From this kind of concatenated metre he afterwards refrained, and taught his followers the art of concluding their sense in couplets; which has, perhaps, been with rather too much constancy pursued.
This passage exhibits one of those triplets which are not unfrequent in this first essay, but which it is to be supposed his maturer judgment disapproved, since, in his latter works, he has totally forborne them.
His rhymes are such as seem found without difficulty, by following the sense; and are, for the most part, as exact, at least, as those of other poets, though now and then the reader is shifted off with what he can get:
O how _transform'd!_ How much unlike that Hector, who _return'd_ Clad in Achilles' spoils!
From thence a thousand lesser poets _sprung_ Like petty princes from the fall of _Rome_.
Sometimes the weight of rhyme is laid upon a word too feeble to sustain it:
Troy confounded falls From all her glories: if it might have stood By any power, by this right hand it _shou'd_.
--And though my outward state misfortune _hath_ Deprest thus low, it cannot reach my faith.
--Thus, by his fraud and our own faith o'ercome, A feigned tear destroys us, against _whom_ Tydides nor Achilles could prevail, Nor ten years' conflict, nor a thousand sail.
He is not very careful to vary the ends of his verses; in one passage the word _die_ rhymes three couplets in six.
Most of these petty faults are in his first productions, when he was less skilful, or, at least, less dexterous in the use of words; and though they had been more frequent, they could only have lessened the grace, not the strength of his composition. He is one of the writers that improved our taste, and advanced our language, and whom we ought, therefore, to read with gratitude, though, having done much, he left much to do.
[Footnote 22: In Hamilton's memoirs of count Grammont, sir John Denham is said to have been seventy-nine, when he married Miss Brook, about the year 1664; according to which statement he was born in 1585. But Dr. Johnson, who has followed Wood, is right. He entered Trinity college, Oxford, at the age of sixteen, in 1631, as appears by the following entry, which I copied from the matriculation book.
"1631. Nov. 18. Johannes Denham, Essex. filius J. Denham de Horsley-parva in com. praedict. militis, annos natus 16. MALONE".]