c, and quick in transition,--he wrote for a
people inconstant, of warm imaginations and exquisite sensibility. He
chose the most popular subjects, and all his allusions are to customs
well known, in his day, to the meanest person.[F]

His English Imitator wants those advantages. He speaks to a people not
easily impressed with new ideas; extremely tenacious of the old; with
difficulty warmed; and as slowly cooling again.--How unsuited then to
our national character is that species of poetry which rises upon us
with unexpected flights! Where we must hastily catch the thought, or it
flies from us; and, in short, where the Reader must largely partake of
the Poet's enthusiasm, in order to taste his beauties. To carry the
parallel a little farther; the Greek Poet wrote in a language the most
proper that can be imagined for this species of composition; lofty,
harmonious, and never needing rhyme to heighten the numbers. But, for
us, several unsuccessful experiments seem to prove that the English
cannot have Odes in blank Verse; while, on the other hand, a natural
imperfection attends those which are composed in irregular rhymes:--the
similar sound often recurring where it is not expected, and not being
found where it is, creates no small confusion to the Reader,--who, as we
have not seldom observed, beginning in all the solemnity of poetic
elocution, is by frequent disappointments of the rhyme, at last obliged
to drawl out the uncomplying numbers into disagreeable prose.

It is, by no means, our design to detract from the merit of our Author's
present attempt: we would only intimate, that an English Poet,--one whom
the Muse has _mark'd for her own_, could produce a more luxuriant bloom
of flowers, by cultivating such as are natives of the soil, than by
endeavouring to force the exotics of another climate: or, to speak
without a metaphor, such a genius as Mr. Gray might give greater
pleasure, and acquire a larger portion of fame, if, instead of being an
imitator, he did justice to his talents, and ventured to be more an
original. These two Odes, it must be confessed, breath[e] much of the
spirit of Pindar, but then they have caught the seeming obscurity, the
sudden transition, and hazardous epithet, of his mighty master; all
which, though evidently intended for beauties, will, probably, be
regarded as blemishes, by the generality of his Readers. In short, they
are in some measure, a representation of what Pindar now appears to b