Amidst much in their writings that is questionable in taste and weak in expression, both Watts and Charles Wesley have written hymns which prove their incontestible right to a place among the poets, and the influence they have exerted over the English-speaking race is beyond the power of the literary historian to estimate. The external divisions of the Christian Church are numerous; its unity is to be seen in the Hymn Book. 'Men whose theological views contrast most strongly,' says Mr. Abbey in his essay on _The English Sacred Poetry of the Eighteenth Century_, 'meet on common ground when they express in verse the deeper aspirations of the heart and the voice of Christian praise.' In 1714, on the death of the Queen, Addison was once more in office, and held his old position of Irish Secretary. In the following year he defended the Whig Government and Whig principles in the _Freeholder_, a paper published twice weekly. In it he gives no niggard praise to the Government of George I., and to the King himself, for his 'civil virtues,' and for his martial achievements. Addison's praise disagrees, it need scarcely be said, with the more minute and veracious description of the King given by Thackeray, but a party politician in those days could scarcely be a faithful chronicler. He could see what he wished to see, but found it necessary to shut his eyes when the prospect became unpleasant. George was a heartless libertine, but Addison observes with great satisfaction that the women most eminent for virtue and good sense are in his interest. 'It would be no small misfortune,' he says, 'to a sovereign, though he had all the male part of the nation on his side, if he did not find himself king of the most beautiful half of his subjects. Ladies are always of great use to the party they espouse, and never fail to win over numbers to it. Lovers, according to Sir William Petty's computation, make at least the third part of the sensible men of the British nation, and it has been an uncontroverted maxim in all ages, that though a husband is sometimes a stubborn sort of a creature, a lover is always at the devotion of his mistress. By this means it lies in the power of every fine woman to secure at least half-a-dozen able-bodied men to his Majesty's service. The female world are likewise indispensably necessary in the best causes to manage the controversial part of them, in which no man of tolerable breeding is ever able to refute them. Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.'