nity 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 itfelf though many topicks of perfuafion; but fupplication to God can only cry for mercy.

Of fentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most fimple expreffion is the most fublime. Poetry lofes its luftre and its power, because it is applied to the decoration of fomething more excellent than itself. All that verfe can do is to help the memory, and delight the ear, and for thefe purposes it may be very useful; but it fupplies nothing to the mind. The ideas of Chrif

tian 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 hemisphere:

As much of Waller's reputation was owed to the foftnefs and fmoothnefs of his Numbers; it is proper to confider thofe minute particulars to which a versifyer must attend.

He certainly very much excelled in fimoothhefs moft of the writers who were living when his poetry commenced. The Poets of Elizabeth had attained an art of modulation, which was afterwards neglected or forgotten. Fairfax was acknowledged by him as his model; and he might have studied with advantage the poem of Davies, which, though merely philofophical, yet feldom leaves the ear ungratified.

But he was rather fmooth than ftrong; of the full refounding line, which Pope attributes to Dryden, he has given very few examples. The critical decifion has given the praise of ftrength

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strength to Denham, and of sweetness to Waller.

His excellence of verfification has fome abatements. He uses the expletive do very frequently; and though he used to fee it almost universally ejected, was not more careful to avoid it in his laft compositions than in his first. Praise had given him confidence; and finding the world fatisfied, he fatisfied himself.

His rhymes are fometimes weak words: fo is found to make the rhyme twice in ten lines, and occurs often as a rhyme through his book.

His double rhymes, in heroick verse, have been cenfured by Mrs. Phillips, who was his rival in the translation of Corneille's Pompey; and more faults might be found, were not the enquiry below attention.

He fometimes ufes the obfolete termination of verbs, as waxeth, affecteth; and sometimes retains the final fyllable of the preterite, as amazed, fuppofed; of which I know not whe

ther

ther it is not to the detriment of our language that we have totally rejected them.

Of triplets he is fparing; but he did not wholly forbear them: of an Alexandrine he has given no example.

The general character of his poetry is ele

gance and gaiety. He is never pathetick, and very rarely fublime. He feems neither to have had a mind much elevated by nature, nor amplified by learning. His thoughts are fuch as a liberal conversation and large ac-, quaintance with life would easily supply. They had however then, perhaps, that grace of novelty, which they are now often suppofed to want by those who, having already found them in later books, do not know or enquire who produced them firft. This treat-. ment is unjuft. Let not the original author lose by his imitators.

Praise however should be due before it is given. The author of Waller's Life afcribes to him the first practice, of what Erythræus and fome late critics call Alliteration, of ufing in the fame verfe many words begin

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beginning with the fame letter. But this knack, whatever be its value, was fo frequent among early writers, that Gascoign, a writer of the fixteenth century, warns the young poet against affecting it; and Shakfpeare in the Midsummer Night's Dream is supposed to ridicule it.

He borrows too many of his fentiments and illuftrations from the old Mythology, for which it is vain to plead the example of ancient poets: the deities which they introduced fo frequently, were confidered as realities, fo far as to be received by the imagina tion, whatever fober reafon might even then determine. But of thefe images time has tarnished the fplendor. A fiction, not only detected but defpifed, can never afford a folid basis to any pofition, though sometimes

it

may furnish a tranfient allufion, or flight illuftration. No modern monarch can be much exalted by hearing that, as Hercules had had his club, he has his navy.

But of the praise of Waller, though much may be taken away, much will remain; for it cannot be denied that he added fomething