Dispensations of Genius. She digs with chymists in the deepest caves, And bounds with seamen o'er the distant waves; To one she gives the microscopic eye To scan the legs and pinions of a fly; 280 She leads bold Cæsar o'er the rolling flood, Thro' trackless forests, and thro' scenes of blood: *Literature is much indebted to the author of the Pursuits of Literature, and to Mr. Gifford, the author of the Baviad and Mæviad, for their poems and criticisms. The pursuits of Literature is a work which discovers genius, correctness of mind, and great extent of information, and is calculated to restore true taste and true learning. While its author liberally approves the works of the true philosopher and the true poet, he points his overcoming satire against all those who would propagate false principles and false taste. Some of his opinions, on subjects of religion and criticism, I deem erroneous and unfounded. As a minister of the gospel I cannot, however, restrain my admiration of this author for the morality of his strains, for his defence of religion against the attacks of impiety and a new and dangerous philosophy. 1 Eloquence. While some she gives the orator's controul, To roll their thunder o'er the prostrate soul.* 290 * Eloquence, as well as poetry, has been the inexhaustible subject of investigation. Which is the most proper mode of pulpit-eloquence? is a question which has been often asked, and differently answered. The Abbey Maury, in his lively and entertaining treatise, has denied their due merits to the English divines; and the English divines, on the other hand, do not sufficiently infuse into their discourses the fire and passion of the French manner. Theology has been reduced to a perfect science; there are no new truths in religion to be explored; he, therefore, who, with an accurate investigation of these truths, connects a cultivated taste and exercised imagination, and subjects these powers under the guidance of reason, will be a more agreeable and persuasive combatant for divine truth than the preacher, who, though skilled in theology, has no perception of beauty and sublimity; but who delivers trite truths in triter forms. To the pulpit, the close and indisLocke is not adapted; were preachers to reason like him, their hearers would return from church as edified as they came there; the mind must be aided by the silence and solitude of the closet, to comprehend the chain of such arguments. soluble reasoning of a The preacher must employ other weapons than syllogism; he must observe a medium between argument and declamation; the passions, as well as the understanding, must be addressed. Declamation, without a due proportion of argument, would have no effect upon the understanding; and argument, without declamation, would have Painting. To some she spreads a world's unbounded view And gives the pencil with which Raphael* drew. no force upon the passions; therefore, to address the souls of men with power, and justly to accommodate the discourse to the prevailing taste, declamation and argument should be united. A forcible illustration, a forcible appeal to the heart, and a forcible question, will oftentimes convince, when many pages of the most masterly reasoning would fail. In proof of this, I appeal to the figurative expressions of our Saviour, and to some of the discourses of St. Paul.--I appeal to some of the most eminent divines in the Christian church.---I appeal, particularly, to Massillon, one of the most eloquent of men; read his discourses; you find Genius breathing in almost every sentence. You discover in his works, reason which, while it convinces the understanding, at the same time impresses the heart. What did he say when he drew the whole audience, by an in stantaneous impulse, upon their feet? Did he prove, by mathematical deductions, that small were the number which should be saved? No---he told them the plain truth from the scriptures; and presented that truth in the most striking colours. Notwithstanding the eulogy I have passed upon Massillon and his unrivalled excellence in his addresses to the heart, I am far from thinking him a perfect model for the preacher. He indulges, perhaps, too much in declamation. To arouse, to terrify, to melt into tears, appears generally to be more his aim than to instruct. In making this remark I except several of his discourses, particularly his wonderful discourse on the divinity of our Saviour. He, in my conception, would be a finished model Sculpture. Nerv'd by her power, the statuary's arts,† of pulpit eloquence, who united the erudition and sublimity of Barrow, the warmth and pathos of Massillon, the acuteness and ingenuity of Sherlock, the condensity of Ogden, with Witherspoon's method of discussing theological doctrines. * At Greece, painting was first brought to perfection. The most famous schools in Greece were opened at Athens, Corinth, and Rhodes. Rome afterwards cultivated this art; but, at the overthrow of that empire, it was swallowed up in the same grave with literature and science. In the year 1450, it again revived in Italy, and was advanced to an eminence, perhaps equal to that which it held in either Greece or Rome. Raphael Santio was born in the year 1483. He died in his thirty-eighth year. He surpassed all modern painters. His invention was unbounded. He possessed all the graces; and in the disposition of his pieces, he has left Michael Angelo, Titian, and Corregio, far behind him. Du Fresnoy, in his Art of Painting, and in his observations connected with that poem, considers him as the prince of modern painters, and characterizes him in these lines:- Hos apud invenit Raphael miraculo summo Ducta modo, Veneresque habuit quas nemo deinceps. See Raphael there his forms celestial trace, DU FRESNOY. MASON. + Sculpture is acknowledged to be one of the most difficult of the fine arts. It is remarkable that it was the favourite Music. Rouz'd by her fire the voice of music flows, * In proud defiance when the tempest blows.† 300 art of Greece, and that her sculptors were more numerous than her painters. To this national enthusiasm the Grecian statues are principally indebted for their exquisite perfection.---Dædalus is supposed to have been the first who formed a statue; Phideas, Praxitiles, Polycletus, and Lysippus, his most successful Grecian followers. Sculpture, we are informed by history, emigrated from the desolated cities of Greece into Syria and Egypt. She was there employed to serve the pomp and gageantry of courts, and Alexandria under Ptolemy Philadelphus became, in the cultivation of this art, almost what Athens had been. Rome imitated, but never equalled Greece in sculpture. The most celebrated statues which have been rescued from the ruins of time, are the Apollo Belvidere--the Medicean Venus---the Hercules--the dying Gladiator---and the Laocoon.---" Of all the productions of art (says a recent writer on sculpture and painting) the statue of Apollo is unquestionably the most sublime. It rises indeed as a single figure to the highest pitch of excellence; but I confess the group of the Laocoon, appears to me a superior effort of sculpture." * See in Burney's History of Music, the wonderful effects of this art upon the mind. And an account of its greatest masters. + Not only in the sister arts, Poetry, Painting, Statuary, |