His Church History.

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a bitterness of tone towards Protestants, which Möhler himself never showed. We could have desiderated a more full account of the intercourse which, during his Munich residence, Möhler had with the two Gorres, Baader, the brothers Brentano, Philipps, and other Romanist celebrities.

The Bavarian capital was then as much the intellectual headquarters of Romanism as the Prussian was of Protestantism, and something better than the fragmentary and unsatisfactory notices in the last chapter of the second section of the volume might surely have been forthcoming.

In both the works before us, Gams has followed the plan of indicating publications posterior to the time of Möhler's life. This is useful to the readers of the church history, but seems scarcely called for in estimating the reviews.

Möhler seems to have contemplated the publishing a Church History that should, once for all, be for the Germany of our day, what the histories of Natalis Alexander, Fleury, and Tillemont, had been for their time in France-the Catholic Church History. The warm admirer of Neander, he sought to be, in this field, his Protestant rival. There were already, and the number greatly increased during his latter years, various Romanist manuals, of one or two volumes size. But a thoroughly satisfactory large history did not exist. The work of Count Stolberg was the production, not of a professional theologian, but of a well informed layman-all the more zealous, indeed, because a convert from Protestantism; the work of Katerkamp was more pleasing and judicious than profound, and wanted almost all reference to authorities; there was, therefore, abundant scope for Möhler's ambition. It would have been a worthy life-long occupation. But time was not given him for it.

The work on our table is the sketch, not the picture. Widely printed as these volumes are, they hardly contain more matter than the manual of Ritter; they comprehend less matter than the manual of Allzog. And this makes it the less satisfactory, when we find some parts of the narrative elaborated at disproportionately great length, while others are hurried over. The book is a valuable one to those who are entering on the study of church history, but it is disappointing to those who have made greater progress in the study. We extract some of the remarks on St Bernard :

"Bernard had much to do with allaying the differences in the Roman Church, and with bringing back the refractory inhabitants of the seven-hilled city to their allegiance, but he had also rendered the greatest service to the Church in general; and therefore did not shrink from laying before the Pope with the utmost freedom the abuses, which he at least believed to have found, especially in the

highest ranks of the hierarchy itself. This he effected in the five books, On Consideration of One's Self.' The work is dedicated to P. Eugenius III., who was chosen to the chair of St Peter in 1145. Eugenius was a scholar of Bernard, and belonged to the same order, so that the saint thought himself amply justified in giving him a word in season.

"Bernard had remarked, for he was a keen observer of men, though a monk, that persons occupied with public affairs were apt to neglect a salutary self-inspection. That his beloved papal pupil might not err in this way, he exhorts him to much self-scrutiny, and so obtain man's highest blessing, consecration and union to God. The Pope ought to be a pattern for all priests; the Roman Church for all churches; the Roman state for all states. But the Roman clergy were deficient in moral earnestness and moral dignity. Three especial abuses existed,— the frequent appeals to Rome, the exemption of abbots and bishops from metropolitan control, and the legateeships."

After giving the essence of the book in these connections, Möhler proceeds :

"This work of St Bernard is an especially important source for the history of the papacy in the Middle Ages; it is so, not only from its contents, which make it valuable to every clergyman, for in it is a true mirror of clerical life, but also from its presenting a picture of the times as they were. We must bear in mind that here St Bernard has undertaken the office of a censor,-of a judge of the morals of his time. The censor is like the priest at the confessional, one who has only the evil before him,-what needs amending. He is silent about the good, or he will have it yet better; he will have the good without a shade; he is always desirous that men should mount from a lower to a higher degree of virtue. This is the duty of the censor; he cannot act otherwise. But the function of the historian is entirely different. It is his business to contemplate offices and persons in the mass; he has to delineate both good and evil, to weigh the one against the other, to view the whole bearing of the times, and see what was practicable in the circumstances of the case. Appeals were customary to Rome, because local judges were either incompetent for their office, or had no power to carry out their sentences; legates had often been useful by contributing to the extinction of slavery, the making up peace between contending neighbours, the revivifying the decaying custom of provincial councils."-(II. pp. 395–405.)

