Poetry could scarcely blend more closely The least impressive of these hymns is the second pair of hymns for morning and evening, as the first pair are among the finest, if not the finest of all. There is a limp about the rhythm of the second pair which breaks the train of thought and feeling. Perhaps the finest of all the hymns is that which expresses so powerfully our modern difficulties in finding Christ. We cannot resist the pleasure of extracting this perfect expres--a prayer in which the poetic imagination sion of the new belief which prays that its approaches "in nearest nearness own unbelief may be helped: : spirit of true worship. "Set up thy throne within thine own," to the From the London Review. GOOD OLD SAXON. at the beginning of a word generally implies strength and fixity, str force and effect, th a violent degree of motion, wr oblqiuity or distortion, sw a gentle agitation, cl adhesion WHEN Johnson was drawing nigh his or tenacity, sp expansion or dissipation, sixtieth year, and was actively giving the and sl a kind of silent fall. Perhaps he weight of his great name to the practice of had not reasoned much about it, perhaps Latinizing English to the utmost, a poor he had never analyzed the relations be boy in Bristol, who lived in a garret, and tween the sound and the sense in the old often ransacked the muniment room of St. words he adopted, but poetic instinct led Mary Redcliff's Church, composed a variety him to conclusions similar to those at which of poems, of which the extraordinary vigour Mr. Mathew Browne has arrived, and exwas not discovered till, amid the pangs of plained in his essay on vowel-music. In hunger, he had put an end to his dreary the English of Chaucer and Rowley," life. They passed under the name of the force of vowels and consonants too was Rowley and were alleged to have been writ- more concentrated than the English of ten by an old poet of the age of Edward III. Johnson. The public began to see this They breathed the very spirit and lan- fact when the Ayrshire bard piped so guage of Chaucer; and from the time they sweetly, but it has taken a century to open came into notice, a reaction in English their eyes to it thoroughly. There was a phraseology began. Our best writers had strong analogy between broad Scotch and for a long while been departing from the Chaucer's tough and racy dialect. As far genius of the language. The classical as it guided taste at all, it led in a direction style had succeeded to that of the drama- opposed to bombast and pedantic diction. tists of Elizabeth's reign. The original Elision was a sharp pruning knife, and tendency of English was towards words of lopped off a heap of redundant syllables. of one syllable; but under Shaftesbury, George Ellis, who had assisted Canning Bolingbroke, and Chatham, it tended and Frere in the Anti-Jacobin combined a strongly towards words of many syllables. critical spirit with great knowledge of old It was growing weaker when it was authors. While Addington was premier, thought to be gaining strength. It was he published his third edition of Specimens more sonorous, but less pregnant with of the Early English Poets. Then came sense; more smooth, but less fibrous. his Specimens of Early English Romances Faith was called "fidelity," drying was in Verse, which with the former work, "exsiccation," quivering was "tremulous- drew the attention of literary men to the ness. The process of the ancients was simple and vigorous language in which inverted. They, in their rough Saxon Anglo-Saxon bards sung the exploits of way, used to clip off the end of borrowed King Arthur, and Anglo-Normans the fiery words, and crop the first syllable, especially adventures of King Richard in Palestine. in words that began with a vowel. They About the same time William Godwin dropped the weaker consonants, and re- wrote his Life of Chaucer, and Todd that tained the stronger, thus boiling the word of Spenser, with a glossary to help the down as it were, and reducing it to an es- readers of the "Faerie Queene." "Childe sence. From excortico they got "scratch," Harold" appeared a few years later, and from Hispania "Spain." from exscorio was in the outset a partial imitation of the scour." The poems of Chatterton pointed language of Spenser. The "Good Night" the way back to this earlier mode. He also of the first canto was suggested by a saw by intuition how great was the agree- similar poem in the "Border Minstrelsy ment between the sound and sense in the edited by Scott. Thus one writer unconnative words of our tongue, and how much sciously followed another's lead; and the poetry would lose in point, and music, if its retrograde movement in this instance was wild rill-like flow were turned into chan- really one in advance. Mr. Evans's "Colnels cut by the art of pedants. Monosylla- lection of Old Ballads was intended as a bles such as jar, twine, plash, twist, curl, supplement to Percy's "Reliques of