Great ingenuity, however, and vigor of thought, sometimes break out amidst those unnatural conceptions: a few anacreontics surprise us by their ease and gayety: his prose writings please by the honesty and goodness which they express, and even by their spleen and melancholy.

This author was much more praised and admired during his lifetime, and celebrated after his death, than the great Milton.

He died in 1667, aged forty-nine.
Sir John Denham, in his Cooper's Hill, (for none of his other poems merit attention,) has a loftiness and vigor which had not before him been attained by any English poet who wrote in rhyme.

The mechanical difficulties of that measure retarded its improvement.

Shakspeare, whose tragic scenes are sometimes so wonderfully forcible and expressive, is a very indifferent poet when he attempts to rhyme.