To footh the hovering foul be thine the care, With plaintive cries to lead the mournful band, In fable weeds the golden vafe to bear, And cull my ashes with thy trembling hand: Panchaia's odours be their coftly feast, And all the pride of Afia's fragrant year, Give them the treasures of the farthest East, And, what is ftill more precious, give thy tear. Surely no blame can fall upon the nymph who rejected a fwain of fo little meaning. His verfes are not rugged, but they have no sweetness; they never glide in a stream of melody. Why Hammond or other writers have thought the quatrain of ten fyllables elegiac, it is difficult to tell. The character of the Elegy is gentleness and tenuity, but this stanza has been pronounced by Dryden, whofe knowledge of English metre was not inconfiderable, to be the most magnificent of all the measures which our language affords. SOMER SOMERVILE. OF F Mr. SOMERVILE's life I am not able to fay any thing that can fatisfy curiofity. He was a gentleman whofe eftate was in Warwickshire; his houfe is called Edfton, a feat inherited from a long line of ancestors; for he was faid to be of the firft family in his country. He tells of himself, that he was born near the Avon's banks. He was bred at Winchefter-school, but I know not whether he was of any university. I have never heard of him but as of a poet, a country gentleman, and a skilful and ufeful Juftice of the Peace. Of the clofe of his life, thofe whom his poems have delighted will read with pain the following |