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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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^ ell-being of the human race ; they are not derogat ory the majesty God . Compare with this the marvellous in the legends and mythi of other nations ; how mean , how devoid of propriety , and even of decorum , how destitute of every worthy and adequate object do they appear ! Surely no impartial inquirer can class together things so essentially different ! ' "A question still remains , * Is it possible that these fragments of primaeval history should have been preserved pure and without addition , till the time
when they were collected in their present form ? Granting that the power of memory is great among a people ignorant of the art of writing , yet was it possible that imagination should not interfere with tradition , and that the ancient narratives , which the patriarchs handed down , should have been preserved free from additions and embellishments by which they would at length assume a mythical character ? May not the monuments which were erected to perpetuate the knowledge of events , have been made at length to say more than was originally committed to their keeping ? May not poets
have adorned the narratives which they made the groundwork of their songs , and may not those who first committed the oral tradition to writing have interpolated something of their own ? These things are admitted to have happened to the legends of other nations ; how is it likely that the most ancient narratives of the Bible should form an exception ? ' And why should they not form an exception in this respect , since they form so
striking an exception in regard to their contents ; since their very scantiness would make the task of remembering them more easy ; since they were committed to writing at an earlier period than the traditions of any other ancient people ; since they have preserved the knowledge of God in such purity ; and since , even in their written form , their simple language , abounding in sensible images , is so characteristic , that the collector , had he attempted to interpolate them , would have betrayed himself by his more modern ideas , and even by his more formed and copious language ?
" I must , however , break off , and satisfy myself with what I have already said , which may suffice to warn those readers , for whom my book is designed , not to be led away by mere love of novelty , to adopt that mode of interpreting the Bible against which I have been arguing . "—Biblische Archaologie , Pref . pp . xxvii—xxxvi .
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And this is life to me ! How sweeter far The harmony of nature , than of man ! The sweet hymns of the wood-bird , than the jar And ceaseless strife of life ' s each bustling clan . But onward , sons of men ! and I will turn To the green shades—to pleasures which , when gone ,
Shall leave no sting , but , as the hour flits on , Still sooth and elevate ; for here I learn The love of themes above the vulgar mind ; The thought that dwells upon eternal things ; The hope whose consummating vision brings The deathless and the beautiful—designed By heaven for man- —and imaged to the eye By all it looks upon—flowers , field , wooas , earth , and sky ! Hinckley , May , 7 , 1827 . JOSEPH DARE .
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to of 640 Sonnet composed in Buybage Wood .
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SONNET COMPOSED IN BURBAGE WOOD ,
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K .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1827, page 640, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1800/page/8/
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