from the drudgery of counting lines and interpreting single words. How much this servile practice obscured the clearest and deformed the most beautiful parts of the ancient authors, may be discovered by a perusal of our earlier versions; some of them are the works of men well qualified, not only by critical knowledge, but by poetical genius, who yet, by a mistaken ambition of exactness, degraded at once their originals and themselves. Denham saw the better way, but has not pursued it with great success. His versions of Virgil are not pleasing; but they taught Dryden to please better. His poetical imitation of Tully on " Old Age" has neither the clearness of prose, nor the sprightliness of poetry. The "strength of Denham," which Pope so emphatically mentions, is to be found in many lines and couplets, which convey much meaning in few words, and exhibit the sentiment with more weight than bulk. On the Thames. Though with those streams he no resemblance hold, His genuine and less guilty wealth t'explore, On Strafford. "His wisdom such, at once it did appear Three kingdoms' wonder, and three kingdoms' fear. Such was his force of eloquence to make The hearers more concern'd than he that spake : On Cowley. "To him no author was unknown, He did not steal, but emulate! And, when he would like them appear, As one of Denham's principal claims to the regard of posterity arises from his improvement of our numbers, his versification ought to be considered. It will afford that pleasure which arises from the observation of a man of judgment man of judgment naturally right, forsaking bad copies by degrees, and advancing towards a better practice, as he gains more confidence in himself. In his translation of Virgil, written when he was about twenty-one years old, may be still found the old manner of continuing the sense ungracefully from verse to verse: "Then all those Who in the dark our fury did escape, Returning, know our borrow'd arms, and shape, Before Minerva's altar; next did bleed From this kind of concatenated metre he afterwards refrained, and taught his followers the art of concluding their sense in couplets; which has perhaps been with rather too much constancy pursued. This passage exhibits one of those triplets which are not unfrequent in this first essay, but which it is to be supposed his maturer judgment disapproved, since in his latter works he has totally forborn them. His rhymes are such as seem found without difficulty, by following the sense; and are for the most part as exact at least as those of other poets, though now and then the reader is shifted off with what he can get: "O how transform'd! How much unlike that Hector, who return'd And again: "From thence a thousand lesser poets sprung Like petty princes from the fall of Rome." Sometimes the weight of rhyme is laid upon a word too feeble to sustain it: From all her glories: if it might have stood By any power, by this right hand it should." "And though my outward state misfortune hath Deprest thus low, it cannot reach my faith." "Thus, by his fraud and our own faith o'ercome, A feigned tear destroys us, against whom Tydides nor Achilles could prevail, Nor ten years conflict, nor a thousand sail.” He is not very careful to vary the ends of his verses; in one passage the word die rhymes three couplets in six. Most of these petty faults are in his first productions, when he was less skilful, or at least less dextrous in the use of words; and though they had been more frequent, they could only have lessened the grace, not the strength of his composition. is one of the writers that improved our taste, and advanced our language, and whom we ought therefore to read with gratitude, though, having done much, he left much to do. He MILTON. THE life of Milton has been already written in so many forms, and with such minute enquiry, that I might perhaps more properly have contented myself with the addition of a few notes on Mr. Fenton's elegant Abridgement, but that a new narrative was thought necessary to the uniformity of this edition. JOHN MILTON was by birth a gentleman, descended from the proprietors of Milton, near Thame, in Oxfordshire, one of whom forfeited his estate in the times of York and Lancaster. Which side he took I know not; his descendant inherited no veneration for the White Rose. His grandfather John was keeper of the forest of Shotover, a zealous papist, who disinherited his son, because he had forsaken the religion of his ancestors. His father, John, who was the son disinherited, had recourse for his support to the profession of a scrivener. He was a man eminent for his skill in musick, many of his compositions being still to be found; and his reputation in his profession was such, that he grew |