arising out of the latter being one word. It may even consist of three words: yet the effect be the same. It is the pause that makes the difference. Secondly, the expediency if not necessity that the first syllable both of the Dactyl and the Trochee should be short by quantity, and only long by force of accent or position— the Epitrite being true lengths. Whether the last syllable be long or short, the force of the rhymes renders indifferent.

P. 173. As if there were no such cold thing.' Had been no such thing.

P. 179. That choice,' &c. Their.

P. 182. ' E'en in my enemies' sight.' Foemen's.

P. 199. That they in merit shall excel.' I should not have expected from Herbert so Romanism in the article of merit. holy Macarius and great Anthony,

open an avowal of In the same spirit is

p.

202.*

*The Rev. Dr. Bliss has kindly furnished the following judicious remark, and which is proved to be correct, as the word is printed heare' in the first edition (1633). He says, "Let me take this opportunity of mentioning what a very learned and able friend pointed out on this note. The fact is, Coleridge has been misled by an error of the press.

What others mean to do, I know not well,
Yet I here tell, &c. &c.

་

should be hear tell. The sense is then obvious, and Herbert is not made to do that which he was the last man in the world to have done, namely, to avow Romanism in the article of merit;' on the contrary, he says, although I know not the intention of others, yet I am told that there are who will plead their freedom from sin and the excellence of their own deeds-not so with me, when my account is called for, so far from laying claim to any merit, I shall at once tender the New Testament, by which we learn that Christ hath taken upon himself our sins. Herbert does not avow the article of merit; he hears that some do, but resolves' that to decline.""

P. 297. Although it be of touch.'

Tuch rhyming to much, from the German tuch, cloth;-I never met with it before, as an English word. So I find platt for foliage in Stanley's Hist. of Philosophy, p. 22.

P. 312. Though bishops without presbyteries many.' An instance of proving too much.

P. 313. To several persons,' &c. Functions of times, but not persons, of necessity? Ex. Bishop to Archbishop.

P. 315. That he loves God, or heaven, or happiness.' Equally unthinking and uncharitable;—I approve of them;—but yet remember Roman Catholic idolatry, and that it originated in such high flown metaphors as these.

P. 315. The Sabbath, or Lord's Day.' Make it sense, and lose the rhyme; or make it rhyme, and lose the

sense.

P. 318. The Nativity,' &c. The only poem in the Synagogue which possesses poetic merit; with a few changes and additions this would be a striking poem. Mr. C. proposes to substitute the following for the fifth to the eighth line:

To sheath or blunt one happy ray,

That wins new splendour from the day.
This day that gives the power to rise,
And shine on hearts as well as eyes:
This birth-day of all souls, when first
On
eyes of flesh and blood did burst
That primal great lucific light,

That rays to thee, to us gave sight.

P. 327. Whitsunday.' The spiritual miracle was the descent of the Holy Ghost: the outward the wind and the tongues; and so St. Peter himself explains it. That each individual obtained the power of speaking all languages, is neither contained in, nor fairly deducible from, St. Luke's account.

P. 329. All reason doth transcend.' Most true; but Reason is to faith, as the eye to the

not contradict.

telescope.

Mr. Coleridge, in his Biographia Literaria, after quoting some stanzas from Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida, says, "Another exquisite master of this species of style, where the scholar and the poet supplies the material, but the perfect well-bred gentleman, the expressions and the arrangement, is George Herbert. As from the nature of the subject, and the too frequent quaintness of the thoughts, his "Temple; or Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations" are comparatively but little known, I shall extract two poems. The first is a sonnet, equally admirable for the weight, number, and expression of the thoughts, and for the simple dignity of the language, (unless indeed a fastidious taste should object to the latter half of the sixth line); the second is a poem of greater length, which I have chosen not only for the present purpose, but likewise as a striking example and illustration of an assertion hazarded in a former page of these sketches: namely, that the characteristic fault of our elder poets is the reverse of that, which distinguishes too many of our recent versifiers; the one conveying the most fantastic thoughts in the most correct and natural language; the other in the most fantastic language conveying the most trivial thoughts. The latter is a riddle of words; the former an enigma of thoughts. The one reminds me of an odd passage in Drayton's Ideas:

SONNET IX.

As other men, so I myself do muse,
Why in this sort I wrest invention so;
And why these giddy metaphors I use,
Leaving the path the greater part do go ?
I will resolve you: I am lunatic!

The other recalls a still odder passage in the "Synagogue: or the Shadow of the Temple,” a connected series of poems in imitation of Herbert's "Temple," and in some editions annexed to it:

O! how my mind, &c. p. 334.

Immediately after these burlesque passages, I canno proceed to the extracts promised, without changing the ludicrous tone of feeling by the interposition of the three following stanzas of Herbert's:

VIRTUE.

Sweet day, &c. p. 85.

THE BOSOM SIN.

Lord, with what care, &c. p. 38.

LOVE UNKNOWN.

Dear friend, sit down, &c. p. 131.

Vide Biographia Literaria, vol. 2.

p. 98.

The best and most forcible sense of a word is often that which is contained in its Etymology. The author of the Poems (the Synagogue), frequently affixed to Herbert's "Temple," gives the original purport of the word Integrity, in the following lines of the fourth stanza of the eighth poem;

Next to Sincerity, remember still,

Thou must resolve upon Integrity.

God will have all thou hast, thy mind, thy will,
Thy thoughts, thy words, thy works.

And again, after some verses on constancy and humility, the poem concludes with—

He that desires to see

The face of God, in his religion must

Sincere, entire, constant, and humble be.

Having mentioned the name of Herbert, that model of a man, a gentleman, and a clergyman, let me add, that the quaintness of some of his thoughts, not of his diction, than which nothing can be more pure, manly, and unaffected, has blinded modern readers to the great general merit of his poems, which are for the most part exquisite in their kind.

The Friend, vol. i. p. 53, edit. 1837.

THE END.

BB