There seems to be an opposition intended in the fourth line, which is not very obvious: where is the relation between the two positions, that he gained no title, and lost no friend? be said. There are, however, some defects | We may, however, observe some defects. There which were not made necessary by the character is a redundancy of words in the first couplet: it in which he was employed. There is no oppo- is superfluous to tell of him who was sincere, true, sition between an honest courtier and a patriot; and faithful, that he was in honour clear. for, an honest courtier cannot but be a patriot. It was unsuitable to the nicety required in short compositions to close his verse with the word too: every rhyme should be a word of emphasis; nor can this rule be safely neglected, except where the length of the poem makes slight inaccuracies excusable, or allows room for beauties sufficient to overpower the effects of petty faults. At the beginning of the seventh line the word filled is weak and prosaic, having no particular adaptation to any of the words that follow it. The thought in the last line is impertinent, having no connexion with the foregoing character, nor with the condition of the man described. Had the epitaph been written on the poor conspirator* who died lately in prison after a confinement of more than forty years, without any crime proved against him, the sentiment had been just and pathetical; but why should Trumbull be congratulated upon his liberty, who had never known restraint?" III. On the HON. SIMON HARCOURT, only Son of the Lord To this sad shrine, whoe'er thou art, draw near; How vain is reason! eloquence how weak! This epitaph is principally remarkable for the artful introduction of the name, which is inserted with a peculiar felicity, to which chance must concur with genius, which no man can hope to attain twice, and which cannot be copied but with servile imitation. I cannot but wish that of this inscription the two last lines had been omitted, as they take away from the energy what they do not add to the sense. IV. On JAMES CRAGGS, ESQ. JACOBVS CRAGGS, REGI MAGNE BRITANNIE A SECRETIS ET CONSILIIS SANCTIORIBVS PRINCIPIS PARITER AC POPVLI AMOR ET DELICIE : Statesman, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere, Prais'd, wept, and honour'd by the Muse he lov'd! The lines on Craggs were not originally intended for an epitaph; and therefore some faults are to be imputed to the violence with which they are torn from the poem that first contained them. Major Bernardi, who died in Newgate, Sept. 20, 1736. See Gent. Mag. vol. 1. p. 125.-N. It may be proper here to remark the absurdity of joining in the same inscription Latin and English, or verse and prose. If either language be preferable to the other, let that only be used; for no reason can be given why part of the information should be given in one tongue, and part in another, on a tomb more than in any other place, or any other occasion; and to tell all that can be conveniently told in verse, and then to call in the help of prose, has always the appearance of a very artless expedient, or of an attempt unaccomplished. Such an epitaph resembles the conversation of a foreigner, who tells part of his meaning by words, and conveys part by signs. V. Intended for MR. Rowe. Thy relics, Rowe, to this fair urn we trust, Of this inscription the chief fault is, that it be- To wish Peace to thy shade is too mythological to be admitted into a Christian temple: the ancient worship has infected almost all our other compositions, and might therefore be contented with life, and let us be serious over the grave. to spare our epitaphs. Let fiction at least cease VI. On MRS. CORBET, Who died of a Cancer in her Breast.† I have always considered this as the most valuable of all Pope's epitaphs; the subject of it is a character not discriminated by any shining or eminent peculiarities; yet that which really makes, though not the splendour, the felicity of life, and that which every wise man will choose for his final and lasting companion in the languor of age, in the quiet of privacy, when he This was altered much for the better as it now stands on the monument in the Abbey, erected to Rowe and his daughter.-Warb. In the north aisle of the parish church of St. Mar. garet, Westminster.