'Twill waft me or to Heav'n, or quiet shade:
In either, Hymn is the employment made.
I, crush'd by ftate decree, and griev'd with pain,
The Paft'ral toil unable to fuftain,

More gladly off the hallow'd burthen shake,
Than I at first the weight did undertake,
And shall rejoice, when finking to my grave,
That my
dear fheep a worthier Shepherd have;
That, living, I had buried Past'ral care,
And for my last was freer to prepare."

The Saint took leave of the city of Conftantinople in a pathetic addrefs, delivered in the Metropolitan Church, before an incredible number of people: in like manner Ken departed from Wells. St. Gregory concluded in these words, "my dear children, preserve the Depofitum of Faith, and remember the ftones which have been thrown at me, because I planted it in your hearts." Ken expreffes the fame anxious love for his people, when he says:

"To his dear flock when Greg'ry bad adieu,
He warn'd them vow baptismal to renew,—
And rather die glad Martyrs at the stake,
Than the Depofitum he left forfake.
With like, though with inferior facred heat,
The fame request I to my flock repeat:

Wolves on the vitals of their Faith will prey,
Their fafety is their Shepherd to obey."†

St. Gregory was tenderly affected in abandoning his flock, his own converts especially. They followed him weeping and entreating him to abide with them. He was not insensible to their tears; but motives of greater weight obliged him not to regard them on this occafion: an exactly parallel cafe with our Bishop. Gregory left to Ken a full juftification and example,

* The Works of Bishop Ken, Dedication, vol. i.

† Ibid.

when he quitted the public worship of the Church, and retired into folitude;-where he had a garden, a fountain, and a shady grove, in which he took much delight: he lived in company with certain folitaries, eftranged from pleasures, and in the practice of bodily mortification, fasting, watching, and praying much on his knees. He says, He fays, "we have fed the poor, we have served our brethren, we have fung the pfalms with cheerfulness. If we are no longer permitted to continue this, let us employ our devotion some other way. Grace is not barren, and opens different ways to Heaven. Let us live in retirement; let us occupy ourselves in contemplation; let us purify ourselves by the light of God."

In his retirement Gregory wrote devotional poems, for the edification of fuch as delighted in mufic and poetry. They are full of ardent love, and prayers to our Bleffed Saviour to affift him. Ken's "Preparatives for Death," "Anodynes of Pain," "Hymns for all the Festivals in the Year," and his "Songs on Jefus," though far inferior in beauty as compofitions, breathe the fame fpirit of love and piety. Perhaps the devotional writings of no modern Divine have approached much nearer to the Primitive, which we may almost call angelical, aspirations of the Church, than Bishop Ken's. Alexander Knox remarks, that there is in the peculiar character of Ken's piety, as in that of Jeremy Taylor's, and fome few others whom he names, fomething of fublimity, as well as fimplicity there was a feraphick glow of heart, a fire of Divine Love, which lives and breathes in the ancient writers ;-but though enshrined in our Liturgy, like

the Pot of Manna in the Tabernacle, is not the prevailing spirit of most Proteftants.*

"The characters to which I refer have been Spiritualists, rather than Theologists. * * * I must not multiply names : yet I cannot but specify Herbert, Taylor, and Ken; each of these excellent persons (as well as Doddridge and Leighton, with the whole happy class who have been like-minded) pursued religion not merely on account of the evils which it averts, but for the fake of the good, even the present good, which it confers they felt the force of that admirable saying of St. Augustin: Fecifti nos tibi, et cor femper irrequietum donec requiefcat in te.' They were at the fame time fully aware of the frailty of human nature, which they well knew could only be furmounted by the infufed grace of God; and this they fought by daily and hourly prayer. But they were not lefs fenfible of the capability of human nature; and they accordingly placed no narrow limits to their spiritual prospects even in this prefent world. The good things which they have brought forth out of the good treasure of their heart give ample evidence that they did not hope in vain.

"From these men, then, I am able to take an estimate of fpiritual peace here, and form a reckoning of consummate happiness hereafter. I confider their records of themselves to afford the best and surest comment on the evangelical promises, both spiritual and eternal, because they aspired with peculiar ardour to the fulness of spiritual bleffings: and while corporeally on earth, lived mentally in eternity. The more attentively I examine and compare these almoft transparent characters, the more deeply I am fatisfied that Christian piety is in them an anticipatory Paradife; and had I no other ground, muft, in all reason, conclude, from fuch blessed first fruits, that the full harveft will be replete with happiness and glory. It is the folid rationality of thofe good men's

* Remains of Alexander Knox. Third edit., vol. ii. pp. 108, 110.

happiness in religion, which juftifies our eftimation, and warrants our reliance. The uniform principles which animated their virtues, and established their hearts and minds, are, in their own way, as demonstrable as mathematical truths."

And again,

"I have little of Bishop Ken at this moment within my reach, but that little furnishes me with a paffage ftrictly appofite to one of the points (indeed the chief one) on which your question about the future turns. He fays, from the full feelings of his own heart (in a poem on 'The Divine Attribute of Truth')

'Thy promises of hearing prayer,
Of pardon and paternal care,

Of efficacious aids

When hell our fouls invades ;

Of blifs ecftatic, unconfined,

Of thy good Spirit templing in our mind;

'They all infallibly are true,

All are perform'd in seasons due;

My God, much fooner

My thinking would deny,

Than of thy gracious promise doubt,

The steady anchor of a foul devout.'"+

Ken thus, with all becoming modefty, compares himself to the great Bishop of Conftantinople:

"Bleff'd Gregory, whofe Patriarchal height
Shed o're the Eastern sphere celestial light,
To Nazianzum flew, dethron'd by rage,
And spent in fongs divine his drooping age.
I, if the leaft may with the greatest dare,
In grief, not gifts or graces, to compare,
Forc'd from my flock by uncanonick heat,
In finging Hymns thus folace my retreat.

* Remains of Alexander Knox. Third edit., vol. iii. pp. 434-5. † Ibid. p.438. The Works of Bishop Ken, vol. ii. p. 62.

"Bleff'd Gregory, with pain and sickness griev'd,
His fpirit oft with fongs devout reliev'd:
And while on Hymns his meditation dwelt,
Devotion sweeten'd ev'ry pang he felt.
Pain haunting me, I court the facred muse,
Verfe is the only Laudanum I use.
Eaf'd of my facred load, I live content;
In Hymn, not in difpute, my paffion vent.

"Bleff'd Gregory to facred verse configned
The laft efforts of his immortal mind:
Those poems, loftieft profpects have disclos❜d,
On brink of bright eternity compof'd.
I the small dol'rous remnant of my days
Devote to hymn my great Redeemer's praise.
And, nearer as I draw t'ward heavenly Rest,

The more I love th' employment of the blest.”

In an age of criticism and refinement, enriched with the inheritance left to us by our poets, from Dryden downwards, through a century and a half, Ken's verse will find comparatively few admirers. We are fo accustomed to the "elegance, facility, and golden cadence of poefy," that no energy of thought, or genuine influences of the heart, will compenfate for the want of smoothly-flowing numbers. With a natural and ample vein of imagination, he was deficient in the effentials of pleafing, fonorous, and varying verse,— those easy rhythms, fo grateful to the ear,-that metrical expreffion, which fprings, as by inftinct, to embody the poet's exuberant flow of thought and feeling. Although we might have looked for these in the author of the Morning, Evening, and Midnight Hymns, his poems often exhibit ill-regulated

* The Works of Bishop Ken, Dedication, vol. i.
Shakespeare. Love's Labour Loft, act iv. fc. 2.