15 



As a proof of the correctness of this opinion, the new 

 edition just issued has comparatively few alterations ; 

 and where it is altered, it is not always improved 

 as, for instance, Hesper, for twilight, in the opening- 

 piece. 



The editor of the Journal affirms, that Dr. Alexan- 

 der is a bold man, because he wrote on the Church's 

 seasons, and followed Keble. Now, I am not so well 

 satisfied that there is much of boldness in this, heret- 

 ical as it may sound. Heber had walked the same 

 path before Keble, and Heber was a true poet. Keble 

 followed, and in his own line it would have been not 

 only presumptuous but foolish to have sought to follow 

 him. This Dr. Alexander did not do. Both of them 

 drew from the Scripture woven into the service for 

 the day ; and yet they drew from different portions of 

 the Word, while neither of them have brought out the 

 teachings of the seasons, as fully as they are brought 

 out in prose. Keble is unapproachable in his own 

 peculiar vein. He is a peculiar star, by himself, with 

 no other star near him in that part of the heavens, 

 which was the highest, where he now sheds the soft 

 beams of his glory a fixed star of the first magni- 

 tude, in the poetic constellation. But Dr. Alexander's 

 was a totally different vein ; and no microscope within 

 my reach is strong enough to detect the least resem- 

 blance. They cannot be compared, for they are not 

 alike. He must be dead to poetry, who does not 

 trace with delight the footprints of either, and rejoice 

 that the Church's system, is so rich and suggestive, as 

 to afford a secure foothold for both. Take the Easter 

 or Trinity lyrics, and compare them ; and they will 

 be found to be as much unlike as two leaves, each 

 resplendent in beauty, and a flowering of its own. 

 To my mind, it would be about as wise to reject the 



