"As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path, Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum: Now teach me, Maid composed, To breathe some softened strain, "Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale, May, not unseemly, with its stillness suit ; As, musing slow, I hail Thy genial loved return! "For when thy folding-star arising shows "And many a Nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge, And sheds the freshening dew, and lovelier still, The pensive Pleasures sweet, Prepare thy shadowy car. "Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene, Or find some ruin, 'midst its dreary dells, Whose walls more awful nod By thy religious gleams. "Or, if chill blustering winds, or driving rain, Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut, That from the mountain's side Views wilds, and swelling floods, "And hamlets brown, and dim-discovered spires, And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all Thy dewy fingers draw The gradual dusky veil. "While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont, While Summer loves to sport "While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves; And rudely rends thy robes; "So long, regardful of thy quiet rule, Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, smiling Peace, And love thy favourite name."* The following exquisite lines, "written in the beginning of the year 1746," refer, no doubt, to some skirmish with the Pretender, who seized Stirling Castle in the month of January. It is scarcely possible, however, that they were suggested by General Hamley's attempt to raise the siege, for that commander was not only defeated with much loss, but is said to have made a hasty and disgraceful retreat to Edinburgh. "How sleep the brave, who sink to rest, "By fairy hands their knell is rung ; By forms unseen their dirge is sung ; "Two of the most enchanting lyrics in our language," said Rogers, "are Collins's 'Ode to Evening,' and Coleridge's Love." Thomas Warton. 1728-1790. There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray, To dwell a weeping hermit there." Had Collins written nothing beyond the two odes I have quoted, his fame as a poet would be secure. It is strange that Gray, his contemporary and rival, should have failed to discern his supremacy as a lyrist. He classes him with Thomas Warton, a minor poet of some merit, and a critic of high reputation, and writes as if the two men occupied the same platform. This opinion was not due to any feeling of jealousy. Gray was a modest man, and if he was mistaken in his judgment of Collins, he was equally mistaken in the estimate of his own powers. He died, said his friend Bonstetten, without a suspicion of the high rank he was destined to hold amongst the poets of his country. The genius of Collins is distinct from that of Gray. The least known is the greater lyric poet, but will never be the best beloved. They are alike in learning, in their sensibility to the beauties of nature-a feeling unknown to Pope; in the art with which they built up their lofty rhyme; in the aspirations which lifted them into a region never to be reached by the poetical moralists of the age. [The biographies of Gray and Collins should be read in Johnson's "Lives." Johnson knew Collins, and appreciated him as a man if not as a poet. He had no personal intercourse with Gray, and is unjust to his poetry; but Johnson, even at his worst-and his life of Gray is the least satisfactory of the series-has always something to say that is worth reading. Gray's poems are to be met with in every variety of form. His works, including the letters, and edited by the Rev. John Mitford, were published in five volumes by the late Mr. Pickering, who knew better than any publisher of his day how to produce the poets in an edition worthy of their merit. The poems, apart from the prose, can be obtained in the cheap but beautiful Aldine series now published by Messrs. Bell and Sons, in which series the student can also secure a Collins. Mr. Gosse, whose competency for such a task is beyond question, has written a masterly account of Gray in the series of "English Men of Letters ;" and Mr. Matthew Arnold (in Ward's "English Poets") writes an interesting essay on the poet, taking for his text four words written by Gray's executor a fortnight after his death—“ He never spoke out.” I may add that Gray's "Odes" and "Elegy," with introduction and notes, can be bought for a few pence in Chambers's cheap reprints of English classics.] CHAPTER XI. THE GEORGIAN POETS (Continued). WILLIAM COWPER. IN 1761, Charles Churchill was the most popular poet in England. In 1764 he died, and the satires which gave him such sudden popularity were as speedily forgotten. He appealed, it has been well said, "to the passion of the moment," and when that passion passed his fame died with it. His name, however, will always have some attraction for the student, since his schoolfellow, William Cowper, formed his style as a satirist upon that of the "great Churchill." Churchill was never great, although Cowper deemed him so; but there is a vigour and boldness in his lines which give them a special character, and their roughness was attractive at a time when, instead of the fine grain of poetry, the public were forced to be satisfied with the polish of veneer. *"A critic of the present day," says Cowper, serves a poem as a cook serves a dead turkey, when she fastens the legs of it to |