Memoirs, miscellanies and letters of the late Lucy Aikin: Including those addressed to the Rev. Dr. Channing from 1826 to 1842.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1864. Excerpt: ... LETTERS TO THE EEV. DK. CHANNING. No. 1. Hampstead: July 9, 1826. I Feae, Sir, I must have appeared negligent and ungrateful in not sooner returning you my thanks for a copy of your excellent remarks on the character and writings of Milton; but since I received them, which is about a fortnight, this is my first opportunity of writing. Accept my most cordial acknowledgements of the justice and honour you have done to that great and injured character--that true servant of God, that sublime teacher of the noblest truths to man. From my earliest youth I have been an assiduous and reverential student of his poetical works, that inestimable storehouse of instruction and delight, that fount of inspiration; lately I have reperused them with a more direct reference to the circumstances of the times, and the character and situation of the author, and I am thus enabled to give my deliberate testimony to the soundness, and at the same time the novelty and originality of your observations. In a short fragment of observations on Milton, which I found among Mrs. Barbauld's papers, was an expression of surprise that his ardent attachment to liberty so seldom breaks forth in his verse, but your remark that it was principally the freedom of the mind to which he paid homage, well explains this circumstance. He deeply felt that' who loves that must first be wise and good,' and to make men so, he accounted the first and most important service to be rendered them. What you say of the futility of looking back to the Primitive Church for authority, is excellent, and so far as I know entirely new; the notion of a progressive Christianity is very strikingly expressed, I remember in that pamphlet of Mr. Wakefield's on public worship, which I think was considerably misconceived by m...