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Yet let the grief and humbleness,

As low as silence, languish ;

Earth surely now may give her calm
To whom she gave her anguish.

O poets! from a maniac's tongue
Was poured the deathless singing!
O Christians! at your cross of hope
A hopeless hand was clinging!
O men! this man in brotherhood,
Your weary paths beguiling,
Groaned inly while he taught you peace,
And died while ye were smiling!

And now, what time ye all may read
Through dimming tears his story—
How discord on the music fell,

And darkness on the glory

And how, when, one by one, sweet sounds And wandering lights departed,

He wore no less a loving face,

Because so broken-hearted

He shall be strong to sanctify
The poet's high vocation,

And bow the meekest Christian down

In meeker adoration :

Nor ever shall he be in praise

By wise or good forsaken :

Named softly, as the household name
Of one whom God hath taken.

With quiet sadness, and no gloom,
I learn to think upon him;
With meekness that is gratefulness,

To God whose heaven hath won himWho suffered once the madness-cloud,

To his own love to blind him;

But gently led the blind along

Where breath and bird could find him:

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Thus woke the poet from the dream
His life's long fever gave him,
Beneath those deep pathetic Eyes,
Which closed in death to save him.

Thus! oh, not thus! no type of earth
Could image that awaking,

Wherein he scarcely heard the chaunt

Of seraphs round him breakingOr felt the new immortal throb

Of soul from body parted;

But felt those eyes alone, and knew "My Saviour! not deserted!"

Deserted! who hath dreamt that when

The cross in darkness rested

Upon the Victim's hidden face,

No love was manifested?

What frantic hands outstretched have e'er

The atoning drops averted

What tears have washed them from the soul-s

That one should be deserted?

Deserted! God could separate

From his own essence rather:
And Adam's sins have swept between
The righteous Son and Father;
Yea! once Immanuel's orphaned cry

His universe hath shaken

It went up single, echoless,
'My God, I am forsaken !"

It went up from the Holy's lips

Amid his lost creation,

That of the lost, no son should use

Those words of desolation ;

That, earth's worst frenzies, marring hope,

Should mar not hope's fruition;

And I, on Cowper's grave, should see

His rapture, in a vision !

LECTURE VIII.*

Literature of the Nineteenth Century.

Literature of our own times-Influence of political and social relations-The historic relations of literature-The French Revolution, and its effects-Infidelity-Thirty years' Peace-Scientific progress coincident with letters-History-Its altered tone-Arnold-Prescott-Niebuhr-Gibbon-Hume-Robertson-Religious element in historical style-Lord Mahon-Macaulay's History-Historical romance-Waverley Novels-The pulpit-Sydney Smith-ManningPoetry of the early part of the century-Bowles and Rogers-Campbell-Coleridge's Christabel-Lay of the Last Minstrel-Scott's

poetry.

In my last lecture, I noticed the date of the death of Cowper, in the year 1800, as conveniently marking the close of the literature of the eighteenth century. The excellence of his prose, as well as of his poetry, and his share in that literary revival which began during the latter part of that century, make such a use of his name subservient, in a reasonable rather than an arbitrary manner, to the purposes of literary chronology. We pass thence into what may be entitled "The Literature of our own Times," or, having nearly completed its era of fifty years, "The Literature of the first half of the Nineteenth Century." It has its characteristics-distinctive qualities, with their origin from within, in the minds of those whose writings make the literature, and from without, in the influence exerted on those minds by the world's doings

January 21, 1850.

and the world's condition. In the study of literature, it is needful, for our knowledge of it, to look at it in its relation to civil and political history, in order to understand how, in a greater or less degree, it takes a colour from the times. The mind of no author can dwell so aloof from his generation that his thoughts and feelings shall be above or beyond outward influences. He is more or less what he is, because he is where he is. These outward influences affect genius of the highest order, with this difference, indeed, that they do not limit or control it, but, by its own inborn power, it carries them up, idealized, into the highest truth for the perpetual good of all after time.

Looking back to the early and distant eras of English literature, it is not difficult to trace the relations between the literature and the national history-the record of words and the record of actions and events: The full and varied outburst of poetry, grave and gay, in Chaucer, becomes a more intelligible phenomenon when we think of it in association with the chivalry, the enterprise, and the cultivation of Edward the Third's long and glorious reign. The genius of Spenser and the genius of Shakspeare shine with a clearer light when our eyes look at it as issuing from the Elizabethan age-that age strenu̟ous with thoughts and acts, chivalrous, philosophical, adventurous, of whose great men it might be said, as it was said of one of them, that they were so contemplative you could not believe them active, and so active you could not believe them contemplative. Milton's great epic seems, at first thought, strangely uncongenial to the immediate period of its appearance; but ceases tó be so when it is thought of as engendered in those years

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