It is no small Satisfaction, to have given Occasion
to ingenious Men to employ their Thoughts upon sacred Subjects, from the
Approbation of such Pieces of Poetry as they have seen in my
_Saturday's_ Papers. I shall never publish Verse on that Day but what is
written by the same Hand; yet shall I not accompany those Writings with
_Eulogiums,_ but leave them to speak for themselves.

_For the_ SPECTATOR.

_Mr_. SPECTATOR,

'You very much promote the Interests of Virtue, while you reform the
Taste of a Prophane Age, and persuade us to be entertained with Divine
Poems, while we are distinguished by so many thousand Humours, and
split into so many different Sects and Parties; yet Persons of every
Party, Sect, and Humour are fond of conforming their Taste to yours.
You can transfuse your own Relish of a Poem into all your Readers,
according to their Capacity to receive; and when you recommend the
pious Passion that reigns in the Verse, we seem to feel the Devotion,
and grow proud and pleas'd inwardly, that we have Souls capable of
relishing what the SPECTATOR approves.

'Upon reading the Hymns that you have published in some late Papers, I
had a Mind to try Yesterday whether I could write one. The 114th
_Psalm_ appears to me an admirable Ode, and I began to turn it into
our Language. As I was describing the Journey of _Israel_ from
_Egypt_, and added the Divine Presence amongst them, I perceived a
Beauty in the _Psalm_ which was entirely new to me, and which I was
going to lose; and that is, that the Poet utterly conceals the
Presence of God in the Beginning of it, and rather lets a Possessive
Pronoun go without a Substantive, than he will so much as mention any
thing of Divinity there. _Judah was his Sanctuary, and_ Israel _his
Dominion or Kingdom_. The Reason now seems evident, and this Conduct
necessary: For if God had appeared before, there could be no wonder
why the Mountains should leap and the Sea retire; therefore that this
Convulsion of Nature may be brought in with due Surprise, his Name is
not mentioned till afterward, and then with a very agreeable Turn of
Thought God is introduced at once in all his Majesty. This is what I
have attempted to imitate in a Translation without Paraphrase, and to
preserve what I could of the Spirit of the sacred Author.

'If the following Essay be not too incorrigible, bestow upon it a few
Brightnings from your Gen