SACRED POETRY.
CHAPTER I.
We have often exposed the narrowness and weakness of that dogma, so pertinaciously adhered to by persons of cold hearts and limited understandings, that Religion is not a fit theme for poetical genius, and that Sacred Poetry is beyond the powers of uninspired man. We do not know that the grounds on which that dogma stands have ever been formally stated by any writer but Samuel Johnson; and therefore with all respect, nay, veneration, for his memory, we shall now shortly examine his statement, which, though, as we think, altogether unsatisfactory and sophistical, is yet a splendid specimen of false reasoning, and therefore worthy of being exposed and overthrown. Dr Johnson was not often utterly wrong in his mature and considerate judgments respecting any subject of paramount importance to the virtue and happiness of mankind. He was a good and wise being; but sometimes he did grievously err; and never more so than in his vain endeavour to exclude from the province of poetry its noblest, highest, and holiest domain. Shut the gates of Heaven against Poetry, and her flights along this earth will be feebler and lower,—her wings clogged and heavy by the attraction of matter,—and her voice—like that of the caged lark, so different from its hymning when lost to sight in the sky—will fail to call forth the deepest responses from the sanctuary of our spirit.
"Let no pious ear be offended," says Johnson, "if I advance, in opposition to many authorities, that poetical devotion cannot often please. The doctrines of religion may indeed be defended in a didactic poem; and he who has the happy power of arguing in verse, will not lose it because his subject is sacred. A poet may describe the beauty and the grandeur of nature, the flowers of spring and the harvests of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide and the revolutions of the sky, and praise his Maker in lines which no reader shall lay aside. The subject of the disputation is not piety, but the motives to piety; that of the description is not God, but the works of God. Contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical. Man admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the merits of his Reedemer, is already in a higher state than poetry can confer.
"The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights. The topics of devotion are few, and being few are universally known: but few as they are, they can be made no more; they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment, and very little from novelty of expression. Poetry pleases by exhibiting an idea more grateful in the mind than things themselves afford. This effect proceeds from the display of those parts of nature which attract, and the concealment of those that repel, the imagination; but religion must be shown as it is; suppression and addition equally corrupt it; and such as it is, it is known already. From poetry the reader justly expects, and from good poetry always obtains, the enlargement of his comprehension and the elevation of his fancy; but this is rarely to be hoped by Christians from metrical devotion. Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name of the Supreme Being. Omnipotence cannot be exalted; Infinity cannot be amplified; Perfection cannot be improved.
"The employments of pious meditation are faith, thanksgiving, repentance, and supplication. Faith, invariably uniform, cannot be invested by fancy with decorations. Thanksgiving, though the most joyful of all holy effusions, yet addressed to a Being without passions, is confined to a few modes, and is to be felt rather than expressed. Repentance, trembling in the presence of the Judge, is not at leisure for cadences and epithets. Supplication to man may diffuse itself through many topics of persuasion; but supplication to God can only cry for mercy.
"Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre and its power, because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent than itself. All that pious verse can do is to help the memory and delight the ear, and for these purposes it may be very useful; but it supplies nothing to the mind. The ideas of Christian Theology are too simple for eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic for ornament; to recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirror the sidereal hemisphere."
Here Dr Johnson confesses that sacred subjects are not unfit—that they are fit—for didactic and descriptive poetry. Now, this is a very wide and comprehensive admission; and being a right, and natural, and just admission, it cannot but strike the thoughtful reader at once as destructive of the great dogma by which Sacred Poetry is condemned. The doctrines of Religion may be defended, he allows, in a didactic poem—and, pray, how can they be defended unless they are also expounded? And how can they be expounded without being steeped, as it were, in religious feeling? Let such a poem be as didactic as can possibly be imagined, still it must be pervaded by the very spirit of religion—and that spirit, breathing throughout the whole, must also be frequently expressed, vividly, and passionately, and profoundly, in particular passages; and if so, must it not be, in the strictest sense, a Sacred poem?
"But," says Dr Johnson, "the subject of the disputation is not piety, but the motives to piety." Why introduce the word "disputation," as if it characterised justly and entirely all didactic poetry? And who ever heard of an essential distinction between piety, and motives to piety? Mr James Montgomery, in a very excellent Essay prefixed to that most interesting collection, "The Christian Poet," well observes, that "motives to piety must be of the nature of piety, otherwise they could never incite to it—the precepts and sanctions of the Gospel might as well be denied to be any part of the Gospel." And, for our own parts, we scarcely know what piety is, separated from its motives—or how, so separated, it could be expressed in words at all.
