29 



Rev. H. H. Higgins, a Parchment Document purporting to be laws 

 and original list of members of the Moss-lake tields Cricket Society, 

 dated 1807. 



The paper for the evening, of which the following is the substance, 

 was then read : — 



POETRY, AND ITS APPLICATION TO COMMON LIFE. 

 Br THE Rev. J. EOBBEEDS, B.A. 



It was formerly supposed that Poetry was quite remote from common 

 life, and that it lay entirely in what was far-fetched and out of the way 

 — the picturesque regions of mythology and supernaturalism, or the 

 wild and strange adventures of travel and war. Poetry was often 

 talked of, and perhaps sneered at, as simply equivalent to fiction, the 

 arbitrary invention of things not actually existing. The proverbial 

 phrase, " a poet's license," was often understood to mean that a poet is 

 at liberty to represent things in a manner quite contrary to truth and 

 fact. The whole region of Poetry has sometimes been regarded as 

 altogether technical and artificial, extraneous to real life, and having no 

 natural foundation in the human heart. 



Since the time of Wordsworth it has been unnecessary to prove that 

 this was an entire mistake. It is now acknowledged that all true poetry 

 is founded on the simplicity of nature, and responded to by the universal 

 heart of man. No doubt a great deal of poetry, so called, has been 

 written and admired, wliich was not of this genuine and simple character. 

 Poetry was originally the spontaneous outpouring of natural feeling, under 

 the influence of strong and deep emotion or elevated sentiment. But 

 when the composition of poetry became a professed art, poets were apt to 

 copy the conceptions and images of those who had preceded them, instead 

 of trusting to their own natural resources, and the impulses of native 

 genius. Thus, in our sacred poetry, our religious hymns, images are 

 often introduced which were natural only to the country, climate, history 

 and maimers of the ancient Jews in Palestine, and were strictly appro- 

 priate, intelligible, and beautiful in the devout strains of the Hebrew 

 psalmist, or the glowing fervour of the Hebrew prophet, but which, to 

 our English ears, and with our English habits, sound affected, unmean- 

 ing, or even ludicrous. It may be said, indeed, with respect to many of 

 these, that our religious associations, and especially our English version 

 of the Scriptures, ought to make us sufficiently familiar with the imagery 

 of Scriptural poetry to enter into it, almost as if it were of native growth 

 in our own soil. But again, much of our earlier English poetry is full 

 of allusions to the imagery, and especially to the mythology, of the an- 

 cic-nt (ireeks. 'I'lie numberless divinities of (lartli, sea, and sky, who, in 



