What is meant by
Nature is not the

much to wonder that he should die. 'judge of nature,' is not easy to say. object of human judgment; for it is vain to judge where we cannot alter. If by naure is meant what is commonly called nature by the critics, a just representation of things really existing and actions really performed, nature cannot be properly opposed to art; nature being, in this sense, only the best effect of art.

The scourge of pride

Of this couplet, the second line is not, what is intended, an illustration of the former. Pride in the great is indeed well enough connected with knaves of state, though knaves is a word rather too ludicrous and light; but the mention of sanctified pride will not lead the thoughts to fops in learning, but rather to some species of tyranny or oppression, something more gloomy and more formid. able than foppery.

Yet soft his nature

This is a high compliment, but was not first bestowed on Dorset by Pope. The next verse is extremely beautiful.

Blest satirist!

In this distich is another line of which Pope was not the author. I do not mean to blame these imitations with much harshness; in long performances they are scarcely to be avoided, and in shorter they may be indulged, because the train of the composition may naturally involve them, or the scantiness of the subject allow little choice. However, what is borrowed is not to be enjoyed as our own; and it is the business of critical justice to give every bird of the muses his proper feather.

Blest courtier!

Whether a courtier can properly be commended for keeping his ease sacred, may perhaps be disputable. To please king and country, without sacrificing friendship to any change of times, was a very uncommon instance of prudence or felicity, and deserved to be kept separate from so poor a commendation as care of his ease. I wish our poets would attend a little more accurately to the use of the word sacred, which surely should never be ap

plied in a serious composition but where some reference may be made to a higher Being, or where some duty is exacted or implied. A man may keep his friendship sacred, because promises of friendship are very awful ties; but methinks he cannot, but in a burlesque sense, be said to keep his ease sacred.

Blest peer!

The blessings ascribed to the peer have no connexion with his peerage; they might happen to any other man whose ancestors were remembered, or whose posterity are likely to be regarded.

I know not whether this epitaph be worthy either of the writer or the man entombed.

II.

On Sir WILLIAM TRUMBULL, one of the principal
Secretaries of State to King WILLIAM II. who,
having resigned his place, died in his retirement at
Easthamstead in Berkshire, 1716.

A pleasing form; a firm, yet cautious mind;
Sincere, though prudent, constant, yet resign'd;
Honour unchang'd, a principle profest,
Fix'd to one side, but moderate to the rest;
An honest courtier, yet a patriot too;
Just to his prince, and to his country true;
Fill'd with the sense of age, the fire of youth,
A scorn of wrangling, yet á zeal for truth;
A generous faith, from superstition free;
A love to peace, and hate of tyranny;

Such this man was; who, now from earth remov❜d,
At length enjoys that liberty he lov'd.

In this epitaph, as in many others, there appears, at the first view, a fault which I think scarcely any beauty can compensate. The name is omitted. The end of an epitaph is to convey some account of the dead; and to what purpose is any thing told of him whose name is concealed?" An epitaph, and a history of a nameless hero, are equally absurd, since the virtues and qualities so recounted in either are scattered at the mercy of fortune to be appropriated by guess. The name, it is true, may be read upon the stone; but what obligation has it to the poet, whose verses wander over the earth and leave their subject behind them, and who is forced, like an unskilful painter, to make his purpose known by adventitious help?

This epitaph is wholly without elevation, and contains nothing striking or particular; but the poet is not to be blamed for the defects of his subject. He said, perhaps, the best that could be said. There are, however, some de. fects which were not made necessary by the character in which he was employed. There is no opposition between an honest courtier and a patriot; 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
Chancellor HARCOURT, at the Church of Stanton-
Harcourt in Oxfordshire, 1720.

To this sad shrine, whoe'er thou art, draw near;
Here lies the friend most lov'd, the son most dear:
Who ne'er knew joy, but friendship might divide,
Or gave his father grief but when he died.

How vain is reason! eloquence how weak!
If Pope must tell what Harcourt cannot speak.
Oh! let thy once lov'd friend inscribe thy stone,
And with a father's sorrows mix his own!

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

Major Bernardi, who died in Newgate, Sept. 20, 1736. See Gent. Mag. vol. 1. p. 125.-N.

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.-In Westminster-Abbey.

JACQBVS CRAGGS,

REGI MAGNE BRITANNIA A SECRETIS
ET CONSILIIS SANCTIORIBVS,

PRINCIPIS PARITER AC POPVLI AMOR ET DELICIA:
VIXIT TITVLIS ET INVIDIA MAJOR
ANNOS HEV PAVCOS, XXXV.

OB. FEB. XVI. MDCCXX.

Statesman, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere,
In action faithful, and in honour clear!
Who broke no promise, serv'd no private end,
Who gain'd no title, and who lost no friend!

Ennobled by himself, by all approv'd,

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 impated to the violence with which they are torn from the poem that first contained them. We may, however, observe some defects. There is a redundancy of words in the first couplet: it is superfluous to tell of him who was sincere, true, and faithful, that he was in honour clear.

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?

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.-In Westminster-Abbey.*

Thy relics, Rowe, to this fair urn we trust,
And, sacred, place by Dryden's awful dust;
Beneath a rude and nameless stone he lies,
To which thy tomb shall guide inquiring eyes.
Peace to thy gentle shade, and endless rest!
Blest in thy genius, in thy love too blest!
One grateful woman to thy fame supplies.
What a whole thankless land to his denies,

Of this inscription the chief fault is, that it belongs less. to Rowe, for whom it is written, than to Dryden, who was buried near him; and indeed gives very little information concerning either.

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 to spare our epitaphs. Let fiction at least cease with life, and let us be serious over the grave.

VI.

On Mrs. CORBET, who died of a Cancer in her Breast.t
Here rests a woman, good without pretence,
Blest with plain reason and with sober sense;
No conquest she, but o'er herself, desir'd:
No arts essay'd, but not to be admir'd.
Passion and pride were to her soul unknown,
Convinc'd that virtue only is our own.
So unaffected, so compos'd a mind,

So firm, yet soft, so strong, yet so refin'd,
Heaven, as its purest gold, by tortures tried;
The saint sustain'd it, but the woman died.

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 departs weary and disgusted

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. Margaret, Westminster.-H.