ABSTRACT
The LONDON CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTOR (1818–1824), a monthly that enjoyed a later and longer life under its subtitle, the Congregational Magazine (1825–1845), is unknown to most students of the period because — like several other religious periodicals — it entered the field of reviewing Romantic poetry only once: during the great debate over the theological implications of Byron’s Cain. The reviewer, however, uses the occasion to survey contemporary poetry, from the bungling vanity of Southey, through the debauched appetites of Shelley, Byron, and Moore to James Montgomery and James Edmeston (1791–1867), harbingers (he hopes) of a new school of religious poets.
