at the Revolution, is exploded. These are succeeded by a few com pliments to some modern gardens, Chiswick, Richmond, Oatlands, Esher, Woburn, and Hagley; a description of those of Epicurus, and a celebration of his morals. The apostrophe to the Genius of Gardens is happily introduced; and the description of the Gardens of Epicurus is rich and luxuriant. • In the third canto are described hay-making, harvest, and the harvest-home; a method is prescribed for preventing the hay from being mow-burnt, or taking fire. Other vegetable, fossil, and mineral productions peculiar to England are praised. From the culture and produce of the earth, we have a transition to the breeding and management of sheep, cows, and horses; of the latter there are descriptions according to their respective uses; whether for draught, the road, the field, the race, or for war. The portraits of the two last, which are eminently beautiful, conclude the poem. • Of his other poems, his Melpomene may be considered as the greatest effort of his poetical genius. In cannot indeed vie in sublimity and enthusiasm with the lyric compositions of Dryden, Akenside, Collins, Gray, and Mason. It has a more moderate degree of elevation, and poetic fire. It is animated without being rhapsodical, and joins ardent sentiment and picturesque description, to correctness, harmony, and happy expression. His picture of Despair, in the Region of Terror, is finely drawn, and only inferior to that of Spenser. The portrait of Rage is equally happy in the designing, and the expression. In the Region of Pity, the image of a beautiful maid expiring on the corse of a brave lover, who has been killed in vindicating her honour, is affectingly picturesque. That of a too credulous and injured beauty, is equally striking and beautiful, and pregnant with a necessary moral caution. Of his Art of Preaching, in imitation of Horace's " Art of Poetry," the rules are well adapted, and exemplified, and the versification is smooth and elegant. His Songs, in point of tenderness, delicacy, and simplicity, are not inferior to any composition of that kind in the English language.' The following epigram on Burnet, - the gossiping, credulous, and not over-candid Burnet, written on account of his contemptuous mention of Prior, whom he denominated in the second volume of his history "one Prior," was just, and fully merited by the Bishop: "One Prior! and is this, this all the fame The whole account of Michael Bruce, who died at the early age of twenty-one, in a consumption, is in an eminent degree interesting and pathetic. This young man, who has received a very elegant tribute to his merits from the pen of Lord Craig", * Vide Mirror, Number 36. appears appears to have possessed amiable dispositions, classical acquirements, and fine genius. He had to contend not only with a distemper that proved fatal to him, but with the res angusta domi. Yet, amid such unfavourable and disheartening circumstances, he found opportunity and inclination for cultivating a taste for poetry; and he has left several productions which manifest tender sensibility and rich imagination. We recom mend this piece of biography to the attention of our readers, as furnishing them with a favourable specimen of Dr. Anderson's powers as an author. We were much pleased with the life of Chatterton, which contains a fair and satisfactory account of that cutious and interesting controversy. The life of James Græme is introduced by the following paragraphs, which place the feelings of Dr. Anderson in an amiable light: • The poet, whose life the present writer is about to delineate, has a double claim to a place among the poets of our nation, to whose story the public attention has been called by the collection of their works, from genitus and from friendship. He was brought up with him from his infancy, and thinks it a duty incumbent on his friendship for him, to be the faithful executor of his fame, and to collect among others, the incidents of his life, in order that his merit may be known, and his example may be followed. But in making this attempt to state his pretensions, and to estimate his worth, he feels and avows so much affection for the man, that he distrusts his judgment of the poet. • His short life, past in obscurity, and in the silent acquisition of knowledge, has scarce [scarcely] any objects for description to embellish, or events, to which narrative could give importance. If the detail of trivial particulars appear to be little deserving of transmission to posterity, it will be allowed as an excuse for the culpable minuteness of the writer, that the subject of his narrative was the friend of his youth, and the companion of his studies; and, if his opinion, in any instance, appear to be less the result of just judgment than of partial friendship, his feelings may claim some indulgence, though his senti ments do not correspond with those of the reader, who with less friendship for the poet, than he avows, may possess, in a juster proportion, that peculiar combination of sensibility and judgment, upon which the