nent
digression to look back with me upon some observations of his life,
which, whilst a gentle slumber gives rest to his spirits, may, I hope,
not unfitly, exercise thy consideration.

His marriage was the remarkable error of his life; an error which,
though he had a wit able and very apt to maintain paradoxes, yet he was
very far from justifying it: and though his wife's competent years, and
other reasons, might be justly urged to moderate severe censures, yet he
would occasionally condemn himself for it: and doubtless it had been
attended with an heavy repentance, if God had not blessed them with so
mutual and cordial affections, as in the midst of their sufferings made
their bread of sorrow taste more pleasantly than the banquets of dull
and low-spirited people.

The recreations of his youth were poetry, in which he was so happy as if
nature and all her varieties had been made only to exercise his sharp
wit and high fancy; and in those pieces which were facetiously composed
and carelessly scattered,--most of them being written before the
twentieth year of his age--it may appear by his choice metaphors that
both nature and all the arts joined to assist him with their utmost
skill.

It is a truth, that in his penitential years, viewing some of those
pieces that had been loosely--God knows, too loosely--scattered in his
youth, he wished they had been abortive, or so short-lived that his own
eyes had witnessed their funerals; but, though he was no friend to them,
he was not so fallen out with heavenly poetry, as to forsake that; no,
not in his declining age; witnessed then by many divine sonnets, and
other high, holy, and harmonious composures. Yea, even on his former
sick-bed he wrote this heavenly hymn, expressing the great joy that then
possessed his soul, in the assurance of God's favour to him when he
composed it:--

"AN HYMN

"TO GOD THE FATHER

"Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.

"Wilt Thou forgive that sin, which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two:--but wallow'd in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,