-H. The ninth line, which is far the strongest and most elegant, is borrowed from Dryden. The conclusion is the same with that on Harcourt, but is here more elegant and better connected. VIII. departs weary and disgusted from the ostenta- | In the eight lines which make the character of tious, the volatile, and the vain. Of such a Digby, there is scarce any thought, or word, character, which the dull overlook, and the gay which may not be found in the other epitaphs. despise, it was fit that the value should be made known, and the dignity established. Domestic virtue, as it is exerted without great occasions, or conspicuous consequences, in an even unnoted tenor, required the genius of Pope to display it in such a manner as might attract regard, and enforce reverence. Who can forbear to lament that this amiable woman has no name in the verses ? If the particular lines of this inscription be examined, it will appear less faulty than the rest. There is scarcely one line taken from common-places, unless it be that in which only virtue is said to be our own. I once heard a lady of great beauty and elegance object to the fourth line, that it contained an unnatural and incredible panegyrie. Of this let the ladies judge. VII. On the Monument of the HON. ROBERT DIGBY, and of his Sister MARY, erected by their Father, the LORD DIGBY, in the Church of Sherborne in Dor setshire, 1727. Go! fair example of untainted youth, Who knew no wish but what the world might hear: And thou, blest maid! attendant on his doom, Yet take these tears, Mortality's relief, And, till we share your joys, forgive our grief: These little rites, a stone, a verse receive, 'Tis all a father, all a friend can give! This epitaph contains of the brother only a general indiscriminate character, and of the sister tells nothing but that she died. The difficulty in writing epitaphs is to give a particular and appropriate praise. This, however, is not always to be performed, whatever be the diligence or ability of the writer; for the greater part of mankind have no character at all, have little that distinguishes them from others, equally good or bad, and therefore nothing can be said of them which may not be applied with equal propriety to a thousand more. It is indeed no great panegyric, that there is inclosed in this tomb one who was born in one year and died in another; yet many useful and amiable lives have been spent which yet leave little materials for any other memorial. These are however not the proper subjects of poetry; and whenever friendship, or any other motive, obliges a poet to write on such subjects, he must be forgiven if he sometimes wanders in generalities, and utters the same praises over different tombs. The scantiness of human praises can scarcely be made more apparent, than by remarking how often Pope has, in the few epitaphs which he composed, found it necessary to borrow from himself. The fourteen epitaphs which he has written, comprise about a hundred and forty lines, in which there are more repetitions than will easily be found in all the rest of his works. On SIR GODFREY KNELLER. Kneller, by Heav'n, and not a master taught, Living, great nature fear'd he might outvie Her works; and dying, fears herself may die. Of this epitaph the first couplet is good, the second not bad, the third is deformed with a broken metaphor, the word crowned not being applicable to the honours or the lays; and the fourth is not only borrowed from the epitaph on Raphael, but of a very harsh construction, IX, On GENERAL HENRY WITHERS. Here, Withers, rest! thou bravest, gentlest mind! The epitaph on Withers affords another instance of common-places, though somewhat diversified by mingled qualities and the peculiarity of a profession. The second couplet is abrupt, general, and unpleasing; exclamation seldom succeeds in our language; and, I think, it may be observed that the particle O! used at the beginning of the sentence, always offends. The third couplet is more happy; the value expressed for him, by different sorts of men, raises him to esteem: there is yet something of the common cant of superficial satirists, who suppose that the insincerity of the courtier destroys all his sensations, and that he is equally a dissembler to the living and the dead. At the third couplet I should wish the epitaph to close, but that I should be unwilling to lose the two next lines, which yet are dearly bought if they cannot be retained without the four that follow them. X. On MR. ELIJAH FENTON, At Easthamstead in Berkshire, 1730. This modest stone, what few vain marbles can, May truly say, Here lies an honest man; A poet, blest beyond the poet's fate, Whom Heav'n kept sacred from the proud and great; The first couplet of this epitaph is borrowed | taph, supposed to be lamented; and therefore from Crashaw. The four next lines contain a this general lamentation does no honour to Gay. species of praise peculiar, original, and just.