Art. VI.-THOMAS TRAHERNE AND THE RELIGIOUS POETRY OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Edited by Edited by 1. The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne, B.D. Now first published from the original MSS. Bertram Dobell. London: Dobell, 1903. 2. The Poetical Works of George Herbert. A. B. Grosart. London: Bell, 1876. 3. The Temple. By George Herbert. Facsimile reprint of the first edition of 1633. Sixth edition, with Introductory Essay by J. H. Shorthouse. London: Fisher Unwin, 1903. 4. The Temple. By George Herbert. Reprint of the first edition. ('Chiswick Quartos.') London: Bell and Sons, 1904. 5. The Works of Henry Vaughan, Silurist. Edited by the Rev. A. B. Grosart. Four vols. Privately printed. London, 1871. 6. The Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist. Edited by E. K. Chambers. With an Introduction by H. C. Beeching. Two vols. London: Lawrence and Bullen, 1896. 7. Silex Scintillans, or Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations. By Henry Vaughan. (Temple Classics.') London: Dent, 1900. 'NEWS from a foreign country!'-the opening words of one of his own poems-might well serve as a subsidiary title to the volume which acquaints us, for the first time, with the poetical works of Thomas Traherne. Unknown, apparently, as a poet to his contemporaries, it has been the strange fortune of this devout singer of the seventeenth century to wait until the twentieth for his advancement to the House of Fame. It is but a humble niche, perhaps, that he can claim to occupy; but his right of entry is clear enough to render his identification by Mr Dobell one of the most notable literary discoveries of recent years. Mr Dobell has rescued from oblivion a poet who was either too modest or too careless to court publicity, and seems to have been too shy even to share his poetical secret with his closest friends. As a divine, Traherne had in his day some small repute. Had he been known as a versifier, however indifferent, to any brother of his craft, we should have heard of it. The minor poets of those days were never chary of exchanging complimentary numbers; and, had he had a friend among them, Thomas Traherne would not have died unsung. It has been left to Mr Dobell himself to supply the only commendatory verses which attend the poet's first appearance in print, and, as he quaintly tells us, to match his author's 'noble and exalted thought With the best raiment that our time affords And so, in the panoply all at once of hand-made paper and vellum binding, Thomas Traherne takes his station among the English poets. We are not, indeed, prepared to rate him at his discoverer's sanguine valuation. Mr Dobell is positive that neither Herbert, Crashaw, nor Vaughan can compare with Traherne in the most essential qualities of the poet.' Far from being the superior, he is not, in our opinion, the equal of any one of the three, tried by any test of poetical quality. He is, however, good enough to be admitted to their company; and with Herbert and Vaughan in particular, he has sufficiently close affinities, both literary and racial, to warrant our treating the three together as a separate group among the poets of their time. Traherne has so much in common with Henry Vaughan, at all events, that the newly discovered poems were first ascribed, by no mean authority, to the Silurist, and narrowly escaped publication under his name. The manuscript, casually picked up on a London bookstall, passed into the hands of the late Dr Grosart, whose services to literature as a prolific editor of English poetry should save him from much of the facile disparagement provoked by his eccentricities as a critic. Among Dr Grosart's last, and unfulfilled, projects was a reissue of the complete works in prose and verse of Henry Vaughan; and his main inducement to undertake the task was the acquisition of the manuscript since identified as Traherne's. So many of Traherne's poems start from and return to one of Vaughan's characteristic thoughts that they might well have deceived acuter and less headlong judges than seems to imply that reason is at work even in the desires that appear to be most antagonistic to it. Now Kant is hardly prepared to admit such conceptions as these as objectively valid, in the full sense of the word; but he is ready to connect his idea of history with the belief in a divine providence that 'shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will,' and which makes the whole process of the universe subservient to the intellectual and moral progress of man. In this sense he tries to prove that the Christian religion, when its mythic and purely ceremonial elements are removed, is in essence identical with the ethical monotheism which he himself had postulated in the 'Critique of Practical Reason.' And, in maintaining this thesis, Kant tacitly introduces many considerable modifications in the individualistic character of his original ethical system, both as regards the social relations of men to each other, and as regards the relation of human freedom to divine grace. He thus not obscurely points to a view of the kingdom of spirits, not as a collection of independent self-determining individuals, but as a real organic community, in whose development