The Panegyrick upon Cromwell has obtained from the publick a very liberal dividend of praife, which however cannot be faid to have been unjustly lavifhed; 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 verfe, 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 ftriking than Waller is accustomed to produce. The fucceeding parts are variegated with better paffages and worse. 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 falfe and yulgar : Alive, Alive, in equal flames of love they burn'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 neceffary to examine fingly. They must be fuppofed 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 those 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 jealousy which makes every man unwilling to allow much excellence in another, always produces a difpofition to believe that 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 power. His Sacred Poems do not please like some 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 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 attained their end is fufficiently known, aiid it may not be improper to enquire why they have miscarried. Let no pious ear be offended if I advance, in opposition 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 fpring, and the harvefts 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 aside. The subject of the disputation 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 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, furprises 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 those which repel the imagination but religion must be shewn 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, defireable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name of the Supreme Being. Omnipotence cannot be exalted; Infi nity 1 |