ter the fields of speculation opened up
by the Reformation, than in the short space of the life of one man--than
in the space of seventy years, there arose such men as Spenser, and
Milton, and Shakspeare, and Sydney, and Raleigh, and Bacon, and Hobbes,
and Cudworth, and a whole phalanx of other great men, inferior only to
them in the brightness of original genius. How glorious must have been
the soil which could bring to maturity a harvest of such teeming
abundance! There are probably many among us who can even now remember
with exultation when the first ray of light was cast on their minds from
the genius of Spenser--as the first glimmering of day comes to him whose
sealed eyes are opened to the light of heaven, discovering objects at
first dimly and then more clearly, we at length gazed in wonder and in
joy on a creation vaster far, and far more lovely, than it had entered
into our hearts to conceive. And if, in our maturer years, we return to
live an hour with him in the regions of fairyland that enchanted our
youth--if some of the flowers seem less bright, if the murmur of the
waters is a more pensive sound, if a soberer light pervade the scene,
and if some of the illusions are broken for ever, we still discover in
every stanza beauties which escaped our earlier observation, and we
never lose our relish for that rich play of fancy, like the eastern
fountain, whose spray descends in pearls and in gems. But, above all,
when we look upon him with mature feelings, we can appreciate that lofty
strain of godly philosophy which he, the father of our poetry,
bequeathed, and which has been followed by his successors. When we call
to mind the influence produced on a people by the poetry of a
nation--when we call to mind that whatever is desired to be inculcated,
whether for good or for evil, the power of poetry has been employed to
advance it, even from the times when the Monarch-Minstrel of Israel
glorified his Maker in Psalms, to the latest attempts which have been
made to propagate treason, immorality, or atheism--when we thus think of
these things, we may learn how much of gratitude is due to those men
who, having had the precious ointment of poetic genius poured abundantly
on their heads, have felt and acknowledged that they were thereby
consecrated to the cause of virtue--who have never forgotten that there
was a time when

"The sacred name
Of poet and of prophet was the same."

Such men are S