printers, not to HERBERT (as proved by his MSS.); and that where the 'ed' might be misread, we have elided, as 'perplex'd,' not 'perplexed.' The punctuation has been reduced from chaos to some order, it is hoped. Repeatedly, over-punctuation destroys sense and sound in the printed texts. I pass next to

11. The story of the Life, as revealing his original and ultimate character, public and private.

In delivering the 'little book,' to wit a Ms. of 'The Temple,' it will be remembered the dying HERBERT used these remarkable words to his visitor, Mr. Duncon: 'Sir, I pray deliver this little book to my dear Brother Farrer [Ferrar], and tell him he shall find in it a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed between God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus, my Master: in Whose service I have now found perfect freedom.' There was beautiful humility in this, but, like all genuine humility, it rested on the deepest truth and reality of personal experience. GEORGE HERBERT was perhaps at that moment, and from his induction to Bemerton, one of the holiest men in Christendom and the most John-like spirit in the Church of England, or in any Church. Nevertheless, it is to miss the teaching of his Life as well as the innermost meanings of his Writings, to forget 'the many spiritual conflicts' commemorated in his Poems, and the emphasis of the 'now' in his grateful as adoring profession, 'in Whose service I have now found perfect freedom.' That is to say, if, as I think, all must recognise in GEORGE HERBERT one whom we inevitably think of as a St. John in his ultimate tenderness and lovingness, equally must it be recalled that as, until the grace and masterdom of The Master transformed and transfigured him, St. John was originally bold, proud, fierce, self-conscious, so it was out of intense, prolonged, backsliding-marked conflict our Worthy became what he

did become, unworldly, humble, meek, gentle, tender, holy: 'my fierce youth' is his own confession (136. The Answer). Izaak Walton did not know the subject of his 'Life' so well as he himself did, or he never should have spoken of him as at Westminster 'natively' good and gentle. I can accept nearly all his golden-mouthed Biographer's praise of him even thus early, when he tells us that at School the beauties of his pretty behaviour and wit shin'd and became so eminent and lovely in this his innocent age, that he seem'd to be mark'd out for piety, and to have the care of heaven and of a particular angel to guard and guide him.' The power of his Mother's example and instruction repressed that inborn haughtiness and lofty self-estimate which flashed out very soon; but the motherly power was needed, there were haughtiness and pride to be repressed. For if we take note of young Master Edward's presumption in holding a 'dispute' in Logic at the University almost immediately on his entrance there (twelfth or fourteenth year), there was still more presumption in Master GEORGE while at Westminster School answering and 'reproving' Andrew Melville for daring to condemn the ultraRitualism of King James in his Royal Chapel. As will appear, the renowned Divine and Scholar was thus 'reproved' by GEORGE HERBERT in his eleventh or twelfth year. Effrontery or impudence is the only word for the like of that; and it is to be recalled, as symptomatic of the native character-a character that showed itself similarly and even more egregiously later. When in his sixteenth year, a Letter and double-Sonnet are extremely noteworthy and suggestive. It seems clear that he was a versifier from a very early date, probably as early as Abraham Cowley or Pope were: and here is his verdict to his Mother on the poetry that was then being published: 'I fear the heat of my late Ague hath dryed up those springs by which scholars say the Muses use to take up their habitations. However, I need not their help to

reprove the vanity of those many love-poems that are daily writ and consecrated to Venus; nor to bewail that so few are writ that look towards God and Heaven. For my own part, my meaning, deer mother, is, in these sonnets, to declare my resolution to be, That my poor abilities in Poetry shall be all and ever consecrated to God's glory.' This Letter (of which Walton gives only these sentences) was written in the first year of his going to Cambridge,' and the accompanying Sonnets for a New Year's gift.' The 'first year' was 1608, or say his sixteenth year; and if the phrase 'poore abilities in poetry' is a foil to the forwardness and frowardness of his eleventh or twelfth year, one has an inevitable suspicion that it was only a phrase, and that Master George regarded his Sonnets as well worthy of being sent as a New Year's gift. There certainly is thought in them and his abidingly-characteristic quaintness of wording, while the sentiment is admirable. This double-Sonnet is such a land-mark in his life as to demand a place here, that it may be studied:

'My God, where is that ancient heat towards Thee Wherewith whole shoals of martyrs once did burn,

Besides their other flames? Doth poetrie

Wear Venus' liverie, onely serve her turn?
Why are not sonnets made of Thee, and layes
Upon Thine altar burnt? Cannot Thy love

Heighten a spirit to sound out Thy praise

As well as any she? Cannot Thy Dove

Outstrip their Cupid easilie in flight?

