Here playful yet, in ftripling years unripe,
Fram'd of thy reeds a fhrill and artless pipe:
Sudden thy beauties, Avon, all are fled,
As at the waving of fome magick wand;
An holy trance my charmed fpirit wings,
And aweful fhapes of leaders and of kings,
People the bufy mead,

Like fpectres fwarming to the wifard's hall;
And flowly pace, and point with trembling hand
The wounds ill-cover'd by the purple pall.
Before me Pity feems to ftand,

A weeping mourner, fmote with anguish fore,
To fee Misfortune rend in frantick mood
His robe, with regal woes embroider'd o'er.
Pale Terror leads the vifionary band,

And sternly shakes his fceptre, dropping blood.

By the fame.

Far from the fun and fummer gale,
In thy green lap was Nature's darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon stray'd,
To him the mighty mother did unveil
Her awful face: The dauntless child
Stretch'd forth his little arms, and smil'd.
This pencil take (fhe faid) whofe colours clear
Richly paint the vernal year:

Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy!
This can unlock the gates of joy;

Of horror that, and thrilling fears,

Or ope the facred fource of fympathetick tears.' Gray's Ode on the Progrefs of Poefy.

3 An ingenious perfon, who fent Mr. Gray his remarks anonymoufly on this and the following Ode foon after they were publifhed, gives this ftanza and the following a very juft and wellexpreffed eulogy: "A poet is perhaps never more conciliating than

Next Shakspeare fat, irregularly great,
And in his hand a magick rod did hold,
Which vifionary beings did create,
And turn the fouleft drofs to pureft gold:
Whatever spirits rove in earth or air,
Or bad, or good, obey his dread command;
To his behefts thefe willingly repair,

Those aw'd by terrors of his magick wand, The which not all their powers united might withstand.

Lloyd's Progress of Envy, 1751.

Oh, where's the bard, who at one view
Could look the whole creation through,
Who travers'd all the human heart,
Without recourfe to Grecian art?
He scorn'd the rules of imitation,
Of altering, pilfering, and translation,
Nor painted horror, grief, or rage,
From models of a former age;
The bright original he took,

And tore the leaf from nature's book.
'Tis Shakspeare.—

Lloyd's Shakespeare, a Poem.

when he praifes favourite predeceffors in his art. Milton is not more the pride than Shakspeare the love of their country: It is therefore equally judicious to diffufe a tenderness and a grace through the praife of Shakspeare, as to extol in a ftrain more elevated and fonorous the boundlefs foarings of Milton's imagination." The critick has here well noted the beauty of contraft which refults from the two defcriptions; yet it is further to be obferved, to the honour of our poet's judgement, that the tenderness and grace in the former, does not prevent it from ftrongly characterising the three capital perfections of Shakspeare's genius; and when he describes his power of exciting terror (a fpecies of the fublime) he ceafes to be diffufe, and becomes, as he ought to be, concife and energetical. MASON.

In the first seat, in robe of various dies
A noble wildness flashing from his eyes,
Sat Shakspeare.-In one hand a wand he bore,
For mighty wonders fam'd in days of yore;
The other held a globe, which to his will
Obedient turn'd, and own'd a master's fkill:
Things of the nobleft kind his genius drew,
And look'd through nature at a fingle view:
A loose he gave to his unbounded foul,
And taught new lands to rife, new feas to roll;
Call'd into being scenes unknown before,

And, paffing nature's bounds, was fomething more.
Churchill's Rofciad.

1

GB. Cipriani pinx!

RRead Sculp

THE NYMPH OF IMMORTALITY

attended by the loves crowning the Bust of Shak