EPITAPH ON THE LADY WHITMORE. FAIR, kind, and true, a treasure each alone, Come, virgins, ere in equal bands ye join, 5 Come first, and offer at her facred shrine; Pray but for half the virtues of this wife, Compound for all the reft, with longer life; And with 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, Fairbone's undaunted foul did undergo, From thence returning with deferv'd applause, Against the Moors his well-flefh'd fword het draws; 11 The fame the courage, and the fame the caufe. 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. 21 UNDER MR. MILTON'S PICTURE, BEFORE HIS PARADISE LOST. THREE Poets in three distant 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 faid," 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 Addifon) that Milton wrote no language, but formed a Babylonish dialect, harsh and barbarous. He adds, that with refpect 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 porphyry; nor would Dryden have thanked Johnson for faying in another place, that "From his contemporaries he was in no danger; that he flood in the highest place; and that there was no name above his own." The genius of Milton is univerfally allowed; but I am of opinion that his tafte and judgment were equally excellent: witnefs the majesty with which he has drawn the figure of Satan, fo different from what his favorite Dante had done, who was fo likely to dazzle and miflead him, and who has fo ftrangely mixed the grotesque with the great. Satan, fays Dante in the Inferno, had a vaft and moft gigantic appearance; he stood up to his middle in ice, eagerly trying to difentangle himself, and for that purpofe violently flapping his huge leathern wings. He has three different faces, a livid, a black, and a fcarlet one. He has fix blood-fhot eyes; three mouths that pour forth torrents of blood; and in each mouth he holds a finner. This is not, like Milton's, the figure of an archangel fallen. The Satan in the Davideis difgraces Cowley. Dr. J. WARTON. |