Thoughts, having it dropped into his mind, that the orbs, floating in fpace, might be called the cluster of Creation, he thinks on a cluster of grapes, and fays, that they all hang on the great Vine, drinking the nectareous juice of immortal Life. His conceits are fometimes yet lefs valuable; in the Laft Day, he hopes to illustrate the re-affembly of the atoms that compofe the human body at the Trump of Doom, by the collection of bees into a fwarm at the tinkling of a pan. The Prophet fays of Tyre, that her Merchants are Princes; Young fays of Tyre in his Merchant, Her merchants Princes, and each deck a Throne. Let burlesque try to go beyond him. He has the trick of joining the turgid and familiar: to buy the alliance of Britain, Climes were paid down. Antithefis is his favourite. They for kindness hate; and because fhe's right, fhe's ever in the wrong. His verfification is his own, neither his blank nor his rhyming lines have refemany blance to those of former writers: he picks up no hemistichs, he copies no favourite expreffions; he seems to have laid up no stores of thought or diction, but to owe all to the fortuitous fuggeftions of the present moment. Yet I have reafon to believe that, when once he had formed a new design, he then laboured it with very patient industry, and that he compofed with great labour, and frequent revifions. His verses are formed by no certain model; for he is no more like himself in his different productions than he is like others. He seems never to have ftudied profody, nor to have had any direction but from his own ear. But, with all his defects, he was a man of genius and a poet. MALLET. |