in Hierom's time, twelve hundred years ago, brought forth in his declining age so many and so religious poems, straitly charging his soul not to let pass so much as one either night or day without some divine song: and as sedulous Prudentius, so prudent Sedulius was famous in this poetical divinity, the coëtan* of Bernard, who sang the history of Christ with as much devotion in himself as admiration to others, all of which were followed by the choicest wits of Christendome,-Nonnus translating all St. John's Gospel into Greek verse; Sannazar, the late living image and happy imitator of Virgil, bestowing ten years upon a song, only to celebrate that one day when Christ was born unto us on earth, and we (a happy change) unto God in heaven; Thrice honoured Bartas, and our (I know no other name more glorious than his own) Mr. Edmund Spenser (two blessed souls) not thinking ten years enough, laying out their whole lives upon this one study."

The following eloquent passage may be compared with Sidney's Defence of Poetry:

"To the second sort, therefore, that eliminate poets out of their city gates as though they were now grown so bad, as they could neither grow worse nor better, though it be somewhat hard for those to be the only men should want cities, that were the only causers of the building of them, and somewhat inhuman to thrust them into the woods, who were the first that called men out of the woods.

"I would gladly learn what kind of professions these men would be entreated to entertain that so deride and disaffect poesy. Would they admit of philosophers, that after they have burnt out the whole candle of their life in the circular study of sciences, cry out at length, se nihil prorsus scire? Or should musicians be welcome to them

*The contemporary.

that Dant sine mente sonum, bring delight with them indeed, could they as well express with their instruments a voice, as they can a sound. Or would they most approve of soldiers, that defend the life of their countrymen, either by the death of themselves or their enemies?

"If philosophers please them, who is it that knows not that all the lights of example to clear their precepts are borrowed by philosophers from poets; that without Homer's examples, Aristotle would be as blind as Homer. If they retain musicians, who ever doubted but that poets infused the very soul into the inarticulate sounds of music —that without Pindar and Horace, the Lyrics had been silenced for ever? If they must needs entertain soldiers, who can but confess that poets restore that life again to soldiers, which they before lost for the safety of their country; that without Virgil, Æneas had never been so much as heard of. How can they, for shame, deny commonwealths to them, who were the first authors of them; how can they deny the blind philosopher that teaches them, his light; the empty musician that delights them, his soul; the dying soldier that defends their life, immortality after his own death. Let philosophy, let ethics, let all the arts bestow on us this gift, that we be not thought dead men whilst we remain among the living; it is only poetry can make us be thought living men when we lie among the dead. And, therefore, I think it unequal to thrust them out of our cities that call us out of our graves, to think so hardly of them that make us to be so well thought of, to deny them to live awhile among us that make us live for ever among our posterity."

If Fletcher's sermons were composed in this style, their loss deserves to be lamented.

Christ's Victory is divided into four cantos, and opens with a stanza so antithetically constructed as, in some measure, to impair the solemnity of the subject; but the

poet soon rises into a nobler strain when he thinks of those

Sacred writings, in whose antique leaves

The memories of heaven entreasured lie*.

Milton's Invocation to the Holy Spirit in the Paradise Regained is considered by Mr. Dunster "supremely beautiful;" it does not surpass the solemn and enraptured piety of Fletcher:

O thou that didst this holy fire infuse,

And taught this breast, but late the grave of hell,
Wherein a blind and dead heart lived, to swell

With better thoughts; send down those lights that lend
Knowledge how to begin, and how to end,

The love that never was, and never can be penned.

In the first canto, Christ's Victory in Heaven, he traces the redemption of man to the pleadings of mercy, who dwelt in the quiet of that Sabbath where "saintly heroes" rest from their labours. When Mercy beheld the ruin of that "Golden Building," once illuminated with every "star of excellence," she is represented lifting up "the music of her voice" against the decrees of fate.

The interposition of offended Justice is grandly conceived:

But Justice had no sooner Mercy seen

Smoothing the wrinkles of her Father's brow,
But up she starts, and throws herself between;
As when a vapour from a moory slough
Meeting with fresh Eöus, that but now

Opened the world which all in darkness lay,
Doth heaven's bright face of his rays disarray,
And sads the smiling orient of the springing day.

She was a virgin of austere regard,

Not as the world esteems her, deaf and blind,

But as the eagle, that hath oft compared

*My quotations are made from the original edition of 1610. The orthography only is modernized.

Her eye with heaven's, so, and more brightly shined
Her lamping sight; for she the same could wind

Into the solid heart, and with her ears

The silence of the thought loud speaking hears,
And in one hand a pair of even scales she wears.
No riot of affection revel kept

Within her breast, but a still apathy
Possessed all her soul, which softly slept,
Securely, without tempest; no sad cry
Awakes her pity, but wronged Poverty

Sending her eyes to heaven swimming in tears
And hideous clamours ever struck her ears,
Wetting the blazing sword that in her hand she bears.

The winged lightning is her Mercury,

And round about her mighty thunders sound;
Impatient of himself lies pining by

Pale sickness, with his kerchered head up wound,
And thousand noisome plagues attend her round:
But if her cloudy brow but once grow foul,
The flints do melt, the rocks to water roll,

And airy mountains shake, and frightened shadows howl.
Famine, and bloodless Care, and bloody War,
Want, and the want of knowledge how to use
Abundance, Age, and Fear that runs afar
Before his fellow Grief, that aye pursues

His winged steps; for who would not refuse

Grief's company, a dull and raw-boned spright,
That lanks the cheeks and pales the freshest sight,
Unbosoming the cheerful breast of all delight.

Before this cursed throng goes Ignorance,
That needs will lead the way it cannot see;
And, after all, Death doth his flag advance,
And, in the midst, Strife still would roguing be,
Whose ragged flesh and clothes did well agree;
And round about amazed Horror flies,
And over all, Shame veils his guilty eyes,

And underneath Hell's hungry throat still yawning lies.

Justice is portrayed leaning her bosom upon "two stone tables spread before her;" and the poet, in order to impress more deeply the fearful horror of that "scroll" on the mind, makes the terror and darkness of the Appear

ance upon Mount Sinai to rush upon our memory, when the affrighted children of Israel, like

A wood of shaking leaves became.

The grandeur and dignity of Justice are expressed by the solemn silence of the universe, waiting in awe for the opening of her lips*. In the stillness of heaven and earth, Justice proceeds to accuse and convict man of wickedness and ingratitude. But in this part of the poem Fletcher forgot the sublimity of the occasion; he amuses himself with a display of metaphysical ingenuity, as when speaking of Adam's covering of leaves, he asks,

for who ever saw

A man of leaves a reasonable tree?

And in some of the verses he seems to have studied that epigrammatic brevity and rapidity of interrogation, which so delighted his brother's eccentric friend, Quarles; but though the author of the Enchiridion might hang a garland at "the door of those fantastic chambers," every true lover of Fletcher's poetry will regret to see him lingering within their threshold. Some of the lines, however, are

beautiful and musical:

What, should I tell how barren Earth is grown
All for to starve her children, didst not thou
Water with heavenly showers her womb unsown,
And drop down clouds of flowers; did'st not thou bow
Thine easy ear unto the plowman's vow,

Long might he look, and look, and long in vain
Might load his harvest in an empty wain,

And beat the woods, to find the poor oak's hungry grain.

The effect of the address of Justice is given with great sublimity:

* Milton saw the force of this conception; at the conclusion of the speech of the "Eternal Father" to the Angel Gabriel,