Let not this weak, unknowing hand Presume thy bolts to throw, Or deal damnation round the land On each I judge thy foe. If I am right, thy grace impart Still in the right to stay: If I am wrong, oh, teach my heart To find that better way. ... These stanzas, I am well aware, do not quite conform to the modern taste in hymns, nor are they likely to find favour with admirers of the 'Christian Year.' Another school would object to them on a very different ground. The deism of Pope's day was not a stable form of belief; but in the form in which it was held by the pure deists of the Toland and Tindal school, or by the disguised deists who followed Locke or Clarke, it was the highest creed then attainable; and Pope's prayer is an adequate impression of its best sentiment. FOOTNOTES: [2] The remark was perhaps taken from Sir Thomas Browne: 'Thus have we no just quarrel with nature for leaving us naked; or to envy the horns, hoofs, skins, and furs of other creatures; being provided with reason that can supply them all.'--_Religio Medici_, Part I. sec. 18. [3] This sentiment, by the way, was attacked by Darnley, in his edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, as 'false and degrading to man, derogatory to God.' As I have lately seen the remark quoted with approbation, it is worth noticing the argument by which Darnley supports it. He says that an honest able man is nobler than an honest man, and Aristides with the genius of Homer nobler than Aristides with the dulness of a clown. Undoubtedly! But surely a man might say that English poetry is the noblest in the world, and yet admit that Shakespeare was a nobler poet than Tom Moore. Because honesty is nobler than any other quality, it does not follow that all honest men are on a par. This bit of cavilling reminds one of De Quincey's elaborate argument against the lines: Who would not laugh, if such a man there be? Who would not weep, if Atticus were he? De Quincey says that precisely the same phenomenon is supposed to make you laugh in one line and weep in the other; and that therefore the thought is inaccurate. As if it would not be a fit cause for tears to discover that one of our national idols was a fitting subject for laughter! _SIR WALTER SCOTT_