personage must
have had his taste formed in the punning Court of James I., and that the
epitaph was composed at a time when our literature was stuffed with
quaint or out-of-the-way thoughts, it will seem not unlikely that the
author prided himself upon what he might call a clever hit: I mean his
better affections were less occupied with the several associations
belonging to the two ideas than his vanity delighted with that act of
ingenuity by which they had been combined. But the first couplet
consists of a just thought naturally expressed; and I should rather
conclude the whole to be a work of honest simplicity; and that the
sense of worldly dignity associated with the title, in a degree
habitual to our ancestors, but which at this time we can but feebly
sympathize with, and the imaginative feeling involved--viz. the saintly
and chivalrous name of the champion of England, were unaffectedly linked
together: and that both were united and consolidated in the author's
mind, and in the minds of his contemporaries whom no doubt he had
pleased, by a devout contemplation of a happy immortality, the reward of
the just.

At all events, leaving this particular case undecided, the general
propriety of these notices cannot be doubted; and I gladly avail myself
of this opportunity to place in a clear view the power and majesty of
impassioned faith, whatever be its object: to shew how it subjugates the
lighter motions of the mind, and sweeps away superficial difference in
things. And this I have done, not to lower the witling and the worldling
in their own esteem, but with a wish to bring the ingenuous into still
closer communion with those primary sensations of the human heart, which
are the vital springs of sublime and pathetic composition, in this and
in every other kind. And as from these primary sensations such
composition speaks, so, unless correspondent ones listen promptly and
submissively in the inner cell of the mind to whom it is addressed, the
voice cannot be heard; its highest powers are wasted.

These suggestions may be further useful to establish a criterion of
sincerity, by which a writer may be judged; and this is of high import.
For, when a man is treating an interesting subject, or one which he
ought not to treat at all unless he be interested, no faults have such a
killing power as those which prove that he is not in earnest, that he is
acting a part, has leisure for affectation, and feels that without it he
co