Hurrell was asked to say his say about _The Christian Year_, then in manuscript. He seems to have been inclined to begrudge the fact that Keble had set himself to write not as a poet for poets, but as a challenging voice to ‘earth-drudging hearts.’ That he appreciated the lasting charm of the book is quite apparent from the singularly apposite quotation applied to it in the second letter on the subject. To the Rev. JOHN KEBLE, Sept. 10, 1825. ‘About the poems――it is really too ludicrous for a fellow like me to sit down deliberately to criticise the taste and philosophy of a production of yours: so that I have no inclination to expose or commit myself, by detailing to you my remarks on particular passages. There are, as you may suppose, many places which, in fun, I would show fight about; and there is something which I should call Sternhold-and-Hopkinsy in the diction, of which I began to note down the first instances I met; but, finding it go through, I concluded it was done on a theory. But though I am not quite such a fool as to think my opinion worth offering in point of criticism, it may not, perhaps, be quite useless to confess it as a matter of fact, with which you may begin an induction as to the probable good you may do by publication. I confess, then, and not without some shame, that you seem to me to have addressed yourself too exclusively to plain matter-of-fact good sort of people … and not to have taken much pains to interest and guide the feelings of people who feel acutely, nor to have given much attention to that dreary visionary existence which they make themselves very uncomfortable by indulging in, and which I should have hoped it was the peculiar province of religious poetry to sober down into practical piety. I know all this may be great nonsense, may be even humbug; for long experience has convinced me how much I can cheat myself as to my real feelings. But that you may see that it has not been concocted since, but was the impression made on me while reading, I will extract a note which I made … I suppose I meant that things like Gray’s _Elegy_, which turn melancholy to its proper account, by pointing out the vanity of the world without telling us so, seem to me more to answer the purpose. And now I will cease making an ass of myself!… I am half-conscious that the same sort of objections might be made against the Psalms; and though I cannot but think that they will make your poems less generally liked and read, I am far from confident that it may not be better, upon the whole, for those who attend to them as a religious duty.