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PITT.

CHRISTOPHER PITT, of whom whatever I shall relate, more than has been already published, I owe to the kind communication of Dr. Warton, was born, in 1699, at Blandford, the son of a physician much esteemed.

He was, in 1714, received as a scholar into Winchester college, where he was distinguished by exercises of uncommon elegance, and, at his removal to New college, in 1719, presented to the electors, as the product of his private and voluntary studies, a complete version of Lucan's poem, which he did not then know to have been translated by Rowe.

This is an instance of early diligence which well deserves to be recorded. The suppression of such a work, recommended by such uncommon circumstances, is to be regretted. It is, indeed, culpable to load libraries with superfluous books; but incitements to early excellence are never superfluous, and, from this example, the danger is not great of many imitations.

When he had resided at his college three years, he was presented to the rectory of Pimpern, in Dorsetshire, 1722, by his relation, Mr. Pitt, of Stratfield Say, in Hampshire; and, resigning his fellowship, continued at Oxford two years longer, till he became master of arts, 1724.

He probably about this time translated Vida's Art of Poetry, which Tristram's splendid edition had then made popular. In this translation he distinguished himself, both by its general elegance, and by the skilful adaptation of his numbers to the images expressed; a beauty which Vida has, with great ardour, enforced and exemplified.

He then retired to his living, a place very pleasing by its situation, and, therefore, likely to excite the imagination of a poet; where he passed the rest of his life, reverenced for his virtue, and beloved for the softness of his temper and the easiness of his manners. Before strangers he had

ruption among the great, is, indeed, such a peculiarity as deserved notice. But to be a safe companion is praise merely negative, arising not from the possession of virtue, but the absence of vice, and one of the most odious.

character, by asserting that

Every man that dies is, at

As little can be added to his he was lamented in his end. least, by the writer of his epitaph, supposed to be lamented; and, therefore, this general lamentation does no honour to Gay.

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 *.

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.

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.

* The same thought is found in George Whetstone's epitaph on the good lord Dyer, 1582:

Et semper bonus ille bonis fuit, ergo bonorum
Sunt illi demum pectora sarcophagus.

J. B.

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 nine-
teenth year of his age, 1735.

If modest youth, with cool reflection crown'd,
And ev'ry op'ning 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 ask'd thy tear,
Or sadly told how many hopes lie here!
The living virtue now had shone approv'd,
The senate heard him, and his country lov'd.
Yet softer honours, and less noisy fame,
Attend the shade of gentle Buckingham:
In whom a race, for courage fam'd and art,
Ends in the milder merit of the heart:
And, chiefs or sages long to Britain giv'n,
Pays the last tribute of a saint to heav'n.

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 prosaick. 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.

In his last epitaph on himself, in which he attempts to be jocular upon one of the few things that make wise men serious, he confounds the living man with the dead:

Under this stone, or under this sill,

Or under this turf, &c.

When a man is once buried, the question, under what he is buried, is easily decided. He forgot that though he wrote the epitaph in a state of uncertainty, yet it could not be laid over him till his grave was made. Such is the folly of wit when it is ill employed.

The world has but little new; even this wretchedness seems to have been borrowed from the following tuneless lines :

Ludovici Areosti humantur ossa

Sub hoc marmore, vel sub hac humo, seu
Sub quicquid voluit benignus hæres,

Sive hærede benignior comes, seu

Opportunius incidens viator;

Nam scire haud potuit futura, sed nec

Tanti erat vacuum sibi cadaver

Ut urnam cuperet parare vivens;
Vivens ista tamen sibi paravit,
Quæ inscribi voluit suo sepulchro

Olim siquod haberet is sepulchrum.

Surely Ariosto did not venture to expect that his trifle

would have ever had such an illustrious imitator.

PITT.

CHRISTOPHER PITT, of whom whatever I shall relate, more than has been already published, I owe to the kind communication of Dr. Warton, was born, in 1699, at Blandford, the son of a physician much esteemed.

He was, in 1714, received as a scholar into Winchester college, where he was distinguished by exercises of uncommon elegance, and, at his removal to New college, in 1719, presented to the electors, as the product of his private and voluntary studies, a complete version of Lucan's poem, which he did not then know to have been translated by Rowe.

This is an instance of early diligence which well deserves to be recorded. The suppression of such a work, recommended by such uncommon circumstances, is to be regretted. It is, indeed, culpable to load libraries with superfluous books; but incitements to early excellence are never superfluous, and, from this example, the danger is not great of many imitations.

When he had resided at his college three years, he was presented to the rectory of Pimpern, in Dorsetshire, 1722, by his relation, Mr. Pitt, of Stratfield Say, in Hampshire; and, resigning his fellowship, continued at Oxford two years longer, till he became master of arts, 1724.

He probably about this time translated Vida's Art of Poetry, which Tristram's splendid edition had then made popular. In this translation he distinguished himself, both by its general elegance, and by the skilful adaptation of his numbers to the images expressed; a beauty which Vida has, with great ardour, enforced and exemplified.

He then retired to his living, a place very pleasing by its situation, and, therefore, likely to excite the imagination of a poet; where he passed the rest of his life, reverenced for his virtue, and beloved for the softness of his temper and the easiness of his manners. Before strangers he had

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