Up to the days of
Keats' "Endymion" and "Hyperion," Akenside's "Hymn to the Naiads"
was thought one of the best attempts to reproduce the classical
spirit and ideas. It now takes a secondary place; and at no time
could be compared to an actual hymn of Callimachus or Pindar, any
more than Smollett's "Supper after the Manner of the Ancients" was
equal to a real Roman Coena, the ideal of which Croly has so
superbly described in "Salathiel." His "Epistle to Curio" is a
masterpiece of vigorous composition, terse sentiment, and glowing
invective. It gathers around Pulteney as a ring of fire round the
scorpion, and leaves him writhing and shrivelled. Out of Dryden and
Pope, it is perhaps the best satiric piece in our poetry.
Of the "Pleasures of Imagination," it is not necessary to say a
great deal. A poem that has been so widely circulated, so warmly
praised, so frequently quoted and imitated--the whole of which
nearly a man like Thomas Brown has quoted in the course of his
lectures--must possess no ordinary merit. Its great beauty is its
richness of description and language--its great fault is its
obscurity; a beauty and a fault closely connected together, even as
the luxuriance of a tropical forest implies intricacy, and its
lavish loveliness creates a gloom.
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