Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 3.djvu/34

30 Alma is written in professed imitation of Hudibras, and has at least one accidental resemblance: Hudibras wants a plan, because it is left imperfect; Alma is imperfect, because it seems never to have had a plan. Prior appears not to have proposed to himself any drift or design, but to have written the casual dictates of the present moment.

What Horace said when he imitated Lucilius, might be said of Butler by Prior, his numbers were not smooth or neat: Prior excelled him in versification; but he was, like Horace, inventore minor; he had not Butler’s exuberance of matter and variety of illustration. The spangles of wit which he could afford, he knew how to polish; but he wanted the bullion of his master. Butler pours out a negligent profusion, certain of the weight, but careless of the stamp. Prior has comparatively little, but with that little he makes a fine shew. Alma has many admirers, and was the only piece among Prior’s works of which Pope said that he should wish to be the author.

Solomon is the work to which he entrusted the protection of his name, and which he expected succeeding ages to regard with ration.