“To tell you, worthy Doctor, that your works have long been my delight and study, the favourite pattern by which I would form my conduct and model my style, would be only to echo back in the faintest accents what sounds in the general voice of the nation. Among other of your edifying compositions, I have reason to thank you for your ‘Sacred Songs,’ which I have introduced into the service of my church; so that in the solemnities of the Sabbath, and in a lecture on the week-day, your music lights up the incense of our praise, and furnishes our devotions with harmony. Our excellent friend, Dr. Doddridge, informs me of the infirm condition of your health, for which reason I humbly beseech the Father of spirits and the God of our life to renew your strength as the eagle’s, and to recruit a lamp that has shone with distinguished lustre in His sanctuary; or, if this may not consist with the counsels of unerring wisdom, to make all your bed in your languishing, softly to untie the cords of animal existence, to enable your dislodging soul to pass triumphantly through the valley of death, leaning on your beloved Jesus, and rejoicing in the greatness of His salvation. You have a multitude of names to bear on your breast and mention with your lips, when you approach the throne of grace in the beneficent exercise of intercession; but none, I am sure, has more need of such an interest in your supplications than, dear sir, your obliged and humble and affectionate servant, “JAMES HERVEY.” There could not be a very long intimacy between these two, or much knowledge of each other; they were both hermits, following, in the midst of much weakness, the calls of duty and the pursuits of a cultivated taste. The letter we have just quoted was written the year before Watts died; Hervey lived ten years longer, but died at the age of forty-seven. He forms one of a cluster of men singularly interesting to contemplate. With Doddridge, from their vicinity in the same county, he was on terms of the closest intimacy. He was a large scholar, a poet by natural temperament, and an intense lover of natural description. His works, once so famous, are almost forgotten, and have fallen into quite an undeserved neglect, partly arising, it may be, from the unfavourable estimate formed of them by those who have not read them, or who may have fixed their impressions from the scanning his “Contemplation of the Starry Heavens,” or his “Reflections in a Flower Garden,” or his “Descant on Creation.” His portrait should be suspended in the gallery of those we are noticing as one, who, if not among Watts’ most intimate friends, yet revered and loved him much.