Or, since Thy wayes are deep, and still the same,
Will not a verse runne smooth that bears Thy Name?
Why doth that fire, which by Thy power and might
Each breast does feel, no braver fuel choose

Then that which one day worms may chance refuse?

Sure, Lord, there is enough in Thee to drie

Oceans of ink; for, as the Deluge did

Cover the earth, so doth Thy Majestie.

Each cloud distills Thy praise, and doth forbid
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Poets to turn it to another use;

Roses and lilies speak Thee, and to make
A pair of cheeks of them is Thy abuse.

Why should I women's eyes for crystal take?
Such poor invention burns in their low minde,

Whose fire is wild, and doth not upward go
To praise, and on Thee, Lord, some ink bestow.
Open the bones, and you shall nothing finde

In the best face but filth; when, Lord, in Thee
The beauty lies in the discoverie.'

With reference to the sweeping condemnation of the 'Love-Poems' of the period, all familiar with them must agree that the youthful Censor was not without warrant; yet must it be kept in mind that Edmund Spenser's 'Twelve Books' of 'The Faerie Queene,' with, for the first time, 'Two Cantoes of Mutabilitie,' were at the very time in the press of ' H. L. for Matthew Lownes,' while Michael Drayton's pure Poems, 'newly corrected by the author,' bear the same date; and so with some of the supremest of the productions of Shakespeare and Jonson and the Elizabethan Worthies; while the alleged Love-songs 'daily writ and consecrated to Venus' are unknown or slight in proportion. Then, in respect of the 'Resolution,' when we come to examine into its carrying out, there is disappointment. Years follow years, and while he found time to go on with his Epigrams-Apologetical' in answer to Anti-Tami-Cami-Categoria, one is struck with the all but utter absence of Christian thinking as of Christian feeling therein. He is quick, keen, sarcastic, effective in unyielding defence of Ceremonial and Rite and Dignity ; but there is scarcely a thrill of emotion, scarcely a recognition of the real end for which a Church exists. So, too, with his Epicidivm' celebration of Prince Henry. With such a nation-stirring death for text, what a great poemsermon he might have preached! It is as pagan as if it had been written by Virgil or Horace, and more sycophantic than ever were they to a Cæsar. Even as far on as 1627, when

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the 'Parentalia' appeared, there is wealth of filial veneration and filial sorrow over his illustrious lady-mother; but there are the merest scintillations of Christian faith and hope: precious scintillations, yet only aggravating the general lack. The artist excels the poet, and the poet hides the Christian. I cannot marvel that of the 'Parentalia,' as of the 'Epigrams-Apologetical,' even so revering a friend as Archdeacon Barnabas Oley felt constrained to pronounce this judgment: 'those many Latin and Greek verses, the obsequious [=funereal] Parentalia he made and printed in her memory: which, though they be good, very good, yet (to speak freely even of this man I so much honour) they be dull or dead in comparison of his Temple Poems. And no marvel. To write those, he made his ink with water of Helicon; but these inspirations prophetical were distilled from above. In those, are weak motions of Nature; in these, raptures of grace; in those he writ [of] flesh and blood-a frail earthly woman, though a mother; but in these he praised his heavenly Father, the God of men and angels, and the Lord Jesus Christ his Master.' Strongly put, certainly, is this; yet there is extremely notable and extremely sad truth in it. Nor does it vindicate HERBERT to allege that the mode of the day was to imitate the classic writers, and so to speak of God as Jove, and more than that, to make Christians talk like heathens; for the gravamen of our charge as the sting of our regret, not to say wonder, is, that GEORGE HERBERT should not have risen above such mere classicality, especially in the celebration of his own lady-mother. I am compelled to look beneath the logical inconsistency of all this with a really Christian or Christ-tending life, to a still over-mastering earthliness, even on the borders of the change of changes. We may be very sure that if his Christianhood had been all in all to him, he would have contrived to make it give character to his (then) writings, as Shakespeare has it of Antony :