allow the adorning gift of eloquence to be added; but in all that is of a contrary nature we carefully and reasonably disallow it, lest the gilding of a bitter pill should make us thoughtlessly swallow it. We do not want that which is evil and unjust and impure to be seasoned by a clever devil or spiced by his jests, nor do we wish such things to be supported by vulgar or sophistical arguments or illustrations, nor will we allow them to be defended or taught frequently or persistently, or to be prepared for the public by any florid verbosity of language or any other entrancing arts of the orator. "Against such devices of the enemy we have invented an anti-rhetoric, which exposes the vanity of their meretricious disguises and shows the fallacy of logical puzzles. At the same time, we are not stern upholders of "the naked truth" in all her bitterness; we are for sweetness and light, and the message of rigid truth may be clothed in honeyed and enticing words, and none the worse for it. Indeed, it is our joy to see Truth's chaste simplicity adorned with all the ornaments that winged words can give. But they must be words that can be justified, and words well founded,1 not words that will sink presently into the shifting quicksands and confused whirlpools of thought from which they first arose; indeed, no good man can help being heartily sick of listening to fulsome. praise of an unworthy subject, or object to give ornate honour where such honour is due." When he had at length finished his remarks and replaced this pen, he took out another, similar to the last, but of a gold colour, embellished with figures of a more archaic and dramatic character, and having its other end in the form of a painter's pencil. When it was briskly used, it produced a most pleasant tinkling sound as of cymbals concealed in it. "This," said he, "is the famous implement that poets use. By this they describe, as in a picture, all the most 1 Milton acted up to these principles in his sonnet on the massacres in Piedmont, and many another pure and lofty passage in his varied themes. IN PRAISE OF POETRY 257 Ch. II] wonderful beauties of Nature, which lie hidden from the unobservant crowd. By this they throw a new glamour on the world, and put before us the ideas of the Divine mind. Just as the heroic virtue adds glory to each other virtue, so does this art throw light and splendour on the best efforts of her sister arts. Poetry is the impetuous rush of a mind full to overflowing, strained and exalted to its utmost powers, yea, rather, lifted in ecstasy beyond itself. Savages regard it with mute amazement. With the civilised world it has always been honoured, but very few of our mortal race have attained unto its fulness.2 No other accomplishment is so easily taken in hand or so full of spirit. No other mental exercise is so adapted to quicken the natural talents of our boys, or so easily to relieve the natural fervour of our maturer students. "How sad, then, it is, that when all the other arts are the handmaids of Religion, this is the only one which is quite banished from Christian uses. For the religious Muse to be in disfavour or neglect would be bad enough, but the present age seems to despair of introducing her at all. And, what is still more strange, the remains of pagan superstition as handed down by profane poets are still the stock reading of the schools, and not even do they who profess to sing the praises of God and the saints venture to give up the incongruous, not to say wicked and abominable, practice of invoking the heathen gods. These extremes especially offend us, and we are 1 Miltonic. See On Education to Hartlib, when the word is used in italics, as pointing it out to be a foreign word. Of course it is Greek and Platonic originally, and in this sense is used by Milton again in Paradise Lost, vii. 557. The modern use has vulgarised the meaning considerably. Milton says, in Paradise Lost as above, that the world when completed answered God's "great idea." * Milton says the same (Reasons of Church Government, p. 479) of poetical abilities-they are "rarely bestowed." 3 Cowley thought the same a few years later. His words are to be found in his Preface to his Works, 1656 fol. "It is time," he says, "to recover poetry out of the tyrant's hands, and to restore it to the Kingdom of God, who is the father of it." And in the opening stanzas of the Davideis: a Sacred Poem on the Troubles of David, he again VOL. I. 17 pained too when we see good religious men, lacking the poetic instinct, rush to the other extreme, and bind down as with the chains of a slave that sacred Muse that should be so free, deprive her of all warmth of colour, all beauty of expression, all loftiness of thought; as if Religion could be nothing unless lonely, dry, feeble, and morose, and could never beget a noble, vigorous, generous impulse.1 "It is this that so often turns aside the young from a just idea of Christian principles and a true knowledge of the Creator, especially when they have imbibed from their studies such lofty ideas of the arts and poetry of classic times. records his novel theory, as he supposed it, for Paradise Lost had not yet been written. His words are: Too long the Muses' land hath heathen been: Cowley evidently had not read and did not know of "the apostle" who published Nova Solyma in 1648, and could not know of the later Paradise Lost, the grandest exposition of Cowley's supposed original thought. 