XII. Intended for Sir ISAAC NEWTON, . In Westminster-Abbey. ISAACUS NEWTONIUS: Teftantur, Tempus, Natura, Cælum : Hoc marmor fatetur. Nature, and Nature's laws, lay hid in night, Of this epitaph, fhort as it is, the faults seem not to be very few. Why part should be Latin and part English, it is not easy to discover. In the Latin, the oppofition of Immortalis and Mortalis, is a mere found, or a mere quibble; he is not immortal in any sense 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. 1 On EPMUND Duke of BUCKINGHAM,` whe 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 justest pride from fate, Or add one patriot to a finking state; This weeping marble had not ask'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 less noisy famé Attend the shade 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, This epitaph Mr. Warburton prefers to the reft, but I know not for what reafon. To crown with reflection is furely a mode of fpeech approaching to nonfenfe. Opening virtues blooming round, is something like tautology; the fix following lines are poor and profaick. Art is in another couplet ufed for arts, that a rhyme may be had to heart. The The fix laft lines are the best, but not excellent. The rest of his fepulchral performances hardly deferve the notice of criticism. The contemptible Dialogue between, HE and SHE should have been fuppreffed for the author's fake. In his last epitaph on himself, 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 ftone, or under this fill, When a man is once buried, the question, under what he is buried, is easily decided. He forgot that though he wrote the epitaph in a ftate 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 wretchedness seems to have been borrowed from the following tuneless lines : Ludovici Ludovici Areofti humantur offa Sub hoc marmore, vel fub hac humo, feu Sive hærede benignior comes, feu Nam fcire haud potuit futura, fed nec Ut utnam cuperet parare vivens, Surely Ariofto did not venture to expect that his trifle would have ever had fuch an illuftrious imitator. PITT. PIT T. CH HRISTOPHER PITT, of whom whatever I fhall relate, more than has been already published, I owe to the kind communication of Dr. Warton, was born in 1699 at Blandford, the fon of a physician much esteemed. He was, in 1714, received as a fcholar into Winchester College, where he was diftinguished by exercises of uncommon elegance; and, at his removal to New College in 1719, presented to the electors, as the product of his private and voluntary ftudies, a compleat verfion |