The wing, the harp, the hatchet, the altar of _Simmias_, were the dregs of a degraded nation's worn-out taste; but it is matter of surprise, that a race celebrated for susceptibility of sentiment should have submitted to lisp their first accents, and continued to breathe their full raptures of love, in the trammels of a sonnet. If, as may reasonably be supposed, the first twister of a sonnet were a being of a versatile head and frozen heart, the beauties thronged into this little labyrinth, it's glowing words, and thoughts that burn, whether we consider the original, or it's more than equal translation, equally challenge our admiration and sympathy. We must yet be allowed to make a few observations on what our author, perhaps with greater ingenuity than impartiality, pronounces on the comparative excellence of the ancients and moderns in the use of the prosopopœia. P.266.--'If the moderns excel the ancients in any department of poetry, it is in that now under consideration. It must not indeed be supposed, that the ancients were insensible of the effects produced by this powerful charm, which, more peculiarly than any other, may be said _To give to airy nothing, A local habitation and a name._ But it may safely be asserted, that they have availed themselves of this creative faculty much more sparingly, and with much less success, than their modern competitors. The attribution of sense to inert objects, is indeed common to both; but that still bolder exertion, which embodies abstract existence, and renders it susceptible of ocular representation, is almost exclusively the boast of the moderns.[34] 'If, however, we advert to the few authors who preceded Lorenzo de' Medici, we shall not trace in their writings many striking instances of those embodied pictures of ideal existence, which are so conspicuous in the works of Ariosto, Spenser, Milton, and subsequent writers of the higher class, who are either natives of Italy, or have formed their taste upon the poets of that nation.' To enforce his premises, the author produces a variety of tableaux from the writings of his hero, and not without appearance of success, to show his superiority in this species of composition.