civil agency not to the excitement of virtue, but the repreffion of wickedness, fo judgment in the operations of intellect can hinder faults, but not produce excellence. Prior is never low, nor very often fublime. It is faid by Longinus of Euripides, that he forces himself fometimes into grandeur by violence of effort, as the lion kindles his fury by the lashes of his own. tail. Whatever Prior obtains above mediocrity feems the effort of struggle and of toil. He has many vigorous but few happy lines; he has every thing by purchase, and nothing by gift; he had no nightly vifitations of the Mufe, no infufions of fentiment or felicities of fancy. His diction, however, is more his own than that of any among the fucceffors of Dryden; he borrows no lucky turns, or commodious modes of language, from his predeceffors. His phrafes are original, but they are fometimes harfh; as he inherited no elegancies, none has he bequeathed. His expreffion has every mark of laborious study: the line feldom feems to have been formed at once; the words did not come till they were called, andwere then put by constraint into their places, where they do their duty, but do it fullenly. In his greater compofitions there may be found more rigid stateliness than graceful dignity. Of verfification he was not negligent: what he received from Dryden he did not lofe; neither did he increase the difficulty of writing by unneceffary feverity, but ufes Triplets and Alexandrines without fcruple. In his preface to Solomon he propofes fome improvements, by extending the fenfe from one couplet to another, with variety of paufes. This he has attempted, but without fuccefs; his VOL. III. inter interrupted lines are unpleafing, and his fenfe as lefs diftinct is lefs ftriking. He has altered the Stanza of Spenfer, as a house is altered by building another in its place of a different form. With how little refemblance he has formed his new Stanza to that of his master, these fpecimens will fhew: SPENSER. She flying faft from heaven's hated face, To reft themselves, and weary powers repair, PRIOR. To the clofe rock the frighted raven flies, Soon as the rifing eagle cuts the air: The fhaggy wolf unfeen and trembling lies, When the hoarfe roar proclaims the lion near. Ill ftarr'd did we our forts and lines forfake, To dare our British foes to open fight: Our conqueft we by ftratagem fhould make: Our triumph had been founded in our flight. 'Tis ours, by craft and by surprise to gain: 'Tis theirs, to meet in arms, and battle in the plain. By this new structure of his lines he has avoided difficulties ; nor am I fure that he has loft any of the power of pleafing; but he no longer imitates Spenfer. Some N Some of his poems are written without regularity of measures; for, when he commenced poet, he had not recovered from our Pindaric infatuation; but he probably lived to be convinced, that the effence of verfe is order and confonance. His numbers are fuch as mere diligence may attain; they feldom offend the ear, and feldom footh it; they commonly want airinefs, lightness, and facility: what is smooth, is not foft. His verfes always roll, but they feldom flow. A furvey of the life and writings of Prior may exemplify a fentence which he doubtlefs underflood well, when he read Horace at his uncle's; "the "veffel long retains the fcent which it firft re"ceives." In his private relaxation he revived the tavern, and in his amorous pedantry he exhibited the college. Bnt on higher occafions and nobler fubjects, when habit was overpowered by the neceflity of reflection, he wanted not wifdom as a ftatefman, or elegance as a poet. CONGRE VE, WILLIAM CONGREVE defcended from a family in Staffordshire, of fo great antiquity that it claims a place among the few that extend their line beyond the Norman Conqueft; and was the son of C 2 William William Congreve, fecond fon of Richard Congreve of Congreve and Stratton. He visited, once at leaft, the refidence of his ancestors; and, I believe, more places than one are ftill fhewn, in groves and gardens, where he is related to have written his Old Batchelor. Neither the time nor place of his birth are certainly known; if the infcription upon his monument be true, he was born in 1672. For the place; it was faid by himself, that he owed his nativity to England, and by every body elfe that he was born in Ireland. Southern mentioned him with sharp cenfure, as a man that meanly difowned his native country. The biographers affigned his nativity to Bardfa, near Leeds in Yorkshire, from the account given by himself, as they suppose, to Jacob. To doubt whether a man of eminence has told the truth about his own birth, is, in appearance, to be very deficient in candour; yet nobody can live long without knowing that falfehoods of convenience or vanity, falfehoods from which no evil immediately visible enfues, except the general degradation of human teftimony, are very lightly uttered, and once uttered, are fullenly supported. Boileau, who defired to be thought a rigorous and fteady moralift, having told a pretty lie to Lewis XIV. continued it afterwards by falfe dates; thinking himself obliged in honour, fays his admirer, to maintain what, when he said it, was fo well received. Wherever Congreve was born, he was educated firft at Kilkenny, and afterwards at Dublin, his father having fome military employment that ftationed him in Ireland: but after having paffed through the ufual preparatory studies, as may be reafonably fuppofed, with great celerity and fuccefs, his father thought it proper to affign him a profeffion, by which something might be gotten; and about the time of the Revolution fent him, at the age of fixteen, to ftudy law in the Middle Temple, where he lived for feveral years, but with very little attention to Statutes or Reports. His difpofition to become an author appeared very early, as he very early felt that force of imagination, and poffeffed that copioufnefs of fentiment, by which intellectual pleasure can be given. His first performance was a novel, called Incognita, or Love and Duty reconciled: It is praised by the biographers, who quote fome part of the preface, that is indeed, for fuch a time of life, uncommonly judicious. I would rather praise it than read it. His firft dramatic labour was the Old Batchelor ; of which he fays, in his defence against Collier, "that comedy was written, as feveral know, "fome years before it was acted. When I wrote it, I had little thoughts of the stage; but did it, "to amufe myfelf in a flow recovery from a fit of "fickness. Afterwards, through my indifcretion, "it was feen, and in fome little time more it was "acted; and I, through the remainder of my in"difcretion, fuffered myfelf to be drawn in, to the "profecution of a difficult and thankless study, and "to be involved in a perpetual war with knaves "and fools." There feems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done every thing by chance. The Old Batchelor was written for amufement, in the languor of convalefence. Yet it is apparently compofed with great elaboratenefs of dialogue, and inceffant ambition of wit. The age of the writer confidered, it is indeed a very wonderful performC3 ance; |