singularly deficient in verbal memory, a deficiency
which is usually accompanied by a relatively slight appreciation of the
mere rhythmic beauty of literary form. It is my impression that for
amorous poems, such as Moore's songs, or even Shakespeare's sonnets, and
for purely descriptive poetry, such as the best of 'Childe Harold' and
certain poems of Wordsworth, he cared comparatively little.

But he delighted in religious poetry, whether the religion was that of
the pagan Greek Tragedies, the mediaeval Dante, or the Puritan Milton.
He was a great lover of the best hymns, and with a catholicity of
affection which included the Calvinist Toplady, the Arminian Wesley, the
Roman Catholic Faber, and the Unitarian Holmes. Generally, however, he
cared more for poetry of strength than for that of fancy or sentiment.
It was the terrific strength in Watts's famous hymn beginning

"My thoughts on awful subjects dwell,
Damnation and the dead,"

which caused him to include it in the 'Plymouth Collection,' abhorrent
as was the theology of that hymn alike to his heart and to his
conscience.

In any estimate of Mr. Beecher's style, it must be remembered that he
was both by temperament and training a preacher. He was brought up not
in a literary, but in a didactic atmosphere. If it were as true as it is
false that art exists only for art's sake, Mr. Beecher would not have
been an artist. His art always had a purpose; generally a distinct moral
purpose. An overwhelming proportion of his contributions to literature
consists of sermons or extracts from sermons, or addresses not less
distinctively didactic. His one novel was written avowedly to rectify
some common misapprehensions as to New England life and character. Even
his lighter papers, products of the mere exuberance of a nature too full
of every phase of life to be quiescent, indicated the intensity of a
purposeful soul, much as the sparks in a blacksmith's shop come from the
very vigor with which the artisan is shaping on the anvil the nail
or the shoe.

But Mr. Beecher was what Mr. Spurgeon has called him, "the most
myriad-minded man since Shakespeare"; and such a mind must both deal
with many topics, and if it be true to itself, exhibit many styles. If
one were to apply to Mr. Beecher's writings the methods which have
sometimes been applied by certain Higher Critics to the Bible, he would
conclude that the man who wrote the Sermons on Evolution and Theology
could