Which Gabriel plays on every chord,
From all below and all above
Loud hallelujahs to the Lord.’
“Simply as a specimen of harmonious versification, I would place this paraphrase by Dr Watts above everything in the English language, not even excepting Pope’s Messiah”!!! Whereas, to any one possessing a common ear, the lines must rank as absolute doggrel, and the ideas which they convey are commonplace and wretchedly expressed. Elsewhere she says:—“I certainly do not worship the old English poets. With the exception of Milton and Shakespeare, there is more poetry in the works of the writers of the last fifty years than in all the rest together.” We wonder if she ever read a line of Chaucer or of Spenser, not to speak of Pope and Dryden. But she objects even to Milton. Here is a piece of criticism which we defy the world to match: “There is a coldness about all the luscious exuberance of Milton, like the wind that blows from the glaciers across these flowery valleys. How serene his angels in their adamantine virtue! yet what sinning, suffering soul could find sympathy in them? The utter want of sympathy for the fallen angels, in the whole celestial circle, is shocking. Satan is the only one who weeps
“‘For millions of spirits for his faults amerced,
And from eternal splendours flung—’
“God does not care, nor his angels.” Our readers, we hope, will understand why we leave this passage without comment. But it may be worth while to show them the sort of poetry (beyond Watts) which Mrs Stowe does admire, and she favours us with the following as a “beautiful aspiration” from an American poet of the name of Lowell:—
“Surely the wiser time shall come
When this fine overplus of might,
No longer sullen, slow or dumb,