writer is seen everywhere, and all that is pure and earnest in the reader answers to the thought expressed. It is a companion to the Prayer-book, and as such is dear to all earnest Churchmen; but its influence extends more widely still, for it appeals to every heart that is conscious of heavenward aspirations. To say how this is done would be to explain what we know only by its results-the supreme art of the poet. But observe how much is effected by the exact and loving observation of nature. It was Sir John Coleridge who first made Wordsworth known to Keble as a poet, and “the admiration for his poetry which he conceived in youth never wavered in after-life." A great master among poets like Wordsworth, could not be loved. by Keble without also influencing him strongly, but he did this probably by inciting his genius, and assuredly not by lessening its originality. It is interesting to remember that when Wordsworth received his honorary degree at Oxford, Keble, then Professor of Poetry, paid him a fitting eulogy, delivered, according to custom, in Latin, as having above all pocts "exhibited the manners, the pursuits, and the feelings, religious and traditional, of the poor-I will not say in a favourable light merely, but in a light which glows with the rays of heaven." Some critics agree in thinking that if the "Christian Year" be the volume which keeps the name of Keble fragrant in all English-speaking countries, his "Lyra Innocentium" is marked by still higher poetical qualities. It may be so in a few instances, but there is nothing, perhaps, in that volume so beautiful as the poems in the "Christian Year" for the second, fifteenth, and twenty-fourth Sundays after Trinity; and it may be added that the "Lyra" is more dogmatic in tone than the earlier work-more distinctly Church poetry for Churchmen. I write only of degree, for this was surely Keble's aim throughout. He was not only a sacred poet, but he was a Church poet, and it is difficult to understand the late Dean of Westminster's assertion, that "Keble was not a sacred, but, in the best sense of the word, a secular poet." "Not George Herbert," he writes, "or Cowper, but Wordsworth, Scott, and perhaps more than all, Southey, are the English poets that kindled his flame and coloured his diction." In one sense this is true. Keble was no doubt greatly influenced by his contemporaries, for he had a sympathetic nature, and for Wordsworth and Scott, at least, his admiration was extreme. But of Scott he cannot write without regretting that he was not a poet of the Church, and that this was Keble's single purpose is evident from the whole tenor of his work. No doubt he gathered imagery from classical literature, and it may be true that "his descriptions of natural scenery display a depth of poetical intuition very rarely vouchsafed to any man." He had the wide culture of a scholar combined with the genius of a poet, and poet-like wisely gathered his materials from every source; but his purpose throughout, as expressed in the "Advertisement" to the "Christian Year," is distinct and unwavering. It does not follow that it should appear with equal clearness in every poem he wrote. Not one, however, but has what may be called a religious note, and how happily this is expressed will be seen in "May Garlands," a poem quoted by Dean Stanley in illustration of his position that Keble was a secular poet. With these lines this brief notice of Keble must conclude, and with them also I must close a volume which, if it be the means of making poetry more dear to the reader, will serve also to make life more beautiful. "Come, ye little revellers gay, Gemmed with cowslips in their pride; "Bring me now a crown as gay, Wreathed and woven yesterday. Where are now those forms so fair?— Feeling nought of earth or sky, Shower or dew, behold they lie, Vernal airs no more to know :- "Hearken, children of the May, Her green robe o'er you shall fling, How should else Earth's flowerets prove |