his intention of maintaining "the true reformed Protestant religion as it stood in its beauty in the happy days of Queen Elizabeth." On the other hand was Puritanism—a tremendous force in national affairs, a leaven of good and of evil through every class of English society. Both sides could point to their representative poets: good poets for the Establishment, one great poet for the Dissenters; all of whom the world has remembered. But it is not for the fervour and intensity of their religious emotion that the world remembers Milton, or Cowley, or even Herbert. And yet the fire of sincerest devotional poetry did burn on through this somewhat frigid time, tended with all devotion by its gentle high-priest; nor did the light and warmth of it fail to guide Crashaw back to its true altar-source, the Catholic faith.
Students of heredity may find the usual discrepancies in the poet's story. His father, William Crashaw, was a clergyman and scholar of pronounced Puritan tendencies; very active in the production of "Romish Forgeries and Falsifications," and Anti-Jesuit treatises in general. His imagination ran also into the fields of poetry; his most interesting work (to us) being a "Complaint or Dialogue betwixt the Soule and Body of a damned man. Supposed to be written by St. Bernard." These literary labours do not seem, however, to have brought much remuneration, for we find Queen Elizabeth once proposing the elder Crashaw for a Cambridge fellowship, having learned of his "povertie and yet otherwise good qualities." Richard was born in London in the year 1612-13; and one of the pathetic incidents of his life is its almost entire lack of a mother's understanding love. Just when she died is not known—nor, in fact, who she was; but, as early
