he was one of the firft that refolutely endeavoured at correctness. He never facrifices accuracy to hafte, nor indulges himself in contemptuous negligence, or impatient idleness; he has no careless lines, or entangled fentiments; his words are nicely felected, and his thoughts fully expanded. If this part of his character fuffers any abatement, it must be from the difproportion of his rhymes, which have not always fufficient confonance, and from the admiffion of broken lines into his Solomon; but perhaps he thought, like Cowley, that hemiftichs ought to be admitted into heroick poetry.

He had apparently fuch rectitude of judgement as fecured him from every

thing that approached to the ridiculous or abfurd; but as laws operate in civil agency not to the excitement of virtue, but the repreffion of wickedness, so judgement in the operations of intellect can hinder faults, but not produce excellence. Prior is never low, nor very often fublime. It is faid by Longinus of Euripides, that he forces himself fometimes into grandeur by violence of effort, as the lion kindles his fury by the lashes of his own tail. Whatever Prior obtains above mediocrity feems the effort of ftruggle and of toil. He has many vigorous but few happy lines; he has every thing by purchase, and nothing by gift; he had no nightly vift

tations

tations of the Mufe, no infufions of fentiment or felicities of fancy.

His diction, however, is more his own than that of any among the fucceffors of Dryden; he borrows no lucky turns, or commodious modes of language, from his predeceffors. His phrafes are original, but they are fometimes harfh; as he inherited no elegances, none has he bequeathed. His expreffion has every mark of laborious study; the line fel-dom feems to have been formed at: once; the words did not come till they were called, and were then put by conftraint into their places, where they do their duty, but do it fullenly. In his greater compofitions there may be found

more

more rigid stateliness than graceful dig

nity.

Of verfification he was not negligent:: what he received from Dryden he did not lofe; neither did he increase the difficulty of writing, by unneceffary feverity, but ufes Triplets and Alexandrines without fcruple. In his Preface to Solomon he propofes fome improvements, by extending the fenfe from one couplet to another, with variety of paufes. This he has attempted, but without fuccefs; his interrupted lines are unpleafing, and his fenfe as lefs diftinct is lefs ftriking.

He has altered the Stanza of Spenser, as a house is altered by building another in its place of a different form. With how little refemblance he has

formed

formed his new Stanza to that of his

mafter, these specimens will fhew.

SPENSER.

She flying faft from heaven's hated face, And from the world that her discover'd wide, Fled to the wafteful wilderness apace,

From living eyes her open fhame to hide,
And lurk'd in rocks and caves long unespy'd.

But that fair crew of knights, and Una fair,
Did in that eaftle afterwards abide,

To reft themselves, and weary powers repair,.
Where fore they found of all, that dainty was

and rare.

PRIOR.

To the clofe rock the frighted raven flies, Soon as the rifing eagle cuts the air: The fhaggy wolf unfeen and trembling lies, When the hoarfe roar proclaims the lion near.