The remaining pieces it is not neceffary to examine fingly. They must be supposed to have faults and beauties of the fame kind with the reft. The Sacred Poems, however, deserve particular regard; they were the work of Waller's declining life, of thofe hours in which he looked upon the fame and the folly of the time past with the fentiments which his great predeceffor Petrarch bequeathed to pofterity, upon his review of that love and poetry which have given him immortality.

That natural jealoufy 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 ourselves. 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 small portion. Intellectual decay is doubtlefs not uncommon; but it

feems

feems not to be univerfal. Newton was in his eighty-fifth year improving his chronology, a few days before his death; and Wal

ler

appears not, in my opinion, to have lost 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 fiftyfive, had he written on the fame fubjects, his fuccefs would hardly have been better.

It has been the frequent lamentation of good men, that verfe 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 D d 4 defcribe

defcribe the beauty and the grandeur of Nas.

ture, the flowers of the Spring, and the hare vefts of Autumn, the viciffitudes of the Tidel and the revolutions of the Sky, and praise thei Maker for his works, in lines which no reas der shall lay afide. The fubject of the difsi putation is not piety, but the motives to piety; that of the description is not God, but the works of God.

Contemplative piety, or the intercourfe be tween God and the human foul, cannot be poetical. Man admitted to implore the mercy, of his Creator, and plead the merits of his, Redeemer, is already in a higher ftate tham poetry can confer.

The effence of poetry is invention; fuch invention as, as, by producing fomething unexpected, furprises and delights. The topicks of devotion are few, and being few are uni verfally known; but, few as there are, they can be made no more; they can receive, nor grace from novelty of fentiment, and very little from novelty of expreffion.

Poetry pleases by exhibiting an idea more grateful to the mind than things themselves afford.

afford. This effect proceeds from the display of those parts of nature which attract, and the concealment of thofe which repel, the imagination: but religion must be fhewn as it is; fuppreffion and addition equally corrupt it; and such as it is, it is known already.

From poetry the reader justly 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 Christians from metrical devotion. Whatever is great, defireable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name of the Supreme Being. Omnipotence 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 moft 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 prefence of the judge, is

not

not at leisure 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 fentiments purely religious, it will be found that the moft 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 verse can do is to help the memory, and delight the ear, and for these purposes it may be very ufeful; 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 recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirror the fidereal hemifphere.

As much of Waller's reputation was ow ing to the foftnefs and smoothness of his Numbers; it is proper to confider those minute particulars to which a verfifier muft attend.

He