Page:Scotish Descriptive Poems - Leyden (1803).djvu/213

 youth; "Would thou intreat of prodigious miracles? Look the books of Genesis and Exode, or the works of our Saviour, of the prophets and apostles. Would thou have a subject of valiant deeds of arms? Read the books of Josua and the Judges, and of the kings of Israel and Judah. Would thou have store of wise sentences? Read the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Would thou have a subject of love? Look the Song of Songs; the love betwixt Christ and his church. Would thou rejoice or lament—praise or dispraise—comfort or threaten—pray or use imprecation? Imitate the old Hebrew David in his Psalms, as a pattern of all heavenly poesy." The general success of Hume, in the style of poetry which he adopted, will not render his example very attractive. He seems to have curbed his fancy assiduously, and to have forcibly confined his imagination to the common-place phraseology of Calvinism; a phraseology which, however proper for the simplicity of theology, is extremely unfit for the purposes of poetry. The selection of descriptive images, and the fluency of versification which he exhibits, are sufficient to prevent him from being confounded with the Sternholds and Hopkins of the period in which he lived. Besides the religious controversies of that period, the civil dissentions which agitated the country, may be enumerated among the causes which impeded the progress of Scotish poetry, and withered the laurels on the brows of her bards.