as he owns, from the Northern
Bards, but their texture, however, was very properly the work of female
powers, as the act of spinning the thread of life in another mythology.
Theft is always dangerous; Gray has made weavers of slaughtered bards
by a fiction outrageous and incongruous. They are then called upon to
"Weave the warp and weave the woof," perhaps with no great propriety,
for it is by crossing the WOOF with the WARP that men weave the WEB
or piece, and the first line was dearly bought by the admission of its
wretched correspondent, "Give ample room and verge enough." He has,
however, no other line as bad. The third stanza of the second ternary is
commended, I think, beyond its merit. The personification is indistinct.
THIRST and HUNGER are not alike, and their features, to make the imagery
perfect, should have been discriminated. We are told in the same stanza
how "towers are fed." But I will no longer look for particular faults;
yet let it be observed that the ode might have been concluded with
an action of better example, but suicide is always to be had without
expense of thought.

These odes are marked by glittering accumulations of ungraceful
ornaments, they strike rather than please; the images are magnified by
affectation; the language is laboured into harshness. The mind of the
writer seems to work with unnatural violence. "Double, double, toil and
trouble." He has a kind of strutting dignity, and is tall by walking
on tiptoe. His art and his struggle are too visible, and there is too
little appearance of ease and nature. To say that he has no beauties
would be unjust; a man like him, of great learning and great industry,
could not but produce something valuable. When he pleases least, it can
only be said that a good design was ill directed. His translations of
Northern and Welsh poetry deserve praise; the imagery is preserved,
perhaps often improved, but the language is unlike the language of other
poets. In the character of his Elegy I rejoice to concur with the common
reader, for by the common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary
prejudices, after all the refinements of subtlety and the dogmatism of
learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honours. The
"Churchyard" abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and
with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo. The four stanzas,
beginning "Yet even these bones," are to me original; I have never seen
the notions in a