cal to literal expression, it is not to be wondered if the cus tom of expressing ideas by personal images, which had so long prevailed, should still retain its influence on the mind, though the use of letters had rendered the practical appli. cation of it superfluous. Those who had been accustomed to express strength by the image of an elephant, swiftness by that of a panther, and courage by that of a lion, would make no scruple of substituting, in letters, the symbols for the ideas they had been used to represent.

Here we plainly see the origin of allegorical expression, that it arose from the ashes of hieroglyphics; and if to the same cause we should refer that figurative boldness of style and imagery which distinguish the oriental writings, we shall, perhaps, conclude more justly, than if we should impute it to the superior grandeur of eastern genius.

From the same source with the verbal, we are to derive the sentimental allegory, which is nothing more than a continuation of the metaphorical or symbolical expression of the several agents in an action, or the different objects in a

scene.

The latter most peculiarly comes under the denomination of allegorical imagery; and in this species of allegory we include the impersonation of passions, affections, virtues and vices, &c. on account of which, principally, the following odes were properly termed by their author, allegorical.-L.

C

ODE TO PITY.

O THOU, the friend of man assign'd,
With balmy hands his wounds to bind,
And charm his frantic woe:

When first Distress, with dagger keen,
Broke forth to waste his destin'd scene,
His wild unsated foe!

By Pella's Bard,❤ a magic name,

By all the griefs his thought could frame,

Receive my humble rite:

Long, Pity, let the nations view

Thy sky-worn robes of tenderest blue,
And eyes of dewy light!

But wherefore need I wander wide

To old Ilissus' distant side,

Deserted stream, and mute?

Wild Arun† too has heard thy strains,
And Echo, 'midst my native plains,

Been sooth'd by Pity's lute.

Euripides, who was buried at Pella, a city of Macedonia, after residing there about three years.-C.

A river in Sussex.-The mention of Otway, born as well as Collins near the Arun, probably suggested to his melancholy and indignant mind, an

There first the wren thy myrtles shed
On gentlest Otway's infant head,

To him thy cell was shewn ;

And while he sung the female heart,

With youth's soft notes unspoil'd by art,
Thy turtles mix'd their own.

Come, Pity, come, by fancy's aid,
Ev'n now my thoughts, relenting Maid,
Thy temple's pride design:

Its southern site, its truth complete
Shall raise a wild enthusiast heat,
In all who view the shrine.

There Picture's toil shall well relate,
How chance or hard involving fate
O'er mortal bliss prevail :

The buskin'd Muse shall near her stand,
And sighing prompt her tender hand,
With each disastrous tale.

There let me oft, retir'd by day,
In dreams of passion melt away,
Allow'd with thee to dwell:

analogy in their fates which he has forborne to express. They both were the objects of pity, from that circumstance which a liberal mind would least wish to become so-pecuniary distresses.-B.

There waste the mournful lamp of night,
Till, Virgin, thou again delight

To hear a British shell!

ODE TO FEAR.

THOU, to whom the world unknown
With all its shadowy shapes is shewn ;
Who seest appall'd th' unreal scene,
While Fancy lifts the veil between :
Ah Fear! ah frantic Fear?

I see, I see thee near.

I know thy hurried step, thy haggard eye!
Like thee I start, like thee disorder'd fly,
For, lo what monsters in thy train appear!
Danger, whose limbs of giant mould
What mortal eye can fix'd behold?
Who stalks his round, an hideous form,
Howling amidst the midnight storm,
Or throws him on the ridgy steep
Of some loose hanging rock to sleep:
And with him thousand phantoms join'd,
Who prompt to deeds accurs'd the mind:
And those, the fiends, who near allied,
O'er nature's wounds, and wrecks preside;

While Vengeance, in the lurid air
Lifts her red arın, expos'd and bare:
On whom that ravening Brood of fate,
Who lap the blood of Sorrow, wait;
Who, Fear, this ghastly train can see,
And look not madly wild, like thee?

EPODE.

In earliest Greece, to thee, with partial choice,
The grief-full Muse addrest her infant tongue;
The maids and matrons, on her awful voice

Silent and pale in wild amazement hung.

Yet he, the Bard who first invok'd thy name,
Disdain'd in Marathon its power to feel:

For not alone he nurs'd the poet's flame,

But reach'd from Virtue's hand the patriot's steel.

But who is he, whom later garlands grace,
Who left a while o'er Hybla's dews to rove,
With trembling eyes thy dreary steps to trace,
Where thou and Furies shar'd the baleful grove?+

* Eschylus. In his play, entitled Eumenides (Furies),he introduced a chorus of 50 persons, whose habits, gestures, and appearance altogether were so formidable, as to terrify the whole audience. Eschylus fought at the battle of Marathon.-C.

The allusion here is to the Edipus Coloneus of Sophocles, which con tains the most sublime scene in the whole compass of the Grecian Drama, of that kind of sublimity which arises from the obscure, and is calculated to produce terror.-See Ed: Col. v. 1658.-C.