1829.7

Sacred Poetry.

shall enter into a farther exposition and illustration of it; and, meanwhile, conclude by reminding the readers of Wordsworth-and they are becoming more and more numerous every year -that in an Episode, or say rather, one of the many Tales of domestic suffering, in the Excursion, that of Margaret, upwards, we believe, of four hundred lines-a tolerably long poem in itself-though the whole and entire state of a poor deserted wife and mother's heart, for year after year, of hope deferred, that maketh the heart sick," is described, or rather depicted, with an almost cruel anatomy-not one quivering fibre being left unexposed-and all the ceaseless yet fluctuating, and finally all the constant and unchangeable agitations laid bare and naked that carried her at last lingeringly to the grave-there is not-except one poor and weak line, that seems to have been afterwards purposely dropped in-one single syllable about Religion. Was Margaret a Christian?Let the answer be yes, as good a Christian as ever kneeled in the small mountain chapel, in whose churchyard her body now waits for the resurrection. If she was, then the picture painted of her and her agonies, is a libel not only on her character, but on the character of all other poor Christian women in this Christian land. Placed as she was, for so many years, in the clutches of so many passions her soul surely must have turned sometimes-aye, often, and often, and often, else had it sooner left the clay, towards her Lord and Saviour. But of such "comfort let no man speak,' seems to have been the principle of Mr Wordsworth; and the consequence is that this, the most elaborate picture he ever painted of any conflict within any one human heart, is, with all its pathos, shocking to every religious-nay, even to every moral mind, -that being wanting, without which the entire representation is vitiated, and necessarily false to nature-to virtue to resignation-to life-and to death. These may seem strong words-but we are ready to defend them in the face of all who may venture to impugn their truth.

This utter absence of Revealed Religion, where it ought to have been all-in-all-for in such trials in real life it is all-in-all, or we regard the

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existence of sin or sorrow with repug
nance-shocks, we have said, far deep-
er feelings within us than those of
taste-and throws over the whole poem
to which the tale of Margaret be-
longs, an unhappy suspicion of hol-
lowness and insincerity in that poe-
tical religion, which is throughout a
sorry substitute indeed for the light
that is from Heaven. Above all, it
flings, as indeed we have intimated,
an air of absurdity over the orthodox
Church-of-Englandism-for once to
quote a not inexpressive barbarism of
Bentham-which every now and then
breaks out, either in passing compli-
ment-amounting to but a bow-or
in eloquent laudation, during which
the poet appears to be prostrate on his
knees. He speaks nobly of cathedrals
and minsters, and so forth, reverent-
ly adorning all the land; but in none
-no, not one of the houses of the
humble, the hovels of the poor into
which he takes us, is the religion
preached in those cathedrals and min-
sters, and chanted in prayer to the peal-
ing organ-represented as the power
that in peace supports the roof-tree,
lightens the hearth, and is the guard-
ian, the tutelary spirit of the lowly
dwelling. Can this be right? Impossi-
ble. And when we find religion thus
excluded from Poetry, otherwise as
good as ever was produced by human
genius, what are we to think of the
Poet, and of the world of thought
and feeling, fancy and imagination,
in which he breathes, nor fears to de-
clare to all men, that he believes him-
self to be the very High Priest-at
least one of the order of the High
Priests of nature?

a

It is true, that in his Ecclesiastical Sonnets, Mr Wordsworth has said many fine and noble things pertaining to religion-for when did he ever write on any great subject-and the History of the English Church is assuredly so-without saying many fine and noble things-and proving himself to be prevailing poet." But that Series of Sonnets is rather philosophical than religious; rarely are the essential doctrines of Christianity breathed fully forth, although sometimes beautifully touched upon; we feel, in perusing them, as if merely reading history by a purer and more sacred light than usually falls on her pages; it is indeed a history of Sanctities, written by one who can feel all Sanctities-but still

there is not much in it which might not, without insincerity and hypocrisy, have been uttered, in solemn moods, by a poet who was not a Christian. We are not finding fault-positively -with the Ecclesiastical Sonnets many of which, in grace, delicacy, purity, and tenderness, never were surpassed-and some of which are so dignified and so majestic, that they may be said to be sublime. They are what Wordsworth intended them to be and we are satisfied; but they are not, although all appertaining to divine things, thoroughly embued with the spirit of the Christian faith-and there fore do not seem to us to have any claim to exception from the charge of a want of a truly religious feeling in the poetry of this illustrious man.

Neither, we think, can the devoted admirers and lovers of the Lyrical Ballads help wondering, either at the total absence of all feelings and thoughts in any way connected with Religious Establishments in them, or at the prevalence of such feelings in the Ecclesiastical Sonnets. On turning from the one to the other, we do not see one Wordsworth in two different and opposite lights-but we, for our own parts, cannot help seeing two Wordsworths. Now, however defective of old, and in itself insufficient to satisfy all the demands of the soul, was the religion of the woods of Wordsworth Primus, even now we cannot but prefer it to the religion of the cathedral of Wordsworth Secundus. The altar before which the one did most devoutly bow or kneel, was of the grassy turf-and never had the great goddess Nature a sincerer, a nobler worshipper. The altar which the other but we feel that we have no right to pursue the parallel, although we have a right to suggest itfor the poetry of Wordsworth is a possession belonging to all menthey are not worthy to study it, who are not also privileged to speak of it before the world with that freedom of thought which all its strains inspire, and which can never be exerted by us towards him or his inspirations, with out due and becoming reverence.

