already in heaven. The music which he loved was found poured livingly into his poetry, which is solemn, overflowing with tender and profound feeling, with the most chaste and seraphic imagination, with the most fervent devotion. James Montgomery, in our own time, is the only poet who resembles him in his pure and beautiful piety; but there is in Herbert a greater vigour, dignity of style, and felicity of imagery than in Montgomery. There is a gravity, a sublimity, and a sweetness which mingle in his devotional lyrics, and endear them for ever to the heart that has once imbibed them. His "Temple" is a poetic fabric worthy of a Christian minstrel, and stands as an immortal refutation of the oft repeated theory, that religious poetry cannot be at once original and attractive. What can be more noble than the following stanzas from his poem entitled "Man:"—
For us the winds do blow;
The earth doth rest, heavens move, and fountains flow.
Nothing we see but means our good,
As our delight, or as our treasure:
The whole is either our cupboard of food
Or cabinet of pleasure.
The stars have us to bed
Night draws the curtain which the sun withdraws.
Music and light attend our head.
All things to our flesh are kind
In their descent and being; to our mind
In their ascent and cause.
Each thing is full of duty:
Waters united are our navigation;
Distinguished, our habitation;
Below, our drink—above, our meat:
Both are our cleanliness. Hath one such beauty?
Then bow are all things neat!
More servants wait on man
Than he'll take notice of: in every path
He treads down that which doth befriend him
When sickness makes him pale and wan.
Oh I mighty love! man is one world, and hath
Another to attend him.
Besides his "Temple," Herbert wrote a prose work, "The Priest to the Temple; or, the Country Parson," which is charmingly full of the simple, child-like piety of the author. He also collected a great number of proverbs, under the title of "Jacula Prudentum."
The third of the trio of poets who seem to class themselves together by their quaintness, their fancy, and their piety, is Francis Quarles, a man who has been treated by many critics as a mere poetaster, but who is one of the most sterling poets which this country, prolific in poetic genius, has produced. Quarles was a gentleman and a scholar; in his youth he was cup-bearer to Elizabeth of Bohemia, and was finally ruined by taking the royal side in the civil wars. He wrote various poetical works; "Argalus and Parthenia," "A Feast for Worms," "Zion's Elegies," and a series of elegies on the death of a friend, the son of Bishop Aylmer, which probably suggested a similar poem on a similar occasion, Tennyson's "In Meraoriam." But the great work of Quarles is his "Emblems," which originated in a Latin poem by Herman Hugo, a Jesuit, called "Pia Desideria." This book, condemned and overlooked by the great critics, like Banyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," has, from generation to generation, adorned with curious woodcuts circulated amongst the people in town and country, till it has won an extraordinary popularity: and that it has well deserved it. we need only read such verses as these to convince ourselves:—
I love, and have some cause to love, the earth:
She is my Maker's creature—therefore good;
She is my mother—for she gave me birth;
She is my tender nurse—she gives me food.
But what's a creature. Lord, compared with thee?
Or what's my mother, or my nurse, to me?
I love the air: her dainty sweets refresh
My drooping soul, and to new sweets invite me;
Her shrill-mouthed quires sustain me with their flesh,
And with their Polyphonian notes delight me.
But what's the air or all the sweets that she
Can bless my soul withal, compared to thee?
I love the sea: she is my fellow-creature—
My careful purveyor; she provides me store;
She walls me round, she makes ray diet greater;
She wafts my treasure from a foreign shore.
But, Lord of oceans, when compared to thee,
What is the ocean, or her wealth to me?
To heaven's high city I direct ray journey.
Whose spangled suburbs entertain mine eye;
Mine eye, by contemplation's great attorney,
Transcends the crystal pavement of the sky.
But what is heaven, great God, compared to thee?
Without thy presence, heaven's no heave:i to me.
Without thy presence, earth gives no refection;
Without thy presence, sea affords no treasure;
Without thy presence, air's a rank infection;
Without thy presence, heaven itselfs no pleasure.
If not possessed, if not enjoyed in thee,
What's earth, or sea, or air, or heaven to me?
Quarles also wrote "The School of the Heart," and "The Virgin Widow," a comedy, which title has been borrowed by the author of "Philip van Artevelde" for a very different drama; and a modern critic ranks him with "Grotius, Addison, Pascal, Johnson, Coleridge, and Isaac Taylor, as one of the eminent lay-brothers in the christian church, whose testimony is above all challenge, and whose talents left their religion above all contempt." In the love of the people he may be classed with the authors of "The Pilgrim's Progress," a work also written at this period, and "Robinson Crusoe." Quarles was the author also of two prose works, "Judgment and Mercy for Afflicted Souls," republished some years ago by Sir Egerton Brydges, and his "Enchiridion," a collection of maxims, divine and moral; declared by "The Retrospective Review" to be the best collection of maxims in the English language.
William Browne's "Britannia's Pastorals," written at this period, have been much and justly celebrated for their faithful transcripts of nature and country life. They are perfect photographic sketches, abound with most striking imagery, and, as has been observed, "give you a vivid glimpse of the country, which remains miraculously preserved in its pristine hues." The enormous poetic wealth of this epoch, however, compels us to pause. There are numbers of names yet that sue for recognition as among the genuine poets of those times—Raleigh, as a lyrical poet; Sir Henry Wotton; Henry Vaughan, the author of "Silex Scintillans" and "Olor Iscauus," a disciple of Herbert's, who would demand a notice were it only to show how freely Campbell borrowed the poem of "The Rainbow" from him:—
How bright wert thou when Shem's admiring eye
Thy burning, flaming arch did first descry.
When Zerali, Nahor, Haran, Abram. Lot,
The youthful world's gray fathers in one knot,
Did with attentive looks watch every hour
For thy new light.
