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men's level; now-a-days, if you do so, you will get nothing but contempt for your pains-you cannot, indeed, be too intelligible, but you may be so while using the loftiest imagery and language. Chalmers never "came down to men's level," and yet his discourses were understood and felt by the humblest of his audience, when by the energy of his genius and the power of his sympathies he lifted them up to his.

Mr. Rogers thinks that all preachers aspiring to power and usefulness will "abhor the ornate and the florid," and yet it is remarkable that the most powerful and the most useful, too, of preachers have been the most ornate and florid. Who more ornate than Isaiah? Who spoke more in figures and parables than Jesus? Chrysostom, of the "golden mouth," belonged to the same school. South sneers at Jeremy Taylor, and Rogers very unworthily re-echoes the sneer; but what comparison between South the sneerer, and Taylor, the sneered at, in genius or in genuine power and popularity? To how many a cultivated mind has Jeremy Taylor made religion attractive and dear, which had hated and despised it before? Who more florid than Isaac Taylor, and what writer of this century has done more to recommend Christianity to certain classes of the community? He, to be sure, is no preacher, but who have been or are the most popular and most powerful preachers of the age? Chalmers, Irving, Melville, Hall; and amid their many diversities in point of intellect, opinion, and style, they agree in this-that they all abound in figurative language and poetical imagery. And if John Foster failed in preaching, it was certainly not from want of imagi nation, which formed, indeed, the staple of all his best discourses. Mr. Rogers, to be sure, permits a "moderate use of the imagination;" but, strange to say, it is the men who have made a large and lavish use of it in preaching who have most triumphantly succeeded. Of course they have all made their imagination subservient to a high purpose; but we demur to his statement that no preacher should ever employ his imagination merely to delight us. He should not, indeed, become constantly the minister of delight; but he should, and must occasionally, in gratifying himself with his own fine fancies, give an innocent and intense gratification to others, and having thus delighted his audience, mere gratitude on

their part will prepare them for listening with more attention and interest to his solemn appeals at the close. He says that the splendid description in the "Antiquary" of a sunset would be altogether out of place in the narrative by a naval historian of two fleets separated on the eve of engagement by a storm, or in any serious narrative or speech, forgetting that the "Antiquary" professes to be a serious narrative, and that Burke, in his speeches and essays, has often interposed in critical points of narration descriptions quite as long and as magnificent, which, nevertheless, so far from exciting laughter, produce the profoundest impression, blending, as they do, the energies and effects of fiction and poetry with those of prose and fact.

That severely simple and agonistic style, which Mr. Rogers recommends so strongly, has been seldom practised in Britain, except in the case of Baxter, with transcendent effect. At all events, the writings of those who have followed it, have not had a tithe of the influence which more genial and fanciful authors have exerted. For one who reads South, ten thousand revel in Jeremy Taylor. Howe, a very imaginative and rather diffuse writer, has supplanted Baxter in general estimation. In Scotland, while the dry sermons of Ebenezer Erskine are neglected, the lively and fanciful writings of his brother Ralph have still a considerable share of popularity. The works of Chalmers and Cumming, destined as both are in due time to oblivion, are preserved in their present life by what in the first is real, and in the second a semblance of imagination. Of the admirable writings of Dr. Harris, and of Hamilton, we need not speak. Latimer, South, and Baxter, whom Rogers ranks so highly, are not classics. Even Jonathan Edwards and Butler, with all their colossal talent, are now little read on account of their want of imagination. The same vital deficiency has doomed the sermons of Tillotson, Atterbury, Sherlock, and Clarke. Indeed, in order to refute Mr. Rogers, we have only to recur to his own words, quoted above" this faculty-fancy, namely-is incomparably the most important for the vivid and attractive exhibition of truth to the minds of men." It follows, that, since the great object of preaching is to exhibit truth to the minds of men, fancy is the faculty most needful to the preacher, and that the

want of it is the most fatal of deficiencies. In fact, although a few preachers have, through the agonistic methods, by pure energy and passion, produced great effects, these have been confined chiefly to their spoken speech, have not been transferred to their published writings, and have speedily died away. It is the same in other kinds of oratory. Fox's eloquence, which studied only immediate effect, perished with him, and Pitt's likewise. Burke's, being at once highly imaginative and profoundly wise, lives, and must live for ever.