This defence, however ingenious, really evades the matter of Bernard's accusations. And is every dark page of secular history, as well as ecclesiastical, to be softened down because the historian may be conceived as passing into the function of a

censor?

Möhler thus describes the later mystical tendency of the Middle Ages:

"In the writings of Peter d'Ailly, there are already manifest the traces of a mystical direction, which at this period became very

Medieval Mysticism.

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powerful, and spread itself in far wider circles than before. His famous scholar, John Gerson (1363-1429), also Chancellor of the University of Paris, and of great service in the removal of the Western Schism, was rightly termed the Mystic. His whole effort was to divest interest from argumentative speculation to mysticism. He blames the forwardness and combativeness of theologians who often lost themselves in mere verbal quibbles. He complains that philosophy had yielded far too much sway in theology. It was high time to educe a mystical theology from repentance and love. The mystical theology, says he, is a knowledge of God by experience, of which we become possessed in the embrace of uniting love. It is simple and foolish, but far more elevated than a boastful wisdom. He prefers to Thomas Aquinas St Bonaventura, and alongside of him the Victorines; and of the fathers, Augustine and the supposed Dionysius the Areopagite. The mystical writings of Gerson are numerous,—we name among them his Considerations on Mystical Theology,' and his Treatise on the Mount of Contemplation.' Gerson does not despise a deeper knowledge of the great divine truths, but expects this to proceed from a perfection, to which the wearisome efforts of mere speculation could not attain, but which would issue out of an immediate supernatural contemplation. Nicolas of Clemangis (1860-1440), nearly connected with Gerson, and, like him, zealous for the unity of the church, in recommending the life of prayer to the heartless speculatists of his time, shews himself here also at one with his friend. But especially must we direct attention to a number of men who, proceeding from the school of Master Eckhardt (d. 1829), as they wrote in the German language, are called the German mystics. The greatest among them were John Tauler (d. 1361), Henry Suao (d. 1365), both, like Eckhardt, belonging to the Dominican order, and John Ruysbrock. Many of them, as the author of the German Theology,' published by Luther, and Master Eckhardt himself, did not keep themselves entirely free from pantheistic errors. One of the most unexceptionable the most acceptable fruit of the Mystik' of the fifteenth century-is the well known little book of The Imitation of Christ,' by Thomas Hammerken, usually called a Kempis (d. 1471).”—(II. 576-8.)

But

The two works on our table will perhaps not extend, but will maintain the reputation of Möhler. It might have been interesting to have had a specimen or two of his sermons. he probably set little store by productions for which, in constant academical labour, he had, once made a professor, no more occasion. He was a learned, candid, and able defender of Romanism, but we have no reason to believe that either the "Symbolik," or any other of his works, has proved the means of leading, either in Germany or out of it, any to Rome. Confirm Romanists they may, convert Protestants they will not.

IX.-GENERAL LITERATURE.

Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript. Edited by JOHN W. HALES, M.A., and FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL, M.A., assisted by Professor CHILD and W. CHAPPELL, Esq. Vol. I. and Vol. II. Part I. London: Trübner & Co. 1867.

