16. "Th' applause of list'ning senates to com mand, The threats of pain and ruin to despise, 17. "Their lot forbade ; nor circumscrib'd alone, Their growing virtues, but their crimes coufin'd; Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind; And read their history in a nation's eyes.---This line is very beautiful. A great man, who has been useful to his country, reads the grateful sentiments of his countrymen in their pleased countenances. And that is also the meaning of "smiling land."-It is not the land which appears cheer ful, but the inhabitants, who have received plenty, and enjoy prosperity. Their lot forbade.---These three words complete the sense of the stanza which precedes them, and mean that the humble lot of these villagers prevented them from shining in the senate, either by their oratory, wisdom, or virtue; and the sense of the remaining part of the stanza, is, that their obscurity not only circumscribed or confined the extent of their virtues, but also prevented their committing such great crimes as are the consequences of ambition. Shut the gates of mercy on mankind.---In the Scriptures, opening and shutting the gates of Heaven, is E an expression used to denote the admission or rejection of the claims of mankind to the favour of the Divinity. Shutting the gates of mercy, is not a classical allusion; that is to say, it is not an allusion taken from those Greek or Latin authors that are called classical. To shut the gates of the temple of Janus, among the Romans, was an emblem of universal peace; and an allusion to this would be called classical. Allusions, however, to the Sacred writings are often highly beautiful and impressive. The sublimity of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Job, and the Psalms, is pointed out with judgment and taste in the Spectators. 18. "The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame; Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride, With incense kindled at the inuses' flame. The sense in this stanza is also carried on from that which is before it; and the poet continues to enumerate the errors and mean conduct of those, who seek for peace by concealing their own sense of right and wrong, and by flattering the great. Shrine,-an inclosure, containing the figure of some object of worship. Heaping the shrine of luxury with incense kindled at the muses' flame, means, metaphorically, the flattery which poets offer to those who live in splendor. 19. "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray; Along the cool, sequester'd vale of life, They kept the noiseless tenour of their way. Ignoble.--The poet justly calls the usual pursuits of ambition and avarice ignoble; that is, mean and base. And he calls those pursuits the ignoble strife," or mean competition of the" madding crowd;" who follow ambition and avarice, with an eagerness almost equal to madness. 66 Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray,--never wandered beyond their own business. Sequester'd vale.----Sequestered means retired; and "sequestered vale of life," an humble situation, |