rsies which agitated the established church,
and their devotion might indulge itself without incurring the
suspicion of a fanatical spirit. Then the solemnity of their worship
is fitted to inspire splendid and gorgeous strains, such as Dryden's
paraphrase of the Veni Creator; and their own fallen fortunes in
England, no less naturally, would fill them with a sense of decay very
favourable to the plaintive tenderness of Habington and Crashaw.

A feeling of this kind, joined to the effect of distressing languor
and sickness, may be discerned, occasionally, in the writings of
Bishop Ken; though he was far indeed from being a Romanist. We shall
hardly find, in all ecclesiastical history, a greener spot than the
later years of this courageous and affectionate pastor; persecuted
alternately by both parties, and driven from his station in his
declining age; yet singing on, with unabated cheerfulness, to the
last. His poems are not popular, nor probably ever will be, for
reasons already touched upon; but whoever in earnest loves his three
well-known hymns, and knows how to value such unaffected strains of
poetical devotion, will find his account, in turning over his four
volumes, half narrative and half lyric, and all avowedly on sacred
subjects; the narrative often cumbrous, and the lyric verse not seldom
languid and redundant: yet all breathing such an angelic spirit,
interspersed with such pure and bright touches of poetry, that such a
reader as we have supposed will scarcely find it in his heart to
criticize them.

Between that time and ours, the form of sacred poetry which has
succeeded best in attracting public attention, is the didactic: of
which Davies in Queen Elizabeth's reign, Sir Richard Blackmore in King
William's, Young in the middle, and Cowper in the close, of the last
century, may fairly be taken as specimens, differing from each other
according to the differences of their respective literary eras.
Davies, with his Lucretian majesty (although he wants the moral pathos
of the Roman poet), representing aptly enough the age of Elizabeth;
Blackmore, with his easy paragraphs, the careless style of King
Charles's days; Young, with his pointed sentences, transferring to
graver subjects a good deal of the manner of Pope; and Cowper, with
his agreeable but too unsparing descriptions, coming nearer to the
present day, which appears, both in manners and in scenery, to delight
in Dutch painting, rather than in what is mo