e
restored to purity and to peace among the Sons of God, the Children of
Light! The Love of God is set forth as limitless. We have before us the
birth of matter at the Almighty's fiat; and we close the work with the
salvation and ecstasy--described as decreed from the Beginning--of
whatever creature hath been given a spiritual existence, and made a
spiritual subject and agency. There is in the doctrine of 'Festus' no
such thing as the "Son of Perdition" who shall be an ultimate castaway.

Few English poems have attracted more general notice from all
intelligent classes of readers than did 'Festus' on its advent.
Orthodoxy was not a little aghast at its theologic suggestions.
Criticism of it as a literary production was hampered not a little by
religious sensitiveness. The London Literary Gazette said of it:--"It is
an extraordinary production, out-Heroding Kant in some of its
philosophy, and out-Goetheing Goethe in the introduction of the Three
Persons of the Trinity as interlocutors in its wild plot. Most
objectionable as it is on this account, it yet contains so many
exquisite passages of genuine poetry, that our admiration of the
author's genius overpowers the feeling of mortification at its being
misapplied, and meddling with such dangerous topics." The advance of
liberal ideas within the churches has diminished such criticism, but the
work is still a stumbling-block to the less speculative of sectaries.

The poem is far too long, and its scope too vast for even a genius of
much higher and riper gifts than Bailey's. It is turgid, untechnical in
verse, wordy, and involved. Had Bailey written at fifty instead of at
twenty, it might have shown a necessary balance and felicity of style.
But, with all these shortcomings, it is not to be relegated to the
library of things not worth the time to know, to the list of bulky
poetic failures. Its author blossomed and fruited marvelously early; so
early and with such unlooked-for fruit that the unthinking world, which
first received him with exaggerated honor, presently assailed him with
undue dispraise. 'Festus' is not mere solemn and verbose commonplace.
Here and there it has passages of great force and even of high beauty.
The author's whole heart and brain were poured into it, and neither was
a common one. With all its ill-based daring and manifest crudities, it
was such a _tour de force_ for a lad of twenty as the world seldom sees.
Its sluggish current bears along remarka