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 splendour, and fometimes heightened it to sublimity: he perceived in it many excellencies, and did not discover that it wanted that without which all others are of small avail, the power of engaging attention and alluring curiofity.

Tedioufnefs is the moft fatal of all faults; negligences or errors are fingle and local, but tediousness pervades the whole; other faults are cenfured and forgotten, but the power of tediousness propagates itself. He that is weary the firft hour, is more weary the fecond; as bodies forced into motion, contrary to their tendency, pafs more and more flowly through every fucceffive interval of space.

Unhappily this pernicious failure is that which an author is least able to discover. We are seldom tirefome to ourselves; and the act of compofition fills and delights the mind with change of language and fucceffion of images; every couplet when produced is new, and novelty is the great source of pleasure. Perhaps

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haps no man ever thought a line fuperfluous when he firft wrote it, or contracted his work till his ebullitions of invention had fubfided. If he fhould controul his defire of immediate renown, and keep his work nine years unpublished, he will be still the author, and still in danger of deceiving himself; and if he confults his friends, he will probably find men who have more kindness than judgement, of more fear to offend than desire to instruct.

The tedioufnefs of this poem proceeds not from the uniformity of the subject, for it is fufficiently diversified, but from the continued tenour of the narration; in which Solomon relates the fucceffive viciffitudes of his own mind, without the intervention of any other speaker, or the mention of any other agent, unlefs it be Abra; and the reader is only to learn what he thought, and to be told that he thought wrong. The event of every experiment is forefeen, and therefore the process is not much regarded.

Yet the work is far from deferving to be neglected. He that shall peruse it will be able to mark many paffages, to which he may recur for inftruction or delight; many from

which the poet may learn to write, and the philofopher to reason.

If Prior's poetry be generally confidered, his praise will be that of correctness and industry, rather than of compafs of comprehenfion, or activity of fancy. He never made any effort of invention: his greater pieces were all tiffues of fentiment; and his fmaller, which confist of light images or fingle conceits, were not always his own. I have traced him among the French Epigrammatists, and have been informed that he poached

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prey among obfcure aathors. The Thief and the Cordelier is, I fuppofe, generally confidered as an original production; with how much justice this Epigram may tell, which was written by Georgius Sabinus, a poet now little known or read, though once the friend of Luther and Melancthon:

De Sacerdote Furem confolante.

Quidam facrificus furem comitatus euntem
Huc ubi dat fontes carnificina neci.
Ne fis mœftus, ait; fummi conviva Tonantis
Jam cum cœlitibus (fi modo credis) eris.
Ille gemens, fi vera mihi folatia præbes,
Hofpes apud fuperos fis meus oro, refert,
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Sacri

Sacrificus contra; mihi non convivia fas eft
Ducere, jejunans hac edo luce nihil.

What he has valuable he owes to his dili gence and his judgement. His diligence has juftly placed him amongst the most correct of the English poets; and he was one of the first that refolutely endeavoured at correctnefs. He never facrifices accuracy to hafte, nor indulges himself in contemptuous negligence, or impatient idlenefs; 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 heroic 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, fo 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 seems the effort of struggle 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 visitations 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 feldom seems 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