— The first eight lines have no grammar; the Here, therefore, the inscription should have adjectives are without any substantive, and the ended, the latter part containing nothing but epithets without a subject. what is common to every man who is wise and good. The character of Fenton was so amiable, that I cannot forbear to wish for some poet or biographer to display it more fully for the advantage of posterity. If he did not stand in the first rank of genius, he may claim a place in the second; and, whatever criticism may object to his writings, censure could find very little to blame in his life. XI. On MR. GAY. In Westminster Abbey, 1732. Of manners gentle, of affections mild; With native humour temp'ring virtuous rage, And uncorrupted, e'en among the great; The two parts of the first line are only echoes of each other; gentle manners and mild affections, if they mean any thing, must mean the same. The thought in the last line, that Gay is buried in the bosoms of the worthy and the good, who are distinguished only to lengthen the line, is so dark that few understand it; and so harsh. when it is explained, that still fewer approve. XII. Intended for SIR ISAAC NEWTON. ISAACUS NEWTONIUS: Quem Immortalem Testantur, Tempus, Natura, Cœlum, Hoc marmor fatetur. Nature and Nature's laws, lay hid in night, Of this epitaph, short as it is, the faults seem not to be very few. Why part should be Latin, and part English, it is not easy to discover. In the Latin the opposition of Immortalis and Mortalis is a mere sound or a mere quibble; he is not immortal in any sense contrary to that in which he is mortal. In the verses the thought is obvious, and the words night and light are too nearly allied. XIII. On EDMUND DUKE of BUCKINGHAM, who died in the 19th Year of his Age, 1735. If modest youth with cool reflection crown'd, And every opening virtue blooming round, Could save a parent's justest pride from fate, Or add one patriot to a sinking state; This weeping marble had not ask'd thy tear, Or sadly told how many hopes lie here! The living virtue now had shone approv'd, The senate heard him, and his country lov'd. Yet softer bonours, and less noisy fame, Attend the shade of gentle Buckingham: In whom a race, for courage fam'd and art, Ends in the milder merit of the heart: And, chiefs or sages long to Britain giv'n, Pays the last tribute of a saint to Heav'n. That Gay was a man in wit is a very frigid This epitaph Mr. Warburton prefers to the commendation; to have the wit of a man is not rest; but I know not for what reason. To crown much for a poet. The wit of man,* and the with reflection is surely a mode of speech apsimplicity of a child, make a poor and vulgar con-proaching to nonsense. Opening virtues bloomtrast, and raise no ideas of excellence either in- ing round is something like tautology; the six tellectual or moral. following lines are poor and prosaic. Art is In the next couplet rage is less properly intro-another couplet used for arts, that a rhyme may duced after the mention of mildness and gentle- be had to heart. The six last lines are the best, ness, which are made the constituents of his cha- but not excellent. racter; for a man so mild and gentle to temper his rage was not difficult. The next line is inharmonious in its sound and mean in its conception; the opposition is obvious, and the word lash, used absolutely, and without any modification, is gross and improper. To be above temptation in poverty, and free from corruption among the great, is indeed such a peculiarity as deserved notice. But to be a safe companion is a praise merely negative, arising not from possession of virtue, but the absence of vice, and that one of the most odious. The rest of his sepulchral performances hardly deserve the notice of criticism. The contemptíble Dialogue" between HE and SHE should have been suppressed for the author's sake. In his last epitaph on himself, in which he attempts to be jocular upon one of the few things that make wise men serious, he confounds the living man with the dead: Under this stone, or under this sill, When a man is once buried, the question, under what he is buried, is easily decided. He As little can be added to his character by asserting that he was lamented in his end. Every state of uncertainty, yet it could not be laid over forgot that, though he wrote the epitaph in a man that dies is, at least by the writer of his epi-him till his grave was made. Such is the folly "Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child." of wit when it is ill employed. Dryden on Mrs. Killigrew.