improve the opportunities which converfation offered of diffufing and increasing the influence of religion. By his natural temper he was quick of refentment; but, by his established and habitual practice, he was gentle, modeft, and inoffenfive. His tenderness appeared in his attention to children, and to the poor. To the poor, while he lived in the family of his friend, he allowed the third part of his annual revenue, though the whole was not a hundred a year; and for children, he condefcended to lay afide the fcholar, the philofopher, and the wit, to write little poems of devotion, and systems of inftruction, adapted to their wants and capacities, from the dawn of reason through its gradations of advance in the morning of life. Every man acquainted with the common principles of human action, will look with veneration on the writer, who is at one time combating Locke, and at another making a catechifm for children in their fourth year. A voluntary defcent from the dignity of science is perhaps the hardest lesson that humility can teach. As his mind was capacious, his curiofity excurfive, and his industry continual, his writings are very numerous, and his fubjects various. With his theological works I am only enough acquainted to admire his meekness of oppofition, and his mildness of cenfure. It was not only in his book but in his mind that orthodoxy was united with charity. Of his philofophical pieces, his Logick has been received into the univerfities, and therefore wants no private recommendation: if he owes part of it to Le Clerc, it must be confidered that no man, who under 2 undertakes merely to methodife or illuftrate a fyftem, pretends to be its author. In his metaphyfical difquifitions, it was observed by the late learned Mr. Dyer, that he confounded the idea of space with that of empty space, and did not confider that though space might be without matter, yet matter being extended could not be without fpace. Few books have been perufed by me with greater pleasure than his Improvement of the Mind, of which the radical principles may indeed be found in Locke's Conduct of the Underflanding, but they are fo expanded and ramified by Watts, as to confer upon him the merit of a work in the highest degree useful and pleafing. Whoever has the care of inftructing others, may be charged with deficience in his duty if this book is not recommended. I have mentioned his treatifes of Theology as dif tinct from his other productions; but the truth is, that whatever he took in hand was, by his inceffant folicitude for fouls, converted to Theology. As piety predominated in his mind, it is diffufed over his works under his direction it may be truly faid, The gie Philofophia ancillatur, philofophy is fubfervient to evangelical inftruction; it is difficult to read a page without learning, or at leaft withing, to be better. The attention is caught by indirect inftruction, and he that fat down only to reafon is on a fudden com pelied to pray. It was therefore with great propriety that, in 1728, he received from Edinburgh and Aberdeen an unfo licited diploma, by which he became a Doctor of Divinity. Academical honours would have more va lue, lue, if they were always bestowed with equal judge ment. He continued many years to study and to preach, and to do good by his inftruction and example; till at laft the infirmities of age difabled him from the more laborious part of his minifterial functions, and being no longer capable of publick duty, he offered to remit the falary appendant to it; but his congregation would not accept the refignation.. By degrees his weakness increased, and at last confined him to his chamber and his bed; where he was worn gradually away without pain, till he expired Nov. 25, 1748, in the feventy-fifth year of his age. Few men have left behind fuch purity of character, or fuch monuments of laborious piety. He has provided inftruction for all ages, from thofe who are lisping their firft leffons, to the enlightened readers of Malbranche and Locke; he has left neither corporeal nor spiritual nature unexamined; he has taught the art of reasoning, and the science of the stars. His character, therefore, must be formed from the multiplicity and diverfity of his attainments, rather than from any single performance; for it would not be fafe to claim for him the highest rank in any fingle denomination of literary dignity; yet perhaps there was nothing in which he would not have excelled, if he had not divided his powers to different pursuits. As a poet, had he been only a poet, he would probably have stood high among the authors with whom he is now affociated. For his judgement was exact, and he noted beauties and faults with very nice difcernment; his imagination, as the Dacian Battle proves, was vigorous and active, and the ftores of 3 know knowledge were large by which his fancy was to be fupplied. His ear was well-tuned, and his diction was elegant and copious. But his devotional poetry is, like that of others, unfatisfactory. The paucity of its topicks enforces perpetual repetition, and the fanctity of the matter rejects the ornaments of figurative diction. It is fufficient for Watts to have done better than others what no inan has done well. His poems on other fubjects feldom rife higher than might be expected from the amufements of a Man of Letters, and have different degrees of value as they are more or lefs laboured, or as the occafion was more or lefs favourable to invention. He writes too often without regular meafures, and too often in blank verfe: the rhymes are not always fufficiently correfpondent. He is particularly unhappy in coining names expreffive of characters. His lines are commonly finooth and eafy, and his thoughts always religiously pure; but who is there that, to fo much piety and innocence, does not wifh for a greater measure of fpriteliness and vigour? He is at leaft one of the few poets with whom youth and ignorance may be fafely pleafed; and happy will be that reader whofe mind is difpofed by his verfes, or his profe, to imitate him in all but his non-conformity, to copy his benevolence to man, and his reverence to God. A. PHILIPS. A. PHILIP S. F the birth or early part of the life of AMBROSE His academical education he received at St. John's College in Cambridge, where he firft folicited the notice of the world by fome English verfes, in the collection published by the University on the death of queen Mary. From this time how he was employed, or in what ftation he paffed his life, is not yet difcovered. He must have published his Pastorals before the year 1708, because they are evidently prior to thofe of Pope. He afterwards (1709) addreffed to the univerfal patron, the duke of Dorfet, 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 feems not to have procured him any thing more than |