In the fourth I find nothing better than this natural strain of
Hope:--

"Alas! from the day that we met,
What hope of an end to my woes,
When I cannot endure to forget
The glance that undid my repose?

Yet Time may diminish the pain:
The flower, and the shrub, and the tree,
Which I reared for her pleasure in vain,
In time may have comfort for me."

His "Levities" are by their title exempted from the severities of
criticism, yet it may be remarked in a few words that his humour is
sometimes gross, and seldom sprightly.

Of the Moral Poems, the first is the "Choice of Hercules," from
Xenophon. The numbers are smooth, the diction elegant, and the
thoughts just; but something of vigour is still to be wished, which
it might have had by brevity and compression. His "Fate of
Delicacy" has an air of gaiety, but not a very pointed and general
moral. His blank verses, those that can read them, may probably
find to be like the blank verses of his neighbours. "Love and
Honour" is derived from the old ballad, "Did you not hear of a
Spanish Lady?"--I wish it well enough to wish it were in rhyme.

The "Schoolmistress," of which I know not what claim it has to stand
among the Moral Works, is surely the most pleasing of Shenstone's