Lecture 8

It is impossible to pay a higher compliment to poetry, than to consider the effects it has in common with religion, yet distinct as far as distinct can be, where there is no division in those qualities which religion exercises and diffuses over all mankind, as far as they are subject to its influence. I have often thought that religion (speaking of it only as it accords with poetry, without reference to its more serious impressions) is the Poetry of all mankind, so as both have for their object:—...