'man as he is _not_ to be.' This saying was the
beginning of a friendship between us, which I believe still
continues.--Enough of this for the present.

But there is matter for another rhyme,
And I to this may add a second tale.

JOHN KEBLE

1792-1866

SACRED POETRY (1825)

_The Star in the East; with other Poems._ By Josiah Conder. London.
1824.

There are many circumstances about this little volume, which tend
powerfully to disarm criticism. In the first place, it is, for the
most part, of a _sacred_ character: taken up with those subjects which
least of all admit, with propriety, either in the author or critic,
the exercise of intellectual subtlety. For the _practical_ tendency,
indeed, of such compositions, both are most deeply responsible; the
author who publishes, and the critic who undertakes to recommend or to
censure them. But if they appear to be written with any degree of
sincerity and earnestness, we naturally shrink from treating them
merely as literary efforts. To interrupt the current of a reader's
sympathy in such a case, by critical objections, is not merely to
deprive him of a little harmless pleasure, it is to disturb him almost
in a devotional exercise. The most considerate reviewer, therefore, of
a volume of sacred poetry, will think it a subject on which it is
easier to say too much than too little.

In the present instance, this consideration is enforced by the
unpretending tone of the volume, which bears internal evidence, for
the most part, of not having been written to meet the eye of the
world. It is in vain to say that this claim on the critic's favour is
nullified by publication. The author may give it up, and yet the work
may retain it. We may still feel that we have no right to judge
severely of what was not, at first, intended to come before our
judgement at all. This of course applies only to those compositions,
which indicate, by something within themselves, this freedom from the
pretension of authorship. And such are most of those to which we are
now bespeaking our readers' attention.

_Most_ of them, we say, because the first poem in the volume, _The
Star in the East_, is of a more ambitious and less pleasing character.
Although in blank verse, it is, in fact, a lyrical effusion; an ode on
the rapid progress and final triumph of the Gospel. It looks like the
composition of a young man: harsh and turgid in parts, but
interspersed with some rather beautiful