-C. The world has but little new; even this wretchedness seems to have been borrowed from the following tuneless lines: Ludovici Areosti humantur ossa Sub hoc marmore, vel sub hac humo, seu Tanti erat vacuum sibi cadaver Surely Ariosto did not venture to expect that his trifle would have ever had such an illustrious imitator. PITT. CHRISTOPHER PITT, of whom, whatever I shall | relate, more than has been already published, I owe to the kind communication of Dr. Warton, was born in 1699, at Blandford, the son of a physician much esteemed. He was, in 1714, received as a scholar into Winchester College, where he was distinguished by exercises of uncommon elegance, and, at his removal to New College, in 1719, presented to the electors, as the product of his private and voluntary studies, a complete version of Lucan's poem, which he did not then know to have been translated by Rowe. This is an instance of early diligence, which well deserves to be recorded. The suppression of such a work, recommended by such uncommon circumstances, is to be regretted. It is indeed culpable to load libraries with superfluous books; but incitements to early excellence are never superfluous, and from this example the danger is not great of many imitations. When he had resided at his college three years, he was presented to the rectory of Pimpern, in Dorsetshire, (1722,) by his relation, Mr. Pitt, of Stratfield Say, in Hampshire; and, resigning his fellowship, continued at Oxford two years longer, till he became master of arts, (1724.) He probably about this time translated Vida's "Art of Poetry," which Tristram's splendid edition had then made popular. In this translation he distinguished himself, both by its general elegance, and by the skilful adaptation of his numbers to the images expressed; a beauty which Vida has with great ardour enforced and exemplified. He then retired to his living, a place very pleasing by its situation, and therefore likely to excite the imagination of a poet; where he passed the rest of his life, reverenced for his virtue, and beloved for the softness of his temper, and the easiness of his manners. Before strangers he had something of the scholar's timidity or distrust; but, when he became familiar, he was, in a very high degree, cheerful and entertaining. His general benevolence procured general respect; and he passed a life placid and honourable, neither too great for the kindness of the low, nor too low for the notice of the great. Ar what time he composed his " "Miscellany," published in 1727, it is not easy or necessary to know those which have dates appear to have been very early productions; and I have not observed that any rise above mediocrity. The success of his "Vida" animated him to a higher undertaking; and in his thirtieth year he published a version of the first book of the "Eneid." This being, I suppose, commended by his friends, he some time afterwards added three or four more, with an advertisement, in which he represents himself as translating with great indifference, and with a progress of which himself was hardly conscious. This can hardly be true, and, if true, is nothing to the reader. At last, without any further contention with his modesty, or any awe of the name of Dryden, he gave us a complete English "Eneid," which I am sorry not to see joined in this publication with his other poems.* It would have been pleasing to have an opportunity of comparing the two best translations that perhaps were ever produced by one nation of the same author. Pitt, engaging as a rival with Dryden, naturally observed his failures, and avoided them; and, as he wrote after Pope's "Iliad," he had an example of an exact, equable, and splendid versification. With these advantages, seconded by great diligence, he might successfully labour particular passages and escape many errors. If the two versions are compared, perhaps the result would be, that Dryden leads the reader forward by his general vigour and sprightliness, and Pitt often stops him to contemplate the excellence of a single couplet: that Dryden's faults are forgotten in the hurry of delight, and that Pitt's beauties are neglected in the languor of a cold and listless perusal; that Pitt pleases the critics, and Dryden the people; that Pitt is quoted, and Dryden read. He did not long enjoy the reputation which this great work deservedly conferred; for he left the world in 1748, and lies buried under a stone at Blandford, on which is this inscription :— In Memory of and yet more It has since been added to the collection THOMSON. JAMES THOMSON, the son of a minister well | esteemed for his piety and diligence, was born September 7, 1700, at Ednam, in the shire of Roxburgh, of which his father was pastor. His mother, whose name was Hume,* inherited as co-heiress a portion of a small estate. The revenue of a parish in Scotland is seldom large; and it was probably in commiseration of the difficulty with which Mr. Thomson supported his family, having nine children, that Mr. Riccarton, a neighbouring minister, discovering in James uncommon promises of future excellence, undertook to superintend his education and provide him books. He was taught the common rudiments of learning at the school of Jedburg, a place which he delights to