her grown old; but so refined is his adulation, that he means quite the contrary. When he left her, not a bud was blowne, not a bloome of beauty past; and yet, after fifteen years absence, he finds her as young as ever.
P. 74. l. 10.Round as ther serpent or ther yeare.
A serpent, with its tail in its mouth, is an emblem of immortality.
P. 75. l. 8.Now that's eclipst, and yet you shine.
An allusion to the civil war and usurpation of Cromwell.
So Horace,
Mordet aquâ taciturnus amnis.
There is great delicacy and tenderness of sentiment in these lines to his mistress; the thoughts are natural, the imagery is classical, the diction poetical, and the versification melodious.
P. 78. Mr Normington is so much praised in these poems, that I feel the greatest regret at not being able to afford the reader the slightest information concerning him. He appears to have been a great traveller. See pages 10, 15, and 37. I have never heard the name, nor met with it any where else.
Reigne ore the Heleconian spring?
Phœbus, or Apollo, the river’s king, was the father of Phæeton, who, having obtained from him, for one day, the management of the chariot of the sun, conducted it so ill, that Jupiter was obliged to throw a thunderbolt at him; and poor Phæeton fell into the Eridanus, or Po, where he was drowned.
Pindar is called Dircæan, or Dirce's swan, from a fountain of that name in Bæotia, his native country. See Horace's Odes, b. iv. ode 2. and Gray's "Progress of Poesy," I. 2.
