To look for our modern philanthropy in that "Greek Gazette," the Iliad
of Homer--to expect that reverence for the Supreme Being which the Bible
has taught us in the Metamorphoses of Ovid--or to seek that refinement
of manners and language which has only of late prevailed amongst us, in
the plays of Aristophanes and Plautus--were very foolish and very vain.
In ages not so ancient, and which have revolved since the dawn of
Christianity, a certain coarseness of thought and language has been
prevalent; and for it still larger allowance should be made, because it
has been applied to simplicity rather than to sensuality--to rustic
barbarism, not to civilised corruption--and carries along with it a
rough raciness, and a reference to the sturdy aboriginal beast--just as
acorns in the trough suggest the immemorial forests where they grew, and
the rich greenswards on which they fell.

In two cases, it thus appears, should the severest censor be prepared to
modify his condemnation of the bad taste or the impurity to be found in
writers of genius--first, in that of a civilization, perfect in its
kind, but destitute of the refining and sublimating element which a
revelation only can supply; and, secondly, in that of those ages in
which the lights of knowledge and religion are contending with the gloom
of barbarian rudeness. Perhaps there are still two other cases capable
of palliation--that of a mind so constituted as to be nothing, if not a
mirror of its age, and faithfully and irresistibly reflecting even its
vices and pollutions; or that of a mind morbidly in love with the
morbidities and the vile passages of human nature. But suppose the case
of a writer, sitting under the full blaze of Gospel truth, professedly a
believer in the Gospel, and intimately acquainted with its oracles,
living in a late and dissipated, not a rude and simple age--possessed of
varied and splendid talents, which qualified him to make as well as to
mirror, and with a taste naturally sound and manly, who should yet seek