with a superior and invisible being.
He probably considered the suggestions of his conscience, or reason,
as revelations, or inspirations from the Supreme mind, bestowed, on
important occasions, by a special superintending providence.

I acknowledge all the merit of the hymn of Cleanthes to Jupiter, which
you ascribe to it. It is as highly sublime as a chaste and correct
imagination can permit itself to go. Yet in the contemplation of a being
so superlative, the hyperbolic flights of the Psalmist may often be
followed with approbation, even with rapture; and I have no hesitation
in giving him the palm over all the hymnists of every language, and of
every time. Turn to the 148th psalm in Brady and Tate's version. Have
such conceptions been ever before expressed? Their version of the 15th
psalm is more to be esteemed for its pithiness than its poetry. Even
Sternhold, the leaden Sternhold, kindles, in a single instance, with the
sublimity of his original, and expresses the majesty of God descending
on the earth, in terms not unworthy of the subject.

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The Latin versions of this passage by Buchanan and by Johnston, are but
mediocres. But the Greek of Duport is worthy of quotation.

The best collection of these psalms is that of the Octagonian dissenters
of Liverpool, in their printed form of prayer; but they are not always
the best versions. Indeed, bad is the best of the English versions; not
a ray of poetical genius having ever been employed on them. And how much
depends on this, may be seen by comparing Brady and Tate's 15th psalm
with Blacklock's _Justum et tenacem propositi virum_ of Horace, quoted
in Hume's History, Car. 2. ch. 66. A translation of David in this style,
or in that of Pompei's Cleanthes, might give us some idea of the merit
of the original. The character, too, of the poetry of these hymns is
singular to us; written in monostichs, each divided into strophe
and antistrophe, the sentiment of the first member responded with
amplification or antithesis in the second.

On the subject of the Postscript of yours of August the 16th and of Mrs.
Adams's letter, I am silent. I know the depth of the affliction it has
caused, and can sympathize with it the more sensibly, inasmuch as there
is no degree of affliction, produced by the loss of those dear to us,
which experience has not taught me to estimate. I have ever found time
and silence the only medicine, and these but assuage, they nev