I cannot proceed with this defence without feeling that I move tremulously among sacred things which should be approached only in serene contemplation; that I am compelled to solicit your attention to considerations more fit to be weighed in the stillness of thought than amidst the excitements of a public trial; and that I am able only to suggest reasonings which, if woven into a chain, no strength of mine could utter, nor your kindest patience follow. But the fault is not mine. I cannot otherwise even hint the truth-the living truth -of this case to your minds as it fills and struggles in my own, or protect my client and friend from a prosecution without parallel in our legal history. If the prosecutor, in return for his own conviction of publishing some cheap and popular work of alleged blasphemy -prepared, calculated, and intended by the author to shake the religious principles of the uneducated and the young,—has attempted to assail the efforts of genius, and to bring into question the relations, the uses, the tendencies of the divinest faculties, I must not shrink from entreating you to consider those bearings of the question which are essential to its justice. And if you feel unable fully to examine them within the limits of a trial, and in the atmosphere of a court of justice, yet if you feel with me that they are necessary to a just decision, you cannot doubt what your duty to the defendant and to justice is, on a criminal charge! Pardon me, therefore, if I now seek to show you, by a great example, how unjustly you would deal with so vast and so divine a thing as the imagination of a poet, if you were to take his isolated passages which may seem to deal too boldly with sacred things, andwithout regard to the process of the faculty by which they are educed-to brand them as the effusions of a blasphemous mind, or as tending to evil issues. That example will also show you how a poet-devoting the noblest powers to the loftiest themes-when he ventures to grapple with the spiritual existences revealed by the Christian faith, in the very purpose of vindicating "the ways of God to men," may seem to incur a charge like the present, and with as much justice, and may be absolved from it only by nice regard to the tendencies of the divine faculty he exerts. I speak not of a "marvellous boy," as Shelley was at eighteen, but of Milton, in the maturity of his powers, when he brought all the "spoils of time," and the clustered beauty hoarded through a long life, to the deliberate construction of a work which should never die. case is the converse of that of Shelley-he begins from an opposite point; he falls into an opposite error; but he expatiates in language and imagery out of which Mr. Hetherington might shape a charge as spacious as that which he has given you to decide. Shelley fancies himself irreligious, and everywhere falters or trembles into piety; Milton, believing himself engaged in a most pious work, is led by the tendencies of his imagination_to individualize-to adorn-to enthrone-the Enemy of God; and to invest his struggles against Omnipotence with all the nobleness of a patriotic resistance to tyranny, and his suffering His from Almighty justice with the graces of fortitude. Let it not be urged that the language which his Satan utters is merely to be regarded with reference to dramatic proprieties—it is attributed to the being in whom the interest of his poem centres; and on whom admiration and sympathy attend as on a sufferer in the eternal struggle of right against power. Omnipotence becomes tyranny in the poet's vision, and resistance to its requisitions appears the more generous even because hopelessly vain. Before I advert to that language, and ask you to compare it with the expressions selected for prosecution, let me call to your recollection the grandeurs-nay, the luxuries of thought with which the "Lost Archangel" is surrounded;-the magic by which even out of the materials of torture dusky magnificence is created in his place of exile, beyond "the wealth of Ormus and of Ind;" and the faded glory and unconquerable spirit attributed to those rebel legions who still sustain him in opposition to the Most High. Observe the hosts, still angelic, as they march at his bidding! Anon they move In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood Whether we listen to those who More mild, or those with whom the moral philosopher sympathizes yet more-who Sat on a hill retired or expatiate over the muster-roll of their chiefs, in which all the splendours of the East, the gigantic mysteries of Egypt, and the chastest forms of Grecian beauty gleam on us-all rethem with "tears such as angels weep." His flect back the greatness of Him who surveys very armour and accoutrements glisten on us with a thousand beauties! His ponderous shield, Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, Behind him cast; the broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon And not only like the moon as seen to the upturned gaze of ordinary men, but as associated with Italian art, and discerned from places whose names are music— Like the moon whose orb "His spear" is not only likened to a pine hewn in the depth of mountain forests, but, as if the sublimest references to nature were in- His spear (to equal which the tallest pine Now, having seen how the great Christian Poet has lavished all the glories of his art on the attendant hosts and personal investiture of the brave opponent of Almighty Power, let us attend to