Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

the prisoner in its cage was conveyed to his rooms in King's College. There the bearer met with a very kind reception, but was desired to carry back the bird with him. "I cannot," said the Doctor, "take so good care of it as you can, but I will consider it mine, and you shall keep it for me; and, as long as it lives, I will pay you half-a-crown weekly for its maintenance."

No one, in fact, knew better the proper spirit and application of the scriptural injunction " to make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness," with a view to that awful tribunal which he has delineated with such fire of poetic imagination, such justness of sentiment. and truth, in his admirable Seatonian Prize Poem on the Day of Judgment; a poem replete with so many beauties, that the wonder is, how so great a favorite of the Muses as the author must have been in his early years, should have ceased to court a continuance of their favors. With the exception of a few stanzas* which I have seen

[ocr errors]

I have since discovered this little poetical effusion in the same volume of the "Elegant Extracts" which contains a complete copy of the Prize Poem; and, being very short, I will here insert it.

VERSES BY DR. GLYNN.

"Teaze me no more, nor think I care

Though monarchs bow at Kitty's shrine,

Or powder'd coxcombs woo the fair,
Since Kitty is no longer mine.

Indifferent 'tis alike to me,

If my favorite dove be stole,

Whether its dainty feathers be

Pluck'd by the eagle or the owl.

somewhere in print with the name of Dr. Glynn annexed, there is no evidence, that I am aware of, of his having written any further poetry. The following story is told relative to his obtaining the Seatonian Prize. For four years consecutively it had been gained by the once celebrated Christopher Smart; a circumstance which would naturally be much talked of in the University; and some friend of Glynn's whom he met at a coffee-house, after regretting that Smart had met with no able competitor, asked him, why he did not enter the lists ? "I think I will," was the reply, and he nobly fulfilled his intention.

There are some compositions which we never tire of reading-some subjects to which we cannot recur too often, nor study too intently. To this absorbing interest Glynn's Seatonian Poem may well lay claim. Like that Holy Book on which it is founded, it is redolent of things not There is throughout a solemn sublimity of thought and a holy circumspection, which tend to lift the mind from sublunary objects and pursuits to the exigencies of

seen.

[blocks in formation]

that stupendous day, when "Behold, He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him.”—Rev. i. 7.

It is the hope of everlasting life brought more prominently to light by the Gospel-and insured to us on the terms of the Gospel covenant-that can alone sustain us in all difficulties and carry us through all temptations.*

Happy, therefore, is the man who can say with St. Paul, at the end of his earthly pilgrimage, when only it can be said safely, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.”— 2 Tim. iv. 7.t

"Death, considered as the way which leadeth us into the presence of God, infinitely holy, to whom we must give an account of all our actions, would be very terrible to us indeed, did we not know that Jesus, by shedding his blood, hath procured the pardon of our sins. For, to use the words of Addison, 'I must confess that I think there is no scheme of religion, besides that of Christianity, which can possibly support the most virtuous person under the thought of the final judgment. Let a man's innocence be what it will, let his virtues rise to the highest pitch of perfection attainable in this life, there will be still in him so many secret sins, so many human frailties, so many offences of ignorance, passion, and prejudice, so many unguarded words and thoughts; and, in short, so many defects in his best actions; that, without the advantage of such an expiation and atonement, as Christianity has revealed to us, it is impossible that he should be cleared before his sovereign Judge, or that he should be able to stand in his sight. Our holy religion suggests to us the only means whereby our guilt may be taken away, and our imperfect obedience accepted.'"-Dr. MACKNIGHT, from MANT's Bible.

+ It is the opinion of many learned interpreters, that St. Paul was warned by an oracle, or revelation from Heaven, of his near approaching martyrdom, after the same manner as St. Peter.-2 Pet. i. 14. Having so often, in the course of his life, experienced the grace of God, carrying him through such an infinite variety and multitude of sufferings, with honour and victory, he was assured that his fortitude should not forsake him in his last and greatest trial. Well may he

In conformity with the doctrine which the Book of Job so sublimely inculcates, Dr. Glynn looked around the world, and saw that, without faith, reason must falter in contemplating the inequalities of justice, not only as they meet us in the general allotment of mankind, but as they force themselves upon our observation in the very centre of civilization, and in the very focus, as it were, of the rays of Christianity.

His Poem opens accordingly with the following beautiful exordium :—

66 Thy justice, heavenly King! and that great day,
When Virtue, long abandon'd and forlorn,

Shall raise her pensive head; and Vice, that erst
Ranged unreproved and free, shall sink appall'd,
I sing advent'rous.-But what eye can pierce
The vast immeasurable realms of space,
O'er which Messiah drives his flaming car

To that bright region, where enthroned he sits,
First-born of Heav'n, to judge assembled worlds,

Clothed in celestial radiance ?"

He then proceeds to vindicate the ways of God to man, not by the vain attempt to bring them to the level of each

be supposed to have been entitled to such assurance at such a time, and there was no danger of his abusing it. But, before this, when the blessed Apostle was farther off from the end of his race and combat, he speaks in a more doubtful manner: "I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway."1 Cor. ix. 27.

"St. Paul cannot be considered as absolutely certain of his salvation at the time when he so expressed himself. Such an assurance, in fact, would but tend to betray any man who is yet in the midst of his combat with the adversaries of his soul-the devil, the world, and the flesh-into treacherous security; inasmuch as it would, probably, make him careless and negligent in the use of means appointed for his perseverance."-BISHOP BULL. See MANT'S Bible.

man's capacity, but, appealing to the deliberate conclusions of reason and to the voice of conscience, he tells us, despite the apparent inequalities with which we are surrounded,

"What harmony

(Sweet as the music of the rolling spheres)
Attunes the moral world: that Virtue still

May hope her promised crown; that Vice may dread
Vengeance, though late; that reas'ning Pride may own
Just, though unsearchable, the ways of Heav'n."

And, as if incapable of restraining the indignation which the prevailing scepticism of that fearful period in which he wrote his Poem, the prelude of a long succession of years of blasphemy and reproach, roused in him, he exclaims

"Sceptic! whoe'er thou art, who say'st the soul,

That divine particle which God's own breath
Inspired into the mortal mass, shall rest
Annihilate, till Duration has unroll'd
Her never-ending line; tell, if thou know'st,
Why every nation, every clime, though all
In laws, in rites, in manners disagree,
With one consent expect another world,

Where wickedness shall weep?

Tell, why conscience acts

With tenfold force, when sickness, age, or pain,

Stands tott'ring on the precipice of death?

Or why such horror gnaws the guilty soul

Of dying sinners, while the good man sleeps
Peaceful and calm, and with a smile expires ?"

And having thus adverted to the silent monitor within, he appeals to the condition of the external and moral world

« AnteriorContinuar »