the divine life is manifested. In fact, if we leave out the reserves and cautions by which Kant always protects himself from direct contradiction with his earlier individualistic statements, we might easily find, in the three Critiques' mentioned above, an anticipation of almost all the main features of later idealism. It is, indeed, only an anticipation; nor can we identify the system of Kant, even at the most advanced point of his speculations, with that which was subsequently developed out of it. We cannot directly pass from his philosophy to that of Hegel, except through the long movement by which Fichte and Schelling gradually modified the narrow subjective view upon which Kant stood to the last, and which he never consciously renounced. Still, looking backward, we can see that the Kantian philosophy contains not only the possibility, but even the necessity of such a development, and that, in this point of view, he is the father of modern idealism and spiritualism. We have now considered the main aspects of the work of Kant in its relation to the history of speculation, and we have attempted to show that three great tendencies of modern thought find their starting-point and passion and of feverish rapture about Crashaw's ecstasies of devotion, his thirsts of love,' his 'brim-filled bowls of fierce desire.' He stands alone among the religious poets of his time, impatient alike of the rigorous penances of the Puritans and of the decent pieties of Anglicanism, and finding only in the Church of Rome that free fellowship with saints and seraphim, "The fairest first-born sons of fire,' after which his ardent spirit yearned. Crashaw's poetry, more than the religious verse of any of his contemporaries, fulfils two of Milton's prime tests; it is 'sensuous' and 'passionate,' even to excess. What cannot be claimed for it is simplicity. Some of the worst enormities of the seventeenth century mania for fantastic and grotesque imagery stand to the account of Crashaw. And yet he, like the rest, derives much of his interest for the literary student from these very freaks and eccentricities. The claim of devotional poetry to rank with the highest forms has been impugned by eminent authority. 'Poetry,' says Dr Johnson, loses its lustre and its power, because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent than itself.' Even were we disposed to acquiesce in this characteristically magisterial pronouncement, we may be permitted at least to derive some pleasure from the 'decoration.' And it is just because the devotional poets of the seventeenth century bestowed so much pains upon decoration that their work remains the most interesting body of religious verse in all English literature. The noble numbers' of that age are something richer and rarer than the expression of mere religious feeling or devout meditation. The sacred thoughts and pious ejaculations' of the time were sent forth tricked and flounced with emblems and images strangely remote from the associations of the cloister and the sanctuary. As it has been said of Milton's later poems, that 'for the materials of those palaces whole provinces were pillaged,' so to the building of the miniature fanes and oratories of the lesser poets there went the spoil of many a profane city and pagan temple. These sacred songsters made it their boast to challenge and cut out the vulgar amorist' on his own ground. George Herbert, himself an aristocrat and a potential courtier, essays to prove, in an age of courtly makers and high-born wits, that God's love can "Heighten a spirit to sound out His praise As well as any She.' 'Cannot thy Dove,' he asks, 'Outstrip their Cupid easily in flight?' Henry Vaughan, again, turns for inspiration from Parnassus and Helicon to the Mount of Olives. 'Sweet sacred hill! on whose fair brow My Saviour sate, shall I allow And idolize some shade or grove In his preface to 'Silex Scintillans' Vaughan more specifically avows in prose the purpose of his devotional songs. Those ingenious persons, which in the late notion are termed Wits' needed to be taught that poesy demanded higher matter than 'idle or sensual subjects.' 'The true remedy,' he continues, 'lies wholly in their bosoms, who are the gifted persons, by a wise exchange of vain and vicious subjects for divine themes and celestial praise.... The first that with any effectual success attempted a diversion of this foul and overflowing stream [of profane poetry] was the blessed man, Mr George Herbert, whose holy life and verse gained many pious converts, of whom I am the least.' It is this loftiness of aim, this declared purpose of exemplifying the diviner uses of poetry, that lifts the poems of Herbert and Vaughan, in particular, above the region of fantastic experiment or of heroic tours de force. Their highest aspiration was, according to their gift, 'to celebrate,' in Milton's majestic words, the throne and equipage of God's almightiness.' None of the minor poets can, indeed, make such lofty vaunt as he who, invoking a Muse who was herself divine, sings: 'Up led by thee Into the Heav'n of Heav'ns I have presum'd, An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air.' But, in spite of their weakness of wing and their frequent Vol. 200.-No. 400. 2 G |