Such was the Briton's fate,

As with firft prow (what have not Britons dar'd)
He for the paffage fought, attempted fince
So much in vain, and seeming to be shut
By jealous nature with eternal bars.
In these fell regions, in Arzina caught,
And to the ftony deep his idle ship
Immediate feal'd, he with his hapless crew,
Each full exerted at his several task,
Froze into statues, to the cordage glued
The failor, and the pilot to the helm.†

When he is describing the diseases of hot climates, he inftances their fatality in the case of Admiral Vernon's fleet at Carthagena. This paffage has been mentioned by Dr. Warton with just approbation.

-You gallant Vernon faw

The miferable scene; you pitying faw
To infant weakness funk the warrior arm,
Saw the deep-racking pang, the ghastly form,
The lip pale-quivering, and the beamless eye

There is perhaps a little poetical exaggeration here, the action of froft could fcarcely be fo inftantaneous.

No more with ardor bright; you heard the groans
Of agonizing ships, † from shore to shore,
Heard nightly plung'd amid the fullen waves
The frequent corse.-

Thomson, in the courfe of the preceding ftrictures, has been confidered chiefly in his principal character of a defcriptive poet; the delineatory part of his work affording the beft fpecimen of his peculiar manner. His poem however has other merit, for it abounds with noble strokes of pathos, natural philosophy, civil liberty, morality, and piety.

† A bold but poetical metonymy, or fubftitution of the thing containing, for the thing contained, of ships for failors.

FINI S.

#-G