-and

Now, Mr Montgomery has lament cd over the absence of the Christian religion, from the poetry of Gray, and Collins, and Goldsmith-and we have sympathized with his expression of regret. But if we except the Elegy --Christianity did not lie so directly

nor constantly in the way of those poets, as in Mr Wordsworth's. They chose, in general-Gray and Collins certainly did-subjects in which religion ought not to have been introduced; but Mr Wordsworth has all his life long chosen subjects from which it ought not to have been omittedand therefore Mr Montgomery might, we think, rather have read a useful lesson to the living, than a useless lamentation over the dead.

We find we are still at some distance from the most interesting volume of which it was our purpose to give some specimens-" The Christian Year"yet we must request the indulgencethe attention of our readers, while we pursue the subject a little farther, in company with the excellent Montgomery-himself one of the best of men, and one of our most delightful living poets-for the epithet delightful" does indeed rightfully belong to the author of the Pelican Island.

"Songs and hymns, in honour of their Gods, are found among all people who have either religion or verse. There is scarcely any pagan poetry, ancient or modern, in which allusions to the nation. al mythology are not so frequent as to constitute the most copious materials, as well as the most brilliant embellishments. The poets of Persia and Arabia, in like manner, have adorned their gorgeous strains with the fables and morals of the Koran. The relics of Jewish song which we possess, with few exceptions, are consecrated immediately to the glory of God, by whom, indeed, they were inspired. The first Christians were wont to edify themselves in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs; and though we have no specimens of these left, except the occa sional doxologies ascribed to the redeemed in the Book of Revelation, it cannot be doubted that they used not only the psalms of the Old Testament, literally,

or accommodated to the circumstances of

a new and rising Church, but that they had original lays of their own, in which they celebrated the praises of Christ, as the Saviour of the world. In the middle ages, the Roman Catholic and Greek churches statedly adopted singing as an essential part of public worship; but this, like the reading of the Scriptures, was too frequently in an unknown tongue, by an affectation of wisdom, to excite the veneration of ignorance, when the learn ed, in their craftiness, taught that Ignorance is the mother of devotion;' and Ignorance was very willing to believe it.

At the era of the Reformation, psalms and hymns, in the vernacular tongue, were revived in Germany, England, and elsewhere, among the other means of grace, of which Christendom had been for centuries defrauded."

Mr Montgomery, however, says truly, that, without disparagement to the living or the dead, and to borrow an idea of an Italian poet-Angelo da Costanzo, in reference to the lyre of Virgil-it may be said that the harp of David yet hangs upon the willow, disdaining the touch of any hand less skilful than his own. For though our elder poets, down even to the Revolution, often chose to exercise their vein on religious topics,-since that time there has been but one who bears a great name among them, who has condescended to compose HYMNS, in the commonly accepted sense of the word. Cowper stands alone-for Addison, beautiful as are some of his pious compositions in verse, is scarcely an exception-Cowper stands alone among "the Mighty-Masters" of the Lyre, as having contributed a considerable number of approved and popular hymns, for the purposes of public and private devotion.

"Hymns, looking at the multitude and mass of them, appear to have been written by all kinds of persons, except poets; and why the latter have not delighted in this department of their own art, is obvious. Just in proportion as the religion of Christ is understood and taught in primitive purity, those who either believe not in its spirituality, or have not proved its converting influence, are careful to avoid meddling with it; so that, if its sacred mysteries have been less frequently and ostentatiously honoured by the homage of our poets within the last hundred and fifty years than formerly, they have been less disgraced and violated by absurd and impious associations. The offence of the cross has not ceased; nay, it exists, perhaps, most inveterately, though less apparently, in those countries where the religion of the state has been refined from the gross superstitions of the dark ages; for there the humbling doctrines of the Gospel are, as of old, a stumblingblock to the self-righteous, and foolishness to the wise in their own esteem. Many of our eminent poets have belonged to one or the other of these classes; it cannot be surprising, then, that they either knew not, or contemned, the truth as it is in Jesus.'"

demolished-and we agree with Mr Montgomery, that had our greatest poets possessed the religious knowledge of our humblest writers of hymns, they might have been the authors of similar compositions, not less superior to the ordinary run of these, than their own best poems are above the incorrigible mediocrity of their contemporaries. But, in this default, we are not without abundant proof, that hymns may be as splendid in poetry, as they are fervent in devotion; as in the Christian Psalmist collected by Mr Montgomery, are to be found many popular pieces, the untaught workmanship of men who had no name in literature, but whose piety inspired them to write in verse, and sometimes with a felicity which the most prac tised masters in song might envy, but unless the spirit gave them utterance," could not compass with their

utmost art.

Mr Montgomery gives, in his Essay, a short example of three favourite poets of the last century, who, had they consecrated their talents to the service of the sanctuary, would have been, of all others, the most likely to have originated hymns, uniting the charms of poetry with the beauties of holiness. Take first the following lines of Gray.

"See the wretch, that long has tost
On the thorny bed of pain,
At length repair his vigour lost,
And breathe and walk again :
The meanest floweret of the vale,
The simplest note that swells the gale,
The common sun, the air, the skies,
To him are opening Paradise."

It cannot be questioned, says Mr Montgomery, that this is genuine poetry, and that the beautiful, but not obvious image in the last couplet, elevates it far above all common-place. Yet there is nothing in the style, nor the cast of sentiment, which might not be employed with corresponding effect on a sacred theme, and in the texture of a hymn. The form of the stanza,and the line that tells of personal experience, in the fact which the writer mentions, remind one, he adds, of the vivid feeling and fluent versification happiest moods; while the concluof Charles Wesley, in some of his ding idea is precisely the same with that of Dr Watts, in a hymn which would not have discredited Gray him

The dogma of Dr Johnson we have self: