Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 4.djvu/229

Rh For thee, ſo great ſhall be thy high renown, That fame ſhall think no muſic like thy name; Around the circling globe it ſhall be ſpread, And to the world’s laſt ages ſhall endure; And the moſt lofty, moſt aſpiring man, Shall want th’ aſſurance in his ſecret prayers To ask ſuch high felicity and fame, As Heav’n has freely granted thee; yet this That ſeems ſo great, ſo glorious to thee now, Would look how low, how vile to thy great mind, If I could ſet before th’ aſtoniſh’d eyes, Th’ exceſs of glory, and th’ exceſs of bliſs That is prepar’d for thy expiring ſoul, When thou arriv’ſt at everlaſting day. The quotation by Mr. Dennis is longer, but we are perſuaded the reader will not be diſpleaſed that we do not take the trouble to tranſcribe the whole, as it does not improve, but rather grows more languid. How ſtrangely are people deceived in their own productions! In the language of ſincerity we cannot diſcover a poetical conception, one ſtriking image, or one animated line in the above, and yet Mr. Dennis obſerves to Sir Richard Steele, that theſe are the lines, by quoting which, he would really have done him honour.

But Mr. Dennis’s reſentment did not terminate here; he attempted to expoſe a paper in the Spectator upon dramatic conduct, in which the author endeavours to ſhew that a poet is not always obliged to diſtribute poetical juſtice on this very reaſonable account, that good and evil happen alike to all men on this ſide the grave. To this propoſition our critic objects, ‘that it is not only a very falſe, but a dangerous aſſertion, that we neither know what men really are, nor what they ſuffer. Beſides, ſays he, let it be conſidered, that a man is a creature, who is created immortal, and a