1809. ] 
me to my own whims, and go look after 
my sheep.” The J at the end of the 
third line, followed by the J at the be- 
ginning of the fourth, is a pretty concetto / 
<¢ Now I know what it is to have strove 
With the torture of doubt and desire, 5 
What it is to admire and to love, 
And to leave her we love and admire.”’ 
To have strove is not grammar. The 
changes (to use a vulgar expression) are 
most delectably rung on love and admire. 
“© Ah! lead forth my flock in the morn, 
And the damps of each ev’ning repel. 
Alas! I am faint and forlorn 5 
I have bade my dear Phillis farewell.” 
Here again our inamorato gives the 
shepherds fresh orders. His flock is now 
neither to be called nor driven, but to 
be led.—-What he means by telling them 
tu repel the damps of each evening is ut- 
terly beyond my a an EI If it 
allude to the sheep, [ should think the 
covering given them by nature sufficient 
for this purpose; but probably these Ar- 
cadian sheep are more delicate in con- 
stitution than common muttons with 
which I have been acquainted. 
“¢ [ have bade” may be poetry, but it 
is not grammar—bid might have been ad- 
missible, as an abreviation of bidden, 
without derogation to the measure. 
6© Since Phillis vouchsaf’d me a look, 
I never once dreamt of my vine; 
May I lose both my pipe and my croak, 
If I know of a kid that was mine !” 
The first line of the above stanza seems 
to have been borrowed from Capt. Bo- 
badil—“ Vouchsafe me a light of this 
match, Master Kitely’s man.” 
“« T never once dreamt” would in hum- 
ble prose be the extreme of vulgarity ; 
in pastoral verse it is perhaps a beauty. 
“« May I lose both my pipe and my 
crook!” What a pretty, little, inno- 
cent, pastoral oath! especially as the 
crook would be of no use, when he was 
determined no longer to take charge of 
his flock; and if, as is classically ex- 
pressed in the last line, he did not know 
ofa kid “ that was mine,” what had he 
to care about them. Mine appears to have 
been found a necessary rhyme to wine: 
and, on the other hand, although it is 
probable he had mere vines than one, the 
singular has been used instead of the plu- 
ai, to furnish a counter~rhyme to mine. 
It is not a little remarkable, that the 
preceding stanzas are all exceptionable, 
and that the remaining ones of Part I. 
are not only the reverse, but some of 
thein eminently beautiful, 
On Pastoral Peciry. 
333 
Part I1.— Hope. 
‘© My banks they are furnished with bees, - 
Whose murmur invites one to sleep, 
My grottoes are shaded with trees, 
And my hills are white over witl 
sheep.” 
From the furnishing in the first line, 
it looks as if it had been written by an 
upholsterer, especially from the interpo- 
lation of the unnecessary and ungramma- 
tical they, to fill up the measure. 
«© Whose murmur invites one to sleep.” 
I never could abide that one. 
to have been introduced by ignorant or 
indolent translators, to Anglicise the 
French ox ; and now it has become al- 
most an English idiom; but it will not 
be found used by any correct writer. 
The newspaper translators have been the 
means of giving curreacy to many false 
expressions in our language. Their 
hurry may furnish an excuse, “but it is of 
fatal consequence, as the works of news~ 
paper writers are read so universally, and 
by so many ignorant persons. Thus, 
our naval officers have universally adopt- 
ed the verb to capture, which never was 
a-verb till made such by these editors. 
In lke manner, when the French papers 
speak of wne corvette, which is neither 
more nor Jess than a sloop of war, our 
editors, and after them our captains, ne- 
ver ‘ capture” from France a sloop of 
war; itis always acorvette. Butl dis 
gress— 
«* Not a pine in my grove is there seen, 
But with tendrils of woodbine is bound; 
Not a beech’s more beautiful green, 
But a sweetbriar entwines it around.” 
Had this been the effusion of a cock~ 
ney poet, it might have been excusable ; 
but for Shenstone, the former of the 
charming Leasowes, with all its delight. 
ful walks and bowers, a first-rate critic 
im gardening, to forget that the sweet. 
briar is not a parasitical plant, was un- 
pardonable. God knows the stanza is 
not so harmonious as toaftord any poetical 
licence for this absurdity. However, the 
same structure niust be continued in the 
next. 
‘< Not my fields, in the prime of the year, 
More charms than my cattle untold; 
Not a brook that is Jimpid and clear, 
But it glitters with fishes of gold.’ 
Without cavilling at the equivocal 
word prime, which may either mean the 
first or the best of the year, I must ob- 
serve, that the comparison between the 
churms of field and the charms of cattle 
have certainly the merit of novelty. As 
to the latter, I suppose their charms were 
$0 
It seems — 
