Believe me, my friend, those were men, not to be captivated by meretricious blandishments.

II.

Melancholy, which implies a disposition for the indulgence of contemplation, softens the heart, tunes every fibre with the nicest touch, and, flattering our feelings, even in the lap of misery, disposes the mind to derive an elevated satisfaction, from every grand and beautiful feature of Nature; from every virtuous exertion; and from all the secret sources of association and sympathy. This is that sacred passion, to which Dyer alludes in his ruins of Rome:

There is a mood

(I sing not to the vacant and the young-)
There is a kindly mood of melancholy,

That wings the soul and points her to the skies.

This is the species of melancholy, which soothes, delights, and captivates the soul. Indulging this infatuating propensity, the intrusion of mirth is grating to the feelings and offensive to the heart. It unhinges, by its turbulence and intoxication, the faculty of thought; it deranges the charm, by which we are bound; and dispels the luxury of meditation. In wild and uncultivated scenes melancholy loves principally to reside. Magnificent buildings, splendid equipages, and crowded streets, associate but ill, with that delicacy of taste, which prompts the mind to seek the shade of some favourite grove, or the cool banks of some murmuring rivulet. These, and the cloud

capt mountain, the deep and sequestered glen, the ivied ruin, and the setting sun, are objects, which she most delights to contemplate. And sounds, most grateful to her ear, are the soft and melting accents of the flute; the aerial warblings of an Æolian lyre: the howling of the midnight storm; the distant voice of thunder; the foaming cataract, and an angry ocean. Milton loved to indulge in scenes, which conspired to awake emotions, arising from philosophic melancholy; -a passion so exquistely personified by Collins, in his Ode to the Passions; and by that noblest of all descriptive poets,-Thomson!

"I sat me down," says Milton,—

I sat me down to watch upon a bank

With ivy canopied, and interwove
With flaunting honeysuckle, and began,
Wrapt in a pleasing fit of melancholy,
To meditate my rural minstrelsy,
Till fancy had her fill.

This is not "the green and yellow melancholy," to which Shakspeare alludes in Twelfth Night: nor the passion, pointed at by Fletcher in the poem whence Milton is supposed to have taken the idea of his It Penseroso still less is it the corroding" offspring of phantasie," described in Burton's Anatomy; but, as defined in the context, "a disposition for the indulgence of contemplation:"-and to this elegant affection we may refer the solution of an expression, so common in Homer, in holy writ, and in Ossian ;

"The joy of grief;" and the " est quædam flere voluptas,""1 of Ovid.

III.

From the agreeable nature of this elegant feeling arises the paradox, which asserts, that no obligation, a friend can bestow, endears him so much to our memory, as his death. Something of this feeling was experienced by Epaminondas. Hence, when some of his relatives inquired, which of his friends he valued most, he replied, that such a question could not be truly answered, till one of them was dead. While our friend lives, we feel, as if it were possible, that his station could be occupied by another. He dies!-The thought appears to assume the nature of constructive treason; and we weep the more, because we begin to fear, that we had never estimated his friendship at its proper value.— His grave we consecrate;-and memory loves to linger on his virtues with a mild, yet melancholy regret.

1 Trist. El. iii., v. 37.-Seneca has an analogous sentiment, Epist. 99. Vid. also Epist. 69.-Thus sings a Javanese poet

"While Dewi Nâti and all the sons of Pandu met together with mutual delight,

"And discoursed in turn of the hardships of her being incessantly obliged to retreat to the hills;

"The more she poured out her griefs, the greater was the joy, that followed; even to shedding of tears."

Analysis of the Bràta Yudha, a Javanese Epic.-Raffles' Hist. Java (Poetry), vol. i., p. 489.

ODE

TO THE NYMPH OF THE FOUNTAIN OF TEARS.

I.

FROM thy soft fountain flow those showers,

'That deluge man's majestic eye, When despots wield their giant powers

Against the sons of liberty.

When a noble patriot falls,

When a sacred poet dies,

Thine is the influence, that calls

Our best and holiest sympathies.

II.

When listening with enchanted ear,

The copse beneath, to that soft tale,
Which tells all Nature, far and near,
The sorrows of the nightingale;
A tender youth,-of Petrarch's school,-
Has some fair Laura's loss to mourn;
Ah! who with reasoning would controul
Those tears, that bathe her funeral urn?

III.

Those tears are thine which gem the eye,
And all her fears and anguish smother;
First, when an infant's feeble cry

Proclaims the lovely fair "a mother."
And when that infant,-grown a man,—
O'er seas beset with wild alarms,
(Contracting space into a span,)

Shall spring into that mother's arms,
Who that e'er felt, as mothers feel,
Would her soft trickling tears forego?

Not all the gold that burnish'd steel,
E'er won upon the field of woe,
Could tempt the mother, father, wife,

To check the rapturous throbs and tears,

Which quicken into instant life,

When that delighted son appears!1

There is a simile in Horace almost superlative. I quote it, not be

.IV.

When TASSO's fate, when DANTE's page,

Beguile the bosom's overflow;

When want, disease, and helpless age,
Dissolve the heart in speechless woe.
And when the maniac's piercing cry
Loud a'er the echoing torrent swells;
And when his robe, his lyre, his eye,

Too truly mark where misery dwells;
Who can withhold their starting tears?
And who their heaving sighs suppress?
Those, only those,-whose iron ears
Are never open to distress.

V.

When SIRACH's or ISAIAH's page

Subdues the heart, or fires the soul;

When, glowing with celestial rage,

Their bold and burning measures roll:

And soaring on the boldest wing,

That ever graced poetic flight,

Tune their best and favourite string,
To set the human heart aright;

And justify the ways of leaven

To every weak and dubious eye,
By teaching, that a good is given
With every painful mystery,

cause I have imitated it, but because it may serve to awaken in the mind of the reader the most affecting associations.

Ut mater juvenem, quem Notus invido
Flatu Carpathii trans maris æquora

Cunctantem spatio longiùs annuo

Dulci destinat à domo,

Votis, ominibusque & precibus vocat ;

Curvo nec faciem littore demovet :

Sic desideriis icta fidelibus

Quærit patria Cæsarem.-Lib. iv. od. v. I. 9.

VOL. IV.

K