SUMMARY. INVOCATION. The origin, nature, and perfection of the poetic art.— The various sources of poetry.-Silence, Solitude; Young-Dodd-HerveyOssian.—Melancholy; Kirk White-Chatterton—Warton—Smith.— Grief ; Shaw-Mason-Gray.-Love; examples-youth-Ovid-Tibullus-Anacreon -Moore-Troubadours.-Wit, comic and satiric poetry; Butler-Syntax— Lucilius-Juvenal-Horace-Boileau-Rochester-Prior-Gay-Swift-Rabelais. Nature, pastoral and picturesque poetry, &c.; Theocritus-VirgilGessner-Thomson-Burns Scott-Hogg-Falconer - Goldsmith-Crubbe -Bloomfield - Gisborne —Shenstone -Denham-Somerville-Wordsworth— Montgomery. — Mind; intellectual poetry; Beattie — Rogers — Campbell — - Akenside-Collins.-History; epic poetry; Homer-Virgil-Milton-Lucan -Le Trissin-Camouens-Tasso-(Ariosto)—Voltaire. Canto E. GERM of enthusiast Nature, POESY! Thy sources, num'rous as thy varied laws, From which each Poet inspiration draws; Who Thee have honour'd in the golden line, And who disgrac'd the influence divine, Thoughtful, we trace.-How man, with fond desire Inflam'd, or kindled by resistless fire, C 'Gan first to try the "imitative" strain,* To finish'd Ode and splendid Epopee. Is thy sweet power a "taint of madness" hight? So thought sage Plato and the Stagyrite:† *See Aristotle's Poetics. + See Aristotle's Poetics. |