and of the latter it may be said, that one of the greatest charms of Thomson's masterpiece is the pure and elevated spirit of devotion which occasionally breathes out amidst the reveries of fancy and the pictures of nature, as though the poet had caught sudden and transporting glimpses of the Creator himself through the perspective of his works; while the crowning Hymn, at the close, is unquestionably one of the most magnificent specimens of verse in any language, and only inferior to the inspired prototypes in the Book of Psalms, of which it is, for the most part, a paraphrase. As much may be said of Pope's "Messiah," which leaves all his original productions immeasurably behind it, in combined elevation of thought, affluence of imagery, beauty of diction, and fervency of spirit.

It follows, that poetry of the highest order may be composed on pious themes; and the fact that three out of the only four long poems which are daily reprinted for every class of readers among us, are at the same time religious,—that fact ought for ever to silence the cuckoo-note, which is echoed from one mockingbird of Parnassus to another,-that poetry and devotion are incompatible: no man in his right mind, who knows what both words mean, will admit the absurdity for a moment. I have already endeavoured to show*, that gorgeous ornament is no more essential to verse, than naked simplicity is essential to prose. There must, therefore, within the compass of human

See Lecture III.

language, be a style suitable for "contemplative piety" in verse as well as in prose ;-a style for penitential prayer, as well as for holy adoration and rapturous thanksgiving. If nothing can be poetry, which is not elevated above ordinary speech by "decorations of fancy, tropes, figures, and epithets," many of the finest passages, in the finest poems which the world has ever seen, must be outlawed and branded with the ignominy of prose. It is true, that there is a vast deal of religious verse, which, as poetry, is utterly worthless; but it is equally true, that there is no small portion of genuine poetry associated with pure and undefiled religion, among the compositions even of our Hymn-writers. What saith Milton on "the height of this great argument ?" Hear him in prose, that wants nothing but numbers to equal it with any page in "Paradise Lost."

"These abilities are the inspired gifts of God, rarely bestowed; and are of power to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility; to allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the affections in right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God's almightiness, and what he works, and what he suffers to be wrought with high providence in his church; to sing victorious agonies of martyrs and saints, the deeds and triumphs of pious nations doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ; to deplore the general relapses of kingdoms and states from justice and God's true worship. Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable and

grave; whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of that which is called fortune from without, and the wily subtleties and refluxes of man's thoughts from within; all these things, with a solid and treatable smoothness, to paint out and describe: — teaching over the whole book of sanctity and virtue, through all the instances of example, with such delight to those especially of soft and delicious temper, who will not so much as look upon truth herself, unless they see her elegantly dressed; whereas the paths of honesty and good life appear now rugged and difficult, though they be indeed easy and pleasant, they will then appear to all men easy and pleasant, though they were rugged and difficult indeed."-On Church Government, book ii.

The art, of which this is a true description, must be the highest of all arts, and require the greatest combination of fine faculties to excel in it. That art is poetry; and the special subjects on which it is here exhibited, as being most happily employed, are almost entirely sacred. The writer is Milton, who, in his subsequent works, exemplified all the varieties of poetical illustration here enumerated, and justified his lofty estimate of the capabilities of verse, hallowed to divine themes, by the success with which he celebrated such in "Paradise Lost," "Paradise Regained," and "Samson Agonistes." Not another word can be necessary to refute the notion, that religious subjects are incapable of poetic treatment. Dr. Johnson himself says nothing of the kind; and yet, upon his authority, (from a misunderstanding of two passages

in his criticisms on Waller and Watts,) this notion is still held by men who ought to be ashamed of it.

Didactic and Descriptive Poetry.

I class these two together, because poets themselves so often unite them; for though we have abundance of pieces, in which, if "pure description holds (not) the place of sense," but occupies its own picturesque position with independent and due effect, yet few compositions in verse can be purely preceptive, without the "aid of foreign ornament;" nor can it be literally said of any art or science, thus handled, that its "beauty" is, "when unadorned, adorned the most." It must be arrayed and enriched with extrinsic graces, or renounce all pretensions to attractiveness from the poor and impolitic use of metre. It is the misfortune of didactic poetry, that for the purposes of teaching, it has no advantage over prose; and, in fact, from the difficulty of adapting the elegancies of verse to common-place details, it often falls lamentably short of common sense, in unnatural attempts to convey the simplest meanings in bloated verbiage. Pure directions of any kind, especially on technical subjects, may be delivered more precisely and intelligibly in the ordinary language of men, diversified with the terms of that art which is taught. Every specimen of this class, from the days of Hesiod to those of the late James Grahame-not excepting what has been deemed, in point of execution, the most perfect poem of antiquity, the Georgics of Virgil,—every specimen

of this class establishes the truth, or rather the truism, above laid down.

In a poem on agriculture, it is self-evident, à priori, that instructions in hedging, ditching, draining, haymaking, sowing, reaping, &c. can assume little or nothing of poetry beyond the shape of rhythm to the eye, for they will scarcely admit the sound of it to the ear, in higher harmony, or sweeter diction, than may be found by humming and counting the fingers over old Tusser's "Five Hundred Points in Husbandry.” Lessons on manual occupations, domestic economy, or even learned pursuits, cannot alone be the burthen of song, or it will soon be no song at all; for with "music, image, sentiment, and thought,”—the elements of poetry,-they have no affinity. I confine the remark to the instructions, because the things themselves may sometimes be made highly poetical and interesting; but then they cease to be didactic, and become descriptive. Thomson's great work, with a few precepts intermingled, presents, in beautiful series and harmonious connection, the phenomena of nature, and the operations of man contemporary with these, through the four seasons;-forming, in fact, a biographical memoir of the infancy, maturity, and old age of an English year. - Grahame, in his "British Georgics," has written a preceptive poem, in which similar subjects are included; but here the lovely and magnificent appearances of nature are extraneous embellishments, while the labours of the farmer (the Scotch farmer), mean in themselves, are daily directed, and occasionally delineated, according to the succession of months. Between the plans of the two poems