re please.

Hail, meek-eyed maiden, clad in sober grey,
Whose soft approach the weary woodman loves,
As homeward bent to kiss his prattling babes,
He jocund whistles through the twilight groves.
* * * * *
* * * * *
To the deep wood the clamorous rooks repair,
Light skims the swallow o'er the watery scene,
And from the sheep-cotes, and fresh-furrow'd field,
Stout ploughmen meet to wrestle on the green.

The swain that artless sings on yonder rock,
His nibbling sheep and lengthening shadow spies;
Pleased with the cool, the calm, refreshful hour,
And the hoarse hummings of unnumber'd flies.

But these pretty stanzas are interrupted by the mention of Phoebus, the
Dryads, old Sylvan, and Pan. The Ode to Content is in the same metre as
his school-fellow's Ode to Evening; but in the numbers, it is very
inferior both to that and to Mrs. Barbauld's Ode to Spring.

In his Dying Indian, he has produced a few lines of extraordinary force
and pathos. The rest of his poems, in blank verse, are for the most part
of an indifferent structure.

In his Translations from Virgil, he will probably be found to excel
Dryden as much in correctness, as he falls short of him in animation and
harmony.

When his Odes were first published, Gray perceived the author to be
devoid of invention, but praised him for a very poetical choice of
expression, and for a good ear, and even thus perhaps a little over-rated
his powers. But our lyric poetry was not then what it has since
been made by Gray himself, the younger Warton, Mason, Russell, and one
or two writers now living.

If he had enjoyed more leisure, it is probable that he might have
written better; for he was solicitous not to lose any distinction to be
acquired by his poetry; and took care to reclaim a copy of humorous
verses, entitled, an Epistle from Thomas Hearne, which had been
attributed by mistake to his brother, among whose poems it is still
printed.

FOOTNOTES
[1] Mr. Crowe, in one of his Crewian Orations.
[2] Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. ix.
[3] Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. ix.

* * * * *

CHRISTOPHER ANSTEY.

An account of Christopher Anstey, written by his second son, is prefixed
to the handsome edition of his works, printed at London, in 1808. He was
born on the thirty-first of October, 1724, and was the son of Doctor
Anstey, rector of Brinkley, in Cambridge