Wise, not Cunning Ministers.

We may observe much the same difference between wisdom and cunning, both as to the objects they propose and to the means they employ, as we observe between the visual powers of different men. One sees distinctly the objects that are near to him, their immediate relations, and their direct tendencies and a sight like this serves well enough the purpose of those who concern themselves no further. The cunning minister is one of those he neither sees nor is concerned to see any further than his personal interests and the support of his administration require. If such a man overcomes any actual difficulty, avoids any immediate distress, or, without doing either of these effectually, gains a little time by all the low artifice which cunning is ready to suggest and baseness of mind to employ, he triumphs, and is flattered by his mercenary train on the great event; which amounts often to no more than this, that he got into distress by one series of faults, and out of it by another. The wise minister sees and is concerned to see further, because government has a further concern: he sees the objects that are distant as well as those that are near, and all their remote relations, and even their indirect tendencies. He thinks of fame as well as of applause, and prefers that which to be enjoyed must be given, to that which may be bought. He considers his administration as a single day in the great year of government; but as a day that is affected by those which went before, and that must affect those which are to follow. He combines, therefore, and compares all these objects, relations, and tendencies; and the judgment he makes on an entire, not a partial survey of them, is the rule of his conduct. That scheme of the reason of state, which lies open before a wise minister, contains all the great principles of government, and all the great interests of his country: so that, as he prepares some events, he prepares against others, whether they be likely to happen during his administration, or in some future time. (From The Idea of a Patriot King.) Bolingbroke's collected works were published by Mallet in See works on him by Macknight (1863), Harrop (1884), Churton Collins (1886), and Hassall (1887), and the defence of his character for patriotism by W. Sichel (vol. i. 1901). Ch. de Remusat's character-sketch (in L'Angleterre au XVIIIième Siècle) is eminently judicial; and there are German works on him by Von Noorden (1882) and Brosch (1885).

1753-54.

Isaac Watts (1674-1748) was born at Southampton, where his father kept a boarding-school and was in a small way a poet. The child of pious parents, he was trained for the ministry at an Independent academy in London; and he was for six years tutor in the family of Sir John Hartopp at Stoke-Newington. Here he was chosen (1699) assistant-minister by the Independent congregation in Mark Lane, where three years after he succeeded to the full charge; but infirm health soon rendered him unequal to the performance of the full ministerial labours. His health continuing to decline, he went for change of air in 1712 into the house of Sir Thomas Abney (Lord Mayor in 1700) at Theobalds; and as an inmate of that kindly household he spent the remainder of his life-thirty-six years. While in this pleasant retreat he preached occasionally, and, in spite of his small stature and feeble health, he was accounted an admirable and

effective preacher. But he gave the most of his time to literary labour. He produced a series of catechisms and educational manuals, as well as theological works and volumes of sermons. His treatises on Logic and on the Improvement of the Mind were long in constant use as handbooks. His poetry consists mainly but not wholly of devotional hymns, which by their simplicity and unaffected ardour secured the interest of many generations, and were never forgotten in mature life by those who committed them to memory as children. The Hora Lyrica (1705) and Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707) were followed by Divine and Moral Songs for Children (1715), Psalms of David Imitated (1719), and Reliquia Juveniles (1734, in prose and verse).

Watts's theology was marked by a charity and catholicity then unusual amongst the orthodox, and even exposed him to the charge of heresy at the hands of the stricter brethren. A Calvinist, he yet shrank from the high doctrine of reprobation. He held the doctrine of the Trinity not essential to salvation, and was willing to admit Arians to communion; and it was even affirmed-on insufficient evidence that in the end he had become a Unitarian. His hymns provided a vehicle for the religious emotions of the English world till then (from theological prejudice or otherwise) unknown. Among his five hundred hymns and versions there is many a metrical defect, and not a few verses of mere rhymed theology; yet a select number remain amongst the most cherished treasures of English devotion. It is enough to name 'There is a land of pure delight,' 'Jesus shall reign where'er the sun,' 'When I survey the wondrous cross,' and 'Our God, our help in ages past.' The second of these is the first great missionary hymn; the third has been pronounced the most majestic hymn in English speech.' Those who think of Watts as the author mainly of 'How doth the little busy bee,' 'Let dogs delight,' and a few similar edifying verses in the common measure rhyme do him a great injustice. Even in the Divine and Moral Songs for Children there is frequently something of the sweet simplicity of Blake, if the fervour is usually ethical rather than lyrical; Watts's blank verse comes very near Cowper's in feeling and rhythm, and there is at times a line or a touch that suggests even Wordsworth. And the rhythms of the irregular ode, of the Sapphic, of the heroic measure, are handled with no inconsiderable skill. The poems quoted below are all from the Hora Lyricæ.