the language in which he addresses his comrade in enterprise and suffering. Into what pit thou seest, From what height fallen so much the stronger proved He with his thunder: and till then who knew Though changed in outward lustre, that fix'd mind, That durst dislike His reign, and, me preferring, Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors, hail! I might multiply passages of the same kind; but I dare only allude to the proposition made of assaulting the throne of God" with Tartarean sulphur and strange fire, his own invented torments," and to the address of Satan to the newly-created sun, in which he actually curses the love of God. Suppose that last passage introduced into this indictment-suppose that instead of the unintelligible lines beginning "They have three words, God, Hell, and Heaven," we had these-Be then His love accursed," with the innuendo, "Thereby meaning the love of Almighty God," how would you deal with the charge? How! but by looking at the object of the great poem of which those words are part; by observing how the poet, incapable of resting in a mere abstraction, had been led insensibly to clothe it from the armory of virtue and grandeur; by showing that although the names of the Almighty and Satan were retained, in truth, other ideas had usurped those names, as the theme itself had eluded even Milton's grasp! I will not ask you whether you agree with me in the defence which might be made for Milton; but I will ask, do you not feel with me that these are matters for another tribunal? Do you not feel with me that except that the boldness of Milton's thoughts comes softened to the ears by the exquisite beauty of Milton's language, I may find parallels in the passages I have quoted from the Paradise Lost, for those selected for prosecution from Queen Mab? Do you not feel with me that, as without a knowledge of the Paradise Lost, you could not absolve the publisher of Milton from the prosecution of "some mute This mighty representation of generous re- inglorious" Hetherington; so neither can you, sistance, of mind superior to fortune, of re- dare you, convict Mr. Moxon of a libel on God solution nobler than the conquest, concludes and religion, in publishing the works of Shelby proclaiming "eternal war" against Him-ley, without having read and studied them all? Such is the force of the poet's enthusiastic sympathy with the speaker, that the reader almost thinks Omnipotence doubtful; or, if that is impossible, admires the more the courage that can resist it! The chief proceeds What though the field be lost? Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy, Surely, but for the exquisite grace of the language compared with the baldness of Shelley's, I might parallel from this speech all that the indictment charges about "an Almighty Fiend" and "Tyrannous Omnipotence." Listen again to the more composed determination and sedate self-reliance of the archangelic sufferer! "Is this the region? this the soil, the clime ?" If rashly you assail the mighty masters of thought and fantasy, you will, indeed, assail them in vain, for the purpose of suppression, though not for the purpose of torture; all you can do is to make them suffer, as being human, they are liable to corporal suffering; but, like the wounded spirits of Milton, "they will soon cluse," "confounded, though immortal!" If, however, these are considerations affecting the exercise of human genius on themes beyond its grasp, which we cannot discuss in this place, however essential to the decision of the charge, there is one plain position which I will venture to assert: that the poetry which pretends to a denial of God or of an immortal life, MUST contain its own refutation in itself, and sustain what it would deny! A poet, though never one of the highest order, may Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, "link vice to a radiant angel;" he may diffuse | years give birth to images of grace which, unluxurious indifference to virtue and to truth; touched by time, people the retreats which are but he cannot inculcate atheism. Let him sought by youthful toil, and make learning strive to do it, and like Balaam, who came to lovely. Why shall not these be brought, with curse, like him he must end in blessing! His the poetry of Shelley, within the range of criart convicts him; for it is "Eternity revealing minal jurisdiction? Because, with all their itself in Time!" His fancies may be wayward, beauty, they do not belong to the passions of the his theories absurd, but they will prove, no less present time,-because they hold their domiin their failure than in their success, the divi- nion apart from the realities which form the nity of their origin, and the inadequacy of this business of life, because they are presented world to give scope to his impulses. They are to the mind as creations of another sphere, to the beatings of the soul against the bars of its be admired, not believed. And yet, without clay tenement, which though they may ruffle prosecution-without offence—one of the greatand sadden it, prove that it is winged for a di-est and purest of our English poets, wearied viner sphere! Young has said, " An undevout with the selfishness which he saw pervading a astronomer is mad;" how much more truly Christian nation, has dared an ejaculating might he have said, an atheist poet is a con- wish for the return of those old palpable shapes tradiction in terms! Let the poet take what of divinity, when he exclaimed, range of