Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 3.djvu/38

34 Ille gemens, si vera mihi solatia præbes,
 * Hospes apud superos sis meus oro, refert.

Sacrificus contra; mihi non conviva fas est
 * Ducere, jejunas hac edo luce nihil.

What he has valuable he owes to his diligence and his judgement. His diligence has justly placed him amongst the most correct of the English poets; and he was one of the first that resolutely endeavoured at correctness. He never sacrifices accuracy to haste, nor indulges himself in contemptuous negligence, or impatient idleness; he had no careless lines, or entangled sentiments: his words are nicely selected, and his thoughts fully expanded. If this part of his character suffer any abatement, it must be from the disproportion of this rhymes, which have not always sufficient consonance, and from the admission of broken lines into his Solomon; but perhaps he thought, like Cowley, that hemistichs ought to be admitted into heroic poetry.

He had apparently such rectitude of judgement as secured him from every thing that approached to the ridiculous or absurd; but as laws operate in civil agency not to the excitement of virtue, but the repression of ness,