The poem for which Sir Richard had been most celebrated, was, undoubtedly, his Creation, now deservedly become a classic.  We cannot convey a more amiable idea of this great production, than in the words of Mr. Addison, in his Spectator, Number 339, who, after having criticised on that book of Milton, which gives an account of the Works of Creation, thus proceeds, ’I cannot conclude this book upon the Creation, without mentioning a poem which has lately appeared under that title.  The work was undertaken with so good an intention, and executed with so great a mastery, that it deserves to be, looked upon as one of the most useful and noble productions in our English verse.  The reader cannot but be pleased to find the depths of philosophy, enlivened with all the charms of poetry, and to see so great a strength of reason amidst so beautiful a redundancy of the imagination.  The author has shewn us that design in all the works of nature, which necessarily leads us to the knowledge of its first cause.  In short, he has illustrated, by numberless and incontestable instances, that divine wisdom, which the son of Sirach has so nobly ascribed to the Supreme Being in his formation of the world, when he tells us, that he created her, and saw her, and numbered her, and poured her out upon all his works.’

The design of this excellent poem is to demonstrate the self-existence of an eternal mind, from the created and dependent existence of the universe, and to confute the hypothesis of the Epicureans and the Fatalists, under whom all the patrons of impiety, ancient and modern, of whatsoever denomination may be ranged.  The first of whom affirm, the world was in time caused by chance, and the other, that it existed from eternity without a cause.  ’Tis true, both these acknowledge the existence of Gods, but by their absurd and ridiculous description of them, it is plain, they had nothing else in view, but to avoid the obnoxious character of atheistical philosophers.  To adorn this poem, no embellishments are borrowed from the exploded and obsolete theology of the ancient idolaters of Greece and Rome; no rapturous invocations are addressed to their idle deities, nor any allusions to their fabulous actions.  ’I have more than once (says Sir Richard) publicly declared my opinion, that a Christian poet cannot but appear monstrous and ridiculous in a Pagan dress.  That though it should be granted, that the Heathen religion might be allowed a place in light and loose songs, mock heroic, and the lower lyric compositions, yet in Christian poems, of the sublime and greater kind, a mixture of the Pagan theology must, by all who are masters of reflexion and good sense, be condemned, if not as impious, at least, as impertinent and absurd.  And this is a truth so clear and evident, that I make no doubt it will, by degrees, force its way, and prevail over the contrary practice.  Should Britons recover their virtue, and reform their taste, they could no more bear the