ot necessarily by
allegory, for it may be done in a thousand other ways--and so deceive
the world of taste into devotional reading--

Succhi amari intanto ei beve,
E dall' inganno sua vita riceve--

or else, directly avowing that their subject as well as purpose is
devotion, they must be content with a smaller number of readers; a
disadvantage, however, compensated by the fairer chance of doing good
to each.

It may be worth while to endeavour to trace this distinction, as
exemplified in the most renowned of the sacred poets of England; and
to glean from such a survey the best instruction we can, in the happy
art of turning the most fascinating part of literature to the highest
purposes of religion.

We must premise that we limit the title of 'sacred poet' by excluding
those who only devoted a small portion of their time and talent now
and then, to sacred subjects. In all ages of our literary history it
seems to have been considered almost as an essential part of a poet's
duty to give up some pages to scriptural story, or to the praise of
his Maker, how remote so ever from anything like religion the general
strain of his writings might be. Witness the Lamentation of Mary
Magdalene in the works of Chaucer, and the beautiful legend of Hew of
Lincoln, which he has inserted in his Canterbury Tales; witness also
the hymns of Ben Jonson. But these fragments alone will not entitle
their authors to be enrolled among sacred poets. They indicate the
taste of their age, rather than their own; a fact which may be thought
to stand rather in painful contrast with the literary history of later
days.

There is another class likewise, of whom little need be said in this
place; we mean those who composed, strictly and only, for the sake of
unburthening their own minds, without any thought of publication. But
as Chaucer's sacred effusions indicate chiefly the character of the
times, so poems such as those we now allude to, mark only the turn of
mind of the individual writers; and our present business is rather
with that sort of poetry which combines both sorts of instruction;
that, namely, which bears internal evidence of having been written by
sincere men, with an intention of doing good, and with consideration
of the taste of the age in which they lived.

Recurring then to the distinction above laid down, between the direct
and indirect modes of sacred poetry; at the head of the two classes,
as the reader may perhaps ha