s of Beauty seems one of his most elaborate pieces, and is
not deficient in splendour and gaiety; but the merit of original thought
is wanting. Its highest praise is the spirit with which he celebrates
king James's consort, when she was a queen no longer.

The Essay on unnatural Flights in Poetry, is not inelegant nor
injudicious, and has something of vigour beyond most of his other
performances: his precepts are just, and his cautions proper; they are,
indeed, not new, but in a didactick poem novelty is to be expected only
in the ornaments and illustrations. His poetical precepts are
accompanied with agreeable and instructive notes.

The Mask of Peleus and Thetis has here and there a pretty line; but it
is not always melodious, and the conclusion is wretched.

In his British Enchanters he has bidden defiance to all chronology, by
confounding the inconsistent manners of different ages; but the dialogue
has often the air of Dryden's rhyming plays; and the songs are lively,
though not very correct. This is, I think, far the best of his works;
for, if it has many faults, it has, likewise, passages which are, at
least, pretty, though they do not rise to any high degree of excellence.

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[Footnote 37: To Trinity college. By the university register it appears,
that he was admitted to his master's degree in 1679; we must, therefore,
set the year of his birth some years back. H.]

YALDEN.

Thomas Yalden, the sixth son of Mr. John Yalden, of Sussex, was born in
the city of Exeter, in 1671. Having been educated in the grammar-school
belonging to Magdalen college in Oxford, he was in 1690, at the age of
nineteen, admitted commoner of Magdalen hall, under the tuition of
Josiah Pullen[38], a man whose name is still remembered in the
university. He became, next year, one of the scholars of Magdalen
college, where he was distinguished by a lucky accident.

It was his turn, one day, to pronounce a declamation; and Dr. Hough, the
president, happening to attend, thought the composition too good to be
the speaker's. Some time after, the doctor finding him a little
irregularly busy in the library, set him an exercise for punishment;
and, that he might not be deceived by any artifice, locked the door.
Yalden, as it happened, had been lately reading on the subject given,
and produced, with little difficulty, a composition which so pleased the
president, that he told him his former suspicions, and promised to
favour him.