With regard, again, to descriptive poetry, the argument, if argument it may be called, is still more lame and impotent. "A poet," it is said, "may describe the beauty and the grandeur of nature, the flowers of the spring and the harvests of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide and the revolutions of the sky, and praise his Maker in lines which no reader shall lay aside." Most true he may; but then we are told, "the subject of the description is not God, but the works of God!" Alas! what trifling—what miserable trifling is this! In the works of God, God is felt to be by us His creatures, whom He has spiritually endowed. We cannot look on them, even in our least elevated moods, without some shadow of love or awe; in our most elevated moods, we gaze on them with religion. By the very constitution of our intelligence, the effects speak of the cause. We are led by nature up to nature's God. The Bible is not the only revelation—there is another—dimmer but not less divine—for surely the works are as the words of God. No great poet, in describing the glories and beauties of the external world, is forgetful of the existence and attributes of the Most High. That thought, and that feeling, animate all his strains; and though he dare not to describe Him the Ineffable, he cannot prevent his poetry from being beautifully coloured by devotion, tinged by piety—in its essence it is religious.
It appears, then, that the qualifications or restrictions with which Dr Johnson is willing to allow that there may be didactic and descriptive sacred poetry, are wholly unmeaning, and made to depend on distinctions which have no existence.
Of narrative poetry of a sacred kind, Mr Montgomery well remarks, Johnson makes no mention, except it be implicated with the statement, that "the ideas of Christian Theology are too sacred for fiction—a sentiment more just than the admirers of Milton and Klopstock are willing to admit, without almost plenary indulgence in favour of these great, but not infallible authorities." Here Mr Montgomery expresses himself very cautiously—perhaps rather too much so—for he leaves us in the dark about his own belief. But this we do not hesitate to say, that though there is great danger of wrong being done to the ideas of Christian theology by poetry—a wrong which must be most painful to the whole inner being of a Christian; yet that there seems no necessity of such a wrong, and that a great poet, guarded by awe, and fear, and love, may move his wings unblamed, and to the glory of God, even among the most awful sanctities of his faith. These sanctities may be too awful for "fiction"—but fiction is not the word here, any more than disputation was the word there. Substitute for it the word poetry; and then, reflecting on that of Isaiah and of David, conversant with the Holy of Holies, we feel that it need not profane those other sanctities, if it be, like its subject, indeed divine. True, that those bards were inspired—with them
——"the name
Of prophet and of poet was the same;"
but still, the power in the soul of a great poet, not in that highest of senses inspired, is, we may say it, of the same kind—inferior but in degree; for religion itself is always an inspiration. It is felt to be so in the prose of holy men—Why not in their poetry?
If these views be just, and we have expressed them "boldly, yet humbly"—all that remains to be set aside of Dr Johnson's argument is, "that contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and man, cannot be poetical. Man admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the merits of his Redeemer, is already in a higher state than poetry can confer."
There is something very fine and true in the sentiment here; but the sentiment is only true in some cases, not in all. There are different degrees in the pious moods of the most pious spirit that ever sought communion with its God and its Saviour. Some of these are awe-struck and speechless. That line,
"Come, then, expressive silence, muse his praise!"
denies the power of poetry to be adequate to adoration, while the line itself is most glorious poetry. The temper even of our fallen spirits may be too divine for any words. Then the creature kneels mute before his Maker. But are there not other states of mind in which we feel ourselves drawn near to God, when there is no such awful speechlessness laid upon us—but when, on the contrary, our tongues are loosened, and the heart that burns within will speak? Will speak, perhaps, in song—in the inspiration of our piety breathing forth hymns and psalms—poetry indeed—if there be poetry on this earth? Why may we not say that the spirits of just men made perfect—almost perfect, by such visitations from heaven—will break forth—"rapt, inspired," into poetry which may be called holy, sacred, divine?
We feel as if treading on forbidden ground—and therefore speak reverently; but still we do not fear to say, that between that highest state of contemplative piety which must be mute, down to that lowest state of the same feeling which evanishes and blends into mere human emotion as between creature and creature, there are infinite degrees of emotion which may be all embodied, without offence, in words—and if so embodied, with sincerity and humility, will be poetry, and poetry too of the most beautiful and affecting kind.
