"Victorious arms thro' Ammon's land it bore, Ruin behind, and terror march'd before."
Wakefield mentions some parallel passages, but omits the best of all:
"A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; Yea, and nothing shall escape them."--Joel, ii. 3.
In the "Ode on the Installation" Gray says:
"Their tears, their little triumphs o'er Their _human passions_ now no more."
Wakefield dwells enraptured on the expression _human passions_. Cowley speaks of "_humana quies_" (_Davideidos_, lib. i. p. 3.). Horace says:
"---- Carminibus quæ versant atque venenis _Humanos animos_."--_Sat._ viii. 19. lib. i.
_Human passions_ is not, however, a _creation_ of Gray's; for, if not anywhere else, he might have found the words very often in the writings of William Law, as vigorous a prose writer as England can boast of since the days of Dr. South. See his _answer_ to Dr. Trapp's _Not Righteous overmuch_, p. 62., Lond. 1741; and his _Serious Call_, cap. xii. p. 137., and cap. xxi. p. 293., Lond. 1816.
To mention its use by modern writers would be endless. I selected these few passages on reading Mr. Wakefield's laudations, for otherwise I should not perhaps have remarked the words as unusual. Wakefield adduces from Pope's _Eloisa to Abelard_:
"One _human tear_ shall drop, and be forgiven."
"Noble rage," Gray's _Elegy_. "Noble rage," Cowley's _Davideidos_, lib. iv. p. 137. Again, in the _Elegy_:
"Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower The mopeing owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wand'ring near her secret bower, _Molest her ancient solitary reign_."
Cowley, in describing the palace of Lucifer, has some fine sentences; and amongst them:
"Non hic gemmatis stillantia sidera guttis _Impugnant sævæ jus inviolabile noctis_."
"No gentle stars with their fair gems of light, _Offend the tyrannous and unquestion'd night_."
Akenside constantly used the adjective _human_ in different conjunctions.
The following song I never saw in print. I knew an old lady, who fifty years ago used to sing it. Is it known?
Near Reading there lived a buxom young dame, The wife of a miller, and Joan was her name; And she had a hen of a wondrous size, The like you never beheld with your eyes: It had a red head, gay wings, yellow legs, And every year laid her a bushel of eggs, Which made her resolve for to set it with speed, Because she'd a mind to have more of the breed.