is due to Wordsworth himself; who, although possessing the highest imaginative powers, has written very many pieces which, in our judgment, have no other claim to be considered poetry than the mere propriety and finish of expression which is the characteristic of their author. Hence it is that Wordsworth has created either, on the one hand, a passionate worship, or, on the other, a superficially conceived contempt. Those who only glance at his writings, often rise up disgusted; whilst those who persevere in the perusal are first gratified, then admire, and often end in downright enthusiasm. But perhaps we had better illustrate our view of Wordsworth's genius by comparing him with himself as the poet and the mere classical versifier. As an instance of his powers of imagery, we subjoin the following lines:

66 A COMPLAINT.

There is a change, and I am poor:
Your love hath been, nor long ago,
A fountain at my fond heart's door
Whose only business was to flow ;-
And flow it did, not taking heed
Of its own bounty nor my need.

What happy moments did I count;
Blest was I then all bliss above!
Now for this consecrated fount

Of murmuring, sparkling, living love,
What have I-shall I dare to tell?--
A comfortless, a hidden well.

A well of love.-It may be deep;
Perhaps it is, and never dry :
What matter, if the waters sleep
In silence and obscurity!
Such change, and at the very door

Of my fond heart, hath made me poor!"

It is such lines as the above which account for the enthusiasm of Wordsworth's disciples; whilst such verses as the following, which are of too frequent occurrence, fully account likewise for the coldness of the opposite school, who read Byron, Shelley, and Tennyson, and shrink from Wordsworth:

66 CORRUPTIONS OF THE HIGHER CLERGY.

Woe to you, prelates! rioting in ease
And cumbrous wealth-the shame of your estate;
You, on whose progress dazzling trains await
Of pompous horses, whom vain titles please,
Who will be served by others on their knees,
Yet will yourselves to God no service pay :
Pastors who neither take nor point the way

To heaven; for either, lost in vanities,
Ye have no skill to teach, or if ye know,
To speak the word. Alas, of fearful things,
"Tis the most fearful when the people's eye
Abuse hath cleared from vain imaginings,
And taught the general voice to prophesy
Of justice armed, and pride to be laid low !"

It goes hard with us to find a fault with Father Caswall; but in the golden little volume which he has lately given to the public he has earned such a reputation as a genuine poet, that he will bear any amount of impartial criticism. We feel free, then, to find the very fault with him (although it is not often that he commits it) which we have found with Wordsworth, viz. he sometimes writes elegantly and chastely and thoughtfully without writing poetry. Let us compare him with himself, as we have done with Wordsworth. His odes present specimens of imagery such as we are happy to meet with in the greatest poets, as:

And,

Or,

Again :

"The peacock next,

Fanning his goodly plumes,
His aureole display'd.

Upon a broken urn,

Relic of ancient days,

Graceful he stood, the rainbow amid birds!"

"Then came the mystic dove,

Her silvery feathers all bedropp'd with gold,
Sliding she came, down the smooth circling stair
Of yielding atmosphere, nor stirr'd a breath
With her becalmed wing!"

"I see the dolphin on the stormy wave
Taking his morning roll."

"Before me lay the bottom of the deep,
A region unexplored,-

Where never yet the storm was heard to rave,—
Stirless abode of solitude profound!"

Then how fine is the description of the great "fish" which swallowed the prophet Jonas

"With fear I saw

A mighty monster of an unknown fish,
Dozing and motionless,

Thy wond'rous work, O Lord!
Thick-ribb'd and strong he seem'd,

With skin more rugged than the corky rind;
On whom no sooner had I fix'd my glance,
Than seems to shoot

An Angel down, and whisper in his ear.
Forthwith his fins strike out,

And, as an arrow from the bow, he darts
Upon his order'd course."

But the following is mere verse-prose:

BELIEF OF ANGLICANS IN THE REAL PRESENCE TESTED.

My friends, ye use a solemn seeming tone,

And teach a truth sublime;

Christ present in His Eucharist ye own,
And count denial a crime.

Be honest; if Him truly there ye hold,
When next the Feast ye share,
Bow down before the Mystery untold,—
Bow down, and worship there!

What, ye refuse! O men unreal, I see
Ye have your words belied!

Farewell, such teaching will not serve for me;
I seek a surer guide."

Homer sometimes nods, and so does Father Caswall; but it is hardly fair that the nod should constitute by itself a little poem, though we can excuse several nods in a long one. The same remark applies to "Unreality."

