nd the easiness of his manners. Before
strangers he had something of the scholar's timidity or distrust; but
when he became familiar he was, in a very high degree, cheerful and
entertaining. His general benevolence procured general respect; and he
passed a life placid and honourable, neither too great for the kindness
of the low, nor too low for the notice of the great.

At what time he composed his Miscellany, published in 1727, it is not
easy or necessary to know: those which have dates appear to have been
very early productions, and I have not observed that any rise above
mediocrity.

The success of his Vida animated him to a higher undertaking; and in his
thirtieth year he published a version of the first book of the AEneid.
This being, I suppose, commended by his friends, he, some time
afterwards, added three or four more; with an advertisement, in which he
represents himself as translating with great indifference, and with a
progress of which himself was hardly conscious. This can hardly be true,
and, if true, is nothing to the reader.

At last, without any farther contention with his modesty or any awe of
the name of Dryden, he gave us a complete English AEneid, which I am
sorry not to see, joined in this publication with his other poems[159].
It would have been pleasing to have an opportunity of comparing the two
best translations that, perhaps, were ever produced by one nation of the
same author.

Pitt, engaging as a rival with Dryden, naturally observed his failures,
and avoided them; and, as he wrote after Pope's Iliad, he had an example
of an exact, equable and splendid versification. With these advantages
seconded by great diligence, he might successfully labour particular
passages, and escape many errours. If the two versions are compared,
perhaps the result would be that Dryden leads the reader forward by his
general vigour and sprightliness, and Pitt often stops him to
contemplate the excellence of a single couplet; that Dryden's faults are
forgotten in the hurry of delight, and that Pitt's beauties are
neglected in the languor of a cold and listless perusal; that Pitt
pleases the criticks, and Dryden the people; that Pitt is quoted, and
Dryden read.

He did not long enjoy the reputation which this great work deservedly
conferred; for he left the world in 1748, and lies buried under a stone
at Blandford, on which is this inscription:

In memory of