And things divine thou treat'st of in such state BUT Milton next, with high and haughty stalks

ADDRESS TO GREAT BRITAIN.

-For lofty sense,
Creative fancy, and inspection keen
Through the deep windings of the human heart,
Is not wild Shakspeare thine and Nature's boast?
Is not each great, each amiable Muse
Of classic ages in thy Milton met?
A genius, universal as his theme;
Astonishing as Chaos; as the bloom

Of blowing Eden fair; as Heaven sublime!
THOMSON'S SUMMER.

ODE TO THE MUSE.

SAY, goddess, can the festal board,
Or young Olympia's form ador'd;
Say, can the pomp of promis'd fame
Relume thy faint, thy dying, flame?
Or have melodious airs the power
To give one free poetic hour?
Or, from amid the Elysian train,
The soul of Milton shall I gain,

To win thee back with some celestial strain?

O powerful strain! O sacred soul! His numbers every sense control: And now again my bosom burns; The Muse, the Muse herself, returns!

AKENSIDE.

OUR stedfast bard, to his own genius true,
Still bade his Muse, "fit audience find, though
"few."

Scorning the judgement of a trifling age,
To choicer spirits he bequeath'd his page.
He too was scorn'd; and, to Britannia's shame,
She scarce for half an age knew Milton's name.
But now, his fame by every trumpet blown,
We on his deathless trophies raise our own.
Nor art nor nature did his genius bound;

Heaven, Hell, Earth, Chaos, he survey'd around;
All things his eye, through wit's bright empire

thrown,

Beheld; and made, what it beheld, his own.
Such Milton was: 'tis ours to bring him forth;
And yours to vindicate neglected worth.
Such Heaven-taught numbers should be more
than read,

More wide the manna through the nation spread.
Like some bless'd spirit he to night descends.
Mankind he visits, and their steps befriends;
Through mazy errour's dark perplexing wood,
Points out the path of true and real good;
Warns erring youth, and guards the spotless
maid

From spell of magic vice, by reason's aid.

DR. DALTON'S PROLOGUE TO COMUS, 1738.

Whose generous zeal, unbought by flattering
rhymes,
Shames the mean pensions of Augustan times;
Immortal patrons of succeeding days,
Attend this prelude of perpetual praise!
Let Wit, condemn'd the feeble war to wage
With close Malevolence, or public Rage;
Let Study, worn with Virtue's fruitless lore,
Behold this theatre, and grieve no more.
This night, distinguish'd by your smiles, shall
tell,

Ya patriot crowds, who burn for England's fame,

Ye nymphs, whose bosoms beat at Milton's name,

That never Britain can in vain excel;
The slighted arts futurity shall trust,
And rising ages hasten to be just.

At length our mighty bard's victorious lays
Fill the loud voice of universal praise;
And baffled Spite, with hopeless anguish dumb,
Yields to renown the centuries to come;
With ardent haste each candidate of fame,
Ambitious, catches at his towering name:
He sees, and pitying sees, vain wealth bestow
Those pageant honours which he scorn'd below,
While crowds aloft the laureat bust behold,
Or trace his form on circulating gold.
Unknown,-unheeded, long his offspring lay,
And want hung threatening o'er her slow decay.
What though she shine with no Miltonian fire,
No favouring Muse her morning dreams inspire }
Yet softer claims the melting heart engage,
Her youth laborious, and her blameless age;
Hers the mild merits of domestic life,
The patient sufferer, and the faithful wife.
Thus grac'd with humble Virtue's native charms,
Her grandsire leaves her in Britannia's arms;
Secure with peace, with competence, to dwell,
While tutelary nations guard her cell.
Yours is the charge, ye fair, ye wise, ye brave!
'Tis yours to crown desert-beyond the grave.
Dr. Johnson's Prologue to the Mask of Comus,

acted at Drury-Lane Theatre, April 5, 1750,
for the Benefit of Milton's Grand-daugh-

ter.

NOR second he that rode sublime
Upon the seraph-wings of ecstasy;
The secrets of the abyss to spy,

He pass'd the flaming bounds of place and time:
Where angels tremble while they gaze,
The living throne, the sapphire blaze,
He saw; but, blasted with excess of light,
Clos'd his eyes in endless night.

GRAY'S PROGRESS OF POESY.

ODE ON THE POETICAL CHARACTER.

HIGH on some cliff, to Heaven up-pil'd,
Of rude access, of prospect wild,
Where tangled round the jealous steep
Strange shades o'erbrow the vallies deep,
And holy Genii guard the rock,
Its glooms embrown, its springs unlock,
While on its rich ambitious head

An Eden, like his own, lies spread;

I view that oak the fancied glades among,
By which as Milton lay, his evening ear,
From many a cloud that dropp'd ethereal dew,

Nigh spher'd in Heaven, its native strains could hear,

On which that ancient trump he reach'd was hung;

Thither oft his glory greeting,

From Waller's myrtle shades retreating,

With many a vow from Hope's aspiring tongue
My trembling feet his guiding steps pursue;
In vain:- -Such bliss to one alone

Of all the sons of soul was known;
And Heaven and Fancy, kindred powers,
Have now o'erturn'd the inspiring bowers,
Or curtain'd close such scene from every
ture view.

