Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 4.djvu/74

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64
The Life of

preſent the reader with the two firſt Parts of his Verſion of that Pſalm as a ſpecimen. There have not been leſs than forty different Verſions, and Paraphraſes of this Pſalm, by poets of very conſiderable eminence, who ſeem to have vied with one another for the ſuperiority of an theſe attempts, if we may truſt our own judgment, none have ſucceeded ſo happily as Mr. Blackclock, a young gentleman now reſident at Dumfries in Scotland. This Paraphraſe is the more extraordinary, as the author of it has been blind from his cradle, and now labours under that calamity; it carries in it ſuch elevated ſtrains of poetry, ſuch pictureſque deſcriptions, and ſuch a mellifluent flow of numbers, that we are perſuaded, the reader cannot be diſpleaſed at finding it inſerted here.

Dr. Brady alſo tranſlated the Æneid of Virgil, which were publiſhed by ſubſcription in four volumes octavo, the laſt of which came out in 1726, a little before the author’s death.

He alſo publiſhed in his life-time three Volumes of Sermons in 8vo. each conſiſting of 14, all printed in London; the firſt in 1704, the ſecond in 1706, and the third in 1713. After the Dr.’s death, his eldeſt ſon, who is now a clergyman, publiſhed three other Volumes of his father’s Sermons, each alſo conſiſting of 14, printed in London 1730, 8vo. Amongſt his ſermons there is one preached on St. Cecilia’s day, in vindication of Church-muſic, firſt printed in 1697, in 4to.

PSALM