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A celebrated writer, in his ingenious letters on Chivalry, has obferved, that the Gothic manners, and Gothic fuperftitions, are more adapted to the uses of poetry, than the Grecian. The devotion of those times was gloomy and fearful, not being purged of the terrors of the Celtic fables. The Prieft often availed himself of the dire inventions of his predeceffor, the Druid. The church of Rome adopted many of the Celtic fuperftitions; others, which were not established by it, as points of faith, ftill maintained a traditional authority among the vulgar. Climate, temper, modes of life, and institutions of government, feem all to have conspired to make the fuperftitions of the Celtic nations melancholy and terrible. Philofophy had not mitigated the aufterity of ignorant devotion, or tamed the fierce fpirit of enthusiasm. As the Bards, who were our philofophers and poets, pretended to be poffeffed of the dark fecrets of magic and divination, they certainly encouraged the ignorant credulity, and anxious fears, to which fuch impof

tures

tures owe their fuccefs and credit. The retired and gloomy scenes appointed for the most folemn rites of devotion; the aufterity and rigour of druidical difcipline and jurifdiction; the fafts, the penances, the fad excommunications from the comforts and privileges of civil life; the dreadful anathema, whofe vengeance pursued the wretched beyond the grave, which bounds all human power and mortal jurisdiction, muft deeply imprint on the mind every form of fuperftition, which fuch an Hierarchy prefented. The Bard who was subfervient to the Druid, had mixed them in his heroic fong; in his historical annals; in his medical practice: genii affifted his heroes; dæmons decided the fate of the battle; and charms cured the fick, or the wounded. Nay after the confecrated groves were cut down, and the temples demolished, the tales that sprung from them were still preferved, with religious reverence, in the minds of the people.

The Poet found himself happily fituated

amidst

amidst enchantments, ghofts, goblins; every element fuppofed the refidence of a kind of deity; the Genius of the mountain, the Spirit of the floods, the Oak endued with facred prophecy, made men walk abroad with a fearful apprehenfion

Of powers unseen, and mightier far than they. On the mountains, and in the woods, ftalked the angry Spectre; and in the gayest and most pleasing scenes, even within the cheerful haunts of men, amongst villages and farms,

Tripp'd the light fairies and the dapper elves. The reader will eafily perceive what refources remained for the Poet, in this vifionary land of ideal forms. The general fce

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of nature, confidered as inanimate, only adorns the descriptive part of poetry; but being, according to the Celtic traditions, animated by a kind of Intelligences, the bard could better make use of them, for his moral purposes. That awe of the immediate presence of the Deity, which, among the vulgarof other nations, is confined to temples and altars, was here diffufed over every object.

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object. The Celt paffed trembling through the woods, and over the mountain, and near the lakes, inhabited by thefe invisible ers; fuch apprehenfions muft indeed

Deepen the murmur of the falling floods,

And fhed a browner horror on the woods;

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give fearful accents to every whifper of the animate or inanimate creation, and arm every fhadow with terrors.

With great reafon, therefore, it has been afferted, that the weftern bards had an advantage over Homer, in the fuperftitions of their country. The religious ceremonies of Greece were more pompous than folemn; and feemed as much a part of their civil institutions, as belonging to spiritual matters : nor did they imprefs fo deep a fenfe of invifible beings, and prepare the mind to catch the enthufiafm of the Poet, and to receive with veneration the Phantoms, he prefented.

Our countryman has another kind of superiority over the Greek Poets, even the earliest of them, who, having imbibed the learning

learning of myfterious Egypt, addicted themselves to Allegory; but our Gothic Bard, instead of mere amufive allegory, employs the potent agency of facred Fable. When the world becomes learned and philofophical, Fable refines into Allegory. But the age of Fable is the golden age of Poetry; when reason, and the steady lamp of inquifitive philosophy, throw their penetrating rays upon the phantoms of Imagination, they discover them to have been mere fhadows, formed by ignorance. The thunderbolts of Jove, forged in Cimmerian caves: the ceftus of Venus, woven by the hands of the attracting Graces, cease to terrify and allure. Echo, from an amorous nymph, fades into voice, and nothing more ;

the

very threads of Iris's fcarf are untwisted; all the Poet's spells are broken, his charms diffolved: deferted on his own enchanted

ground, he takes refuge in the groves of Philosophy; but there his divinities evaporate in allegory, in which mystic and insubstantial state, they do but weakly affist his operations. By affociating his muse

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