Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 1.djvu/437

Rh This is admirably pathetical, and shews very well the vicissitudes of sublunary things. The rest goes on to a prodigious height; and a man in Greenland could hardly have made a more pathetick and terrible complaint. Is it not surprising that the subject should be so mean, and the verse so pompous, that the least things in his poetry, as in a microscope, should grow great and formidable to the eye; especially considering that, not understanding French, he had no model for his style? that he should have no writer to imitate, and himself be inimitable? that he should do all this before he was twenty? at an age which is usually pleased with a glare of false thoughts, little turns, and unnatural fustian? at an age, at which Cowley, Dryden, and I had almost said Virgil, were inconsiderable? So soon was his imagination at its full strength, his judgement ripe, and his humour complete.

This poem was written for his own diversion, without any design of publication. It was communicated but to me: but soon spread, and fell into the hands of pirates. It was put out, vilely mangled, by Ben Rh