We have not room to enlarge on some other points in the paper. We think Mr. Rogers lays far too much stress on the time a preacher should take in composing his sermons. Those preachers who spend all the week in finical polishing of periods, and intense elaboration of paragraphs, are not the most efficient or esteemed. A well-furnished mind, animated by enthusiasm, will throw forth in a few hours a sermon incomparably superior, in force, freshness, and energy, to those discourses which are slowly and toilsomely built up. It may be different sometimes with sermons which are meant for publication. Yet some of the finest published sermons in literature

have been written at a heat.

From the entire second volume of these admirable essays, we must abstain. "Reason and Faith" would itself justify a long separate article. Nor can we do any more than allude, at present, to that noble "Meditation among the Tombs of Literature," which closes the first volume, and which he entitles the "Vanity and Glory of Literature." It is full of sad truth, and its style and thinking are every way worthy of its author's genius.

ESCHYLUS; PROMETHEUS BOUND AND UNBOUND.*

PROFESSOR BLACKIE has lately translated the "Prometheus Vinctus" into English verse. Without much ease, or grace, or melody, his translation is very spirited, and gives a more vivid idea of Eschylus, in his rugged energy and rapturous enthusiasm, than any other verse rendering we have read. But we are mistaken if the mere English reader does not derive a better notion of Eschylus still from the old prose versions. Best of all were such a translation as Dr. John Carlyle has executed of Dante, distinguished at once by correctness and energy. What a thing his brother Thomas could make of the "Prometheus" in his prose!

The sympathy which this great poet felt for the ancient mythology of his country, for gods to whom Jove was but a beardless boy, was strictly a fellow-feeling. He was a Titan among men; and we fancy him, sick of the present, and reverting to the past, tired of the elegant mannikins around, and stretching forth his arms to grasp the bulky shades of a bygone era. He had been a soldier, too, and this had probably infused into his mind a certain contempt for mankind as they were. He that mingles and takes a part in a battle-field, would require to be more than mortal to escape this feeling. seeing there, as he must, man writhen into all varieties of painful, shameful, despicable, and horrible attitudes. It was, indeed, at Marathon, Salamis, and perhaps Platea, that he mingled in warfare; but the details of even these world-famous fights of freedom must have been as mean and disgusting as those of Borodino or Austerlitz. From man Eschylus turned pensively and proudly to the gods; first, to the lower circle of Jove and Apollo, but, with deeper reverence and fonder love, to that elder family whom they had supplanted. Of that fallen house he became and continued the laureate, till the boy Keats, with hectic heat and unearthly beauty, sang "Hyperion."

"Prometheus Bound" and "Unbound;" Blackie's "Eschylus;" Shelley's Prometheus."

More strictly speaking, schylus was the poet of destiny, duty, and other great abstractions. He saw these towering over Olympus, reposing in his sleeping Furies, and shining like stars through the shadows of his gods. To him, whether consciously or unconsciously, the deities were embodied thoughts, as those of all men must in some measure be; and his thoughts, being of a lofty transcendental order, found fitter forms in the traditionary members of the Saturnian house, than in the more recent and more sharply-defined children of Jove.

His genius was lofty and bold, but rather bare and stern. Luxuriance and wealth of thought and imagination were hardly his; they are seldom found so high as the Promethean crags, although they sometimes appear in yet loftier regions, such as Job, Isaiah, and the "Paradise Lost." His language is the only faculty he ever pushes to excess. It is sometimes overloaded into obscurity, and sometimes blown out into extravagance. But it is the thunder, and no lower voice, which bellows among those lonely and difficult rocks, and it must be permitted to follow its own old and awful rhythm.

At Gela in Sicily, in the sixty-ninth year of his age, died this Titan-banished, as some think, at all events alienated, from his native country. It was fitting that he should have found a grave in the land of Etna and the Cyclopses. There, into the hands of his Maker, he returned the "blast of the breath of his nostrils;" and a prouder and a more powerful spirit never came from, and never returned to God.

"Prometheus Bound" is not the most artistic or finished of Eschylus' plays; but it is the most characteristic and sublime. There are more passion and subtlety in the "Agamemnon;" but less intensity and imagination. The "Agamemnon " is his "Lear;" and the "Prometheus" his " Macbeth." It was natural that a mind so lofty and peculiar as this poet's should be attracted towards the strange and magnificent myth of Prometheus. It seemed a fable waiting for his treatment. Thus patiently, from age to age, have certain subjects, like spirits on the wrong side of Styx, or souls in their antenatal state, seemed to wait till men arose able to incarnate them in history or song. And it matters not how many prematurely try to give them embodiment! Their time is not yet, and

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