ast mentioned circumstance; because
though the immediate design is not going forward, we can still however
keep it in view with the same ease, as a traveller can do the public
road, from which he willingly makes an excursion to survey the
neighbouring country. Thus the noble panegyric upon the whole people
of Rhodes, and the account of their Founder Tlepolemus, which we meet
with in the Ode inscribed to Diagoras the Rhodian; these are happy and
beautiful embellishments, whose introduction enlivens the whole piece
with a proper variety of objects[74].

[Footnote 73: Pin. Nem. Ode XI.]

[Footnote 74: Id. Olym. Ode VII.]

The same principle which induceth us to approve of Poet's transitions in
the preceding instances, must (as your Lordship will immediately
conceive) lead us to condemn those which are far-fetched, pursued too
closely, or foreign to the subject of the poem. This is frequently the
consequence of following the track of imagination with implicit
compliance, as the Poet without being sensible of his mistake runs into
one digression after another, until his work is made up of incoherent
ideas; in which, as Horace expresseth it,

velut aegri somnia vanae
Finguntur species, ut nec pes, nec caput uni
Reddatur formae[75].

This is the character of the Ode to Thrasidaeus the Theban, in which the
Poet is insensibly led from one digression to another, until his readers
lose sight of the principal subject which is dropped almost as soon as
proposed[76].

[Footnote 75: Hor. de Art. Poet.]

[Footnote 76: Pind. Pyth. Ode XI.]

The last circumstance mentioned as characteristic of the Ode, was a
certain picturesque vivacity of description. In this we permit the Lyric
Poet to indulge himself with greater freedom than any other, because
beauties of this kind are necessary to the end of exciting admiration.
It is the peculiar province of imagination to give that life and
expression to the ideas of the mind, by which Nature is most happily and
judiciously imitated. By the help of this poetical magic the coldest
sentiments become interesting, and the most common occurrences arrest
our attention. A man of Genius, instead of laying down a series of dry
precepts for the conduct of life, exhibits his sentiments in the most
animating manner, by moulding them into symmetry, and superadding the
external beauties of drapery and colour[77]. His reader by this
expedient is led through an Elysium, in whi