It is as an author that James Hervey is best known to us.  The popularity which his writings long enjoyed presents to us a curious phenomenon.  Almost to this day old-fashioned libraries of divinity are not complete without the ‘Meditations’ and ‘Theron and Aspasio,’ though probably they are not often read in this age.[793] But by Hervey’s contemporaries his books were not only bought, but read and admired.  They were translated into almost every modern language.  The fact that such works were popular, not among the uneducated, but among those who called themselves people of culture, almost justifies John Wesley’s caustic exclamation, ‘How hard it is to be superficial enough for a polite audience!’ Hervey’s style can be described in no meaner terms than as the extra-superfine style.  It is prose run mad.  Let the reader judge for himself.  Here is a specimen of his ‘Meditations among the Tombs.’  The tomb of an infant suggests the following reflections:  ’The peaceful infant, staying only to wash away its native impurity in the layer of regeneration, bid a speedy adieu to time and terrestrial things.  What did the little hasty sojourner find so forbidding and disgustful in our upper world to occasion its precipitate exit?’ The tomb of a young lady calls forth the following morbid horrors:—­’Instead of the sweet and winning aspect, that wore perpetually an attractive smile, grins horribly a naked, ghastly skull.  The eye that outshone the diamond’s brilliancy, and glanced its lovely lightning into the most guarded heart—­alas! where is it?  Where shall we find the rolling sparkler?  How are all its sprightly beams eclipsed!’ The tongue, flesh, &c., are dwelt upon in the same fashion.

It is hard to believe that this was really considered fine writing by our ancestors, but the fact is indisputable.  The ‘Meditations’ brought in a clear gain of 700_l._ Dr. Blair, himself a model of taste in his day, spoke in high terms of approbation of Hervey’s writings.  Boswell records with evident astonishment that Dr. Johnson ’thought slightingly of this admired book’ (the ’Meditations’); ’he treated it with ridicule, and parodied it in a “Meditation on a Pudding."’[794] Most modern readers will be surprised that any sensible people could think otherwise than Dr. Johnson did of such a farrago of highflown sentiment clothed in the most turgid language.

It is a pity that Hervey could not learn to be less bombastic in his style and less vapid in his sentiments, for, after all, he had an eye for the sublime and beautiful both in the world around him and in the heavens above his head—­a faculty very rare in the age in which he lived, and especially in the school to which he belonged.  Occasionally he condescends to be more simple and natural, and consequently more readable.  Here and there one meets with a passage which almost reminds one of Addison, but such exceptions are rare.[795]