Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 4.djvu/221

Rh Lies crown'd with Princes honours, Poets lays, Due to his merit, and brave thirst of praise. Living, great Nature fear'd he might outvie. Her works; and dying, fears herself may die.

Of this epitaph the first couplet is good, the second not bad, the third is deformed with a broken metaphor, the word crowned not being applicable to the honours or the lays, and the fourth is not only borrowed from the epitaph on Raphael, but of a very harsh construction.

Rh