As one of Denham's principal claims to the regard of pofterity arifes from his improvement of our numbers, his verfification ought to be confidered. It will afford that pleasure which arifes from the observation of a man of right natural judgement forfaking bad copies by degrees, and advancing towards a better practice, as he gains more confidence in himself. In his tranflation of Virgil, written when he was about twenty-one years old, may be ftill found the old manner of continuing the fenfe ungracefully from verfe to verse. "Then "And differing dialect: then their "numbers fwell "And grow upon us; firft Chorobus "fell "Before Minerva's altar; next did "bleed "Juft Repheus, whom no Trojan ❝ did exceed "In virtue, yet the gods his fate "decreed. "Then "Then Hypanis and Dymas, wound ❝ed by "Their friends; nor thee, Pantheus, "thy piety, "Nor confecrated mitre, from the " fame "Ill fate could fave; my country's "funeral flame "And Troy's cold afhes I atteft, and ❝ call "To witness for myself, that in their "fall "No foes, no death, nor danger I "declin'd, "Did, and deserv'd no less, my fate "to find." From From this kind of concatenated metre he afterwards refrained, and taught his followers the art of concluding their fenfe in couplets; which has perhaps been with rather too much conftancy pursued. This paffage exhibits one of those triplets which are not infrequent in this firft effay, but which it is to be fuppofed his maturer judgement disapproved, fince in his latter works he has totally forborn them. His rhymes are fuch as feem found without difficulty, by following the fense; and are for the moft part as exact at least as thofe of other poets, though now and then the reader is fhifted off with what he can get. 4 "O how |