the Carmen Seculare, I cannot but suspec that I might praife or cenfure it by caprice, without danger of detection; for who can be fuppofed to have laboured through it? Yet the time has been when this neglected work was fo popular, that it was tranflated into Latin by no common master.

His Poem on the Battle of Ramillies is neceffarily tedious by the form of the ftanza: an uniform mafs of ten lines, thirty-five times repeated, inconfequential and flightly connected, muft weary both the ear and the understanding. His imitation of Spenfer, which confifts principally in Iween and I weet, without exclufion of later modes of speech, makes his poem neither ancient nor modern.

dern. His mention of Mars and Bellona, and his comparison of Marlborough to the Eagle that bears the thunder of Jupiter, are all puerile and unaffecting; and yet more despicable is the long tale told by Lewis in his despair, of Brute and Troynovante, and the teeth of Cadmus, with his fimilies of the raven and eagle, and wolf and lion. By the help of fuch eafy fictions, and vulgar topicks, without acquaintance with life, and without knowledge of art or nature, a poem of any length, 'cold and lifeless like this, may be easily written on any subject.

In his Epilogues to Phadra and to Lucius, he is very happily facetious; but into the Prologue before the Queen,

the

the pedant has found his way, with Minerva, Perfeus, and Andromeda.

His Epigrams and lighter pieces are, like thofe of others, fometimes elegant, fometimes trifling, and fometimes dull; among the beft are the Camelion, and the epitaph on John and Joan.

Scarcely any one of our poets has written fo much, and tranflated so little: the verfion of Callimachus is fufficiently licentious; the paraphrafe on St. Paul's Exhortation to Charity is eminently beautiful.

Alma is written in profeffed imitation of Hudibras, and has at least one accidental resemblance: Hudibras wants a plan, because it is left imperfect; Alma is imperfect, because it seems

never to have had a plan. Prior appears not to have propofed to himself any drift or defign, but to have written the cafual dictates of the present mo

ment.

What Horace faid when he imitated Lucilius, might be faid of Butler by Prior, his numbers were not smooth or neat Prior excelled him in verfification, but he was, like Horace, inventore minor; he had not Butler's exuberance of matter and variety of illuftration. The fpangles of wit which he could afford, he knew how to polish; but he wanted the bullion of his master. Butler pours out a negligent profufion, certain of the weight, but careless of the ftamp. Prior has comparatively little, but with

that little he makes a fine fhew.

Alma`

has many admirers, and was the only piece among Prior's works of which Pope faid that he fhould wish to be the author.

Solomon is the work to which he entrufted the protection of his name, and which he expected fucceeding ages to regard with veneration. His affection was natural; it had undoubtedly been written with great labour, and who is willing to think that he has been labouring in vain? He had infufed into it much knowledge and much thought; had often polished it to elegance, often dignified it with fplendour, and fometimes heightened it to fublimity: he perceived in it many excellencies, and did

not