ood play_, etc.:

"Thinkest thou, base lord,
Because the glorious Sun behind black clouds
Has awhile hid his beams, he's darken'd forever,
Eclips'd never more to shine?"

137. Cf. _Lycidas_, 169: "And yet anon repairs his drooping head;"
and Fletcher, _Purple Island_, vi. 64: "So soon repairs her light,
trebling her new-born raies."

141. Mitford remarks that there is a passage (which he misquotes, as
usual) in the _Thebaid_ of Statius (iii. 81) similar to this,
describing a bard who had survived his companions:

"Sed jam nudaverat ensem
Magnanimus vates, et nunc trucis ora tyranni,
Nunc ferrum adspectans: 'Nunquam tibi sanguinis hujus
Jus erit, aut magno feries imperdita Tydeo
Pectora; _vado equidem exsultans_ et _ereptaque fata_
Insequor, et comites feror expectatus ad umbras;
_Te_ Superis, fratrique.' Et jam media orsa loquentis
Abstulerat plenum capulo latus."

Cf. also a passage in Pindar (_Olymp._ i. 184), which Gray seems to
have had in mind:

[Greek: Eie se te touton
Hupsou chronon patein, eme
Te tossade nikaphorois
Homilein, k. t. l.

143. Cf. Virgil, _Ecl._ viii. 59:

"Praeceps aerii specula de montis in undas
Deferar; extremum hoc munus morientis habeto."

As we have given Johnson's criticism on _The Progress of Poesy_, we
append his comments on this "Sister Ode:"

"'The Bard' appears, at the first view, to be, as Algarotti and
others have remarked, an imitation of the prophecy of Nereus.
Algarotti thinks it superior to its original; and, if preference
depends only on the imagery and animation of the two poems, his
judgment is right. There is in 'The Bard' more force, more thought,
and more variety. But to copy is less than to invent, and the copy
has been unhappily produced at a wrong time. The fiction of Horace
was to the Romans credible; but its revival disgusts us with apparent
and unconquerable falsehood. _Incredulus odi_.

"To select a singular event, and swell it to a giant's bulk by
fabulous appendages of spectres and predictions, has little
difficulty; for he that forsakes the probable may always find the
marvellous. And it has little use; we are affected only as we
believe; we are improved only as we find something to be imitated or
declined. I do not see that 'The Bard' promotes any truth, moral or
political.

"His stanzas are too long, especially his epodes; the ode i