Poetry. 201 



tires of Horace, Juvenal, and Persius, have all 

 been the objects. And among these imitators are 

 found the names of Pope, Johnson, Gifford, 

 Lewis, and several other British poets. 



descriptive poetry. 



In Descriptive poetry the last age may lay claim 

 to the character of distinguished excellence. It 

 not only produced more in quantity, but also much 

 of a superior quality to that of which any preceding 

 period can boast. The Tale of the Hermit, by 

 Dr. Parnell, deserves high praise for justness of 

 sentiment, and delicacy and liveliness of colouring. 

 The Windsor Forest of Pope also belongs to the 

 same class, and for variety and elegance of de- 

 scription, and particularly for a happy interchange 

 of the descriptive, the narrative, and the moral, 

 possesses great merit. But the work entitled to 

 the highest place in this department of poetry, 

 is the Seasons, by Thomson. This writer may be 

 said to have created a new species of poetry. 

 cc His mode of thinking and of expressing his 

 thoughts is original. His blank verse is not the 

 blank verse of Milton, or of any preceding poet. 

 His numbers, his pauses, his diction, are of his 

 own growth, without transcription, without imi- 

 tation. He thinks in a peculiar strain; and he 

 thinks always as a man of genius. He looks round 

 on nature and life with the eye which nature be- 

 stows only on a poet; the eye that distinguishes 

 in every thing presented to its view, whatever 

 there is on which imagination can delight to be 

 detained; and with a mind that at once compre- 

 hends the vast, and attends to the minute. He 

 leads us through the appearances of things as they 

 are successively varied by the vicissitudes of the 

 year; and imparts to us so much of his own en- 



VOL. II. 2D 



