Page:Henry Derozio, the Eurasian, poet, teacher, and journalist. With appendices (IA henryderozioeura00edwarich).pdf/50

Poetry and Philosophy were the chief themes discussed, Derozio's attainments in philosophy were as wide and varied as his acquaintance with the poets and dramatists. Indeed, his innate gift of song, which entitles him to rank as an English poet of no inconsiderable eminence, was but the outcome of his vigorous intellect, which sought in verse an outlet for the restless mental activity that marks superior minds. No doubt, in the meetings of the Academic Association and in the social circle that gathered round his hospitable table in the old house in Circular Road, subjects were broached and discussed with freedom, which could not have been approached in the class-room. Free-will, fore-ordination, fate, faith, the sacredness of truth, the high duty of cultivating virtue, and the meanness of vice, the nobility of patriotism, the attributes of God, and the arguments for and against the existence of deity as these have been set forth by Hume on the one side, and Reid, Dugald Stewart and Brown on the other; the hollowness of idolatry, and the shams of the priesthood, were subjects which stirred to their very depths the young, fearless, hopeful hearts of the leading Hindoo youths of Calcutta; but that either Derozio or his pupils revelled, as has been asserted, in the "more licentious plays of the Restoration, and the minor pieces of Tom Paine, born of the filth of the worst period of the French Revolution,"