Still shall each kind returning season Our name while virtue thus we tender Thro' youth and age in love excelling How should I love the pretty creatures And when with envy time transported [PERCY.] O go with me, Nor sigh to leave the flaunting town: O Nancy! when thou'rt far away, Wilt thou not cast a wish behind ? Say, canst thou face the parching ray, Nor shrink before the wint'ry wind? O can that soft and gentle mien Extremes of hardship learn to bear. Nor sad regret each courtly scene, Where thou wert fairest of the fair? O Nancy! canst thou love so true, Wilt thou assume the nurse's care, Nor wistful those gay scenes recall Where thou wert fairest of the fair? M And when at last thy love shall die, ESSAY ON INGENIOUS AND WITTY SONGS. THERE is no product of mental cultivation for which we are so little indebted to the ancients, as wit. This has been observed in a former Essay, to be the latest growth of the mind; and the ancients had scarcely attained to it, before the deluge of Gothic barbarity broke in, and swept away all the tender plants of literary genius. Though some of their early writers. carried sublimity and beauty to their highest perfection, yet were they in general utterly devoid of a just taste for that elegant and delightful artifice of composition termed wit, and their attempts in it were to the highest degree coarse and unpolished. Ovid had a brilliancy and artificial turu of fancy, which frequently produced true wit, but more frequently that false glitter which is only its counterfeit. Martial advanced so far as to give perfect models of his particular branch of wit, the epigrammatic; yet a prevailing number of faulty pieces demonstrates that he was void of judgment to distinguish the most excellent parts of a faculty which he possessed. By the Lyric poets, wit appears to have been quite unknown or disregarded. Anacreon and Horace, have indeed a gaiety and smartness of sentiment, but extremely different from the turn of thought in such modern pieces as we shall include in the present class. A taste for true wit soon followed the revival of learning and the fine arts in Europe for, modern literature being founded upon the classical remains of antiquity, had not a tedious gradation to go through, but acquired immediate refinement; and genius awaking from her long slumber, seemed to proceed towards per |