longs more to the maturity of age than to the inexperienced innocence of childhood; and to the eye of the Christian pilgrim, in the most desolate path of his wanderings, "the shady City of Palm Trees" is visible, and the blackness of the remote horizon often glows with the orient light of the City of Paradise. THE WREATH. Addressed to the Redeemer. SINCE I in storms most used to be, The softer dressings of the spring, But a twined wreath of grief and praise, This day I bring for all Thy pain, Thy quickening breath, which gladly bears Where cloudless quires sing without tears, A pretty verse on the burial of an infant should not be omitted: Blest infant bud whose blossom-life, Did only look about and fall, Weary'd out with harmless strife 295 RICHARD CRASHAW. AFTER an anxious search in all the accessible sources of information, I am able to tell little of one of whom every lover of poetry must desire to know so much. The day of his birth and of his decease are involved in equal mystery. His father was an Crashaw was born in London. eminent Divine, and Preacher at the Temple. His works, however, brought him more fame than profit, and he confessed that he had spent his patrimony in buying books, and his time in scribbling them. At the close of the reign of Elizabeth he had also been deprived of a "little vicarage*." But his learning and virtues procured for him the esteem of many learned and excellent men†, and particularly of Sir Randolph Crew, and Sir Henry Yelverton, by whom his son Richard was placed on * A Discourse on Popishe Corruption Requiringe a Kingly Reformation; among the MS. Books in the Royal Library. See Casly's Catalogue. ↑ He was intimate with Archbishop Usher, as an extract from a letter to that Prelate will show:-"I lent you Josseline de Vitis Archiep. Cant., in folio, which you said you lent to Dr. Mocket, and I believe it; yet I could never get it, and now I find my book at Mr. Edwards his shop, in Duke Lane, and he saith he bought it with Dr. Mocket's library, but I cannot have it. Happily you might, by your testimony, prevail to get it me, for I charged him not to sell it. I pray think of it as you go that way. Thus longing to see you, and till you send me word what day you will be here, I commend us unto God, and am, Yours in Christ, WILLIAM CRASHAW." Appendix to Parr's Life of Usher. Sir Henry Yelverton was appointed Solicitor-General soon after 1613, and Attorney-General in 1616. In 1625, he was one of the Judges of the King's Bench, and subsequently of the Common Pleas. A curious the foundation of the Charter House School, where he highly distinguished himself under Brooks, a celebrated master of that day, whom he afterwards addressed in an epigram, full of attachment and respect. I had hoped, from a reference to the Registers of the School, to have determined the period of his admission, but they contain no entry before 1680. How long he continued there is equally uncertain. He was elected a scholar of Pembroke Hall, March 26, 1632*, and yet we find him lamenting the premature death of his friend, William Herrys, a fellow of the same College, which happened in the October of 1631. Herrys had been originally entered of Christ's, and his relations were persons of property and consideration, in the county of Essex. Crashaw calls him the sweetest among men, and mourned his fate in five epitaphs, one of which was in Latin. In 1633 he took his Bachelor's Degree, and, in 1634, published anonymously, a volume of Epigrammata Sacra, inscribed to Benjamin Laney, the Master of Pembroke Hall. In the civil war, Laney was deprived of his situation, and suffered much persecution and many hardships for his loyalty. The guides of the poet's youthful studies were always esteemed, and their memory preserved in his heart. Of Mr. Tournay, the tutor of Pembroke, he spoke in grateful language, as of one who merited his respect †. narrative, written by himself, "of what passed on his being restored to the King's favour, in 1609," is printed in the fifteenth volume of the Archæologia, p. 27. * From the College Register, quoted in Cole's MSS. + Tutori Summe Observando.-" We have had some doings here of late about one of Pembroke Hall, who preaching in St. Mary's, about the beginning of Lent, upon that text James ii, 22, seemed to avouch the In 1635 he prefixed a copy of verses to Robert Shelford's Five Pious and Learned Discourses. Shelford was of Peterhouse, and Rector of Ringsfield, in Suffolk. Crashaw's recommendation of this work requires notice, for it was considered to advocate doctrines inimical to the established church. Archbishop Usher condemns it with indignation, in a letter to Dr. Ward, Sept. 15, 1635. But, while we strive here to maintain the purity of our ancient truth, how cometh it to pass that you at Cambridge do cast such stumbling-blocks in our way, by publishing into the world such rotten stuff as Shelford hath vented in his Five Discourses; wherein he hath so carried himself ut famosi Perni amanuensem possis agnoscere. The Jesuits of England sent over the book hither to confirm our papists in their obstinacy, and to assure them that we are now coming home to them as fast as we can. I pray God this sin be not deeply laid to their charge, who give an occasion to our blind thus to stumble *.' This fact enables us to trace the gradually growing inclination of Crashaw to the Roman Catholic faith. His mystical and enthusiastic insufficiency of faith to justification, and to impugn the doctrine of our 11th article, of Justification by faith only; for which he was convented by the Vice-Chancellor, who was willing to accept of an easy acknowledgment: but the same party preaching his Latin sermon, pro Ġradu, the last week, upon Rom. iii, 28, he said, he came not palinodiam canere, sed eandem cantilenam canere, which moved our Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Love, to call for his sermon, which he refused to deliver. Whereupon, upon Wednesday last, being Barnaby Day, the day appointed for the admission of the Bachelors of Divinity, which must answer Die Comitiorum, he was stayed by the major part of the suffrages of the Doctors of the faculty. The truth is, there are some Heads among us, that are great abettors of M. Tournay, the party above mentioned, who, no doubt, are backed by others."-Letter from Ward of Sidney Coll., June, 1634, to Archbishop Usher. Life by Parr, p. 470. * * *Master Shelford hath of late affirmed in print, that the Pope was never yet defined to be the Antichrist by any Synode.-Huntley's Breviate, third edition, 1637, p. 308. manner of life, indeed, powerfully predisposed him to lend a willing ear to the gorgeous deceptions of a poetical religion. Every day he passed several hours in the solitude of St. Mary's Church. "In the temple of God, under his wing, he led his life in St. Mary's Church, near St. Peter's College, under Tertullian's roof of angels; there he made his nest more gladly than David's swallow near the house of God; where, like a primitive saint, he offered more prayers in the night, than others usually offer in the day*." On the 20th of November, 1636, he removed to Peterhouse, of which he was made Fellow in 1637, and Master of Arts in the following year. Of his occupa tions in these seasons of tranquility, the only fruits are to be found in his poems; but his various acquirements prove him to have been something more than a dreamer. In 1641, Wood says that he took degrees at Oxford. He also entered into Holy Orders, and soon became a preacher of great energy and power. His richness of diction, and animation of style, were well calculated to render him an effective minister of the Gospel. Stormy days were swiftly coming on. In August, 1642, the University had testified its loyalty by sending the public plate to the King to coin into money; and Cromwell, then member of Parliament for the Town of Cambridge, is supposed to have succeeded in intercepting a portion of the treasure. An act of devotion to the royal cause was not likely to be forgotten. In 1644, the University was converted into a garrison for the Parliament, principally under the superintendence of Pref. to Steps to the Temple, 1646. |