has apparently borrowed in his
beautiful ballad of _Black-eyed Susan_.

Among the sonnet-writers of this period, next to Spenser I place
Shakespeare. Perhaps in brilliancy of imagery, quickness of thought,
variety and fertility of allusion, and particularly in touches of
pastoral painting, Shakespeare is superiour. But he is more incorrect,
indigested, and redundant: and if Spenser has too much learning,
Shakespeare has too much conceit. It may be necessary however to read
the first one hundred & twenty six sonnets of our divine dramatist as
written by a lady:[22] for they are addressed with great fervency yet
delicacy of passion, and with more of fondness than friendship, to a
beautiful youth.[23] Only twenty six, the last bearing but a small
proportion to the whole number, and too manifestly of a subordinate
cast, have a female for their object. But under the palliative I have
suggested, many descriptions or illustrations of juvenile beauty,
pathetic endearments, and sentimental declarations of hope or
disappointment, which occur in the former part of this collection, will
lose their impropriety and give pleasure without disgust. The following,
a few lines omitted, is unperplexed and elegant.

How like a winter has my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December's bareness every where!
And yet this time, remov'd,[24] was summer's time;
The teeming autumn big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, &c.
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And thou away, the very birds are mute:
Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a chear,
That leaues look pale, dreading the winter's near.[25]

In the next, he pursues the same argument in the same strain.

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim,
Has put a sprite of youth in euery thing;
That heauy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet not the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lilies white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion of the rose:
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after thee, thou pattern of all those![26]
Yet se