The late past frosts | tributes of pleasure | bring.

N.B. First, the difference between

U

and an amphima

cer - | and this not always or necessarily 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 by force of accent or position — the Epitrite being true lengths.—Whether the last syllable be or the force of the rhymes renders indifferent. “As if there were no such cold thing." thing. P. 181.

Thus,

Had been no such

I should not have expected from Herbert so open an avowal of Romanism in the article of merit. In the same spirit is "Holy Macarius, and great Anthony," p. 205.*

* Herbert, however, adds:

But I resolve, when thou shalt call for mine,

That to decline,

And thrust a Testament into thy hand:

Let that be scann'd;

There thou shalt find my faults are thine.

Martin Luther himself might have penned this concluding stanza. Since I wrote the above, a note in Mr. Pickering's edition of Herbert has been pointed out to me:

P. 237. The Communion Table.

And for the matter whereof it is made,
The matter is not much,

Although it be of tuch,

Or wood, or metal, what will last, or fade;
So vanity

And superstition avoided be.

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

P. 252. The Synagogue, by Christopher Harvey. The Bishop.
But who can show of old that ever any
Presbyteries without their bishops were:

Though bishops without presbyteries many, &c.

An instance of proving too much. If Bishop without Presb. B.=Presb. i. e. no Bishop.

P. 253. The Bishop.

To rule and to be ruled are distinct,

And several duties, severally belong
To several persons.

Functions of times, but not persons, of necessity? Ex. Bishop to Archbishop.

P. 255.

Church Festivals.

Who loves not you, doth but in vain profess
That he loves God, or heaven, or happiness.

"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.' "

This suggestion once occurred to myself, and appears to be right, as it is verified by the first edition: but at the time it seemed to me so obvious, that surely the correction would have been made before if there had not been some reason against it.-S. C.

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. 255.

The Sabbath, or Lord's Day.

Make it sense and lose the rhyme; or make it rhyme and lose the sense.

P. 258. The Nativity, or Christmas Day.

Unfold thy face, unmask thy ray,

Shine forth, bright sun, double the day,

Let no malignant misty fume, &c.

The only poem in The Synagogue which possesses poetic merit; with a few changes and additions this would be a strik

ing poem.

Substitute the following for the fifth to the eighth line.

To sheath or blunt one happy ray,
That wins new splendor from the day.
This day that gives thee 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. 267. Whit-Sunday.

Nay, startle not to hear that rushing wind,
Wherewith this place is shaken, &c.

To hear at once so great variety

Of language from them come, &c.

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.

R*

P. 269. Trinity-Sunday.

The Trinity

In Unity,

And Unity

In Trinity,

All reason doth transcend.

Most true, but not contradict. Reason is to faith, as the eye to the telescope.

EXTRACT FROM A LETTER

OF S. T. COLERIDGE TO W. COLLINS, R. A. PRINTED IN THE LIFE OF COLLINS BY HIS SON. VOL. I.

December, 1818. To feel the full force of the Christian religion it is perhaps necessary, for many tempers, that they should first be made to feel, experimentally, the hollowness of human friendship, the presumptuous emptiness of human hopes. I find more substantial comfort now in pious George Herbert's Temple, which I used to read to amuse myself with his quaintness, in short, only to laugh at, than in all the poetry since the poems of Milton. If you have not read Herbert I can recommend the book to you confidently. The poem entitled "The Flower" is especially affecting, and to me such a phrase as and relish versing" expresses a sincerity and reality, which I would unwillingly exchange for the more dignified “and once more love the Muse," &c. and so with many other of Herbert's homely phrases.

66

NOTES ON MATHIAS' EDITION OF GRAY.

ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE.

Vol. i. p. 9.

Wanders the hoary Thames along

His silver-winding way.-GRAY.

WE want, methinks, a little treatise from some man of flexible good sense, and well versed in the Greek poets, especially Homer, the choral, and other lyrics, containing first a history of compound epithets, and then the laws and licenses. I am not so much disposed as I used to be to quarrel with such an epithet as silver-winding;" ungrammatical as the hyphen is, it is not wholly illogical, for the phrase conveys more than silvery and

winding. It gives, namely, the unity of the impression, the coinherence of the brightness, the motion, and the line of motion.

This is the only stanza that appears to me very objectionable in point of diction. This, I must confess, is not only falsetto throughout, but is at once harsh and feeble, and very far the worst ten lines in all the works of Mr. Gray, English or Latin, prose or verse.

P. 12.

1

And envy wan, and faded care,'
Grim-visaged comfortless despair,2
And sorrow's piercing dart.'

'Bad in the first, 2 in the second, in the last degree.

P. 18.

The proud are taught to taste of pain.-GRAY.

There is a want of dignity-a sort of irony in this phrase to my feeling that would be more proper in dramatic than in lyric composition.

On Gray's Platonica, vol. i. p. 299-547.

Whatever might be expected from a scholar, a gentleman, a man of exquisite taste, as the quintessence of sane and sound good sense, Mr. Gray appears to me to have performed. The poet Plato, the orator Plato, Plato the exquisite dramatist of conversation, the seer and the painter of character, Plato the highbred, highly-educated, aristocratic republican, the man and the gentleman of quality stands full before us from behind the curtain as Gray has drawn it back. Even so does Socrates, the social wise old man, the practical moralist. But Plato the philosopher, but the divine Plato, was not to be comprehended within the field of vision, or be commanded by the fixed immovable telescope of