not yet quite extinguished; and his poetry still retains some splendour beyond that which genius has bestowed. Wood and Burnet give us reason to believe, that much was imputed to him which he did not write. I know not by whom the original collection was made, or by what authority its genuineness was ascertained. The first edition was published in the year of his death, with an air of concealment, professing in the title-page to be printed at Antwerp. Of some of the pieces, however, there is no doubt. The imitation of Horace's Satire, the verses to lord Mulgrave, Satire against Man, the verses upon Nothing, and perhaps some others, are I believe genuine, and perhaps most of those which the late collection exhibits. As he cannot be supposed to have found leisure for any course of continued study, his pieces are commonly short, such as one fit of resolution would produce. His songs have no particular character; they tell, like other songs, in smooth and easy language, of scorn and kindness, dismission and desertion, absence, and inconstancy, with the common-places of artificial courtship. They are commonly smooth and easy; but have little nature, and little sentiment. His imitation of Horace on Lucilius is not inelegant, or unhappy. In the reign of Charles the Second began that adaption, which has since been very frequent, of ancient poetry to present times; and perhaps few will be found where the parallelism is better preserved than in this. The versification is indeed sometimes careless, but it is sometimes vigorous and weighty. The strongest effort of his muse is his poem upon Nothing. He is not the first who has chosen this barren topick for the boast of his fertility. There is a poem called Nihil in Latin by Passerat, a poet and critick of the sixteenth century in France, who, in his own epitaph, expresses his zeal for good poetry thus: Molliter ossa quiescent, Sint modo carminibus non onerata malis. His works are not common, and therefore I shall subjoin his verses. In examining this performance, nothing must be considered as having not only a negative but a kind of positive signification; as, I need not fear thieves; I have nothing; and nothing is a very powerful protector. In the first part of the sentence it is taken negatively; in the second it is taken positively, as an agent. In one of Boileau's lines it was a question, whether he should use a rien faire, or a ne rien faire; and the first was preferred because it gave rien a sense in some sort positive. Nothing can be a subject only in its positive sense, and such a sense is given it in the first line. Nothing, thou elder brother ev'n to shade. In this line, I know not whether he does not allude to a curious book De Umbra, by Wowerus, which, having told the qualities of shade, concludes with a poem in which are these lines : Jam primum terram validis circumspice claustris Terrasque tractusque maris, camposque liquentes Omnibus UMBRA prior: The positive sense is generally preserved with great skill through the whole poem; though sometimes, in a subordinate sense, the negative nothing is injudiciously mingled. Passerat confounds the two senses. Another of his most vigorous pieces is his lampoon on sir Car Scrope, who, in a poem called "The Praise of Satire," had some lines like these :* He who can push into a midnight fray This was meant of Rochester, whose buffoon conceit was, I suppose, a saying often mentioned, that every man would be a coward if he durst; and drew from him those furious verses; to which Scrope made in reply an epigram, ending with these lines: Thou canst hurt no man's fame with thy ill word; Of the satire against man, Rochester can only claim what remains when all Boileau's part is taken away. In all his works there is sprightliness and vigour, and every where may be found tokens of a mind which study might have carried to excellence. What more can be expected from a life spent in ostentatious contempt of regularity, and ended before the abilities of many other men began to be displayed?t * I quote from memory. Dr. J. †The late George Steevens, Esq. made the selection of Rochester's poems which appears in Dr. Johnson's edition; but Mr Malone observes, that the same task had been performed in the early part of the last century by Jacob Tonson. C. Poema Cl. V. JOANNIS PASSERATII, Regii in Academia Parisiensi Professoris, Ad ornatissimum virum ERRICUM MEMMIUM, Janus adest, festæ poscunt sua dona Kalendæ, Usque adeò ingenii nostri est exhausta facultas, Quod nusquam est, potius nova per vestigia quæram. Ausoniæ indictum NIHIL est Græcæque Camanæ. In bello sanctum NIHIL est, Martisque tumultu: Non timet insidias: fures, incendia temnit: Solicitas sequitur nullo sub judice lites. Arcano instantes operi, & carbonibus atris, Nec numeret Libycæ numerum qui callet arenæ : Tange NIHIL, dicesque NIHIL sine corpore tangi. Vexerit & quemvis trans mœstas portitor undas, Diique NIHIL metuunt. Quid longo carmine plura Ne tibi si multa laudem mea carmina charta, |