necessities of nature, so much as will feed me for one week, unless I labour for it." His vindication of his own fitness for the work he had undertaken is manly and eloquent: "I wonder what divine calling Sternhold and Hopkins had more than I have, that their metrical Psalms may be allowed of rather than my Hymns. Surely if to have been groom of the Privy Chamber were sufficient to qualify them, that profession which I am of may as well fit me for what I have undertaken, who having first • laid the foundation of my studies in one of our famous Universities, have ever since builded thereon towards the erecting of such fabrics as I have now in hand. "But I would gladly know by what rule those men discern of spirits who condemn my work as the endeavour of a private spirit. The time was, men did judge the tree by its fruit; but now, they will judge the fruit by the tree. If I have expressed any thing repugnant to the analogy of the Christian Faith, or irreverently opposed the orderly and allowed discipline, or dissented in any point from that spirit of verity which breathes through the Holy Catholic Church, then let that which I have done be taxed for the work of a private spirit. Or if it may appear that I have indecently intruded to meddle with those mysteries of our Christian Sanctuary, which the God of order hath, by his Divine law, reserved for those who have, according to his Ordinance, a special calling thereunto, then, indeed, let me be taxed as deserv ing both punishment and reproof. "But if, making conscience of my actions, I observed that seemly distance which may make it appear I intruded not upon ought appropriated to the outward ministry; if, like an honest-hearted Gibeorite, I have but a little extraordinarily laboured to hew wood and to draw water for the spiritual sacrifices; if, according to the art of the apothecary, I have composed a sweet perfume to offer unto God, in such manner as is proper to my own faculty only, and then brought it to those to whom the consecration thereof belongs; if, keeping my own place, I have laboured for the building up of God's house, as I am bound to do, in offering up of that which God hath given me, and making use, with modesty, of those gifts which were bestowed on me to that purpose; if, I say, the case be so, what blame-worthy have I done? Why should those disciples who follow Christ in a nearer place, forbid us from doing good in his name, who follow him further off? Why should they, with Joshua, forbid Eldad and Medad from prophesying, seeing that every good Christian wisheth, with Moses, that God's people were all prophets, and that he would give his spirit to them all." This passage is interesting on many accounts, especially as showing the sentiments of Wither towards the established Church. In another part of the same pamphlet he declares, in a strain of vigour and richness. almost worthy of Jeremy Taylor himself, that neither the swelling impostumations of vain-glory, nor the itchings of singularity, nor the ticklings of self-love, nor the convulsions of envy, nor the inflammations of revenge, nor the hunger and thirst of gold, were able to move him to the prosecution of any thing repugnant to religion or the authority of the Church*. So highly • The same sentiment had been before expressed in the Motto:In my religion I dare entertain No fancies hatched in mine own weak brain, Nor private spirits, but am ruled by The Scriptures, and that Church authority. were Wither's talents and honesty at this time esteemed, that he was even urged to take Holy Orders; and his "possibilities of outward preferments in that way, he tells us, were not the least." But "while no man living more honoured the cailing," he considered himself disabled by his own unworthiness, independent of the belief he constantly indulged, that God had appointed him "to serve him in some other course." Very tempting overtures had also been made to Wither by some of the numerous sectaries of the day, and he declared that he had been offered a larger yearly stipend, and more "respective entertainments to employ himself in setting forth heretical fancies than he had any probability of obtaining by the profession of the truth. Yea, sometimes," he continues, "I have been wooed to the profession of their wild and ill-grounded opinions by the sectaries of so many several separations, that had I liked, or rather had not God been the more merciful to me, I might have been Lieutenant, if not Captain, of some new band of such volunteers long e'er this time." These were the sentiments of the writer in 1623-4. Nothing was left undone on the part of the stationers to annoy or injure the unfortunate poet. They refused to provide copies of the Hymns in their shops, alleging as their excuse "that none would fetch them out of their hands," although Wither assures us in his Scholler's Purgatory, that the work was so much inquired after, that twenty thousand might have been speedily dispersed. Some compared the Hymns to "Dod the Silkman's" version of the Psalms, which had been recently con demned to the fire; and others styled them in derision, "Wither's Sonnets," and said that they would procure "the roving ballad-singer, with one leg," to sell them about the city. Wither's miseries were not confined to the malignant opposition of the stationers. "Wherever I come," he complained, 66 one giddy brain or another offers to fall into disputation with me about my Hymns ; yea, brokers, and costermongers, and tapsters, and pedlars, and sempsters, and fiddlers, and felt-makers, and all the brotherhood of Amsterdam, have scoffingly passed sentence upon me in their conventicles, at tap-houses and taverns." It was natural that Wither should feel bitterly these attacks of the ignorant and malevolent, and he alludes with pardonable self-satisfaction to the Christian intentions with which the Sacred Songs had been composed, and the many hours at midnight he had devoted to their study when his traducers were asleep. The composition of his Hymns had contributed to beguile the tedious and melancholy hours of his imprisonment in the Marshalsea. Wither is not the only poet whose harp has given utterance to the sweetest and holiest music while it hung upon the willow-tree. It was in a lonely dungeon at Coimbra, in Portugal, that the accomplished Buchanan prepared his elegant translation of the Psalms. A list of books produced during confinement would be both interesting and instructive. The names of Boëthius, of Grotius, and of Raleigh, arise immediately to the memory*. The Hymns and Songs of the Church are known to many I find the following notices in the Journals of the House of Commons. "One hath a patent of sole printing on one side: hath been often warned to bring it in. To have the sergeant at arms go for him. Ordered. The like for Wither's patent.”—J. of H. of C., May 15, 1624. "After complaint made against Withers, the sergeant's man, who took him, related at the bar how he was withstood and abused by one at whose house Withers lay. That Withers assisted him, and kept him from wrong."-J. of H. of C., May 22, 1624. It is probable that these extracts apply to our poet. of my readers, and can hardly fail of being admired for their unaffected piety, and plaintive harmony of expression. They breathe a domestic tenderness and simplicity not more rare than precious. Take for example two stanzas from the Thanksgiving for Victory:-- We love thee, Lord, we praise thy name, And make throughout the world be known That such as are our foes, are Thine. The prayer for Seasonable Weather is not less simple and earnest. Lord, should the sun, the clouds, the wind, The air and seasons be To us so froward and unkind, As we are false to Thee; All fruits would quite away be burn'd, Or lie in water drown'd, Or blasted be, or overturn'd, Or chilled on the ground. But from our duty though we swerve, And deign Thy creatures to preserve |