s an unfit subject for poetry, as being
incapable of novelty, because, after all, it is only ringing the
changes upon one simple affection, which every one understands. The
novelty there consists, not in the original topic, but in continually
bringing ordinary things, by happy strokes of natural ingenuity, into
new associations with the ruling passion.

There's not a bonny flower that springs
By fountain, shaw, or green;
There's not a bonnie bird that sings
But minds me of my Jean.

Why need we fear to extend this most beautiful and natural sentiment
to 'the intercourse between the human soul and its Maker', possessing,
as we do, the very highest warrant for the analogy which subsists
between conjugal and divine love?

Novelty, therefore, sufficient for all the purposes of poetry, we may
have on sacred subjects. Let us pass to the next objection.

Poetry pleases by exhibiting an idea more grateful to the
mind than things themselves afford. This effect proceeds
from the display of those parts of nature which attract,
and the concealment of those which repel, the imagination;
but religion must be shown as it is; suppression and
addition equally corrupt it; and, such as it is, it is known
already.

A fallacy may be apprehended in both parts of this statement. There
are, surely, real landscapes which delight the mind as sincerely and
intensely as the most perfect description could; and there are family
groups which give a more exquisite sensation of domestic happiness
than anything in Milton, or even Shakespeare. It is partly by
association with these, the treasures of the memory, and not
altogether by mere excitement of the imagination, that Poetry does her
work. By the same rule sacred pictures and sacred songs cannot fail to
gratify the mind which is at all exercised in devotion; recalling, as
they will, whatever of highest perfection in that way she can remember
in herself, or has learned of others.

Then again, it is not the religious doctrine itself, so much as the
effect of it upon the human mind and heart, which the sacred poet has
to describe. What is said of suppression and addition may be true
enough with regard to the former, but is evidently incorrect when
applied to the latter: it being an acknowledged difficulty in all
devotional writings, and not in devotional verse only, to keep clear
of the extreme of languor on the one hand, and debasing rapt