In all there are
flashes of epigrammatic smartness.
How shall I speak thee, or thy power address,
Thou God of our idolatry, the press?
By thee, religion, liberty, and laws
Exert their influence, and advance their cause;
By thee, worse plagues than Pharaoh's land befel,
Diffused, make earth the vestibule of hell:
Thou fountain, at which drink the good and wise,
Thou ever-bubbling spring of endless lies,
Like Eden's dread probationary tree,
Knowledge of good and evil is from thee.
Occasionally there are passages of higher merit. The episode of
statesmen in _Retirement_ has been already mentioned. The lines on the
two disciples going to Emmaus in _Conversation_, though little more
than a paraphrase of the Gospel narrative, convey pleasantly the
Evangelical idea of the Divine Friend. Cowper says in one of his
letters that he had been intimate with a man of fine taste who had
confessed to him that though he could not subscribe to the truth of
Christianity itself, he could never read this passage of St.
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