to suit the occasion, required, in a manner, not more wonderful to those, who were partially informed, than delightful to those, who could follow his track, and continue with him to the end, Yet he is said to have, in general, wanted gaiety of heart in society. He was naturally of a chcerful temper; but his cheerfulness was accompanied by a mellowness of feeling, which sometimes relapsed into melancholy. Not that corrosive melancholy, however, which unstrings the mind and renders it incapable of life and action; but of that sweet and delightful nature, which DYER has so beautifully characterized in his "Ruins of Rome." "There is a mood (I sing not to the vacant or the young), That wings the soul, and points her to the skies." NOTES, &c. "Soon after the publication of the Pleasures of Imagination, Akenside," says Mr. Dyson, "became conscious that it wanted revision and correction: but so quick was the demand for successive editions, that in any of the intervals to have completed the whole of his corrections was impossible. He chose, therefore, to continue reprinting it without any corrections or improvements, until he should be able at once to give them to the public complete; and with this view he went on, for several years, to review and correct his poem at leisure, till at length he found the task grow so much upon his hands, that, despairing ever being able to execute it to his own satisfaction, he abandoned the purpose of correcting, and resolved to write the poem over anew, upon a somewhat different and enlarged plan; and in the execution of this design, he had made a considerable progress." He printed the first and second books for his own private use; and transcribed a considerable portion of the third book, in order to its being printed in the same manner: "and to these," continues Mr. Dyson, "he added the introduction to a subsequent book, which in MS. is called the fourth, and which appears to have been composed at the time, when the author intended to comprise the whole in four books; but as he afterwards determined to distribute the poem into more books, might, perhaps, more properly be called the last book. This," continues Mr. Dyson, "is all that is executed of the new work; which, although it appeared to the editor too valuable, even in its imperfect state, to be withholden from the public, yet (he conceives) takes in by much too small a part of the original poem to supply its place, and to supersede the republication of it." Besides this, Akenside left behind him a copy of the original poem with marginal alterations, which came into the possession of the late Mr. Pinkerton, who published them in a collection of letters on various subjects, under the name of Robert Heron. What Akenside proposed in the second poem is thus laid down by himself in the general argument. "The Pleasures of the Imagination proceed either from natural objects; as from a flourishing grove, a clear and murmuring fountain, a calm sea by moon |