man's hand was against his neighbour, it is delightful to recollect that one family was united in the bond of Christian amity, and that while the night without was dark and tempestuous, the humble charities of the poet's fire-side were preserved inviolate.

If we pass from his private to his public character, the contemplation is not so pleasing. As a politician he was weak and inconsistent, a reed shaken by every wind. Echard called him a dangerous incendiary, and said that he was capable of doing a great deal of mischief. Yet he never became the fosterer of crime, or the apologist of tyranny. He lived, he tells us, under eleven different governments-Elizabeth, James, Charles the First, the King and Parliament together, the Parliament alone, the Army, Oliver Cromwell, Richard Cromwell, a Council of State, the Parliament again, and Charles the Second. In his youth, and for many years after, we have seen him the admirer of the Monarchy, and if he forsook the cause of royalty, it should not be forgotten that he did not long remain with the Parliament; if he became the eulogist of Cromwell, he at the same time spoke to him boldly of his errors. Unlike contemporary rhymers, his flattery seldom degenerated into adulation-he always mixed wormwood with the wine. The man who could indignantly return to the Protector, when in the zenith of his power, the key of his private closet at Whitehall, given as a mark of peculiar favour, was no common individual. His numerous pamphlets, with few exceptions, cannot be numbered among the controversial fruits of the age; they are usually devoted to the expression of his own wrongs, and more frequently deserve the name of RibbleRabblements bestowed on them by himself, than

any

more honourable appellation. They have none of the menace and defiance, the “trample and spurn" of the polemical Milton. By some he was called a puritan, by others a presbyterian, but his own words show that he was neither. "I am not," he said, "for or against the Presbyterians, Independents, King, Parliament, members, or people, more or less than in my judgment may conduct to the wrong or right way—from or toward the truth of God." Of the royal power he desired a reformation, not an extirpation*, and he drew up a petition against the execution of Charles the First, but could not find any member bold enough to present it.

In his earlier days he had been noticed by the High Church party, and in later times, the leaders of the Republican administration thought him worth their regard. He says that he was known "to the greatest number of the most considerable persons in the nation," and had familiarity with many of them, not "without some appearance of good respect." In the list of his political acquaintance we have found Oliver Cromwell, Lord Essex, Sir Gilbert Pickering, &c.; and he whom the Protector honoured with frequent invitations to his own table, and did not hesitate to soothe by personal visits, must have possessed no little influence. It speaks powerfully for his honesty, that he subsequently forfeited the favour of Cromwell.

His religious feelings are hardly less difficult accurately to define than his political sentiments. He was, almost up to the breaking out of the civil war, a follower

Furor Poeticus, p. 33, and again in the Epistle at Randome, p. 15,"For I never was absolutely for or against a King, or Commonwealth, with or without a single person, but according as God's extraordinary dispensations, the present necessities, the law of common justice, and the people's assent in Parliament, made it expedient or not expedient."

of the established 'church, and although solicited by the seductive offers of numerous Sectaries, he still continued to hold fast the faith of his fathers. But Republicanism and Episcopacy could not subsist together; yet he might be said to have forsaken the outward forms of our church rather than its ordinances. When questioned as to his belief, he answered that he called himself a Catholic Christian, a title not affected out of any singularity, but "by way of distinction" only. "I separate myself," he says, "from no church adhering to the foundations of Christianity; I waive the confining my belief or practice to any one national or congregational society of Christians, not out of a factious inclination or petulant disesteem of any; but having a desire to be instrumental in uniting men dissenting in judgment both unto God and each other in love, I conceive that endeavour would be suspected of partiality, and not so effectually prosecuted if I made myself party with any one fraternity more than another. True faith cannot be evidenced without good works, which being imperfect in the best of men, we have no such certain mark whereby unfeigned disciples may no, as by their being loving to each other and charitably affected toward all men; yea, although they are our personal enemies *."

We may admire the picty of this passage without confessing the justness of the reasoning; we discern in the poet's mild and Christian declaration, none of the gloom of the ascetic, or the harshness of the intolerant bigot. To be of no church, it has been excellently observed, is dangerous; all men cannot, like Milton, preserve religion of the heart;" and even in his case we find more to regret than to admire. Wither has left abundant

• An Answer to some Objections, reprinted 1666.

testimony to prove the sincerity of his religious professions. If he did not endure his misfortunes in silence, at least he braved them with fortitude; if, amid the overwhelming perils of the country, he too often sat down on his own "little bundle of thorns*,' *," it may be urged in his behalf, that he suffered much and long. In the resolution with which he fulfilled what he considered the commission intrusted to him from above, we trace something of primitive singleness of heart. For nearly half a century he was a "watchman for the nation," unceasingly warning it of its vices and crimes. Through the dangers of the pestilence, and all the changes of Government, he pursued the same course; often, indeed, drawn aside by the importunities and weaknesses of heart, to whose charming no human ear can be utterly deaf, but always returning, after a little while, to his labours. Though the storm of adversity might beat upon his spirits, it could not subdue them; he walked with untired feet,

The solitary path

Of disrespect:

at one time threatened with "loss of limb and tortures," at another, glad to escape from his enemies only with "life and raiment." He was imprisoned in the Marshalsea, Newgate, and in the Tower, frequently without any means of procuring the common necessaries of life. If he murmured, he did not faint; in the midst of all his persecutions he' derived peace and consolation from a sincere reliance on the mercy of Heaven, often exclaiming that he was "excellently sad," and that God infused such happiness into his heart, that grief became to him "Comfort's mother." Under one of his heaviest calamities he could exclaim

• Jeremy Tavlor.

But Lord, though in the dark

And in contempt thy servant lies,
On me there falls a spark

Of loving-kindness from thine eyes.

While lauding his virtues, I am far from being blind to his errors. Had Wither remembered the sacred command, Do not evil that good may come, many of his follies would not have been committed. He would then have been more temperate in his satire, more steadfast in his politics, and more decided in his religion. The best apology which can now be offered, is contained in his own affecting words. "Be it considered that some of these books were composed in his unripe age; some when wiser men than he erred; and that there is in all of them somewhat savouring of a natural spirit, and somewhat dictated by a better spirit than his own."

Upon the merits of his poetry it is unnecessary to dilate. His early compositions were not, perhaps, sufficiently popular to operate very powerfully on the public taste, but in the Shepherd's Hunting, the Mistress of Philarete, and the Shepherd's Pipe, the correctness and finish of Denham and Waller were united to a natural grace and melody of style to which they have not an equal claim. His touches of rural simplicity have never been surpassed; in his hand the pastoral reed seemed not to have forgotten the lip of Spenser.

As a sacred poet, Wither is entitled to a distinguished place among his contemporaries. If he does not awe the soul with the majesty of Milton, or crush it with the iron energy of Quarles, or force the tears of rapture into our eyes with the pathos of Crashaw, yet his words come home to every bosom, and no man ever poured the balm of holy truth into a wounded heart with a