"Man, admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the merits of his Redeemer, is already in a higher state than poetry can confer." Most true, indeed. But, though poetry did not confer that higher state, poetry may nevertheless, in some measure and to some degree, breathe audibly some of the emotions which constitute its blessedness; poetry may even help the soul to ascend to those celestial heights; because poetry may prepare it, and dispose it to expand itself, and open itself out to the highest and holiest influences of religion; for poetry there may be inspired directly from the word of God, using the language and strong in the spirit of that word—unexistent but for the Old and the New Testament.
We agree with Mr Montgomery, that the sum of Dr Johnson's argument amounts to this—that contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical. But here we at once ask ourselves, what does he mean by poetical? "The essence of poetry," he says, "is invention—such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights." Here, again, there is confusion and sophistry. There is much high and noble poetry of which invention, such invention as is here spoken of, is not the essence. Devotional poetry is of that character. Who would require something unexpected and surprising in a strain of thanksgiving, repentance, or supplication? Such feelings as these, if rightly expressed, may exalt or prostrate the soul, without much—without any aid from the imagination—except in as far as the imagination will work under the power of every great emotion that does not absolutely confound mortal beings, and humble them down even below the very dust. There may be "no grace from novelty of sentiment," and "very little from novelty of expression"—to use Dr Johnson's words—for it is neither grace nor novelty that the spirit of the poet is seeking—"the strain we hear is of a higher mood;" and "few as the topics of devotion may be," (but are they few?) and "universally known," they are all commensurate—nay, far more than commensurate, with the whole power of the soul—never can they become unaffecting while it is our lot to die;—even from the lips of ordinary men, the words that flow on such topics flow effectually, if they are earnest, simple, and sincere; but from the lips of genius, inspired by religion, who shall dare to say that, on such topics, words have not flowed that are felt to be poetry almost worthy of the Celestial Ardours around the Throne, and by their majesty to "link us to the radiant angels," than whom we were made but a little lower, and with whom we may, when time shall be no more, be equalled in heaven?
We do not hesitate to say, that Dr Johnson's doctrine of the effect of poetry is wholly false. If it do indeed please, by exhibiting an idea more grateful to the mind than things themselves afford, that is only because the things themselves are imperfect—more so than suits the aspirations of a spirit, always aspiring, because immortal, to a higher sphere—a higher order of being. But when God himself is, with all awe and reverence, made the subject of song—then it is the office—the sacred office of poetry—not to exalt the subject, but to exalt the soul that contemplates it. That poetry can do, else why does human nature glory in the "Paradise Lost?"
"Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name of the Supreme Being. Omnipotence cannot be exalted—Infinity cannot be amplified—Perfection cannot be improved." Should not this go to prohibit all speech—all discourse—all sermons concerning the divine attributes? Immersed as they are in matter, our souls wax dull, and the attributes of the Deity are but as mere names. Those attributes cannot, indeed, be exalted by poetry. "The perfection of God cannot be improved"—nor was it worthy of so wise a man so to speak; but while the Creator abideth in His own incomprehensible Being, the creature, too willing to crawl blind and hoodwinked along the earth, like a worm, may be raised by the voice of the charmer, "some sweet singer of Israel," from his slimy track, and suddenly be made to soar on wings up into the ether.
Would Dr Johnson have declared the uselessness of Natural Theology? On the same ground he must have done so, to preserve consistency in his doctrine. Do we, by exploring wisdom, and power, and goodness, in all animate and inanimate creation, exalt Omnipotence, amplify infinity, or improve perfection? We become ourselves exalted by such divine contemplations—by knowing the structure of a rose-leaf or of an insect's wing. We are reminded of what, alas! we too often forget, and exclaim, "Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name!" And while science explores, may not poetry celebrate the glories and the mercies of our God?
