bifhop, and being familiarly converfant with Kelly his fecretary, fell under fufpicion, and was taken into cuftody.

Upon his examination he was charged with a dangerous correfpondence with Kelly. The correspondence he acknowledged; but maintained, that it had no treafonable tendency. His papers were feized; but nothing was found that could fix a crime upon him, except two words in his pocket-book, thorough-paced doctrine. This expreffion the imagination of his examiners had impregnated with treafon, and the doctor was enjoined to explain them. Thus preffed, he told them that the words had lain unheeded

in his pocket-book from the time of queen Anne, and that he was afhamed to give an account of them; but the truth was, that he had gratified his curiofity one day, by hearing Daniel Burgefs in the pulpit, and those words was a memorial hint of a remarkable fentence by which he warned his congregation to beware of thorough-paced doctrine, that doctrine, which, coming in at one ear, paces through the head, and goes out at the other.

Nothing worse than this appearing in his papers, and no evidence arising against him, he was fet at liberty.

It will not be fuppofed that a man of this character attained high dignities in the church; but he still retained the friendship, and frequented the converfation, of a very numerous and splendid body of acquaintance. He died July 16, 1736, in the 66th year of his age.

Of his poems, many are of that irregular kind, which, when he formed his poetical character, was fuppofed to be Pindarick. Having fixed his attention on Cowley as a model, he has attempted in fome fort to rival him, and has written a Hymn to Darkness, evidently as a counter-part to Cowley's Hymn to Light,

This hymn feems to be his best performance, and is, for the most part, imagined with great vigour, and expreffed with great propriety. I will not transcribe it. The seven first stanzas are good; but the third, fourth, and feventh are the best: the eighth feems

3

1

feems to involve a contradiction; the tenth is exquifitely beautiful; the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth, are partly mythological, and partly religious, and therefore not fuitable to each other: he might better have made the whole merely philofophical.

There are two ftanzas in this poem where Yalden may be fufpected, though hardly convicted, of having confulted the Hymnus ad Umbram of Wowerus, in the fixth ftanza, which answers in fome fort to these lines:

Illa fuo præeft nocturnis numine facrisPerque vias errare novis dat spectra figuris, Manefque excitos medios ululare per agros Sub noctem, et queftu notos complere penates.

And again, at the conclusion:

Illa fuo fenium fecludit corpore toto
Haud numerans jugi fugientia fecula lapfu,
Ergo ubi poftremum mundi compage folutâ
Hanc rerum molem fuprema abfumpferit hora
Ipfa leves cineres nube amplectetur opacâ,
Et prifco imperio rurfus dominabitur UMBRA.

His Hymn to Light is not equal to the other. He feems to think that there is an East absolute and positive where the Morning rises.

In the laft ftanza, having mentioned the fudden eruption of new created Light, he Lays,

Awhile th' Almighty wondering stood.

He ought to have remembered that Infinite Knowledge can never wonder. All wonder is the effect of novelty upon ignorance.

Of his other poems it is fufficient to say that they deserve perufal, though they are not always exactly polished, and the rhymes are fometimes very ill forted, and though his faults feem rather the omiffions of idleness than the negligences of enthusiasm.

TICKELL.

TICKEL L.