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he had no sooner mentioned her name to his Lordship, than he retreated suddenly, as if stricken with a panic, from the room, and from the house, leaving her to fcilow overwhelmed with confusion.

"As an instance of the wit of his conversation, the following extemporary spondiac, descriptive of the three Bedels of the University, who were at that time all very fat men, is still remembered by his academical acquaintance.

Pinguia tergeminorum abdomina Bedellorum.

"This line he afterwards inserted in one of his poems for the Tripos."

As a poet Smart exhibits indubitable proofs of genius, but few of a correct taste, and appears to have seldom exercised much labour, or employed cool judgment in preparing his works for the public. Upon the whole therefore he is most successful in his lighter pieces, his odes, his songs, and fables. Of his odes, that on Illnature; the Morning, Noon, and Night pieces, particularly the last, if the epigrammatic turn at the conclusion does not disappoint the pensive reader, may be cited as productions of rich and original fancy, nor will it detract much from their praise that they sometimes remind us of Milton. His fables are entitled to high praise, for ease of versification and delicacy of humour; and although he may have departed from the laws which some critics have imposed on this species of composition, by giving reason to inanimate objects, it will be difficult by any laws to convince the reader that he ought not to be delighted with the Tea-pot and the Scrubbing-brush, the Bag Wig and the Tobacco-pipe, or the Brocaded Gown and the Linen Rag.

In his religious poems, written for the Seatonian prize, there is much to commend, and where we are most disposed to blame, the fault perhaps is in the expectation that such subjects can be treated with advantage. In the preface to his Ode to St. Cecilia, he allows that "the chusing too high subjects has been the ruin of many a tolerable genius ;" and Dr. Johnson, with majestic energy, remarks that "whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name of the Supreme Being. Omnipotence cannot be exalted; Infinity cannot be amplified ; Perfection cannot be improved." Of this Smart seems to have been aware, although ambition and interest, neither illaudable in his circumstances, prompted him to make an attempt, in which, whatever his success, he was allowed to excel his ri vals. We find him accordingly digressing from his immediate subjects, wherever he can: in his poem on Eternity, he treats of the creation and end of the world, and the last judgment: and in that of Omniscience, he confines himself principally to ne wonderful effects of instinct. That there are some splendid passages in these poems, calculated to elevate the mind, and to impart the pious enthusiasm which animated the poet, it would be unjust to deny, but they are perhaps nearly balanced by pompous irregularities, and some of those extraordinary flights which remind us of Blackmore. What can be worse poetry than such lines as

"O Thou whose ways to wonder at's distrust,

Whom to describe's presumption."?

Or what more bold and reprehensible freedoms than to call the Almighty the

6

"Great Poet of the universe," and to speak of himself as "The Poet of his God?"

The Hymn to the Supreme Being is free from all these objections, and is in truth a composition of great pathos and sublimity.

The Hilliad is professedly an imitation of the Dunciad, to which, however, it is greatly superior in design, and generally in execution. Hill was a more fair object of ridicule than either of the heroes of Pope's satire, and in the Hilliad we have such a profusion of ludicrous imagery as cannot perhaps be found in any composition of the same length in our language. Of poems written in profound contempt, and with no other object than to accumulate terms and epithets of the most poignant ridicule, the Hilliad perhaps may be considered as the first.

POEMS

or

CHRISTOPHER SMART.

ODES.

IDLENESS.

ODE I.

GODDESS of ease, leave Lethe's brink,
Obsequious to the Muse and me;
For once endure the pain to think,
Oh! sweet insensibility!

Sister of peace and indolence,

Bring, Muse, bring numbers soft and slow, Elaborately void of sense,

And sweetly thoughtless let them flow.

Near some cowslip-painted mead,

There let me doze out the dull hours,
And under me let Flora spread,
A sofa of her softest flow'rs.

Where, Philomel, your notes your breathe
Forth from behind the neighbouring pine,
And murmurs of the stream beneath
Still flow in unison with thine,

For thee, O Idleness, the woes

Of life we patiently endure,

Thou art the source whence labour flows,
We shun thee but to make thee sure.