The argument against which we contend gets weaker and weaker as it proceeds—the gross misconception of the nature of poetry on which it is founded becomes more and more glaring—the paradoxes, dealt out as confidently as if they were self-evident truths, more and more repulsive alike to our feelings and our understandings. "The employments of pious meditation are faith, thanksgiving, repentance, and supplication. Faith, invariably uniform, cannot be invested by fancy with decorations. Thanksgiving, though the most joyful of all holy effusions, yet addressed to a Being superior to us, is confined to a few modes, and is to be felt rather than expressed. Repentance, trembling in the presence of the Judge, is not at leisure for cadences and epithets. Supplication to men may diffuse itself through many topics of persuasion; but supplication to God can only cry for mercy." What a vain attempt authoritatively to impose upon the common sense of mankind! Faith is not invariably uniform. To preserve it unwavering—unquaking—to save it from lingering or from sudden death—is the most difficult service to which the frail spirit—frail even in its greatest strength—is called every day—every hour—of this troubled, perplexing, agitating, and often most unintelligible life! "Liberty of will," says Jeremy Taylor, "is like the motion of a magnetic needle towards the north, full of trembling and uncertainty till it be fixed in the beloved point; it wavers as long as it is free, and is at rest when it can choose no more. It is humility and truth to allow to man this liberty; and, therefore, for this we may lay our faces in the dust, and confess that our dignity and excellence suppose misery, and are imperfection, but the instrument and capacity of all duty and all virtue." Happy he whose faith is finally "fixed in the beloved point!" But even of that faith, what hinders the poet whom it has blessed to sing? While, of its tremblings, and veerings, and variations, why may not the poet, whose faith has experienced, and still may experience them all, breathe many a melancholy and mournful lay, assuaged, ere the close, by the descent of peace?
Thanksgiving, it is here admitted, is the "most joyful of all holy effusions;" and the admission is sufficient to prove that it cannot be "confined to a few modes." "Out of the fulness of the heart the tongue speaketh;" and though at times the heart will be too full for speech, yet as often even the coldest lips prove eloquent in gratitude—yea, the very dumb do speak—nor, in excess of joy, know the miracle that has been wrought upon them by the power of their own mysterious and high enthusiasm.
That "repentance, trembling in the presence of the Judge, should not be at leisure for cadences and epithets," is in one respect true; but nobody supposes that during such moments—or hours—poetry is composed; and surely when they have passed away, which they must do, and the mind is left free to meditate upon them, and to recall them as shadows of the past, there is nothing to prevent them from being steadily and calmly contemplated, and depictured in somewhat softened and altogether endurable light, so as to become proper subjects even of poetry—that is, proper subjects of such expression as human nature is prompted to clothe with all its emotions, as soon as they have subsided, after a swell or a storm, into a calm, either placid altogether, or still bearing traces of the agitation that has ceased, and have left the whole being self-possessed, and both capable and desirous of indulging itself in an after-emotion at once melancholy and sublime. Then, repentance will not only be "at leisure for cadences and epithets," but cadences and epithets will of themselves move harmonious numbers, and give birth, if genius as well as piety be there, to religious poetry. Cadences and epithets are indeed often sought for with care, and pains, and ingenuity; but they often come unsought; and never more certainly and more easily than when the mind recovers itself from some oppressive mood, and, along with a certain sublime sadness, is restored to the full possession of powers that had for a short severe season been overwhelmed, but afterwards look back, in very inspiration, on the feelings that during their height were nearly unendurable, and then unfit for any outward and palpable form. The criminal trembling at the bar of an earthly tribunal, and with remorse and repentance receiving his doom, might, in like manner, be wholly unable to set his emotions to the measures of speech; but when recovered from the shock by pardon, or reprieve, or submission, is there any reason why he should not calmly recall the miseries and the prostration of spirit attendant on that hour, and give them touching and pathetic expression?
"Supplication to man may diffuse itself through many topics of persuasion; but supplication to God can only cry for mercy." And in that cry we say that there may be poetry; for the God of Mercy suffers his creatures to approach his throne in supplication, with words which they have learned when supplicating one another; and the feeling of being forgiven, which we are graciously permitted to believe may follow supplication, and spring from it, may vent itself in many various and most affecting forms of speech. Men will supplicate God in many other words besides those of doubt and of despair; hope will mingle with prayer; and hope, as it glows, and burns, and expands, will speak in poetry—else poetry there is none proceeding from any of our most sacred passions.
Dr Johnson says, "Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre and its power, because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent than itself." Here he had in his mind the most false notions of poetry, which he had evidently imagined to be an art despising simplicity—whereas simplicity is its very soul. Simple expression, he truly says, is in religion most sublime—and why should not poetry be simple in its expression? Is it not always so—when the mood of mind it expresses is simple, concise, and strong, and collected into one great emotion? But he uses—as we see—the terms "lustre" and "decoration"—as if poetry necessarily, by its very nature, was always ambitious and ornate; whereas we all know, that it is often in all its glory direct and simple as the language of very childhood, and for that reason sublime.
