Anglican Church-poet, such as his affectionate admirers recognise in the author of the "Christian Year."

But we must remember, on the other hand, that, before the publication of "Keble," modern High-Churchismhight Anglicanism by its friends, Tractarianism by its foes-was not an established phase of human thought. The High-Churchism of the beginning of the present century was a different thing from what we are usually apt to associate with that term. It was an orthodox, self-satisfied, withal a somewhat prosaic persuasion. Its traditional sympathies with Jacobites and Nonjurors did not go the length of causing serious disaffection to the things that be. The alliance of Church and State Church represented by prelates like Horsley and Lowth, State represented by a king like George the Third-was a first principle of its creed. Its congregational worship affected no revolutionary Rubricism; for congregational singing, Tate and Brady's version of the Psalms, once set forth by authority, was sufficient. Hymns and spiritual songs were perhaps not very much in vogue, either for Church or closet, with those who piqued themselves on being especially "high and dry;" but unsophisticated piety, of whatever persuasion, might and did find aliment in the strains of Cowper, or of Addison, or of Watts, or of other pious versifiers of more or less divergency from ecclesiastical requirements.

And here, preparatory to dealings with some elements in the formation of Keble's style, let us throw a glance over the history and principal features of English devotional poetry in the last and present century, and the influences which have modified the public taste, from time to time, in this department of our literature.

Addison's hymns were written at a time when certainly there was very little sensibility to sacred poetry apparent either in the higher or lower classes of society. The Puritanism, which in its. heroic age had produced the sublime conceptions of Milton, had given place to a dull, disputatious Dissent. The feeble chants of the Nonjurors had died

away in the not unimpressive tones of Bishop Ken. The rising school of poetic composition was about to exhibit, in the essays of its greatest genius, Pope, a type of the umimpassioned philosophy which was its inspiration. Among the "good society" of that period, the "infidel" Bolingbroke, the "corrupt" Harley, and the "profligate Steele," were representatives of the fashionable principles too commonly afloat. It was a time, assuredly, when devotional tendencies, where they existed, were not brought prominently forward. A man of refinement had no inducement in the sympathy of his fellows, to employ his talents in recommending religious subjects; especially a man who as a statesman, philosopher, and wit, had no professional prepossession for such subjects. Yet, from the natural impulses of a pious heart, Addison produced a few simple effusions of sacred verse, which have always retained a place in the affections of his country

men.

There is no devotional zeal, no fervid spiritualism in these hymns; they are the utterance of a calm, but genial spirit, reposing in sure trust on the Providence of God, and rejoicing in His mercies. Nor were they the casual flights of a soul ordinarily absorbed in the pursuits of ambition or of pleasure. Like the beautiful meditations which infuse an under-current of religion through the pages of the Spectator, they arose from the habitual, though to the mere outward observer, imperceptible direction of his thoughts.

For

by the meditations of his inmost soul in life, not less than by his pious hope in death, to which he himself ventured the appeal, Addison gave evidence far better than that of many a formal treatise, of the faith which is the good man's one sustaining guide through a busy and an evil world.

But, if the fashionable world of Addison's time was disinclined for the cultivation of poetry as connected with religious subjects, if it afforded little attraction to the steady-going adherents of the Establishment, with the straiter sects addicted to Calvinist Nonconformity there was a positive objection to it, on the ground of the old

others, resulted in a sort of compound of the sentiment of Le Grand Cyrus and that of Solomon's Song. How much unction was felt in George I.'s days, for the fervid style of those pieces on Divine Love in the "Horæ Lyricæ," which now shock our taste, is testified by the numerous commendatory verses, couched in similar warmth of language, which were appended to the later editions. Thus writes Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe :

"No gay Alexis in the grove

Shall be my future theme:
I burn with an immortal love,
And sing a purer flame.
"Seraphic heights I seem to gain,
And sacred transports feel,
While, Watts, to thy celestial strain,
Surprised, I listen still."

Thus was accomplished the somewhat curious alliance of Nonconformity with a propensity for rhyme. The Dissenters, Presbyterian and Independent, notwithstanding their proverbial stiffness and dislike of ornament in religious worship, did, nevertheless, take a march in the flowery paths of metre, from which phlegmatic Churchmen held aloof. The early days of the Hanoverian dynasty are noted for a lethargy and poverty in all matters of taste and imagination; yet a constant succession of Calvinist ministers continued to turn into verse the rigid doctrines of their creed, and the "experiences" of the spiritual life; and, notwithstanding the monotony which results from the limited range of subjects on which they allowed themselves to expatiate, will sometimes be found to have touched a chord of true feeling, to which the heart of any Christian might respond. Doddridge, with some of the fashionable affectation of his class, some of the amatory exaggeration to which we have alluded, was tender and earnest. It is a curious trait of the liberalism, or latitudinarianism, as some would say, of the days in which his lot was cast, that some of his hymns, Dissenter as he was, were admitted into our Common Prayer-Book,

where they still retain their place. But Doddridge lived on terms of friendship and correspondence with several divines, and even prelates, of the Church of England, and was a favourite spiritual counsellor of some ladies of rank. Perhaps his accommodating temper may have a little compromised, at times, the strictness of his theology.