recollect in his poem of "Autumn;" but was not considered by his master as superior to common boys, though in those early days he amused his patron and his friends with poetical compositions; with which, however, he so little pleased himself, that on every new-year's day he threw into the fire all the productions of the foregoing year. From the school he was removed to Edinburgh, where he had not resided two years when his father died, and left all his children to the care of their mother, who raised upon her little estate what money a mortgage could afford, and removing with her family to Edinburgh, lived to see her son rising into eminence. The design of Thomson's friends was to breed him a minister. He lived at Edinburgh, as at school, without distinction or expectation, till, at the usual time, he performed a probationary exercise by explaining a psalm. His diction was so poetically splendid, that Mr. Hamilton, the Professor of Divinity, reproved him for speaking language unintelligible to a popular audience; and he censured one of his expressions as indecent, if not profane. This rebuke is reported to have repressed his thoughts of an ecclesiastical character, and he probably cultivated with new diligence his blossoms of poetry, which, however, were in some danger of a blast; for, submitting his productions to some who thought themselves qualified to criticise, he heard of nothing but faults; but finding other judges more favourable, he did not suffer himself to sink into despondence. He easily discovered that the only stage on which a poet could appear with any hope of advantage was London; a place too wide for the operation of petty competition and private malignity, where merit might soon become conspicuous, and would find friends as soon as it became reputable to befriend it. A lady who was acquainted with his mother advised him to the journey, and promised some countenance or assistance, which at last he never received; however, he justified his adventure by her en His mother's name was Beatrix Trotter. His grand. mother's name was Hume.-C. couragement, and came to seek in London patronage and fame. At his arrival he found his way to Mr. Mallet, then tutor to the sons of the Duke of Montrose. He had recommendations to several persons of consequence, which he had tied up carefully in his handkerchief; but as he passed along the street, with the gaping curiosity of a new-comer, his attention was upon every thing rather than his pocket, and his magazine of credentials was stolen from him. His first want was a pair of shoes. For the supply of all his necessities, his whole fund was his "Winter," which for a time could find no purchaser; til, at last, Mr. Millan was persuaded to buy it at a low price; and this low price he had for some time reason to regret; but by accident, Mr. Whatley, a man not wholly unknown among authors, happening to turn his eye upon it, was so delighted that he ran from place to place celebrating its excellence. Thomson obtained likewise the notice of Aaron Hill, whom, being friendless and indigent, and glad of kindness, he courted with every expression of servile adulation. "Winter" was dedicated to Sir Spencer Compton, but attracted no regard from him to the author, till Aaron Hill awakened his attention by some verses addressed to Thomson, and published in one of the newspapers, which censured the great for their neglect of ingenious men. Thomson then received a present of twenty guineas, of which he gives this account to Mr. Hill: "I hinted to you in my last, that on Saturday morning I was with Sir Spencer Compton. Á certain gentleman without my desire spoke to him concerning me: his answer was, that I had never come near him. Then the gentleman put the question, If he desired that I should wait on him? He returned, he did. On this, the gentleman gave me an introductory letter to him. He received me in what they commonly call a civil manner; asked me some commonplace questions, and made me a present of twenty guineas. I am very ready to own that the present was larger than my performance deserved; and shall ascribe it to his generosity, or any other cause, rather than the merit of the address." The poem, which being of a new kind, few would venture at first to like, by degrees gained upon the public; and one edition was very speedily succeeded by another. Thomson's credit was now high, and every day brought him new friends; among others Dr. Rundle, a man afterwards unfortunately famous, sought his acquaintance, and found his qualities such, that he recommended him to the Lord Chancellor Talbot. "Winter" was accompanied, in many editions, not only with a preface and dedication, but with poetical praises by Mr. Hill, Mr. Mallet, (then Malloch,) and Mira, the fictitious name |