lower world, as the darkness of that dispensation would admit; and now and then, a divine and poetic rapture lifted their souls far above the level of that economy of shadows, bore them away far into a brighter region, and gave them a glimpse of evangelic day. The life of angels was harmoniously breathed into the children of Adam, and their minds raised near to Heaven in melody and devotion at once. In the younger days of heathenism the Muses were devoted to the same service: the language in which old Hesiod addresses them is this; "Pierian Muses, fam'd for heavenly lays, Descend, and sing the God your Father's praise.' And he pursues the subject in ten pious lines, which I could not forbear to transcribe, if the aspect and sound of so much Greek were not terrifying to a nice reader. But some of the latter poets of the Pagan world have debased this divine gift; and many of the writers of the first rank, in this our age of national Christians, have, to their eternal shame, surpassed the vilest of the Gentiles. They have not only disrobed Religion of all the ornaments of verse, but have employed their pens in pious mischief, to deform her native beauty, and defile her honours. They have exposed her most sacred character to drollery, and dressed her up in a most vile and ridiculous disguise, for the scorn of the ruder herd of mankind. The vices have been painted like so many Goddesses; the charms of wit have been added to debauchery; and the temptation heightened, where Nature needs the strongest restraints. With sweetness of sound, and delicacy of expression, they have given a relish to blasphemies of the harshest kind; and when they rant at their Maker in sonorous numbers, they fancy themselves to have acted the hero well. Thus almost in vain have the throne and the pulpit cried reformation; while the stage and licentious poems have waged open war with the pious design of church and state. The press has spread the poison far, and scattered wide the mortal infection. Unthinking youth have been enticed to sin beyond the vicious propensities of nature, plunged early into diseases and death, and sunk down to damnation in multitudes. Was it for this, that Poesy was endued with all those allurements that lead the mind away in a pleasing captivity? Was it for this, she was furnished with so many intellectual charms, that she might seduce the heart from Gon, the original beauty, and the most lovely of beings? Can I ever be persuaded, that those sweet and resistless forces of metaphor, wit, sound, and number, were given with this design, that they should be all ranged under the banner of the great malicious spirit, to invade the rights of Heaven, and to bring swift and everlasting destruction upon men? How will these allies of the nether world, the lewd and profane versifiers, stand aghast before the great Judge; when the blood of many souls, whom they never saw, shall be laid to the charge of their writings, and be dreadfully requited at their hands? The reverend Mr. Collier* has set this awful scene before them in just and flaming colours. If the application In his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, &c.' were not too rude and uncivil, that noble stanza of my Lord Roscommon, on Psalm cxlviii. might be addressed to them: 'Ye dragons, whose contagious breath Change your dire hissings into heavenly songs, This profanation and debasement of so divine an art, has tempted some weaker Christians to imagine that poetry and vice are naturally akin; or at least, that verse is fit only to recommend trifles, and entertain our looser hours, but is too light and trivial a method to treat any thing that is serious and sacred. They submit, indeed, to use it in divine psalmody, but they love the driest translation of the psalms best. They submit, indeed, to a dull hymn or two at church, in tunes of equal dulness; but still they persuade themselves, and their children, that the beauties of poesy are vain and dangerous. All that arises a degree above Mr. Sternhold is too airy for worship, and hardly escapes the sentence of 'unclean and abominable." 'Tis strange, that persons that have the Bible in their hands should be led away by thoughtless prejudices to so wild and rash an opinion. Let me entreat them not to indulge this sour, this censorious humour, too far; lest the sacred writers fall under the lash of their unlimited and unguarded reproaches. Let me entreat them to look into their Bibles, and remember the style and way of writing that is used by the ancient prophets. Have they forgot, or were they never told, that many parts of the Old Testament are Hebrew verse? and the figures are stronger, and the metaphors bolder, and the images more surprising and strange than ever were read in any profane writer. When Deborah sings her praises to the God of Israel, while he marched from the field of Edom, she sets the 'earth a trembling, the heavens drop, and the mountains dissolve from before the Lord. They fought from Heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera: when the river of Kishon swept them away; that ancient river, the river Kishon. O my soul, thou hast trodden down strength,' Judges v. &c. When Eliphaz, in the book of Job, speaks his sense of the holiness of God, he introduces a machine in a vision: Fear came upon me, trembling on all my bones, the hair of my flesh stood up; a spirit passed by and stood still, but its form was undiscernible; an image before mine eyes; and silence: then I heard a voice, saying, "Shall mortal man be more just than God?" ' &c. Job iv. When he describes the safety of the righteous, he hides him from the scourge of the tongue, he makes him laugh at destruction and famine, he brings the stones of the field into league with him, and makes the brute animals enter into a covenant of peace,' Job v. 21, &c. When Job speaks of the grave, how melancholy is the gloom that he spreads over it! It is a region to which I must shortly go, and whence I shall not return: it is a land of darkness, it is darkness itself, the land of the shadow of death; all confusion and disorder, and where the light is as darkness. This is my house, there have I made my bed: I have said to corruption, thou art my father; and to the worm, thou art my mother and my sister and for my hope, who shall see it? I and my hope go down together to : 6 the bars of the pit,' Job x. 21. and xvii. 13. When he humbles himself in complainings before the almightiness of God, what contemptible and feeble images doth he use ! Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro Wilt thou pursue the dry stubble? I consume away like a rotten thing, a garment eaten by the moth,' Job xiii. 25, &c. • Thou liftest me up to the wind, thou causest me to ride upon it, and dissolvest my substance,' Job xxiii. 22. Can any man invent more despicable ideas to represent the scoundrel herd, and refuse of mankind, than those which Job uses? Chap. xxx, and thereby he aggravates his own sorrows and reproaches to amazement : They that are younger than I, have me in derision: whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock; for want and famine they were solitary; fleeing into the wilderness desolate and waste. They cut up mallows by the bushes, and juniper-roots for their meat. They were driven forth from among men, (they cried after them as after a thief) to dwell in the cliffs of the valleys, in the caves of the earth, and in rocks. Among the bushes they brayed; under the nettles they were gathered together; they were children of fools, yea, children of base men; they were viler than the earth. And now am I their song, yea, I am their bye-word,' &c. How mournful and dejected is the language of his own sorrows! Terrors are turned upon him, they pursue his soul as the wind, and his welfare passes away as a cloud; his bones are pierced within him, and his soul is poured out; he goes mourning without the sun, a brother to dragons, a companion to owls; while his harp and organ are |