For who'd sustain war's toil and waste,

Or who th' hoarse thund'ring of the sea,

But to be idle at the last,

And find a pleasing end in thee.

TO ETHELINDA,

Happy Muse, that didst embrace
The sweet, the heav'nly-fragrant place!
Tell me, is the omen true,

Shall the bard arrive there too?

Oft thro' my eyes my soul has flown,
And wanton'd on that iv'ry throne:
There with extatic transport burn'd,
And thought it was to Heav'n return'd.
Tell me is the omen true,
Shall the body follow too?

When first at Nature's early birth,
Heav'n sent a man upon the Earth,
Ev'n Eden was more fruitful found,
When Adam came to till the ground:
Shall then those breasts be fair in vain,
And only rise to fall again?

No, no, fair nymph-for no such end
Did Heav'n to thee its bounty lend;
That breast was ne'er design'd by fate
For verse, or things inanimate ;
Then throw them from that downy bed,
And take the poet in their stead.

ON AN EAGLE

CONFINED IN A COLLEGE COURT.
ODE III.

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

ON HER DOING MY VERSES THE HONOUR OF The sovereign thund'rer's arms in air,

WEARING THEM IN HER BOSOM.-WRIT

TEN AT THIRTEEN,

ODE II.

HAPPY verses! that were prest

In fair Ethelinda's breast!

VOL. XVI.

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,

C

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!

Tho' dim'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.

ON THE SUDDEN DEATH OF A CLERGYMAN,

ODE IV.

Ir, like th' Orphean lyre, my song could charm'
And light to life the ashes in the uru,
Fate of his iron dart I would disarm,

Sudden as thy disease should'st thou return,
Recall'd with mandates of despotic sounds,
And arbitrary grief that will not hear of bounds.
But, ah! such wishes, artless Muse, forbear;
'Tis impotence of frantic love,

Th' enthusiastic flight of wild despair,

To hope the Thracian's magic power to prove.
Alas! thy slender vein,

Nor mighty is to move, nor forgetive to feign,
Impatient of a rein,

Thou canst not in due bounds the struggling mea

sures keep,

-But thou alas! canst weepThou canst-and o'er the melancholy bier Canst lend the sad solemnity a tear.

[cold,

Hail to that wretched corse, untenanted and And hail the peaceful shade loos'd from its irksome hold.

Now let ine say thon'rt free,

For sure thou paid'st an heavy tax for life, While combating for thee,

Nature and mortality

Maintain'd a daily strife.

High, on a slender thread thy vital lamp was

plac'd

Upon the mountain's bleakest brow,

To give a noble light superior was it rais'd,
But more expos'd by eminence it blaz'd;
For not a whistling wind that blew,
Nor the drop descending dew,
But half extinguish'd its fair flame--but now

See-hear the storms tempestuous sweep Precipitate it falls-it falls-falls lifeless in the deep.

Cease, cease, ye weeping youth,

Sincerity's soft sighs, and all the tears of truth. And you, his kindred throng, forbear Marble memorials to prepare,

And sculptur'd in your breasts his busto wear. 'Twas thus when Israel's legislator dy'd, No fragile mortal honours were supply'd,

But even a grave denied.

Better than what the pencil's daub can give,
Better than all that Phidias ever wrought,
Is this that what he taught shall live,
And what he liv'd for ever shall be taught,

ON GOOD-NATURE.
ODE V.

HALL cherub of the highest Heav'n,
Of look divine, and temper ev'n,

Celestial sweetness, exquisite of mien,
Of ev'ry virtue, ev'ry praise the queen!
Soft gracefulness, and blooming youth,
Where, grafted on the stem of truth,

That friendship reigns, no interest can divide,
And great humility looks down on pride.
Oh! curse on slander's viprous tongue,
That daily dares thy merit wrong;

Ideots usurp thy title, and thy frame,
Without or virtue, talent, taste, or name.

Is apathy, is heart of steel,

Nor ear to hear, nor sense to feel,

Life idly inoffensive such a grace,

That it shou'd steal thy name and take thy place?

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