increase the pleafing fenfations that arife from reprefentations of love. There are other analogies which are too manifeft to be mentioned it is fufficient juft to have pointed out this neglected fource of new beauties. Sometimes the fituation of the perfon, and the nature of the fcene, may be contrafted; pleafure may be furrounded by objects of horror, and forrow with the beauties of a terreftrial paradife thefe pictures will act upon the foul with oppofite powers, and produce at once fenfibility and reflection. But defcriptive poetry fhould not only move, it should infruct. It is not enough to interfperfe virtuous fentiments, and general maxims of life: the whole fhould be uniformly directed to fome end: this will give the performance all the merit and beauty it can have, and produce a harmony among all its parts, and a unity in the whole. My ultimate view has been to infpire our noble and wealthy citizens with love for the country, and respect for its employments; and this may be traced in every part of my work. I have written Georgics for those who are to protect the country, and not thofe who cultivate it: I fpeak not to hufbandmen, for they would not understand me. The Georgics of Virgil, and even those of Vanieres which defcend to more minute particulars, can be of no ufe to the peafant. To give him inftructions concerning his employment, in verfe, is to labour in vain; but it is of great ufe to apprife thofe whom the laws have fet over him, of the kindness and regard that is due to fo useful a member of the common wealth. It is particularly at this time of great ufe to infpire perfons of the higher claffes with a taste for rural life; for luxury, the arts, and an infinite variety of employments, peculiar to great cities, are now making the country in fome fenfe a defart. The noblesse are not fufficiently apprifed of the value of that free and blameless life which is to be found in the manfion that is furrounded by their paternal inheritance: they are fond of being bufy and in place; "We must be fomething" is an expreffion continually in the mouth of those who in themselves are nothing. My work is naturally divided by my fubject; there are four feafons, and I have made four cantos. Nature in the beginning of the Spring is gloomy and majeftic; fhe foon becomes lovely and gay. She is great, beautiful and ftriking in Summer'; mournful in Autumn, and fublime and awful in Winter. 'I have endeavoured to give, to each of my cantos, the character of the season which it defcribes: I have confidered with what what fentiments the fucceffive phænomena of the various feafons would naturally infpire mankind, and thofe fentiments I have expreffed. Thomfon has, in each of his books or cantos, reprefented Nature as fublime and great; he had more pleasure in the aftonifhing than the lovely: and, perhaps, he found it more easy. All the words that defcribe great phænomena, and the fublime of Nature, are poetical, and no other can offer themfelves on the fubject; fo that although the picture fhould be unfinished, it would still have an effect. It is much more difficult to ennoble common objects, than to paint thofe which are great; it is more difficult to animate a landfcape, than to describe awful beauty. Thomfon was not obliged perpetually to recal the attention of his reader to the moral which I have propofed: he fung of Nature among a people by whom Nature was known and loved; but I fing of her to a nation who either knows her not, or regards her with indifference. Thomfon fpoke to lovers of their miftrefs, and he was fure to be heard with pleasure: I am endeavouring to excite a paffion for a fine woman, in the breaft of one who has never feen her, by fpeaking her praife, and exhi biting her picture. I have confined all my defcriptions to our own climate; if I had indulged myself in thofe of others, I muft have engrafted defcription upon defcription, and I thought it more eligible to form epifodes of manners and events, that were fufceptible of an intereft. I have fometimes melted down my defcriptions in thefe epifodes, fo that they form an effential part of them; and I have fometimes abridged them to make room for some of those fimple verfes, which we love to repeat in the different circumftances and fituations of life. I have regretted the want of power to transfufe into my work the beauties which Thomfon has fo lavishly fcattered through his own but the defigns of our poems were not the fame; and the difference of the plan naturally produced a difference in the conduct: when we have painted the fame objects, we have not given them the fame proportions; and when our pictures have been the fame in the drawing, the colouring has been different. This little work has been written five or fix years; and I would have publifhed it fooner if I had been fatisfied with it: fince I determined to publifh it I have retouched it with great care; and I would retouch it perhaps with ftill more, if I was more fure that it was worth the labour. Whether it is or not, I must learn from the public; from the public alfo I must learn what further corrections must be made. I fhall be grateful for criticism: if my work, however, does not rife above mediocrity, 9 criticifin criticism will be ufelefs, but, if it is good, it may enable me to render it ftill better.' Upon this difcourfe we have not much to remark; the principles it contains are in general fo manifeftly juft, that they need neither illuftration nor proof. Something, however, may be objected to this Author's account of the rife of pastoral or rural poetry. He fays, that among happy people whofe employments were embittered neither by toil nor anxiety, men who were born with a genius for poetry, celebrated the quiet felicity which they enjoyed. They contemplated all the circumstances of their condition with pleasure, and there were none which they thought unworthy of their fong.'