In its present shape we cannot
compliment him on its beauty; for as this bard himself sweetly sings:--
"The clear harangue, and cold as it is clear,
Falls soporific on the listless ear."
In justice to the bard it ought to be said that he wrote under the eye
of the Rev. John Newton, to whom the design had been duly submitted,
and who had given his _imprimatur_ in the shape of a preface which took
Johnson the publisher aback by its gravity. Newton would not have
sanctioned any poetry which had not a distinctly religious object, and
he received an assurance from the poet that the lively passages were
introduced only as honey on the rim of the medicinal cup, to commend
its healing contents to the lips of a giddy world. The Rev. John
Newton must have been exceedingly austere if he thought that the
quantity of honey used was excessive.
A genuine desire to make society better is always present in these
poems, and its presence lends them the only interest which they possess
except as historical monuments of a religious movement.
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