"Solomon;" but perhaps he thought, like Cowley, that hemistichs
ought to be admitted into heroic poetry.

He had apparently such rectitude of judgment as secured him from
everything that approached to the ridiculous or absurd; but as law
operates in civil agency, not to the excitement of virtue, but the
repression of wickedness, so judgment in the operations of intellect
can hinder faults, but not produce excellence. Prior is never low,
nor very often sublime. It is said by Longinus of Euripides, that
he forces himself sometimes into grandeur by violence of effort, as
the lion kindles his fury by the lashes of his own tail. Whatever
Prior obtains above mediocrity seems the effort of struggle and of
toil. He has many vigorous, but few happy lines; he has everything
by purchase, and nothing by gift; he had no NIGHTLY VISITATIONS of
the Muse, no infusions of sentiment or felicities of fancy. His
diction, however, is more his own than of any among the successors
of Dryden; he borrows no lucky turns, or commodious modes of
language, from his predecessors. His phrases are original, but they
are sometimes harsh; as he inherited no elegances, none has he
bequeathed. His expression has every mark of laborious study, the
line seldom seems to have been formed at once; the words did not
come till they were called, and were then put by constraint into
their places, where they do their duty, but do it sullenly. In his
greater compositions there may be found more rigid stateliness than
graceful dignity.

Of versification he was not negligent. What he received from Dryden
he did not lose; neither did he increase the difficulty of writing
by unnecessary severity, but uses triplets and alexandrines without
scruple. In his preface to "Solomon" he proposes some improvements