for abetters or partakers of the horrid conspiracy; and Dr.
Yalden, having some acquaintance with the bishop, and being familiarly
conversant with Kelly, his secretary, fell under suspicion, and was
taken into custody.

Upon his examination he was charged with a dangerous correspondence with
Kelly. The correspondence he acknowledged; but maintained that it had no
treasonable tendency. His papers were seized; but nothing was found that
could fix a crime upon him, except two words in his pocketbook,
"thorough-paced doctrine." This expression the imagination of his
examiners had impregnated with treason, and the doctor was enjoined to
explain them. Thus pressed, he told them that the words had lain
unheeded in his pocketbook from the time of queen Anne, and that he was
ashamed to give an account of them; but the truth was, that he had
gratified his curiosity one day, by hearing Daniel Burgess in the
pulpit, and those words were a memorial hint of a remarkable sentence by
which he warned his congregation to "beware of thorough-paced doctrine,
that doctrine, which, coming in at one ear, passes 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 set at liberty.

It will not be supposed that a man of this character attained high
dignities in the church; but he still retained the friendship, and
frequented the conversation, of a very numerous and splendid set 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 supposed to be Pindarick. Having fixed his
attention on Cowley as a model, he has attempted, in some sort, to rival
him, and has written a Hymn to Darkness, evidently as a counterpart to
Cowley's Hymn to Light.

This hymn seems to be his best performance, and is, for the most part,
imagined with great vigour, and expressed with great propriety. I will
not transcribe it. The seven first stanzas are good; but the third,
fourth, and seventh, are the best: the eighth seems to involve a
contradiction; the tenth is exquisitely beautiful; the thirteenth,
fourteenth, and fifteenth, are partly mythological, and partly
religious, and, therefore, not suitable to each other: he might better
have made the whole merely philosophical.

There are two stanzas in this poem where Yalden may be suspected, though
hardly convicted, of h