the
Quakers are the only _Professors_ of Christianity as I read it in the
Evangiles; I say _Professors_--marry, as to practice, with their gaudy
hot types and poetical vanities, they are much at one with the sinful.
Martin's frontispiece is a very fine thing, let C.L. say what he please
to the contrary. Of the Poems, I like them as a volume better than any
one of the preceding; particularly, Power and Gentleness; The Present;
Lady Russell--with the exception that I do not like the noble act of
Curtius, true or false, one of the grand foundations of old Roman
patriotism, to be sacrificed to Lady R.'s taking notes on her husband's
trial. If a thing is good, why invidiously bring it into light with
something better? There are too few heroic things in this world to admit
of our marshalling them in anxious etiquettes of precedence. Would you
make a poetn on the Story of Ruth (pretty Story!) and then say, Aye, but
how much better is the story of Joseph and his Brethren! To go on, the
Stanzas to "Chalon" want the _name_ of Clarkson in the body of them; it
is left to inference. The Battle of Gibeon is spirited again--but you
sacrifice it in last stanza to the Song at Bethlehem. Is it quite
orthodox to do so. The first was good, you suppose, for that
dispensation. Why set the word against the word? It puzzles a weak
Christian. So Watts's Psalms are an implied censure on David's. But as
long as the Bible is supposed to be an equally divine Emanation with the
Testament, so long it will stagger weaklings to have them set in
opposition. Godiva is delicately touch'd. I have always thought it a
beautiful story characteristic of old English times. But I could not
help amusing myself with the thought--if Martin had chosen this subject
for a frontispiece, there would have been in some dark corner a white
Lady, white as the Walker on the waves--riding upon some mystical
quadruped --and high above would have risen "tower above tower a massy
structure high" the Tenterden steeples of Coventry, till the poor Cross
would scarce have known itself among the clouds, and far above them all,
the distant Clint hills peering over chimney pots, piled up,
Ossa-on-Olympus fashion, till the admiring Spectator (admirer of a noble
deed) might have gone look for the Lady, as you must hunt for the other
in the Lobster. But M. should be made Royal Architect. What palaces he
would pile--but then what parliamentary grants to make them good!
ne'ertheless I like t