We beg not hell our Orpheus to restore:

Had he been there,

Their fovereign's fear

Had fent him back before.

The power of harmony too well they knew: 20 He long ere this had tun'd their jarring sphere, And left no hell below.

III.

The heavenly choir, who heard his notes from

high,

Let down the fcale of music from the sky:

They handed him along,

25

And all the way he taught, and all the way they fung.

Ye brethren of the lyre, and tuneful voice, Lament his lot; but at your own rejoice: Now live fecure, and linger out your days; The gods are pleas'd alone with Purcell's lays, Nor know to mend their choice.

31

EPITAPH

ON THE

LADY WHITMORE.

FAIR, kind, and true, a treasure each alone,
A wife, a mistress, and a friend in one,
Reft in this tomb, rais'd at thy husband's cost,
Here fadly fumming, what he had, and loft.

Come, virgins, ere in equal bands ye join, 5 Come firft, and offer at her facred fhrine; Pray but for half the virtues of this wife, Compound for all the reft, with longer life; And wish your vows, like hers, may be return'd, So lov'd when living, and when dead fo

mourn'd.

10

EPITAPH

ON

SIR PALMES FAIRBONE'S TOMB

IN

WESTMINSTER-ABBEY.

Sacred to the immortal memory of Sir Palmes Fairbone, Knight, Governor of Tangier; in execution of which command, he was mortally wounded by a fhot from the Moors, then befieging the town, in the forty-fixth year of his age. October 24, 1680.

YE facred relics, which

your

marble keep, Here, undisturb'd by wars, in quiet fleep: Discharge the truft, which, when it was below,

Fairbone's undaunted foul did undergo,
And be the town's Palladium from the foe.
Alive and dead these walls he will defend:
Great actions great examples must attend.
The Candian siege his early valour knew,
Where Turkish blood did his young hands im-
brue.

From thence returning with deferv'd applause, Against the Moors his well-flesh'd fword he

draws;

11

The fame the courage, and the fame the cause. His youth and age, his life and death, combine,

As in fome great and regular defign,

All of a piece throughout, and all divine. 15 Still nearer heaven his virtues fhone more bright,

Like rifing flames expanding in their height; The martyrs glory crown'd the foldier's fight. More bravely British general never fell,

Nor general's death was e'er reveng'd fo well;
Which his pleas'd eyes beheld before their

clofe,
Follow'd by thousand victims of his foes.
To his lamented lofs for time to come
His pious widow confecrates this tomb.

21

THREE Poets in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England, did adorn.
The firft, in loftinefs of thought furpafs'd;
The next, in majesty; in both the last.
The force of nature cou'd no further go;
To make a third, the join'd the former two.

5

Ver. 1. Three Poets] If any other proof was wanting of the high respect and veneration which our poet entertained of the fuperior genius of Milton, these fix nervous lines will for ever remain as a strong and indisputable teftimony. They are a confirmation of an anecdote communicated by Richardson, that, the earl of Dorfet, having fent the Paradife Loft to Dryden, when he returned the book, he said," This man cuts us all out, and the ancients too." I cannot therefore be induced to think that Dryden himself would have been pleased with the preference Johnson endeavours to give him to Milton, especially after faying (in exprefs contradiction to Addison) that Milton wrote no language, but formed a Babylonish dialect, harsh and barbarous. He adds, that with respect to English poetry, Dryden

Lateritiam invenit, marmoream reliquit.

Milton moft affuredly did not build his lofty rhime with coarse and perishable brick, but with the moft coftly and durable por phyry; nor would Dryden have thanked Johnson for saying in