SOLILOQUY OF THE PRINCESS PERIWINKLE,

IN THE MOCK PLAY OF "A TRIP TO CAMBRIDGE, OR THE GRATEFUL FAIR,"

[The Princess PERIWINKLE sola, attended by fourteen maids of great honour.]

SURE such a wretch as I was never born,
By all the world deserted and forlorn:
This bitter sweet, this honey-gall to prove,
And all the oil and vinegar of love;
Pride, love, and reason, will not let me rest,
But make a devilish bustle in my breast.
To wed with Fizgig, pride, pride, pride, denies,
Put on a Spanish padlock, reason cries;
But tender, gentle love, with every wish complies.
Pride, love, and reason, fight till they are cloy'd,
And each by each in mutual wounds destroy'd.
Thus when a barber and a collier fight,
The barber beats the luckless collier-white;
The dusty collier heaves his ponderous sack,
And, big with vengeance, beats the barber-black.
In comes the brick-dust man, with grime o'erspread,
And beats the collier and the barber-red;
Black, red, and white, in various clouds are toss'd,
And in the dust they raise the combatants are lost.

ODE

ON AN EAGLE CONFINED IN A COLLEGE COURT.

IMPERIAL bird, who wont to soar
High o'er the rolling cloud,
Where Hyperborean mountains hoar
Their heads in ether shroud ;-
Thou servant of almighty Jove,
Who, free and swift as thought, could'st rove
To the bleak north's extremest goal ;-

Thou, who magnanimous could'st bear
The sovereign thund'rer's arms in air,
And shake thy native pole!

Oh, cruel fate! what barbarous hand,
What more than Gothic ire,

At some fierce tyrant's dread command,
To check thy daring fire

Has plac'd thee in this servile cell,
Where discipline and dulness dwell,

Where genius ne'er was seen to roam;
Where ev'ry selfish soul's at rest,
Nor ever quits the carnal breast,

But lurks and sneaks at home!

Though dimm'd thine eye, and clipt thy wing,

So grov'ling! once so great! The grief-inspired Muse shall sing

In tend'rest lays thy fate.

What time by thee scholastic pride
Takes his precise pedantic stride,

Nor on thy mis'ry casts a care,
The stream of love ne'er from his heart
Flows out, to act fair pity's part;

But stinks, and stagnates there.
Yet useful still, hold to the throng-
Hold the reflecting glass,-
That not untutor'd at thy wrong
The passenger may pass!
Thou type of wit and sense confin'd,
Cramp'd by the oppressors of the mind,

Who study downward on the ground;
Type of the fall of Greece and Rome;
While more than mathematic gloom
Envelopes all around.

THOMAS GRAY.

BORN 1716.-DIED 1771.

MR. MATTHIAS, the accomplished editor of Gray, in delineating his poetical character, dwells with peculiar emphasis on the charm of his lyrical versification, which he justly ascribes to the naturally exquisite ear of the poet having been trained to consummate skill in harmony, by long familiarity with the finest models in the most poetical of all languages, the Greek and Italian. "He was in"deed (says Mr. Matthias) the inventor, it may be " strictly said so, of a new lyrical metre in his own "tongue. The peculiar formation of his strophe, " antistrophe, and epode, was unknown before "him; and it could only have been planned and "perfected by a master genius, who was equally " skilled by long and repeated study, and by trans" fusion into his own mind of the lyric compositions " of ancient Greece and of the higher canzoni' of "the Tuscan poets, 'di maggior carme e suono,' as "it is termed in the commanding energy of their "language. Antecedent to the 'Progress of Poetry,' " and to the Bard, no such lyrics had appeared. " There is not an ode in the English language which " is constructed like these two compositions; with " such power, such majesty, and such sweetness, " with such proportioned pauses and just cadences, "with such regulated measures of the verse, with " such master principles of lyrical art displayed and "exemplified, and, at the same time, with such a " concealment of the difficulty, which is lost in the " softness and uninterrupted flowing of the lines in " each stanza, with such a musical magic, that every "verse in it in succession dwells on the ear and " harmonizes with that which has gone before."

So far as the versification of Gray is concerned, I have too much pleasure in transcribing these sentiments of Mr. Matthias, to encumber them with any qualifying remarks of my own on that particular

subject; but I dissent from him in his more general estimate of Gray's genius, when he afterwards speaks of it, as "second to none."

In order to distinguish the positive merits of Gray from the loftier excellence ascribed to him by his editor, it is unnecessary to resort to the criticisms of Dr. Johnson. Some of them may be just, but their general spirit is malignant and exaggerated. When we look to such beautiful passages in Gray's odes, as his Indian poet amidst the forests of Chili, or his prophet bard scattering dismay on the array of Edward, and his awe-struck chieftains, on the side of Snowdon-when we regard his elegant taste, not only gathering classical flowers from the Arno and Ilyssus, but revealing glimpses of barbaric grandeur amidst the darkness of Runic mythology -when we recollect his " thoughts that breathe, and words that burn"-his rich personifications, his broad and prominent images, and the crowning charm of his versification, we may safely pronounce that Johnson's critical fulminations have passed over his lyrical character with more noise than destruction.

At the same time it must be recollected, that his beauties are rather crowded into a short compass, than numerous in their absolute sum. The spirit of poetry, it is true, is not to be computed mechanically by tale or measure; and abundance of it may enter into a very small bulk of language. But neither language nor poetry are compressible beyond certain limits; and the poet, whose thoughts