arrangements; it must depend upon the relation of the different
persons and events to the central subject. No nice adjustments of
success and failure to right and wrong must constitute its poetical
justice; the conscience of the readers must be satisfied in some
deeper way than this, that there is an order in the universe, and
that the poet has perceived and asserted it.

Long before these principles were reduced into formal canons of
orthodoxy, even while they encountered the strong opposition of
critics, they were unconsciously recognised by Englishmen as sound
and national. Yet I question whether a clergyman writing in
conformity with them might not have incurred censure in former
times, and may not incur it now. The privilege of expressing his
own thoughts, sufferings, sympathies, in any form of verse is easily
conceded to him; if he liked to use a dialogue instead of a
monologue, for the purpose of enforcing a duty, or illustrating a
doctrine, no one would find fault with him; if he produced an actual
Drama for the purpose of defending or denouncing a particular
character, or period, or system of opinions, the compliments of one
party might console him for the abuse or contempt of another.

But it seems to be supposed that he is bound to keep in view one or
other of these ends: to divest himself of his own individuality
that he may enter into the working of other spirits; to lay aside
the authority which pronounces one opinion, or one habit of mind, to
be right and another wrong, that he may exhibit them in their actual
strife; to deal with questions, not in an abstract shape, but mixed
up with the affections, passions, relations of human creatures, is a
course which must lead him, it is thought, into a great
forgetfulness of his office, and of all that is involved in it.