XII. Intended for Sir ISAAC NEWTON. ISAACUS NEWTONIUS: Teftantur, Tempus, Natura, Cœlum: Hoc marmor fatetur. Nature, and Nature's laws, lay hid in night, GOD faid, Let Newton be! And all was light. Of this epitaph, fhort as it is, the faults feem not to be very few. Why. part fhould be Latin and part English, it is not easy to difcover. In the Latin, the oppofition of Immortalis and Mortalis, is a mere found, or a mere quibble; he is not immortal in any fenfe contrary to that in which he is mortal. In the verses the thought is obvious, and the words night and light are too nearly allied. XIII. On EDMUND Duke of BUCKINGHAM, who died in the 19th Year of his Age, 1735. If modeft youth, with cool reflection crown'd, And every opening virtue blooming round, Could fave a parent's jufteft pride from fate, Or add one patriot to a finking state; This weeping marble had not afk'd thy tear, Or fadly told, how many hopes lie here! The living virtue now had fhone approv'd, The fenate heard him, and his country lov'd. Yet fofter honours, and lefs noify fame, Attend the fhade of gentle Buckingham: In whom a race, for courage fam'd and art, Ends in the milder merit of the heart; And chiefs or fages long to Britain given, Pays the laft tribute of a faint to heaven. This This epitaph Mr. Warburton prefers to the reft, but I know not for what reason. To crown with reflection is furely a mode of fpeech approaching to nonfenfe. Opening virtues, blooming round, is fomething like tautology; the fix following lines are poor and profaick. Art is in another couplet ufed for arts, that a thyme may be had to heart. The fix laft lines are the beft, but not excellent. The reft of his fepulchral performances hardly deferve the notice of criticifm. The contemptible Dialogue be-. tween HE and SHE fhould have been fuppreffed for the author's fake. In his laft epitaph on himfelf, in which he attempts to be jocular upon one of the few things that make wife men ferious, he confounds the living man with the dead: Under this stone, or under this fill, When a man is once buried, the queftion, under what he is buried, is eafily decided. He forgot that though he wrote the epitaph in a state of uncertainty, yet it could not be laid over him till his grave was made. Such is the folly of wit when it is ill employed. The world has but little new; even this feems to have been borrowed from the following tuneless lines: Ludovici Areofti humantur offa Sub hoc Marmore, vel fub hac humo, feu Sub quicquid voluit benignus hæres Nam feire haud potuit futura, fed nec Ut |