We had put Father Faber's volume at the head of our list; but our space, we find, is too limited to enable us to enlarge upon its merits, and we prefer saying nothing to being forced to say too little. We only observe, therefore, that to Father Faber and Father Caswall falls naturally a destination which cannot be too highly esteemed, for it is theirs to form a Catholic literature. The errors of the modern poets are for the most part such as spring from the unhealthy atmosphere of Protestantism which surrounds them. There is no lack of poetry in our country; but it is a mischievous principle, active indeed, and beautiful sometimes, but fatally beautiful. The poet is by turns morbid, frantic, sullen, and ecstatic; and he affects his readers with his spirit as with a disease, and they become unfitted for life and discontented with their lot.

A Catholic literature is what all who have the welfare of our youth at heart are looking anxiously forward to. A rich foretaste we have had already; but we expect greater things yet from Father Faber and Father Caswall.

208

THE ENGLISH OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. THE following short "character of the English" is from a Ms. work preserved in the Royal Library of Brussels,* entitled Second Thoughts. It consists, says the author, of "notes of things that have occurred to me in the way of ordinary observation, preserved in order to be perfected and refined by such as can and will take the pains to do it." The subjects treated of are such as these: that every rational mortal creature naturally loves variety and change; that the use of images is convenient, necessary, and natural; that every body, even God, loves gifts; on wit, beauty, good-nature, love, friendship, and the like. The author gives scarcely any notes whereby he can be identified; except that in the margin of two or three of his essays he has written, "I have served myself of much of this in my Life of St. Augustine."† He was an English Catholic, probably an exile during the civil wars; and we should think a layman, or if a priest, one who had lived long in the world, and had mixed much in high society before his ordination. The Lord Bristol whom he mentions at the conclusion of the following essay, was evidently the earl whom Clarendon so often carps at, who, on the defeat of Sir George Boothe at Chester in 1659, when the hopes of Charles II. seemed desperate, "had not the patience to expect another change that presently succeeded, but changed his religion, and declared himself a Roman Catholic. . He gave account, by a particular letter to the Pope, of this his conversion, which was delivered by the general of the Jesuits; in return of which he received a customary brief from his Holiness, with the old piece of Scripture, never left out in these occasions, Tu conversus, converte fratres tuos," a text that converts in all ages would do well to lay to heart, and adopt as the primary rule of their conduct.

The Ms. forms a thick quarto volume, probably written about 1660-70. The matter contained is often piquant, always sensible. The extract we give shows that the author was no mean master of composition.

"A Kind of Character of the English Nation.

It is no easy thing to make a very exact character of any nation, but yet much more hard of the English. For

* No. 4144.

May the author be Abbot Montague, who translated St. Augustine's City of God? If so, he was a person who moved in high society, as he was the confessor of the Queen Henrietta Maria.

Clarendon, Continuation, p. 83, folio edition.

generally other nations have their several natures and humours and customs, which stick much to all the men of that nation; so as that when you look for some, you shall be almost sure to find them all. For generally the Italians are cautious and civil, the Spaniards haughty and grave, the French prompt and light, the Dutch jealous and slow: but the English are generally of no one nature, or humour, or custom, and consequently not to be comprised within one rule; but they walk by several ways, as if they all were almost of several nations. For you shall find thousands of them who love the sober, and as many who love the giddy way. You shall have them eminently civil and courteous, and yet extremely proud; and even in all the different kinds of pride. And because it is so with them as that they are extreme in the very ground of their natures and humours, they are so therefore also in their affections to this or that kind of life. For some love the gravity and state of the Spaniard; some the reservedness and cleanliness of the Italian; some the levity and alacrity of the French; and some the slowness and jealousy of the Dutch: and many, in a word, are prodigal, many miserable, many confident, many jealous; as if they were not only no sons of the same mother, but not so much as men of the same nation.

"I incline, therefore, to think the English nation, both of men and women, to be apter perhaps to deceive third persons than any other nation which we know; not yet that they are the cunningest and deepest and most dissembling people of the world, even upon premeditation and in cold blood, but upon these other reasons that go here. The English nation abounds much with a kind of great ingenuous simplicity and goodness of nature; and it makes itself appear very easily in them from the mind into the body; whereupon an auditor or spectator makes no difficulty to frame an early judgment upon the man. But now, quickly after, this man or woman grows (through the natural mutability and inconstancy to which Flemings and especially English are subject) to be of another humour, and to exercise very different acts thereof; which gives reason to such as are wise to frame, and that rationally, a very different judgment from the former. Nay, perhaps there is scarce a nation which alters itself so very often as doth this of ours. Our comfort in this mischief may be, that if it be familiar for us to change from better to worse, it will also deserve to go for no miracle to see us often change from bad to good.

"But I think also that generally, and even naturally enough, they are very idle, and apt to love their ease; and doubtless they may pass for as unpunctual a people as are in

VOL. IX.-NEW SERIES.