satire, and with thoughts sometimes absolutely approaching to pleasantry. His ingenuity in the false sublime is very peculiar. In Night IX. he concludes his description of the Day of Judgment by showing the just and the unjust consigned respectively to their 'sulphureous or ambrosial seats,' while 'Hell through all her glooms Returns in groans a melancholy roar.' This is aptly put under the book of Consolation. But instead of winding up his labours, he proceeds through a multitude of reflections, and amidst many comparisons assimilates the constellations of heaven to gems of immense weight and value on a ring for the finger of their Creator. Conceit could hardly go farther than to ascribe finery to Omnipotence. The taste of the French artist was not quite so bold, when in the picture of Belshazzar's feast he put a ring and ruffle on the hand that was writing on the wall. Here, however, he was in earnest comparatively with some other passages." No doubt much has to be surrendered in reducing to shape the floating, amorphous impressions concerning Young, whether as man or poet, in the popular mind. The grave fault of the foregoing critique is its tendency to resolve inconsistency into insincerity. An important per contra inference in favour of Young's weight of character must be drawn if their legitimate value be attached to all the particulars of the following extract from a letter of the poet Cowper to his cousin, Lady Hesketh, which bears the date of July 12, 1765, three months to a day, after the death of Dr. Young: "Our mentioning Newton's treatise on the Prophecies brings to my mind an anecdote of Dr. Young, who, you know, died lately at Welwyn. Dr. Cotton, who was intimate with him, paid him a visit about a fortnight before he was seized with his last illness. The old man R was then in perfect health; the antiquity of his person, the gravity of his utterance, and the earnestness with which he discoursed about religion, gave him, in the doctor's eye, the appearance of a prophet. They had been delivering their sentiments, upon this book of Newton, when Young closed the conference thus :-'My friend, there are two considerations upon which my faith in Christ is built as upon a rock: the fall of man, the redemption of man, and the resurrection of man; the three cardinal articles of our religion are such as human ingenuity could never have invented, therefore they must be divine. The other argument is this: If the Prophecies have been fulfilled (of which there is abundant demonstration) the Scripture must be the Word of God; and if the Scripture is the Word of God, Christianity must be true."" MAN. How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, A worm! a god!—I tremble at myself, And in myself am lost. At home a stranger, Triumphantly distressed! what joy! what dread! What can preserve my life? or what destroy? "Tis past conjecture; all things rise in proof. Unfettered with her gross companion's fall. For human weal heaven husbands all events: SHORTNESS AND TEDIOUSNESS OF TIME. Ah! how unjust to Nature and himself (For Nature's voice unstifled would recal) Drives headlong towards the precipice of Death; Death, most our dread; Death, thus more dreadful made; Oh what a riddle of absurdity! Leisure is pain; takes off our chariot wheels; How heavily we drag the load of life; Blest leisure is our curse; like that of Cain, It makes us wander, wander earth around, To fly that tyrant Thought. As Atlas groaned PHILIP DODDRIDGE was born in London, June 26th, 1702. He was sent to school at Kingston-on-Thames in 1712; and in 1715, upon the death of his father, was removed to a school at St. Alban's. In 1719, having the previous year declined an offer made by the Duchess of Bedford for his support at the university, Doddridge, who was at once himself a dissenter, the son of a dissenter, and grandson of a deprived Nonconforming incumbent of Shepperton, was placed at a Dissenting academy established first at Kibworth, and then at Hinckley, in Leicestershire. In 1722, he preached his first sermon at Hinck ley, and in the following year settled at Kibworth, till, in 1729, he removed to Northampton. Here he opened his house for the reception of pupils, with so much success that men of all ranks and opinions confided to his learning, piety, and discretion, the training of their sons. He died in the year 1751, at Lisbon, whither he had gone in quest of health. The works by which he is best known at the present day are "The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul," published in 1745; "Some Remarkable Passages in the Life of Colonel James Gardiner, who was slain by the Rebels at the Battle of Prestonpans, Sept. 21, 1745;" and his "Family Expositor." His "Hymns founded on Various Texts in the Holy Scriptures," were edited by his friend Job Orton, who was also his biographer. GOD THE EVERLASTING LIGHT OF THE SAINTS ABOVE. (Isaiah lx. 20.) Ye golden lamps of heaven, farewell, And thou, refulgent Orb of day, My soul, that springs beyond thy sphere Ye Stars are but the shining dust The pavement of those heavenly courts The Father of eternal light Shall there his beams display; Nor shall one moment's darkness mix |