To heighten our satisfaction two blackbirds answered each other from opposite hedges, the familiar redbreast came and pecked the crumbs from our hands, and every sound seemed but the echo of tranquillity.

'I never sit thus,' says Sophia, 'but I think of the two lovers, so sweetly described by Mr Gay, who were struck dead in each other's arms.

There is something so pathetic in the description, that I have read it an hundred times with new rapture.'-- 'In my opinion,' cried my son, 'the finest strokes in that description are much below those in the Acis and Galatea of Ovid.

The Roman poet understands the use of contrast better, and upon that figure artfully managed all strength in the pathetic depends.'-- 'It is remarkable,' cried Mr Burchell, 'that both the poets you mention have equally contributed to introduce a false taste into their respective countries, by loading all their lines with epithet.

Men of little genius found them most easily imitated in their defects, and English poetry, like that in the latter empire of Rome, is nothing at present but a combination of luxuriant images, without plot or connexion; a string of epithets that improve the sound, without carrying on the sense.