be strictly said so) of a new lyrical metre in his own tongue. The peculiar formation of his strophe, antistrophe, and epode was unknown before him; and it could only have been planned and perfected by a master genius, who was equally skilled by long and repeated study, and by transfusion into his own mind, of the lyrical compositions of ancient Greece, and of the higher canzoni of the Tuscan poets "di maggior carme e suono;" as it is termed in the commanding energy of their language.* Antecedent to "The Progress of Poetry" and to "The Bard," no such lyricks had appeared. There is not an ode in the English language which is constructed, like these two compositions, with such power, such majesty, and * The most dignified stanza among the Latins, the Alcaick, consists but of four lines. such sweetness, with such proportioned pauses and just cadences, with such regulated measures of the verse, with such master principles of lyrical art displayed and exemplified, and, at the same time, with such a concealment of the difficulty, which is lost in the softness and uninterrupted flowing of the lines in each stanza with such a musical magick, that every verse in it in succession dwells on the ear, and harmonizes with that which has gone before. If indeed the veil of classical reverence and of pardonable prejudice can be awhile removed, and if with honest unshrinking criticism we consider the subject as exemplified in Greece, and in Italy ancient and modern, and if we then weigh the merits of any single composition of Pindar, of Horace, of Dante, of Petrarch, or of any of their successors, it will fade before that excellence which encom passes, with an incommunicable brightness, THE BARD of GRAY.* * It cannot be imagined, that Dryden's Ode for St. Cecilia's Day is forgotten for a moment. Mr. Gray, in a note on "The Progress of Poetry," justly pronounced it to be the only ode of the sublime kind in our language, antecedent to one of Mason's in his Caractacus. It is however an ode of the irregular kind as to its metre, differing in its principle and in its structure from Mr. Gray's; and, (if the reader will excuse a conjecture) when properly considered as to its principle, it appears to be of the nature of the shorter ancient Greek dithyrambick. Very little indeed is known of the ancient dithyrambick; but the learned reader will recollect a passage in the third book of the Republick of Plato, where he is speaking of the different species of poetical imitation, one of which, he says, is by the narration of the poet; and it is this, which prevails in the dithyrambick; Δι' απαγγελίας αυτε τε Ποιητε έυροις δ' αν αυτην μαλιστα εν Διθυραμβοις. (Plato de Repub. 1. 3. p. 394. edit. Serrani.) This sublime and original ode, called Alexander's Feast, may be considered as an animated narration; the subject of it is one, the destruction of Persepolis; and it is related as having been effected by the succession An attentive and competent judge will be inclined to attribute this not only to Gray's genius, which was second to none, but to the peculiar turn of his poetical studies. Before him, with the exception of Milton, no English poet had taken equal draughts from the Ilyssus and from the Arno; "impiger hausit spumantem pateram:" or, to drop that allusion, no one had read with equal discernment the odes of Pindar, the choral harmonies of the Greek tragedians, and the higher canzoni of Dante and of Petrarch, and of their illustrious successors. It was from his ear, so exquisitely fine and so musically of passions, raised in the mind of the conqueror by the lyre and by the strains of Timotheus. The ode is here properly concluded: it is disfigured and disgraced by the conclusion; "Thus long ago, ere heaving bellows learned to blow, &c. &c. &c." which should always be omitted, when the ode is read to produce the great effect. formed; it was from the contemplation of the legitimate structure of a lyrical stanza, of the necessity of its regularity, and of the labour and of the polish which are required not only to perfect every verse, but every single expression in every verse; it was indeed from all these views combined, that Mr. Gray revolted from the vapid, vague, and unmeaning effusions of writers who, refusing to submit to the indispensable laws of lyrical poetry, or from ignorance of them, called their own wildness, genius, and their contempt of rules, originality. He fixed his attention on all the most finished models of Greece and of modern Italy, he seized and appropriated their specifick and their diversified merits, united their spirit, improved upon their metre, and then, in conformity with his great preconceived idea, he gave at once in lyrick poetry to every succeeding age the law, the precept, and the ex |