Ancrack, crush, and the like, appeared to him cient English Poetry," and both of these to express better than even the compounds works brought ballads into notice which of other languages the action signified, to were remarkable for the great simplicity of imitate it to the ear when spoken, and to their style, and almost exclusive use of make a picture of it to the age when written. monosyllables. Walter Scott compares He believed, like Dr. Wallis, that in our them to "the grotesque carving on a Goth"northern guttural" (as Byron calls it), stic niche." They made us acquainted, too, 66 with many comic and rustic romances of] are crowded with Saxon words. It is so As the present century advanced, the retura up the stream to the sources of our language became more decided. In proportion as the age grew practical, fine writing, which is usually mere declamation, lost its charms. The racy style-curt, pointed, and suggestive-rose in value. Science and thought make people exact, and much business makes them briefspoken. The love of historic truth, and the hatred of shams of every sort, bas helped us to speak less vaguely, and to write with more substance and strength. Dean Swift acted on the principle that no Saxon word among us should be allowed to become obsolete; and Dean Hoare, in our own day, has expressed a strong conviction that the writers and speakers who please us most are those whose style is the most Saxon in its character; and he believes, with good reason, that this remark is especially true of poetry. Certainly, those passages in our poets which are most popular among us ners of England," the best of Burns's songs Affectation of every sort should, of course, or "This game went on for better than a week, till the foolish beast (a young ass on the leads of Christ's Hospital), not able to fare well but he must needs cry roast meat happier than Caligula's minion, could he have kept his own counsel, but foolisher, alas, than any of his species in the fables waxing fat, and kicking, in the fulness of bread, one unlucky minute would needs proclaim his good fortune to the world below; and laying out his simple throat, blew such a ram's-horn blast as, toppling down the walls of his own Jericho, set concealment any longer at defiance." ("Essays of Elia.") "In the evening I went with the lasses to the banks of Ouse, and scattered on the dimpling stream, as is their wont at the lamb-ale a thousand odorous flowers, new-born roses, sweetwilliams, and yellow-coxcombs, the small-flowered lady's-slipper, the prince's-feather, and the clustered bell-flower, the sweet basil (the saucy wenches smiled when they furnished me with a bunch thereof), and a great store of midsummer daisies. When with due observance I threw on the water a handful of these goldentufted and silver-crowned flowerets, I thought of Master Chaucer's lines. The great store of winsome and graciously named flowers used that day set me to plan a fair garden, wherein each mouth should yield in its turn to the altar of our secret chapel a pure incense of nature's own furnishing." ("Constance Sherwood.") From the Examiner. Thomas Shillitoe, the Quaker Missionary and Temperance Pioneer. By William Tallack, Author of 'Peter Bedford, the Spitalfields Philanthropist,' &c. S. W. Partridge. THOMAS SHILLITOE is said in the first page of this book to have "lived a life of wonderful energy as a univeral philanthropist, and as a Christian minister of almost apostolic activity; "which reminds one of a criticism upon Cowley's Davideis,' that while Homer simply opened the Iliad' by saying that he was about to tell of the wrath of Achilles, whom he calls barely Achilles, son of Peleus, and never praises except by the relation of his actions, Cowley put all his hero in the opening, where he is set down as the best poet and the best king. Thomas Shillitoe, we are told, however, at the close of the first chapter, was not perfect. He was sometimes obstinate, occasionally uncharita"often impetuous and irritable, ble, and always more or less nervous and Twice," he records, confined to my bed by the sudden sight of a mouse. But he was very like the apostles about the legs; which is more than can be eccentric." 66 "I was And now for an example or two in said for a bishop when he has his gaiters buttoned on. In the Acts of the Of The Evangelists repeatedly allude to the journey on foot of that sacred band, foremost amongst whom was their Divine Lord and Leader. And when, on other occasions, they went forth two and two, they received the command that they should take nothing for their journey save a staff only," inasmuch as those who received the blessing of their services were to supply all needful wants; and when this return was not accorded, the further command was "Shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them." Apostles also there are allusions to the general pedestrian movements of the Apostles. Philip, for instance, it is