onsiderable degree of this sensibility, it is as vain for a man of
the greatest understanding to speak of the higher beauties of poetry
as it is for a blind man to speak of colours. To adopt the warmest
sentiments of poetry, to realize its boldest imagery, to yield to
every impulse of enthusiasm, to submit to the illusions of fancy, to
retire with the poet into his ideal worlds, were dispositions wholly
foreign from the worldly sagacity and stern shrewdness of Johnson. As
in his judgment of life and character, so in his criticism on poetry,
he was a sort of Free-thinker. He suspected the refined of
affectation, he rejected the enthusiastic as absurd, and he took it
for granted that the mysterious was unintelligible. He came into the
world when the school of Dryden and Pope gave the law to English
poetry. In that school he had himself learned to be a lofty and
vigorous declaimer in harmonious verse; beyond that school his
unforced admiration perhaps scarcely soared; and his highest effort
of criticism was accordingly the noble panegyric on Dryden."

W. H. Prescott, the historian, also remarks that Johnson, as a
critic, "was certainly deficient in sensibility to the more delicate,
the minor beauties of poetic sentiment. He analyzes verse in the
cold-blooded spirit of a chemist, until all the aroma which
constituted its principal charm escapes in the decomposition. By this
kind of process, some of the finest fancies of the Muse, the lofty
dithyrambics of Gray, the ethereal effusions of Collins, and of
Milton too, are rendered sufficiently vapid."]

[Illustration: PINDAR.]

[Illustration: EDWARD I.]

THE BARD.

"This ode is founded on a tradition current in Wales that Edward the
First, when he completed the conquest of that country, ordered all
the bards that fell into his hands to be put to death" (Gray).

The original argument of the ode, as Gray had set it down in his
commonplace-book, was as follows: "The army of Edward I., as they
march through a deep valley, and approach Mount Snowdon, are suddenly
stopped by the appearance of a venerable figure seated on the summit
of an inaccessible rock, who, with a voice more than human,
reproaches the king with all the desolation and misery which he had
brought on his country; foretells the misfortunes of the Norman race,
and with prophetic spirit declares that all his cruelty shall never
extinguish the noble ardour of poetic genius in this island; and that
men