associations he will-let him adopt what notions he may-he cannot dissolve his alliance with the Eternal. Let him strive to shut out the vistas of the future by encircling the present with images of exquisite beauty; his own forms of ideal grace will disappoint him with eternal looks, and vindicate the immortality they were fashioned to veil! Let him rear temples, and consecrate them to fabled divinities, they will indicate in their enduring beauty" temples not made with hands, eternal in the heavens!" If he celebrates the delights of social intercourse, the festal reference to their fragility includes the sense of that which must endure; for the very sadness which tempers them speaks the longing after that which prompts the eternal sigh." If he desires to bid the hearts of thousands beat as one man at the touch of tragic passion, he must present "the future in the instant,"-show in the death-grapple of contending emotions a strength which death cannot destroy-vindicate the immortality of affection at the moment when the warm passages of life are closed against it; and anticipate in the virtue which dares to die, the power by which "mortality shall be swallowed up of life!" The world is too narrow for us. Time is too short for man,-and the poet only feels the sphere more inadequate, and pants for the "all-hail hereafter," with more urgent sense of weakness than his fellows : Too-too contracted are these walls of flesh, And the fantasies of Queen Mab, if not so compact of imagination, are as harmless now as those forms of Grecian deities which Wordsworth thus invokes! Pure-passionless-they were while their author lived; they have grown classic by that touch of death which stopped the generous heart and teeming fancy of their fated author. They have no more influence on living opinion, than that world of beauty to which Shelley adverts, when he exclaims in "Hellas," But Greece and her foundations are Having considered this charge chiefly as affecting poetry, I must not forget that the last passage selected by the Prosecutor is in prose, culled from the essay which was appended to the poem of "Queen Mab," disclaimed by the editor-disclaimed by Shelley long before he reached the prime of manhood-but rightly preserved, shocking as it is in itself, as essential to the just contemplation of his moral and intellectual nature. They form the dark ground of a picture of surpassing interest to the philosopher. There shall you see a poet whose fancies are most ethereal, struggling with a theory gross, material, shallow, imaging the great struggle by which the Spirit of the If this prosecution can succeed, on what Eternal seeks to subdue the material world to principle can the publishers of the great works its uses. His genius was pent up within the of ancient times, replete with the images of hard and bitter rind of his philosophy, as idolatrous faith, and with moralities only to be Ariel was in the rift of the cloven pine; and endured as historical, escape a similar doom? what wonder if a Spirit thus enthralled should These are the works which engage and reward send forth strange and discordant cries? Bethe first labours of our English youth,-which, cause the words which those strange voices in spite of the objections raised to them, prac- syllabled are recorded here, will you say the tically teach lessons of beauty and wisdom-record is a crime? I recollect in the speech the sense of antiquity-the admiration of heroic of that great ornament of our profession, Mr. daring and suffering; and refine and elevate Erskine, an illustration of the injustice of se their lives. It was destined in the education lecting part of a conversation or of a book, of the human race, that imperfect and faint and because singly considered it is shocking, suggestions of truth, combined with exquisite charging a criminal intent on the utterer of perceptions of beauty, should in a few teeming the publisher; which, if, at first, may not seem applicable to this case, will be found es- indicted volume conveys! What can the sentially to govern it. He refers to the pas- telescope disclose of worlds and suns and syssage in the Bible, "The fool hath said in his tems in the heavens above us, or the microheart, There is no God," and shows how the pub- scope detect in the descending scale of various lisher of the Book of God itself might be life, endowed with a speech and a language charged with atheism, by the insertion only like that with which Shelley, being dead, here of the latter division of the sentence. It is not speaks? Not even do the most serene prosurely by the division of a sentence only that ductions of poets, whose faculties in this world the context may be judged; but by the general have attained comparative harmony-strongly intent of him who publishes what is in itself as they plead for the immortality of the mind offensive, for the purpose of curious record- which produced them-afford so unanswerable of controversy of evidence of example. The a proof of a life to come, as the mighty empublisher of Shelley has not indeed said "The bryo which this book exhibits;—as the course, fool hath said in his heart, There is no God;" the frailty, the imperfection, with the dark but he has in effect said, The poet has tried to curtain dropped on all! It is, indeed, when say with his lips "There is no God," but his best surveyed, but the infancy of an eternal genius and his heart belie his words! What being; an infancy wayward but gigantic; an indeed does the