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. Ill-starr'd did we our forts and lines forfake, To dare our British foes to open fight: Our conqueft we by ftratagem should make : Our triumph had been founded in our flight. 'Tis ours, by craft and by furprise to gain: 'Tis theirs, to meet in arms, and battle in the plain. By this new structure of his lines he has avoided difficulties; nor am I sure that he has loft any power of pleafing; but he no longer imitates Spenfer. of the Some of his poems are written without regularity of measures; for, when he commenced poet, he had not recovered from our Pindarick infatuation; but he probably lived to be convinced, that the effence of verfe is order and confonance. His numbers are fuch as mere diligence may attain; they feldom offend the ear, and feldom footh it; they commonly want airiness, lightness, and facility: what is smooth, is not foft. His verfes always roll, but they feldom flow. A furvey of the life and writings of Prior may exemplify a sentence which he doubtless understood well, when he read Horace at his uncle's; "the veffel long retains the scent "which it firft receives." In his private relaxation he revived the tavern, and in his amorous pedantry he exhibited the college, But on higher occafions and nobler fubjects, when habit was overpowered by the neceffity of reflection, he wanted not wisdom as a ftatesman, or elegance as a poet, CONGREVE. W ILLIAM CONGREVE defcended from a family in Staffordshire, of so great antiquity that it claims a place among the few that extend their line beyond the Norman Conqueft; and was the son of William Congreve, fecond fon of Richard Congreve of Congreve and Stratton. He visited, once at leaft, the refidence of his ancestors; and, I believe, more places than one are still shewn, in groves and gardens, where he is related to have written his Old Batchelor. Neither the time nor place of his birth are certainly known; if the infcription upon his monument be true, he was born in 1672, For the place; it was faid by himself, that he owed his nativity to England, and by every body elfe that he was born in Ireland. Southern mentioned him with fharp cenfure, as a man that meanly difowned his native country. The biographers affigned his nativity to Bardfa, near Leeds in Yorkshire, from the account given by himself, as they suppose, to Jacob. To doubt whether a man of eminence has told the truth about his own birth, is, in appearance, to be very deficient in candour; yet nobody can live long without knowing that falfehoods of convenience or vanity, falfehoods from which no evil immediately visible enfues, except the general degradation of human teftimony, are very lightly uttered, and once uttered, are fullenly supported. Boileau, who defired to be thought a rigorous and steady moralift, having told a pretty lie to Lewis XIV. continued it afterwards by falfe dates; thinking himself obliged in honour, fays his admirer, to maintain what, when he faid it, was fo well received. Wherever Congreve was born, he was educated first at Kilkenny, and afterwards at Dublin, his father having fome military employment that ftationed him in Ireland: but after having paffed through the ufual preparatory ftudies, as may be reasonably fuppofed, with great celerity and fuccess, his father thought it proper to affign him a profeffion, by which something might be gotten; and about about the time of the Revolution fent him, at the age of fixteen, to ftudy law in the Middle Temple, where he lived for several years, but with very little attention to Statutes or Reports. His difpofition to become an author appeared very early, as he very early felt that force of imagination, and poffeffed that copiousness of sentiment, by which intellectual pleasure can be given. His first performance was a novel, called Incognita, or Love and Duty reconciled: It is praised by the biographers, who quote fome part of the preface, that is indeed, for fuch a time of life, uncommonly judicious. I would rather praise it than read it. His first dramatick labour was the Old Batchelor; of which he fays, in his defence against Collier," that comedy was written, 66 as feveral know, fome years before it was "acted. When I wrote it, I had little "thoughts of the ftage; but did it, to amuse "myself in a flow recovery from a fit of "fickness. Afterwards, through my indif"cretion, it was feen, and in fome little "time more it was acted; and I, through "the remainder of my indifcretion, fuffered myself |