Troy confounded falls
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-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 passagethe word _die_ rhymes three couplets in six. Most of these petty faults are in his first productions, when he wasless skilful, or, at least, less dexterous in the use of words; andthough they had been more frequent, they could only have lessened thegrace, not the strength of his composition. He is one of the writersthat improved our taste, and advanced our language, and whom we ought,therefore, to read with gratitude, though, having done much, he leftmuch to do. [Footnote 22: In Hamilton's memoirs of count Grammont, sir John Denhamis said to have been seventy-nine, when he married Miss Brook, about theyear 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 followingentry, which I copied from the matriculation book.
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