publisher of Shelley's works infancy which we shall never fully understand, virtually say, where he thus presents to his till we behold its development "when time readers this record of the poet's life and death? | shall be no more"-when doubt shall be disHe says-Behold! Here is a spectacle which solved in vision-" when this corruptible shall angels may admire and weep over! Here is have put on incorruption, and when this a poet of fancy the most ethereal-feelings the mortal shall have put on immortality!" most devout-charity the most Christian-enthralled by opinions the most cold, hollow, and debasing! Here is a youth endowed with that sensibility to the beautiful and the grand which peoples his minutes with the perceptions of years-who, with a spirit of self-sacrifice which the eldest Christianity might exult in if found in one of its martyrs, is ready to lay down that intellectual being-to be lost in loss itself -if by annihilation he could multiply the enjoyments and hasten the progress of his species-and yet, with strange wilfulness, rejecting that religion in form to which in essence he is imperishably allied! Observe these radiant fancies-pure and cold as frostworkhow would they be kindled by the warmth of Christian love! Track those "thoughts that wander through eternity," and think how they would repose in their proper home! And trace the inspired, yet erring youth, poem after poem-year after year, month after monthhow shall you see the icy fetters which encircle his genius gradually dissolve; the wreaths of mist ascend from his path; and the distance spread out before him peopled with human affections, and skirted by angel wings! See how this seeming atheist begins to adorehow the divine image of suffering and love presented at Calvary, never unfelt, begins to be seen-and in its contemplation the softened, not yet convinced poet exclaims, in his Prometheus, of the followers of Christ The wise, the pure, the lofty, and the just, Whom thy slaves hate-for being like to thee! And thus he proceeds-with light shining more and more towards the perfect day, which he was not permitted to realize in this world. As you trace this progress, alas! Death veils it-veils it, not stops it-and this perturbed, imperfect, but glorious being is hidden from us-"Till the sea shall give up its dead!" What say you now to the book which exhibits this spectacle, and stops with this catastrophe Is it a libel on religion and God? Talk of proofs of Divine existence in the wonders of the material universe, there is nothing in anynor in all-compared to the proof which this Let me, before I sit down, entreat you to ask yourselves where the course of prosecution will stop if you crown with success Mr. Hetherington's revenge. Revenge, did I say? I recall the word. Revenge means the returning of injury for injury-an emotion most unwise and unchristian, but still human;-the satisfaction of a feeling of ill-regulated justice cherished by a heart which judges bitterly in its own cause. But this attempt to retaliate on one who is a stranger to the evil suffered—this infliction of misery for doing that which the prosecutor has maintained within these works the right of all men to do—has no claim to the savage plea of wild justice; but is poor, cruel, paltry injustice; as bare of excuse as ever tyrant, above or below the opinion of the wise and good, ever ventured to threaten. Admit its power in this case-grant its right to select for the punishment of blasphemy the exhibition of an anomaly as harmless as the stuffed aspic in a museum, or as its image on the passionless bosom of a pictured Cleopatraand what ancient, what modern history, shall be lent unchallenged to our friends? If the thousand booksellers who sell the "Paradise Lost"-from the greatest publisher in London or Edinburgh down to the proprietor of the little book-stall, where the poor wayfarer snatches a hasty glance at the grandeur and beauty of the poet, and goes on his way refreshed-may hope that genius will render to the name of Milton what they deny to that of Shelley; what can they who sell "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" hope from the prosecutor of "Queen Mab?" In that work are two celebrated chapters, sparkling with all the meretricious felicities of epigrammatic style, which, full of polished sarcasm against infant Christianity, are elaborately directed to wither the fame of its Martyrs and Confessors with bitterest scorn-two chapters which, if published at a penny each, would do more mischief than thousands of metaphysical poems; but which, retained in their apppropriate place, to be sought only by the readers of history, may serve the cause of truth by proving the poverty of the spite by the soul shall endure-whom, to do this prosecutor justice, I know he disclaims-may obtain true bills of indictment against any man, who has sold Horace, or Virgil, or Lucretius, or Ovid, or Juvenal-against all who have sold a copy of any of our old dramatists--and thus not only Congreve, and Farquhar, and Wycherley, but Fletcher, and Massinger, and Ford, and Webster, and Ben Jonson; nay, with reve. rence be it spoken, even Shakspeare, though ever pure in essence, may be placed at the mercy of an insect abuser of the press-unless juries have the courage and the virtue to recognise the distinction between a man who publishes works which are infidel or impure, because they are infidel or impure, and publishes them in a form and at a price which indicate the desire that they