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 praife the Maker for his works, in lines which no reader fhall lay afide. The fubject of the difputation is not piety, but the motives to piety; that of the defcription is not God, but the works of God.

Contemplative piety, or the intercourfe between 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 than poetry can confer.

The effence of poetry is invention; fuch invention as, by producing fomething unexpected, surprises and delights. The topicks. of devotion are few, and being few are univerfally known; but, few as they are, they can be made no more; they can receive no 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. 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 fuch as it is, it is known already.

From poetry the reader juftly expects, and from good poetry always obtains, the entargement of his comprehenfion and elevation of his fancy; but this is rarely to be hoped by Chriftians from metrical devotion. Whatever is great, defirable, or tremen

dous, 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 most joyful of all holy effufions, yet addreffed to a Being without paflions, is confined to a few modes, and is to be felt rather than expreffed. Repentance, trembling in the prefence 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 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 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 Chriftian Theology are too fimple for eloquence, too facred for fiction, and too majeftick 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 owing to the foftness and fmoothnefs of his Numbers; it is proper to confider thofe minute particulars to which a versi fier must attend.

He certainly very much excelled in fmoothness moft of the writers who were living when his poetry

I

commenced,

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 ftudied 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 strength to Denham, and of fweetnefs to Waller.

His excellence of verfification has fome abatements. He uses the expletive do very frequently; and, though he lived to fee it almoft univerfally ejected, was not more careful to avoid it in his last compofitions than in his first. Praise had given him confidence; and finding the world fatisfied, he fatiffied 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 verfe, have been cenfured by Mrs. Phillips, who was his rival in the tranflation 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, affeð and fometimes retains

Sir John Davies, intituled, "Nofce teipfum. This Oracle "expounded in two Elegies; I. Of Humane Knowledge; "II. Of the Soule of Man and the Immortalitie thereof, 1599." R.

the final fyllable of the preterite, as amazed, fuppofed, of which I know not whether 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 elegance 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 converfation and large acquaintance with life would eafily fupply. They had however then, perhaps, that grace of novelty which they are now often fuppofed to want by those who, having already found them in later books, do not know or enquire who produced them firft. This treatment is unjuft. Let not the original author lofe by his imitators.

Praife, however, fhould be due before it is given. The author of Waller's Life afcribes to him the first practife of what Erythræus and fome late criticks call Alliteration, of ufing in the fame verfe many words beginning with the fame letter. But this knack, whatever be its value, was fo frequent among early writers, that Gafcoigne, a writer of the fixteenth century, warns the young poet against affecting it: Shakspeare, in the Midfummer Night's Dream, is fuppofed to ridicule it; and in another play the fonnet of Holofernes fully displays 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 imagination, 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 bafis to any pofition, though fometimes it may furnish a tranfient allufion, or flight illuftration. No modern monarch can be much exalted by hearing that, as Hercules 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 to our elegance of diction, and fomething to our propriety of thought; and to him may be applied what Taffo faid, with equal fpirit and juftice, of himself and Guarini, when, having perused the Paftor Fido, he cried out, "If "he had not read Aminta, he had not excelled it."