the SPRING not equally experienced in the British roughness of our skies. The fluency and softness of the water are thus described by Lucretius:

-"Tibi suaveis Dædala tellus

Submittit flores; tibi RIDENT æquora ponti.

Inelegantly rendered by Creech,

"The roughest sea puts on smooth looks and SMILES."

Dryden more happily,

"The ocean SMILES and smooths her wavy breast."

But Metastasio has copied Lucretius.

"A te fioriscon o

Gli erbosi prati :
Ei flutti RIDONO
Nel mar placati."

It merits observation, that the Northern Poets could, not exalt their imagination higher than that the water SMILED, while the modern Italian, haying before his eyes a different spring, found no difficulty in agreeing with the ancients, that the waves Laughed. Of late modern poetry has made a very free use of the animating epithet LAUGHING. Gray has the LAUGHING FLOWERS; and Langhorne in two beautiful lines, exquisitely personiSir William Jones, with all the spirit of Oriental poetry has "the LAUGHING AIR." It is but justice however to Dryden to acknowledge that he has employed this epithet very boldly in the following delightful lines, which are almost entirely borrowed from his original, Chaucer ;

"The morning lark, the messenger of day,
Saluted in her song the morning gray;
And soon the sun arose, with beams so bright,
That all THE HORIZON LAUGHED to see the joyous sight.
Palamon and Arcite, B. II.

It is extremely difficult to conceive what the ancients precisely meant by the word purpureus. They seem to have designed by it any thing BRIGHT and BEAUTIFUL. A classical friend has furnished me with numerous significations of this word which are very contradictory. Albinovanus, in his elegy on Livia, mentions Nivem purpureum. Catullus, Quercus ramos purpureos. Horace purpureo bibet nectar, and somewhere mentions Olores purpureos. Virgil has purpuream vomit ille animam; and Homer calls the sea purple, and gives it in some other book the same epithet, when in a storm.

The general idea however has been fondly adopted by the finest writers in Europe. The PURPLE of the ancients is not known to us. What idea therefore have the moderns affixed to it? Addison II

VOL. II.

in his vision of the Temple of Fame describes the country as " being covered with a kind of PURPLE LIGHT." Gray's beautiful line is well known;

"The bloom of young desire and purple light of love:" and Tasso in describing his hero Godfrey, says Heaven,

"Gli empie d'onor la faccia, e vi riduce
Di Giovinezza, il bel purpureo lume.

Both Gray and Tasso copied Virgil, where Venus gives to her son Æneas

-" Lumenque Juventæ

Purpureum."

Dryden has omitted the purple light in his version, nor is it given by Pitt; but Dryden expresses the general idea by

"With hands divine,

Had formed his curling locks and made his temples shine,
And given his rolling eyes a sparkling grace."

It is probable that Milton has given us his idea. of what was meant by this purple light, when applied to the human countenance, in the felicitous expression of

"CELESTIAL ROSY-RED."

Gray appears to me to be indebted to Milton for a hint for the opening of his elegy; as in the

first line he has Dante and Milton in his mind he perhaps might also in the following passage have recollected a congenial one in Comus, which he altered. Milton describing the evening, marks it out by

." What time the laboured ox In his loose traces from the furrow came, And the swinkt hedger at his supper sat."

Gray has,

"The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way."

Since writing this I perceive Warton has made an observation on this passage in Comus; and observes further that it is a classical circumstance, but not a natural one in an English landscape, for I think our ploughmen quit their work at noon. therefore the imitation is still more evident; and as Warton observes, both Gray and Milton copied here from books, and not from life.

There are three great poets who have given us a similar incident.

Dryden introduces the highly finished picture of the hare in his Annus Mirabilis :

Stanza 131.

"So have I seen some fearful hare maintain
A course, till tired before the dog she lay;

Who stretched behind her, pants upon the plain,
Past power to kill, as she to get away.

112

132.

With his loll'd tongue he faintly licks his prey,
His warm breath blows her flix up as she lies';
She trembling creeps upon the ground away,
And looks back to him with beseeching eyes."

Thomson paints the stag in a similar situation;

Fainting breathless toil

Sick seizes on his heart-he stands at bay:
The big round tears run down his dappled face,
He groans in anguish."

Autumn, v. 451.

Shakspeare exhibits the same object;

"The wretched animal heaved forth such groans,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase.

Of these three pictures the beseeching eyes of Dryden perhaps is more pathetic than the big round tears, certainly borrowed by Thomson from Shakspeare, because the former expression has more passion, and is therefore more poetical. The sixth line in Dryden is perhaps exquisite for its imitative harmony, and with peculiar felicity paints the action itself. Thomson adroitly drops the innocent nose, of which one word seems to have lost its original signification; and the other offends now by its familiarity.

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