They acknowledged their fault, and own'd the wrong they had offer'd;
Not without ingenuous shame, and a sense of compunction,
More or less, as each had more or less to atone for.

One alone remain'd, when the rest had retired to their station :
Silently he had stood, and still unmoved and in silence,
With a steady mien, regarded the face of the monarch.

Thoughtful awhile he gazed; severe, but serene, was his aspect;
Calm, but stern; like one whom no compassion could weaken,
Neither could doubt deter, nor violent impulses alter:
Lord of his own resolves,-of his own heart absolute master.
Awful spirit! his place was with ancient sages and heroes:
Fabius, Aristides, and Solon, and Epaminondas.

Here then at the gate of Heaven we are met! said the spirit;
King of England! albeit in life opposed to each other,
Here we meet at last. Not unprepared for the meeting
Ween I; for we had both outlived all enmity, rendering
Each to each that justice which each from each had withholden.
In the course of events, to thee I seem'd as a rebel,

Thou a tyrant to me ;-so strongly doth circumstance rule men
During evil days, when right and wrong are confounded.

6

Left to our hearts, we were just. For me, my actions have spoken,
That not for lawless desires, nor goaded by desperate fortunes,
Nor for ambition, I chose my part; but observant of duty,
Self-approved. And here, this witness I willingly bear thee,-
Here, before angels and men, in the awful hour of judgment,-
Thou too didst act with upright heart, as befitted a sovereign,
True to his sacred trust, to his crown, his kingdom, and people.
Heaven in these things fulfill'd its wise, tho' inscrutable purpose,
While we work'd its will, doing each in his place as became him.
Washington! said the monarch, well hast thou spoken, and truly,
Just to thyself and to me. On them is the guilt of the contest,
Who, for wicked ends, with foul arts of faction and falsehood,
Kindled and fed the flame: but verily they have their guerdon.
Thou and I are free from offence. And would that the nations,
Learning of us, would lay aside all wrongful resentment,
All injurious thought, and honouring each in the other
Kindred courage and virtue, and cognate knowledge and freedom,
Live in brotherhood wisely conjoined. We set the example.
They who stir up strife, and would break that natural concord,
Evil they sow, and sorrow will they reap for their harvest.'

With what shall we begin? where shall we end? Shall we consider the mild composure, the exquisite charity, with which Wilkes and Junius are consigned to the fiends of loyal persecution? 'the blast with lightning and thunder

Vollying aright and aleft amid the accumulate blackness,
Scatter'd its inmates accurst!' p. 20.

Thus writes a man of his fellow-men! thus writes almost a contemporary of his countrymen! Blessed effects of ultra-loyalism! How soothing the principles must be that engender you! We have always condemned, in our hearts, the practice of those mortals who have dared to place their brethren, specified, named,

persecuted (for so it is) in the shades, or rather in the horrible lights of hell! Dante led the way; for the ancient x, or views of the infernal regions, bear no resemblance to the modern, the CHRISTIAN liberties, on such subjects. The ancients, even in their vain and blinded faith, saw enough to avoid the gross cruelty of condemning those who were still living, or lately dead; and it was left for men whom a better creed ought to have conducted to better feelings, to vent the vilest passions of human nature, the "envy, hatred, malice, and uncharitableness" of the corrupted soul, on every enemy of corruption, sincere or insincere. That we could say much more on this head is obvious but it is equally plain that we must desist for the present, and return to our visionary politician, our reconciler of liberty and oppression, the laureate.

It must be with the calmest contempt, that the admirers of the truly philosophical patriot, of the unrivalled Washington, will look on this endeavour to compromise HIS patriotism, by a pretended approval on his part of the motives which produced the American war. We shall not dilate on this topic, on the present occasion; and we have surely said enough to attract the aversion and indignation of the honest and the intelligent, towards such a confusion of all that is either sensible or true.

