or who is
solicitous to display the fertility of a rich imagination at the expence
of perspicuity, when it is not supposed that his passions are inflamed:
you will observe, my Lord, that his digressions are by no means so
excusable as those of the other, because obscurity in the latter may be
an excellence, whereas in the former it is always a blemish.

It is only necessary to observe farther on this head, that the
difference of the subjects treated by Anacreon and Horace, from those of
Orpheus, Museus, &c. is owing to the different characters of the ages in
which they lived. We could not indeed have expected to meet with any
thing very serious, at any period, from so indolent and careless a
writer as Anacreon. But Luxury even in his time had made considerable
progress in the world. The principles of Theology were sufficiently well
established. Civil polity had succeeded to a state of confusion, and men
were become fond of ease and affluence, of wine and women. Anacreon
lived at the court of a voluptuous Monarch[49], and had nothing to
divert his mind from the pursuit of happiness in his own way. His Odes
therefore are of that kind, in which the gentler Graces peculiarly
predominate. Sappho and Horace were employed in the same manner. The
Lady had a Gallant, of whom it appears that she was extremely fond, and
the Roman Poet lived in a polite court, was patronized by a man of
distinguished eminence, and was left at full liberty to pursue that
course of life to which he was most powerfully prompted by inclination.

[Footnote 49: Polycrates, Tyrant of Samos.]

The poetic vein in these Writers takes that turn, which a stranger must
have expected upon hearing their characters. Their pieces are gay,
entertaining, loose, elegant, and ornamented with a rich profusion of
the graces of description. The reader of sensibility will receive the
highest pleasure from perusing their works, in which the internal
movements of the mind warmed by imagination, or agitated by passion, are
exposed in the happiest and most agreeable attitudes. This, perhaps, is
the principal excellence of the looser branches of poetic composition.
The mind of the Poet in these pieces is supposed to be intensely kindled
by his subject. His Fancy assumes the rein, and the operation of reason
is for a moment suspended. He follows the impulse of enthusiasm, and
throws off those simple but lively strokes of Nature and Passion, which
can only be felt, and are