tender passion, had not yet been shown in its most interesting forms. It was hence our poets, particularly the dramatic, borrowed ideas of a legitimate plot, and the complication of facts necessary to constitute a story either of the comic or tragic species. In proportion as knowledge increased, genius had wanted subjects and materials. These pieces usurped the place of legends and chronicles. And although the old historical songs of the minstrels contained much bold adventure, heroic enterprise, and strong touches of rude delineation, yet they failed in that multiplication and disposition of circumstances, and in that description of characters and events approaching nearer to truth and reality, which were demanded by a more discerning and curious age. Even the rugged features of the original Gothic romance were softened by this sort of reading; and the Italian pastoral, yet with some mixture of the kind of incidents described in Heliodorus's Ethiopic History, now newly translated, was engrafted on the feudal manners in Sidney's Arcadia.

But the Reformation had not yet destroyed every delusion, nor disenchanted all the strongholds of superstition. A few dim characters were yet legible in the mouldering creed of tradition. Every goblin of ignorance did not vanish at the first glimmerings of the morning of science. Reason suffered a few demons still to linger, which she chose to retain in her service under the guidance of poetry. Men believed, or were willing to believe, that spirits were yet hovering around, who brought with them airs from Heaven, or blasts from Hell; that the ghost was duly released from his prison of torment at the sound of the curfew; and that fairies imprinted mysterious circles on the turf by moonlight. Much of this credulity was even consecrated by the name of science and profound speculation. Pros pero had not yet broken and buried his staff, nor drowned his book deeper than did ever plummet sound. It was now that the alchymist, and the judicial astrologer, conducted his occult operations by the potent intercourse of some preternatural being, who came obsequious to his call, and was bound to accomplish his severest services, under certain conditions, and for a limited duration of time. It was actually one of the pretended feats of these fantastic philosophers, to evoke the queen of the fairies in the solitude of a gloomy grove, who, preceded by a sudden rustling of the leaves, appeared in robes of transcendent lustre. The Shakspere of a more instructed and polished age

would not have given us a magician darkening the sun at noon, the sabbath of the witches, and the cauldron of incantation.

Undoubtedly most of these notions were credited and entertained in a much higher degree in the preceding periods. But the arts of composition had not then made a sufficient progress, nor would the poets of those periods have managed them with so much address and judgment. We were now arrived at that point when the national credulity, chastened by reason, had produced a sort of civilised superstition, and left a set of traditions, fanciful enough for poetic decoration, and yet not too violent and chimerical for common sense. Hobbes, although no friend to this doctrine, observes happily, "In a good poem both judgment and fancy are required; but the fancy must be more eminent, because they please for the extravagancy, but ought not to displease by indiscretion."

In the mean time the Gothic romance, although somewhat shook by the classical fictions, and by the tales of Boccace and Bandello, still maintained its ground; and the daring machineries of giants, dragons, and enchanted castles, borrowed from the magic storehouse of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, began to be employed by the epic The Gothic and pagan fictions were now frequently blended and incorporated The Lady of the Lake floated in the suite of Neptune before Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth, and assumes the sem. blance of a sea-nymph; and Hecate, by an easy association, conducts the rites of the weird sisters in Macbeth.

muse.

Allegory had been derived from the religious dramas into our civil spectacles. The masques and pageantries of the age of Elizabeth were not only furnished by the heathen divinities, but often by the virtues and vices impersonated, significantly decorated, accurately distinguished by their proper types, and represented by living actors. The ancient symbolical shows of this sort began now to lose their old barbarism and a mixture of religion, and to assume a degree of poetical elegance and precision. Nor was it only in the conformation of particular figures that much fancy was shown, but in the contexture of some of the fables or devices presented by groups of ideal personages. These exhibitions quickened creative invention, and reflected back on poetry what poetry had given. From their familiarity and public nature they formed a national taste for allegory; and the allegorical poets were now writing to the people. Even romance was turned into

this channel. In the Faery Queen' allegory is wrought upon chivalry, and the feats and figments of Arthur's Round Table are moralised. The virtues of magnificence and chastity are here personified; but they are imaged with the forms, and under the agency, of romantic knights and damsels. What was an after-thought in Tasso, appears to have been Spenser's premeditated and primary design. In the mean time we must not confound these moral combatants of the 'Faery Queen' with some of its other embodied abstractions, which are purely and professedly allegorical.

It may here be added, that only a few critical treatises, and but one Art of Poetry, were now written. Sentiments and images were not absolutely determined by the canons of composition, nor was genius awed by the consciousness of a future and final arraignment at the tribunal of taste. A certain dignity of inattention to niceties is now visible in our writers. Without too closely consulting a criterion of correctness, every man indulged his own capriciousness of invention. The poet's appeal was chiefly to his own voluntary feelings, his own immediate and peculiar mode of conception; and this freedom of thought was often expressed in an undisguised frankness of diction.

