Thus life doth vanish as this bow is gone,
Said I. That sacred nymph forthwith reply'd,
Vain showes may vanish that have gaily shone
To feeble sense; but if the truth be tri'd,
Life cannot perish, or to nothing slide:
It is not life that falleth under sight,
None but vain flitting qualities are ey'd

By wondring ignorance. The vitall spright
As surely doth remain as the Sun's lasting light.

This bow, whose breaking struck thy troubled heart,
Of causelesse grief, I hope, shall thee secure,
When I have well explain'd with skilful art
By its resemblance what things must indure,
What things decay and cannot standen sure.
The higher causes of that colour'd ark,
What ere becomes of it, do sit secure.

That so (the body falling) life's fair spark
Is safe, I'll clearly show if you but list to mark.

He has found it necessary to annex a glossary to the poem, but these uncouth words which require a glossary are not the worst. The reader who does not understand Greek and Hebrew will naturally look there for the meaning of such words as acronychall, Adamah, Anantasthesie, &c.

c... introducing foreign coin is not so heavy an offence as clipping the King's English is, which he has done most unmercifully. If the word which presented itself did not rhyme, he made it, and wrote passe for past, narre for near, emisse for emitted, conject for conjecture, &c. and it is sometimes past the reach of conjecture to find out his meaning. In the midst of a very fine passage he calls Fear or Doubt a sturdy rascal,'.. and Alexander the Great is designated as that pert Pellaan lad.' Idee is generally used for idea, a word which had not then been made trite by fashionable metaphysics.

A curious passage occurs against materialism.

For then our soul can nothing be but bloud,
Or nerves, or brains, or body modifide,
Whence it will follow that cold-stopping crud,
Hard moldy cheese, dry nuts, when they have rid
Due circuits though the heart, at last shall speed
Of life and sense;.. look thorough our thin eyes

And view the close wherein the cow did feed

Whence they were milk'd; gross pie-crust will grow

wise,

And pickled cucumbers, sans doubt, philosophize.

Poor young Beattie has something in the same strain of thought.

A certain High Priest could explain

How the soul is but nerve at the most,
And how Milton had glands in his brain
Which secreted the Paradise Lost.

In looking over this account of Henry More's strange poems, I do not perceive that any thing too harsh has been said of their defects, and yet it leaves a more unfavourable opinion of the author's talents, than I feel myself, or by any means wish to communicate. It is generally acknowledged that a man may write good verses, and yet be no poet; it is not so generally acknowledged that he may be a poet and yet write bad ones, Three fourths of the English poets have had less genius than Henry

More, but not one of them who Р SSCSSed any has contrived so completely to smother it, and render it useless.

213. Quaker Preaching.

Sewel, who is more generally known by his Dutch and English Dictionary than as an English writer, was the grandson of a Brownist who emigrated from Kidderminster and settled at Utrecht. His mother, Judith Zinspenning, visited England, and was much esteemed there among the Quakers. He relates a curious anecdote of her. "She was moved. to speak at the meeting at Kingston, where William Caton interpreted for her. At another time, being in a meeting at London, and he not present, and finding herself stirred up to declare of the loving kindness of the Lord to those that feared him, she desired one Peter Sybrands to be her interpreter, but he, though an honest man, yet not very fit for that service, one or more friends

told her, they were so sensible of the Power by which she spoke, though they did not understand her words, yet they were edified by the life and power that accompanied her speech, and therefore they little mattered the want of interpretation. And so she went on without any interpreter." The good Quaker relates this anecdote with perfect simplicity, and yet he thought church-music an abomination! In these cases how much wiser are the Romanists in their generation than the children of light!

214. Hats.

The grandfather of Brown, the famous head of the Puritans, is said to have enjoyed the same Grandee privilege as Earl Strongbow. Fuller* says he had seen a charter granted to this Francis Brown by King Henry VIII. (the 16th of July, in the 18th of his reign) and

* Church History, Book ix. p. 167.