OF THE PASSIONS. 



457 



cate judgment; and no serious mind would readily consent, I apprehend, that 

 they should be resorted to and promulgated as sources of entertainment in the 

 theatres of our own country. I mention the fact with the mere view of con- 

 trasting it with what has of late years been the predominant and licentious 

 taste of the French metropolis ; and to show the readiness with which this 

 polite and elegant, but gay and giddy, people rush from one extreme to the 

 other of that sober medium which will, I trust, ever limit and characterize 

 our own national feelings and conduct.* 



It is well known to have been the opinion of Dr. Johnson, that religious 

 subjects are but little calculated for poetry of any kind ; that the fire of the 

 Muses will not cordially blend with the flame of devotion. From this opi- 

 nion, however, I must beg leave altogether to dissent. 



There is no topic so well qualified for enkindling and enlisting into its ser- 

 vice all the best and purest passions of the heart ; and none, therefore, to 

 which the language of the passions, subject, indeed, to the discipline of a nice 

 judgment, is better adapted, or can be more laudably consecrated. And on 

 turning accidentally to Sir William Jones's " Essay on the Arts commonly 

 called Imitative," I find this opinion fortified ; and the general survey of the 

 subject now offered supported by the authority of this great scholar, whose 

 name and judgment I may fairly put into the scale against those of our cele- 

 brated lexicographer. 



" It seems probable, that poetry was originally no more than a strong and 

 animated expression of the human passions, of joy and grief, love and hatred, 

 admiration and anger, sometimes pure and unmixed, sometimes variously 

 modified and combined ; for, if we observe the voice and accents of a person 

 affected by any of the violent passions, we shall perceive a something in them 

 very nearly approaching to cadence and measure ; which is remarkably the 

 case in the language of a vehement orator, whose talent is chiefly conversant 

 about praise or censure ; and we may collect from several passages in Tully, 

 that the fine speakers of old Greece and Rome had a sort of rhythm in their 

 sentences, less regular, but not less melodious, than that of the poets. 



"If this idea be just, one would suppose thai the most ancient sort of 

 poetry consisted in praising the Deity : for if we conceive a being created 

 with all his faculties and senses, endued with speech and reason, to open his 

 eyes in a most delightful plain ; to view for the first time the serenity of the 

 sky, the splendour of the sun, the verdure of the fields and woods, the glow 

 ing colours of the flowers ; we can hardly believe it possible, that he should 

 refrain from bursting into an ecstasy of joy, and pouring his praises to the 

 Creator of those wonders, and the Author of his happiness. This kind of 

 poetry is used in all nations ; but as it is the sublimest of all, when it is ap- 

 plied to its true object, so it has often been perverted to impious purposes by 

 pagans and idolaters."! 



It is true the devotional poetry of our own country that can pretend to any 

 high degree of merit is but very sparing, when compared with what we may 

 reasonably boast on most other subjects. Not, however, that we are without 

 writers of high and deserved reputation, or specimens of admirable excel- 

 lence and sublimity. Yet we must not judge, as Dr. Johnson appears to have 

 done, from our own country alone ; since, perhaps, no people celebrated for 

 great refinement in taste and language have so little cultivated this branch of 

 the poetic art. It is a remarkable fact, that the metrical psalmody of our 

 established church, which ought to be the best, is the worst of all English 

 poetry in its old version, and not always improved as one could wish in its 

 new, though several of the psalms in this later version are exquisitely turned. 



And here it is obvious, that the fault does not lie with the subject, for the 

 original Hebrew is full of excellences of every kind. Our poets of the 

 highest reputation, whether epic, dramatic, or lyric, have seldom ventured 

 upon sacred themes ; and in the few instances in which they have made such 



* It Bhould be recollected that this lecture was composed and delivered during the reign of Buonaparte, 

 t EBsay on the Arts commonly called Imitative Works, iv. 550, 4to. 



