* him) on one subordinate particular, and with much confidence of manner, and fresh scurrility of language, triumphed over my supposed misapprehension of a point of law. Here, too, he was defeated: his ignorance of the law was exposed, as his less venial practices had been detected before. Having done this, I addressed the Editor of the Review, in terms of forbearance, perhaps I might say of courtesy, on the just grounds of complaint which I might urge against himself. After an interval of three years, being again assailed in the same Journal with equal grossness, and, as I have proved, with equal falsehood, I now tell the Editor, before the world, that on him will light all the ignominy of this second outrage. I tell him, too, that he would rather have foregone half the profits of his unhallowed trade, than have dared to launch against any one of his Brethren of the Gown the smallest part of that scurrility, which he has felt no scruple in circulating against Churchmen. If To you, Sir, I make no apology for addressing you on this occasion. you are not, what the public voice proclaims you to be, the Editor of the Review, you will thank me for thus giving you an opportunity publicly to disclaim the degrading title. If you are, it is henceforth to me a matter of mere indifference, what such a person may think or say. I am, Sir, &c. HENRY PHILLPOTTS. Stanhope, 30th Dec. 1822. the fair fame of Mr John Ambrose Williams, Mr Brougham and the unknown Reviewer. That this Reviewer may remain unknown, is my very earnest wish. I seek to despise no man. But whether the Reviewer remain unknown or not, it is time that the Editor of the Review should feel ("As feel he will, If damned custom have not brazed him so, That he is proof and bulwark against sense,") that he may not with impunity persist in giving circulation to these foul and unmanly calumnies. A man of honour, conducting a Review, would feel himself bound, by the strongest ties, to protect from all gross insult (it would be childish to weigh these matters in very nice scales) those whose only protection against the petulance, or the malignity, of his underlings, must rest on his honour. If, by inadvertence, any thing false, unjust, or culpably offensive to the feelings of an individual, should for once have crept into his Journal, at least he would be anxious to prevent all recurrence of the injury. Has such been the conduct of the Editor of this Review? An article was published in his 64th Number, reflecting in the coarsest terms on my character. I answered that article, by proving the wilful falsehood of its main allegations, and at the same time called on the author to defend his own veracity. Under that challenge he sate down in silence. He seized, indeed, (or some one for [Our readers will, we are assured, be much more obliged to us for giving them the entire Letter of Dr Phillpotts, than an article of our own on the "Durham Case." We had prepared such an article; and perhaps we may yet lay it before the public; for it is evident that the Edinburgh Review has joined "The Unholy Alliance." But in this contest we shall take a firm and "Before I conclude, I will add one word to the Editor of the Review. "That he is answerable for all that appears in it, will not be disputed. He is a man of high and (I doubt not) merited reputation, a man of honour and of liberal feelings. Let me then calmly remind him of the discreditable light, in which he is exhibited by this discussion. He appears in it as a willing instrument to give currency to the base effusions of another man's malignity: he has allowed his Journal, professing to discharge the duties of fair and equal criticism, to be made the vehicle of wilful mis-statements, and of the most glaring injustice; he has permitted gross personal insults to be offered under the sanction of his authority, to one, whose profession, and, I will add, whose character, would have protected him from all indignity at the hands of an honourable or manly opponent. "Whether Mr Jeffrey finds any disgrace in all this, is a matter of much more importance to him, than it can be to me.' -See Remarks on a Note in the Edinburgh Review, No. LXV. decided part, and let the enemies of religion, and of religious establishments, look to themselves. Meanwhile we cannot conclude better than by copying the following excellent remarks by our friend Dr Stoddart: 1 "The slight castigation we inflicted on the article. in The Edinburgh Review, entitled Clerical Abuses,' was but the prelude to a most severe punishment which the author has since received from a far more powerful pen. The Rev. Dr PHILLPOTTS has published a "Letter to Francis Jeffrey, Esq." which, if the author of the article has not a hide tougher than the seven-fold shield of Ajax, must cut him to the bone. He first disposes of the theological matter which the unfortunate Critic was so ill-advised as to introduce into his Review; and he shews that, in pretending to talk about the doctrines of the Church of England, the Reviewer has shewn an ignorance which would dis grace a catechumen of ten years old in a country parish. Every syllable that this polemical journal has ventured about Transubstantiation, the Real Presence, and the power of Absolution, is proved to be a blunder of the grossest magnitude. Then, what he says of Bishops BURNET and BUTLER, is at woful variance with history. His censures on the amiable and excellent Bishop of LONDON, which we had before noticed, are next exposed with still greater force. And, after disposing of the introductory matter, Dr Phillpotts refutes the calumnies against himself and the Durham Clergy, by an exposition of the real state of the case, which leaves the Reviewers without the shadow of an excuse for one of the most intemperate, and, at the same time, most unfounded attacks ever made on the Church.' - New Times, January 10, 1823. THE LOVES OF THE ANGELS. THE subject of this poem, when first it rises up dimly and distantly before us, seems to be at once so brightened and shadowed with thoughts and feelings, both human and divine, so richly overspread with the perishable groundflowers