and
its enchantment by the passions; the third sets forth the power of
imagination to give pleasure, and illustrates its mental operation. The
author remodeled the poem in 1757, but it is generally agreed that he
injured it. Macaulay says he spoiled it, and another critic delightfully
observes that he "stuffed it with intellectual horsehair."

The year of Akenside's death (1770) gave birth to Wordsworth. The freer
and nobler natural school of poetry came to supplant the artificial one,
belonging to an epoch of wigs and false calves, and to open toward the
far greater one of the romanticism of Scott and Byron.

FROM THE EPISTLE TO CURIO

[With this earlier and finer form of Akenside's address to the unstable
Pulteney (see biographical sketch above) must not be confused its later
embodiment among his odes; of which it is 'IX: to Curio.' Much of its
thought and diction were transferred to the Ode named; but the latter by
no means happily compares with the original 'Epistle.' Both versions,
however, are of the same year, 1744.]

Thrice has the spring beheld thy faded fame,
And the fourth winter rises on thy shame,
Since I exulting grasped the votive shell.
In sounds of triumph all thy praise to tell;
Blest could my skill through ages make thee shine,
And proud to mix my memory with thine.
But now the cause that waked my song before,
With praise, with triumph, crowns the toil no more.
If to the glorious man whose faithful cares,
Nor quelled by malice, nor relaxed by years,
Had awed Ambition's wild audacious hate,
And dragged at length Corruption to her fate;
If every tongue its large applauses owed,
And well-earned laurels every muse bestowed;
If public Justice urged the high reward,
And Freedom smiled on the devoted bard:
Say then,--to him whose levity or lust
Laid all a people's generous hopes in dust,
Who taught Ambition firmer heights of power
And saved Corruption at her hopeless hour,
Does not each tongue its execrations owe?
Shall not each Muse a wreath of shame bestow?
And public Justice sanctify the award?
And Freedom's hand protect the impartial bard?

There are who say they viewed without amaze
The sad reverse of all thy former praise;
That through the pageants of a patriot's name,
They pierced the foulness of thy secret aim;
Or deemed thy arm exalted but t