The religious topics are, generally, the propitiating of the Divinities--then the particular benefits: Rain supplicated in seasons of Drought--the visitation of Pestilential Sickness averted--National dangers repelled--Peace, the wished-for, obtained--and the perpetual desire of earth's dwellers and tillers, the fruitful Year. He has risen gradually, and has reached the summit. Unexpectedly--you know not how--the Poet, though it is not so said, is far greater than the Emperor. Yes, my friends, for the dominion of the Imperial Throne is over the Kings of the Earth; but the sway of the well-strung Lyre is over the throned Gods who inhabit above or underneath the Earth. With Song are the celestial Deities soothed and made favourable--with Song the dark dominators of Hell. "Carmine Dî Superi placantur, carmine Manes!" A swelling and musical close to an anthem. What shall we admire most, then? The variety of the Praise? The ethical wisdom? The genuine love in the selection of the grounds? Or the exquisite skill of the artificer? The "craft of the delicate spirit," who, veiled in humility, has gradually, and as if insensibly, scaled to a station from which he looks upon Monarchs--but from which should they aspire to strike him down, they offend, in violating his right, the majesty of the assembled Gods? In inditing the unhappy passage about the Poet's sole end being to please, I think that Dugald Stewart was beguiled by a prevalent misconception amongst those who have taught the Philosophy of the Fine Arts. The degrading influences are his own. No doubt the Poet draws his poetical being from Pleasure--the great ancestress of his tribe--_gentis origo_. He worships Pleasure according to the primeval fashion of ancestor-worship. But what is his impulse to compose, to _sing_? O hear from all the Great Poets since the world began, their answer. They sing because a Spirit is in them. They sing because the muse bids. She pours in thoughts and words; and along with thoughts and words flows in the musical Will. With them it is like the Sybil when invaded by Apollo. The real Poet sings, moved from without or from within. If from without--some fore-shaped or self-shaped subject; if from within, some passion, or some impassioned thought of his own has so deeply and strongly affected him, that he is impelled to seek relief of the burthening emotions and ideas in uttering them. This is the primary cause, and the natural origin of Song. And you may call this, if you choose, an intending of pleasure; but beware how you draw degrading inferences from this first recognition and admission of pleasure. If you weigh the psychological fact, you must look backwards to the attitude of mind which produced the work, and not forwards to the attitude which the work produces. Of the intellective, the moral, the imaginative, the pathetic powers that gave birth to the Iliad--or to the Prometheus Vinctus--to the Knight's Tale--to the Legend of