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scattered lines of Milton ' s , in which his peculiar but erroneous opinions were referred tof as things with which the reader was supposed and expected to be familiar . When increasing years , and some advancement in knowledge , had revealed to us the import of these ' dark sayings / we were greatly disappointed to find that it rested upon no firmer basis than the authority of the Christian Talmudists—the fathers , or that of the Hebrew Fathers , the Talmudists and Rabbis * We have now left both
the ignorance and the disappointment behind us ; and we are not quite sure that we should , if the power were granted us , call the immortal Blind Man from the * rest' which he has made * glorious ' to substitute any other lines whatsoever , for any now standing in the ' Paradise Lost . ' If ( supposing it offered ) we should accept of such a privilege , it would be for the sake of others , and not for our own . But we reconcile ourselves to the want of it , by
remembering that all who think with us , or like us , will have passed through the same process when they have numbered our years , and think as little as we do of these spots in the great Epic Sun . We merely adverted to the facts , to show that the mind does , in some degree , exercise the power of which we have been speaking . And if this be done imperfectly without our
consciousness , may it not be done more perfectly from design ? If it be practicable in the case of an individual author , why should we not endeavour to extend it to imaginative literature at large ; to collect the honey of a garden , as well as of a flower ; to make not one poet only , or two , but Poetry herself the preceptress of Wisdom and the handmaid of Religion ?
While we are upon the subject , we will just advert to another poet , whose writings present a similar incongruity between a part and the whole , or rather between the letter and the spirit . Several passages might be taken from the ' Night Thoughts' of Young ( a work only approached by the few , who can pardon the stony ness of the mine for the sake of its gold ) , which are abundantly orthodox in the wrong sense of the term . One of these especially used to give us particular annoyance . Many will know that we refer to the Athanasian invocation of the Godhead . Yet we
now read the c Night Thoughts' * as a decidedly Unitarian poem ; and we say , that this is the character in which it will be read by coming ages . We earnestly advise our young readers to anticipate them . We can assure them that , in time , the objectionable parts of the poem will be lost in the general and glorious spirit which pervades it ; and that Young , who , for his popular passages , is often found on the window-sill of the cottage , will be discovered to he a philosopher as well as a poet , beautifying truth itself by passing it through the gorgeous picture-glass of his Gothic song . We have already noticed the tendency of poetry to expand and elevate the mind , by falling in with its innate and unquenchable thirst for the vague and infinite , for that which is beyond ancl
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On the Connexion between Poetry and Religion . 499
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No . 67 . 2 N
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1832, page 489, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1816/page/57/
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