66 Introductory Motice. UT with my hand on the lock, I shrink from opening the door. Here comes a poet indeed! and how am I to show him due honour? With his book humbly, doubtfully offered, with the ashes of the poems of his youth fluttering in the wind of his priestly garments, he crosses the threshold." So, in England's Antiphon, the most suggestive and ideally stated account of English religious poetry which we have, George Herbert is ushered into the august choir of poets; and the words, in their especial homage and reverence, are happily appropriate in introducing him to the readers of this little volume. There might seem at first an almost superlative strain in such an opening, remembering what other poets have sung of the spiritual life before and after; but George Herbert is one of those writers who transcend mere literary relationship, and draw their readers into a charmed circle of peculiar intimacy, within which the sense of qualification and criticism is more or less forgotten. Behind the quaint poetry of Herbert-at the back of these devotional lyrics which might be called little ballads of the soul-we feel his heart passionately beating, and, reading, we suddenly find ourselves filled with his personality in a way that is unaccountable. It is a way in which certain natures affect us; approaching them through their books, the ordinary relations of writer and reader are overpassed, and we become their intimates, lovers, disciples. In Herbert the religious appeal very much enhances this feeling, placing him in a nook apart, of hermit-like sanctity, to which those who find life touched with the almost tragic devotional import it had for him will always repair with affection and mystical fervour. George Herbert is a true poet," said Coleridge, "but a poet sui generis, the merits of whose poems will never be felt without a sympathy with the mind and character of the man." So, while his audience will never be large, as Milton's and Wordsworth's are large, such as do listen to his song will do so with an exceptional love and interest. 66 There was nothing of the "beautifully objective " about Herbert's literary production. His was not the calm exercise of an unimpassioned poetasternot the mere æsthetic diversion of a talented brainbut the issue and expression of his very soul. His song sprang from the conflict of what to him at least were tragically opposing forces; the heart's |