Augustus Toplady, Vicar of Broad Hembury, in Devonshire, was a man of a different stamp. Whimsical, hardheaded, and extreme in his opinions, he hated an Arminian with right good will. Yet some of his hymns are favourites even to this day with persons of directly opposite views to those he entertained. Dr. Pusey, who would have fought à l'outrance with Toplady on almost any point of dogmatic theology, has recorded his fervid admiration of the hymn beginning,

"Rock of Ages cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee," &c. which finds its place in almost every collection, for Church or conventicle.

The cultivation of hymns by the Wesleyan Methodists was undertaken in a yet more systematic and purposelike manner than among the old Calvinists. Hymns were regarded by John Wesley, and his brother, much as they were by the author of a greater religious "revival," Martin Luther, as an essential part of his liturgical apparatus. Like Luther's, his spiritual songs, and those of his brother, were the outbursts of a naturally demonstrative nature, and of a temperament inclined to music and verse. They were appeals sent straight to the consciences and feelings of his hearers. They were for the most part intense and overwrought in tone, compared with those of the German Reformer; but, like them, they have retained a hold over the affections of a religious party, to which no other sacred verse among us can furnish any parallel. The sect of the Wesleyan Methodists, indeed, consists, and has always consisted, mostly of the "lower orders." The very circumstance that the Methodist hymns were popular with those for whom they were

primarily intended, would deter them from gaining wide acceptance with the educated classes. For it is unquestionable that in England our higher and lower ranks have difficulty in meeting on any common ground of sentiment. Any approximation of this sort among us is commonly artificial and temporary. This is partly owing to the reserve of the one class, partly to the want of any poetical refinement in the other. In Germany, on the other hand, and even in the sister kingdom, north of the Tweed, the noble and the peasant are very commonly moved by the same spell of poetical association, be it in matters of history or of religion.

Wit

ness in Germany the Kirchenlied, to which princes and divines, titled ladies, artisans, jurists, physicians, all professions and all ranks, have contributed, till the body of sacred song has reached the proportions of a great national monument. Witness in Scotland the strong attachment felt by the people to the Psalms and Paraphrases of the Kirk, and the way in which these mingle with their every-day contemplations. Of historical and traditional associations it is not our place here to speak; but the difference of character between ourselves and our northern neighbours is, perhaps, even more strikingly displayed in this respect.

Meanwhile the stream of Calvinist verse flowed on through John Newton and Cowper. Here it encountered a mind of true genius; and, as genius is never satisfied with passing on a mere transcript of former fashions, but must needs interpret for itself, in its own way, the features of nature, and of human life around it, so with Cowper a modification of character was introduced into our sacred poetry, which in great measure it still retains.

John Newton, of Olney, was one of those vigorous enthusiasts, uniting narrowness of spirit with a vast breadth of common sense, and a thoroughly genial disposition, of which our evangelical school has been very productive. He swayed the gentle impressible mind of Cowper, as a strong though coarse will

is often found to sway sensitive genius. The pressure was too strong. The old wine was poured into the new bottles, and, finally, the bottles brake; but, meanwhile, the flavour was enriched and mellowed. The more the composition of the vessel told upon the quality of the liquid, the more the former crudeness disappeared. Even in Cowper's "Olney Hymns," which were written at Newton's prescription, we discern the poetic grace and sweetness of his fancy often controlling the rigid doctrinalism of his theory. His lines on the "Wisdom" of Proverbs, ch. viii. have much freedom and force of diction. Those on "Retirement," "Far from the world, O Lord, I flee," are an unaffected transcript of his own pensive temperament. But, in general, these hymns are too much squared to a pattern, in order to suit the requirements of his Evangelical guides. It is not in his "Olney Hymns" that we are to seek for his true poetry. It was not by them that he became the favourite bard of the religious world. Cowper possessed, if not a very powerful, at least a pure and an original genius. No writing hymns "to order" for Newton, and his fellow apostles, could satisfy the instincts of his heart. His true genius is to be found in the discursive verse which was the outpouring of his unfettered thoughts, the solace of his painful existence; for, in addition to the religious affections which made him yearn to God as a Father, even when his dark delusions made him conceive of Him as an angry and offended Father, Cowper possessed also a poet's love of nature; in other words, the Almighty, in His works of creation, was as much an object of attraction to his sensitive mind, as in His work of redemption; and the gloom which his dogmatic views of religion, unrelieved, would have rendered as deep in his poetry as in his life, was tempered in the former by the loving study of the great Parent's manifestations.

Cowper was a thoroughly English poet; and this, perhaps, was unconsciously one cause of his popularity at an era when national sentiment, as well as evangelical piety, was called into strong self-asser