passionate vindicator of the liberty of the individual, not only as
against political oppression, but against the tyranny of public opinion
over thought and conscience: "We were made for free action. This alone
is life, and enters into all that is good and great." This jealous
love of freedom inspired all that he did and wrote. It led him to join
the Antislavery party. It expressed itself in his elaborate
arraignment of Napoleon in the Unitarian organ, the _Christian
Examiner_, for 1827-28; in his _Remarks on Associations_, and his paper
_On the Character and Writings of John Milton_, 1826. This was his
most considerable contribution to literary criticism. It took for a
text Milton's recently discovered _Treatise on Christian Doctrine_--the
tendency of which was anti-Trinitarian--but it began with a general
defense of poetry against "those who are accustomed to speak of poetry
as light reading." This would now seem a somewhat superfluous
introduction to an article in any American review. But it shows the
nature of the _milieu_ through which the liberal movement in Boston had
to make its way. To re-assert the dignity and usefulness of the
beautiful arts was, perhaps, the chief service which the Massachusetts
Unitarians rendered to humanism. The traditional prejudice of the
Puritans against the ornamental side of life had to be softened before
polite literature could find a congenial atmosphere in New England. In
Channing's _Remarks on National Literature_, reviewing a work published
in 1823, he asks the question, "Do we possess what may be called a
national literature?" and answers it, by implication at least, in the
negative. That we do now possess a national literature is in great
part due to the influence of Channing and his associates, although his
own writings, being in the main controversial, and, therefore, of
temporary interest, may not themselves take rank among the permanent
treasures of that literature.