CHRISTIAN POET; OR, SELECTIONS IN VERSE, ON SACRED SUBJECTS. BY JAMES MONTGOMERY, AUTHOR OF 99.66 THE WORLD BEFORE THE FLOOD, SONGS OF ZION," WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. "If I were a nightingale, I would sing like a nightingale; but, THIRD EDITION. GLASGOW: PRINTED FOR WILLIAM COLLINS; INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. "THESE abilities are the inspired gift of God, rarely bestowed; and are of power to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility; to allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the affections in right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God's almightiness, and what he works, and what he suffers to be wrought with high providence in his church; to sing victorious agonies of martyrs and saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations, doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ; to deplore the general relapses of kingdoms and states from justice and God's true worship. Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and refluxes of man's thoughts from within; all these things, with a solid and treatable smoothness, to paint out and describe :-Teaching over the whole book of sanctity and virtue, through all the instances of example, with such delight to those especially of soft and delicious temper, who will not so much as look upon truth herself, unless they see her elegantly dressed,—that whereas the paths of honesty and good life appear now rugged and difficult, though they be indeed easy and pleasant, they will then appear to all men easy and pleasant, though they were rugged and difficult indeed."-MILTON, on Church Government, Book II. The art, of which this is a true description, must be the highest of all arts, and require the greatest powers to excel in it. That art is Poetry, and the special subjects on which it is here exhibited as being most happily employed are almost all sacred. The writer of this splendid panegyric of the art, in which he himself equalled the most gifted of its adepts, was Milton, who, in his subsequent works, exemplified all the varieties of poetical illustration here enumerated, and justified his lofty estimate of the capabilities of verse, hallowed to divine themes, by the success with which he celebrated such, in Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. Yet we are continually told, that religious subjects are incapable of poetic treatment. Nothing can be more contrary to common sense; nothing is more unanswerably contradicted by matter of fact. There are only four long poems in the English language, that are often reprinted, and consequently better known and more read than any other similar compositions of equal bulk. Three of these are decidedly religious in their whole or their prevailing character,-Paradise Lost, the Night Thoughts, and The Task and of the fourth, The Seasons, it may be said, that one of its greatest charms is the pure and elevated spirit of devotion which occasionally breathes out amidst the reveries of fancy and the descriptions : of nature, as though the poet had sudden and transporting glimpses of the Creator himself through the perspective of his works; while the crowning Hymn of the whole is one of the most magnificent specimens of verse in any language, and only inferior to the inspired original in the Book of Psalms, of which it is for the most part a paraphrase. As much may be said of Pope's Messiah, which leaves all his original productions immeasurably behind it, in elevation of thought, affluence of imagery, beauty of diction, and fervency of spirit. Indeed this poem is only depreciated in the eyes of ordinary and prejudiced readers by that which constitutes its glory and supreme worth-that every sentiment and figure in it is taken directly from the prophecies of Isaiah; compared with which it is indeed but as the moon reflecting light borrowed from the sun; yet, considered in itself, it cannot be denied, that had Pope been the entire author of the poem just as it stands, (or with no other prototype than Virgil's Pollio before him) and drawn the whole from the treasures of his own imagination, he would have been the first poet in rank, to whom this country has given birth; for in the works of no other will be found so many and such transcendant excellences as are comprised in this small piece. It follows, that poetry of the highest order may be composed on sacred themes; and the fact, that three out of the only four long poems in English literature, which can be called popular, are at the same time religious-this fact ought forever to silence the cuckoo note, which is echoed from one fool's mouth to another's, (for many of the wise in this respect are fools,) that religion and poetry are incompatible; no man, in his right mind, who knows what |