Talk,' wherein the illustrious Thinker roomTA WOIDPWLES proudly that he had converted Crashaw from 1# 9006sition to stage-plays. We may as wel expleasA TIE POLS here. The younger Crashaw, then, never express 1'11self, so far as is known, against stage-playa: mar

wise, in his fine Epigram on Ford's Love & Suede aud 'Broken Heart' he is in sympathy with t plays.' On the other hand, in one of is

sioned sermons, his father had, with derwere pu gency, condemned 'Plaies and Payen- gre tuse

*,

1 The passage occurs in his Sermon sefore setting out for Virginia (see its title-age of (1) the divels, (2) the Papists, be come Plaiers. As for the Plaiers: parde merr beloued, for wronging this place and your pa WTL subject), they play with Princes and Poema Kige and Ministers, nay with God and Regan wy ng that is good, excellent, or holy cat evape the 11 1 1 1 action? But this may suffice, that they are Player Quy Virginia, but they are Players: they diagrast futur suey are but Players, and they haue played with bent ing aut a

for which, if they speedily repent not, I dare y. for them. But let them play on; they make a big star 1. but "Hee that sits in heaven laughes them to wanta;

the flie, they so long play with the ende i bret it wage tumir wings, and at last burnes them altogether. But why en te Paym enemies to this Plantation and doe at 27

causes. First, for that they are so maitised were the one liue by another, and they see that we end of a trace w 614. but wee send no Players, which if we wont see they that re would gaine the more at home. Secondly, the ** because wee purpose not to suffer Heathens, and the huge wee have vowed to tolerate no Papiate, wo doe te Payen wee resolue to suffer no idle persons in Virginia; which one 1 were taken in England, they know they might tume to teme von spations' [sheet II 3, unpaged]. The Talk in beldena Tee-Tex is as follows: 'I never converted but two; the one was Mr. Cranew, from writing against Plays, by telling him a way how to w deretan that place [of putting on women's apparel) which, bas neck legs

of 'A Hymn to the Name and Honor of the admirable Sainte Teresa' was yet among the Protestants. In his 'Apologie for the foregoing Hymn - than which, for subtle, delicate, finest mysticism, in words that are not so much words as music, and yet definite words too, changing with the quick bright changes of a dove's neck, there is hardly anything truer - the Poet traces up his devotion to her to his reading' of her books; as thus:

'Thus haue I back again to thy bright name,
Fair floud of holy fires! transfus'd the flame

I took from reading thee. . .

.. O pardon, if I dare to say Thine own dear bookes are guilty.'

(vol. i. p. 150.)

The words of the Preface (as above) remind us also that Crashaw took his part in the Fasts and Vigils and aus terities of the Ferrars and the saintly, if ascetic, Little Gidding' group. Going back on the 'Hymn,' such lines as these show how even then the Poet had drunk-in the very passion of Teresa e. g.

:

'Loue toucht her heart, and, lo, it beates

High, and burnes with such braue heates,
Such thirsts to dy, as dares drink vp

A thousand cold deathes in one cup.
Good reason for she breathes all fire;
Her white breast heaues with strong desire.

Sweet, not so fast! lo, thy fair Spouse,
Whom thou seekst with so swift vowes,
Calls thee back, and bidds thee come
T'embrace a milder martyrdom.

Blest powres forbid thy tender life
Should bleed vpon a barbarous knife:

1 See Professor Mayor's 'Nicholas Ferrar' (1855), pp. vi. vii. 330. He has satisfied us that Crashaw was not the author of the Epitaph on Nicholas Ferrar, as Sancroft supposed. See p. 144.

VOL. II.

a7

Or some base band have power to raze
Thy brest's chast cabinet, and vnease
A soul kept there so sweet: O no,
Wise Heaun will neuer haue it so.
Thou art Love's victime, and must dy
A death more mystical and high:
Into Loue's armies thou shalt let fall

A still-suruining funeral.

His is the dart must make the death

Whose stroke shall tast thy hallow'd breath:

A dart thrice dipt in that rich flame

Which writes thy Spouse's radiant name

Vpon the roof of Hean'n, where ay

It shines; and with a soueraign ray

Beates bright vpon the burning faces

Of soules which in that Name's sweet graces

Find everlasting smiles.

O how oft shalt thou complain

Of a sweet and subtle pain;

of intolerable joyes;

Of a death, in which who dyes

Loues his death, and dyes again,

And would for ever so he slain,

And lines and dyes; and knowes not why

To live, but that he thus may neuer leaue to dy.'

It is deeply significant to find such a Hymn as that written while yet among the Protestants.' Putting the two things together- ( his recluse, shy, meditative life under Tertullian's roofe of angels, and his prayers THERE in the night; (b) his passionately sympathetic reading, as of Teresa, and going forth of his most spiritual yearnings after the sweet and subtle pain,' and Love's death mystical and high-we get at the secret of the 'change' now being considered. However led to it, Crashaw's reading lay among books that were as fuel to fire brought to a naturally mystical and supersensitive temperament; and however formed and nurtured, such selfevidently was his temperament. His innate mysticism