From 'The Law given at Sinai.'
Forbear, young muse, forbear;
The flowery things that poets say,
The little arts of simile

Are vain and useless here;
Nor shall the burning hills of old
With Sinai be compared,
Nor all that lying Greece has told,
Or learned Rome has heard;

Etna shall be named no more,

Ætna the torch of Sicily;

Not half so high

Her lightnings fly;

Not half so loud her thunders roar

Cross the Sicanian sea, to fright the Italian shore. Behold the sacred hill: Its trembling spire Quakes at the terrors of the fire, While all below its verdant feet Stagger and reel under the Almighty weight: Pressed with a greater than feigned Atlas' load. Deep groaned the mount; it never bore Infinity before,

It bowed, and shook beneath the burden of a God.

From 'To Sarissa'-An Epistle.
Farewell, ye waxing and ye waning moons,
That we have watched behind the flying clouds
On night's dark hill, or setting or ascending,
Or in meridian height: Then silence reigned
O'er half the world; then ye beheld our tears,
Ye witnessed our complaints, our kindred groans,
(Sad harmony!) while with your beamy horns
Or richer orb ye silvered o'er the green
Where trod our feet, and lent a feeble light
To mourners. Now ye have fulfilled your round,
Those hours are fled, farewell. Months that are gone
Are gone for ever, and have borne away

Each his own load. Our woes and sorrows past,
Mountainous woes, still lessen as they fly
Far off. So billows in a stormy sea,
Wave after wave (a long succession) roll
Beyond the ken of sight: The sailors safe
Look far a-stern till they have lost the storm,
And shout their boisterous joys.

From 'True Monarchy.'

We are a little kingdom; but the man That chains his rebel will to reason's throne, Forms it a large one, while his royal mind Makes heaven its council, from the rolls above Draws its own statutes, and with joy obeys. 'Tis not a troop of well-appointed guards Create a monarch, not a purple robe

Dyed in the people's blood, not all the crowns

Or dazzling tiars that bend about the head,
Though gilt with sun-beams and set round with stars,
A monarch he that conquers all his fears,
And treads upon them; when he stands alone,
Makes his own camp; four guardian virtues wait
His nightly slumbers, and secure his dreams.
Now dawns the light; he ranges all his thoughts
In square battalions, bold to meet the attacks
Of time and chance, himself a numerous host,
All eye, all ear, all wakeful as the day,
Firm as a rock, and moveless as the centre.

In all its charming, or its frightful shapes.
He that unshrinking, and without a groan,
Bears the first wound, may finish all the war
With mere courageous silence, and come off
Conqueror: for the man that well conceals
The heavy strokes of fate, he bears them well.
He, though the Atlantic and the Midland seas
With adverse surges meet, and rise on high
Suspended 'twixt the winds, then rush amain
Mingled with flames, upon his single head,
And clouds, and stars, and thunder, firm he stands,
Secure of his best life; unhurt, unmoved;
And drops his lower nature, born for death.
Then from the lofty castle of his mind
Sublime looks down exulting, and surveys
The ruins of creation (souls alone
Are heirs of dying worlds); a piercing glance
Shoots upwards from between his closing lids,
To reach his birth-place, and without a sigh

He bids his battered flesh lie gently down Amongst his native rubbish; whilst the spirit Breathes and flies upward, an undoubted guest Of the third heaven, the unruinable sky.

