The first eight lines have no grammar; the adjectives are without any substantive, and the epithets without a subject. The thought in the last line, that Gay is buried in the bosoms of the worthy and good, who are distinguished only to lengthen the line, is so dark that few understand it, and so harsh, when it is explained, that still fewer approve.
XII.
Intended for Sir Isaac Newton, in Westminster Abbey.
Isaacus Newtonius:
Quem Immortalem
Testantur, Tempus, Natura, Cœlum:
Mortalem hoc marmor fatetur.
Nature, and Nature’s laws, lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! And all was light.
On this epitaph, short as it is, the faults seem not to be very few. Why part should be Latin and part English it is not easy to discover. In the Latin the opposition of Immortalis and Mortalis is a mere sound, or a mere quibble; he is not immortal in any sense 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 crowned,
And every opening virtue blooming round,
Could save a parent’s justest pride from fate,
Or add one patriot to a sinking state;
This weeping marble had not asked thy tear,
Or sadly told how many hopes lie here!
The living virtue now had shone approved,
The senate heard him, and his country loved.
Yet softer honours, and less noisy fame,
Attend the shade of gentle Buckingham:
In whom a race, for courage famed and art,
Ends in the milder merit of the heart;
And, chiefs or sages long to Britain given,
Pays the last tribute of a saint to heaven.
This epitaph Mr. Warburton prefers to the rest, but I know not for what reason. To crown with reflection is surely a mode of speech approaching to nonsense. Opening virtues blooming round is something like tautology; the six following lines are poor and prosaic. Art is in another couplet used for arts, that a rhyme may be had to heart. The six last lines are the best, but not excellent.
The rest of his sepulchral performances hardly deserve the notice of criticism. The contemptible dialogue between He and She should have been suppressed for the author’s sake.