With such false notions of poetry, it is not to be wondered at that Dr Johnson, enlightened man as he was, should have concluded his argument with this absurdity—"The ideas of Christian theology are too simple for eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic for ornament; to recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirror the sidereal hemisphere." No. Simple as they are—on them have been bestowed, and by them awakened, the highest strains of eloquence—and here we hail the shade of Jeremy Taylor alone—one of the highest that ever soared from earth to heaven; sacred as they are, they have not been desecrated by the fictions—so to call them—of John Milton; majestic as are the heavens, their majesty has not been lowered by the ornaments that the rich genius of the old English divines has so profusely hung around them, like dewdrops glistening on the fruitage of the Tree of Life. Tropes and figures are nowhere more numerous and refulgent than in the Scriptures themselves, from Isaiah to St John; and, magnificent as are the "sidereal heavens" when the eye looks aloft, they are not to our eyes less so, nor less lovely, when reflected in the bosom of a still lake or the slumbering ocean.
This statement of facts destroys at once all Dr Johnson's splendid sophistry—splendid at first sight—but on closer inspection a mere haze, mist, or smoke, illuminated by an artificial lustre. How far more truly, and how far more sublimely, does Milton, "that mighty orb of song," speak of his own divine gift—the gift of Poetry! "These abilities are the inspired gift of God, rarely bestowed, and are of power to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility; to allay the perturbation of the mind, and set the affections to a right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God's Almightiness, and what he suffers to be wrought with high providence in his Church; to sing victorious agonies of Martyrs and Saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations, doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ; to deplore the general relapse of kingdoms and states from virtue and God's true worship. Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, and in virtue amiable or grave; whatsoever hath passion, or admiration in all the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and reflections of men's thoughts from within; all these things, with a solid and treatable smoothness, to paint out and describe—Teaching over the whole book of morality and virtue, through all instances of example, with such delight to those, especially of soft and delicious temper, who will not so much as look upon Truth herself unless they see her elegantly dressed; that, whereas the paths of honesty and good life that appear now rugged and difficult, appear to all men easy and pleasant, though they were rugged and difficult indeed."
It is not easy to believe that no great broad lights have been thrown on the mysteries of men's minds since the days of the great poets, moralists, and metaphysicians of the ancient world. We seem to feel more profoundly than they—to see, as it were, into a new world. The things of that world are of such surpassing worth, that in certain awe-struck moods we regard them as almost above the province of Poetry. Since the revelation of Christianity, all moral thought has been sanctified by Religion. Religion has given it a purity, a solemnity, a sublimity, which, even among the noblest of the heathen, we shall look for in vain. The knowledge that shone but by fits and dimly on the eyes of Socrates and Plato, "that rolled in vain to find the light," has descended over many lands into "the huts where poor men lie"—and thoughts are familiar there, beneath the low and smoky roofs, higher far than ever flowed from the lips of Grecian sage meditating among the magnificence of his pillared temples. The whole condition and character of the Human Being, in Christian countries, has been raised up to a loftier elevation; and he may be looked at in the face without a sense of degradation, even when he wears the aspect of poverty and distress. Since that Religion was given us, and not before, has been felt the meaning of that sublime expression—The Brotherhood of Man.
Yet it is just as true that there is as much misery and suffering in Christendom—nay, far more of them all—than troubled and tore men's hearts during the reign of all those superstitions and idolatries. But with what different feelings is it all thought of—spoken of—looked at—alleviated—repented—expiated—atoned for—now! In the olden time, such was the prostration of the "million," that it was only when seen in high places that even Guilt and Sin were felt to be appalling;—Remorse was the privilege of Kings and Princes—and the Furies shook their scourges but before the eyes of the high-born, whose crimes had brought eclipse across the ancestral glories of some ancient line.
But we now know that there is but one origin from which flow all disastrous issues, alike to the king and the beggar. It is sin that does "with the lofty equalise the low;" and the same deep-felt community of guilt and groans which renders Religion awful, has given to poetry in a lower degree something of the same character—has made it far more profoundly tender, more overpoweringly pathetic, more humane and thoughtful far, more humble as well as more high, like Christian Charity more comprehensive; nay, we may say, like Christian Faith, felt by those to whom it is given to be from on high; and if not utterly destroyed, darkened and miserably weakened by a wicked or vicious life.
