but yet remember Roman Catholic idolatry, and that it originated in fuch high flown metaphors as these. P. 304. The Sabbath, or Lord's Day.' Make it sense, and lofe the rhyme; or make it rhyme, and lose the sense. P. 307. "The Nativity,' &c. The only poem in the Synagogue which poffeffes poetic merit; with a few changes and additions this would be a striking poem. Mr. C. proposes to substitute the following for the fifth to the eighth line : To sheath or blunt one happy ray, That wins new splendour from the day. That rays to thee, to us gave fight. P. 316. Whitfunday.' The spiritual miracle was the defcent of the Holy Ghoft: the outward the wind and the tongues; and fo St. Peter himself explains it. That each individual obtained the power of speaking all languages, is neither contained in, nor fairly deducible from, St. Luke's account. P. 318. All reason doth transcend.' Most true; but not contradict. Reason is to faith, as the eye to the telescope. Mr. Coleridge, in his Biographia Literaria, after quoting some ftanzas from Chaucer's Troilus and Creffida, fays, " Another exquifite master of this fpecies of ftyle, where the scholar and the poet fupplies the material, but the perfect well-bred gentleman, the expreffions and the arrangement, is George Herbert. As from the nature of the subject, and the too frequent quaintnefs of the thoughts, his "Temple; or Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations" are comparatively but little known, I shall extract two poems. The firft is a fonnet, equally admirable for the weight, number, and expreffion of the thoughts, and for the fimple dignity of the language, (unless indeed a faftidious taste fhould object to the latter half of the fixth line); the second is a poem of greater length, which I have chofen not only for the present purpose, but likewise as a striking example and illustration of an affertion hazarded in a former page of these sketches: namely, that the characteristic fault of our elder poets is the reverse of that, which distinguishes too many of our recent verfifiers; the one conveying the most fantastic thoughts in the most correct and natural language; the other in the most fantaftic language conveying the most trivial thoughts. The latter is a riddle of words; the former an enigma of thoughts. The one reminds me of an odd paffage in Drayton's Ideas : SONNET IX. As other men, so I myself do muse, The other recalls a still odder paffage in the "Synagogue: or the Shadow of the Temple," a connected series of poems in imitation of Herbert's "Temple," and in fome editions annexed to it : O! how my mind, &c. p. 323. Immediately after these burlesque paffages, I cannot proceed to the extracts promised, without changing the ludicrous tone of feeling by the interpofition of the three following stanzas of Herbert's: VIRTUE. Sweet day, &c. p. 85. THE BOSOM SIN. Lord, with what care, &c. p. 38. LOVE UNKNOWN. Dear friend, fit down, &c. p. 131. Vide Biographia Literaria, vol. 2. p. 98. The best and moft forcible fenfe of a word is often that which is contained in its Etymology. The author of the Poems (the Synagogue), frequently affixed to Herbert's "Temple," gives the original purport of the word Integrity, in the following lines of the fourth ftanza of the eighth poem; Next to Sincerity, remember ftill, Thou must refolve upon Integrity. God will have all thou haft, thy mind, thy will, Thy thoughts, thy words, thy works. And again, after fome verfes on conftancy and humility, the poem concludes with He that defires to fee The face of God, in his religion must Having mentioned the name of Herbert, that model of a man, a gentleman, and a clergyman, let me add, that the quaintness of some of his thoughts, not of his diction, than which nothing can be more pure, manly, and unaffected, has blinded modern readers to the great general merit of his poems, which are for the moft part exquifite in their kind. The Friend, vol. i. p. 53, edit. 1837. |