delicacy of critical discernment depends.' In 1763, when Græme was fourteen years old, he was sent to the grammat school of the neighbouring town of Lanark, then taught by Mr. Robert Thomson, brother-in-law to the " poet of the Seasons," a man whose eminent worth, uncommon knowlege in classical learning, indefatigable diligence, and strictness of discipline, without severity, placed him in the first rank among the instructors of youth in North Britain.' We knew this worthy and respectable man, who died in the year 1789, and we are sensible that the praise here bestowed was merited. Our extracts from this work shall be terminated by the character given of him:-a decline carried him off at the age of twenty-two: • His character may easily be collected from this account of his life. A few of his peculiarities remain to be mentioned. His person was manly and prepossessing. His eye was lively and pene trating. His features were pleasing and expressive, his gestures animated, and all his movements and expressions were marked by extraordinary energy and vivacity. In the fortune of his life and the fate of his writings, he resembles Bruce; and, like him, he was equally amiable and ingenious. His mind was capacious, his curiosity excursive, and his industry indefatigable. He united acute ness of intellect with good sense, and sensibility of heart with correctness of taste and critical sagacity. Though studious and learned, he was neither austere nor formal. In him the strictest piety and modesty were united with the utmost cheerfulness, and even playfulness of disposition. He had, what perhaps all people of observation have, a slight tendency to satire; but it was of the gentlest kind. He had too much candour and good-nature to be either a general fatirist or a severe one. Of persons notoriously profligate, or rendered impudent by immorality, breach of public trust, or ignorance, he was at no pains to conceal what he thought. The slightest appearance of immorality, vanity, pedantry, coarse manners, or blameable levity, disgusted him. Like other votaries of the muses, he was passionately fond of rural scenery, and delighted in walking alone in the fields. By the villagers, to whom he was little known his love of solitude was mistaken for an unsocial disposition. The reverse was his character. He was social, cheerful, and affectionate, and by those friends who thoroughly knew him, beloved even to enthusiasm. He practised every manly exercise with dexterity, participated in the amusements becoming his age, and particularly excelled in the games of chess and backgammon; but to games of chance he had rather a disinclination. In every thing he pursued he was indefatigable in aiming at perfection. The lowliness of his lot conspired with the simplicity of his heart, to possess him with an carly veneration for the virtues and the writings of the primitive ages; and the nature of his studies afforded him the best oppor tunities to heighten and confirm that veneration, by enabling him to converse familiarly with the most celebrated writers of Greece and Rome. He read their remains with ardour, and imbibed their sentiments with enthusiasm; on them he formed his taste and improved his heart. In his admiration of Grecian and Roman liberty, he founded his ardent love of political freedom, and his peculiar attachment to the popular part of our conftitution. He found the principles of good writing in Homer, Xenophon, Herodotus, Cæsar, and others who are distinguished by a severe and majestic simplicity of style. But he was charmed above all others with the humane writers of the elegiac class. The wit of Ovid and the learning of Propertiua Propertius were the qualities he least admired; but the tender simplicity of Tibullus affected him with the liveliest delight, as it was most congenial to the gentleness of his disposition, and exhibited the purest model of elegiac poetry. Time was not allowed him for going deep into French, Italian, and German literature; but he had read the best authors in these languages, in English versions. • From the gentleness of his disposition, the elegance of his fancy, and the classical simplicity of his taste, the style of his poetry took its character, which has more tenderness than sublimity, more elegance than dignity, more ease than force. Prompted generally by incident, and impatient of design, he wrote with more happiness than care. But all his compositions are distinguished by marks of genius and poetical feeling, with numbers animated and varied accord. ing to the subject. His thoughts are often striking, and always just. His versification, though not exquisitely polished, is commonly flowing and harmonious. His language is, in general, chaste, correct, and well adapted; in elegy, frugal of epithet and metaphor; in blank verse and burlesque heroic, swelling and pompous, but not stiff or obscure. In some passages, he has not been so careful as might have been wished to choose perfect rhymes, or to avoid prosaic diction. All his pieces were written with surprising facility; most of them, as occasion