straining hand upon my understanding, that I may not reason in the pride of worldly wisdom, nor flatter myself on my attainments, but ever hold my judgment in subordination to thy word, and see myself as what I am, a helpless dependant on thy bounty. If a spirit of indolence and lassitude have at times crept on me, I pray thy forgiveness for it; and if I have felt rather inclined to prosecute studies which procure respect from the world, than the humble knowledge which becomes a servant of Christ, do thou check this growing propensity, and only bless my studies so far as they conduce to thy glory, and as thy glory is their chief end. My heart, O Lord! is but too fond of this vain and deceitful world, and I have many fears lest I should make shipwreck of my hope on the rocks of ambition and vanity. Give me, I pray thee, thy grace to repress these propensities: illumine more completely my wandering mind, rectify my understanding, and give me a simple, humble, and affectionate heart, to love thee and thy sheep with all sincerity. As I increase in learning, let me increase in lowliness of spirit: and inasmuch as the habits of studious life, unless tempered by preventing grace, but too much tend to produce formality and lifelessness in devotion, do thou, O heavenly Father, preserve me from all cold and speculative views of thy blessed Gospel; and while with regular constancy I kneel down daily before thee, do not fail to light up the fire of heavenly love in my bosom, and to draw my heart heavenward with earnest longing [to thyself.]

And now, O Blessed Redeemer! my rock, my hope, and only sure defence, to thee do I cheerfully commit both my soul and my body. If thy wise Providence see fit, grant that I may rise in the morning, refreshed with sleep, and with a spirit of cheerful activity for the duties of the day but whether I wake here or in eternity, grant that my trust in thee may remain sure, and my hope unshaken. Our Father, &c.

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[This prayer was discovered amongst some dirty loose papers of H. K. White's.]

MEM.

September 22nd, 1806.

ON running over the pages of this book, I am constrained to observe, with sorrow and shame, that my progress in divine light has been little or none.

I have made a few conquests over my corrupt inclinations, but my heart still hankers after its old delights; still lingers half willing, half unwilling, in the ways of worldly-mindedness.

My knowledge of divine things is very little improved. I have read less of the Scriptures than I did last year. In reading the Fathers, I have consulted rather the pride of my heart than my spiritual good.

I now turn to the cause of these evils, and I find that the great root, the main-spring, is-love of the world; next to that, pride; next to that, spiritual sloth.

REMARKS ON THE ENGLISH POETS.

IMITATIONS.

THE sublimity and unaffected beauty of the sacred writings are in no instance more conspicuous, than in the following verses of the xviiith Psalm:

'He bowed the heavens also and came down and darkness was under his feet.

'And he rode upon a cherub and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind.'

None of our better versions have been able to preserve the original graces of these verses. That wretched one of Thomas Sternhold, however, (which, to the disgrace and manifest detriment of religious worship, is generally used,) has in this solitary instance, and then perhaps by accident, given us the true spirit of the Psalmist, and has surpassed not only Merrick, but even the classic Buchanan. This version is as follows:

"The Lord descended from above,
And bowed the heaven's high,

And underneath his feet he cast

The darkness of the sky.

On cherubs and on cherubims
Full royally he rode,

And on the wings of mighty winds
Came flying all abroad.'

Dryden honored these verses with very high commendation, and, in the following lines of his Annus Mirabilis, has apparently imitated them, in preference to the original :

The duke less numerous, but in courage more,

On wings of all the winds to combat flies.'

And in his Ceyx and Alcyone, from Ovid, he has

'And now sublime she rides upon the wind.'

which is probably imitated, as well as most of the following, not from Sternhold, but the original. Thus Pope,

'With arms sublime that float upon the air.'

Few poets of eminence have less incurred the charge of plagiarism than Milton; yet many instances might be adduced of similarity of idea and language with the Scripture, which are certainly more than coincidences, and some of these I shall, in a future number, present to your readers. Thus the present passage in the Psalmist was in all probability in his mind when he

wrote

-And with mighty wings outspread,
Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast abyss.'
Par. Lost, 1. 20. B. 1.

The third verse of the civth Psalm

'He maketh the clouds his chariot, and walketh upon the wings of the wind,'is evidently taken from the before-mentioned verses in the xviiith Psalm, on which it is perhaps an improvement. It has also been imitated by two of our first

poets,-Shakspeare and Thomson. The former in Romeo and Juliet

'Bestrides the lazy-paced clouds,

And sails upon the bosom of the air.'

The latter in Winter, l. 199.

'Till Nature's King, who oft
Amid tempestuous darkness dwells alone,
And on the wings of the careering winds
Walks dreadfully serene.'

As these imitations have not before, I believe, been noticed, they cannot fail to interest the lovers of polite letters; and they are such as at least will amuse your readers in general. If the sacred writings were attentively perused, we should find innumerable passages from which our best modern poets have drawn their most admired ideas: and the enumerations of these instances would perhaps attract the attention of many persons to those volumes, which they now perhaps think to contain everything tedious and disgusting, but which, on the contrary, they would find replete with interest, beauty, and true sublimity.

STERNHOLD AND HOPKINS.

MR. EDITOR,

In your Mirror for July, a Mr. William Toone has offered a few observations on a paper of mine, in a preceding number, containing remarks on the versions and imitations of the 9th and 10th verses of the xviiith Psalm, to which I think it necessary to offer a few words by way of reply; as they not only put an erroneous construction on certain passages of that paper, but are otherwise open to material objection.

The object of Mr. Toone, in some parts of his observations, appears to have been to refute something which he fancied I had advanced, tending to establish the general merit of Sternhold and Hopkins's translation of the Psalms but he might have saved himself this unnecessary trouble, as I have decidedly condemned it as mere

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doggerel, still preserved in our churches, to the detriment of religion; and the version of the passage in question is adduced as a brilliant, though probably accidental, exception to the general character of the work. What necessity, therefore, your correspondent could see for hoping that I should think with him, that the sooner the old version of the Psalms was consigned to oblivion, the better it would be for rational devotion,' I am perfectly at a loss to imagine.

This concluding sentence of Mr. Toone's paper, which I consider as introduced merely by way of rounding the period, and making a graceful exit, needs no further animadversion. I shall therefore proceed to examine the objections of the worthy clergyman of the church of England' to these verses, cited by your correspondent, by which he hopes to prove, Dryden, Knox, and the numerous other eminent men who have expressed their admiration thereof, to be little better than idiots.The first is this:

'Cherubim is the plural for Cherub; but our versioner by adding an s to it, has rendered them both plurals.' By adding an s to what? If the pronoun it refer to cherubim, as according to the construction of the sentence it really does, the whole objection is nonsense.But the worthy gentleman, no doubt, meant to say, that Sternhold had rendered them both plurals by the addition of an s to cherub. Even in this sense, however, I conceive the charge to be easily obviated; for, though cherubim is doubtless usually considered as the plural of cherub, yet the two words are frequently so used in the Old Testament as to prove, that they were often applied to separate ranks of beings. One of these, which I shall cite, will dispel all doubt on the subject.

And within the oracle he made two cherubims of olive tree, each ten cubits high.' 1 Kings, v. 23. ch. vi.

The other objection turns upon a word with which it is not necessary for me to interfere; for I did not quote these verses as instances of the merit of Sternhold, or his version, I only asserted that the lines which I then copied, viz.

"The Lord descended from above,' &c.