should work out mischief, and one who publishes works in which evil of the same kind may be found, but who publishes them because, in spite of that imperfection, they are on the whole for the edification and delight of mankind;-between one who tenders the mischief for approbation, and one who exposes it for example. And are you prepared to succumb to this new censorship! Will you allow Mr. Hetherington to prescribe what leaves you shall tear from the classic volumes in your libraries? Shall he dictate to you how much of Lord Byron-a writer far more influential than Shelley-you shall be allowed to lend to your friends without fear of his censure? Shall he drag into court the vast productions of the German mind, and ask juries to decide whether the translator of Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, and Lessing-deal which it has been assailed, and find ample | which-children often themselves-mount the counterpoise in the sequel. The possibility chariot and board the steamboat to scatter that that this history should be suppressed by some poison which may infect the soul as long as descendant of Gibbon, who might extravagantly suppose it his duty to stifle cold and crafty sneers aimed at the first followers of Christ, was urged-and urged with successagainst me when I pleaded for the right of those descendants to the fruits of the labours of their ancestor; yet, if you sanction this attempt, any Hetherington may compel by law that suppression, the remote possibility of which has been accepted as a reason for denying to the posterity of the author a property in the work he has created! This work, invested with the peculiar interest which belongs to the picture of waning greatness, has recently been printed in a cheap form, under the sanction of a dignitary of the Established Church-a Christian Poet of the noblest aim-whose early genius was the pride of our fairest university, and who is now the honoured minister of the very parish in which we are assembled. If I were now defending Mr. Milman, of whose friendship I am justly proud, for this last and cheapest and best edition of Gibbon, I could only resort to the arguments I am now urging for Mr. Moxon, and claim the benefit of the same distinction between the tendency of a book adapted to the promotion of infidelity, and | one which, containing incidental matter of offence, is commended to the student with those silent guards which its form and accompaniments supply. True it is that Mr. Milman has accompanied the text with notes in which he sometimes explains or counteracts the insinuations of the author; but what Notes can be so effectual as that which follows "Queen Mab"-in which Shelley's own letter is set forth, stating, on his authority, that the working with sacred things with a boldness to was immature, and that he did not intend it for which we are unused-are guilty of crime? the general eye? Is not the publication of this Shall he call for judgment on that stupendous letter by the publisher as decisive of his mo- work, the "Faust," with its prologue in Hea tive-not to commend the wild fancies and ven, which has been presented by my friend stormy words of the young poet to the reader's Mr. Hayward, whose able assistance I have approval, but to give them as part of his to-day, with happy vividness to English readbiography, as the notes of Mr. Milman are ers-and ask a jury to take it in their hand, of that which no one doubts, his desire to make and at an hour's glance to decide whether it is the perusal of Gibbon healthful? Prosper this a libel on God, or a hymn by Genius to His attempt, and what a field of speculative prose- praise? Do you not feel those matters are cution will open before us! Every publisher for other seasons-for another sphere?-If of the works of Rousseau, of Voltaire, of Vol- so, will you, in the dark-without knowledge ney, of Hume-of the Classics and of their without evidence-sanction a prosecution Translations-works regarded as innoxious, which will, in its result, impose new and because presented in a certain aspect and strange tasks on juries who may decide on offered to a certain class, will become liable to other trials; which may destroy the just every publisher of penny blasphemy who may allowance accorded to learning even under suffer or hate or fear the law;--nor of such absolute monarchies; and place every man only, but of every small attorney in search of who hereafter shall print, or sell, or give, or practice, who may find in the machinery of the lend, any one of a thousand volumes_saneCrown-office the facilities of extortion. Nor tioned by ages, at the mercy of any Prosewill the unjust principle you are asked to sanc-cutor who for malice-for gain-or mere mistion stop with retaliation in the case of alleged chief, may choose to denounce him as a blasphemy--the retailer of cheap lascivious- blasphemer? ness, if checked in his wicked trade, will have And now, I commend into your hands the his revenge against the works of the mighty cause of the defendant-the cause of genius dead in which some tinge of mortal stain may-the cause of learning-the cause of history unfortunately be detected. The printer of one-the cause of thought. I have not sought to of those penny atrocities which are thrust into the hands of ingenuous youths when bound on duty or innocent pleasure, the emissaries of maintain it by assailing the law as it has been expounded by courts, and administered by juries; which, if altered, should be changed |