drift or design, but to have written the casual dictates of the
present moment.

What Horace said when he imitated Lucilius, might be said of Butler
by Prior; his numbers were not smooth nor neat. Prior excelled him
in versification; but he was, like Horace, inventore minor; he had
not Butler's exuberance of matter and variety of illustration. The
spangles of wit which he could afford he knew how to polish; but he
wanted the bullion of his master. Butler pours out a negligent
profusion, certain of the weight, but careless of the stamp. Prior
has comparatively little, but with that little he makes a fine show.
"Alma" has many admirers, and was the only piece among Prior's works
of which Pope said that he should wish to be the author.

"Solomon" is the work to which he entrusted the protection of his
name, and which he expected succeeding ages to regard with
veneration. His affection was natural; it had undoubtedly been
written with great labour; and who is willing to think that he has
been labouring in vain? He had infused into it much knowledge and
much thought; had often polished it to elegance, often dignified it
with splendour, and sometimes heightened it to sublimity: he
perceived in it many excellences, and did not discover that it
wanted that without which all others are of small avail--the power
of engaging attention and alluring curiosity.

Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults; negligence or errors
are single and local, but tediousness pervades the whole; other
faults are censured and forgotten, but the power of tediousness
propagates itself. He that is weary the first hour is more weary
the second, as bodies forced into motion, contrary to their