One celebrated line seems to be borrowed. The Essay calls a perfect character.
A faultless monster which the world ne'er saw.
Scaliger, in his poems, terms Virgil sine labe monstrum. Sheffield can scarcely be supposed to have read Scaliger's poetry, perhaps he found the words in a quotation.
Of this Essay, which Dryden has exalted so highly, it may be justly said that the precepts are judicious, sometimes new, and often happily expressed; but there are, after all the emendations, many weak lines, and some strange appearances of negligence; as, when he gives the laws of elegy, he insists upon connection and coherence; without which, says he,
'Tis epigram, 'tis point, 'tis what you will;
But not an elegy, nor writ with skill,
No Panegyrick, nor a Cooper's Hill.
Who would not suppose that Waller's Panegyrick and Denham's Cooper's Hill were Elegies?
His verses are often insipid; but his memoirs are lively and agreeable: he had the perspicuity and elegance of an historian, but not the fire and fancy of a poet.
END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
