(the first of its kind) with Cowley. But when he asserts that devotional poetry is unsatisfactory, because the paucity of its topics enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity of the matter rejects the ornaments of figurative diction, it seems as if he had taken a most contracted and short-sighted view of the subject, and as if he had forgotten that of all poetry, inspired poetry is the most figurative. He says of Watts himself, in his poetical character, that his judgment was clear, and that he noted beauties and faults with very nice discernment. Where was this judgment and this nice discernment when he professed his admiration of Sir Richard Blackmore, and went for an example of English heroic verse in his Grammar, to that knight's "excellent poem, called King Arthur?" But to this praise of Dr. Watts every reader will assent, that his thoughts are always religiously pure; "that he is at least one of the few poets with whom youth and ignorance may be safely pleased; "that happy will that reader be whose mind is disposed, by his verse or his prose, to copy his benevolence to man, and his reverence to God;" that "if he stood not in the first class of genius, he compensated this defect by a ready application of his powers to the promotion of piety;" and that "to those all human eulogies are vain, whom we believe applauded by angels and numbered with the just." دو 66 Feeble as Dr. Watts always was in body, and much as he had suffered from illness, he attained to a good old age. The conduct of some very near relations embittered his latter days, and for a while he seemed, being at the time in a state of extreme weakness, stupefied by it to such a degree as hardly to take notice of any thing about him. The worst part of this behaviour, which one of Doddridge's friends characterizes as most marvellous, infamous, enormous wickedness," was concealed from him. "Lady Abney," says the writer, "keeps him in peaceful ignorance, and his enemies at a becoming distance; so that in the midst of this cruel persecution he lives comfortably; and when a friend asks him how he does, answers, 6 waiting God's leave to die.' It was in this stage of his decay that he mentioned the observation of an aged minister, how "the most learned and knowing Christians, when they come to die, have only the same plain promises of the Gospel for their support, as the common and unlearned; and so," said he, "I find it. It is the plain promises of the Gospel that are my support; and I bless God that they are plain promises, that do not require much labour and pains to understand them ; for I can do nothing now but look into my Bible for some promise to support me, and live upon that." In this patient and peaceful state of mind, on the 25th of Nov. 1748, and in the 75th year of his age, he departed "in sure and certain hope." His body was deposited in the burial-ground of Bunhill-fields. His pupil, Sir John Hartopp, and his true friend, Lady Abney, under whose roof he had partaken of all the comforts of affluence for six-and-thirty years, erected a handsome tomb over his grave; the epitaph he had composed himself, in these humble words: ISAAC WATTS, D. D. Pastor of a Church of Christ in London, successor to THE REV. JOSEPH CARYL, DR. JOHN OWEN, MR. DAVID after fifty years of feeble labours in the gospel, In uno Jesu omnia. 2 Cor. v. 8. Absent from the body and present with the Lord. Col. iii. 4. When Christ who is my life shall appear, then shall I also appear with him in glory. Keswick, August 20, 1834. R. S. HORE LYRICE: POEMS, CHIEFLY OF THE LYRIC KIND, IN THREE BOOKS. SACRED I. TO DEVOTION AND PIETY. II. TO VIRTUE, HONOR, AND FRIENDSHIP. III. TO THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD. si non Urania lyram Cœlestem cohibet, nec Polyhymnia Humanum refugit tendere barbiton. HOR. Od. I. imitated. ̓Αθάνατον μὲν πρῶτα Θεόν, νόμῳ ὡς διάκειται, PYTHAG. Aur. Carm. |