THE latter most peculiarly comes under the denomination of allegorical imagery; and in this species of allegory we include the imperfonation of paffions, affections, virtues and vices, &c. on account of which, principally, the following odes were properly termed by their author allegorical.

WITH refpect to the utility of this figurative writing, the fame arguments that have been advanced in favour of defcriptive poetry, will be of weight likewise here. It is, indeed, from imperfonation, or, as it is commonly termed, perfonification, that poetical description borrows its chief powers and graces. Without the aid of this, moral and intellectual painting would be flat and una.. nimated, and even the scenery of material objects would be dull without the introduction of fictitious life.

THESE obfervations will be most effectually illuftrated by the fublime and beautiful odes that occafioned them; in those it will appear how happily this allegorical painting may be executed by the genuine powers of poetical genius, and they will not fail to prove its force and utility by paffing through the imagination to the heart.

B

ODE TO PITY.

Y Pella's Bard, a magic name,

By all the griefs his thought could

frame,

Receive my humble rite: Long, Pity, let the nations view Thy fky-worn robes of tendereft blue, And eyes of dewy light!

The propriety of invoking Pity through the mediation of Euripides is obvious.-That admirable poet had the keys of all the tender paffions, and, therefore, could not but stand in the highest esteem with a writer of Mr. COLLINS's fenfibility.—He did, indeed, admire him as much as MILTON profeffedly did, and probably for the fame reasons; but we do not find that he has copied him so closely as the laft mentioned poet has fometimes done,

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done, and particularly in the opening of Samfon - Agonistes, which is an evident

imitation of the following paffage in the

ΦΟΙΝΙΣΣΑΙ.

Η ε παροιθε, θυγατες, ὡς τυφλῷ ποδι
Οφθαλμος ει συ, ναυβαταισιν αςρον ὡς,

Δευρ' εις το λευρον πεδον Ίχνος τιθεισ εμον,
Προβαινε..

A& III. Sc. I.

The eyes of dewy light" is one of the happieft ftrokes of imagination, and may be ranked among thofe expreffions which

-give us back the image of the mind.
Wild ARUN too has heard thy ftrains,
And Echo, 'midft my native plains,
Been footh'd with Pity's lute.

There firft the wren thy myrtles fhed
On gentleft OrWAY's infant head.

Suffex, in which county the Arun is a small river, had the honour of giving birth to OTWAY

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OTWAY as well as to COLLINS: both these poets, unhappily, became the objects of that pity by which their writings are distinguifhed. There was a fimilitude in their genius and in their fufferings. There was a refemblance in the misfortunes and in the diffipation of their lives; and the circumftances of their death cannot be remembered without pain.

THE thought of painting in the temple of Pity the hiftory of human misfortunes, and of drawing the scenes from the tragic mufe, is very happy, and in every respect worthy the imagination of COLLINS.