of earth, and so magnificently canopied with the imagery of heaven, that before we have formed any very distinct conception of what may be "The Loves of the Angels," we are happy to hail them as a beautiful theme for the creations of genius. Every thing antediluvian is poetical. The flood washed away a world from life into imagination. Its universal waters yet divide us from the younger years of the earth. Our generations seem to be from Noah ; but Adam was the father of the Races that sinned before the ark rested upon Ararat. Our human sympathies are still with the children of them who lived in Paradise; and from Cain and Abel we follow them, wheresoever they go, on the widening circle of inhabitation over the new fields of the earth. But then these human sympathies which we feel, because we are all one kind, are idealized towards objects in that wild remoteness; and being of themselves insuffi cient to satisfy the heart, they are easily transmuted into emotions of pure ima gination, and perhaps are never found to exist but in such alliance. Those ages, therefore, seem to be the very domain of pure poetry. With regard to the Loves of Angels with the human race, it is of no moment, in a merely poetical view, whether or not they are scriptural. Of the nature of such beings, Scripture tells us nothing; but our minds are so framed as to conceive of them, and to endow them with attributes. Whether we endeavour to raise up our thoughts from earth to heaven, or to bring them down imperceptibly from heaven to earth, our minds do of themselves conceive the image of intermediate intelligences between man and God, to which we give a mixed terestrial and celestial nature. Such beings seem to belong to our own race, because like us they are created; but they seem not to belong to our race, because their birthplace was in heaven, and their dwelling round the throne of the Deity. It is easy, therefore, and delightful, for any imagination to think of such creatures hanging between heaven and earth, and partaking, if not of human pas The Loves of the Angels; a Poem. By Thomas Moore. London, printed for Longman, Hurst, Recs, Orme, and Brown, Paternoster-Row. 1823. sions, at least of those human affections which are in their purity the most nearly resembling divine. Whatever may be attributable to tradition, it is not possible to suppose the human soul, during its sojourn here, not forming to itself such visions, which seem inseparable from its consciousness of a divine origin and an immortal destiny. Now, if this be the kind of imaginative thought in which we willingly allow the existence of such beings, it is obvious, that if they are to be made the subjects of poetry, they must be preserved in the full beauty or majesty of their angelic character. This Milton has in general done; and in Paradise Lost, we desiderate nothing, except when the mighty poet ventures to ascend from his angels, fallen or unfallen, to their Creator. Then Milton himself is struck with a blacker blindness than that which had veiled his “ visual orbs ;” and his poetry is at an end. But Milton spoke of angels in their own world-not in ours-unless when sent on missions of love or anger to our parents in Paradise. Had he ever written about the power and dominion given to angels over the races of men, we know from that sublime passage in the First Book of his great poem, in what spirit it would have been conceived. "For those the race of Israel oft forsook Their living Strength, and unfrequented left His righteous altar, bowing lowly down To bestial gods; for which their heads as low Bow'd down in battle, sunk before the spear To whose bright image nightly by the moon Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured tale Infected Sion's daughters with the heat; Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch The Loves of the Angels with women were not suited to Milton's spirit; and accordingly, in his eleventh book, he gives his interpretation of that Text. "For that fair female troop thou saw'st, that seem'd Of goddesses, so blithe, so smooth, so gay, eye. To these that sober race of men, whose lives Ignobly to the trains and to the smiles joy, Ere long to swim at large; and laugh, for which The world, ere long, a world of tears must, weep." But although Milton's genius put away from itself the image of Angels mixing in human loves, such an image may yet be brought home to another heart; and there does not seem any thing incongruous, or worse than incongruous, in divine beings, of limited intelligence, and liable to sin like ourselves, being overcome by the beauty of creatures different from them in much, but made almost one and the same by common infirmities and participated guilt. The subject, therefore, we conceive, is legitimate; but it is one to be managed with extreme skill, and with the native awe of a high mind, conscious at all times of the unapproachable sanctity of that Nature which created all things, both men and angels, heaven and earth. If there be any want of such awe in the poet's mind, then he will be in danger every moment of dashing our delight-of awakening in our souls an insupportable sense of the violation of holiness-and almost a sacred horror of advancing our most earthly thoughts into the presence of the Most High. Milton spoke of the creation and the fall of man, and he shewed us the human soul standing before God. Adam and Eve are ourselves-Humanity. In them, all that have ever lived, or will live on earth, are exhibited. Therefore Milton's poem inspires us with a holy dread. If MIL 1823.] Moore's Loves of the Ang ton has spoken of angels, can we not feeling and knowing when he is most turn from him to the voice of Moore? blindly and presumptuously bringing If we do, we must at least prepare our- himself and the creatures of his own selves for a great change. earthly fancy into the presence of God, Now, we say this, with many feel- then whatever excuses we may find ings of love and admiration of Moore's for himself, it is impossible not to be genius. But bright and beautiful as shocked by his words; and we lay that genius is, we have no