dicrous portrait of the giver of the banquet in Smollett's "Feast of the Ancients ;" but this piece of lively though exaggerated ridicule can fix no stigma on any man's character. The choice of subject in Akenside's principal poem is peculiarly felicitous The Pleasures of the Imagination is the prototype of the long list of "Pains" and "Pleasures" on which subsequent poets have expatiated. In all his writings his images, if redundant, are always appropriate, and often strikingly beautiful and original. We forgive his sounding amplitude and fantastic diffusion, from admiration of their attendant affluence and splendour. Even the elaborate artifice of his diction displays the delicacy and address of a classic taste. His Hymn to the Naiads has much elegance and classic propriety, and, as a specimen of lyric verse, is worthy of the author of his great poem. Akenside died of a putrid fever. He is characterized by Johnson as one of those who make a sounding love of public liberty the disguise of an acrimonious temper. But from Johnson justice to the memory of an avowed whig is scarcely to be expected. MENTAL BEAUTY. FROM THE PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. MIND, mind alone, (bear witness, Earth and Heaven!) The living fountains in itself contains Of beauteous and sublime: here, hand in hand, Sit paramount the Graces; here enthroned, Celestial Venus, with divinest airs, Invites the soul to never-fading joy. Look then abroad through Nature, to the range When guilt brings down the thunder, call'd aloud Where Peace with ever-blooming olive crowns CONCLUSION. FROM THE SAME. OH! blest of Heaven, whom not the languid songs Of Luxury, the syren! not the bribes Of sordid Wealth, nor all the gaudy spoils Of pageant Honour, can seduce to leave Those ever-blooming sweets, which from the store To charm the enliven'd soul! What though not all Will deign to use them. His the city's pomp, The princely dome, the column and the arch, With blooming gold, and blushes like the morn. TOBIAS SMOLLETT. BORN 1721-DIED 1771. SMOLLETT is chiefly known as a novelist and historian; yet there is a classic beauty and genuine vigour of fancy in several of his poetical pieces which must make the admirers of the ODE TO INDEPENDENCE and the TEARS OF SCOTLAND regret that he has left so little verse. Smollett was descended of a family of some note in Dumbartonshire. He studied medicine at Glasgow, and was for a short time a surgeon in the navy. But most of his busy life was spent as a man of letters, who lived by his writings. After a long course of bad health, Smollett went abroad with his wife, but without receiving much advantage from change of climate. He died at Leghorn in very distressed circumstances, though to him literature had been a very lucrative pursuit. ODE TO LEVEN WATER. ON Leven's banks, while free to rove, I envied not the happiest swain Pure stream! in whose transparent wave My youthful limbs I wont to lave; With white, round, polish'd pebbles spread; While, lightly poised, the scaly brood EXTRACT FROM THE ODE TO INDEPEN DENCE. STROPHE. THY spirit, Independence! let me share ; Thy steps I follow with my bosom bare, A goddess violated brought thee forth, (a) The par is a small fish, not unlike the smelt, which it rivals in delicacy and flavour. |