fellow-creatures; a just God, who by the law of his own nature cannot
save unrepentant sin from eternal retribution; yet an adored God, whose
providence protects the faithful amid stormy vicissitudes,--

Under the shadow of whose throne
The saints have dwelt secure.

Spirits as gentle and kindly as Parnell insist that the only approach
to happiness lies through a religious discipline of the feelings, and
protest that death is not to be feared but welcomed--as the passage from
a troublous existence to everlasting peace. In most of the poetry of
the time, religion, if at all noticeable, is a mere undercurrent; but
whenever it rises to the surface, it reflects the ancient creed.

Traditional too is the general conception of human character. Man is
still thought of as a complex of lofty and mean qualities, widely
variable in their proportion yet in no instance quite dissevered. To
interpret--not God or Nature--but this self-contradictory being, in both
his higher and his lower manifestations and possibilities, remains the
chief vocation of the poets. They have not ceased the endeavor to lend
dignity to life by portraying its nobler features. Addison, in _The
Campaign_, glorifies the national hero whose brilliant victories thwarted
the great monarch of France on his seemingly invincible career toward
the hegemony of Europe, the warrior Marlborough, serene of soul amid the
horror and confusion of battle. Tickell, in his noble elegy on Addison,
not only, while voicing his own grief, illustrates the beauty of
devoted friendship, but also, when eulogizing his subject, holds up to
admiration, as a type to be revered, the wise moralist, cultured and
versatile man of letters, and adept in the art of virtuous life. Pope,
in the most ambitious literary effort of the day, his translation of the