ed the fervent piety of his last hours. He
died on the eighth of October, 1729.

Blackmore, by the unremitted enmity of the wits, whom he provoked more
by his virtue than his dulness, has been exposed to worse treatment than
he deserved. His name was so long used to point every epigram upon dull
writers, that it became, at last, a by-word of contempt; but it deserves
observation, that malignity takes hold only of his writings, and that
his life passed without reproach, even when his boldness of reprehension
naturally turned upon him many eyes desirous to espy faults, which many
tongues would have made haste to publish. But those who could not
blame, could, at least, forbear to praise, and, therefore, of his
private life and domestick character there are no memorials.

As an author he may justly claim the honours of magnanimity. The
incessant attacks of his enemies, whether serious or merry, are never
discovered to have disturbed his quiet, or to have lessened his
confidence in himself; they neither awed him to silence nor to caution;
they neither provoked him to petulance, nor depressed him to complaint.
While the distributors of literary fame were endeavouring to depreciate
and degrade him, he either despised or defied them, wrote on as he had
written before, and never turned aside to quiet them by civility, or
repress them by confutation.

He depended with great security on his own powers, and perhaps was, for
that reason, less diligent in perusing books. His literature was, I
think, but small. What he knew of antiquity, I suspect him to have
gathered from modern compilers; but, though he could not boast of much
critical knowledge, his mind was stored with general principles, and he
left minute researches to those whom he considered as little minds.

With this disposition he wrote most of his poems. Having formed a
magnificent design, he was careless of particular and subordinate
elegancies; he studied no niceties of versification; he waited for no
felicities of fancy; but caught his first thoughts in the first words in
which they were presented: nor does it appear that he saw beyond his own
performances, or had ever elevated his views to that ideal perfection,
which every genius, born to excel, is condemned always to pursue, and
never overtake. In the first suggestions of his imagination he
acquiesced; he thought them good, and did not seek for better. His works
may be read a long time without the occurrence of a