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 the 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[159].
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 law, lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! And all was light.
Of 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 nineteenth year of his age, 1735.