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66 6 i Memoirs" of Priestley—Beattie—Toplady .
Untitled Article
annotator , Mr . Cooper , has brought a charge against one of the before-mentioned doetorsy in his chatacter of a poet , far more serious than afty thing of which Df . Priestley had accused the triumvirate . In the Appendix ( p . 319 . Note ) having quoted part of a Latin ode by Gray , from his Life ( ii . 44 ) , in which that poet appears to indulge too readily <* the sad solace of eternal sleep / ' Mr . Cooper adds— iQ It is still more singular that Dr . Beattie , with all his professions of Christianity , should not have been aware of the atheistical complexion of the following passage of his " -Hermit , **
" Nor yet for the ravage of winter I mourn , Kind Nature the embryo blossom shall save : But when , shall spring visit the mouldering urn ? O ! when shall it dawn on the night of the grave ?*
I can see nothing here to justify the annotator ' s eetfslire ; and I am persuaded that Mr . Cooper , in his judicial opacity , would at once dismiss from his court a charge supported oy such insufficient evidence . It would be trifling tG-rem&fk ^ th at the word " Nature / 5 especially in the licence of poetic didtion , commonly designs the Author of nature : and what-are the lines -quoted * , connected with those which precede them , but , like Young ' s " True Estimate of Human Life , * ( the second part of which never appeared ) a statement of one , and that the melancholy view of man ' s condition . The whole of those stanzas reminds nie of a passage in the book pf Job ( xiv . 7 ** -lC >«) which probably our Poet had in recollection , where a beautiftildescription of the annual revivals of the vegetable world is closed by this affecting inquiry : But man dieth , arid - wastietti . ' ^ k y : yea , man g iveth . up the ghost , and where is he }* ' '
The original edition of the- ** Hermit / ' the only part which has been set to music , and the only one , I am persuaded * which Mr . Cooper had seen , ended with the Stanza : to ^ which he has attributed an c * -atheistical complexion / 1 of WhidhI much doubt whether you or your readers will b £ *^ awar ^/ 9 Jaiiy more than was Dr . Beattie himself . The poet ^ however , was not satisfied with having left man in * ' the night of the grave /' that ne plus ultra o £ rational philosophy , I have before me an edition of his poems , in 1780 , where the following stanzas are added , not , I believe for the first time :-
—" 'Twas thus , by ( he gl ^ re qf false science b ^ tray'd , That leads to bewilder , and dazzles to blind , My thoughts wont to roam from shad 6 on warn to shaafi ? . JDestruetion before me % and sorrow ieMnd :
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1807, page 66, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2377/page/10/
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