Poetry. 207 



Miss Charlotte Smith, Mr. Bowles, and Miss 

 Seward. " In sweetness and harmony of versifi- 

 cation ; in unaffected elegance of style ; and in 

 that pleasing melancholy which irresistably steals 

 upon and captivates the heart, they have excelled 

 all other writers of the Sonnet, and have shown 

 how erroneous are the opinions of those who deem 

 this species of composition beneath the attention 

 of genius. " c 



Finally, under the general denomination of 

 lyric poetry fall those various species of poetic 

 compositions called Songs, Ballads, &x. of which 

 the last age has been eminently fruitful. Never 

 was there a period before in which the number and 

 the poetic merit of these were so great as during 

 that which is under review. In this department 

 of poetry the Scotch and English have excelled 

 not only their contemporaries, but all preceding 

 writers. But this class of poets is so numerous, 

 and so familiarly known, that no attempt will be 

 made to exhibit even a selection of the best. 



elegiac poetry. 



That part of the poetry of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury which falls under this head is worthy of par- 

 ticular notice. It may be pronounced greatly 

 superior to all the productions of a similar kind 

 which belong to any preceding age. In this section 

 several of the productions of Pope may be, with 

 propriety, arranged, and must have assigned to them 

 a high place. The elegies of Hammond, though 

 scarcely possessing first-rate excellence, have been 

 also celebrated. But the writer who confessedly 

 stands in the first rank of elegiac poets is Gray. 

 His Elegy in a Country Church Yard will be read 



e Drake's Literary Hours, vol. i. p. JI3» 