No satires, properly so called, were written till towards the latter end of the queen's reign, and then but a few. Pictures drawn at large of the vices of the times, did not suit readers who loved to wander in the regions of artificial manners. The muse, like the people, was too solemn and reserved, too ceremonious and pedantic, to stoop to common life. Satire is the poetry of a nation highly polished.

The importance of the female character was not yet acknowledged, nor were women admitted into the general commerce of society. The effect of that intercourse had not imparted a comic air to poetry, nor softened the severer tone of our versification with the levities of gallantry and the familiarities of compliment, sometimes, perhaps, operating on serious subjects, and imperceptibly spreading themselves in the general habits of style and thought. I do not mean to insinuate that our poetry has suffered from the great change of manners which this assumption of the gentler sex, or rather the improved state of female education, has produced, by giving elegance and variety to life, by enlarging the sphere of conversation, and by multiplying the topics and enriching the stores of wit and humour; but I am marking the

peculiarities of composition, and my meaning was to suggest that the absence of so important a circumstance from the modes and constitution of ancient life must have influenced the cotemporary poetry.

All or most of these circumstances contributed to give a descriptive, a picturesque, and a figurative cast to the poetical language. This effect appears even in the prose compositions of the reign of Elizabeth. In the subsequent age prose became the language of poetry.

In the mean time general knowledge was increasing with a wide diffusion and a hasty rapidity. Books began to be multiplied, and a variety of the most useful and rational topics had been discussed in our own language. But science had not made too great advances. On the whole we were now arrived at that period, propitious to the operations of original and true poetry, when the coyness of fancy was not always proof against the approaches of reason; when genius was rather directed than governed by judgment; and when taste and learning had so far only disciplined imagination, as to suffer its excesses to pass without censure or control for the sake of the beauties to which they were allied.

227.-ON THE SAGACITY OF THE SPIDER.

GOLDSMITH. ANIMALS in general are sagacious, in proportion as they cultivate society. The elephant and the beaver show the greatest signs of this, when united; but when man intrudes into their communities, they lose all their spirit of industry, and testify but a very small share of that sagacity for which, when in a social state, they are so remarkable.

Among insects, the labours of the bee and the ant have employed the attention and admiration of the naturalist; but their whole sagacity is lost upon separation, and a single bee or ant seems destitute of every degree of industry, is the most stupid insect imaginable, languishes for a time in solitude, and soon dies.

Of all the solitary insects I have ever remarked, the spider is the most sagacious, and its actions, to me, who have attentively considered them, seem almost to exceed belief. This insect is formed by nature

for a state of war, not only upon other insects, but upon each other. For this state, nature seems perfectly well to have formed it. Its head and breast are covered with a strong natural coat of mail, which is impenetrable to the attempts of every other insect, and its belly is enveloped in a soft pliant skin, which eludes the sting even of a wasp. Its legs are terminated by strong claws, not unlike those of a lobster; and their vast length, like spears, serve to keep every assailant at a distance.

Not worse furnished for observation than for an attack or defence, it has several eyes, large, transparènt, and covered with a horny substance, which, however, does not impede its vision. Besides this, it is furnished with a forceps above the mouth, which serves to kill or secure the prey already caught in its claws or its net.

Such are the implements of war with which the body is immediately furnished; but its net to entangle the enemy seems what it chiefly trusts to, and what it takes most pains to render as complete as possible. Nature has furnished the body of this little creature with a glutinous liquid, which, proceeding from the anus, it spins into thread, coarser or finer as it chooses to contract or dilate its sphincter. In order to fix its threads when it begins to weave, it emits a small drop of its liquid against the wall, which, hardening by degrees, serves to hold the thread very firmly. Then receding from the first point, as it recedes, the thread lengthens; and when the spider has come to the place where the other end of the thread should be fixed, gathering up with its claws the thread, which would otherwise be too slack, it is stretched tightly, and fixed in the same manner to the wall as before.

In this manner it spins and fixes several threads parallel to each other, which, so to speak, serve as the warp to the intended web. To form the woof, it spins in the same manner its thread, transversely fixing one end to the first thread that was spun, and which is always the strongest of the whole web, and the other to the wall. All these threads, being newly spun, are glutinous, and therefore stick to each other, wherever they happen to touch; and in those parts of the web most exposed to be torn, our natural artist strengthens them, by doubling the threads sometimes six-fold.

Thus far, naturalists have gone in the description of this animal: what follows is the result of my own observation upon that species of the insect called the house-spider. I perceived, about four years ago,