Thither, when fate has brought our willing souls,
No matter whether 'twas a sharp disease,

Or a sharp sword that help'd the travellers on,
And pushed us to our home. Bear up, my friend,
Serenely, and break through the stormy brine
With steady prow; know, we shall once arrive
At the fair haven of eternal bliss,

To which we ever steer; whether as kings
Of wide command we've spread the spacious sea
With a broad painted fleet, or rowed along
In a thin cock-boat with a little oar.

Dr Watts breathing forth threatenings and slaughter against the enemies of his king and country is a pleasing spectacle. In an answer to an infamous satyr called "Advice to a Painter" against King William III. of glorious memory,' the good doctor thus blazes forth :

Why smoke the skies not? Why no thunders roll?
Nor kindling lightnings blast his guilty soul?
Audacious wretch! to stab a monarch's fame,
And fire his subjects with a rebel-flame ;
To call the painter to his black designs,
To draw our guardian's face in hellish lines:
Painter, beware! the monarch can be shown
Under no shape but angel's, or his own,
Gabriel or William, on the British throne.

O could my thought but grasp the vast design,
And words with infinite ideas join,

I'd rouse Apelles from his iron sleep,

And bid him trace the warrior o'er the deep:
Trace him, Apelles, o'er the Belgian plain;
Fierce, how he climbs the mountains of the slain,
Scattering just vengeance through the red campaign.
Then dash the canvas with a flying stroke,
Till it be lost in clouds of fire and smoke,

And say, 'Twas thus the conqueror through the squadrons broke.

Mark him again emerging from the cloud,

Far from his troops; there like a rock he stood His country's single barrier in a sea of blood.

Whilst alone

He wards the fate of nations, and provokes his own :
But heaven secures its champion; o'er the field
Paint hovering angels; though they fly conceal'd,
Each intercepts a death, and wears it on his shield.

Watts in defence of his own choice of subjects, and in exhortation of other poets (in the preface to the Hora), shows a command of swinging rhythmical prose:

Besides, we may fetch a further answer to Monsieur Boileau's objection from other poets of his own country. What a noble use have Racine and Corneille made of Christian subjects in some of their best tragedies! What a variety of divine scenes are displayed, and pious passions awakened, in those poems! The martyrdom of Polyeucte, how doth it reign over our love and pity, and at the same time animate our zeal and devotion ! May I here be permitted the liberty to return my thanks

to that fair and ingenious hand that directed me to such entertainments in a foreign language, which I had long wished for, and sought in vain in our own. Yet I must confess, that the Davideis, and the two Arthurs, have so far answered Boileau's objection, in English, as that the obstacles of attempting Christian poesy are broken down, and the vain pretence of its being impracticable is experimentally confuted.

It is true indeed, the Christian mysteries have not such need of gay trappings as beautified, or rather composed, the heathen superstition. But this still makes for the greater ease and surer success of the poet. The wonders of our religion, in a plain narration and a simple dress, have a native grandeur, a dignity, and a beauty in them, though they do not utterly disdain all methods of ornament. The book of the Revelation seems to be a prophecy in the form of an opera or a dramatic poem, where divine art illustrates the subject with many charming glories; but still it must be acknowledged that the naked themes of Christianity have something brighter and bolder in them, something more surprising and celestial, than all the adventures of gods and heroes, all the dazzling images of false lustre that form and garnish a heathen song: here the very argument would give wonderful aids to the muse, and the heavenly theme would so relieve a dull hour and a languishing genius, that when the muse nods, the sense would burn and sparkle upon the reader, and keep him feelingly awake.

