for his own fame; nor of those who are glad to see the barren sands drifting over the foundation which another was beginning to lay. Brown has built up his pyramid, and laid him down to rest in it.

POLLOK'S COURSE OF TIME.*

I SHOULD be unjust to myself and to my present opinions, were I to submit this and the two following articles to the public without a word in way of explanation.

They appeared in The Spirit of the Pilgrims during the contest which the Trinitarian Congregationalists maintained against the prevailing Unitarianism of that day and of this vicinity.

In obedience to my rule, I leave the articles without any alterations that, I think, can be called material, although there are many things which I should change were I to go over the ground again.

The engrossing topics of that period left little room for other doctrines necessary to complete the circle of revealed truth. And it is not till more recently that my own mind, in common with countless others, has been led to a fuller apprehension of the faith of the visible Church, with its sacraments, powers, and ordinances, to meet the wants and fill the capacities of man's nature, - truths which are now having their return of presentation to our gradually and partially enlightened understandings.

The changes I would make are not, perhaps, so much directly in the opinions themselves, or in their relation to those in which they were in contrast, as in the point of view from which I would present them, and in the way of supplying their imperfectness by the influences and relations from which they had been severed.

Some things are sharply said. So was too much on both sides in

*From The Spirit of the Pilgrims for 1828.

The Course of Time. A Poem, in Ten Books. By ROBERT POLLOK, A. M. Boston: Crocker & Brewster. 1828.

that contest, as is always the case at such times. I regret that the republication of the articles obliges me to allude to any of these matters. Some of the reasons for republishing them and the other reviews are mentioned in the Preface to these volumes.

It has been said by many, who would have done well had they kept their reading to plain prose, that Cowper owed his popularity mainly, if not wholly, to the religious character of his writings. Such men, we fear, are as ignorant of the true spirit of the world as they are of the true spirit of poetry. Should we reverse the remark, and say, that the truth of his poetry made him popular in spite of his religion, we might be thought harsh; we will therefore leave his fame to the safe-keeping of men of sincere piety and just taste.

It must be acknowledged that the works of Cowper are familiar to a large class of people who might not have known so much as his name, had not his original and poetic mind been sanctified by the Gospel of his Lord and Saviour. It was because he sang by the waters of Siloa, as well as those of another stream, that there gathered to him so many of the humble and the poor; and it is because of this that we so often meet an odd volume of his works, with its worn leaves and soiled cover, in the remotest parts of the country, and in some of our plainer dwellings.

The true poet, he who sees through manners into the hearts and minds of men, will often be conscious of as grateful a feeling at finding himself in a lowly abode and in this worn dress, as in the apartment of a bookish man, and in a costlier and cleanlier attire. He knows that the seriousness which religion brings to the mind, and the tenderness which the touch of God's spirit

gives to the heart, will help to his being understood and felt when he speaks simply and truly to man's better nature. He is conscious, too, that learning, instead of warming into full life the very little of the poetic temperament with which some are originally blessed, often strikes it with a death-chill; that the giddiness of fashionable life deranges the even workings of the mind, and that its frivolousness dries up the flow of the affections faster than the hurrying streams from the mountains are sucked in by the hot and thirsty sands; that learning is apt to be proud, and that the way to a true feeling and appreciation of poetry lies not through pride; that the fashionable will be thoughtless, and that thoughtlessness is a surer destroyer of those sympathies upon which poetry depends, than even poverty and toil, with their attendant ills. In defiance of the outward show of superiority and distinction which the world may make, it is the heart of man which the poet mainly regards for his subject, and with which he chiefly has to do. In this, prince and beggar are both alike to him, and all beyond it is of little concern. He looks for sympathy rather from those of plain sense and kind affections, than amongst those whose intellectual nature has been cultivated at the expense of their moral nature, or whose affections have been left to run broad and shallow, and to waste, over the surfaces of things.

No doubt, a well-cultivated intellect is essential to the full comprehension of an art which springs from the highest exercise of our faculties; but as the grand superiority of poetry consists in the due combination of our moral with our intellectual constitution, taking in not the brain alone, but the entire man, so those whom religious principle has led to self-examination, to the study of motives, and the strength and action and

tendencies of the passions and affections, and to the straight or wandering courses of the thoughts, are, through this discipline, in a fairer way to receive right impressions and form true estimates of the essentials of poetry, than those of over-laboured heads, but untrained hearts.

Besides, those who have considered religion only partially would be surprised were they to observe how much it does for the intellect, and to find how wellbalanced, how searching and discriminating, how quick of perception, how clear, calm, and open to intellectual beauty, may be the mind of that man who has read little else besides himself and his Bible.

No man can be truly religious without much thoughtfulness; and this quality does for the mind what a multitude of books could never do without it. Yet how many read, and how few think! How many go about showily dressed in the robes of other men, who, should they be clad in what alone they themselves had wrought, would be wretched and naked indeed! The grave and learned man, though differing widely in acquisitions, is often led to feel, and if a good man to feel with pleasure, how nearly upon an equality are his mental powers and those of the common-sense Christian. He who has read most, and at the same time thought most, sees most quickly and clearly how little, after all, is the difference between himself and him whom the world calls a plain man. If the rightly learned man perceives this, how much more clearly does the man of originality, of imagination and sentiment, the poet, he who holds an almost supernatural communion with the minds and hearts of his fellowmen! How often has the fresh thought and homely yet strong turn of expression of those in ordinary life