of the Stuart dynasty; and of which several, though little known to the modern reader, are works of great merit. The religious disputes which disturbed the reigns. of Elizabeth and her immediate successors, great as were the evils that accompanied them, were attended with this, among other advantages, that they fixed religion more rootedly than ever in the general mind, as the object of profound and engrossing interest. The character both of the language and of the nation, had now attained the point most favourable for the production of a great poetical work, which might be expected to survive, both as a monument of its present condition, and a measure and model for the future. Our national epic bears the impress of these circumstances. Happily for English literature, its greatest, and still most popular poem, is eminently a religious work. The central orb of our poetic system shines with a direct light from heaven;' and as long as the mind of England remains capable of duly appreciating the merit of the Paradise Lost, no fears need be entertained, lest the unchastised extravagances of passion, and the meretricious charms of overwrought description, should win that permanent favour for vicious principles of composition, and the abandonment of all principle in more important matters, which has hitherto been accorded to serious, if not sacred, verse. The well-known unguarded assertion of a great writer and a good man,' that religious sentiments, and the ideas of Christian theology, cannot be fitly applied to poetical purposes, has been ably refuted; nor is there any need to revive the controversy. The best answer to those critics who so willingly advocate the paradox of Johnson, is implied in such collections as that now before the reader. The author of the "Lives of the Poets" lived at a time, when no more than a very limited acquaintance with the elder writers of English verse, was deemed necessary for the directors of the public taste; nor need we hesitate to assert, that either the prejudices of his education, the ✔morbid timidity of his religious feelings, closely bordering on superstition, or the coldness of his poetical temperament, warped his judgment in this particular. Some of those immortal productions of the diviner muse which furnish the practical evidences of his error-the works of Cowper and Montgomery for instance, have since been added to the treasures of our literature. That so many persons whose only qualification for the important task of the Christian poet, was their unquestionable piety, have deluged the land with dull and sometimes offensive verse, in the supposed service of religion, is sincerely to be lamented; because it has had the effect of averting tasteful, but indifferently Johnson,-Life of Waller. 2 See Mr. Montgomery's Introduction to "The Christian Poet;" the Quarterly Review, vol. xxxii. &c. 6 furnished minds from such reading altogether, and facilitated the adoption of the unfounded opinion of our great modern critic. Some writers also, who in other branches of poetry have displayed ability, and even genius, may have failed in this, for reasons not hard to assign: they were induced by circumstances to attempt a style which their entire habits of thought and life, had rendered uninteresting and uncongenial to them; and the result was as might have been anticipated-the hand thus unwarrantably laid upon the altar became paralyzed, and forgot its cunning.' But it would be difficult to point out, in what works, of a wholly secular character, greater warmth and tenderness of feeling, superior boldness and brilliancy of style, more exuberant wealth of poetry, or a more manly and vigorous exercise of intellectual power, are to be found, than in the publications that have furnished the present volume, and those of the same nature, by which it will be, at intervals, succeeded. Unequal and even strangely heterogeneous as the contents of some of those publications are, so richly fraught are many of them with solemn Christian thoughts, expressed in numbers such as genuine poetic gerius alone could have uttered, that the editor is fully aware how little credit he can assume to himself, in the boast, that he deems the result of his labours worthy alike of a place in the library of the man of piety, or the man of tasteof the poet or the divine. It is, however, chiefly in the character of aids and supports to pious thought and devotional feeling, that an earnest desire for its acceptableness with the public, attends the dismissal of this volume from the press. It is hoped, that many wearied and distressed soldiers of the Cross will find here refreshing "honey upon the ground," by which their strength will be renewed, and their eyes enlightened."1 Few moods of the Christian mind will be found to have been passed over in silence. In these diversified but mutually concordant pages, the devout soul is supplied with the language of praise and adoration-the penitent with the utterances of a contrite heart: the doubting will find the means of conviction; the sinner will be mildly but solemnly warned of his danger; the worldly and the hypocrite, reproved; the proud, humbled; the humble, raised and cheered: while he that takes up the book only for amusement and the delight which true poetry ever imparts, will assuredly find all he seeks, and, haply, by the divine blessing, a far more precious and enduring profit. R. C. 11 Sam. xiv. 27, 29. London, Aug. 24, 1835. |