ceive that we have been doing some service to the cause of piety-and poetry-by thus attempting to widen the sphere of their circulation. They seem to be fast going through editions -the Christian Psalmist having reached a fifth-nor is there any person of any persuasion-if he be a Christian -who will not be the better of having such volumes often in his hands. Mr Montgomery's critical remarks, it will have been seen, are often eminently beautiful, and very profound. His common-places are always those of a poet, whose genius is ever felt to be in subservience to his piety. The simplest of his sentences has often the deepest meaning; and though he sometimes loves to diffuse himself over a subject that is dear to him, he often says much in few words. There may to some-nay to many minds, be something startling in his sentiments-expressed as they often are, with no deference to the authority of old opinions, or of new, come from what quarter they will; but there is never any thing-judging by our own feelings on certain occasions when we could not entirely sympathize with them-never any thing repulsive; and if there be any differences in his creed from ours-so fervent and sincere is every word and every look of the man, (we speak of him, from his writings, as if he were a personal friendthough we have never seen his thoughtful face but in a picture,) that we trust these differences are neither many nor great for we should suspect our own Christianity, were it not, in essentials, the Christianity which, in much noble verse, and much plea sant prose, has, for twenty years past and more too, been issuing from the pure spirit of the Bard of Sheffield. There is a fine humanity in all his criticism. Thus, in alluding to the rough style and harsh metre of some ancient poems-or verses rather, in the Christian Psalmist to their forbidding as pect he says that every piece has some peculiar merit and interest of its own and he asks, who would think his time misemployed in conning over eleven dull lines by Anne Collins, for the sake of meeting, in the twelfth, an original and brilliant emanation of fancy? Anne Collins, in one of her Divine Songs and Meditations (1653), in telling us that happiness is not to be found in the creation, concludes her little lay by beautifully saying of pomp and splendour "Yet could they no more sound contentment bring, Than star-light can make grass or flowers spring!" And can, he asks, the very humble stanzas of poor Anne Askew, made and sung in Newgate, while waiting for her crown of martyrdom, be read without emotions more deep and affecting, and far more powerful than poetry could awaken on a subject of fictiti ous woe? "Yet, Lorde, I Thee desyre, In like manner, can any of the "Prison Poems" in the volume-Sir Thomas More's, Sir Walter Raleigh's, Sir Thomas Overbury's, Sir Francis Wortley's, George Wither's, John Bunyan's-can any of them be read with ordinary sympathy, such as the verses themselves, if written in other circumstances, would have excited? "Surely not; the situation of the unfortunate beings, who thus confessed on the rack of personal and mental torture, or in the immediate prospect of eternity, gives intense and overwhelming interest to lines, which have no extraordinary poetic fervour to recommend them. With what strange curiosity do we look even on animals driven to the slaughter, which we should have disregarded had we seen them grazing in the field! Who can turn away his eyes from a criminal led to execution, yet who can fix them on his amazed and bewildered countenance? The common place,' of the gallows, his last dying speech and confession,' though consisting of a few hurried, broken words, which almost every felon repeats, and hardly understands their meaning himself while he utters them, may produce feelings which all the breath of eloquence, from lips not about to be shut for ever, would fail to awaken. But a good man struggling with adversity, which even the heathen deemed a spectacle worthy of the Gods to contemplate with admiration, becomes an oracle in his agony; and to know how he looked, and spoke, and felt, for the last time, does literally elevate and purify the soul by terror,-terror in which just so much compassion is mingled as to identify him with ourselves in sensibility to suffering, while we are identified with him in exaltation of mind above the infirmity of pain and the fear of death. No eccentricity or perversity of taste, manifested in literary effusions under such circumstances, can destroy the force of nature, or render her voice unintelligible in them, though speaking a strange language, provided it be the language of the times, and not the affected style of the individual, assumed to express sentiments equally affected." How much of the pleasure which we derive from poetry does indeed depend upon contingent circumstances, which confer on the writer or the subject a peculiar, local, personal, or temporary interest and importance! Such interest and importance, says Mr Montgomery, belong to all the subjects of this small volume,-for all the writers are dead! "These thoughts, then, of the departed, expressed in their own words, and brought to our ears in the very sounds with which they uttered them, and affect ing our hearts even more than they affect ed their own, by the consideration that they are no longer living voices, but voices from beyond the tomb, from invisible beings, somewhere in existence, at this moment, these thoughts, thus awfully associated, will prove noble, strengthening, and instructive exercises of mind, for us to read and to understand; for the application required to comprehend them duly, will heighten the enjoyment of the poetry when it is thus understood; the obscurity and difficulty, not arising from the defects of the composition, but from the unacquaintedness of the reader with the models in vogue, when the author wrote. These specimens of 'pious verse' will not be idle amusements for a few spare minutes,-yet for the delight of spare minutes they are peculiarly adapted. They will not glide over a vacant mind, as sing-song verse is wont to do, like quicksilver over a smooth table, in glittering, minute, and unconnected globules, hastily vanishing away, or when detained, not to be moulded into any fixed shape. They will rather supply tasks and themes for meditation; tasks, such as the eagle sets her young when she is teaching them to fly; themes, such as are vouchsafed to inspire poets, in their happiest moods. Nor can the inexpert reader be aware till