ent, and he must have no
poetry in his imagination, who can read the picturesque descriptions in
his Castle of Indolence, without emotion. In his LXXXIst Stanza he has
the following picture of beauty:

Here languid beauty kept her pale-fac'd court,
Bevies of dainty dames, of high degree,
From every quarter hither made resort;
Where, from gross mortal care, and bus'ness free,
They lay, pour'd out in ease and luxury:
Or should they a vain shew of work assume,
Alas! and well-a-day! what can it be?
To knot, to twist, to range the vernal bloom;
But far is cast the distaff, spinning-wheel and loom.

He pursues the description in the subsequent Stanza.

Their only labour was to kill the time;
And labour dire it is, and weary woe.
They fit, they loll, turn o'er some idle rhime;
Then rising sudden, to the glass they go,
Or saunter forth, with tott'ring steps and slow:
This soon too rude an exercise they find;
Strait on the couch their limbs again they throw,
Where hours on hours they sighing lie reclin'd,
And court the vapoury God soft breathing in the wind.

In the two following Stanzas, the dropsy and hypochondria are
beautifully described.

Of limbs enormous, but withal unsound,
Soft swoln and pale, here lay the Hydropsy:
Unwieldly man; with belly monstrous round,
For ever fed with watery supply;
For still he drank, and yet he still was dry.
And moping here did Hypochondria sit,
Mother of spleen, in robes of various die,
Who vexed was full oft with ugly fit;
And some her frantic deem'd, and some her deem'd a wit.
A lady proud she was, of antient blood,
Yet oft her fear, her pride made crouchen low:
She felt, or fancy'd in her fluttering mood,
All the diseases which the spitals know,
And sought all physic which the shops bestow;
And still new leaches, and new drugs would try,
Her humour ever wavering too and fro;
For sometimes she would laugh, and sometimes cry,
And sudden waxed wroth, and all she knew not why.

The speech of Sir Industry in the second Canto, when he enumerates the
various blessings which flow from action, is surely one of the highest
instances of genius which can be produced in poetry. In the second
stanza, before he enters upon the subject, the poet complains of the
decay of patronage, and the general depravity of taste; and in the third
breaks out into the following exclamation, which is so perfectly
beautiful, that it