ther words, a change in
human ideas rendered necessary a change in theology. Still, we have Mr.
Brooke's word for it, the Churches and sects were the last to move. "In
England," he declares, "the resistance offered to these ideas by the
religious bodies has been always steady and often rancorous." It was
another class of men who seized upon them. These were the Poets, the
"most emotional, the most imaginative, the most prophetic, and the most
clear-sighted of men." Sometimes they kept the name of Christians,
but more often they were called "heretics or infidels, blasphemers or
atheists." Occasionally they _were_ Atheists, as in the case of Shelley,
though it could hardly be expected that Mr. Brooke would emphasise the
fact.

After some pithy criticism on William Blake, who was a forceful
protestor against the old theology, Mr. Brooke passes on to Burns and
Cowper. Of the exquisite satire of _Holy Willie's Prayer_, despite
its "irreverence and immorality," which are after all but matters
of opinion, Mr. Brooke says that it "weakened the worst doctrines of
Calvinism far more than ten thousand liberal sermons have done." Cowper
weakened Calvinism too, though he did so unintentionally. The pathos
and horror of some of his poems, written under the heavy shadow of this
awful creed, did a great deal to discredit it amongst thoughtful and
sensitive readers. The poet was asked how he felt when dying. His answer
was, "I feel unutterable despair." These terrible words prompt Mr.
Brooke to write as follows:--

"They are words which all the good deeds of the professors of Calvinism
will never get over. 'He was mad,' they say; but what drove him mad?
Did Jesus teach in order that men might become insane? for Cowper is
one among millions whom this doctrine of God has ruined morally,
intellectually, or physically. But they have perished, unknown, unheard.
This man was a poet, and his words have told. His personal acceptance
of the horror revealed, as the mockery of Burns did not, the idolatrous
foulness of this doctrine concerning God."

Coleridge's one specific contribution as a poet to a wider theology,
in the opinion of Mr. Brooke, was the closing verse of the _Ancient
Mariner_--which, by the way, is not the closing verse, but the
antepenultimate.

He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us
He made and loveth all.

Mr. Brooke holds that Wordsworth did a