Habington's custom of inserting prose sketches which strike the keynote of the various poems: at first it was the "Mistris"; then the "Wife"; still later, the "Friend." But for this Third Part was reserved the most famous of all, his vision of "A Holy Man." It seems a thousand pities to mar the continuity of this study, so wise, so sane, so full of austere beauty, by a mere extract; but the whole is too long to quote. The Holy Man alone, declares Habington, is truly happy:
"In prosperity he gratefully admires the bounty of the Almighty giver, and useth, not abuseth, plenty: but in adversity he remaines unshaken, and like some eminent mountain hath his head above the clouds. . . . Fame he weighes not, but esteemes a smoake, yet such as carries with it the sweetest odour, and riseth usually from the Sacrifice of our best actions." There is no trace of self-righteousness in this little sermon; "for seldome," says the preacher, "the folly we condemne is so culpable as the severity of our judgment. . . . To live he knowes a benefit, and the contempt of it ingratitude, but . . . Death, how deformed soever an aspect it weares, he is not frighted with; since it not annihilates but uncloudes the soule."
There would seem to be more than a superficial significance in this change of Habington's mental attitude. Was the weight of six additional years, the maturing of a deeply serious nature, even the death of George Talbot, sufficient explanation of it? Or did, perhaps, dreams of a lost vocation haunt the soul of the poet? Only his God (and possibly his Castara) could know what chastening hand had rested upon that heart. For, surely, it was not in the school of ease or joy or human consolation that Habington learned to write lines like those which close his Castara:
