ings, receive from him a local habitation and a name. In short, he may personify, bestow life, speech, and action, on whatever he thinks proper. His subjects are as boundless as creation, and his command of them as extensive as the range of the human imagination.

The style of fable should be simple and familiar, correct and elegant. Of those in prose Æsop's are the most celebrated and well known. La Mothe, Fontaine, Dryden, Moore, and Langhorne have furnished the best poetical fables. The measures in which they are written are various. Such also is the manner in which they and other allegorical writing should be read or recited, always observing a due accommodation of manner to the matter of which they are composed.

Satire is a kind of poem of very ancient date. That which we now have is generally allowed to be of Roman invention; and may be distinguished into two kinds. The jocose, or that which makes sport with vice and folly, and sets them up to ridicule: and the serious, or that which treats them with asperity, severity, and acrimony. Horace is a perfect master of the first, and Juvenal much admired for the last. The one is facetious and smiles; the other is angry and storms. The foibles of mankind are the object of one, their crimes that of the other: they are, however, both pungent and biting. The verse in which they are composed should be smooth and flowing, and the language manly, just, and decent. Satire levelled at individuals, and exposing particular characters is called lampoon. The satires of Swift, Pope, Young, Dryden, and Butler, are known to every reader, and will sufficiently exemplify this species of composition. The manner of communicating must partake of its nature, and be sedate or lively as the subject requires, but always animated and sarcastic.

The Epigram is a little poem, or composition in verse, treating of one thing only; its distinguishing characters are, brevity, beauty, and point. Its usual limits are from two to twenty verses, but the shorter it is, the better, and the more perfect. The beauty required in an epigram is a harmony, and apt agreement

of all its parts, a sweet simplicity and polite language. The point is a sharp, lively, unexpected turn of wit, with which an epigram ought always to be concluded. The epigram is generally employed either in praise or satire. Of the first, the following is a specimen, written on a glass with the earl of Chesterfield's diamond pencil:

"Accept a miracle, instead of wit;

See two dull lines by Stanhope's pencil writ."

The following exemplify those of the biting and satyrical kind.

On a company of bad dancers to good music:

"How ill the motion with the music suits!

So Orpheus fiddled, and so danc'd the brutes,"

And this, addressed to a bad fiddler:

"Old Orpheus play'd so well he mov'd old Nick,
But thou mov'st nothing but thy fiddlestick."

The following epigram on an enthusiastic preacher, at the commencement of the revolutionary war with Great Britain, who, in extremely hot weather, preached to a battalion of militia with a very ugly negro man standing behind him all the time fanning him, has considerable point:

To preach up, friend Percy, at this critical season,
Resistance to Britain, is not quite so civil:

Yet what can we look for but faction and treason,
From a flaming enthusiast fan'd by the devil."

This species of verse should be communicated in a lively, animated manner, and when containing any thing satyrical, with an acute tone, and sarcastic look.

Lastly of the Epitaph.

This species of poetical composition generally contains some eulogium on the virtues and good qualities of the deceased, and has a seriousness and gravity adapted to the nature of the sub

ject. Its elegance consists in a nervous, and expressive brevity, and sometimes it is closed with an epigrammatic point.

The following from the pen of doctor Samuel Johnson will prove an elegant illustration.

On a celebrated musician:

"

Philips! whose touch harmonious could remove
The pangs of guilty power and hapless love;
Rest here, distress'd by poverty no more;
Find here that calm thou gav'st so oft before;
Sleep undisturbed within this peaceful shrine,
Till angels wake thee with a note like thine."

The following is a merry epitaph on an old fiddler, who was remarkable for beating time to his own music:

" Stephen and Time are now both even,

Stephen beat time, now Time beats Stephen."

There is also a species of epitaph which rejects rhyme and has no certain and determinate measure; but in which the diction must be pure and strong, every word have weight, and the antithesis be preserved in a clear and direct apposition. Such is the epitaph written by Mr. Pope on a monument in lord Cobham's garden:

To the memory
Of

Signior Fido,

An Italian of good extraction;

Who came into England

Not to bite us, like most of his countrymen,

But to gain an honest livelihood.

He hunted not after fame

Yet acquired it;

Regardless of the praise of his friends,

But most sensible of their love:
Though he lived amongst the great
He neither learned nor flattered any vice.
He was no bigot,

Though he doubted of none of the thirty-nine articles.
And if to follow nature

And to respect the laws of society

Be philosophy,

He was a perfect philosopher,

A faithful friend,

An agreeable companion,

A loving husband;

Distinguished by a numerous offspring,
All which he lived to see take good courses.
In his old age he retired

To the house of a clergyman in the country,
Where he finished his earthly race,

And died an honour and example to the whole species.

Reader,

This stone is guiltless of flattery;

For he, to whom it is inscribed,
Was not a man,

But a
Grey-hound.

This species of poetry, whether serious or satyrical should always be read with a gravity, dignity, slowness and distinctness of articulation suited to its nature and application.

These, gentlemen, are the different species of poetry, and these the characteristic modes of reading or reciting them. The distinctions of measure as accommodated to various subjects has been already descanted on. Their combination in the same poem is frequently advantageous. For instance, in Alexander's Feast, the poet in describing the descent of Jupiter to Olympia, and the ambition of the hero to imitate the god, employs the dignity of iambic measure, suited to the grandeur of the subject, and nothing can be more simple and majestic than the expression:

"The list'ning crowd admire the lofty sound,

A present deity! they shout around;

A present deity! the vaulted roofs rebound.

With ravish'd ears

The monarch hears,
Assumes the god,

Affects to nod,

And seems to shake the spheres."

The magnificence of this scene is contrasted with the revelry of the joys of Bacchus. The measure also is contrasted, and the poet now assumes the brisk trochaic.

"Bacchus, ever fair and ever young,
Drinking joys did first ordain;
Bacchus' blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldier's pleasure;
Rich the treasure,

Sweet the pleasure,

Sweet is pleasure after pain.”

This social scene is happily contrasted with the melancholy fate of Darius, and both the sentiments and the versification strongly prompt commiseration and sympathy:

"He sung Darius great and good,

By too severe a fate,

Fall'n, fall'n, fall'n, fall'n,

Fall'n from his high estate

And weltering in his blood;
Deserted at his utmost need
By those his former bounty fed,
On the bare earth exposed he lies,

With not one friend to close his eyes."

The herois next inflamed with love, and then with revenge so violent as to rise to fury. He will burn the Persian cities, and extirpate their name from the face of the earth. The violence of this frenzy is happily seconded by the rapidity of anapaestic measure. "Revenge! revenge! Timotheus cries;

See the Furies arise!

See the snakes that they rear,

How they hiss in their hair,

And the sparkles that flash from their eyes.
Behold how they toss their torches on high!

How they point to the Persian abodes,

And glittering temples of their hostile gods!

The princes applaud with a furious joy;

And the king seiz❜d a flambeau with zeal to destroy;

Thaïs led the way

To light him to his prey,

And, like another Helen, fir'd another Troy."

This ode does the greatest honour to the genius of Dryden. It is finished in every respect in the most perfect manner; and no language perhaps can present any production of the kind more correct and proper. Such and so various are the different kinds of verse, and