nce and caution. For we all need the
restraining influences of the blessed Spirit of God, as well as the
atonement and example of His dear Son. But when we see the present
tendency to anathematise open profligacy, and to ignore the hidden
Pharisaism (the very opposite to our Lord's own course), and the subtle
lying of the day, it seems as if those who ponder sadly over it ought to
speak out."

Doubtless, there are many more fads and fancies, many other sorts of
perils and trials that might be spoken of as an author's or any other
man's experiences: but I will pass on.

CHAPTER XI.

"SACRA POESIS" AND "GERALDINE."

With the exception of "Rough Rhymes," my first Continental Journal as
aforesaid, and a song or two, and a few juvenile poems, my first
appearance in print, the creator of a real bound volume (though of the
smallest size) was as author of a booklet called "Sacra Poesis;"
consisting of seventy-five little poems illustrative of engravings or
drawings of sacred subjects, and intended to accompany a sort of pious
album which I wished to give to my then future wife. Most of it was
composed in my teens, though it found no technical "compositor" of a
printing sort until I was twenty-two (in 1832), when Nisbet published
the pretty little 24mo, with a picture by myself of Hope's Anchor on the
title. The booklet is now very rare, and a hundred years hence may be a
treasure to some bibliomaniac. Of its contents, speaking critically of
what I wrote between fifty and sixty years ago, some, of the pieces have
not been equalled by me since, and are still to be found among my
Miscellaneous Poems: but, many are feeble and faulty. Some of the
reviews before me received the new poetaster with kindly appreciation;
some with sneers and due disparagement,--much as Byron's "Hours of
Idleness" had been treated not very many years before: though another
cause for hatred and contempt may have operated in my case, namely
this: Ever since youth and now to my old age I have been exposed to the
"_odium theologicum_," the strife always raging between Protestant and
Papist, Low Church and High, Waldo and Dominic, Ulster and Connaught:
hence to this hour the frequent rancour against me and my writings
excited by sundry hostile partisans.

* * * * *

My next volume was "Geraldine and other Poems," published by Joseph
Rickerby in 1838. The origin thereof was this,--as I now extract it from
my earlie