Though in itself it be much blemished
With many imperfections, which smother,

And drown, the worth, and weight of it; yet, fall
What will, or can, love makes amends for all.

Love doth unite, and knit, both make, and keep
Things one together, which were otherwise,
Or would be both diverse, and diftant. Deep,
High, long, and broad, or whatsoever fize
Eternity is of, or happiness,

Love comprehends it all, be 't more or less.

Give me this threefold cord of graces then,
Faith, hope, and love, let them poffefs mine heart,
And gladly I'll refign to other men

All I can claim by nature or by art.

To mount a foul, and make it still stand stable, These are alone Engines incomparable.

Notes on the Temple and

Synagogue.

BY S. T. COLERIDGE.

HERBERT is a true poet, but a poet fui generis, the merits of whose poems will never be felt without a fympathy with the mind and character of the man. To

appreciate this volume, it is not enough that the reader poffeffes a cultivated judgment, claffical taste, or even poetic sensibility, unless he be likewise a Chriftian, and both a zealous and an orthodox, both a devout and a devotional, Chriftian. But even this will not quite fuffice. He must be an affectionate and dutiful child of the Church, and from habit, conviction, and a constitutional predisposition to ceremoniousness, in piety as in manners, find her forms and ordinances aids of religion, not fources of formality; for religion is the element in which he lives, and the region in which he moves.

The Church, fay rather, the Churchmen of England under the first two Stuarts, have been charged with a yearning after the Romish fopperies and even the Papistic ufurpations, but we shall decide more correctly, as well as more charitably, if for the Romish and Papistic we fubftitute the Patriftic leaven. There even was (natural enough from their distinguished learning, and knowledge of ecclefiaftical antiquities) an overrating of the Church and of the Fathers, for the first five or even fix centuries; the lines on the Egyptian monks, "Holy Macarius and great Anthony" [p. 222] supply a striking instance and illustration of this.

P. 12, laft ftanza. I do not understand this stanza.

P. 43. My flesh began unto my soul in pain.' Either a mifprint, or a noticeable idiom of the word began?' Yes! and a very beautiful idiom it is;-the first colloquy or addrefs of the flesh.

P. 47. With an exact and most particular truft,' &c. I find few hiftorical facts fo difficult of folution as the continuance, in Protestantism, of this anti-Scriptural superstition.

P. 57. This verse marks that,' &c. The spiritual unity of the Bible=the order and connexion of organic forms, in which the unity of life is shown, though as widely dispersed in the world of the mere fight as the text.

P. 57. Then, as difperfed herbs do watch a potion.' Some mifprint.

P. 93. A box where,' &c. Neft.

P. 97. Diftinguished.' I understand this but imperfectly. Diftinguished-they form an ifland? and the next lines refer perhaps to the then belief that all fruits grow and are nourished by water? but then how is the afcending fap "our cleanliness?"

P. 151. But he doth bid us take his blood for wine.' Nay, the contrary; take wine to be blood, and the blood of a man who died 1800 years ago. This is the faith which even the Church of England demands; for Consubstantiation only adds a mystery to that of Tranfubftantiation, which it implies.

P. 189. The Flower.' A delicious poem.

P. 189. The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.'

Epitritus primus + Dactyl + Trochee + a long monofyllable, which, together with the pause intervening between it and the preceding trochee, equals, form a pleasing variety in the Pentameter Iambic with rhymes. Ex. gr.

The late paft frōfts | trībutes of | pleasure bring.

51

N. B. First, the difference between and an amphimacer | and this not always or neceffarily arifing out of the latter being one word. It may even confift of three words: yet the effect be the fame. It is the paufe that makes the difference. Secondly, the expediency if not neceffity that the first syllable both of the Dactyl and the Trochee fhould 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. 189. As if there were no fuch cold thing.' Had been no fuch thing.

E'en in my enemies' fight.' Foemen's.

P. 198. P. 216. That they in merit shall excel.' I fhould not have expected from Herbert so open an avowal of Romanism in the article of merit. In the fame fpirit is holy Macarius and great Anthony, P. 220.*

P. 317. Although it be of tuch.' 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 Hift. of Philosophy,

p. 22.

P. 332. Though bishops without prefbyteries many.' An inftance of proving too much.

P. 333. To several perfons,' &c. Functions of times, but not perfons, of neceffity? Ex. Bishop to Archbishop.

P. 335. That he loves God, or heaven, or happiness.' Equally unthinking and uncharitable ;-I approve of them; - but yet re

*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 fays, "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.

fhould be hear tell. The fenfe is then obvious, and Herbert is not made to do that which he was the laft man in the world to have done, namely, to avow Romanifm 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 fin and the excellence of their own deeds-not fo with me, when my account is called for, fo far from laying claim to any merit, I fhall at once tender the New Testament, by which we learn that Christ hath taken upon himself our fins. Herbert does not avow the article of merit ; he hears that fome do, but resolves that to decline.""

member Roman Catholic idolatry, and that it originated in fuch high flown metaphors as these.

P. 335. The Sabbath, or Lord's Day.' Make it sense, and lose the rhyme; or make it rhyme, and lose the sense.

P. 339. The Nativity,' &c. The only poem in the Synagogue which poffeffes 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 fheath or blunt one happy ray,

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

That rays to thee, to us gave fight.

P. 348. Whitsunday.' The spiritual miracle was the descent of the Holy Ghost the outward the wind and the tongues; and fo 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. 351. All reason doth transcend.' Moft true; but not contradict. Reason is to faith, as the eye to the telescope.

Mr. Coleridge, in his Biographia Literaria, after quoting fome ftanzas from Chaucer's Troilus and Creffida, fays, " Another exquifite mafter of this species of style, where the scholar and the poet fupplies the material, but the perfect well-bred gentleman, the expreffions and the arrangement, is George Herbert. As from the nature of the subject, and the two 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 fonnet, equally admirable for the weight, number, and expreffion of the thoughts, and for the fimple dignity of the language (unless