One who had the genius to write Holy Willie's Prayer—a poem that crucified Calvinism and through its bloodless heart thrust the spear of common sense—a poem that made every orthodox creed the food of scorn—of inextinguishable laughter.
Burns had his faults, his frailties. He was intensely human. Still, I would rather appear at the "Judgment Seat" drunk, and be able to say that I was the author of "A man's a man for 'a that," than to be perfectly sober and admit that I had lived and died a Scotch Presbyterian.
I read Byron—read his Cain, in which, as in Paradise Lost, the Devil seems to be the better god—read his beautiful, sublime and bitter lines—read his Prisoner of Chillon—his best—a poem that filled my heart with tenderness, with pity, and with an eternal hatred of tyranny.
I read Shelley's Queen Mab—a poem filled with beauty, courage, thought, sympathy, tears and scorn, in which a brave soul tears down the prison walls and floods the cells with light. I read his Skylark—a winged flame—passionate as blood—tender as tears—pure as light.
I read Keats, "whose name was writ in water"—read St. Agnes Eve, a story told with such an artless art that this poor common world is changed to fairy land—the Grecian Urn, that fills the soul with ever eager love, with all the rapture of imagined song—the Nightingale—a melody in which there is the memory of morn—a melody that dies away in dusk and tears, paining the senses with its perfectness.
And then I read Shakespeare, the plays, the sonnets, the poems—read all. I beheld a new heaven and a new earth; Shakespeare, who knew the brain and heart of man—the hopes and fears, the loves and hatreds, the vices and the virtues of the human race; whose imagination read the tear-blurred records, the blood-stained pages of all the past, and saw falling athwart the outspread scroll the light of hope and love; Shakespeare, who sounded every depth—while on the loftiest peak there fell the shadow of his wings.
I compared the Plays with the "inspired" books—Romeo and Juliet with the Song of Solomon, Lear with Job, and the Sonnets with the Psalms, and I found that Jehovah did not understand the art of speech. I compared Shakespeare's women—his perfect women—with the women of the Bible. I found that Jehovah was not a sculptor, not a painter—not an artist—that he lacked the power that changes clay to flesh—the art, the plastic touch, that moulds the perfect form—the breath that gives it free and joyous life—the genius that creates the faultless.
The sacred books of all the world are worthless dross and common stones compared with Shakespeare's glittering gold and gleaming gems.
VI.
UP to this time I had read nothing against our blessed religion except what I had found in Burns, Byron and Shelley. By some accident I read Volney, who shows that all religions are, and have been, established in the same way—that all had their Christs, their apostles, miracles and sacred books, and then asked how it is possible to decide which is the true one. A question that is still waiting for an answer.