More than a century has elapsed since the "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry" startled the conventional proprieties, and upset the critical canons of a dull and formal age, and it is only now that we are having a glimpse of the mysterious MS. to which that elegant work owed so large a measure of its inspiration. The poor eighteenth century has been so well abused, that a reaction in its favour is not unlikely to set in. We would not, therefore, swell the chorus of detraction, now dying away to feeble echo, further than by remarking, that its worst characteristic appears to us to have been a thoroughly self-satisfied repose in comfortable doctrines of finality in all things, which was fatal to originality in anything. Its literary mechanism, good and useful for one generation, because it was its own honest devising, and because it yielded appropriate expression to its best thoughts, became for two succeeding generations a mere pattern for imitation, an external form uninformed by life. An adapted classicalism, bearing about the same resemblance to the ancient models that the domestic decorative.styles of the age bore to the architecture of Greece or Rome, was regarded as the sum of perfection. Everybody, with or without an idea to communicate, had acquired a proficiency in its manipulation. It was a level dusty highway, whence few had the courage to turn aside into green lanes and pleasant fields, for even there some absurd pastoral masquerade, with painted shepherdesses, would mar the scene. The publication of Dr Percy's three small volumes of ballad lore, in 1765, marked the dawn of a new order of things, by ushering in what is known as the romantic school, yet was this a timidly vindicated adventure on his part. It is thus we occasionally see the modest work of the student compassing an object, perhaps dimly enough perceived by himself, that no amount of popular agitation or extensively organised propagandism could have reached. The time was ripe for the change, and other influences were at work more or less intelligently in the same direction. Sundry stiff and vapid imitations of our early poesy had roused an interest in the originals. The recollection of Addison's admiring reference to the glowing words uttered by Sir Philip Sidney over the ballad of the Chevy Chase, was still fresh in the minds of an untoward generation, which had reared artificial fountains over England's Helicon. Thomas Warton was exhuming the forgotten treasures of our elder poets, and Horace Walpole was feeling his way darkly, and with pardonable error, to a revival of Gothic taste. These first indications of a great revolution in literature and art are now commonplace references, although at the time of their manifestation no such results were predicated. The influence of the Gothic renaissance, however, has hitherto been

Bishop Percy's Folio MS.

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chiefly confined to letters. The fine arts are yet of younger and sicklier growth in England, but its literature will ever bear imperishable memorials of the bright after-glow of romance. If it culminated, as has been said, in the brilliant achievements of Walter Scott, who might never have sung of border chivalry but for the happy inspiration of the "Reliques," while as a boy he lingered with them under the old plantane tree at Kelso, there is still an autumnal glory in the Arthurian Idylls of our laureate. In what direction the next transition may tend, we are not in a position to speculate. Such questions are only answered by the events. Each young modern school, according to its predilections, may flatter itself upon a desirable ascendancy, or be disquieted with vexing thoughts of neglect and oblivion, but when the inevitable change occurs it will assuredly be traced back to its inceptive stages. Perhaps, nay more than perhaps, its unmistakeable signs are lying unobserved amongst us at this moment. "In thus dealing with our literature," however, as Professor Morley has well observed, "when we parcel it out however aptly into periods of this influence and that, let us remember that all such distinctions are in their nature arbitrary. Changes of literary taste are never so abrupt that all writing in one fashion ceases when a new fashion first becomes predominant." But whatever befalls, we are safe to say that the influence of romance is now on the decline. The trick of its style has been imitatively caught by hosts of camp-followers, and the term romantic has already acquired an equivocal meaning. Its magnificent results, nevertheless, are, with us and with our children, an inalienable heritage. Possibly the popular element in the romance period, as represented in the homely ballad of the common folk, may yet yield fresh beauties to our literature, but the praise of high-born dames has been sung, and the bravery of knights and squires must sleep at Abbotsford.

Percy has been blamed, say rather savagely attacked, by Ritson and others for having dishonestly tampered with the originals of the ancient pieces of poetry he gave to the world as the select remains of the bards and minstrels. He cannot, however, be charged with moral, as with literal, unfaithfulness in this respect, that is, with designedly misleading the public; for in his preface he gave clear notice both "to the judicious antiquary and to the reader of taste," that considerable liberties had been taken with the old copies. "The editor," he remarked, "could seldom prevail on himself to indulge the vanity of making a formal claim to improvement, but must plead guilty to the charge of concealing his own share in the amendments." The various collections of which he availed himself were duly specified, and many of them were within the reach of jealous inquirers. The greater part, however, of the poems was "extracted from an ancient folio MS. in the editor's possession, which contained near two hundred poems, songs, and metrical romances. This manuscript," he added, " was written about the middle of the last century, but contained compositions of all times and dates, from the ages prior to Chaucer to the conclusion of the reign of Charles I." The authenticity of the MS. was further vouched for by "the author of The Rambler, and the late Mr Shenstone," but the former did not stand a willing godfather at