With how much less toil and expense might a Dryden, an Otway, a Congreve, or a Dennis furnish out a Christian poem than a modern play! There is nothing among all the ancient fables or later romances that have two such extremes united in them as the eternal God becoming an infant of days; the possessor of the palace of Heaven laid to sleep in a manger; the holy Jesus, who knew no sin, bearing the sins of men in his body on the tree; agonies of sorrow loading the soul of him who was God over all, blessed for ever; and the sovereign of life stretching his arms on a cross, bleeding and expiring: The heaven and the hell in our divinity are infinitely more delightful and dreadful than the childish figments of a dog with three heads, the buckets of the Belides, the Furies with snaky hairs, or all the flowery stories of Elysium. And if we survey the one as themes divinely true, and the other as a medley of fooleries which we can never believe, the advantage for touching the springs of passion will fall infinitely on the side of the Christian poet; our wonder and our love, our pity, delight, and sorrow, with the long train of hopes and fears, must needs be under the command of an harmonious pen, whose every line makes a part of the reader's faith, and is the very life or death of his soul.

If the trifling and incredible tales that furnish out a sovereign of the rational powers, to triumph over all the tragedy are so armed by wit and fancy as to become

affections, and manage our smiles and our tears at pleasure; how wondrous a conquest might be obtained over a wild world, and reduce it, at least, to sobriety, if the same happy talent were employed in dressing the scenes of religion in their proper figures of majesty, sweetness, and terror! The wonders of creating power, of redeeming love, and renewing grace, ought not to be thus impiously neglected by those whom Heaven has endued with a gift so proper to adorn and cultivate them; an art whose sweet insinuations might almost convey piety in

resisting nature, and melt the hardest souls to the love of virtue. The affairs of this life, with their reference to a life to come, would shine bright in a dramatic description; nor is there any need of any reason why we should always borrow the plan or history from the ancient Jews or primitive martyrs, though several of these would furnish out noble materials for this sort of poesy : but modern scenes would be better understood by most readers, and the application would be much more easy. The anguish of inward guilt; the secret stings and racks and scourges of conscience; the sweet retiring hours and seraphical joys of devotion; the victory of a resolved soul over a thousand temptations; the inimitable love and passion of a dying God; the awful glories of the last tribunal; the grand decisive sentence, from which there is no appeal; and the consequent transports or horrors of the two eternal worlds: these things may be variously disposed, and form many poems. How might such performances, under a divine blessing, call back the dying piety of the nation to life and beauty? This would make religion appear like itself, and confound the blasphemies of a profligate world, ignorant of pious pleasures.

But we have reason to fear that the tuneful men of our day have not raised their ambition to so divine a pitch; I should rejoice to see more of this celestial fire kindling within them; for the flashes that break out in some present and past writings betray an infernal source. This the incomparable Mr Cowley, in the latter end of his preface, and the ingenious Sir Richard Blackmore, in the beginning of his, have so pathetically described and lamented, that I rather refer the reader to mourn with them, than detain and tire him here. These gentlemen in their large and laboured works of poesy have given the world happy examples of what they wish and encourage in prose; the one in a rich variety of thought and fancy, the other in all the shining colours of profuse and florid diction.

If shorter sonnets were composed on sublime subjects, such as the Psalms of David and the holy transports interspersed in the other sacred writings, or such as the moral odes of Horace and the ancient lyricks, I persuade myself that the Christian preacher would find abundant aid from the poet in his design to diffuse virtue and allure souls to God. If the heart were first inflamed from Heaven, and the muse were not left alone to form the devotion and pursue a cold scent, but only called-in as an assistant to the worship, then the song would end where the inspiration ceases; the whole composure would be of a piece, all meridian light and meridian fervour; and the same pious flame would be propagated and kept glowing in the heart of him that reads. Some of the shorter odes of the two poets now mentioned, and a few of the Rev. Mr Norris's Essays in verse, are convincing instances of the success of this Droposal.

It is my opinion, also, that the free and unconfined numbers of Pindar or the noble measures of Milton without rhyme would best maintain the dignity of the theme as well as give a loose to the devout soul, nor check the raptures of her faith and love. Though in my feeble attempts of this kind I have too often fettered my thoughts in the narrow metre of our Psalm-translators; I have contracted and cramped the sense, or rendered it obscure and feeble, by the too speedy and regular returns of rhyme.