recorded that he "ran" towards the Ethiopian noble, who riding homewards in his chariot, was reading the pages of Isaiah. Other modes of travel were, doubtless, always permissable and often preferable. Nevertheless, for various reasons, the Apostolic missionaries appear to have usually chosen the independence and freedom of walking. Thus of Paul we read that when he had the option of proceeding from Troas to Assos by ship with his companions, or on land without them. he chose the later course," minding himself to go afoot" (Acts xx. 13). Probably the quiet opportunity thus afforded for meditation and secret prayer, was the deciding motive in the lat ter instance. Partly for a similar reason, partly on economical grounds, and also probably from a love of independent and free movement, Thomas Shillitoe very often performed his preaching journeys on foot. ant. Thomas Shillitoe's father was Librarian at Gray's Inn, from which office he retired in his old age upon a public-house, and became landlord of the Three Tuns' at IsHe was characteristically a pedestrian itiner- lington, when Islington was a village and His memoranda abounds in such records the Angle was a rural tavern. Thomas beas the following:-"After meeting I walked came a Quaker against the wish of his to Castleton, ten miles; had a comfortable parents, and was patronised by a Quaker meeting with a few Friends there next morning. lady who promoted him from his place of In the afternoon walked to Whitby, fourteen grocer's apprentice to a clerkship in a Quamiles over a dreary moor. Afterwards I walk-ker banking house. It grieved him to see ed to Russell Dale, and next day to Helmsley; his employers "going with a multitude to in the afternoon to Bilsdale. Next day walked do evil." So he left the bank and put him about thirty-two miles to Knaresborough, and self apprentice to a shoemaker. "The Alnext day to Rawden. I walked to Lothersdale, about twenty-two miles. The great quantity mighty Care-taker" prospered him afterof rain that has fallen of late has made travel- wards at Tottenham in making shoes for ling on foot trying: I hope I may be preserved Quakers. in the patience, apprehending it is the line of conduct I must pursue when time will allow of it. Next day walked to Netherdale, about twenty-four miles." The continuity of Thomas Shillitoe's pedestrianism was sometimes extraordinary. Thus, in one week he mentions walking on a Satur day evening from Lancaster to Wyersdale; on the Suuday afternoon to Ray; on the Monday twenty-six miles to Hawes; on Tuesday twentyeight miles to Masham; on Wednesday twentythree miles to Leyburn; on Thursday eight miles to Aysgarth, and the same afternoon ten miles over the moor to Reeth. On Friday he set out with a horse and chaise to return to Hawes, but finding the dales were at the time flooded in many places owing to the recent heavy rains, he quitted the conveyance and recommenced walking, often coming to places where the usual crossing by stepping-stones was impracticable, and where he had to wade through the rushing streams. However, he reached Hawes safely, and, fortified by a good dinner, boldy struck over the fells to Brigflatts, whence on Saturday he walked to Kendall, and reached Lancaster in the evening. Such was a week's work of this zealous and simple-hearted evangelist! Repeatedly he proceeded on foot by rapid stages across England at a similar pace to the Yorkshire journey just described. Thus in the same year (1807) he walked from Liverpool to Warrington, thence to Macclesfield, on a Saturday, a journey of twenty-three miles. On the Sabbath morning he walked thirteen miles to Leek, and held a meeting there. He started again on foot on Monday, and performed twenty-nine miles to Derby; then the next day another thirty miles to Leicester; on Wednesday walked twenty-nine miles to Northampton. "The day proving wet, travelling became more difficult; but now drawing so near home operated as a spur to do my best." On Thursday he accomplished twenty-three miles to Woburn, and on Friday walked the remaining thirty-nine miles, which brought him safe back to his family. He married, was frugal, and when his savings gave him a fixed income of a hundred a year, though he then had a wife and five children, he forsook his last and "devoted himself to the home and foreign service of his Lord in the churches." Shortly afterwards a woman was found to have left in her will a hundred pounds to Mr. Shillitoe. "This was an acceptable and seasonable gift, which he gratefully ascribed to the interposition of his Heavenly Father." He went to Russia, Prussia and elsewhere, offering personal advice to monarchs, and otherwise making himself useful. He was a temperance apostle, and (p: 130) "would fancy himself a teapot for weeks together." To this excellent man, before he took his journey to heaven, Professor Tholuck wrote that in his company he "tasted fully the sweetness of the presence of Christ." |