Page:Under the Microscope - Swinburne (1899).djvu/30

 inquiry will produce men competent to resolve it. Meantime we may remark again the very twang of the former preacher in the voice which now denounces to our ridicule B's "want of sense," while it invokes our disgust as fire from heaven on his "want of decency," in the use of a type borrowed from the Christian mythology and applied to actual doings and sufferings; and once more we surely seem to "know the sweet Roman hand" that sets down our errors in its register, when the critic remarks on the absurd inconsequence of a poet who addresses by name and denounces in person a god in whose personal existence he does not believe. In the name of all divine persons that ever did or did not exist, what on earth or in heaven would the critic in such a case expect? Is it from the believers in a particular god or gods that he would look for exposure and denunciation of their especial creed? Would it be natural and rational for a man to attack and denounce a name he believes in or a person he adores, unnatural and irrational to attack and denounce by name a godhead or a gospel he finds incredible and abominable to him? When a great poetess apostrophized the gods of Hellas as dead, was the form of apostrophe made inconsequent and absurd by the fact that she did not believe them to be alive? For a choicer specimen of preacher's logic than this we might seek long without finding it. But we must not be led away into argument or answer