492 
The Enquirer .— No. XXXII. 
Black melancholy sits, and round her 
throws 
A death-like silence, and a dread repose ; 
Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene, 
Shades every flower, and darkens every 
green, 
Deepens the murmurs of the falling floods, 
And breathes a browner horror on the 
woods.’’ Eloisa. 
We might here challenge all such 
unbelieving critics and commentators to 
point out two Tines from their favourite 
descriptive poets, eVen from Cowper 
and Thomson, at all approaching the 
beauty and grandeur of the last. 
In Mr. Bowles, and the best of those 
whom he admires, we have nothing 
more picturesque than such lines as 
these:— 
“ The darksome pines, that o’er yon rocks 
reclin’d. 
Wave high, and murmur to the hollow 
wind, 
The wandering streams that shine between 
the hills, 
The grots that echo to the tinkling rills, 
The dying gales that pant upon the trees. 
The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze, 
N o more these scenes my meditation aid, 
Or lull to rest the visionary maid.” 
Finely descriptive as this is, the 
lover of nature and magnificent draw¬ 
ing will be better pleased with the 
following beautiful winter-piece :— 
“ Lc, Zembla’s rocks, the beauteous work 
of frost, 
Rise white in air, and glitter o’er the 
coast; 
Fale suns, unfelt, at distance roll away, 
And on the impassive ice the lightnings 
play j 
Eternal snows the growing mass supply. 
Till the bright mountains prop th’ incum¬ 
bent sky; 
As Atlas fixed each hoary pile appears 
The gathered winter of a thousand years.” 
If we look for pathetic beauty, what 
can surpass the tenderness and delicate 
sorrow breathed in the elegy on an un¬ 
fortunate lady. 
“ No friend’s complaint, no kind domestic 
tear, 
Pleas’d thy pale ghost, or graced thy 
mournful bier 
By foreign hands thy dying eyes were 
closed, 
By foreign hands thy decent limbs com¬ 
posed, 
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn¬ 
ed, 
By strangers honoured, and by strangers 
mourned! 
What! tho’ no sacred earth allow thee 
room. 
Nor hallow’d dirge be muttered o’er thy 
tomb, 
Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be 
drest, 
And the green turf lie lightly on thy 
breast; 
There shall the mc-ra her earliest tears 
bestow*, 
There the first roses of the year shall 
blow,’*’ 
But there is no reasbn to insist fur¬ 
ther on a subject which so clearly elu¬ 
cidates itself, by a reference to the 
poet's works : and we shall merely add 
that on more serious and elevated sub¬ 
jects, as well as on the most trifling, 
he was equally happy and successful. If 
Pope produced the best mock-heroic in 
our language, he is still more fairly 
entitled to the character of the first 
English satirist, who combined the 
playful ease and elegance of Horace, 
with the fire and vehemence of Juvenal, 
and the abrupt boldness cf Persius. 
In his moral epistles, and his philoso¬ 
phical poem on Man, he discovers a quick 
insight into the motives and feelings of 
our species, which he explains and elu¬ 
cidates in the clearest and happiest 
manner. It is amusing to perceive how 
his various editors differ and contra¬ 
dict each other in their opinions of his 
defects and merits, insomuch that there 
is scarcely any quality, however high, 
for which he has not full credit from 
one or the other, and no fault of which 
he is not acquitted by inference or 
recantation in the end. We conclude 
with an instance of this from Warton, 
who asserted that our author wanted 
dignity and elevation cf poetic cha¬ 
racter, and afterw ards quoted the fol¬ 
lowing lines from the u Essay on Man,” 
in order to prove the contrary, and 
to admit that he had been mistaken. 
“ All are but parts of one stupendous 
whole, 
■Whose body nature is, and God the soul 5 
That chang’d thro’ all, and yet in all the 
same, 
Great in the earth, as in the aetherial frame. 
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze. 
Glows iii the stars, and blossoms in the 
trees, 
Lives thro’ ail life,extends thro’ all extent, 
Spreads undivided, operates unspent; 
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal 
part, 
As full, as perfect in a hair, as heart; 
As full, as perfect in vile man that mourns. 
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns; 
To Him, no high, no low, no great, no 
small, 
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals 
all.” Essay on Mgh. 
To 
