310 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



banished ; it is only subdued and made obedient to Christianity, it speaks 

 of heaven, and it leads us to it ; but it speaks also of this world, and of those 

 innocent and simple enjoyments which the fields and the garden, the walks 

 abroad and the domestic retirements of the evening, afford as a relief 

 for our more deep and more serious reflections. Hence it is that Cowper 

 is the most popular of our religious poets, and is deservedly so : he is unaf- 

 fected, simple and sincere : he never forgets that he is a mortal writing to 

 mortals ; and though he sometimes alarms them, and makes them seriously 

 conscious of the position in which they stand, he never assumes a superna- 

 tural terror or drives them from his side. It is difficult to assign a reason 

 why the Excursion of Wordsworth is not extensively perused ; why it is not 

 in the hands and hearts of all men. There is in it simplicity the most pure: 

 in a style the most unaffected and the most impressive that ever was written, 

 it enters into the thoughts and business of man : the imagery is always clear, 

 and it always throws a luminous brightness on the subject intended to be 

 illustrated : the verse is calm, smooth, and deep, and it flows like a wide 

 river through a beautiful valley, and seems to bear the well- instructed mind 

 of the reader, like a richly-freighted vessel, upon its equably undulating and 

 buoyant bosom. Why, then, is the Excursion seldom read, and perhaps 

 never read through, but at intervals? Is it because the truths it suggests or 

 inculcates are too massive to be passed over or to be hastily investigated ? Is 

 the philosophy of moral existence, viewed as it is here with the pure ore of 

 religion, a mine of descent too painful, and of intricacy too bewildering, for 

 the research of common readers ? Must we have impassioned follies for our 

 guides in such an enterprize, and can we sit down and converse with religious 

 philosophy no where but in the fanciful groves of delusion? There are many 

 who cry out, that the Excursion is but a fragment that it is incomplete 

 and that they will read it when the author has finished it. The intelligent 

 reader, however, feels that his own breast must complete it, by furnishing 

 answers to the awful questions which the powerful author has placed before 

 him ! For our own part we have read this extraordinary poem several times, 

 and we never closed the book, but as CEdipus might have closed the leaves 

 of fate in the presence of the sphynx, to look for the answers within ourselves, 



The poem of Mr. Pollok is written with fervour in a style not always clear, 

 but abundant in waves of rapid thought, which carry us on with the subject 

 from time to eternity. We must not, however, at present, indulge ourselves 

 with any further mention of it, but turn to the work before us, the WORLD ; 

 and, after what we have said of the most eminent works of the class to which 

 it belongs, it can be no small praise to add, that, in no respect, is it unworthy 

 to take a distinguished place among them. To analyze a work of this descrip- 

 tion would be no ungrateful task, but it would lead us far beyond the limits 

 prescribed to us ; besides it is the very elementary purpose of a didactic poem 

 to be desultory, and to bring different subjects so in contact and contrast 

 with each other, that no descriptive abstract could possibly do justice to the 

 whole, or show how richly diversity is made to blend into unity. 



The work is divided into six books, the first of which is dedicated to the 

 Bishop of Norwich. The following passage, descriptive of that truly intel- 

 lectual and pious divine, the late Bishop of Calcutta, is a fair specimen of the 

 style, conduct, and sentiments of the poem. 



"How like to Paul our Oxford's Reginald ! 

 Whose precepts, were his tongue forbid to speak, ] 

 In his example had been perfect shown. 

 Mild charity and Christian love were his. 

 In letters great ; in virtue greater still ; 

 Most great in virtue's holiest source Religion. 

 Honours he won, which won, were meekly worn, 