The large and laboured works of poesy' above described are Cowley's Davideis (see Vol. I. p. 643) and Blackmore's two poems on Arthur (see Vol. II. p. 107). For Mr Norris, see below at page 259. There are Lives of Watts by Dr Gibbons, Dr Johnson, Southey, Milner, and E. Paxton Hood (1875). Since 1753 there have been more than half-a-dozen collective editions of his works; that of 1824 was in 6 vols. 4to.

Charles Leslie (1650-1722), author in 1698 of the famous Short and Easy Method with the Deists, was born in Dublin, the sixth son of John Leslie (1571-1671), the centenarian Bishop of Raphoe and Clogher, who was of Aberdeenshire family. Educated at Enniskillen and Trinity College, Dublin, Charles Leslie studied law in London, but in 1680 took orders. As chancellor of the cathedral of Connor, he distinguished himself by several disputations with Catholic divines, and by the boldness with which he opposed the pro-papal designs of King James. Nevertheless at the Revolution he adopted a decisive tone of Jacobitism, from which he never swerved through life. Removing to London, he was chiefly engaged for several years in writing controversial works against Quakers, Socinians, and deists, of which, however, none now remembered except the little treatise above named, and his Gallienus Redivivus (1695), a chief authority for the Massacre of Glencoe. He also wrote many occasional tracts in behalf of the House of Stuart. In 1711 he repaired to St Germains, and in 1713 to Bar-le-Duc. The Chevalier allowed him to have a chapel fitted up for the English service, and was even expected to lend a favourable ear to his arguments against popery; but in 1721 Leslie returned to Ireland in disgust, and soon after died at his house of Glaslough in County Monaghan. His works (7 vols. 1832) place their author high amongst controversial writers.

are

John Potter (c. 1674-1747) contributed little to English literature, but as a very eminent English classical scholar deserves a brief record. Born at Wakefield, and educated at University College, Oxford, he became professor of divinity at Oxford in 1708, Bishop of Oxford in 1715, and in 1737 Archbishop of Canterbury. He published, besides notes on Plutarch and St Basil, the Archæologia Græca, or Antiquities of Greece (1698), which was practically the standard work till after the middle of the nineteenth century; also editions of Lycophron (1697) and Clemens Alexandrinus (1715); and in English, a Discourse on Church Government, and other theological treatises, several of them against Hoadly, who complimented Potter as being his most formidable antagonist.

James Bramston (c. 1694-1744) wrote two satirical poems, much admired in their day and included in Dodsley's Collection: The Art of Politics, described as 'in imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry' (1729), and The Man of Taste (1733), 'occasioned by Pope's Epistle on that Subject.' He also produced an imitation of Philips's Splendid Shilling, called The Crooked Sixpence. In 1708

Bramston was admitted at Westminster School; in 1713 he was elected to a studentship at Christ Church, Oxford; and in 1723-25 he became vicar of Lurgashall and Harting in Sussex. His two principal poems are good essays in the style of Pope's and Young's satires. The following is the conclusion of his Art of Politics:

Parliamenteering is a sort of itch,

That will too oft unwary knights bewitch.
Two good estates Sir Harry Clodpole spent ;
Sate thrice, but spoke not once, in Parliament.
Two good estates are gone-who 'll take his word?
Oh, should his uncle die, he 'll spend a third;
He'd buy a house his happiness to crown,
Within a mile of some good borough-town ;
Tag-rag and bobtail to Sir Harry's run,

Men that have votes, and women that have none;
Sons, daughters, grandsons with his Honour dine;
He keeps a publick-house without a sign.
Cobblers and smiths extol th' ensuing choice,
And drunken tailors boast their right of voice.
Dearly the free-born neighbourhood is bought,
They never leave him while he's worth a groat;
So leeches stick, nor quit the bleeding wound,
Till off they drop with skinfuls to the ground.
His Man of Taste is ironically made thus to ex-
patiate on his likes and dislikes:

Swift's whims and jokes for my resentment call,
For he displeases me that pleases all.
Verse without rhyme I never could endure,
Uncouth in numbers, and in sense obscure.

