have contrived the ftructure of an epick poem, and therefore muft yield to that vigour and amplitude of mind to which all generations must be indebted for the art of poetical narration, for the texture of the fable, the variation of incidents, the interpofition or dialogue, and all the ftratagems that furprise and enchain attention. But, of all the borrowers from Homer, Milton is perhaps the leaft indebted. He was naturally a thinker for himself, confident of his own abilities, and difdainful of help or hindrance he did not refufe admiffion to the thoughts or images of his predeceffors, but he did not feek them. From his contemporaries he neither courted

7

courted nor received fupport; there is in his writings nothing by which the pride of other authors might be gratified, or favour gained; no exchange of praife, nor folicitation of fupport. His great works were performed under discountenance, and in blindness, but difficulties vanifhed at his touch; he was born for whatever is arduous, and his work is not the greatest of heroick poems, only because it is not the first.

1

BUTLER.

F the great author of Hudibras

there is a life prefixed to the later edition of his poem, by an unknown writer, and therefore of difputable authority; and fome account is incidentally given by Wood, who confeffes the uncertainty of his own narrative; more however than they knew cannot now be learned, and nothing remains but to compare and copy them.

SAMUEL BUTLER was born in the parish of Strenfham in Worcestershire,

VOL. VI.

b

ac

according to his biographer, in 1612; but Mr. Longueville, the fon of Butler's principal friend, informed the author of the "General Dictionary" that he was born in 1600.

His father's condition is varioufly reprefented.

Wood mentions him as

competently wealthy; but the other fays he was an honeft farmer with fome small eftate, who made a fhift to educate his fon at the grammar-fchool of Worcester, under Mr. Henry Bright, from whofe care he removed for a fhort time to Cambridge; but, for want of money, was never made a member of any college. Wood leaves us rather doubtful whether he went to Cambridge or Oxford; but at laft makes him pafs