Of this, (to give but one instance,) an ingenious modern, distinguished by his rank, but much more for his excellent defence of some of the most important doctrines of Christianity, appears convinced in the conclusion of a pathetic Monody, lately published; in which, after he had deplored, as a man without hope, (expressing ourselves in the Scripture phrase,) the loss of an excellent wife; he thus consoles himself: 

Yet, O my soul! thy rising murmurs stay,
Nor dare th’ All-wise Disposer to arraign,
Or against his supreme decree
With impious grief complain. 
That all thy full-blown joys at once should fade,
Was his most righteous will:  and be that will obey’d. 
Would thy fond love his grace to her controul,
And in these low abodes of sin and pain
Her pure, exalted soul,
Unjustly, for thy partial good detain? 
No—­rather strive thy grov’ling mind to raise
Up to that unclouded blaze,
That heav’nly radiance of eternal light,
In which enthron’d she now with pity sees,
How frail, how insecure, how slight,
Is every mortal bliss.

But of infinitely greater weight than all that has been above produced on this subject, are the words of the Psalmist: 

’As for me, says he,* my feet were almost gone, my steps had well nigh slipt:  for I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.  For their strength is firm:  they are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men—­their eyes stand out with fatness:  they have more than their heart could wish—­verily I have cleansed mine heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocence; for all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning.  When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me.  Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end—­thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory.’

* Psalm lxxiii.

This is the Psalmist’s comfort and dependence.  And shall man, presuming to alter the common course of nature, and, so far as he is able, to elude the tenure by which frail mortality indispensably holds, imagine that he can make a better dispensation; and by calling it poetical justice, indirectly reflect on the Divine?

The more pains have been taken to obviate the objections arising from the notion of poetical justice, as the doctrine built upon it had obtained general credit among us; and as it must be confessed to have the appearance of humanity and good nature for its supports.  And yet the writer of the History of Clarissa is humbly of opinion, that he might have been excused referring to them for the vindication of his catastrophe, even by those who are advocates for the contrary opinion; since the notion of poetical justice, founded on the modern rules, has hardly ever been more strictly observed in works of this nature than in the present performance.