child even with the tears of anguish on his cheek the decisive word of truth which his sentence upon earth � the word which rejoicing angels bear to the courts of heaven as the richest tribute humanity can lay before the throne of its creator these are but single instances chosen out from a mass of evidence clearly proving that religion in its influence upon the affections in its intimate with those important scenes and circumstances of life from which we derive the greatest pain or pleasure in short in its supreme dominion over the human heart is above all other subjects that which possesses the highest claim to the regard of ths poet not only as being most productive of gratification but most worthy of him who to the right exercise of the attributes of mind a superficial view of religion may lead to the popular and vulgar notion that its practical duties are with true refinement of feeling and elevation of thought but is not that the most genuine refinement which into the distant relations of things and by mental association the visible and material � tlie familiar or the gross with powerful impressions of moral excellence and beauty and happiness i is not that the most elevated range of thought which the practical and affairs of men with the eternal p upon which the world is established and governed we know of nothing that can so fully and beautifully adorn the ordinary path of life as religion because it a spiritual essence to all our customary actions and pursuits in which the slightest portion of good and evil is involved we can imagine nothing to exceed in tenderness the merciful dealing of our heavenly father with his and rebellious creatures and as there is nothing to equal the perfection of the divine character so there is no to that of his nature nor is this all we have said that poetry must come home to our own in order to be truly felt and religion teaches us that we have a portion in everlasting life � an inheritance in eternity � that the hopes and the fears which our actions the powers and the energies with which we are endowed arc not merely given us for the brief purposes of to play their little part upon this stage � to frail creatures that must perish in the tomb but as links woven in with the great chain of being to be unfolded in a sphere without in a world without end we would not the and the fulness of the benefits of religion by saying that the poet has a in their delights beyond that enjoyed by others because we reverently believe the nature of religion to be such as to it to every understanding render it available in every condition of humanity and and to every heart but we have no hesitation in it impossible for the poet to reach the same intellectual without the aid of religion as when he on angels wings up to the gates of heaven � to touch the strings of human feeling so powerfully as when his hand is bathed in the pure fountains of eternal truth how for instance would he upon beauty or excellence if they had no in heaven how would he describe die which tear up the root of do peace and tlie tortured bosom if neither prayer nor appeal were wrung out by such wretchedness and directed to a power by whom the calamity might be averted how would he the vow or seal the blessing or the curse without the sanction of divine authority or how might his soul to the sublime without its wings in the regions of eternity no there is nothing which the poet need reject in the religion of the bible or the religion of the heart but rather let him seek its and inspiring influence as a light to his genius a to his imagination a guide to his taste a fire to his an to his power and a thrown open to his enjoyment impression � hitherto we have bestowed our attention upon what essentially belongs to poetry as a medium for receiving and the highest intellectual enjoyment we now come to the for poetry � the characteristics of the poet all persons of cultivated understanding endowed with an ordinary share of sensibility are more or less capable of feeling what is poetical but that all even amongst those who attempt it are not equal to poetry is owing to their deficiency in some or all of the following � capacity of receiving deep impressions � imagination � power � and taste these we shall now consider separately beginning with the first which for want of a term i have called impression we have already seen how poetry its existence from the association of ideas as well as how such associations must arise out of impressions and it follows as a natural consequence that if this be necessary to enable a man to feel poetry a is still more so to him for writing it impressions are in fact the secret fund from whence the poet his most brilliant thoughts � the with which he works the colouring in which he his pencil when he � the inexhaustible fountain to which he applies for the of nature and e force of truth we have before observed that it is im impression to trace a great pro of our associations to their original source because we cannot recall the impressions made upon our mind in infancy but we know that in that early stage of life when we were most alive to sensation all the impressions which we did receive must have been connected with pain or pleasure and that hence arise preference and hope and fear love and hatred we have the authority of dr johnson a well as that of our own observation for asserting that children 