ODE TO MEMORY.

RISE, hallow'd Milton! rise, and say,
How, at thy gloomy close of day;

To the fell house of Busyrane, he led
The unshaken Britomart; or Milton knew,
When in abstracted thought he first conceiv'd
All Heaven in tumult, and the seraphim
Came towering, arm'd in adamant and gold.

APART, and on a sacred hill retir'd,
Beyond all mortal inspiration fir'd,
The mighty Milton sits :-An host around
Of listening angels guard the holy ground;
fu- Amaz'd they see a human form aspire

COLLINS.

To grasp with daring hand a seraph's lyre
Inly irradiate with celestial beams,
Attempt those high, those soul-subduing themes,
(Which humbler denizens of Heaven decline,)
And celebrate, with sanctity divine,

The starry field from warring angels won,
And God triumphant in his Victor son.
Nor less the wonder, and the sweet delight,
His milder scenes and softer notes excite,

How, when "depress'd by age, beset with When, at his bidding, Eden's blooming grove

wrongs;"

Breathes the rich sweets of innocence and love.

When "fall'n on evil days and evil tongues:"With such pure joy as our forefather knew
When Darkness, brooding on thy sight,
Exil'd the sov'reign lamp of light:

Say, what could then one cheering hope diffuse;
What friends were thine, save Memory and the
Muse?

Hence the rich spoils, thy studious youth
Caught from the stores of ancient Truth:
Hence all thy busy eye could pleas'd explore,
When Rapture led thee to the Latian shore;
Each scene, that Tiber's bank supplied;
Each grace, that play'd on Arno's side;
The tepid gales, through Tuscan glades that fly;
The blue serene, that spreads Hesperia's sky;
Were still thine own: thy ample mind
Each charm receiv'd, retain'd, combin'd,
And thence "the nightly visitant," that came
To touch thy bosom with her sacred flame,
Recall'd the long-lost beams of grace;
That whilom shot from Nature's face,
When God, in Eden, o'er her youthful breast
Spread with his own right hand Perfection's gor-
geous vest.

MASON.

FROM THE REV. THOMAS WARTON'S ADDRESS TO THE
PRESENT QUEEN ON HER MARRIAGE.

Lo! this the land, whence Milton's Muse of fire
High soar'd to steal from Heaven a seraph's lyre;
And told the golden ties of wedded love
In sacred Eden's amarantine grove.

FROM THE DESCRIPTION OF NIGHT IN THE SAME AU-
THOR'S PLEASURES OF MELANCHOLY.

Nor then let dreams, of wanton folly born,
My senses lead through flowery paths of joy;
But let the sacred Genius of the night
Such mystic visions send, as Spencer saw,
When through bewildering Fancy's magic

maze,

When Raphael, Heavenly guest, first met his
view,

And our glad sire, within his blissful bower,
Drank the pure converse of the etherial Power,
Round the best bard his raptur'd audience
throng,

And feel their souls imparadis'd in song.

HAYLEY'S ESSAY ON EPIC POETRY, EPIST. III.

AGES elaps'd ere Homer's lamp appear'd,
And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard:
To carry Nature lengths unknown before,
To give a Milton birth, ask'd ages more.
Thus Genius rose and set at order'd times,
And shot a day-spring into distant climes,
Ennobling every region that he chose;
He sunk in Greece, in Italy he rose ;
And, tedious years of Gothic darkness pass'd,
Emerg'd all splendour in our isle at last.
Thus lovely halcyons dive into the main,
Then show far off their shining plumes again.
COWPER'S TABLE TALK,

PHILOSOPHY, baptiz'd

In the pure fountain of eternal love,
Has eyes indeed; and, viewing all she sees
As meant to indicate a God to man,
Gives him his praise, and forfeits not her own.
Learning has borne such fruit in other days
On all her branches: Piety has found
Friends in the friends of science, and true prayer
Has flow'd from lips wet with Castalian dews.
Such was thy wisdom, Newton, childlike sage!
Sagacious reader of the works of God,
And in his word sagacious. Such too thine,
Milton, whose genius had angelic wings,
And fed on manna. And such thine, in whom
Our British Themis gloried with just cause,
Immortal Hale! for deep discernment prais'd,
And sound integrity, not more than fam'd
For sanctity of manners undefil'd.

COWPER'S AUTHOR'S TASK, B. 11.

THE VERSE.

THE measure is English heroic verse without rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin: rhyme being no necessary adjunct, or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age to set off wretched matter and lame metre; graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse than else they would have expressed them. Not without cause, therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme both in longer and shorter works: as have also long since our best English tragedies: as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight; which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another; not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients, both in poetry and all good oratory. This neglect then of rhyme so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers, that it is rather to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered, to heroic poem, from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming.