Addison's poetry may now be regarded as extinct, and most of the poems he wrote are probably unknown to the present generation of readers even by name. His Latin verses are pronounced excellent by all competent critics, but when a man writes verses in a dead language he does so generally to show his scholarship, and not to express his inspiration. Latin verse is, as M. Taine says, a faded flower. Now and then, indeed, a poem has been written with merits apart from its latinity--witness the _Epitaphium Damonis_ of Milton--but Addison, who lacked poetic fire in his native language, was not likely to find it in a dead tongue. His English poems are generally dull, and sometimes, as in his earliest poem, the _Account of the greatest English Poets_ (1694), the tameness of the verse is matched by the ignorance of the criticism. The student will observe how differently the theme is treated by a true poet like Drayton in his _Epistle to Reynolds_; or, like Ben Jonson, in the many allusions that he makes to his country's poets. Compare, too, Addison's _Letter from Italy_ (1701) with the lovely lines on a like theme in Goldsmith's _Traveller_, and the contrast between a verseman and a poet is at once apparent. Addison, it may be added, is remembered for his hymns, which may be found in most selections of sacred verse, and deserve a place in the best of them. As the forerunner of Isaac Watts (1674-1748) and of Charles Wesley (1708-1788), he struck upon what at that time might, in our country, be almost called a new department of literature; and it is remarkable that an age which so dreaded enthusiasm should have originated verse which gives utterance to the most emotional form of spiritual aspiration. As hymn-writers, Englishmen were more than a century behind the best sacred poets of Germany. Luther had taught the German people the power of hymnody, but it was during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), and after its conclusion, that the spirit of devotion found full expression in religious verse. Just before the engagement at Leipzic, Gustavus Adolphus wrote his well-known battle hymn, and the peace was celebrated in a noble hymn by Martin Rinkart. He was followed by a succession of sacred singers whose devout utterances influenced and in some degree inspired the Wesleys. "A verse may find him whom a sermon flies," says George Herbert, and the enormous power wielded by Methodism owes a large portion of its strength to song.