The Advertisement, which Patrick prefixed to the text, is a neat summary of the message of the poems. The Bible is the ‘Book of Books … in which the wisest may learn that they know nothing, and fools be made wise’; all those who wish to be truly happy must first be truly religious; the simple and natural manners of the poor, when refined by religion, ‘shine, with a peculiar degree of gospel simplicity … wonderfully calculated to disarm prejudice, and to silence, and put infidelity to the blush’. There is also a rather touching confession of the almost guilty pleasure Patrick took in the
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