His rhymes are fuch as feem found without difficulty, by following the sense; 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 return'd "Clad in Achilles' fpoils!" 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 : 66 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 ftate misfortune. "hath Depreft thus low, it cannot reach my faith." "Thus by his fraud and our own faith o'er 66 come, "A feigned tear deftroys us, against whom 66 Tydides "Tydides nor Achilles could prevail, He is not very careful to vary the ends of his verses; in one paffage the word die rhimes 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, having done much, he left much to do. MILTON. MILTON. T HE Life of Milton has been already written in fo many forms, and with fuch minute enquiry, that I might perhaps more properly have contented myself with the addition of a few notes to Mr. Fenton's elegant Abridgement, but that a new narrative was thought neceffary to the uniformity of this edition. JOHN MILTON was by birth a gentleman, defcended from the proprietors of Milton near Thame in Oxfordshire, one of whom forfeited his eftate in the times of York and Lancaster. Which fide he took I know not; his defcendant inherited no veneration for the White Rofe. |