rewarded; for they have partaken of the nature of sin. As well might the sun be rewarded for propagating light and heat. And the preacher's last account with the great Head of the church must be truly awful, and his punishment very extraordinary. The consequences of his slothfulness have been unutterably injurious, and the pernicious effects of his general conduct dreadful beyond conception. Human nature shudders at the sentence that must ensue,

THE

POETICAL REMAINS

OF

THE REV. DAVID M'NICOLL,

INCLUDING HIS

ESSAY ON THE USES OF POETRY.

EDITED BY HIS SON.

PREFACE.

THE wish which has been expressed by many friends of my late father, that his poetical efforts might be collected and published, whilst it is calculated to excite the grateful acknowledgments of the family, may justly give rise to an apprehension, lest this small collection may prove unworthy of their kindness and of his memory.

The disadvantages which always attend posthumous publications here exist in all their force. Not only are some of the pieces wanting in that polish and finished correctness which they would, doubtless, have received had publication been intended; but there is also an obvious lack of one more prominent and extended article, by which some degree of importance would have been conferred upon the whole, and to which the small pieces would have served as suitable subsidiaries. Such would have been the "Pleasures of Devotion," which stands at the commencement of these poems, had the writer's life been spared to complete the design which he had formed, and on which he was engaged at the time of his decease.

To those who were acquainted with my father's attachment to works of imagination, and who perceive in these few pages traces of poetic genius, it may appear remarkable that he should not have produced some poem of greater length, on which his powers of invention might have been displayed to better advantage. I would, however, remind such persons of the active nature of his ministerial engagements, and the calls of more congenial and important labours. Besides, his diffidence and sensibility would have shrunk from assuming the semblance, or endeavouring to attain the honours, of the poet. His exercises in this department were the result of his own native taste and inclination, and were but the embodied manifestations of his perception of the beautiful, whether in art or in nature.

The degree of poetical merit which may be considered as attaching to these productions, is a question which cannot with propriety be entertained or discussed by the present writer.

The creations of the poet, like the lofty conceptions and vivid

touches of the painter, are not to be defined; and even industry, which overcomes almost every obstacle to human achievement, cannot here supply what nature has denied. To produce verses of moderate value is, indeed, within the reach of most persons of good education and competent command of language; but to clothe them with the warmth and feeling of reality, requires the inspiration of song,-the gift of nature alone. The possession of some degree of the same faculty affords the principal means of discovering its existence in others; and this must ever form the basis of a critical judgment. Ease, correctness, and an harmonious freedom from laboured design, are characteristics which bespeak the true capacity for poetry, whilst their absence can be but very partially supplied by the efforts of steady perseverance and well-applied ingenuity.

The varieties of style and matter afforded by the several writers of works of imagination, are admirably suited to the different tastes and mental peculiarities of readers. Every intermediate grade may be procured, from the depth and intellectual grandeur of Milton, to the softness of Waller, and the unaffected simplicity of Bloomfield and Gay. And, although the degrees of merit thus discoverable in these writers are as many as their numbers, and as varied as their names, there are certain marks of individuality which must ever give to each its peculiar value.

In this view the humblest attempts are to be prized, as diversifying and enlarging the general stock of our rational enjoy

ments.

For much of what these pages contain it may be necessary for me to apologize. The reader will meet with some fragments, whose abruptness and unfinished state may produce unfavourable impressions. With all the weaknesses and marks of juvenility, however, which appear in a few of the earliest of his compositions, this volume is presented to those friends who have requested its appearance, and whose kindness on many occasions was the inspiration under which it was written.

"An Essay on the Uses of Poetry," published by my father in one of the Annuals a few years ago, is préfixed, as harmonizing with the subject.

LONDON, August, 1836.

D. H. M'N.