ity of its topicks enforces perpetual
repetition, and the sanctity of the matter rejects the ornaments of
figurative diction. It is sufficient for Watts to have done better than
others what no man has done well.

His poems on other subjects seldom rise higher than might be expected
from the amusements of a man of letters, and have different degrees of
value as they are more or less laboured, or as the occasion was more or
less favourable to invention.

He writes too often without regular measures, and too often in blank
verse; the rhymes are not always sufficiently correspondent. He is
particularly unhappy in coining names expressive of characters. His
lines are commonly smooth and easy, and his thoughts always religiously
pure; but who is there that, to so much piety and innocence, does not
wish for a greater measure of sprightliness and vigour? He is, at least,
one of the few poets with whom youth and ignorance may be safely
pleased; and happy will be that reader whose mind is disposed, by his
verses or his prose, to imitate him in all but his nonconformity, to
copy his benevolence to man, and his reverence to God.

A. PHILIPS.

Of the birth, or early part of the life, of Ambrose Philips, I have not
been able to find any account. His academical education he received at
St. John's college, in Cambridge[169], where he first solicited the
notice of the world by some English verses, in the collection, published
by the university, on the death of queen Mary.

From this time, how he was employed, or in what station he passed his
life, is not yet discovered. He must have published his Pastorals before
the year 1708, because they are, evidently, prior to those of Pope.

He afterwards, 1709, addressed to the universal patron, the duke of
Dorset, a poetical Letter from Copenhagen, which was published in the
Tatler, and is, by Pope, in one of his first letters, mentioned with
high praise, as the production of a man "who could write very nobly."

Philips was a zealous whig, and, therefore, easily found access to
Addison and Steele; but his ardour seems not to have procured him any
thing more than kind words; since he was reduced to translate the
Persian Tales for Tonson, for which he was afterwards reproached, with
this addition of contempt, that he worked for half-a-crown. The book is
divided into many sections, for each of which, if he received
half-a-crown, his reward, as writers then were paid, was very liberal