doubt that down the book in a painful wonder, how most of our readers will agree with us so fine and even powerful a mind as in thinking, that it ought to keep to Mr Moore's should be so fatally and this earth. Mr Moore possesses fancy, infatuatedly blind, deaf, and insensisensibility, warmth of feeling, grace, ble to that voice, which in all humàn elegance, ingenuity, even passion and hearts humbly whispers to us to bow imagination. But of all highly-en- down in fear before our Creator. The dowed and richly-gifted minds we have constant approach which Mr Moore's ever known, his seems most hopelessly mind makes, if not in its very lightest, bound down to this earth by the chains at least in some of its most worthless of the senses. We do not now unge moods, to the name and to our ideas of nerously allude to his early poems; the being of the Deity, must strike for Mr Moore is not now, as he once every heart with horror. A Greek or a was, a mere gloating sensualist. But Roman spoke with more real reverence his mind is, nevertheless, even in its of Jove, than this poet does of God. We most pure creations, the slave of animal repeat, that such shocking impiety is beauty. The most soul-felt delights manifestly unintentional. But intenof his men, his women, and his angels, tional impiety is not credible at all; either trespass upon, or terminate in, and Mr Moore's sin lies in that state of some kind of passionate desires. If our his soul that could so image to itself its senses be the source of all our know- Creator and Judge. No such shockledge and of all our feelings, in the ing familiarity is to be found anywhere poetry of Mr Moore the soul is never that we know of out of the prose rasuffered to roam far from the source of vings of ignorant religious enthusiasts all her powers ; earthly food is conti- or madmen. Theirs being really what nually administered to her divinest as- they seem to be, the ravings of insani. pirations; and although, in the midst ty, are pitiable and melancholy; but of much beauty, and brightness, and Mr Moore's familiarities with his Mabalm, and music, we may not feel our ker assume the appearance of cold natures absolutely degraded or deba- glittering conceits, and the impertised, yet, most assuredly, when we re- nences of a bad taste. His object seems flect on what we have been reading, to be to make his poem pretty, and his the soul itself seems to have been re- piety has a regard to the Row; in his presented as a delicate material sub-adoration, he never loses sight of his stance, capable of being breathed over bargain with Longinan, Hurst, Rees, by delight, and coloured with gorgeous Orme, &c.; and he is anxious, when hues, but after all a vessel of clay, he writes of heaven, that his lines and if not broken in pieces before our should he polished to the satisfaction eyes, yet felt to be fragile, a toy of of Mr Jeffrey. chance, rather than a work of wisdom. Now, this light and airy, and ofter Mortality is the essence of it all, what- utterly indifferent way of approaching ever Mr Moore may say to the contra- the most awful subjects, is exhibited i ry. Vapours, bubbles, clouds, are all almost every page of the poem. Neve beautiful- -so are most of his perish- once does Mr Moore speak as he oug able thoughts. to do, when coming near such idea The first great and insuperable ob- Each passage by itself is bad enough jection, therefore, to Mr Moore's but the continuous strain of the who Loves of the Angels,” is one which composition is utterly destructive may subject him to nothing short of a all true religious thoughts. Nay, charge of blasphemy. We bring no have no hesitation in saying, that such eharge against him. But, amia- the least religious mind now existi ble, pure, and reverent, as he no doubt in Britain, provided it have any c believed his motives to be in writing tivation at all, this poem will prod these verses, yet if the constitution of an offensive effect, by the mere viole his mind besuch as to prevent him from which its intended piety and uninte 10 a ed impiety will do to its taste and to its sense of fitness. For even an atheist must have an idea of Omnipotence; and his intellectual nature will be shocked by the application to it of small paltry words and sentences, and of imagery so meanly disproportionate to that illimitable vastness. Yet, all the while, Mr Moore himself writes away his sparkling sentences with the same apparent air of unsuspecting sincerity of worship that we might expect to see in a poetaster, at the court of a mortal monarch, lavishing eulogies on the greatness of his character, the diamonds of his crown, and the extent of his dominions. Let the following examples suffice. 1. "Creatures of light, such as still play, 2. "The First who spoke was one, with look The least celestial of the three→→→ A Spirit of light mould, that took The prints of earth most yieldingly; Who, ev'n in heaven, was not of those Nearest the Throne, but held a place Far off, among those shining rows That circle out through endless space, And o'er whose wings the light from Him In the great centre falls most dim." 3. "Well I remember by her side Alone, as all such bright things are ;- Of Him in heaven, the Eternal One !'" 4." That very night-my heart had grown 5. "There was a virtue in that scene, been Thus poison'd,-madden'd-held me As though I stood on God's own ground. 6.That very moment her whole frame The third of their bright stars away- Beyond man, angel, star, or sun, That crowning of creation's birth, 9. "Can you forget her blush, when round 10. "Whate'er I did, or dream'd, or The thought of what might yet befall Through ages yet to come-whate'er All wak'd my soul's intensest care; 11. "No, it was wonder, such as thrill'd With passion, more profound, intense, Its range, as vague as lightnings run, To fix it burning upon One!!!" 12. "I had beheld their First, their EVE Born in that splendid Paradise, Which God made solely to receive The first light of her waking eyes! ! ! I had seen purest angels lean In worship o'er her from above; And man-oh yes, had envying seen Proud man possess'd of all her love!" |