person of one man, than those removed to a greater distance, and divided among several characters: and also, because the gift of superior foresight, may naturally be ascribed to the Deity, who is the supposed Author of the prophecy. The skill of Gray is, I think, eminently shown, in the superior distinctness with which he has marked those parts of his prophecies which are speedily to be accomplished; and in the gradations by which, as he descends, he has insensibly melted the more remote into the deeper and deeper shadowings of general language. The first prophecy is the fate of Edward the Second. In that the bard has pointed out the very night in which he is to be destroyed; has named the river that flowed around his prison, and the castle, that was the scene of his sufferings:

"Mark the year, and mark the night,

When Severn shall re-echo with affright;

The shrieks of death through Berkley's roof that ring,
Shrieks of an agonizing king."

How different is the imagery, when Richard the Second is described; and how indistinctly is the luxurious monarch marked out in the form of the morning, and his country in the figure of the vessel!

"The swarm that in thy noontide beam were born,
Gone to salute the rising morn.

Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
While proudly riding on the azure realm,

In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes,

Youth on the prow, and pleasure at the helm;
Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,
That, hush'd in grim repose, expects his ev'ning prey."

The last prophecy is that of the civil wars, and of the death of the two young princes. No place, no name is now noted: and all is seen through the dimness of figurative expression:

"" 'Above, below,

The rose of snow,

Twin'd with her blushing foe, we spread:
The bristled boar

In infant gore

Wallows beneath the thorny shade.”

As the subject of Gray's poem is drawn from a period of English history not very remote, it was proper to avoid too circumstantial and plain a description, which would destroy the dignity required. It appears then, from the obscurity we meet with in almost all prophetic poems, that it belongs to this species of composition: and that those who have attempted to write poems of this character, have felt how necessary it was to surround themselves with some degree of indistinctness proportioned to their taste and judgment. In Lycophron, however, the almost insurmountable obscurity arises from his strange and pedantic phraseology; which, added to his confusion of Metaphor, has involved in a general mass of darkness the scattered gleams of genius that struggle through the mystic obscurity of that singular

poem; in the Agamemnon of Eschylus, from the accidental corruptions of the text, as well as from the metaphorical ornaments and the cumbrous magnificence of his diction. How much to unfold, and what to leave gradually to be discovered; in short, the degree of clearness and obscurity in which a poetical prophecy should be laid before the reader, must always be a difficult part of the poet's business. Gray's judgment is certainly displayed in omitting the names of the personages of this poem; as in a tale of history so well known, the name would instantly call up the whole circumstances that follow in the recital, and the force of the prophecy would be lessened, or lost.

—Οἰδιποῦν γὰρ ἀν δὲ φῶ

Τὰ δ ̓ ἄλλα πάντ' ἰσάσιν

Before I finish my observations on the prophetic character of this ode, I must remark, that there appears to me one passage, and only one, in which I cannot help considering the unity of the poetical thoughts, and the tendency of the poem to produce one particular effect upon the mind, imperfectly preserved. It is apparent, that the agitation of the bard's mind is extreme: his anger, his scorn, his hatred of the tyrant, his sorrow for his friends, and his contempt of a desolate and dishonoured

* "Latebrasque Lycophronis atri," Stat. Sylv. Lib. v. 3, 157. Lycophron, Nicander, Callimachus, were grammarians, and used hard words. See Scaligerana, art. 'Pindare.'

life, is forcibly described. This character is uniformly sustained, till he has finished his poetical destiny of Edward and his successors; and then, as if he was overwhelmed with a fresh tide of indignation, and withholding his greatest blow for the last, he returns from denouncing woe on the blood of the Plantagenets, to Edward himself: and to make his last denunciation of wrath more dreadful, he foretells the speedy death of his wife-his beloved Eleanor of Castile :

"Half of thy heart we consecrate.

(The web is wove. The work is done.)"

That such impetuosity of feeling may suddenly be changed into great and unexpected* joy, is not unnatural; and accordingly when he foresees the restoration of his own country, in the Welsh descent of the House of Tudor, he with poetical truth of character breaks out into an exultation, founded as well on the future prosperity of his own race, as on the baffled and frustrated cruelty of the tyrant. This joy is finely expressed in the apostrophe to the shade of Taliessin :

"Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear!
They breathe a soul to animate thy clay."

And if this impetuosity of feeling had been carried on by the address to Edward:

* On the sudden, and violent nature of the passion of Joy; and its great difference, in this respect, from the opposite passion of Grief, see Ad. Smith's History of Astronomy, p. 8, 4to.

Fond impious man, think'st thou yon sanguine cloud, Rais'd by thy breath, has quench'd the orb of day?" &c.

the whole poem would have preserved a uniform and consistent character. The bard, however, in the last stanza, and just before he "plunges into endless night," points out the future poets, who were to adorn the reign of Elizabeth, in the following lines:

"The verse adorn again

Fierce war, and faithful love,

And truth severe, by fairy fiction drest.
In buskin'd measures move

Pale grief, and pleasing pain,

With horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast.
A voice, as of the cherub choir,
Gales from blooming Eden bear;

And distant warblings lessen on my ear,
That lost in long futurity expire." &c.

Independently of the interruption which these lines, by their length, give to the uniformity of the emotion, perhaps they are not (however beautiful) well adapted to the character of the Welsh bard at any time; and surely every one must acknowledge that they are most unsuited in subjectmatter, in expression, and turn of feeling, to the awful situation in which he stood, and the deed which he was just preparing to commit; the revival of the Bards, it also must be remarked, is sufficiently noticed in the preceding stanza :

"What strings symphonious tremble in the air,
What strains of vocal transport round her play!"