"'But o'er the twilight grows and dusky caves,' etc." —Ibid, Vol. I. p. 314.
[20] "The Grave," by Robert Blair.
[21] The aeolian harp was a favorite property of romantic poets for a hundred years. See Mason's "Ode to an Aeolus's Harp" (Works, Vol. I. p. 51). First invented by the Jesuit, Kircher, about 1650, and described in his "Musurgia Universalis," Mason says that it was forgotten for upwards of a century and "accidentally rediscovered" in England by a Mr. Oswald. It is mentioned in "The Castle of Indolence" (i. xl) as a novelty:
"A certain music never known before
Here lulled the pensive melancholy mind"—
a passage to which Collins alludes in his verses on Thomson's death—
"In yon deep bed of whispering reeds
His airy harp shall now be laid."
See "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" I. 341-42 (1805)
"Like that wild harp whose magic tone
Is wakened by the winds alone."
And Arthur Cleveland Coxe's (Christian Ballads, 1840)
"It was a wind-harp's magic strong,
Touched by the breeze in dreamy song,"