26 REV. JONES VERY, IN MEMORIAM ; 



Poe was a mechanic, nothing more in poetry, tintinnabu- 

 lation, and showed our quality which is ingenuity, inven- 

 tion, not imagination. Poe was what Copley was in 

 painting. Walt Whitman seems to have the ore un- 

 smelted, to be a symptom not a fulfilment. He has the 

 largest criticism we have had here it seems. Browning 

 is as rugged as Tennyson is sweet. Foils to each other, 

 they fly apart into extremes. They shine by opposites. 

 Browning is a Velasquez, by all means masculine ; Ten- 

 nyson, Murillo. Both Browning and Emerson, avoiding 

 commonplace, run to the farthest limit of obscurity and 

 terseness. 



We are insisting upon literary form while treating of 

 one who was innocent of its attractions, who drew his 

 inspiration from beneath, behind, above and beyond lit- 

 erature, from the spirit itself, far away in the soul where 

 no ambition comes, but only lowliness, humility and 

 seeking. 



The following letters were then read by Rev. Geo. H. 

 Hosmer. 



Jamaica Plain, Mass., Dec. 10, 1880. 



My Dear Sir: 



I have delayed answering you in hope that I might 

 be able to come to your meeting, but I find it will not be in my power 

 to do so. 



I have had a great respect for Mr/Very : first, for his profound and 

 sincere religious convictions, secondly, for his genuine vein of poetry. 

 So much of our religion is more or less outward, — a religion of out- 

 ward conventions, outward rituals, outward beliefs, outward profes- 

 sion and experience, — that it is an immense help sometimes to meet with 

 a man to whom religion is a central life, which would be the same if 

 there should be no other religious man in the world beside himself. 

 And such was the religion of Jones Very. 



His poetry was equally genuine, — original in this best sense, that it 

 originated in his own soul, and was not borrowed nor copied. It was 

 very unequal, as all natural products are apt to be ; but I think there are 



