And winde and curle, and wink and smile,
Shifting thy gate and guile.”
He is one of the earliest of our poets who treats external nature subjectively rather than objectively, in which he was followed by Gray (especially in his letters) and Collins and Cowper, and in some measure by Warton, until it reached its consummation, and perhaps its excess, in Wordsworth.
We shall now give our readers some specimens from the reprint of the Silex by Mr. Pickering, so admirably edited by the Rev. H. F. Lyte, himself a true poet, of whose careful life of our author we have made very free use.
The Timber.
“Sure thou didst flourish once! and many Springs,
Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers
Past o’er thy head: many light Hearts and Wings,
Which now are dead, lodg’d in thy living bowers.
“And still a new succession sings and flies;