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ON THE LANGUAGE 



the first attainments as poets, but the lowest attainments as Christians, iii 

 our own day ; and whose direct object has been to furnish words to what 

 has been vended along with thern under the name of Sacred Music ; to 

 cheat the sacred hours of the Sunday, and of those who hail the return of 

 the Sunday, by a show of Sunday -ailment and occupation. Such attempts 

 have had their day, but have never been able to support themselves. In 

 the midst of ajl their external glitter and polished rhapsody, they have 

 been found vapid and unsatisfactory ; an airy, flatulent food, that the soul 

 could never feed or fatten upon. And, on analyzing several of these at- 

 tempts, with a friend of the nicest judgment, and who was, at first, strange- 

 ly captivated by their pretensions, we found, that by a change in a very few 

 of the terms, chiefly, indeed, by a mere substitution of human names for 

 divine, they were reduced, with great advantage to themselves, to their 

 proper and natural level of love-ditties and ballads, from which alone they 

 seem to have been raised, by an irreverent adoption of mere misnomers 

 for the base purpose of finding them a market in what is called the reli- 

 gious world. 



On every account, however, I am much afraid that we must yield the 

 palm of devotional poetry, to some of the nations on the continent. The 

 best French writers upon this subject, are Racine the younger, son of the 

 celebrated >dramatist of the same name, John Baptiste Rousseau, and Pom- 

 pignan ; all contemporaries, and the last of whom had the honour of 

 being ridiculed by Voltaire, Helvetius, and their associates, for having had 

 the boldness to dehver before the French academy, in 1760, a discourse 

 in favour of Christianity. And when to these I add the name of my late 

 venerable friend, the Abbe Dellille, I fear it will be diflicult to muster an 

 equal group, possessing like power, in our own country. Spain, however.; 

 in this respect, at least rivals, if they do not surpass the master-poets of 

 France ; as I beheve every one must allow who is acquainted with the sa- 

 cred poetry of Melendez, Miguel Sanchez, and the Conde de Norona. 

 Germany has also a few poets of the same kind of great merit, but it is to 

 Italy we must turn for the best specimens of devotional lyrics in modern 

 times ; — Italy, where, almost from the revival of literature, the devotional 

 muse, though surrounded by corruption, has been courted and warmly 

 caressed by many of her best scholars, her best poets, and her best men. 

 Her sacred verse was at first, indeed, too much interwoven with the mys- 

 tic subhmity of Platonism, which pervades more especially the spirited 

 and lofty verses of Lorenzo de' Medici. It next allied itself equally with 

 classical mythology, generalizing the " Jehovah, Jove, or Lord," as Mr. 

 Pope has it, of Christians and Heathens ; under which system every Pagan 

 deity had his name continued, and was regarded as nothing more than a 

 separate attribute of the true God. Sanazzaro and Ponlano, like the 

 Portuguese epic poet Camoens, are full of this absurd amalgamation ; but 

 from the time of Vida to the present day, the devotional effusions of the 

 Tuscan muse have been purged from foreign dross, and in subject as well 

 as in style, while highly empassioned are equally pure, pious, and erudite. 

 Were I to be called upon to point out the two best sacred poets of modern 

 times, I should instantly name Filicaja and Kiopstock ; both men of ex- 

 emplary goodness, whose lives were dedicated to religion, and who, while 

 they wrote from the heart, adorned their compositions with every classical 

 excellence. Bion has nothing sweeter or more touching than Kiopstock ; 

 Pindar nothing more ardent or sublime than Filicaja. 



Yet to determine the question fairly, whether religious subjects can af 

 ford a proper ground for poetry or the language of the passions, it is ne- 



