Excerpt from The Sacred Lyre: Comprising Poems, Devotional, Moral and Preceptive; Including Many Original Pieces, With an Introduction and a Copious Index Nor do we think that the vicious tendency of not a few poems, the productions of our most far oured Bards, forms any valid objection to what has now been advanced Such productions are univer sally regarded as the spurious issue of the Mass, and are ever lamented as the prostitution of the faculties which most enoble and beautify our rational nature. They are the creations of some evil hour, when Ran cour, Envy, or Spleen, was exerting a demoniacal influence over the mind and causing the genius of Poesy to act in subserviency to its own malignant purposes. And it is only when he is again brought under the fell and gloomy sway of these diabolical passions, that the poet himself can relish his own immoral eflixsions. With the reader the case is ex actly similar. His imagination will brood with new and fond delight over the pages of the sensual poet, if the current of his thoughts has been tainted by vicious ludulgences or the contagion of evil ex ample; but should virtue be the peaceful and happy tenor of his life, he will turn in disgust from the page, the reading of which might sully the purity of his mind. Whilst, therefore, the poet addre-es himself to the imagination of his reader, his object is, through means of that spiritual faculty, to form the taste, and to free the soul from the dominion of those grower passions, of a corporeal nature, the in dulging of which sinks man below the level of the inferior animals. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.