He hastened to the chapel, on a stone
Henry was sitting there, cold, stiff and dead,
The bell-rope in his band, and at his feet
The lamp that stream'd a long unsteady light
[Footnote 1: This story is related in the English Martyrology, 1608.]
English Eclogues.
The following Eclogues I believe, bear no resemblance to any poems in
our language. This species of composition has become popular in Germany,
and I was induced to attempt by an account of the German Idylls given me
in conversation. They cannot properly be stiled imitations, as I am
ignorant of that language at present, and have never seen any
translations or specimens in this kind.
With bad Eclogues I am sufficiently acquainted, from ??tyrus [1] and
Corydon down to our English Strephons and Thirsises. No kind of poetry
can boast of more illustrious names or is more distinguished by the
servile dulness of imitated nonsense. Pastoral writers "more silly than
their sheep" have like their sheep gone on in the same track one after
another. Gay stumbled into a new path. His eclogues were the only ones
that interested me when I was a boy, and did not know they were
burlesque. The subject would furnish matter for a long essay, but this
is not the place for it.
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