erses supposed
to be written by Alexander Selkirk:--

Religion! what treasure untold
Resides in that heavenly word!
More precious than silver and gold,
Or all that this earth can afford.
But the sound of the church-going bell
These valleys and rocks never heard,
Ne'er sigh'd at the sound of a knell,
Or smiled when a Sabbath appeared.

Ye winds, that have made me your sport,
Convey to this desolate shore
Some cordial endearing report
Of a land I must visit no more.
My Friends, do they now and then send
A wish or a thought after me?
O tell me I yet have a friend,
Though a friend I am never to see.

This passage is quoted as an instance of three different styles of
composition. The first four lines are poorly expressed; some Critics
would call the language prosaic; the fact is, it would be bad prose, so
bad, that it is scarcely worse in metre. The epithet 'church-going'
applied to a bell, and that by so chaste a writer as Cowper, is an
instance of the strange abuses which Poets have introduced into their
language, till they and their Readers take them as matters of course, if
they do not single them out expressly as objects of admiration. The two
lines 'Ne'er sigh'd at the sound,' &c., are, in my opinion, an instance
of the language of passion wrested from its proper use, and, from the
mere circumstance of the composition being in metre, applied upon an
occasion that does not justify such violent expressions; and I should
condemn the passage, though perhaps few Readers will agree with me, as
vicious poetic diction. The last stanza is throughout admirably
expressed: it would be equally good whether in prose or verse, except
that the Reader has an exquisite pleasure in seeing such natural
language so naturally connected with metre. The beauty of this stanza
tempts me to conclude with a principle which ought never to be lost
sight of, and which has been my chief guide in all I have said,--namely,
that in works _of imagination and sentiment_, for of these only have I
been treating, in proportion as ideas and feelings are valuable, whether
the composition be in prose or in verse, they require and exact one and
the same language. Metre is but adventitious to composition, and the
phraseology for which that passport is necessary, even where it may be
graceful at all, will be little valued by the judicious.

(c) POETRY AS A STUDY.

With the young of b