Lives of the Poets | Page 9

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 has no careless
lines, or entangled sentiments; his words are nicely selected, and his
thoughts fully expanded. If this part of his character suffers an
abatement, it must be from the disproportion of his 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 judgment as secured him from
everything that approached to the ridiculous or absurd; but as law
operates in civil agency, not to the excitement of virtue, but the
repression of wickedness, so judgment in the operations of intellect can
hinder faults, but not produce excellence. Prior is never low, nor very
often sublime. It is said by Longinus of Euripides, that he forces
himself sometimes into grandeur by violence of effort, as the lion
kindles his fury by the lashes of his own tail. Whatever Prior obtains
above mediocrity seems the effort of struggle and of toil. He has many
vigorous, but few happy lines; he has everything by purchase, and
nothing by gift; he had no NIGHTLY VISITATIONS of the Muse, no
infusions of sentiment or felicities of fancy. His diction, however, is
more his own than of any among the successors of Dryden; he borrows
no lucky turns, or commodious modes of language, from his
predecessors. His phrases are original, but they are sometimes harsh; as
he inherited no elegances, none has he bequeathed. His expression has
every mark of laborious study, the line seldom seems to have been

formed at once; the words did not come till they were called, and were
then put by constraint into their places, where they do their duty, but do
it sullenly. In his greater compositions there may be found more rigid
stateliness than graceful dignity.
Of versification he was not negligent. What he received from Dryden
he did not lose; neither did he increase the difficulty of writing by
unnecessary severity, but uses triplets and alexandrines without scruple.
In his preface to "Solomon" he proposes some improvements by
extending the sense from one couplet to another with variety of pauses.
This he has attempted, but without success; his interrupted lines are
unpleasing, and his sense, as less distinct, is less striking. He has
altered the stanza of Spenser as a house is altered by building another in
its place of a different form. With how little resemblance he has formed
his new stanza to that of his master these specimens will show:-
SPENSER.
"She flying fast from Heaven's fated face,
And from the world that
her discovered wide,
Fled to the wasteful wilderness space,
From
living eyes her open shame to hide,
And lurked in rocks and caves
long unespied.
But that fair crew of knights, and Una fair,
Did in
that castle afterwards abide,
To rest themselves, and weary powers
repair,
Where store they found of all that dainty was and rare?"
PRIOR.
"To the close rock the frightened raven flies,
Soon as the rising eagle
cuts the air;
The shaggy wolf unseen and trembling lies,
When the
hoarse roar proclaims the lion near.
Ill-starred did we our forts and
lines forsake,
To dare our British foes to open fight:
Our conquest
we by stratagem should make;
Our triumph had been founded in our
flight.
'Tis ours by craft and by surprise to gain;
'Tis theirs to meet
in arms, and battle in the plain."
By this new structure of his lines he has avoided difficulties; nor am I

sure that he has lost any of the power of pleasing, but he no longer
imitates Spencer. Some of his poems are written without regularity of
measures; for, when he commenced poet, he had not recovered from
our Pindaric infatuation; but he probably lived to be convinced that the
essence of verse is order and consonance. His numbers are such as
mere diligence may attain; they seldom offend the ear, and seldom
soothe it; they commonly want airiness, lightness, and facility. What is
smooth is not soft. His verses always roll, but they seldom flow.
A survey of the life and writings of Prior may exemplify a sentence
which he doubtless understood well when he read Horace at his uncle's,
"The vessel long retains the scent which it first
receives." In his
private relaxation he revived the tavern, and in his amorous pedantry he
exhibited the college. But on higher occasions and nobler subjects,
when habit was overpowered by the necessity of reflection, he wanted
not wisdom as a statesman, or elegance as a poet.
CONGREVE
William Congreve descended from a family in Staffordshire of so great
antiquity, that it claims a place among the few that extend their hue
beyond the