By every honest man contemn’d,
By your own looks betray’d, condemn’d—
Of shame in front there is no lack,
And curses ride upon your back.”
The Sacred Poets of England and America, for Three Centuries. Edited by Rufus W. Griswold. Illustrated by Steel engravings. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 8vo.
There is a strange impression current even among people who ought to know better, that religious poetry is a form of composition confined to poets of the third or fourth class, and chiefly valuable for Hymn Books. The existence of any verse, instinct with the finest essence of poetry, and glowing with the rapt and holy passions of the religious bard, is practically denied. Now nothing is more certain than that poetry, impassioned imagination, is essentially religious both in its nature and its expression. It springs from that raised mood of mind in which the object present to thought is worshiped. This is true even in poetry relating to the senses and to human passion, for if we scrutinize it sharply, we shall find that the object which fills the poet’s mind, however low in itself, is still deified for the moment, and made the exclusive object of his adoration. In this way bards often make gods of persons and things very questionable in themselves, but this is owing rather to the direction than the nature of the poet’s powers. If these powers instead of being devoted to the idealization of appetite or destructive passions, be directed upward to the true object of worship, the poetry will be really more beautiful and sublime than if it were merely confined to spiritualized sensations.
No one can glance over Mr. Griswold’s beautiful book without feeling how rich is English literature in song, celebrating the beauty of holiness and the infinite perfections of God. The compilation comprehends the early as well as the later English poets, and contains some exquisite but not generally known extracts from Spenser, Gascoigne, Drayton, Sir Henry Wottan, Davies, Carew, Ben Jonson, Drummond, Fletcher, Donne, Sir John Beaumont, Wither, Herrick, Quarles, Vaughan and Herbert. The holy poets of a later date, both of England and America, are likewise profusely quoted, and the whole collection is well deserving a place in every family library in the country.
Benjamin Franklin: His Autobiography. With a Narrative of his Public Life and Services. By Rev. H. Hastings Weld. New York: Harper & Brothers.