The naked beggar shivering lies,
While whistling tempests round her rise,
And trembles, least the tottering wall
Should on her fleeping infants fall.

The object of fear indicated in the two last lines, is, I believe, new and unborrowed, and interests us in the scene described. Under this head it would be unpardonable to omit a capital, and, I think, the most excellent example extant, of the beauty here intended, in the third Georgic of Virgil: * The poet having mournfully described a heifer struck with a peftilence, and falling down dead in the middle of his work, artfully reminds us of his former services;

Quid labor aut benefacta juvant? quid vomere terras
Invertisse graves? †

This circumstance would have been sufficient, as it raised our pity from a motive of gratitude; but with this circumstance the tender

* Ver. 525.

+ By the epithet GRAVES Virgil infinuates after his manner

the difficulty and laboriousness of the work.

Virgil

Virgil was not content; what he adds therefore of the natural undeviating temperance of the animal, who cannot have contracted difease by excess, and who for that reason deserved a better fate, is moving beyond compare:

- Atqui non massica Bacchi
Munera, non illis epulæ nocuere repostæ !
Frondibus et vitu pascuntur simplicis herbæ;
Pocula funt fontes liquidi, atque exercita cursu
Flumina, nec somnos abrumpit cura falubres.

OF English poets, perhaps, none have excelled the ingenious Mr. Dyer in this oblique instruction, into which he frequently steals imperceptibly, in his little descriptive poem entitled GRONGAR HILL, where he disposes every object so as it may give occafion for fome observation on human life. Denham himself is not fuperiour to this neglected author, in this particular. After painting a landschape very extensive and diverfified, he adds;

Thus is nature's vesture wrought
To instruct our wandring thought,

Thus the dresses green and gay,
To disperse our cares away!

Another view from his favourite spot, gives him an opportunity, for fliding into the following moralities.

* How close and small the hedges lie!

What streaks of meadows cross the eye !
A step methinks may pass the stream,
So little diftant dangers seem;
So we mistake the future's face
Ey'd through Hope's deluding glass.
As yon fummits soft and fair,
Clad in colours of the air,

Which to those who journey near,
Barren and brown and rough appear,
Still we tread the same coarse way,
The present's still a cloudy day.

THE unexpected insertion of such reflections, imparts to us the same pleasure that we feel, when in wandering through a wilderness or grove, we fuddenly behold in the turning of the walk, a statue of some VIRTUE or MUSE.

It may be observed in general, that defcription of the external beauties of nature, is usually the first effort of a young genius, before he hath studied manners and paffions. Some of Milton's most early, as well as most exquifite pieces, are his Lycidas, L'Allegro, and Il Penserofo; if we may except his Ode on the Nativity of Christ, which is indeed prior in the order of time, and in which a penetrating critic might have discovered the seeds of that boundless imagination, which was one day to produce the Paradise Lost. This ode, which, by the way, is not fufficiently read, or admired, is also of the defcriptive kind; but the objects of his description are great, and striking to the imagination; the false gods and goddesses of the Heathen forsaking their temples on the birth of our saviour, divination and oracles at an end! which facts though perhaps not historically true, are poetically beautiful.

The lonely mountains o'er,
And the resounding shore,

A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament!

From

From haunted spring, and dale
Edg'd with poplar pale,

The parting Genius is with fighing sent;
With flower-enwoven tresses torn

The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thicket mourn.

The lovers of poetry, and to such only I write, will not be displeased at my presenting them also with the following image, which is so strongly conceived, that methinks I fee at this instant the dæmon it represents;

And fullen Moloch fled

Hath left in shadows dread,

His burning idol all of blackest hue;
In vain with cimbals ring
They call the griefly king,

In dismal dance about the furnace blue. †

Attention is irresistibly awoke and engaged by that air of folemnity, and enthusiasm, that reigns in the following stanzas :

* On the morning of Christ's nativity. Newton's edition, ⚫ctavo. Vol. 2. pag. 28, 29. of the miscellaneous poems.

+ See also verses written at a Solemn music, and on the Passion, in the same volume, and a vacation exercise, pag. y. in all which are to be found many strokes of the sublime.

The