’Winde, gentle Ever-green, to form a Shade Around the Tomb where_ Sophocles is laid; Sweet Ivy winde thy Boughs, and intertwine With blushing Roses and the clustring Vine:  Thus will thy lasting Leaves, with Beauties hung, Prove grateful Emblems of the Lays he sung; Whose Soul, exalted like a God of Wit, Among the Muses and the Graces writ.’

This Epigram I have open’d more than any of the former:  The Thought towards the latter End seemed closer couched, so as to require an Explication.  I fancied the Poet aimed at the Picture which is generally made of Apollo_ and the Muses, he sitting with his Harp in the Middle, and they around him.  This look’d beautiful to my Thought, and because the Image arose before me out of the Words of the Original as I was reading it, I venture to explain them so.

    On Menander, the Author unnamed.

    ’The very Bees, O sweet_ Menander, hung
    To taste the Muses Spring upon thy Tongue;
    The very Graces made the Scenes you writ
    Their happy Point of fine Expression hit. 
    Thus still you live, you make your Athens shine,
    And raise its Glory to the Skies in thine.’

This Epigram has a respect to the Character of its Subject; for Menander writ remarkably with a Justness and Purity of Language.  It has also told the Country he was born in, without either a set or a hidden Manner, while it twists together the Glory of the Poet and his Nation, so as to make the Nation depend upon his for an Encrease of its own.

I will offer no more Instances at present, to shew that they who deserve Praise have it returned them from different Ages.  Let these which have been laid down, shew Men that Envy will not always prevail.  And to the End that Writers may more successfully enliven the Endeavours of one another, let them consider, in some such Manner as I have attempted, what may be the justest Spirit and Art of Praise.  It is indeed very hard to come up to it.  Our Praise is trifling when it depends upon Fable; it is false when it depends upon wrong Qualifications; it means nothing when it is general; it is extreamly difficult to hit when we propose to raise Characters high, while we keep to them justly.  I shall end this with transcribing that excellent Epitaph of Mr. Cowley, wherein, with a kind of grave and philosophick Humour, he very beautifully speaks of himself (withdrawn from the World, and dead to all the Interests of it) as of a Man really deceased.  At the same time it is an Instruction how to leave the Publick with a good Grace.

    Epitaphium Vivi Authoris.

    ’Hic, O Viator, sub Lare parvulo_
    Couleius hic est conditus, hic jacet
      Defunctus Humani Laboris
      Sorte, supervacuaque Vita,
    Non Indecora pauperie nitens,
    Et non inerti Nobilis Otio,