tame verses, he could manage pretty well; or even improve them in the reading: but a passage of Virgil, Milton or Shakespeare, would sometimes quite oppress him, that you could hear little else than some ill-articulated sounds, rising as from the bottom of his breast.
He had improved his taste upon the bed originals, ancient and modern; but could not bear to write what was not strictly his own, what had not more immediately struck his imagination, or touched his heart: so that he is not in the least concerned in that question about the merit or demerit of imitators. What he borrows from the ancients, he gives us in an avowed faithful paraphrase or translation; as we see in a few passages taken from Virgil, and in that beautiful picture from Pliny the elder, where the course, and gradual increase, of the Nile are figured by the stages of man's life.
The Autumn was his favourite season for poetical composition, and the deep silence of the night, the time he commonly chose for such studies; so that he would often be heard walking in his library till near morning, humming over, in his way, what he was to correct and write out next day.
The amusements of his leisure hours were civil and natural history, voyages, and the relations of travellers, the most authentic he could procure: and, had his situation favoured it, he would certainly have excelled in gardening, agriculture and every rural improvement and exercise. Although he performed on no instrument, he was passionately fond of music, and would sometimes listen a full hour at his window to the
nightingales
