Yet, sir, irreverence has been felt, and will be felt, by those who take low and narrow views, in the treating of sacred subjects, as themes of poetry.
NORTH.
Shall we stand back awed into silence, and leave the Scriptures alone, to speak of the things which the Scriptures declare? This is a restraint which the Human Spirit has never felt called upon to impose upon itself. On the contrary, the most religious Minds have always felt themselves required in duty to dedicate their best faculties of reason to the service of religion—by inquiring into, and expounding, the truths of religion. But Reason is not the sole intellectual power that God has given to Man, nor the sole faculty by the use of which he will be glorified. Another power native to the same spirit, granted to it now in more scant and now in overflowing measure, is the faculty of verse and of poetical creation; and it is no more conceivable that we are bound to withhold the efforts of this power from its highest avocations, than that we are under obligation to forbear from carrying our powers of rational investigation to the searching of the Scriptures.
SEWARD.
The sanctity of spirit in which Milton wrote hallows the work of Milton. He was driven back by no scruple from applying the best strength of his mind to the highest matters. Holding him justified for attempting the most elevated subjects in verse, we must bear in mind what is the nature of Poetry, and beware that we do not suffer ourselves to be unnecessarily alarmed or offended when we find the Poet, upon the highest occasions, fearlessly but reverently using the manner of representation inseparable from his Art.
NORTH.
What is this Manner of Representation?
TALBOYS.
It may be said in a word. Poetry represents the Inward and the Invisible by means of the Outward and the Visible.
The First great law of poetical Creation is this: that the Kingdom of Matter and of the bodily senses, transformed by the divine energy of genius, shadows forth and images out the Kingdom of the Mind and of Spirit.