fetched in the comparison of the Spaniards drawing the English on, by faluting St. Lucar with cannon, to lambs awakening the lion by bleating. The fate of the Marquis and his Lady, who were burnt in their fhip, would have moved more, had the poet not made him die like the Phoenix, because he had spices about him, nor expreffed their affection and their end by a conceit at once falfe and vulgar:

Alive, in equal flames of love they burn'd,
And now together are to aflies turn'd.

The verfes to Charles, on his Return, were doubtless intended to counterbalance the panegyric on Cromwell. If it has been thought inferior to that with which it is naturally compared, the caufe of its deficience has been already remarked.

The remaining pieces it is not necessary to examine fingly. They must be supposed to have faults and beauties of the fame kind with the reft. The Sacred Poems, however, deferve particular regard; they were the work of Waller's declining life, of those hours in which he looked upon the fame and the folly of the time past with the fentiments which his great predeceffor. Petrarch

trarch bequeathed to pofterity, upon his review of that love and poetry which have given him immortality.

That natural jealousy which makes every man unwilling to allow much excellence in ́another, always produces a difpofition to believe that the mind grows old with the body; and that he whom we are now forced to confefs fuperior, is haftening daily to a level with ourfelves. By delighting to think this of the living, we learn to think it of the dead; and Fenton, with all his kindness for Waller, has the luck to mark the exact time when his genius paffed the zenith, which he places at his fifty-fifth year. This is to allot the mind but a fmall portion. Intellectual decay is doubtless not uncommon; but it feems not to be univerfal. Newton was in his eighty-fifth year improving his chronology, a few days before his death; and Waller appears not, in my opinion, to have loft at eighty-two any part of his poetical power.

His Sacred Poems do not please like fome of his other works; but before the fatal fifty-five, had he written on the fame fubjects, his fuccefs would hardly have been better.

It has been the frequent lamentation of good men, that verse has been too little applied to the purposes of worship, and many attempts have been made to animate devotion by pious. poetry; that they have very feldom attained their end is fufficiently known, and it may not be improper to enquire why they have mifcarried.

Let no pious ear be offended if I advance, in oppofition to many authorities, that poetical devotion cannot often please. The doctrines of religion may indeed be defended in a didactick poem; and he who has the happy power of arguing in verfe, will not lofe it because his fubject is facred. A poet may describe the beauty and the grandeur of Nature, the flowers of the Spring, and the harvests of Autumn, the viciffitudes of the Tide, and the revolutions of the Sky, and praise the Maker for his works in lines, which no reader fhall lay afide. The fubject of the difputation is not pity, but the motives to piety; that of the defcription is not God, but the works of God.

Contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human foul, cannot be poetical. Man admitted to implore the mercy VOL. II.

F

of

of his Creator, and plead the merits of his Redeemer, is already in a higher state than poetry can confer.

The effence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, furprises and delights. The topicks of

devotion are few, and being few are univerfally known; but, few as there are, they can be made no more; they can receive no grace from novelty of fentiment, and very little from novelty of expreffion.

Foetry pleases by exhibiting an idea more grateful to the mind than things themselves afford. This effect proceeds from the display of thofe parts of nature which attract, and the concealment of those which repel the imagination: but religion must be fhewn as it is; fuppreffion and addition equally corrupt it; and fuch as it is, it is known already.

From poetry the reader juftly expects, and from good poetry always obtains, the enlargement of his comprehenfion and elevation of his fancy; but this is rarely to be hoped by Chriftians from metrical devotion. Whatever is great, defireable, or tremendous, is comprifed in the name of the Supreme Being. Omnipo

tence

tence cannot be exalted; Infinity cannot be amplified; Perfection cannot be improved.

The employments of pious meditation are Faith, Thanksgiving, Repentance, and Supplication. Faith, invariably uniform, cannot be invested by fancy with decorations. Thanksgiving, the most joyful of all holy effufions, yet addreffed to a Being without paffions, is confined to a few modes, and is to be felt rather than expreffed. Repentance trembling in the presence of the judge, is not at leifure for cadences and epithets. Supplication of man

to man may diffuse itself through many topicks of perfuafion; but fupplication to God can only cry for mercy.

Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most fimple expreffion is the moft fublime. Poetry lofes its luftre and its power, because it is applied to the decoration of fomething more excellent than itself. All that pious verfe can do is to help the memory, and delight the ear, and for these purposes it may be very useful; but it fupplies nothing to the mind. The ideas of Chriftian Theology are too fimple for eloquence, too facred for fiction, and too majestick for ornament; to F 2

re