to it-the difficulty was great, and it is happily vanquished.

The Verfification

Is various-much studied, and if artificial, it is at leaft eafy, flowing, and full of dignity.

Perhaps, the most exceptionable line is the first, in which is the appearance of an affected alliteration. If this affectation be once fufpected, we rather withhold our fancy than indulge it, and read with caution instead of enjoyment.

The Sentiments

Are characteristic of the perfonages who speak in this dramatic ode-the Bard is deeply impreffed with forrow for the lofs of his companions, and pours forth his imprecations on the tyrant who had taken their lives. The ghosts of the

murdered

murdered bards exprefs their prophetic curfes in the spirit of the Northern Scalds, of whofe works Mr. Gray was an admirer. These, to ufe an expreffion of the authors, are 66 thoughts that breathe, and words that burn." The breaking off from the ghosts to the vifion of the bard, (to whofe imagination are prefented the great poets that are to flourish in future ages) is truly poetical; it has the farther use of reconciling him to his fate, and making him triumph in that death which was inevitable.

Effect.

The effect of a pindaric ode (and indeed of all fublime writing) is to produce that elevation of foul, which, while we read, seems to add increase of Being.

The first line commands our attention, and we feel ourselves expanding as the poem advances, which never finks

fo

fo low as mediocrity; and if no particular paffage can be quoted as the highest pitch of fublimity, yet the whole together has a degree of perfection that has feldom been attained, and perhaps never exceeded by any poet ancient or modern.

The

The Ghoft.

IT was shrewdly remarked by Voltaire,

that the early stages of fociety are the times for prodigies-Scotland was not civilized when Macbeth met the Witches; nor was Rome, when Curtius leaped into the Gulph. People of weak intellects, have, at all times, believed in apparitions. It is unneceflary now to fay, that stories of Ghosts are mistakes or impofitions, and that they might always be detected, if people had ingenuity to discover the trick, or courage enough to fearch out the cause of their fright:

In all relations of this kind there is manifeftly an endeavour to make the event as fupernatural, wonderful, and as wellattefted as poffible, to prevent the fufpi

cion of trick, and to cut off all objections which might be made to its credibility. I am about to comply with the established custom, and shall relate a story of a Ghost, which, I will be bold to fay, has the strongest circumstances of the wonderful, the fupernatural, and the well-attefted, of any upon record. The ftory, as yet, only lives in tradition, but it is much too good to be loft.

At a town in the west of England was held a club of twenty-four people, which affembled once a week to drink punch, fmoke tobacco, and talk politics. Like Rubens's Academy at Antwerp, each member had his peculiar chair, and the Prefident's was more exalted than the rest. One of the members had been in a dying ftate for fome time; of course, his chair, while he was abfent, remained vacant.

The club being met on their usual night, enquiries were naturally made after