ast beams express the beast
Whose shady brows alive they dress'd.
Such game, while yet the world was new,
The mighty Nimrod did pursue;
What huntsman of our feeble race
Or dogs dare such a monster chase?
* * * * *
Oh, fertile head, which every year
Could such a CROP of WONDER bear!"

In his amorous and complimentary ditties, he is often very successful.
So, too, is he in much of his "Divine Poetry," particularly the lines at
the end, beginning with--

"The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,"
Lets in new light through chinks which time hath made.

These contain a thought, so far as we remember, new and highly poetical.

We may close by saying a few words on a question which Dr. Johnson has
started in his "Life of Waller" in reference to sacred poetry. That
great and good man, our readers remember, maintains that the ideas of
the Christian theology are too simple for eloquence, too sacred for
fiction, and too majestic for ornament, and "that faith, thanksgiving,
repentance, and supplication," are all unsusceptible of poetical
treatment. He grants that the doctrines of religion may be defended in a
didactic poem, and that a poet may not only describe God's works in
nature, but may trace them up to nature's God. But he asserts that
"contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human soul,
cannot be poetical." It is curious to remember that, up to Johnson's
time, the best poetry in the world had been sacred. There had been the
poetry of the Bible, in which truth of the deepest import was expressed,
now in "eloquence," now in "fiction," and now in language most
gorgeously "ornamented," and in which "Faith" in Isaiah, "Thanksgiving"
in Moses, "Penitence" in David, and "Supplication" in Jeremiah, had
uttered themselves in sublime, or lively, or subdued, or tender strains
--the poetry of the "Divine Commedia," of the "Jerusalem Delivered," of
the "Faery Queen," of the "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained," of
the "Night-Thoughts," of "Smart's David," all poetry, let it be
observed, not defending religion merely, or confining itself to the
praise of God's lower works, but entering into the depths of divine
contemplation, into the very adyta of the heavenly temple. And it is no
less interesting to recollect that in spite of Dr. Johnson's sage
diction, sacred poetry of a very high order has, since his day,
abounded. Cowper has extracted it from "the in