"But whither am I stray'd? I need not raise
"Trophies to thee from other men's dispraise;
"Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built,
"Nor need thy juster title the foul guilt
"Of eastern kings, who, to secure their reign,
"Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred, slain."

After Denham, Orrery, in one of his prologues,

"Poets are sultans, if they had their will;
"For every author would his brother kill."

And Pope,

"Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
"Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne."

But this is not the best of his little pieces: it is excelled by his poem to Fanshaw, and his elegy on Cowley.

His praise of Fanshaw's version of Guarini contains a very sprightly and judicious character of a good translator:

"That servile path thou nobly dost decline,
"Of tracing word by word, and line by line.
"Those are the labour'd births of slavish brains,
"Not the effect of poetry, but pains;
"Cheap vulgar arts, whose narrowness affords
"No flight for thoughts, but poorly stick at words.
" A new and nobler way thou dost pursue,
"To make translations and translators too :
"They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame;
"True to his sense, but truer to his fame."

:

The excellence of these lines is greater, as the truth which they contain was not at that time generally known.

His poem on the death of Cowley was his last, and, among his shorter works, his best performance: the numbers are musical, and the thoughts are just.

"Cooper's Hill" is the work which confers upon him the rank and dignity of an original author. He seems to have been, at least among us, the author of a species of composition that may be denominated local poetry, of which the fundamental subject is some particular landscape, to be poetically described with the addition of such embellishments as may be supplied by historical retrospection or incidental meditation.

To trace a new scheme of poetry has in itself a very high claim to praise; and its praise is yet more when it is apparently copied by Garth and Pope; after whose names little will be gained by an enumeration of smaller poets, that have left scarcely a corner of the island not dignified either by rhyme or blank verse.

" Cooper's Hill," if it be maliciously inspected, will not be found without its faults. The digressions are too long, the morality too frequent, and the sentiments sometimes such as will not bear a rigorous enquiry.

The four verses, which, since Dryden has commended them, almost every writer for a century past has imitated, are generally known.

"O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
"My great example, as it is my theme!
"Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
"Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full."

The lines are in themselves not perfect; for most of the words, thus artfully opposed, are to be understood simply on one side of the comparison, and metaphorically on the other; and if there be any language which does not express intellectual operations by material images, into that language they cannot be translated. But so much meaning is comprized in so few words; the particulars of resemblance are so perspicaciously collected, and every mode of excellence separated from its adjacent fault by so nice a line of limitation; the different parts of the sentence are so accurately adjusted; and the flow of the last couplet is so smooth and sweet; that the passage, however celebrated, has not been praised above its merit. It has beauty peculiar to itself, and must be numbered among those felicities which cannot be produced at will by wit and labour, but must rise unexpectedly in some hour propitious to poetry.

He appears to have been one of the first that understood the necessity of emancipating translation from the drudgery of counting lines and interpreting single words. How much this servile practice obscured the clearest, and deformed the most beautiful parts of the ancient authors, may be discovered by a perusal of our earlier versions; some of them are the works of men well qualified, not only by critical knowledge, but by poetical genius, who yet, by a mistaken ambition of exactness, degraded at once their originals and themselves.

Denham saw the better way, but has not pursued it with great success. His versions of Virgil are not pleasing: but they taught Dryden to please better. His poetical imitation of Tully on “ Old

Age" has neither the clearness of prose, nor the sprightliness of poetry.

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

On the Thames.

"Though with those streams he no resemblance hold,
" Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold;
"His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore,
"Search not his bottom, but survey his shore."

On Stafford.

" His wisdom such, at once it did appear
"Three kingdoms' wonder, and three kingdoms' fear.
"While single he stood forth, and seem'd, although
"Each had an army, as an equal foe,

"Such was his force of eloquence to make
"The hearers more concern'd than he that spake:
"Each seem'd to act that part he came to see,
"And none was more a looker-on than he:
" So did he move our passions, some were known
"To wish, for the defence, the crime their own,
"Now private pity strove with public 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 wit, and Virgil's state,
"He did not steal, but emulate!
"And, when he would like them appear,
"Their garb, but not their clothes, did wear."

As one of Denham's principal claims to the regard of posterity arises from his improvement of our numbers, his versification ought to be considered. It will afford that pleasure which arises from the observation of a man of judgment naturally right, forsaking 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,
" And differing dialect; then their numbers swell
"And grow upon us: first Chorœbus fell
"Before Minerva's altar; next did bleed
"Just Ripheus, whom no Tro an did exceed exceed
" In virtue, yet the gods his fate decreed.
"Then Hypanis and Dymas, wounded by
"Their friends; nor thee, Pantheus, thy piety,
"Nor consecrated mitre, from the same
" Ill fate could save; my country's funeral flame
"And Troy's cold ashes I attest, and call
"To witness for myself, that in their fall
"No foes, no death, nor danger, I declin'd,
"Did and deserv'd no less, my fate to find."

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

This passage exhibits one of those triplets which are not unfrequent in this first essay, but which it is to be supposed his maturer judgment disapproved, since in his latter works he has totally forborne them.