"He has been called, and justly, too, the 'poet of Nature.' A slight acquaintance with the religion of the Bible will show, however, that it is of human nature in its worst shape, deformed by the basest passions, and agitated by the most vicious propensities, that the poet became the priest; and the incense offered at the altar of his goddess will continue to spread its poisonous fumes over the hearts of his countrymen till the memory of his works is extinct. Thousands of unhappy spirits, and thousands yet to increase their number, will everlastingly look back with unutterable anguish, on the nights and days in which the plays of Shakspeare ministered to their guilty delights. And yet these are the writings which men, _consecrated_ to the service of Him who styles Himself the Holy One, have prostituted their pens to illustrate! such this writer, to immortalise whose name, the resources of the most precious arts have been profusely lavished! Epithets amounting to blasphemy, and honours approaching to idolatry, have been and are shamelessly heaped upon his memory, in a country professing itself Christian, and for which it would have been happy, on moral considerations, if he had never been born. And, strange to say, even our religious edifices are not free from the pollution of his praise. What Christian can pass through the most venerable pile of sacred architecture which our metropolis can boast, without having his best feelings insulted, by observing, within a few yards of the spot from which prayers and praises are daily offered to the Most High, the absurd and impious epitaph upon the tablet raised to one of the miserable retailers of his impurities? Our readers who are acquainted with London, will discover that it is the inscription upon David Garrick, in Westminster Abbey, to which we refer. We commiserate the heart of the man who can read the following lines, without indignation:-- 'And till eternity, with power sublime, Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary time, Shakspeare and Garrick like twin stars shall shine And earth irradiate with a beam divine.' "'_Par nobile fratrum!_' your fame _shall_ last during the empire of vice and misery, in the extension of which you have _acted_ so great a part!"