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causes of the war, and then personified the abstract and christened it by the name which he had been accustomed to hear most often associated with its management and measures. I should guess that the minister was in the author's mind at the moment of composition, as completely απαθὴς, ἀναιμὁσαρκος, as Anacreon's grasshopper, and that he had as little notion of a real person of flesh and blood,
as Milton had in the grim and terrible phantoms (half person, half allegory) which he has placed at the gates of Hell. I concluded by observing, that the Poem was not calculated to excite passion in any mind, or to make any impression except on poetic readers; and that from the culpable levity, betrayed by[errata 1] the grotesque union of epigrammatic wit with allegoric personification, in the allusion to the most fearful of thoughts, I should conjecture that the "rantin Bardie," instead of really believing, much less wishing, the fate spoken of in the last line, in application to any human individual, would shrink from passing the verdict even on the Devil himself, and exclaim with poor Burns,
Oh! wad ye tak a thought an' men!
Ye aiblins might—I dinna ken—
Still hae a stake—
I'm wae to think upon yon den,
Ev'n for your sake!
Errata
