He has, in the first, used the pagan deities with great propriety :

"Twas want of fuch a precedent as this Made the old heathen frame their gods amifs.

In the poem on the Navy, those lines are very noble, which fuppofe the King's power fecure against a second Deluge; fo noble, that it were almoft criminal to remark the mistake of centre for furface, or to say that the empire of the fea would be worth little if it were not that the waters terminate in land.

The poem upon Sallee has forcible sentiments; but the conclufion is feeble. That on the Repairs of St. Paul's has something vulgar and obvious; fuch as the mention of Amphion; and fomething violent and harsh,

as

So all our minds with his confpire to grace
The Gentiles' great apostle, and deface
Those state-obfcuring fheds, that like a

chain

Seem'd to confine, and fetter him again :
Which the glad faint fhakes off at his com-
mand,

As once the viper from his facred hand.
So joys the aged oak, when we divide
The creeping ivy from his injur'd fide.

Of the two laft couplets, the first is extravagant, and the fecond mean.

His praise of the Queen is too much exaggerated; and the thought, that the "faves lovers, by cutting off hope, as gangrenes

are cured by lopping the limb," prefents nothing to the mind but difguft and horror.

Of the Battle of the Summer Islands, it seems not easy to say whether it is intended to raise terror or merriment. The beginning is too fplendid for jeft, and the conclufion too light for seriousness. The verfification is ftudied, the scenes are diligently difplayed, and the images artfully amplified; but as it ends neither in joy nor forrow, it will scarcely be read a fecond time.

The Panegyrick upon Cromwel has obtained from the public a very liberal dividend of praife, which however cannot be faid to have been unjustly lavished; for fuch a series of verfes had rarely appeared before in the English language. Of the lines fome are grand, fome are graceful, and all are mufical. There is now and then a feeble verse, or a trifling thought; but its great fault is the choice of its hero.

The poem of The War with Spain begins with lines more vigorous and striking than Waller is accustomed to produce. The fucceeding parts are variegated with better paffages and worfe. There is fomething too farfetched 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 fpices about him, nor expreffed their affection and their end by a conceit at once false and vulgar:

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

The verfes to Charles, on his Return, were doubtless intended to counterbalance the panegyric on Cromwel. If it has been thought inferior to that with which it is naturally compared, the cause 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 sentiments 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 seems 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 powers.

His Sacred Poems do not please like some 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 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 becaufe 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 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 state than poetry can confer.

The effence of poetry is invention; fuch invention as, by producing fomething unexpected, furprifes 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 sentiment, and very little from novelty of expreffion.

Poetry pleases by exhibiting an idea more grateful to the mind than things themfelves afford. This effect proceeds from the difplay of those 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 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 Chriftians from metrical devotion. Whatever is great, defirable, or tremendous, is comprifed 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. Thankf

giving,