Effay on Maffinger. 153 



The foldiers chanting loud hymns to your praife; 

 The windows fill'd with matrons, and with virgins 

 Throwing upon yoar head, as you pafs by. 

 The choiceft flowers, and filently invoking 

 The Queen of Love, with their particular vows. 

 To be thought worthy of you. Bondman. 



Every thing here is animated, yet every aftion is 

 appropriated : a painter might work after this 

 Iketch, without requiring an additional circum- 

 ftance. 



The fpeech of young Charolois, in the Funeral 

 Proceffion, if too metaphorical for his charafter 

 and fituation, is at leafl highly poetical : 



How like a filent ftream fliaded with night. 

 And gliding foftly with our windy fighs. 

 Moves the whole frame of this folemnity ! 



Whilft I, the only murmur in this grove 



Of death, thus hollowly break forth. 



Fatal Dowry. 



It may afford fome confolation to inferior genius, 

 to remark that even Maffinger fometimes em- 

 ploys pedantic and over-ftrained allufions. He 

 was fond of difplaying the little military know- 

 ledge he poflefled, which he introduces, in the 

 follov/ing pafTage, in a mod extraordinary man- 

 ner : one beautiful image in it, muft excufe 

 the reft: 



^-... Were Margaret only fair. 



The cannon of her more than earthly form. 

 Though mounted high, commanding all beneath it. 



And 



