CHAP, vi.] WORK AND HOPE.

sequestered remoteness of a gorgeous and luxurious fancy 1759-
he thinks of Virgil, and even Homer, as moderns in com- ^-^
parison with Elizabeth's Englishman: and when he wakes
from this Elysium, and comes back to the ways of the world,
his conclusions are, that " no poet enlarges the imagination
*' more than Spenser;" that" Cowley was formed into poetry
" by reading him ; " that " Gray and Akenside have profited
" by their study of him; " and that " his verses may one day
" come to be considered the standard of English poetry."
His next article, which appeared in the following number,
was a notice of young Langhorne's translation of Bion's
Elegy of Adonis; wherein he happily contrasted the false
and florid tastes of the day with the pure simplicity of the
Greek. " If an hero or a poet happens to die with us, the
" whole band of elegiac .poets raise the dismal chorus, adorn
" his herse with all the paltry escutcheons of flattery, rise
" into bombast, paint him at the head of his thundering
" legions, or reining Pegasus in his most rapid career; they
" are sure to strew cypress enough upon the bier, dress up
"all the muses in mourning, and look themselves every
"whit as dismal and as sorrowful as an undertaker's shop,
" Neither pomp nor flattery agrees with real affliction : it is
"not thus that Marcellus, even that Marcellus who was
" adopted by the emperor of the world, is bewailed by
" Propertius: his beauty, his strength, his milder virtues,
" seem to have caught the poet's affections, and inspired his
" affliction. Were a person to die in these clays, tho' he was
" never at a battle in his life, our elegiac writers would be
" sure to make one for the occasion." * Subsequently,. and
with as happy and clear a spirit, he discussed a book on
Oratory by a Gresharn professor of rhetoric: instancing the

* Critical Review, vii. 263, March 1759. pedantic schoolmaster,