In the next couplet rage is lefs properly introduced after the mention of mildness and gentleness, which are made the conftituents of his character; for a man fo mild and gentle to temper his rage was not difficult.

The next line is unharmonious in its found, and mean in its conception; the oppofition is obvious, and the word lash ufed abfolutely, and without any modification, is grofs and improper.

To be above temptation in poverty, and free from corruption among the Great, is indeed fuch a peculiarity as deserved notice. But to be a fafe companion is praise merely negative, arifing not from the poffeffion of virtue, but the abfence. of vice, and that one of the most odious.

As little can be added to his character, by afferting that he was lamented in his

end.

end. Every man that dies is, at least by the writer of his epitaph, fuppofed to be lamented, and therefore this general lamentation does no honour to Gay.

The eight first lines have no grammar; the adjectives are without any fubftantive, and the epithets without a fubject.

The thought in the laft line, that Gay is buried in the bofoms of the worthy and the good, who are diftinguished only to lengthen the line, is fo dark that few understand it; and fo harfh, when it is explained, that still fewer approve.

XII.

XII.

Intended for Sir ISAAC NEWTON, In Westminster-Abbey.

ISAACUS NEWTONIUS:

Quem Immortalem
Teftantur, Tempus, Natura, Cælum

Mortalem

Hoc marmor fatetur.

Nature, and Nature's laws, lay hid in night, GOD faid, Let Newton be! And all was light.

Of this epitaph, fhort as it is, the faults feem not to be very few. Why part, fhould be Latin and part English, it is not easy to discover. In the Latin, the oppofition of Immortalis and Mortalis, is a mere found, or a mere quibble; he is not immortal in any fenfe contrary to that in which he is mortal.

In the verses the thought is obvious, and the words night and light are too nearly allied.

XIII.

On EDMUND Duke of BUCKINGHAM, who died in the 19th Year of his Age, 1735.

If modest youth, with cool reflection crown'd, And every opening virtue blooming round, Could fave a parent's jufteft pride from fate, Or add one patriot to a finking state; This weeping marble had not ask'd thy tear, Or fadly told, how many hopes lie here! The living virtue now had fhone approv❜d, The fenate heard him, and his country lov❜d. Yet fofter honours, and lefs noisy fame, Attend the fhade of gentle Buckingham: In whom a race, for courage fam'd and art, Ends in the milder merit of the heart; And chiefs or fages long to Britain given, Pays the last tribute of a faint to heaven.

This epitaph Mr. Warburton prefers to the reft, but I know not for what reason. To crown with reflection is furely a mode of fpeech approaching to nonfenfe. Opening virtues blooming round, is fomething like tautology; the fix following lines are poor and profaick. Art is in another couplet ufed for arts, that a rhyme may be had to heart. The fix laft lines are the beft, but not excellent.

The rest of his fepulchral performances hardly deferve the notice of criticifm. The contemptible Dialogue between HE and SHE fhould have been fuppreffed for the author's fake.

In his last epitaph on himself, in which he attempts to be jocular upon one of the few things that make wife men ferious, he confounds the living man with the dead :