appeared in 1712. Besides this praise of it from Addison, its religious character caused Dr. Johnson to say that if Blackmore '
had written nothing else it would have transmitted him to posterity among the first favourites of the English muse.'
But even with the help of all his epics it has failed to secure him any such place in the estimation of posterity. This work is not an epic, but described on its title page as 'a Philosophical Poem, Demonstrating the Existence and Providence of a God.' It argues in blank verse, in the first two of its seven books, the existence of a Deity from evidences of design in the structure and qualities of earth and sea, in the celestial bodies and the air; in the next three books it argues against objections raised by Atheists, Atomists, and Fatalists; in the sixth book proceeds with evidences of design, taking the structure of man's body for its theme; and in the next, which is the last book, treats in the same way of the Instincts of Animals and of the Faculties and Operations of the Soul. This is the manner of the Poem:
The Sea does next demand our View; and there
No less the Marks of perfect skill appear.
When first the Atoms to the Congress came,
And by their Concourse form'd the mighty Frame,
What did the Liquid to th' Assembly call
To give their Aid to form the ponderous Ball?
First, tell us, why did any come? next, why
In such a disproportion to the Dry!
Why were the Moist in Number so outdone,
That to a Thousand Dry, they are but one,
It is hardly a 'mark of perfect skill' that there are five or six thousand of such dry lines in Blackmore's poem, and not even one that should lead a critic to speak in the same breath of Blackmore and Milton.
| [No. 340] | Monday, March 31, 1712 | Steele |
Quis novus hic nostris successit sedibus Hospes?
Quem sese Ore ferens! quam forti Pectore et Armis!
Virg.