-To confirm this obfervation he remarks, that the inhabitants of a fertile and temperate climate were the first who cultivated rural poetry, and that Daphnis and Theocritus were Sicilians.' This theory, however fpecious, does not appear to be confirmed by fact. It does not appear either that the first poetry was paftoral, or that paftoral poetry was ever written by paftoral characters. The great original objects of human paffion were three felf, a miftrefs, and an enemy; thefe naturally produced the first poetry, the fubjects of which were religion, love, and war. Men never celebrated their labour: when it was of one fpecies it flood oppofed to pleasure, however easy. It was neceflary, and therefore fometimes performed, when it was not chofen; which alone was fufficient to bring it into difgrace. Labour first began to be confidered as pleafing, when it was compared with other labour which had more inconvenience and fewer advantages; and it was confidered in this light, not by those who performed it, but by thofe who faw it performed. Of Daphnis we are told nothing that can be true except that he invented paftoral, and was a Sicilian; particulars which stand upon no better teftimony than we have of his being the fon of the god Mercury, and miraculously punished with blindness, in confequence of an imprecation, for being falfe to his miftrefs. Of Theocritus we know more; he is faid to have lived in the court of Egypt in the time of Ptolomy Philadelphus, and to have been born in Syracufe, one of the greatest cities then in the world. He was not therefore one of thofe whom this Author fuppofes to have celebrated rural life in confequence of deriving happiness from its employments. Paftoral life itself perhaps did not exift till after the aggregation of fmall nations into great where civil fociety was not familiar with artificial wants and the pleasures which arife from fupplying them, the wants of nature were not fupplied by tilling the ground, and keeping cattle and fheep: mankind in thofe ages lived by hunting, or by fuch vegetables as the earth produced without culture: they lived then as we know they do now in countries where what we call the improvements of life have not taken place, as the negroes live in Africa, and the Savages, as we call them, to whom we have not yet taught all our miferies and our vices, in North America. If Sicilian fhepherds or hufbandmen had ever written poetry, it would have been upon fuch fubjects as ftruck them in common with men in other fituations: they were lefs likely to ceJebrate husbandry, or any other rural employment, than any other people, for the reafons that have been affigned already. Every man naturally thinks better of any labour than that which he is obliged to perform; and thofe who follow the flock or the plough for fubfiftence, look round upon the beauties of nature with as much indifference as a fmith does upon the tools of his fhop. They would probably have celebrated their mistress, and their fongs of love would of neceffity have exhibited paftoral images, but they would not therefore have been paftoral poems. Befides, it is not likely that husbandmen and shepherds had more understanding or literature in former ages than in this; and if, as this Author fays, peafants cannot now underftand verse, it is not to be fuppofed that they could then write it. There is, perhaps, poetry where there is no writing, but, wherever it is true that poetry cannot be understood, it is certainly true that it cannot be made.. Paftoral poetry feems to have been firft written when the pleasures and employments of fhepherds and husbandmen derived value from a comparison with others; and the first paftoral poets were, probably, thofe who were weary of the pleafures and pursuits of a city. Such perfons fee the country occafionally, in intervals of leifure which they devote to the enjoyment of tranquillity and reft; it then naturally touches them with pleasure, and they fondly imagine that this pleasure is always enjoyed by thofe who always behold the fame objects. There is one obfervation of this ingenious Author which is ftrongly in favour of the mixed drama, and perfectly coincides with the opinion of Dr. Johnson, in the excellent preface to his edition of Shakespeare. After the reader, fays the Author of The Seafons, has been impreffed with fear, aftonishment, or any painful paflion, his fenfibility will be more quick, and agreeable impreffions will be more ftrongly felt.' This remark is certainly juft; and perhaps it will be found equally true, that the agreeable fenfation keeping that fenfibility alive, which might languifh by a long contemplation of objects of the fame kind, the mind will be more touched by diftrefs after the tranfition than before. Among other beautiful paffages in the work before us, is a defcription of the effect produced by a fine morning in the fpring, fpring, upon a person just recovering from a long and dangerous difeafe; this we have extracted, as it may be detached without injury and, that we may not give our English Readers wholly fuch an entertainment as the fable fays the crane gave to the fox, when the put the victuals into a glafs veffel with a long neck, we have added a tranflation in verfe. Oui, le Printems, Doris, fes feux, fa force active Il fembloit qu'à la mort j'arrachois ces objets Et |