"'Aye—but to die and go'—alas,
Where all have gone, and all must go;
To be the nothing that I was,
Ere born to life and living woe.
"Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,
Count o'er thy days from anguish free;
And know, whatever thou hast been,
'Tis something better not to be."
Nor can religion be more powerfully recommended than by the following avowal of an apostle of the opposite system.
"No, for myself, so dark my fate
Through every turn of life has been,
Man and the world I so much hate,
I care not when I quit the scene."
But whilst, for the benefit of others, we thus avail ourselves of the antidote supplied by his Lordship to his own poison, we would wish also that he might feel the efficacy of it himself. Could we hope that so humble a work as this would reach the lofty sphere in which he moves, we would solemnly say to him: "You are wretched, but will nothing make you happy? You hate all men; will nothing warm you with new feelings? You are (as you say) hated by all; will nothing make you an object of affection? Suppose yourself the victim of some disease, which resisted many ordinary applications; but that all who used one medicine uniformly pronounced themselves cured:—would it be worthy of a philosopher not merely to neglect the remedy, but to traduce it? Such, however, my Lord, is the fatuity of your own conduct as to the religion of Christ. Thousands, as wretched as yourself, have found 'a Comforter' in Him; thousands, having stepped into these waters, have been healed of their disease; thousands, touching the hem of His garment, have found 'virtue go out of it.' Beggared then of every other resource, try this. 'Acquaint yourself with God, and be at peace.'" His Lordship may designate this language by that expressive monosyllable, cant; and may possibly, before long, hunt us down, as a sort of mad March hare, with the blood-hounds of his angry muse. But we hope better things of him. We assure him, that, whatever may be true of others, we do not "hate him." As Christians, even he who professes to be unchristian is dear to us. We regard the waste of his fine talents, and the laboured suppression and apparent extinction of his better feelings, with the deepest commiseration and sorrow. We long to see him escape from the black cloud which, by what may fairly be called his "black art," he has conjured up around himself. We hope to know him as a future buttress of his shaken country, and as a friend of his yet "unknown God." Should this change, by the mercy of God, take place, what pangs would many passages of his present work cost him! Happy should we be, could we persuade him, in the bare anticipation of such a change, even now to contrive for his future happiness, by expunging sentiments that would then so much embitter it. Should he never change; yet, such an act would prove, that, at least, he meditated no cruel invasion upon the joys of others. Even Rousseau taught his child religion, as a delusion essential to happiness. The philosophic Tully also, if a belief in futurity were an error, deemed it one with which it was impossible to part. Let the author then, at all events, leave us in unmolested possession of our supposed privileges. He plainly knows no noble or "royal way" to happiness. We find in religion a bark that rides the waves in every storm; a sun that never goes down; a living fountain of waters. Religion is suffered to change its aspect and influence according to the eye and faith of the examiner. Like one side of the pillar of the wilderness, it may merely darken and perplex his Lordship's path: to millions it is like the opposite side of that pillar to the Israelites, the symbol of Deity; the pillar of hallowed flame, which lights and guides, and cheers them as they toil onward through the pilgrimage of life. Could we hear any voice proclaim of him, as of one reclaimed from as inveterate, though more honest, prejudices, "behold, he prayeth;" we should hope that here also the scales would drop from the eyes, and his Lordship become an eloquent defender and promulgator of the religion which he now scorns.—The Christian Observer.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude; and other Poems. By Percy Bysshe Shelley. Crown 8vo. pp. 101. Baldwin, and Co. 1816.
We must candidly own that these poems are beyond our comprehension; and we did not obtain a clue to their sublime obscurity, till an address to Mr. Wordsworth explained in what school the author had formed his taste. We perceive, through the "darkness visible" in which Mr. Shelley veils his subject, some beautiful imagery and poetical expressions: but he appears to be a poet "whose eye, in a fine phrenzy rolling," seeks only such objects as are "above this visible diurnal sphere;" and therefore we entreat him, for the sake of his reviewers as well as of his other readers, (if he has any,) to subjoin to his next publication an ordo, a glossary, and copious notes, illustrative of his allusions and explanatory of his meaning.—The Monthly Review.