Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 4.djvu/399

Rh says, that they all hang on the great vine, drinking the "nectarous juice of immortal life."

His conceits are sometimes yet less valuable. In the "Last Day" he hopes to illustrate the re-assembly of the atoms that compose the human body at the "Trump of Doom," by the collection of bees into a swarm at the tinkling of a pan.

The Prophet says of Tyre, that "her Merchants are Princes." Young says of Tyre in his "Merchant,"

Let burlesque try to go beyond him.

He has the trick of joining the turgid and familiar: to buy the alliance of Britain, "Climes were paid down." Antithesis is his favourite, "They for kindness hate:" and "because she's right, she's ever in the wrong."

His versification is his own; neither his blank nor his rhyming lines have any resemblance to those of former writers; he picks up no hemistichs, he copies no favourite expressions; he seems to have laid up no stores of thought or diction, but to owe all to the fortuitous suggestions of the present moment. Rh