Gray used to contend that, the stanza beginning, "O how canst thou renounce the boundless store?" was absolute inspiration, but objected, we think erroneously, to one word in it as French--"the _garniture_ of fields," to which Cary very properly produces, in reply, the words from our common version of the Bible--"The Lord _garnished_ the heavens." We have noticed a stronger objection to a line in this otherwise perfect stanza. It is this-- "All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields." Here is unquestionably a tautology, since to shield and to shelter convey precisely the same idea. The charm of the "Minstrel" greatly lies in its blending of the moral elements with the material imagery of the poem. The mind, the growth of which he describes, is not forced into activity, or hatched prematurely by electric heat; it developes sweetly, gradually, and in finest harmony with the beautiful and the great around it--like a fir amidst the plantations of Woodmyre, or a planetree on the far-seen heights of Esslie. The second canto has beautiful passages, but is, on the whole, more vague and fantastic than the first. We regret exceedingly that Beattie never found leisure for writing a third canto, and leading Edwin, whom he had brought to the threshold, within the sanctuary of song, and consecrating him the "High Priest of the Nine," by baptizing him into the Christian faith. The poem is a dream as well as a fragment--no poetic mind was perhaps ever so thoroughly insulated as that of his hero--but the "dream is one," it is consistent with itself, and is painted with trembling truth of touch and delicate tenderness of feeling. We feel it to be destitute of profound suggestiveness and massive thought, but its verse is solemnly dignified, its imagery is chastely grand, and a rich chiaroscuro rests like a tropical night upon the whole. Besides the stanzas we have already alluded to, it has some of those brief touches which show the master's hand: such as-- "Some deem'd him wondrous wise, and some believed him mad;" or in his curse upon the Cock, the line-- "And ever in thy dreams the ruthless fox appear;" or the burst of description, how like the scene when the clouds suddenly disperse, and show us "the evening star. And from embattled clouds emerging slow, Cynthia came riding in her silver car: And hoary mountain cliffs shone faintly from afar."