suggested, being the production of an evening in bed, before he went to fleep, and, as his custom was, committed to any scrap of paper, or blank leaf of a book that came in his way in the morning. As these scraps received the first effusion of thought, unsubdued by the reiterated castigation of judgment, so they com. monly remained, for he seldom could be brought to submit to the trouble of revising them. His last production was always his favourite; but it continued to please him no longer than it was new. The piece that dropped from his pen in the morning, after having been presented with eagerness, and read with transport to the present writer, was forgotten in the returning meditation of the evening, like the production of the preceding day. Of the incredible number of pieces he composed, the printed collection contains only thirty-eight elegies, and somewhat more than half that number of miscellaneous poems and translations; being all he designed for publication, or of which any complete copies have been preserved. • His Love Elegies, the most finished and the most pleasing of his performances, are mostly written in alternate rhyme, in the style of Hammond, whose simplicity and tenderness he has judiciously imitated, without adopting his Roman imagery derived from Tibullus, whom for the most part he translates. But as love is of no particular country, and its language universal, he confesses in his admiration of Hammond, the sympathetic feelings of passion and of nature, so forcibly expressed in his elegies; a confession common to every reader of sensibility, whose sentiments have not been corrupted by literary prejudice, or perverted by the unmerited censure of Dr. Johnson. Sincere in his love, almost without example, he wrote to a real not a fancied mistress; and as he felt the distress he describes, he has few ambitious ornaments, but expresses the simple unaffected language of the tender passions. To his sincerity it is also owing, that Ca that the character of his elegies is but little diversified, presenting chiefly a recurrence of the querulous ideas of grief and disappointment, a repetition of the soft distress of ill requited love, and a series of pathetic comparisons of the pretensions of birth and wealth, with the happiness and security of humble fortune, in which the preference is constantly ascribed to the latter, and the rights of sensibility asserted with persuasive energy. • Sublimer happiness can titles yield, Can wealth or grandeur greater meed bestow? Of his Elegies, moral and descriptive, the sentiments, in general, are pleasing and pathetic, and the imagery picturesque and beautiful. The Elegy on the loss of the Aurora, the clegy written at Cuthally Castle, October an Elegy, and the elegy on Mr. Fisher, deserve particular commendation. They unite poetical beauty with that plaintive tenderness which is the characteristic of elegy, The amiable humanity, and tender simplicity which distinguish the Linnet an Elegy, are attractive and affecting in the highest degree. Though the palm of merit in this species of elegy be chiefly due to Jago, he has not adopted into his performance the identical circumstances of fictitious distress employed by that poet, in his " Blackbirds," nor followed him in the train of his thoughts, or in the structure of his stanza. The sentiments arise spontaneously from the subject, which is new and happily imagined, and the pathetic touches and delicate strokes of nature are such as would not discredit the pen of the humane and ingenious "poet of the birds." They, who may think the supplemental stanza, offered by the present writer, unnecessary, are at liberty to reject it; as well as the pieces of the same class, under his name, the comparative inferiority of which cannot escape observation. For the sentiments, he flatters himself he shall find an easy pardon. Sylvia and Clara were not the phantoms of his mind; but his life has been protracted till they have sunk into their graves, and his pity and his praise are but empty sounds. • Of his Miscellaneous Poems, the Night Prece, Hymn to the Eternal Mind, Fit of the Spleen, Abra, The Student, Alexis, Verses to Mr. Hamilton, and Major White, are chiefly distinguished for felicity of invention, seriousness of subject, and strength and elegance of com position. The poem on Curling, a winter amusement peculiar to North Britain, abounds with picturesque description and original imagery. But the subject being local and little known, the di dactic and technical allusions, which are numerous, can only be understood by those who are acquainted with the manly diversion of Curling. His Epistles, Songs, Anacreontics, &c. display invention, and no small portion of that ease, vivacity, and delicacy, essential to success, in the lighter and less elevated productions of faney. • His Hero and Leander is for the most part a translation from the Greek poem of Mufaus. Several passages in the original are omitted; others paraphrased, and some entire speeches and new circumstances introduced. Following, in some measure, a new plan, he |