Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 2.djvu/437

Rh One celebrated line seems to be borrowed. The Essay calls a perfect character.

Scaliger, in his poems, terms Virgil sine labe monstrum. Sheffield can scarcely be supposed to have read Scaliger's poetry, perhaps he found the words in a quotation.

Of this Essay, which Dryden has exalted so highly, it may be justly said that the precepts are judicious, sometimes new, and often happily expressed; but there are, after all the emendations, many weak lines, and some strange appearances of negligence; as, when he gives the laws of elegy, he insists upon connection and coherence; without which, says he,

Who would not suppose that Waller's Panegyrick and Denham's Cooper's Hill were Elegies?

His verses are often insipid; but his memoirs are lively and agreeable: he had the perspicuity and elegance of an historian, but not the fire and fancy of a poet.