alone can feed him. Only when subjected to the positive does the negative find its true vocation.

I am jealous of the living force cast into the slough of satire. No doubt, either indignant or loving rebuke has its end and does its work, but I fear that wit, while rousing the admiration of the spiteful or the like witty, comes in only to destroy its dignity. At the same time, I am not sure whether there might not be such a judicious combination of the elements as to render my remarks inapplicable.

At all events, poetry favours the positive, and from the Emblems named of Quarles I shall choose one in which it fully predominates. There is something in it remarkably fine.

PHOSPHOR, BRING THE DAY.

Will 't ne'er be morning? Will that promised light
Ne'er break, and clear those clouds of night?
Sweet Phosphor, bring the day,

Whose conquering ray

May chase these fogs: sweet Phosphor, bring the day.

How long, how long shall these benighted eyes
Languish in shades, like feeble flies

Expecting spring? How long shall darkness soil
The face of earth, and thus beguile

Our souls of sprightful action? When, when will day
Begin to dawn, whose new-born ray

May gild the weathercocks of our devotion,

And give our unsouled souls new motion?
Sweet Phosphor, bring the day :

The light will fray

These horrid mists: sweet Phosphor, bring the day.

PHOSPHOR, bring the DAY.

Let those whose eyes, like owls, abhor the light-
Let those have night that love the night:
Sweet Phosphor, bring the day.
How sad delay

Afflicts dull hopes! Sweet Phosphor, bring the day.

Alas! my light-in-vain-expecting eyes

Can find no objects but what rise
From this poor mortal blaze, a dying spark
Of Vulcan's forge, whose flames are dark,-
A dangerous, dull, blue-burning light,

As melancholy as the night :

Here's all the suns that glister in the sphere
Of earth Ah me! what comfort's here!

Sweet Phosphor, bring the day.

Haste, haste away

Heaven's loitering lamp: sweet Phosphor, bring the day.

Blow, Ignorance. O thou, whose idle knee

Rocks earth into a lethargy,

And with thy sooty fingers hast benight

The world's fair cheeks, blow, blow thy spite;
Since thou hast puffed our greater taper, do

Puff on, and out the lesser too.

If e'er that breath-exiléd flame return,

Thou hast not blown as it will burn.

Sweet Phosphor, bring the day
Light will repay

:

The wrongs of night: sweet Phosphor, bring the day.

173

With honoured, thrice honoured George Herbert waiting at the door, I cannot ask Francis Quarles to remain longer: I can part with him without regret, worthy man and fair poet as he is.

CHAPTER XIII.

GEORGE HERBERT.

BUT, with my hand on the lock, I shrink from opening the door. Here comes a poet indeed! and how am I to show him due honour? With his book humbly, doubtfully offered, with the ashes of the poems of his youth fluttering in the wind of his priestly garments, he crosses the threshold. Or rather, for I had forgotten the symbol of my book, let us all go from our chapel to the choir, and humbly ask him to sing that he may make us worthy of his song.

In George Herbert there is poetry enough and to spare it is the household bread of his being. If I begin with that which first in the nature of things ought to be demanded of a poet, namely, Truth, RevelationGeorge Herbert offers us measure pressed down and running over. But let me speak first of that which first in time or order of appearance we demand of a poet, namely music. For inasmuch as verse is for the ear, not for the eye, we demand a good hearing first. Let no one undervalue it. The heart of poetry is indeed truth, but its garments are music, and the garments come first in the process of revelation. The

music of a poem is its meaning in sound as distinguished from word—its meaning in solution, as it were, uncrystallized by articulation. The music goes. before the fuller revelation, preparing its way. The sound of a verse is the harbinger of the truth contained therein. If it be a right poem, this will be true. Herein Herbert excels. It will be found impossible to separate the music of his words from the music of the thought which takes shape in their sound.

I got me flowers to strow thy way,

I got me boughs off many a tree;
But thou wast up by break of day,

And brought'st thy sweets along with thee.

And the gift it enwraps at once and reveals is, I have said, truth of the deepest. Hear this song of divine service. In every song he sings a spiritual fact will be found its fundamental life, although I may quote this or that merely to illustrate some peculiarity of mode.

The Elixir was an imagined liquid sought by the old physical investigators, in order that by its means they might turn every common metal into gold, a pursuit not quite so absurd as it has since appeared. They called this something, when regarded as a solid, the Philosopher's Stone. In the poem it is also called a tincture.

THE ELIXIR.

Teach me, my God and King,

In all things thee to see;
And what I do in anything,
To do it as for thee;

With a conscience tender as a child's, almost diseased in its tenderness, and a heart loving as a woman's, his intellect is none the less powerful. Its movements are as the sword-play of an alert, poised, well-knit, strong-wristed fencer with the rapier, in which the skill impresses one more than the force, while without the force the skill would be valueless, even hurtful, to its possessor. There is a graceful humour with it occasionally, even in his most serious. poems adding much to their charm. To illustrate all this, take the following, the title of which means The Retort.