To him as nature when he ceased to see,

Milton 's an universal blank to me.
Confirmed and settled by the nation's voice,
Rhyme is the poet's pride and people's choice,
Always upheld by national support,

Of market, university, and court:

Thomson, write blank; but know that for that reason,
These lines shall live when thine are out of season.

Rhyme binds and beautifies the poet's lays,
As London ladies owe their shape to stays.

In the same poem he parodies:

Musick has charms to soothe a savage beast,
And therefore proper at a sheriff's feast.
And many of the couplets are sprightly:
To give is wrong, but it is wronger still,
On any terms to pay a tradesman's bill.

I'll please the maids of honour if I can ;
Without black velvet britches, what is man?

at

Oxford and Cambridge are not worth one farthing, Compared to Haymarket and Convent-garden. This is true taste, and whoso likes it not Is blockhead, coxcomb, puppy, fool, and sot. Laurence Echard (c. 1670-1730), born Barsham rectory in Suffolk, and bred at Christ's, Cambridge, held a succession of Lincolnshire and Suffolk livings, and died Archdeacon of Stow. Of nearly a score of publications, educational, classical, geographical, and historical, the most important was his History of England (1707-20) from the Romans to William and Mary, which was the

standard work thenceforward till it was superseded by Rapin's. The 'historic method' has long since banished some of the elements which in Echard's day were available for enlivening the records of the past. After the battle of Worcester 'Cromwell in his letter to the Parliament tells them,' says Echard, that the dimensions of this Mercy were above his thoughts, and that it was a Crowning Mercy.' There was, however, another side to the story, Echard thought, and adds accordingly this tale of

Cromwell and the Devil.

But others accounted it an infernal judgment; concerning which we have a strange story in the last part of the History of Independency, which the author says he received from a person of quality, viz. 'It was believ'd, and that not without some good cause, that Cromwell the same morning that he defeated the King's army at Worcester, had conference personally with the devil, with whom he made a contract, that to have his will then, and in all things else for seven years from that day, he should, at the expiration of the said years, have him at his command, to do at his pleasure, both with his soul and body.' This is also related in other printed books; but we have receiv'd a more full account never yet publish'd, which is here inserted as a thing more wonderful than probable, and therefore more for the diversion than satisfaction of the reader. It is a relation or narrative of a valiant officer call'd Lindsey, an intimate friend of Cromwell's, the first captain of his regiment, and therefore commonly called Colonel Lindsey; which is to this effect. On the third of September in the morning, Cromwell took this officer to a wood side not far from the army, and bid him alight, and follow him into that wood, and to take particular notice of what he saw and heard. After they had both alighted, and secur'd their horses, and walk'd some small way into the wood, Lindsey began to turn pale, and to be seiz'd with horror from some unknown cause: upon which Cromwell ask'd him how he did, or how he felt himself. He answer'd, that he was in such a trembling and consternation, that he never felt the like in all the conflicts and battels he had been engag'd in; but whether it proceeded from the gloominess of the place, or the temperament of his body, he knew not. How now, said Cromwell, what, troubled with vapours? come forwards, man! They had not gone above twenty yards, before Lindsey on a sudden stood still, and cry'd out, by all that's good, he was seiz'd with such unaccountable terror and astonishment, that it was impossible for him to stir one step further. Upon which Cromwell call'd him faint-hearted fool, and bid him stand there and observe, or be witness; and then advancing to some distance from him, he met with a grave elderly man with a roll of parchment in his hand, who deliver'd it to Cromwell, who eagerly perus'd it. Lindsey, a little recover'd from his fear, heard several loud words between them: particularly Cromwell said, this is but for seven years; I was to have had it for one and twenty, and it must and shall be so. The other told him positively, it could not be for above seven; upon which Cromwell cry'd with great fierceness it should however be for fourteen years. But the other peremptorily declar'd it could not possibly be for any longer time; and if he would not take it so, there were others who