1 Before Milton led the way, there was no precedent for sacred themes being treated with freedom and sublimity in our own country or indeed hardly anywhere. The trail of classic paganism was over them all. Here Milton arose as a burning and a shining light amidst almost universal darkness. Professor Raleigh's remarks on Milton are very appropriate to the above passages of Nova Solyma, and the lament therein contained over the wretched sacred poetry of the early seventeenth century. He says: "Ever since the Renaissance had swept modern poetry back to the pagan world, some voices of protest had been raised, some swimmers, rather bold than strong, had attempted to stem the tide. Among the earliest of these was Thomas Sternhold, Groom of the Chamber to King Henry VIII. Inspired by the example of a better poet, Clement Marot, Sternhold thrust some of the Psalms of David into a carterly metre, 'thinking thereby,' says Anthony à Wood, in his delightfully colloquial fashion, 'that the courtiers would sing them instead of their sonnets, but did not, only some few excepted.' In the reign of Elizabeth, when the classical mythology reigned and revelled in pageant and masque, in court and town, one Ch. II] FOR POETRY 259 "But in strict truth, Poetry finds in Religion its most suitable subject, for Religion, above all else, presents to us the unusual, the marvellous, and the sublime, and is able to rouse our feelings with the most forcible of all inducements. Do we not read that holy men, when they were about to relate the great acts of the Almighty, or were entranced with heavenly joy, or when the fire kindled within them, at once broke forth into song? The prophets, too, when the Spirit came on them, uttered the heavenly oracles in rhythmic verse. Surely this, or something akin to it, is the native language of our heavenly country, and the fittest vehicle of the joys and triumphs that are there. Nay, have we not been told of the angelic choirs above, and do we not believe that when our earthly toils and troubles are over, it will be in God's holy temple that our tongues shall be filled with gladness, and our hearts with joy? Are we not to be made "equal to the angels," and take our share in their continuous service of song? We therefore lay great stress on sacred poetry, and on its right and sound principles." 1 Thomas Brice, a painful preacher, cried out against the pagan fancies that had caught the English imagination captive : We are not Ethnickes, we forsoth at least professe not so; Why range we then to Ethnickes' trade? Come back, where will ye go? Tel me, is Christe or Cupide lord? Doth God or Venus reign? But he cried to deaf ears, and the Elizabethan age produced no body of sacred poetry worth a record. . . . Milton was original. . . He left a high road behind him, along which many a tuneful pauper has since limped; but before him he found nothing but the jungle and false fires" (Raleigh's Milton, 1900, pp. 173-4). 1 Who ever yet has fulfilled this great ideal of sacred song in a higher degree than Milton himself? See also what he says in his recently discovered Commonplace Book, where at p. 6 he quotes St. Basil's similar views as to the religious value of sacred poetry. WIT CHAPTER III A DISCOURSE ON POETRY ITH these words the speaker was about to lay down. the Poetry pen as finished with, when Eugenius begged for some examples and illustrations in addition to the sketch they had just listened to. "For," said he with a smile, "I have a liking for the poetic vein myself, and Joseph gave me the hopes of obtaining instruction and benefit from you." "Joseph could have satisfied your wish himself, well enough," he replied; "but since he has passed the work on to me, I will be even with him in this way--the illustrations shall be his own, and I will read them to you." He then rose and led them to certain sketches which were hanging from hooks on the wall, and covered with silken wrappers to keep off the dust and sun. The first is uncovered, and lo! there appears a wide river, incredible to behold. For at one side of the picture the river, in its lower, broader part, flows fast with tumbling waves towards the sea; at the other the waves are shown rolled back from mid-stream like a wall, and forcing up the river's headlong course to that fount' whence it came. Thus there was a parting of the waters, and an open sandy passage reached from shore to shore. In the midst of this were priests bearing on their shoulders an ark, and around them was a vast crowd in the act of passing 1 Lat. in fontem-that is to say, the writer thought the miracle even more wonderful than it is usually considered by the ordinary Scripture student. He pictured the waves of Jordan, after the dividing of the waters, as rushing in different directions, the lower part of the |