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"When he lays hold of a thought, he pursues it beyond expectation, [and] sometimes happily, as in his parallel of quicksilver with pleasure .... .... which is very ingenious, very subtle, and almost exact . . . . . .

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"His versification is his own; neither his blank nor his rhyming lines have any resemblance to those of former "writers; he picks up no hemesticks, he copies no favourite "expressions; he seems to have laid up no stores of thought "or diction, but to owe all to the fortuitous suggestions of "the present moment. Yet I have reason so believe that, "when once he had formed a new design, he then laboured "it with very patient industry, and that he composed with great labour and frequent revisions.

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"His verses are formed by no certain model; he is no "more like himself in his different productions than he is "like others. He seems never to have studied prosody, nor "to have any direction, but from his own ear. But with all "his defects, he was a man of genius, and a poet."

P. S. The materials of the above Life are taken from the Article referring to our author in Johnson's Lives of the Poets, written by Mr. Herbert Croft, with the Critique of Dr. Johnson, compared with the Biographia Britannica, and other respectable authorities.

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Night-Thoughts.

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