To the higher forms of poetry, so essential is faith in the invisible and eternal, that were religion claiming all that is her own, the fairest gems would vanish from our secular minstrelsy. But it is not the design of these pages to recover from the world's poets the golden grains they may have gathered in the channel of Siloah, or the precious stones they may have picked up among the ruins of Zion. There is no setting in which the thoughts and language of Inspiration are not beautiful; and, as James Montgomery has remarked, the few passages in Shakspeare which can be termed "religious" are all favourites, and of the highest poetical beauty.
Why, all the souls that are, were forfeit once,
And He, that might the vantage best have took,
Found out the remedy. How would you be,
If He, which is the top of
But judge you as you are? Oh! think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made."
"The quality of mercy is not strain'd;
It droppeth as a gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed :
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shews the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings:
But mercy is above the sceptered sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then shew likest God's,
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this—
That in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy."
"Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear
In all my miseries; but thou hast forced me,
Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman.
Let's dry our eyes: and thus far hear me, Cromwell;
And, when I am forgotten, as I shall be,
And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention
Of me more must be heard of, say, I taught thee;
Say, Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory,
And sounded all the depths and shoals of honour,
Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in ;
A sure and safe one, though thy master miss'd it.
Mark but my fall, and that that ruin'd me.
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition;
By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then,
The image of his Maker, hope to win by 't?
Love thyself last: cherish those hearts that hate thee;
Corruption wins not more than honesty.
Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,
To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not:
Let all the ends thou aimest at, be thy country's,
Thy God's, and truth's; then if thou fall'st, O Cromwell!
Thou fall'st a blessed martyr."
Our errand, however, lies with poets who have professedly consecrated their powers to sacred themes.
literature was more popuThe fashion of versifying
During the sixteenth century, no lar in France than sacred poetry. psalms, which Clement Marot originated in the court of Francis I., found many followers; but, during all that tuneful century, no disciple arose who could rival "the poet of princes, and the
prince of poets," till another soldier and Calvinist, DU BARTAS,* published his famous poem of "The Week," which, in the course of five or six years, ran through thirty editions, and was translated into many languages.† Of all these translations, probably none was more faithful or spirited than the English version by JOSHUA SYLVESTER. It must be confessed that it preserves only too well the occasional turgidity of the Gascon original; and in the finical reaction against everything quaint or fervid which signalised the flat afternoon of last century, both Du Bartas and Sylvester fell into utter oblivion. They deserve to be resuscitated. No doubt there is much that will not bear criticism, as, for example, the lines which "wrapt into an ecstasy" Dryden's boyish ardour, and which so amused him on a riper reperusal :
"Now, when the winter's keener breath began
To crystallise the Baltic Ocean,
To glaze the lakes, to bridle up the floods,
And periwig with snow the bald-pate woods."
But there is a wonderful amount of that creative imagination which, within reverential limits, fills up inspiration's outline, and which helps to bring us into life-like contact with the times departed; and we think the coldest critic must confess to the ingenuity of passages like "The Handicrafts," and the pathos of such a canto as "The Fathers."
In the first of the following passages, Cain is represented as the first horse-tamer,—a feat as marvellous as that launching of the first boat which so elicits the Latin poet's admiration.
From the library of the late Mr Heber we possess an excellent Latin translation by Gabriel de Lerm, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth,"Gulielmi Sallustii Bartassii Hebdomas," Parisiis, 1573,—a misprint for 1583. Born 1563; died at Middleburg, in Holland, 1618.
The Taming of the Horse.
"This goodly jennet gently first he wins,
And then to back him actively begins;
Steady and straight he sits, turning his sight
Still to the forepart of his palfrey light.
The chafed horse, such thrall ill-suffering,
Begins to snuff and snort, and leap and fling;
And flying swift, his fearful rider makes
Like some unskilful lad that undertakes
To hold some ship's helm while the headlong tide
Carries away the vessel and her guide;
Who, near devoured in the jaws of death,
Pale, fearful, shivering, faint, and out of breath,
A thousand times (with heaven-erected eyes)
Repents him of so bold an enterprise.
The wise-wax'd rider, not esteeming best
To take too much now of his lusty beast,
Restrains his fury: then with learned wand
The triple curvet makes him understand:
With skilful voice he gently cheers his pride,
And on his neck his flattering palm doth slide;
He stops him steady still, new breath to take,
And in the same path brings him softly back.
But th' angry steed, rising and reining proudly,
Striking the stones, stamping and neighing loudly,
Calls for the combat, plunges, leaps, and prances,
Befoams the path; with sparkling eyes he glances,
Champs on his burnish'd bit, and gloriously
His nimble fetlocks lifteth belly high;
All side-long jaunts, on either side he justles,
And 's waving crest courageously he bristles,
Making the gazers glad, on every side,
To give more room unto his portly pride.
Cain gently strokes him, and now sure in seat,
Ambitiously seeks still some fresher feat
To be more famous: one while trots the ring,
Another while he doth him backward bring,
Then off all four he makes him lightly bound,
And to each hand to manage rightly round,
To stoop, to stop, to caper, and to swim,
To dance, to leap, to hold up every limb:
And all, so done, with time-grace-order'd skill,
As both had but one body and one will.
Th' one for his art no little glory gains :
Th' other through practice by degrees attains
Grace in his gallop, in his pace agility,
Lightness of head, and in his stop facility,
Strength in his leap, and steadfast managings,
Aptness in all, and in his course new wings."
The Discovery of Fron.
"While through a forest Tubal (with his yew
And ready quiver) did a boar pursue,
A burning mountain from his fiery vein
An iron river rolls along the plain.
The witty huntsman, musing, thither hies,
And of the wonder deeply 'gan devise.
And first perceiving that the scalding metal
Becoming cold, in any shape would settle,
And grow so hard that with his sharpened side
The firmest substance it would soon divide;
He casts a hundred plots, and ere he parts
He moulds the groundwork of a hundred arts:
For, now the way to thousand works reveal'd,
Which long shall live, maugre the rage of Eld.
In two square creases of unequal sizes
To turn two iron streamlings he devises;
Cold, takes them thence: then off the dross he rakes,
And this a hammer, that an anvil makes;
And, adding tongs to these two instruments,
He stores his house with iron implements:
As forks, rakes, hatchets, plough-shares, coulters, staples,
Bolts, hinges, hooks, nails, whittles, spokes, and grapples ;
And, grown more cunning, hollow things he formeth,
He hatcheth files, and winding vices wormeth,
He shapeth shears, and then a saw indents,
Then beats a blade, and then a lock invents."
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