We may affirm, then, that as human nature has been so greatly purified and elevated by the Christian Religion, Poetry, which deals with human nature in all its dearest and most intimate concerns, must have partaken of that purity and that elevation—and that it may now be a far holier and more sacred inspiration, than when it was fabled to be the gift of Apollo and the Muses. We may not circumscribe its sphere. To what cerulean heights shall not the wing of Poetry soar? Into what dungeon-gloom shall she not descend? If such be her powers and privileges, shall she not be the servant and minister of Religion?
If from moral fictions of life Religion be altogether excluded, then it would indeed be a waste of words to show that they must be worse than worthless. They must be, not imperfect merely, but false; and not false merely, but calumnious against human nature. The agonies of passion fling men down to the dust on their knees, or smite them motionless as stone statues, sitting alone in their darkened chambers of despair. But sooner or later, all eyes, all hearts, look for comfort to God. The coldest metaphysical analyst could not avoid that, in his sage enumeration of "each particular hair" that is twisted and untwisted by him into a sort of moral tie; and surely the impassioned and philosophical poet will not, dare not, for the spirit that is within him, exclude that from his elegies, his hymns, and his songs, which, whether mournful or exulting, are inspired by the life-long, life-deep conviction, that all the greatness of the present is but for the future—that the praises of this passing earth are worthy of his lyre only because it is overshadowed by the eternal heavens.
But though the total exclusion of Religion from Poetry aspiring to be a picture of the life or soul of man, be manifestly destructive of its very essence—how, it may be asked, shall we set bounds to this spirit—how shall we limit it—measure it—and accustom it to the curb of critical control? If Religion be indeed all-in-all, and there are few who openly deny it, must we, nevertheless, deal with it only in allusion—hint it as if we were half afraid of its spirit, half ashamed—and cunningly contrive to save our credit as Christians, without subjecting ourselves to the condemnation of critics, whose scorn, even in this enlightened age, has—the more is the pity—even by men conscious of their genius and virtue, been feared as more fatal than death?
No: Let there be no compromise between false taste and true Religion. Better to be condemned by all the periodical publications in Great Britain than your own conscience. Let the dunce, with diseased spleen, who edits one obscure Review, revile and rail at you to his heart's discontent, in hollow league with his black-biled brother, who, sickened by your success, has long laboured in vain to edit another, still more unpublishable—but do you hold the even tenor of your way, assured that the beauty which nature, and the Lord of nature, have revealed to your eyes and your heart, when sown abroad will not be suffered to perish, but will have everlasting life. Your books—humble and unpretending though they be—yet here and there a page not uninspired by the spirit of Truth, and Faith, and Hope, and Charity—that is, by Religion—will be held up before the ingle light, close to the eyes of the pious patriarch, sitting with his children's children round his knees—nor will any one sentiment, chastened by that fire that tempers the sacred links that bind together the brotherhood of man, escape the solemn search of a soul, simple and strong in its Bible-taught wisdom, and happy to feel and own communion of holy thought with one unknown—even perhaps by name—who although dead yet speaketh—and, without superstition, is numbered among the saints of that lowly household.
He who knows that he writes in the fear of God and in the love of man, will not arrest the thoughts that flow from his pen, because he knows that they may—will be—insulted and profaned by the name of cant, and he himself held up as a hypocrite. In some hands, ridicule is indeed a terrible weapon. It is terrible in the hands of indignant genius, branding the audacious forehead of falsehood or pollution. But ridicule in the hands either of cold-blooded or infuriated Malice, is harmless as a birch-rod in the palsied fingers of a superannuated beldam, who in her blear-eyed dotage has lost her school. The Bird of Paradise might float in the sunshine unharmed all its beautiful life long, although all the sportsmen of Cockaigne were to keep firing at the star-like plumage during the Christmas holydays of a thousand years.
We never are disposed not to enjoy a religious spirit in metrical composition, but when induced to suspect that it is not sincere; and then we turn away from the hypocrite, just as we do from a pious pretender in the intercourse of life. Shocking it is, indeed, to see "fools rush in where angels fear to tread;" nor have we words to express our disgust and horror at the sight of fools, not rushing in among those awful sanctities before which angels vail their faces with their wings, but mincing in, with red slippers and flowered dressing-gowns—would-be fashionables, with crow-quills in hands like those of milliners, and rings on their fingers—afterwards extending their notes into Sacred Poems for the use of the public—penny-a-liners, reporting the judgments of Providence as they would the proceedings of a police court.