tiform, and unlimited; possessing both the fertility and the munificence of nature. Genius rises in renewed radiance from the hallowing waters of Jordan. "But," resumes Johnson, "the topics of devotion are few, and being few, are universally known; but few as they are, they can be made no more, they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment, and very little from novelty of expression." But the fountains of human feeling are not so soon exhausted; and every one who is familiar with the treasures of English theology, will be enabled to refute the assertion of Johnson. Our topics of devotion may be numbered by our necessities; and he, at least, who, through various obstacles, and many sufferings, and griping penury, had climbed into public notice by the energy of his character and the favour of Providence, ought surely to have reflected upon his own obligations, and to have acknowledged that his own topics of devotion could never be few. Gratitude for mercies, resignation under chastisement, supplication for forgiveness, are only variations of the same great duty. To the fancy of the poet, above all, nothing can be entirely exhausted of its beauty and life; by the rays of his own invention he draws forth new colours and lustre. Homer beheld the moonshine upon the shield of Achilles, and Sidney watched her going astray through the sky, and Virgil lighted up with her beams the face of the little Iulus in the tumultuous streets of Troy; and Landor beheld her reflection upon the wet sand of the sea-shore, like the shadow from "jasper column half upreared;" yet Wordsworth, in one of his latest poems, has presented her under a different aspect, and shown us that the springs of poetry can only be dried up with the heart of man. But the most beautiful refutation of Johnson's theory has been afforded by the Christian Year of Mr. Keble, in which every day of the Christian's life furnishes a theme to the poet. The Hymns of Heber, if enlarged to the original outline, might have been united with a volume which breathes the ardour of Ken, without his conceits, and the meekness of Herbert, without his harshness; which illustrates the saying of Crashaw, that the wounded is the wounding heart, and makes the reader feel, because the author has felt before him. ADDITIONAL NOTES. PAGE 5. THE following interesting letter respecting Milton's alleged Rustication, recently appeared in the Athenæum:— "Sir,-On looking lately into the first volume of Milton's Select Prose Works, edited by my friend Mr. St. John, I noticed that the biographers of the poet are not agreed as to the fact of his Rustication from the University. Among those who maintain the affirmative, or admit it, are Dr. Johnson, the Rev. J. Mitford, and Sir Egerton Bridges. Turning to Johnson's Life of Milton, I found the charge and the evidence on which it rests stated and commented on in the following terms:- 'It seems plain, from his own verses to Diodati, that he had incurred Rustication (a temporary dismission into the country) with, perhaps, the loss of a term: Me tenet urbs refluâ quam Tamesis alluit undâ, Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum, * Si sit hoc exilium patrios adiisse penates, Non ego vel profugi nomen, sortemve recuso, Lætus et exilii conditione fruor. I cannot find any meaning, but this, which even kindness and reverence can give the term vetiti Laris,-a habitation from which he is excluded, or how exile can be otherwise interpreted.' Now it is quite clear to me that if this be the only evidence that can be adduced in support of the allegation, it must fall to the ground. In the first place, the Doctor's translation of the phrase vetiti Laris is not strictly correct; ་ and, in the second, a very slight degree of attention to the scope of the entire passage will enable the reader (whether kind and reverential or otherwise) to discover that the inference the Doctor draws from it is unwarranted. The words vetiti Laris do not mean 'a habitation from which he is excluded,' but a 'habitation,' or more properly a domestic hearth which had been forbidden to him,' and when taken in connexion with dudum, as they unquestionably ought to be, they denote a domestic hearth which had been lately forbidden to him, but is so no longer. In short, I am quite satisfied that the words in question refer, not to the University, but to his father's house, where he was residing at the time he addressed the Elegy to Diodati; and that the line in which they occur, taken in connexion with the context, contains simply the statement that it is one of the agreeable circumstances attending his present situation, that he is no longer afflicted with the home sickness he used to experience when forbidden by the discipline of his college to visit a paternal mansion. As to the other expressions, exilium and profugus, they need not occasion the poet's ‘kind and reverential admirers' much uneasiness; it appears that the verses were addressed to Diodati in reply to a communication the poet had received from him; and in order satisfactorily to account for the terms under review, we have only to suppose that Diodati, ignorant of the feelings with which Milton now regarded the University, had condoled with him on his unavoidable absence from college during a recess, and had spoken of it as a state of exile. This view of his situation Milton repudiates in strains certainly not very complimentary to his alma mater, but which as certainly do not warrant the inference Dr. Johnson too readily drew from them, and which subsequent and less prejudiced biographers have too hastily adopted. "I am, Sir, "Your obedient servant, Queen Anne Street. "ROBERT MACLURE." |