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The strength of Denham," which Pope fo emphatically mentions, is to be found in many lines and couplets, which convey much meaning in few words, and exhibit the fentiment with more weight than bulk.

On the Thames.

Though with those streams he no refem"blance hold,

"Whofe foam is amber, and their gravel

gold;

"His genuine and lefs guilty wealth t'ex"plore,

"Search not his bottom, but furvey his "fhore."

On Strafford,

"His wisdom fuch, at once it did appear "The kingdoms wonder, and three king, "doms fear;

"Whilft fingle he ftood forth, and feem'd, although

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"Each had an army, as an equal foe. "Such was his force of eloquence, to make "The hearers more concern'd than he that "fpake;

"Each feem'd to act that part he came to fee, "And none was more a looker-on than he; "So did he move our paffions, some were

"known

"To wifh, for the defence, the crime their << own.

"Now private pity ftrove with publick hate, "Reason with rage, and eloquence with fate." On Cowley.

"To him no author was unknown,
"Yet what he wrote was all his own;

"Horace's

"Horace's wit, and Virgil's ftate, "He did not steal, but emulate! "And when he would like them appear, "Their garb, but not their cloaths, did wear.

12

As one of Denham's principal claims to the regard of posterity arises from his improvement of our numbers, his verfification ought to be confidered. It will afford that pleasure which arifes from the obfervation of a man of right natural judgement forfaking bad copies by degrees, and advancing towards a better practice, as he gains more confidence in himself.

In his translation of Virgil, written when he was about twenty-one years old, may be still found the old manner of continuing the sense ungracefully from verse to verse.

"Then all those "Who in the dark our fury did escape, Returning, know our borrow'd arms, and shape,

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"And differing dialect: then their numbers "fwell

"And grow upon us; firft Chorobus fell "Before Minerva's altar; next did bleed

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Juft Ripheus, whom no Trojan did ex-
"ceed

"In virtue, yet the gods his fate decreed. J "Then Hypanis and Dymas, wounded by "Their friends; nor thee, Pantheus, thy piety,

"Nor confecrated mitre, from the fame "Ill fate could fave; my country's funeral "flame

"And Troy's cold afhes I atteft, and call "To witnefs for myself, that in their fall

"No

"No foes, no death, no danger I declin'd, "Did, and deferv'd no lefs, my fate to find."

From this kind of concatenated metre he afterwards refrained, and taught his followers the art of concluding their fenfe in couplets; which has perhaps been with rather too much conftancy pursued.

This paffage exhibits one of those triplets which are not infrequent in this firft effay, but which it is to be fuppofed his maturer judgement difapproved, fince in his latter works he had totally forborn them.

His rhymes are fuch as feem found without difficulty, by following the fenfe; and are for the most part as exact at least as those of other poets, though now and then the reader is shifted off with what he can get.

"O how transform'd!

"How much unlike that Hector who re→ "turn'd

"Clad in Achilles' spoils!"

And again,

"From thence a thousand leffer poets Sprung, "Like petty princes from the fall of Rome." Sometimes the weight of rhyme is laid upon a word too feeble to sustain it;

"Troy confounded falls

"From all her glories: if it might have " stood

By any power, by this right hand it fhou'd.

"And though my outward state misfor"tune bath

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Depreft thus low, it cannot reach my "faith."

" —Thus

"Thus by his fraud and our own faith

"o'ercome,

"A feigned tear destroys us, against whom Tydides nor Achilles could prevail,

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"Nor ten years conflict, nor a thousand fail." He is not very careful to vary the ends of his verses in one paffage the word die rhymes three couplets in fix..

Most of these petty faults are in his first productions, when he was lefs fkilful, or at leaft lefs dexterous in the use of words; and though they had been more frequent, they could only have leffened the grace, not the ftrength, of his compofition. He is one of the writers that improved our taste, and advanced our language, and whom we ought therefore to read with gratitude, though, have ing done much, he left much to do.

SPRAT.

SPRA T.

THOMAS SPR AT was born in 1636, SPRAT at Tallaton in Devonshire, the fon of a clergyman; and having been educated, as he tells of himself, not at Westminster or Eton, but at a little school by the churchyard fide, became a commoner of Wadham College in Oxford in 1651; and, being chosen scholar next year, proceeded through the usual academical courfe, and in 1657 became master of arts, He obtained a fellowship, and commenced poet.

In 1659, his poem on the death of Oliver was published, with thofe of Dryden and Waller. In his dedication to Dr. Wilkins he appears a very willing and liberal encomiaft, both of the living and the dead. He implores his patron's excuse of his verses, both as falling fo infinitely below the full and fublime genius of that excellent poet who made this way of writing free of our nation, and being fo little equal and proportioned to the renown of the prince on whom they were written; fuch great actions and lives deferving to be the fubject of the noblest pens and most divine phanhes. He proceeds: Having fo long experienced your care and indulgence, and been formed, as it were, by your own hands, not to entitle you to any thing which my meanness produces, would be not only injuftice but facrilege.

He

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