We could multiply most abundantly the instances of absurd sentiment, and extravagant versification, which are supplied in this tame though odd effort. Our poetical readers will have observed (as we requested) the vile work which Mr. Southey makes with his own ludicrous hexameters. It is but the awkward execution of an awkward plan :—but it is time to speak of the plan itself. Mr. Southey, with the usual complacency of the Lake school, (of which he is the Fountain-Head, as Mr. Wordsworth is the Fountain-Tail,) consigns to utter oblivion ALL the mistaken labours of his predecessors in the English hexameter. In the course of some very shallow criticism, he pretends to discover the cause of their uniform failure; and he quotes amply from Sidney, Arcadian Sidney, to prove his point. By the way, which of Mr. Southey's hexameters is better than the subjoined?

"First the rivers shall cease to repay their floods to the ocean. "First shall virtue be vice, and beauty be counted a blemish." (Sir Philip Sidney, quoted by Mr. Southey.) With regard to the metre, on which Mr. Southey throws no useful light whatever, in his very superficial and very self-satisfying preface, we shall remark, that if not scanned in some accordance with the rules of Latin prosody, the lines are neither

*It seems superfluous to refer our readers to authorities on this point. The subsequent tears cannot (humanly speaking) make amends for the previous obstinacy.

6

hexameters nor verses of any description; and, if they are so scanned, or pronounced, Heavens! what an improvement they are on the English versification of the nineteenth century! In the first place, they must have a casura or pause in the centre of the verse, or all rhythm is lost; and, if this cœsura occurs in the middle of a word, the rhythm is proportionably awkward and interrupted. Metrical reasoning, however, is really wasted on a wearer of the Bays who seems to have the loosest and most indistinct notions on such subjects; and who has given us a Vision of Judgment,' in the strictest sense, being wholly destitute of the reality. Witness the following associations: Washington, and George the Third, as we have seen; Taylor, and Marlborough, among the "elder worthies;" Hogarth, and Wesley, among the later ditto; and, to take them in Mr. Southey's order still, among the other worthies of the Georgian age,' (as he fulsomely calls it,) Mansfield, Burke, and Hastings, and Cowper and Nelson:' while, in bright succession, are introduced the young spirits,' viz. Canning! Davy, Haydon, Allston, Russell, and Bamfylde,** and Henry Kirk White, who distinguishes Mr. Southey with a smile, when he sees him in heaven with all the above heterogeneous and anachronous' worthies.'

6

"Incipe, parve puer, risu dignoscere matrem;"

and it is not the first time that "mater" or Mr. Southey has been welcomed with a smile. Our more initiated readers will have perceived that we have already offered them, in the unassuming progress of our prose, several specimens of Mr. Southey's school of hexameters: but we add some more obvious imitations:

Southey, what can you mean, Oh, minstrel of Thlab the Destroyer,
Minstrel of Joan of Arc, and Madoc, him the world-finder,
Minstrel of last of the Goths, but far from the first Gothic minstrel,
Flattering bard of a Crown, and farthing poet of Tyler,
Southey, what can you mean by this new hexameter measure?
Is it because you are bound thus to sing the new Georgian æra?
Or because you are loose in political songs altogether?
Have you forgotten your Sapphics, in pity for Henry Marten,
Or do we here mistake, and were they for Brownrigg's apprentice?
Canning best can tell, who wrote "the Needy Knifegrinder,"
And ground on his whetstone of wit the Jacobin edge of your dullness,
Oh! would he now turn round, as you set the example of turning,
Well might he sing, or say, "For sack's sake, Southey, be quiet!"
Sapphics imply a plot--and hexameter verse is a riot--

Oliver, Sidmouth, and Co., are on the look out for another;
And the Constitutional boy, young Orton, may ruin a brother.

* Not to know "Carter," says the lottery-puff, argues yourself unknown. True! but we must acknowledge that we know not Russell or Bamfylde !

ART. III.-Theology explained and defended, in a Series of Sermons. Вy TIMOTHY DWIGHT, S.T.D. LL.D., late President of Yale College. With a Memoir of the Life of the Author. In five Volumes. 8vo. Middletown, printed: London, reprinted, 1819.

[Eclectic Review, Aug. 1821.—Extracts.]

