Traveller_.

Akenside illustrates the native impulse of genius by a simile of
Memnon's marble statue, sounding its lyre at the touch of the sun:

For as old Memnon's image, long renown'd
By fabling Nilus, to the quivering touch
Of Titan's ray, with each repulsive string
Consenting, sounded through the warbling air
Unbidden strains; even so did nature's hand, &c.

It is remarkable that the same image, which does not appear obvious
enough to have been the common inheritance of poets, is precisely used
by old Regnier, the first French satirist, in the dedication of his
Satires to the French king. Louis XIV. supplies the place of nature to
the courtly satirist. These are his words:--"On lit qu'en Ethiope il y
avoit une statue qui rendoit un son harmonieux, toutes les fois que le
soleil levant la regardoit. Ce meme miracle, Sire, avez vous fait en
moi, qui touche de l'astre de Votre Majeste, ai recu la voix et la
parole."

In that sublime passage in "Pope's Essay on Man," Epist. i. v. 237,
beginning,

Vast chain of being! which from God began,

and proceeds to

From nature's chain whatever link you strike,
Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.

Pope seems to have caught the idea and image from Waller, whose last
verse is as fine as any in the "Essay on Man:"--

The chain that's fixed to the throne of Jove,
On which the fabric of our world depends,
One link dissolv'd, the whole creation ends.
_Of the Danger his Majesty escaped_, &c. v. 168.

It has been observed by Thyer, that Milton borrowed the expression
_imbrowned_ and _brown_, which he applies to the evening shade, from the
Italian. See Thyer's elegant note in B. iv., v. 246:

----And where the unpierced shade
_Imbrowned_ the noon tide bowers.

And B. ix., v. 1086:

---- Where highest Woods impenetrable
To sun or star-light, spread their umbrage broad,
And _brown as evening_.

_Fa l'imbruno_ is an expression used by the Italians to denote the
approach of the evening. Boiardo, Ariosto and Tasso, have made a very
picturesque use of this term, noticed by Thyer. I doubt if it be
applicable to our colder climate; but Thomson appears to have been
struck by the fine effect it produces in poetical landscape; for he has

----With quickened step
_Brown night_ retires.
_Summer_, v. 51.

If the epithet be true, it cannot be more appropria