em. IV. 50, "Penshurst," by Mr. F. Coventry: a very close
imitation of "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso." IV. 181, "Ode to Fancy," by
the Rev. Mr. Merrick: octosyllables. IV. 229, "Solitude, an Ode," by Dr.
Grainger: octosyllables. V. 283, "Prologue to Comus," performed at Bath,
1756. VI. 148, "Vacation," by----, Esq.: "L'Allegro," very close--

"These delights, Vacation, give,
And I with thee will choose to live."

IX. (Pearch) 199, "Ode to Health," by J. H. B., Esq.: "L'Allegro." X. 5,
"The Valetudinarian," by Dr. Marriott; "L'Allegro," very close. X. 97,
"To the Moon," by Robert Lloyd: "Il Penseroso," close. Parody is one of
the surest testimonies to the prevalence of a literary fashion, and in
Vol X. p 269 of Pearch, occurs a humorous "Ode to Horror," burlesquing
"The Enthusiast" and "The Pleasures of Melancholy," "in the allegoric,
descriptive, alliterative, epithetical, hyperbolical, and diabolical
style of our modern ode wrights and monody-mongers," form which I extract
a passage:

"O haste thee, mild Miltonic maid,
From yonder yew's sequestered shade. . .
O thou whom wandering Warton saw,
Amazed with more than youthful awe,
As by the pale moon's glimmering gleam
He mused his melancholy theme.
O Curfew-loving goddess, haste!
O waft me to some Scythian waste,
Where, in Gothic solitude,
Mid prospects most sublimely rude,
Beneath a rough rock's gloomy chasm,
Thy sister sits, Enthusiasm."

"Bell's Fugitive Poetry," Vol. XI, (1791), has a section devoted to
"poems in the manner of Milton," by Evans, Mason, T. Warton and a Mr. P.
(L'Amoroso).

[16] See James Thomson's "City of Dreadful Night," xxi. Also the
frontispiece to Mr. E. Stedman's "Nature of Poetry" (1892) and pp. 140-41
of the same.

[17] "Eighteenth Century Literature," pp. 209, 212.

[18] "English Literature in the Eighteenth Century," pp. 375, 379.

[19] Joseph mentions as one of Spenser's characteristics, "a certain
pleasing melancholy in his sentiments, the constant companion of an
elegant taste, that casts a delicacy and grace over all his composition,"
"Essay on Pope," Vol. II. p. 29. In his review of Pope's "Epistle of
Eloisa to Abelard," he says: "the effect and influence of Melancholy, who
is beautifully personified, on every object that occurs and on every part
of the convent, cannot be too much applauded, or too often read, as it is
founded on nature and experience. Tha