eighty-two any part of his poetical power.

His Sacred Poems do not please like some of his other works; but
before the fatal fifty-five, had he written on the same subjects,
his success 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 seldom attained their end is sufficiently known, and it may not
be improper to inquire 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 didactic poem; and
he, who has the happy power of arguing in verse, will not lose it
because his subject is sacred. A poet may describe the beauty and
the grandeur of nature, the flowers of the spring, and the harvests
of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide, and the revolutions of the
sky, and praise the Maker for his works, in lines which no reader
shall 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 intercourse between God and the human
soul, 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 essence of poetry is invention; such invention as by producing