Newton would not have sanctioned any poetry which had not a distinctly religious object, and he received an assurance from the poet that the lively passages were introduced only as honey on the rim of the medicinal cup, to commend its healing contents to the lips of a giddy world.

The Rev.John Newton must have been exceedingly austere if he thought that the quantity of honey used was excessive.
A genuine desire to make society better is always present in these poems, and its presence lends them the only interest which they possess except as historical monuments of a religious movement.

Of satirical vigour they have scarcely a semblance.

There are three kinds of satire, corresponding to as many different views of humanity and life, the Stoical, the Cynical, and the Epicurean.

Of Stoical satire, with its strenuous hatred of vice and wrong, the type is Juvenal.