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    Untitled Article

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    Untitled Article

    There is another moral quality possessed by the works in qdesiion , and possessed necessarily by them alone , as it resulted from a scheme of

    religion which is now modified in every essential point . The fable of the Greeks was fable in the strictest sense , it was not promulgated in the shape of a canon : the degree ot belief in the actual existence

    of its agents varied according to the poetic temperament . The fables , again , which gradually grew out of the Christian religion , were preached as part of a faith absolutely necessary . The Catholic history of the early ages , and of the saints , is a tissue of the

    most extraordinary things to be found in the whole range of human invention . The personages who figured in these tales possessed a twofold character : mere men and

    women , at one time they continued to bear the human nature , although elevated to a Superhuman state by compliance with certain rules of

    action and opinion which coidd properly be applied neither to one nor other of these states . l ^ his two-fold character was the introduction of the Christian scheme ; the heathen fables were all included within

    the sphere of humanity , those if the more northern nations wer < $ altogether romance . The effect has been a mixture of Ae minutest particularity viili thfe most extravagant icition . Nothing , indeed , can > iceed the gtptesque of this

    Untitled Article

    combination : the arts of bating and drinking , and the old saint walking with a staff because his toes were horny , or perhaps his refusing to walk with a staff for penance , —are matters which appear to them quite the same as what may follow , viz . an account of

    angels playing on gitterns , carrying him up to the gate of Paradise . The vraisemblance of Dame Quickley ' s address to Tahtaff r reminding him of his promise of the parcel-gilt goblet , is employed in narrating conflicts with Apollyon .

    If those chubby heads with wings , which represent cherubs , were to seat themselves , they could not dangle their legs like school-boys : or suppose a band of angels having completed their concert and taking their enormous violoncellos over their shoulders to

    walk home ! But to the believers in these tales such ludicrous incongruities would not have been , they would have admired ( according to the old use of the word ) all parts of the narrative alike . The adventures of the saints

    are full of such incidents . We can hardly resist giving some instances of these delightful marvels that occur to our memory , but they are too tedious perhaps , and

    unnecessary at present . St Paul , the first hermit , went into the desert at twenty-two years of age , and continued ninet y years in a cave , before which grew a palm-tree , St AAtttoy , Who lived at the saiaie

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    270 Hmt ^ iowdrdia right- Apprtciatioti Picture

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 1, 1837, page 270, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1836/page/45/