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profession. These first-fruits of his Muse, after she had been baptised,— but we must drop the fictitious being, and say rather, after he had been baptised. " with the Holy Ghost and with fire, " will ever be precious (independent of their other merits,) as the transcripts of his happiest feelings, the memorials of his walk with God, and his daily experience (amidst conflicts and discouragements,) of the consoling power of that religion in which he had found peace, and had often enoyed peace to a degree that passed understanding. On the other hand, it is a heart-withering reflection, that his mightier efforts of genius— the poems by which he commands universal admiration though they breathe the soul of purest, humblest, holiest piety, and might have been written amidst the clear shining of the Sun of Righteousness arisen on him with healing in his wings— were yet composed under darkness like that of the valley of the shadow of death. While the tempted poet sang the privileges, the duties, and the blessedness of the Christian, he had himself lost all except the remembrance that he once possessed it, and the bitter, insane, and invincible conviction, that for him there was no hope, " either in this life or that which is to come. " Under this frightful delusion, in its last effect, for several years, even his intellectual being was absorpt, till the disordered body fell into dust, and the soul returned to God who gave it. Oh ! when that veil of horror, with the veil of flesh, was taken away, and the enfranchised captive emerged in the invisible world,— may we not hope, that, like dying Stephen on this side of eternity, he on the other saw heaven opened, with Jesus standing at the right hand of God,— may we not believe that he could then and there exclaim, with that first triumphant martyr,— " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit! "
