trace
three leading moods or tendencies:--the aspects of courtly or educated
life represented by Pope and carried to exhaustion by his followers; the
poetry of Nature and of Man, viewed through a cultivated, and at the
same time an impassioned frame of mind by Collins and Gray:--lastly, the
study of vivid and simple narrative, including natural description,
begun by Gay and Thomson, pursued by Burns and others in the north, and
established in England by Goldsmith, Percy, Crabbe, and Cowper. Great
varieties in style accompanied these diversities in aim: poets could not
always distinguish the manner suitable for subjects so far apart; and
the union of the language of courtly and of common life, exhibited most
conspicuously by Burns, has given a tone to the poetry of that century
which is better explained by reference to its historical origin than by
naming it, in the common criticism of our day, artificial. There is
again, a nobleness of thought, a courageous aim at high and, in a strict
sense manly, excellence in many of the writers:--nor can that period be
justly termed tame and wanting in originality, which produced poems such
as Pope's Satires, Gray's Odes and Elegy, the ballads of Gay and Carey,
the songs of Burns and Cowper. In truth Poetry at this as at all times
was a more or less unconscious mirror of the genius of the age; and the
brave and admirable spirit of Enquiry which made the eighteenth century
the turning-time in European civilisation is reflected faithfully in its
verse. An intelligent reader will find the influence of Newton as
markedly in the poems of Pope, as of Elizabeth in the plays of
Shakespeare. On this great subject, however, these indications must here
be sufficient.

117. ODE ON THE PLEASURE ARISING FROM VICISSITUDE.

Now the golden Morn aloft
Waves her dew-bespangled wing,
With vermeil cheek and whisper soft
She woos the tardy Spring:
Till April starts, and calls around
The sleeping fragrance from the ground,
And lightly o'er the living scene
Scatters his freshest, tenderest green.

New-born flocks, in rustic dance,
Frisking ply their feeble feet;
Forgetful of their wintry trance
The birds his presence greet:
But chief, the sky-lark warbles high
His trembling thrilling ecstasy;
And lessening from the dazzled sight,
Melts into air and liquid light.

Yesterday the sullen year