ated and sometimes abrupt, sometimes diffusive and sometimes
concise. His plan seems to have started in his mind at the present
moment, and his thoughts appear the effect of chance, sometimes adverse
and sometimes lucky, with very little operation of judgment. He was not
one of those writers whom experience improves, and who, observing their
own faults, become gradually correct. His poem on the "Last Day," his
first great performance, has an equability and propriety, which he
afterwards either never endeavoured or never attained. Many paragraphs
are noble, and few are mean, yet the whole is languid; the plan is
too much extended, and a succession of images divides and weakens the
general conception, but the great reason why the reader is disappointed
is that the thought of the LAST DAY makes every man more than poetical
by spreading over his mind a general obscurity of sacred horror, that
oppresses distinction and disdains expression. His story of "Jane Grey"
was never popular. It is written with elegance enough, but Jane is too
heroic to be pitied.

"The Universal Passion" is indeed a very great performance. It is
said to be a series of epigrams, but, if it be, it is what the author
intended; his endeavour was at the production of striking distichs and
pointed sentences, and his distichs have the weight of solid sentiments,
and his points the sharpness of resistless truth. His characters are
often selected with discernment and drawn with nicety; his illustrations
are often happy, and his reflections often just. His species of satire
is between those of Horace and Juvenal, and he has the gaiety of Horace
without his laxity of numbers, and the morality of Juvenal with greater
variation of images. He plays, indeed, only on the surface of life; he
never penetrates the recesses of the mind, and therefore the whole power
of his poetry is exhausted by a single perusal; his conceits please
only when they surprise. To translate he never condescended, unless his
"Paraphrase on Job" may be considered as a version, in which he has not,
I think, been unsuccessful; he indeed favoured himself by choosing those
parts which most easily admit the ornaments of English poetry. He had
least success in his lyric attempts, in which he seems to have been
under some malignant influence; he is always labouring to be great, and
at last is only turgid.

In his "Night Thoughts" he has exhibited a very wide display of original
poetry, variegated w