nd, will ever tell us how far the
understanding has been enlarged by thought, and stored with knowledge.
The richness of the soil even appears on the surface; and the result of
profound thinking, often mixing, with playful grace, in the reveries of
the poet, smoothly incorporates with the ebullitions of animal spirits,
when the finely fashioned nerve vibrates acutely with rapture, or when,
relaxed by soft melancholy, a pleasing languor prompts the long-drawn
sigh, and feeds the slowly falling tear.

The poet, the man of strong feelings, gives us only an image of his mind,
when he was actually alone, conversing with himself, and marking the
impression which nature had made on his own heart.--If, at this sacred
moment, the idea of some departed friend, some tender recollection when
the soul was most alive to tenderness, intruded unawares into his
thoughts, the sorrow which it produced is artlessly, yet poetically
expressed--and who can avoid sympathizing?

Love to man leads to devotion--grand and sublime images strike the
imagination--God is seen in every floating cloud, and comes from the
misty mountain to receive the noblest homage of an intelligent
creature--praise. How solemn is the moment, when all affections and
remembrances fade before the sublime admiration which the wisdom and
goodness of God inspires, when he is worshipped in a _temple not made
with hands_, and the world seems to contain only the mind that formed,
and the mind that contemplates it! These are not the weak responses of
ceremonial devotion; nor, to express them, would the poet need another
poet's aid: his heart burns within him, and he speaks the language of
truth and nature with resistless energy.

Inequalities, of course, are observable in his effusions; and a less
vigorous fancy, with more taste, would have produced more elegance and
uniformity; but, as passages are softened or expunged during the cooler
moments of reflection, the understanding is gratified at the expence of
those involuntary sensations, which, like the beauteous tints of an
evening sky, are so evanescent, that they melt into new forms before they
can be analyzed. For however eloquently we may boast of our reason, man
must often be delighted he cannot tell why, or his blunt feelings are not
made to relish the beauties which nature, poetry, or any of the imitative
arts, afford.

The imagery of the ancients seems naturally to have been borrowed from
surrounding objects and the