Without intending to diminish the just esteem which is their due, or to contend with their many admirers, we may observe, that their fame appears to us much greater than their merit; and that if language owes them much for the exact attention and propriety with which they wrote it, poetry is indebted to them less, and that their reputation appears to rest more on their freedom from the vices, than on any great display of the virtues of composition. In lyric poetry they are easy, pure, and ingenious; but generally devoid of enthusiasm, majesty, and fancy. As little have they in their love pieces the grace and tenderness which erotic poetry requires; and if we except some sonnets of Lupercio, not one of their compositions in this class can be quoted as deserving to arrest the attention, or be recommended to the memory of lovers. I will not speak of the _Isabella_ and the _Alexandra_, as it is evident to all, even without the necessity of a profound acquaintance with the subject, that these compositions have nothing of the tragedy in them but the name, and the coolly atrocious deaths with which they end. Their severe character, the bias of their disposition, more ingenious and neat than florid and expansive, the wit and mirth which at times they knew how to fling forth, were more fit for moral and satiric poetry, in which they have succeeded best. There are in them an infinite number of strokes, some valuable for their depth and boldness, and many for that ingenuity of thought, that facility and propriety of expression, which has rendered them proverbial.