Here we have mournful images, and poetical reverie. The English allow that the prose of Ossian is as poetic as verse, and possesses all the inflexions of the latter; and hence a French translation of this, though a literal one, will be, if good, always supportable; for that, which is simple and natural in one language, possesses these quali ties in every language.

It is generally thought that melancholy allusions, taken from the winds, the moon, and the clouds, were unknown to the ancients; but there are some instances of them in Homer, and a beautiful one in Virgil. Enæas perceives the shade of Dido in the recesses of a forest, as one sees, or fancies that one sees the new moon rising amidst clouds.

“ Qualem primo qui surgere mense

Aut videt, aut videsse putat per nubila lunam.”

Observe all the circumstances. It is the moon, which the spectator sees, or fancies that he sees crossing the clouds; consequently the shade of Dido is reduced to a very small compass, but this moon is in its first phasis, and what is this planet at such a time? Does not the shade of Dido itself seem to vanish from the "mind's eye?" Ossian is here traced to Virgil; but it is Ossian at Naples, where the light is purer, and the vapours more transparent.

Young was therefore ignorant of, or rather has ill expressed melancholy, which feeds itself on the contemplation of nature, and which, whether soft or majestic, follows the natural course of feeling. How superior is Milton to the author of the Night Thoughts in the nobility of grief! Nothing is finer than his four last lines of Paradise Lost:

"The world was all before them where to chuse
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
They hand in hand, with wand'ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way."

In this passage the reader sees all the solitudes of the world open to our first father, all those seas which water unknown lands, all the forests of the habitable globe, and man left alone with his sins amidst the deserts of creation.

Harvey, though possessing a less elevated genius than the author of the Night Thoughts, has evinced a softer and more generous sensibility in his "Meditations among the Tombs." He says of an infant, which suddenly died: "What did the little hasty sojourner find so forbidding and disgustful in our upper world, to occasion its precipitate exit? It is written, indeed, of its suffering Saviour, that, when he had tasted the vinegar, mingled with gall, he would not drink.* And did our new-come stranger begin to sip the cup of life; but, perceiving the bitterness, turn away its head, and refuse the draught? Was this the cause why the weary babe only opened its eyes, just looked on the light, and then withdrew into the more inviting regions of undisturbed repose?"

Dr. Beattie, a Scotch poet, has introduced the most lovely reverie into his Minstrel. It is when he describes the first effects of the Muse upon a young mountain bard, who as yet does not comprehend the genius, by which he is tormented. At one time the future poet goes and seats himself on the borders of the sea during a tempest; at another, he quits the sports of the village that he may listen, first at a distance, and then more closely to the sound of the bagpipe. Young was, perhaps, appointed by nature to treat of higher subjects, but still he was not

* Matthew, chapter 27, verse 34.

a complete poet. Milton, who sung the misfortunes of primeval man, sighed also in Il Penseroso.

Those good writers of the French nation, who have known the charms of reverie, have prodigiously surpassed Young. Chaulieu, like Horace, has mingled thoughts of death with the illusions of life. The following well known lines are of a melancholy cast much more to be admired than the exaggerations of the English poet.

"Grotto, where the murm'ring stream
Mossy bank and flow'ret laves,

Be of thee my future dream,
And of yonder limpid waves.

Fontenay, delicious spot,

Which my youthful life recals,
Oh, when death shall be my lot,
May I rest within thy walls!

Muses who dispell'd my woe,

While the humble swain you bless'd,

Lovely trees, that saw me grow,

Soon you'll see me sink to rest.”

In like manner the inimitable La Fontaine indulges himself.

"Why should my verse describe a flow'ry bank ?

Longer the cruel Fates refuse to spin

My golden thread of life. I shall not sleep
Beneath a canopy of sculptur'd pomp;
But will my rest for this be more disturb'd,
Or will my slumbers less delight impart ?
No, in the trackless desert let me lie," &c.

It was a great poet, from whom such ideas emanated; but to pursue the comparison, there is not a page of Young, which can afford a passage equal to the following

one of J. J. Rousseau. "When evening approached, I descended from the higher parts of the island, and seated myself at the side of the lake in some retired part of the strand. There the noise of the waves and the agitation of the water fixed my attention, and driving every other agitation from my soul, plunged it into a delicious reverie, in which night often imperceptibly surprised me. The flux and reflux of the waves, with their continued noise, but swelling in a louder degree at intervals, unceasingly struck my eyes and ears, while they added to my internal emotions, and caused me to feel the pleasure of existence without taking the pains to think. From time to time a weak and short reflection on the instability of human affairs, occurred to me, which was supplied by the surface of the waters; but these slight impressions were soon effaced by the uniformity of the continued motion which rocked my mind to repose; and which, without any active concurrence of my soul, attached me so strongly to the spot, that when summoned away by the hour and a signal agreed upon, I could not tear myself from the scene without a disagreeable effort."

This passage of Rousseau reminds me that one night, when I was lying in a cottage, during my American travels, I heard an extraordinary sort of murmur from a neighbouring lake. Conceiving this noise to be the forerunner of a storm, I went out of the hut to survey the heavens. Never did I see a more beautiful night, or one in which the atmosphere was purer. The lake's expanse was tranquil, and reflected the light of the moon, which shone on the projecting points of the mountains, and on the forests of the desert. An Indian canoe was traversing the waves in silence. The noise, which I had heard, proceeded from the flood tide of the lake, which was beginning, and which sounded like a sort of groaning as it rose among the rocks. I had left the hut with an idea of

a tempest-let any one judge of the impression which this calm and serene picture must have made upon me-it was like enchantment.

Young has but ill availed himself, as I conceive, of the reveries, which result from such scenes; and this arose from his being eminently defective in tenderness. For the same reason he has failed in that secondary sort of sadness, which arises from the sorrows of memory. Never does the poet of the tombs revert with sensibility to the first stage of life, when all is innocence and happiHe is ignorant of the delights afforded by the recollection of family incidents and the paternal roof. He knows nothing of the regret, with which a person looks back at the sports and pastimes of childhood. He nenever exclaims, like the poet of the Seasons:

ness.

"Welcome, kindred glooms!

Congenial horrors, hail! With frequent foot,
Pleas'd have I, in my cheerful morn of life,
When nurs'd by careless solitude I liv'd,
And sung of nature with unceasing joy,

Pleas'd have I wander'd through your rough domain,
Trod the pure virgin snows, myself as pure." &c.

Gray in his Ode on a distant view of Eton College has introduced the same tenderness of recollection.

"Ah happy hills, ah pleasing shade,

Ah fields belov'd in vain,

Where once my careless childhood stray'd

A stranger yet to pain!

I feel the gales that from you blow,

My weary soul they seem to soothe,
And redolent of joy and youth,

To breathe a second spring."