The following specimen of their productions may be sufficient to enable the reader to judge of their respective merits: "Alas, Jerusalem! alas! where's now Thy pristine glory, thy unmatch'd renown, To which the heathen monarchies did bow? Ah, hapless, miserable town!" Eleazar's _Lamentation over Jerusalem, paraphrased by_ Pomfret. "Before the Almighty Artist fram'd the sky, Or gave the earth its harmony, His first command was for thy light; He view'd the lovely birth, and blessed it: _In purple swaddling bands it struggling lay_, Old Chaos then a chearful smile put on, And from thy beauteous form did first presage its own." Yalden's _Hymn to Light_. "My chearful soul now all the day Sits waiting here and sings; Looks through the ruins of her clay, And practises her wings. O, rather let this flesh decay, The ruins wider grow! Till glad to see the enlarged way, I stretch my pinions through." _A Sight of Heaven in Sickness, by_ Isaac Watts. [23] "He seemed to me to have an unaccountable prejudice against Swift.--He said to-day,--I doubt if the _Tale of a Tub_ was his; it has so much more thinking, more knowledge, more power, more colour, than any of the works that are indisputably his. If it was his, I shall only say, he was _impar sibi_." Boswell's _Tour to the Hebrides_, p. 38. Doctor Johnson's "unaccountable prejudice against Swift" may probably be derived from the same source as Blackmore's, if we may venture to form a judgement from the panegyrick he bestows on the following groundless invective, expressly aimed at Swift as the author of _A Tale of a Tub_, which he quotes in his life of Blackmore: "Several, in their books, have many sarcastical and spiteful strokes at religion in general; while others make themselves pleasant with the principles of the Christian. Of the last kind, this age has seen a most audacious example, in the book intituled "_A Tale of a Tub_." Had this writing been published in a pagan or _popish_ nation, who are _justly_ impatient of all indignity offered to the established religion of their country, no doubt but the author would have received the punishment he deserved.--But the fate of this impious buffoon is very different; for in a protestant kingdom, zealous of their civil and religious immunities, he has not only escaped affronts and the effects of publick resentment, but has been caressed and patronised by persons of great figure of all denominations."