AMERICA has not of late years been indebted to this country for any theological publication of greater value than these lectures of President Dwight. If that jealousy of our transatlantic brethren, which has too long manifested itself in the supercilious tone of English writers towards every thing American, were not already subsiding, this work might seem sufficient to give a check to the language of disparagement, and to compel a more respectful estimate of at least one branch of her literature. But, unfortunately, that one branch is the least likely to obtain in this country adequate attention, or to be fairly and impartially appreciated; the American divines being too closely identified, in the minds of a large class of persons, with the English Calvinistic Dissenters, to stand a fair chance of having their claims to high consideration generally recognized. A modern essayist actually ranks President Edwards among English Dissenters, being ignorant that the Author of the acutest piece of metaphysical reasoning in the language, was an American. For any thing that appears to the contrary, in respect to the purity of his style, and the extent of his literary information, the Author of these volumes too might pass for an Englishman. And his masterly exposition and defence of the doctrines of the Reformation, might occasion his being referred to that class of theologians, who in this country are stigmatized as Calvinists or evangelical divines. The truth is, that he was a man whom any religious denomination might be proud to claim; one whom every true Christian, of whatever country or language, must delight to recognize as a brother. Such men, the Latimers and the Leightons, the Pascals and the Fenelons, the Owens and the Henrys, the Brainerds and the Martyns, the Doddridges and the Dwights, are the property of no exclusive community: they belong to the Catholic Church. And one might be allowed to apply to them the apostolic designation: they are" the angels of the churches, and the glory of Christ."

Timothy Dwight was born in the county of Hampshire, in Massachusetts, the 14th May, 1752. His mother was the third daughter of President Edwards; and to this excellent parent, young Dwight was indebted for the rudiments of his education, and for his early impressions of piety. She is said to have possessed uncommon powers of mind; and, having been accustomed from infancy to the conversation of literary men at her father's Vol. III.

57

house, was well aware of the importance of intellectual acquirements. It was a maxim with her, that children generally lose several years, in consequence of being considered by their friends as too young to be taught. She, accordingly, began to instruct her son almost as soon as he was able to speak; so that before he was four years old, he was able to read the Bible with correctness.

In September, 1771, he was chosen a tutor in Yale College. "When he entered upon the office, more than half the members of his class were older than himself; and the freshman who waited upon him was thirty-two years of age. Notwithstanding a circumstance generally so disadvantageous, he proceeded in the discharge of his official duties with firmness and assiduity; and in a short time gained a reputation for skill in the government and instruction of his class, rarely known in the former experience of the College. In addition to the customary mathematical studies, he carried them through Spherics and Fluxions, and went as far as any of them would accompany him into the Principia of Newton....In the year 1772, he received the degree of Master of Arts; on which occasion, he delivered, as an exercise at the public Commencement, a Dissertation on the History, Eloquence, and Poetry of the Bible. This production, composed and delivered by a youth of twenty, on a subject then so new, and of such high interest, was received with the strongest marks of approbation. A copy was immediately requested for the press; and it was afterwards re-published both in America and in Europe. The field of thought was new in this country. The Lectures of Lowth, if then published, were not known on this side of the Atlantic; nor do we know of any work, except the Bible itself, to which the Author appears to be indebted for his plan or his illustrations."

During the second year of his tutorship, he subjected the physical powers of his constitution to an experiment, which had very nearly proved fatal. In order to save the time spent in bodily exercise, he resolved to attempt how far he could obviate the inconveniences attendant on habits of constant sedentary application, by abstemiousness. He began this system by gradually reducing the quantity of his food at dinner, till he brought it down to twelve mouthfuls. After trying this regimen for six months, feeling 'less clearness of apprehension than was desirable,' he adopted a vegetable diet, without increasing the quantity. His constitution was strong enough to enable him to persevere in this rash system for a twelvemonth. At length it gave way, although, strange to say, Mr. Dwight, when he first perceived the reality of the change in his health, had no suspicion of the cause. He was recommended, when some improvement had been effected by the aid of medicine, to try the effect of vigorous bodily exercise, as the only means of restoring his constitutional health; and to his perseverance_in