tragic subjects, might, if the Poet had pleased, have enabled him to lengthen his ode, by enriching it with sketches to any extent.

The ODE TO FEAR is one of the finest in the collection. Nothing can be more spirited than the opening, which at once introduces the mind to all those undefined terrors which wait upon "the world

unknown." The break in the fifth line,

Ah, Fear!

ah frantic Fear! I see, I see thee near! has the happiest effect on the ear and on the mind. The hurried step, the haggard eye, the withering power of Fear, are all highly characteristic. Danger with gigantic limbs enjoying the midnight storm, and sleeping on a loose precipice; and the ravening brood of Fate who lap the blood of sorrow, are finely imagined. It is difficult to keep intirely separate the active and passive qualities of allegorical personages: difficult to say whether such a being as Fear should be the agent in inspiring, or the victim agitated by the passion. In this Ode the latter idea prevails, for Fear

appears in the character of a nymph pursued, like DRYDEN'S Honoria, by the ravening brood of Fate. She is distracted by the ghastly train conjured up by Danger, and hunted through the world without being suffered to take repose; yet this idea is somewhat departed from, when the Poet endeavours to propitiate Fear by offering her as a suitable abode, the cell where Rape and Murder dwell; or a cave, whence she may hear the cries of drowning seamen. She then becomes the power who delights in inflicting fear. But perhaps the reader is an enemy to his own gratification, who investigates the attributes of these shadowy beings with too nice and curious an eye. In his reference to the goblins of Midsummer eve, the Poet shews that disposition to take advantage of the traditionary superstitions of his country, which he afterwards indulged more fully in his Ode on the Highland Superstition, a piece he did not live to finish. The division of this Ode into Epode and Antistrophe is no advantage

to it. The change of measure is so violent from the Lyric to the Elegiac, that in fact they make two different Poems; and the terms themselves not being supported, as among the ancients, by any adaptation of musical accompaniments, are in our Poetry totally unmeaning. The complimentary valediction, so often imitated from MILTON, And I, O Fear, will dwell with thee, is in this instance but a compliment; for however a man might be content to have his days tinged with the soft influence of a penseroso-melancholy; he could not, for any reward, wish to subject himself habitually to the distracting emotions of such a passion as Fear.

The ODE TO SIMPLICITY is chiefly distinguished by a smoothness and uniformity of melody, adapted to the sober nature of the subject. It chiefly insists on the power of Simplicity in touching the heart, and its necessary connection with Liberty: the latter, though a sentiment we have early imbibed, is probably imaginary. The Poet is obliged

to include the Augustan age of writers under the votaries of Simplicity, and how few were the Poets whom the Romans had to boast of before that period? Where COLLINS is not sustained by richness of Poetry, his sentiments will be found to be trite. ON THE POETICAL CHARACTER. This is one of the most difficult and perhaps least satisfactory of the Odes. It begins with an ingenious comparison drawn from SPENSER. As the girdle of Florimel, though apparently within the reach of all, would not fit any but the virtuous fair destined to wear it, so the girdle of Fancy, the magic cestus of poetic powers, can only be worn by him whom Nature has cast in the mould of true genius. So far is apt and intelligible; but the Poet afterwards, actuated, as it should seem, by a vague desire of exalting his favorite occupation, rather than by any clear and distinct ideas, goes on to say how this cestus was produced. His allegory here is neither luminous nor decent. The Supreme Being, he tells us, being in a diviner mood than usual, retired with

Fancy, having long been wooed by her, (from whom retired? for nothing was yet created,) and placed her on his throne, sitting with her there alone; in the mean time music was heard from behind the veil; the sun, signified by the rich-hair'd youth of morn, and all the visible creation, started into being; and as the work of creation went forward, this magic web, the cestus, was woven: and who, after this account, he adds, will now dare to assert his claim to it?

It is difficult to reduce to any thing like a meaning this strange and by no means reverential fiction concerning the Divine Being. Probably the obscure idea that floated in the mind of the Author was this, that true Poetry being a representation of Nature, must have its archetype in those ideas of the Supreme Mind, which originally gave birth to Nature; and therefore, that no one should attempt it without being conversant with the fair and beautiful, the true and perfect, both in moral ideas, the shadowy tribes of mind, and the productions of the