Behold a town arise, bulwarked with walls and lofty towers;
Two rival armies all the plain o'erspread,
Each in battalia ranged, and shining arms arrayed
With eagle eyes beholding both from far,
Namur, the price and mistress of the war."


The "Birth of the Muse" is a miserable fiction. One good line it
has which was borrowed from Dryden. The concluding verses are
these:-


"This said, no more remained. The ethereal host
Again impatient crowd the crystal coast.
The father now, within his spacious hands,
Encompassed all the mingled mass of seas and lands;
And, having heaved aloft the ponderous sphere,
He launched the world to float in ambient air."


Of his irregular poems, that to Mrs. Arabella Hunt seems to be the
best; his Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, however, had some lines which
Pope had in his mind when he wrote his own. His imitations of
Horace are feebly paraphrastical, and the additions which he makes
are of little value. He sometimes retains what were more properly
omitted, as when he talks of VERVAIN and GUMS to propitiate Venus.

Of his Translations, the "Satire of Juvenal" was written very early,
and may therefore be forgiven, though it had not the massiness and
vigour of the original. In all his versions strength and