This hymn seems to be his best performance, and is, for the most part, imagined with great vigour, and expressed with great propriety. I will not transcribe it. The seven first stanzas are good; but the third, fourth, and seventh, are the best: the eighth seems to involve a contradiction; the tenth is exquisitely beautiful; the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth, are partly mythological, and partly religious, and, therefore, not suitable to each other: he might better have made the whole merely philosophical. There are two stanzas in this poem where Yalden may be suspected, though hardly convicted, of having consulted the Hymnus ad Umbram of Wowerus, in the sixth stanza, which answers, in some sort, to these lines: Illa suo praeest nocturnis numine sacris-- Perque vias errare novis dat spectra figuris, Manesque excitos medios ululare per agros Sub noctem, et questu notos complere penatcs. And again, at the conclusion: Illa suo senium secludit corpore toto Haud numerans jugi fugientia secula lapsu. Ergo ubi postremum mundi compage soluta Hanc rerum molem suprema absumpserit hora Ipsa leves cineres nube amplectetur opaca, Et prisco imperio rursus dominabitur UMBRA. His Hymn to Light is not equal to the other. He seems to think that there is an East absolute and positive, where the morning rises. In the last stanza, having mentioned the sudden eruption of new-created light, he says, Awhile th' Almighty wond'ring stood. He ought to have remembered that infinite knowledge can never wonder. All wonder is the effect of novelty upon ignorance. Of his other poems it is sufficient to say, that they deserve perusal, though they are not always exactly polished, though the rhymes are sometimes very ill sorted, and though his faults seem rather the omissions of idleness than the negligences of enthusiasm. ----- [Footnote 38: We need not remark to any of our readers, but to those who are not Oxford men, that Pullen's name is now remembered in the university, not as a tutor, but by the venerable elm tree which was the term of his morning walks. "I have the honour to be well known to Mr. Josiah Pullen, of our hall above-mentioned, (Magdalen hall,) and attribute the florid old age I now enjoy to my constant morning walks up Headington lull, in his cheerful company." Guardian, No. 2. ED.] [Footnote 39: The vicarage of Willoughby, which he resigned in 1708. N.] [Footnote 40: This preferment was given him by the duke of Beaufort. N.] [Footnote 41: Not long after.] [Footnote 42: Dr. Atterbury retained the office of preacher at Bridewell till his promotion to the bishoprick of Rochester. Dr. Yalden succeeded him as preacher, in June, 1713. N.] TICKELL.