२

But fear'd each sudden moving to and fro;
And his own arms when glittering he did spy,
Or clashing heard, he fast away did fly,
As ashes pale of hue and wingy heel'd;
And evermore on Danger fix'd his eye,
'Gainst whom he always bent a brazen shield,

Which his right hand unarmed fearfully did wield."
Faery Queen, B. iii. c. 12, s. 12.

Warm from its perusal, he seems to have seized it as a hint to the Ode to Fear, and in his "Passions" to have very finely copied an idea here :

"First Fear, his hand, its skill to try,

Amid the chords bewildered laid,

And back recoil'd, he knew not why,

E'en at the sound himself had made."
Ode to the Passions.

The stanza in Beattie's "Minstrel," first book, in which his "visionary boy," after "the storm of summer rain," views "the rainbow brighten to the setting sun," and runs to reach it:

"Fond fool, that deem'st the streaming glory nigh, How vain the chase thine ardour has begun!

'Tis fled afar, ere half thy purposed race be run; Thus it fares with age," &c.

The same train of thought, and imagery applied to the same subject, though the image itself be somewhat different, may be found in the poems

of the platonic John Norris; a writer who has great originality of thought, and a highly poetical spirit. His stanza runs thus,

"So to the unthinking boy the distant sky
Seems on some mountain's surface to relie;
He with ambitious haste climbs the ascent,
Curious to touch the firmament;

But when with an unwearied pace,
He is arrived at the long-wish'd for place,
With sighs the sad defeat he does deplore;
His heaven is still as distant as before!"

The Infidel, by John Norris.

In the modern tragedy of "The Castle Spectre" is this fine description of the ghost of Evelina:-"Suddenly a female form glided along the vault. I flew towards her. My arms were already unclosed to clasp her,—when suddenly her figure changed! Her face grew pale, a stream of blood gushed from her bosom. While speaking, her form withered away; the flesh fell from her bones; a skeleton loathsome and meagre clasped me in her mouldering arms. Her infected breath was mingled with mine; her rotting fingers pressed my hand, and my face was covered with her kisses. Oh! then how I trembled with disgust!"

There is undoubtedly singular merit in this description: I shall contrast it with one which the

French Virgil has written in an age, whose faith was stronger in ghosts than ours, yet which perhaps had less skill in describing them. There are some circumstances which seem to indicate that the author of the "Castle Spectre" lighted his torch at the altar of the French muse. Athalia thus narrates her dream, in which the spectre of Jezabel her mother appears:

"C'étoit pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit,
Ma mère Jezabel devant moi s'est montrée,
Comme au jour de sa mort pompeusement parée.
En achevant les mots epouvantables,

Son ombre vers mon lit a paru se baisser,
Et moi, je lui tendois les mains pour l'embrasser,
Mais je n'ai plus trouvé qu'un horrible melange
D'os et de chair meurtris, et trainée dans la fange,
Des lambeaux pleins de sang et des membres affreux.”
Racine's Athalie, Act ii. S. 5.

Goldsmith, when, in his pedestrian tour, he sat amid the Alps, as he paints himself in his "Traveller," and felt himself the solitary neglected genius he was, desolate amidst the surrounding scenery; probably at that moment, the following beautiful image of Thomson he applied to himself:

"As in the hollow breast of Apennine -Beneath the centre of encircling hills,

A myrtle rises, far from human eyes,

And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild."

Autumn, v. 202.

Goldsmith very pathetically applies a similar

image:

"E'en now where Alpine solitudes ascend,

I sit me down a pensive hour to spend,

Like yon neglected shrub at random cast,
That shades the steep, and sighs at every blast."

Traveller.

Akenside illustrates the native impulse of genius by a simile of Memnon's marble statue, sounding its lyre at the touch of the sun:

"For as old Memnon's image, long renown'd

By fabling Nilus, to the quivering touch
Of Titan's ray, with each repulsive string
Consenting, sounded through the warbling air
Unbidden strains; even so did nature's hand," &c.

It is remarkable that the same image, which does not appear obvious enough to have been the common inheritance of poets, is precisely used by old Regnier, the first French satirist, in the dedication of his satires to the French king. Louis XIV. supplies the place of nature to the courtly satirist. These are his words:" On lit qu'en Ethiopie il y avoit une statue qui rendoit un son

harmonieux, toutes les fois que le soleil levant la regardoit. Ce même miracle, Sire, avez vous fait en moy qui touché de l'astre de Votre Majesté ay reçu la voix et la parole.”

In that sublime passage in "Pope's Essay on Man," Epist. I. v. 237, beginning,

"Vast chain of Being! which from God began,"

and proceeds to

"From nature's chain whatever link you strike,

Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike."

Pope seems to have caught the idea and image from Waller, whose last verse is as fine as any in the "Essay on Man :"

"The chain that's fixed to the throne of Jove, On which the fabric of our world depends, One link dissolved, the whole creation ends."

Of the Danger his Majesty escaped, &c. v. 168.

It has been observed by Thyer, that Milton borrowed the expression Imbrowned, and Brown, which he applies to the evening shade, from the Italian. See Thyer's elegant note in B. IV. v. 246:

"And where the unpierced shade Imbrowned the noon-tide bowers."