and that truculent barbarian, if he did not relent at his intercessions, at all events respected the intercessor, for whom he obtained, unasked, a prebendary stall at Bristol. Ken and Kettlewell, Nelson, Dodwell, and Hooper were his friends. In Queen Anne's time, Lord Chancellor Harcourt showed his esteem for the stout-hearted Nonjuror by offering him a bishopric. He declined it however, and died in seclusion in 1735. Walter Harte was a student and theologian of much the same type as his father, devoting himself especially to early patristic literature. Harte published various sermons, translations, poetical miscellanies, and a carefully written history of Gustavus Adolphus. But his Divine Poems were what he considered his principal work. They appeared in 1767. He was inclined to call them Emblems, after the example of Quarles, of whom he was an admirer. Chesterfield, on the other hand, who had a supreme contempt for that poet, wanted him to name them Moral Tales. Harte compromised the matter by calling them Parables, Fables, Emblematic Visions, etc. They sometimes give an idea of being rather laboured, and of being overburdened by the patristic allusions which he cites or refers to in the foot-notes. poetry is by no means of a commonplace order. In his Vision of Thomas à Kempis1 he has occasionally succeeded in rendering into fit verse some of the apophthegms of the Imitatio Christi. For example :— With prayers thy evening close, thy morn begin ; But heaven's true Sabbath is to rest from sin. Or again— Most would buy heaven without a price or loss; But his His best poem is the Meditation on Christ's Death and Passion: An Emblem. It is headed with the motto— Respice dum transis, quia sis mihi causa doloris. 1 British Poets, vol. ix. pp. 857-60. Haste not so fast on worldly cares employ'd ; From this one prospect draw thy sole relief, Thomas Gray was born in 1716 and died in 1771. Keble has remarked of his Elegy (1751), that, to the shame of the eighteenth century, it is about the only specimen of the indirect, and perhaps the more effective, species of sacred poetry, produced in that age, which has obtained any celebrity.'1 Its popularity was immediate ; in a very short time it passed through eleven editions. It may, in fact, be fairly said of it, that from the time of its first appearance it has always been one of the bestknown poems in the whole range of English literature. Dr. Johnson, who did not at all appreciate Gray's other poetry, and has done him, for the most part, very scanty justice, had only commendation for the Elegy. 'Had Gray,' said he, 'written often thus, it had been vain to blame, and useless to praise him.' 2 Gray was not the founder of a school of poetry in the sense that Cowley, or Dryden and Pope had been. His poetical works were few, and a good deal that he wrote was received with a sort of blank wonder, as if it were simply unintelligible. But he did much to refine and 1 Quart. Rev. xxxii. 231. 2 Lives of the Poets, iii. 427. elevate taste. He was called 'Gothic' in a sense that implied disparagement. In reality, the infusion of ideas derived from the Northern Sagas had a decidedly beneficial effect upon our literature, as having a freshness and a vigour in them which had for some time been wanting. Cowper used to maintain that Gray was the only sublime poet since Shakespeare.1 At all events, there was in his work a simple dignity, an unaffected energy, which was peculiarly refreshing by contrast with the artificial graces and pomposities which had been too much in vogue. It has been said, with truth, that Gray was among the first Englishmen who showed any capacity for the appreciation of mountain scenery. In more than one way he was representative of a new tone of thought which, at the middle of the eighteenth century, was steadily but slowly gaining ground among cultivated men. Thirty or forty years earlier, the character of Gray's genius would have been so strikingly exceptional as to seem almost an anachronism. His writings mark with tolerable accuracy the termination of a period in poetical literature. For a long time previously there had scarcely been a poet in whom the influence of Pope, or at least of the style of thought and writing of which Pope was the most brilliant representative, could not be distinctly traced. Gray was the first writer of poetry in that age who wholly emancipated himself from it. One distinguishing quality, however, they had in common. Not Pope even could outvie Gray in the polished finish of his verses. It is only by a certain latitude of interpretation that Gray can be included among writers of sacred poetry. Yet there is great religious beauty in the last verse of the Elegy: No further seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode- 1 Cowper to J. Hill: quoted in Wilmott's Lives of Sacred Poets, 205. The name of Gray naturally suggests that of his brother poet and intimate friend and biographer. William Mason (1725-1797) was an opulent clergyman, Fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and afterwards Rector of Aston, in Derbyshire, and Prebendary of York—a man of many accomplishments, skilled in music and painting, keenly alive to the sublime and picturesque, and gifted with a most poetical imagination. Without possessing anything like the erudition of his friend Gray, he was yet a competent scholar, and was particularly well read in old English and Italian poetry. In politics he was an enthusiastic Liberal. In theology he was orthodox. An active-minded and conscientious man, he did not allow his multifarious tastes to interfere with the duties of his callings. He was charitable and hospitable; and a genial spirit of religion, traceable throughout all his life and works, shed a special brightness over all his later years. Mason's sacred poetry is varied in kind. His Sunday morning and evening hymns, written for use in York Cathedral, are tolerably well known. The former begins: Again returns the day of holy rest Which, when he made the world, Jehovah blest ; The latter : Soon will the evening star with silver ray, Among his earlier odes, published in 1756, there is a fine paraphrase of the 'proverb against the King of Babylon' in the 14th chapter of Isaiah. It is entitled The Fate of Tyranny. No paraphrase can vie with the sublimity of the simple text; and in Mason's style there is generally some tendency to overload grand 1 Works of W. Mason, ii. 467. conceptions with a too great profusion of ornament. But there is certainly much grandeur in the following rendering of the passage beginning at the 7th verse ('The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet; they break forth into singing,' etc.). It should be compared while read with the original: I 2 He falls; and earth again is free, All nature lifts the choral song. The fir-trees on the mountain's head, Rejoice through all their pomp of shade; 'Tyrant,' they cry, 'since thy fell force is broke, Our proud heads pierce the skies, nor fear the woodman's stroke.' 3 Hell, from her gulph profound, Rouses at thine approach; and all around Her shadowy heroes all, Ev'n mighty kings, the heirs of empire wide, Meet and insult thy pride. What, dost thou join our ghostly train, Thy revel dance, and wanton song? Proud king! corruption fastens on thy breast; And calls her crawling brood, and bids them share the feast. II O Lucifer! thou radiant star; Son of the morn; whose rosy car Who saidst, 'The distant poles shall hear me and obey. |