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The following Hymn requires no criticism to recommend it :

Rise, oh, my soul, with thy desires to heaven,

And with divinest contemplation use

Thy time, where time's eternity is given,

And let vain thoughts no more thy thoughts abuse;
But down in darkness let them lie,

So live thy better, let thy worse thoughts die.

And thou, my soul, inspired with holy flame,
View and review with most regardful eye
That holy cross whence thy salvation came,

On which thy Saviour and thy sin did die.
For in that sacred object is much pleasure,
And in that Saviour is my life, my treasure.

To Thee, O Jesu, I direct my eyes;

To thee my hands, to thee my humble knees,
To thee my heart shall offer sacrifice,

To thee my thoughts, who my thoughts only sees.
To thee myself, myself and all I give ;

To thee I die, to thee I only live.

The lover of poetry will always regret that Raleigh's retreats to his charming seat at Sherborne, were not more frequent, and of longer continuance; and that the "pure contents" which, in his own words, were wont to "pitch their tents" upon those pastures, were unable to detain him from the empty vanities of the court.

I bring this rapid Introduction to an end with regret ; little has been said, where the heart of every poetical student would prompt him to say much. Many names have been passed over unnoticed that deserve to be treasured up in the memory of the Christian. Some of these will be mentioned in the following memoirs. I have walked through the burial-ground of our Elder Poets with no irreverent footstep, nor shall I have lingered there in vain, if I have renewed one obliterated inscription, or bound one flower upon a tomb.

SIR JOHN DAVIES.

THE author of the earliest philosophical poem in our language may seem to claim a longer notice than I am able to bestow; but his life presents no incidents of general interest, and Mr. George Chalmers, in the memoir prefixed to his reprint of Davies' Law Tracts, has communicated every circumstance known concerning him. To that account I am indebted for the following particulars.

John Davies was born at Tisbury in Wiltshire*, where his father, originally of New Inn, practised as a solicitor. He was admitted a commoner of Queen's College, Oxford, in Michaelmas Term 1585, not having then completed his fifteenth year. In the beginning of 1588 he removed to the Middle Temple, but after an interval of two years returned to the university and took his Bachelor's degree. Although the irregularity of his conduct, while residing in the Temple, had excited the displeasure of that Society, he was called to the bar in 1595; but was expelled, in February 1597-8, for beating a fellow-student, named Richard Martin, in the public Hall. After this disgrace he retired to Oxford, where he is considered to have written his poem upon the Immortality of the Soul, which appeared in 1599; the Dedication to the Queen, however, is dated July 11, 1592. The difficulty may be resolved into a typographical error; or it is possible that the manuscript might have been withheld from the press after the dedication was composed. His Orchestra, a poem upon dancing, published in 1596, had carried his name to court, and when the Secretary Cecil entertained Elizabeth, Davies con

* Southey says, in a hamlet of Tetbury.

tributed to a dramatic performance, of which a copy is preserved among the Harleian MSS.

He did not, however, resign himself to the visions of romance, but appeared in the parliament which assembled October 27, 1601. His rising character, combined with a suitable expression of regret for his intemperate conduct, and, perhaps, more than either, the powerful intervention of Lord Ellesmere, had procured his re-admission into the Temple; and when Lord Hunsdon went to Scotland to congratulate James the First upon his accession to the British throne, he was accompanied by Davies. That learned monarch, having inquired whether he were Nosce Teipsum,-a characteristic play of words upon the title of his poem,-welcomed him with very flattering marks of esteem. His advance to prosperity was now rapid. In 1603 he was sent as Solicitor-General to Ireland, and was subsequently chosen Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. Honours continued to flow in upon him, and he was within sight of the Chief Justiceship of England, when a sudden fit of apoplexy put an end to all his projects. He died on the 7th of December, 1626, in the fifty-seventh year of his age, and was buried in St. Martin's in the Fields, where a monument, no longer existing, was erected to his memory.

Sir John Davies was endowed with a very comprehensive intellect; he was the author of our first and noblest didactic poem, of the most sagacious political treatise upon the state of Ireland which had hitherto appeared, and of the earliest report of cases in the Irish Law Courts, during the four hundred years of English domination. Wood says that he versified some of the Psalms, and Mr. Park has printed a specimen of his epigrams. The Immortality of the Soul, although received upon its appearance with the admiration it deserved, had fallen into comparative oblivion, when Nahum Tate, at the instigation of the Earl

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of Dorset, republished the poem with a short but intelligent preface, in which he advocated, with becoming enthusiasm, the poetical claims of Davies. After alluding to the degraded condition of poetry, he continues, "This very consideration should advance the esteem of the following poem, wherein are represented the various movements of the mind; at which we are as much transported as with the most excellent scenes of passion in Shakspeare or Fletcher for in this, as in a mirrour, (that will not flatter,) we see how the soul arbitrates in the understanding upon the various reports of sense, and all the changes of imagination; how compliant the will is to her dictates, and obeys her as a queen does her king, at the same time acknowledging a subjection, and yet retaining a majesty. How the passions move at her command, like a welldisciplined army; from which regular composure of the faculties, all operating in their proper time and place, there arises a complacency upon the whole soul, that infinitely transcends all other pleasures-what deep philosophy is this! to discover the process of God's art in fashioning the soul of man after his own image; by remarking how one part moves another, and how those motions are varied by several positions of each part, from the first springs and plummets, to the very hand that points out the visible and last effects. What eloquence and force of wit to convey these profound speculations in the easiest language, expressed in words so vulgarly received, that they are understood by the meanest capacities! For the poet takes care in every line to satisfy the understandings of mankind: he follows step by step the workings of the mind from the first strokes of sense, then of fancy, afterwards of judgment, into the principle, both of natural and supernatural motives; hereby the soul is made intelligible, which comprehends all things besides: the boundless tracks of sea and land; and the vaster spaces of Heaven; that vital

principle of action, which has always been busied in inquiries abroad, is now made known to itself; in so much that we may find out what we ourselves are, from whence we came, and whither we must go; we may perceive what noble guests those are, which we lodge in our bosoms, and which are nearer to us than all other things, and yet nothing further from our acquaintance.

"But here all the labryinths and windings of the human frame are laid open: it is seen by what pullies and wheels the work is carried on, as plainly as if a window were opened into our breast; for it is the work of God alone to create a mind. The next to this is to show how its operations are performed."

This estimate of the genius of Davies is just and discriminative. For clearness of thought, ingenuity of reasoning, accuracy of deduction, and propriety of illustration, his work may be numbered among the literary marvels of that age. While Shakspeare was peopling the stage with picturesque pageantry; and Spenser, in the zenith of his reputation, was irradiating the intellectual atmosphere with the sunshine of his beautiful imagination, Davies struck into a path in which he had no foreunner, and cannot be said to have had any successor. Having, in the Orchestra, displayed a playful melody of diction, and shown his acquaintance with all the graces of style, he produced a poem which, to the highest dignity of conception, united the stateliest harmony of expression. Waller, was the observation of Johnson, might have studied with advantage the poem of Davies, which, though merely philosophical, seldom leaves the ear ungratified. With a fancy nourished by extensive observation of books and men, he employs it only to light up the chain of his reasoning, and to render more completely manifest the mechanism of the argument. "His thoughts," says Tate, "are moulded into easy and significant words; his rhymes never mislead the sense,

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