NOTE. _Teach_, &c. Teach my best reason what is reasonable: cause the best actings of my intellectual powers to be more strictly conformed to what is reasonable, true, and fit. We take no note of Time But from its loss: to give it then a tongue. NOTE. _To give it then a tongue._ To cause time to speak to us! Here teems with revolutions every hour. NOTE. _Here_, &c. On this earth every hour teems with revolutions! I would not damp, but to secure, thy joys. NOTE. _But to secure_, &c. But with a view to secure thy joys! No moment, but in purchase of its worth. NOTE. _Of its worth_: Of something equally valuable! Nature, in zeal for human amity. NOTE. _In zeal for human amity_: In the exercise of zeal for encouraging human friendship! And so on through all the book--scarcely any thing but these miserable puerilities. There cannot be a child in the world to whom the poet's meaning would not be as plain from the text, as from such notes. In other cases, where the author is perfectly plain to nearly the meanest apprehensions, Mr. Boyd himself cannot understand him; for instance: While o'er my limbs sleep's soft dominion spread, What though my soul fantastic measures trod O'er fairy fields, or mourned along the gloom Of pathless woods, or, down the craggy steep Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled flood. The obvious idea in these last lines is, that, hurled down into a pool, battlemented, or _mantled_ about, he swam with pain, seeing no egress up the craggy or precipitous rocks: a use of the word "mantled," which is justified by instances in many of the best ancient and modern writers. But Mr. Boyd reduces the lines to the poorest stuff by the following NOTE. _Mantled_: Expanded, spread out, as a mantle. An instance of his prosaic feebleness occurs on page 86. Thought, busy thought, too busy for my peace. Through the dark postern of long time elapsed, Led softly, by the stillness of the night.... In quest of wretchedness perversely strays, And finds all desert now, and meets the ghosts Of my departed joys, a numerous train. NOTE. _Ghosts of my departed days_: The bare recollection of them! This is a new exhibition of the "art of sinking." The whole commentary suggests the idea of making a noble poem contemptible, by covering it over with diminutive conceits and bungling impertinences. * * * * *