THEIR AUTHORS AND OKIG1X. 803
the Crimea, making valuable notes, and familiarizing himself with men and manners in foreign lands.
On his return, he entered upon the living of Hodnet, in Shropshire. He was the Bampton Lecturer for 1815, and in 1822 he wrote a life of Jeremy Taylor. In the same year he was appointed to the preachcrship of Lincoln s Inn, and urged to accept the hishopric of Calcutta. This latter appointment he at first refused, for the sake of his wife and child, but at length, impelled by missionary zeal, he accepted it, and embarked for the East Indies on the 16th of June, 1823. The extraordinary extent of his diocese, which included more than the whole of India, laid so heavy a burden of toil upon him that in three short years it sunk him to the grave. His published journal of his travels shows his remarkable assiduity and his devotedness to his work. He died at Tirutchinopoli, of apoplexy, while on a visitation, on the 2nd April, 182G. In addition to the above- mentioned works, he contributed to the " Quarterly Review," and commenced a " Dictionary of the Bible."
His hymns are dear to every section of the Christian Church ; elegant in structure, flowing in rhythm, and charged with Chris tian sentiment. It has been objected to them that some of them are odes, rather than hymns, and that they are built on natural, rather than on Christian religion. Thus, it is said, that in
"From Greenland s icy mountains, No. 912." the appeal is to the winds, and waters
" Waft, waft ye winds," &c., verse 4 ; and that his hymn
" Brightest and best," &c.,
is an apostrophe to a star. But this is a form of hyper-criticism from which many of his thoroughly Christian hymns sufficiently defend him. Yet it is felt by all, however much they may approve his hymns, that they carry the poetic element to its
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