gan that adapation, which has fince been very frequent, of ancient poetry to prefent times; and perhaps few will be found where the parallelifm is better preserved than in this. The verfification is indeed fometimes careless, but it is fometimes vigorous and weighty. The strongest effort of his Mufe is his poem upon Nothing. He is not the first who has chofen this barren topick for the boaft of his fertility. There is a poem called Nibil in Latin by Pafferat, a poet and critick of the fixteenth century in France; who, in his own epitaph, expresses his zeal for good poetry thus: -Molliter offa quiefcent Sint modo carminibus non onerata malis. His works are not common, and therefore I fhall fubjoin his verfes. In examining this performance, Nothing must be confidered as having not only a negative but a kind of pofitive fignification; as I need not fear thieves, I have nothing; and nothing is a very powerful protector. In the first part of the fentence it is taken negatively; in the fecond it is taken pofitively, as an agent. In one of Boileau's lines it was a queftion, whether he should ufe à rien faire, or à ne rien faire; and the firft was preferred, because it gave rien a fenfe in fome fort pofitive. Nothing can be a fubject only in its pofitive fenfe, and fuch a fenfe is given it in the first line : Nothing, thou elder brother ev'n to fhade. In this line, I know not whether he does not allude to a curious book de Umbra, by Wowerus, which, having told the qualities of Shade, concludes with a poem in which are thefe lines: Jam primum terram validis circumfpice clauftris Terrafque tractufque maris, campofque liquentes The positive sense is generally preferved, with great 23 fkill, through the whole poem; though fometimes, in a fubordinate fenfe, the negative nothing is injudiciously mingled. Pafferat confounds the two fenfes. Another of his most vigorous pieces is his Lampoon on Sir Car Scroop, who, in a poem called The Praise of Satire, had fome lines like these * : He who can push into a midnight fray This was meant of Rochefter, whofe buffoon conceit was, I fuppofe, a saying often mentioned, that every Man would be a Coward if he durft; and drew from him those furious verfes; to which Scroop made in reply an epigram, ending with these lines: Thou canft hurt no man's fame with thy ill word; Of the satire against Man, Rochester can only claim what remains when all Boileau's part is taken away. In all his works there is fprightliness and vigour, and every where may be found tokens of a mind which study might have carried to excellence. What more can be expected from a life fpent in oftentatious contempt of regularity, and ended before the abilities of many other men began to be difplayed? * I quote from memory. Orig. Edit. Poema Poema Cl. V. JOANNIS PASSERATII, Regii in Academia Parifienfi Profefforis, Janus adeft, feftæ pofcunt fua dona Kalendæ, Ad Ad magnas quia ducit opes, & culmen honorum, Nec numeret Libycæ numerum qui callet arenæ : Vexerit & quemvis trans moeftas portitor undas, Diíque NIHIL metuunt. Quid longo carmine plura Ne tibi fi multa laudem mea carmina charta, De NIHILO NIHILI pariant faftidią verfus. **THE ** The particulars of fo immoral a life as that of the Earl of Rochester, were it not for his penitence at the close of it, had per haps better have been suffered to fink into oblivion than recorded. Nevertheless, it is faid that his manners were elegant, and that they are truly represented in the perfon of Dorimant, a character in Sir George Etherege's comedy of the Man of Mode, drawn with exquifite art and from the life. Biogr. Brit. 1843, in not. ROS |