he has tried, how much the old language improves upon familiarity; and how the productions of the old poets, like dried spices, give out their sweetness the more, the more they are handled. The fine gold may have become dim, and the fashion of the plate may be antiquated, but the material is fine gold still, and the workmanship as perfect as it came from the tool of the artist; nor is it barbarous, except to eyes that cannot see it as it was intended to be seen, in connexion with the whole state of human society and human intellect at the time. Changes have taken place, within the last century, in the style of religious poetry, which formerly was too much assimilated to the character of So lomon's song, a portion of Scripture often paraphrased, and, it may be added, always unhappily. In judging of our poets of the middle age, from Elizabeth to James the II., we are bound to make the same allowances which we do natur ally, in reading the works of our divines of the same period, who, with many extravagances, have left monuments of genius and piety in prose, unexcelled by later theologians, in powerful argument, splendid eloquence, and learned illustration. With such a preparation of mind, the reader, sitting down to this volume, will find every page improve to his taste, in proportion as his taste improves, to relish what is most rare and exquisite in our language,-the union of poetry with piety, in the works of men distinguished, in their generation, for eminence in the one or the other of these, and frequently for pre-eminence in both. It is, however, greatly to be lamented, that the heterogeneous compositions of the most popular of the Authors, even in the present muster-roll, (with few exceptions,) cannot be indiscriminately recommended. Few, indeed, of the poets of our Christian country, previous to the era of Cowper, have left such manuscripts of their wayward minds, as would be deemed altogether unexceptionable, even by men of the world, who had no particular reve rence for vital Christianity, In the present which had been better spent in seeking The subject which we have so imperfectly treated in this article begins to shew itself in many new lights, as we glance over its and we shall pages; return to it with fervour during some silent evenings, when, after the duties of the day-such as they are we have "sacred leisure" to give our disengaged spirits up to the tender and lustrous contemplations, which the some hymns of pious men-now gone to their reward-Inspire by the hearth of home, when the household is hushed. Feelings and thoughts, we hope, may then arise, which may be not altoge ther an unworthy commentary on those breathed forth by the genius that sung by the altar of religion. Specimens, too, of many of these compositions may be thus presented to many minds to whom they are at present unknownand this miscellany of ours, which,various as its spirit has been, and will be, has we hope, amidst all its mirth and gaiety, and why should not fancy occasionally tinge with her streaks the melancholy atmosphere of human life, -ever been, with all its errors and defects, which none but the hopelessly base and wicked, or the hopelessly dull and stupid, would seek to exaggerate,-the friend-the enthusiastic and not unsteady friend of genius, virtue, and religion. One truly delightful volume alluded to in these pages, its excellent author must not think we have overlookedwe mean "The Christian Year.” When we began to write, it was our intention to have confined ourselves almost entirely to it; but our illustrations took another course, and not one sacred composition of Keeble's now graces our disquisition. "The Chris tian Year" deserves an article-and a long one too-exclusively devoted to itself-for it is full of poetry and piety, both as simple and as sincere as the writer's own heart. This volume is winning its way into many a library-nor will it lie unread on the shelves to which the soul, when wea ried or alarmed with this life, turns for consolation to the musings of those men of holy spirit, who "Have built their Pindus upon Lebanon," and, in still more awful moods, have feared not to murmur their melodies even on Mount Calvary, at the very feet of the Cross. INDEX TO VOLUME XXIV. Affairs, on the present state of, 475. Eng. Allowa, The Goode Manne of, 561 America, Notes on the United States of, Antescript, 500 Appointments and promotions, military, Awkwardness of man, remarks on, 211 Bachellor's Beat, The, No. v. A day at Battle of New Orleans, sketch of the, 354 Bhurtpore, Letter from an officer relative Births, lists of, 131, 403, 804 Bowles, the Rev. W. Lisle, and his resi- dence at Bremhill, 226 Brownie of the Black Haggs, the, 489 Castle of Time, the, by Delta, 362 oath in reference to the, 1-On a late Substance of Sir R. Inglis's two Clapperton, Captain, death of, 136 Corn Markets, 125, 749 the Edinburgh Review combated, 14— Court of Darkness, the, 481 Dawson, Mr, remarks on his speech on Dead, the message to the, 353 Dreams, the land of, 783 Duellists, the, a Tale of the " Thirty Duncan, Dr Andrew. senior, death of, 408 Evening, an ode, 37 Execution in Paris, an, 785 Flies, on the cruelty of killing, 834 Hamlet, on the character of, 585--Post- Hieroglyphics, Marquis Spineto on, 313 Hougge, Mr, ane rychte gude and preyti- Huskisson, Mr, remarks on his resigna- Intruding Widow, the, a dramatic poem, 765 Ireland, state of, in relation to the Catho- Value of the securities offered by the Letter from an infantry officer, relative to on the Clare election, 219 on the close of the London season, Liberals, the rise and fall of the, 96 Marriages, lists of, 132, 404, 805 Meteorological Tables, 127, 796 Missions of Christianity, remarks on the, Monkeyana, or men in miniature, remarks 913 Music of the spheres, the, 225 New Orleans, sketch of the battle of, 354 Noctes Ambrosianæ, No. xxxvii, 501-Rus- sian and Turkish war, ib.-The Greeks, No. xxxix, 640-Origin of poetry, 616 nals, 699-Catholics of Ireland, 781— Speech of, on proposing as a toast the Duke of Wellington, 536 Notices, travelling and political, by a 192 Ode to Tan Hill, 762 O'Hara Family, remarks on the Tales of Old system of trade, and the new, remarks Old maid's story, an, 835 their pamphlets on the coronation oath, I Beauty,30-Evening, an Ode, 37—Nor- The goode Manne of Allowa, 561— Poor proscribed animal, recollections of a, 593 Postscript to an article on the character of Prices current, 795 Publications, monthly lists of new ones, Remarks on the coronation oath, in refer- |