Latin. The ancient language was required to be spoken from this chair longer than from any other, probably from fear of the trash men might talk if fairly unmuzzled. "However prudent this may have been when a merely average functionary held the chair, it is greatly to be regretted that when it was filled by a true poet, who was intent on speaking the secret of his own art, he should have been so formidably weighted. The present gifted occupant of that chair, Matthew Arnold, has fortunately been set free, and has vindicated the newly acquired freedom by enriching our literature with the finest poetical criticism it has received since the days of Coleridge. But Keble had to work in trammels. He was the last man to rebel against any limitations imposed by the wisdom or unwisdom of our ancestors. Faithfully he buckled himself to the task of translating into well-rounded Latin periods his cherished thoughts on his own favourite subject. Of the theory of poetry embodied in the two volumes of his published lectures, something may yet be said. The Latin is easy and unconstrained, the thoughts original and suggestive. A great contrast to the more than Ciceronian paragraphs of his predecessor Copleston, bristling as they do to a marvel with epigrammatic Latinity, but underneath that containing little that is not commonplace. "With slight interruptions, Keble continued to live with his father at Fairford, and to assist him as his curate till 1835. In that year this tie was broken. At the very commencement of it the venerable old man, who to the last retained the full use of his faculties, was taken to his rest; and before the end of it Keble became the vicar of Hursley, and the husband of Miss Charlotte Clarke, second daughter of an old college friend of his father's, who was incumbent of a parish in the neighbourhood of Fairford. This was the happy settlement of his life. For himself he had now no ungratified wish, and the bonds then tied were loosened only by death.' When, in 1835, Keble left the home of his childhood for the vicarage of Hursley, he found a church there not at all to his mind. It seems to have been a plain, not beautiful, building of flint and rubble. He determined to have a fresh one built new, all but the tower-and in this he employed the profits of the many editions of 'The Christian Year;' and when the building was finished, his friends, in token of their regard for bim, filled all the windows with stained glass. Here daily for the residue of his life, until interrupted by the failing health of Mrs. Keble and his own, did he minister. He had not, in the popular sense, great gifts of delivery; for his voice was not powerful, nor was his ear perfect for harmony of sound; but I think it was difficult not to be impressed deeply both by his reading and his preaching; when he read you saw that he felt, and he made you feel, that he was the servant of God, delivering His words; or leading you, as one of like infirmities and sins with your own, your prayer. When he preached it was with an affectionate simplicity and hearty earnestness, which were very moving; and the sermons themselves were at all times full of that abundant scriptural knowledge which was the most remarkable quality in him as a divine: it has always seemed to me among the most striking characteristics of "The Christian Year." It is well known what his belief and feelings were in regard to the sacra ments. I remember on one occasion when I was present at a christening godfather, how much he affected me when a consciousness of his sense of the grace conferred became present to me. As he kept the newly in baptized infant for some moments in his arms, he gazed on it intently and lovingly with a tear in his eye, and apparently absorbed in the thought of the child of wrath become the child of grace. Here his natural affections gave clearness and intensity to his belief; the fondest mother never loved children more dearly than this childless man."" The writer of the essay thus goes on to describe the closing scene of Keble's life, in connection with a remarkable event, and one of touching interest, that shortly preceded it: "The appearance of Dr. Newman's Apologia' in 1864 was to Keble a great joy. Not that he had never ceased to love Dr. Newman with his old affection, but the separation of now nearly twenty years, and the cause of it, had been to Keble the sorest trial of his life. If the book contained some things regarding the Church of England which must have pained Keble, there was much in it to gladden him,-not only the entire human. heartedness of its tone, which made its way to the hearts even of strangers, but the deep and tender affection which it breathed to Dr. Newman's early friends, and the proof it gave that Rome had made no change either in his heart or head, which could hinder their real sympathy. The result was, that in September, 1865, these three, Dr. Newman, Dr. Pusey, and Mr. Keble, met under the roof of Hursley vicarage, and, after an interval of twenty years, looked on each other's altered faces. It happened, however, that at the very time of this meeting, Mrs. Keble had an alarming attack of illness. Keble writes, 'He (Dr. Pusey) and J. H. N. met here the very day after my wife's attack began. Trying as it all was, I was very glad to have them here, and to sit by them and listen.' Soon after this, in October, Mr. and Mrs. Keble left Hursley for Bournemouth, not to return. Since the close of 1864, symptoms of declining health had shown themselves in him also. The long strain of the duties that accumu lated on him in his later years, with the additional anxiety caused by Mrs. Keble's precarious health, had been gradually wearing him. After only a few days' illness he was taken to his rest on the day before last Good Friday. In a few weeks Mrs. Keble followed, and now they are laid side by side in Hursley churchyard." Such is the picture-a simple yet attractive one-drawn by the writer in the North British Review. To this we may add, as illustrative of the traits and habits of feeling, the inner life of Keble, the following sketch from the eloquent pen of Sir James Stephen: "It happened that at this period Mr. Wordsworth had at Oxford a pupil and an imitator, who would have surpassed his master if he could have attained to the exquisite felicities of his master's occasional and better style. The author of The Christian Year,' like the author of 'The Excursion,' inhabited a world in which the humblest objects and the most familiar incidents were symbolical of whatever is most elevated in things spiritual, and most remote from our experience in things invisible. In the tame suburbs, the dusty roads, and the busy streets of Oxford, Mr. Keble lived by imagination, not by sight. On every side they teemed for him with analogies and interpretations of the significance of her liturgical offices, of the mysteries of her priesthood, and of the temples erected by no buman hands in the souls of her worshippers. When he transferred to the canvas the rich hues in which the sanctuary within the veil of common things was disclosed to his own eyes, he was accustomed to throw Over the picture an atmosphere which, however brilliant, was not seldom so hazy as to be almost impervious. What the Virgin Mother had been to the great painters of Italy, that the Anglican or Elizabethan Church became to him. Immaculate in conception, peerless in beauty, resplendent with every grace, she presented herself to him as a living personality to be loved and wooed, and as a divine impersonation to be adored and hymned." Such is a brief outline of the mortal career of him, the poet and Baint, "One of that small transfigured band Whom the world cannot tame," to portray him in the words so eminently descriptive of his illustrious friend and coadjutor of earlier days-one long since buried in the seclusion of a "monastic home," the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, Birmingham. We now proceed to mention his poetry-the lovely reflex of a lovelier life. Keble's poetry is a modern reproduction of what might be called the Christian medieval school of poetry of the seventeenth century-the beauties, disordered and detached, of that school being there concentrated and fused into harmonious unison; the beauties unalloyed with the blemishes, quaintness, mysticism, extravagance, &c., of which sufficient mention was made in a previous paper. This, which holds true of Keble's poetry generally, specially applies to "The Christian. Year," the work by which his name is immortalized. The object f the work is thus stated by the poet himself: "Next to a sound rule of faith, there is nothing of so much consequence a sober standard of feeling in matters of practical religion; and it is the peculiar happiness of the Church of England to possess, in her authorised formularies, an ample and secure provision for both. But in times of much leisure and unbounded curiosity, when excitement of every kind sought after with a morbid eagerness, this part of the merit of our Liturgy is likely in some measure to be lost on many even of its sincere admirers ; the very tempers which most require such discipline setting themselves, in general, most decidedly against it. The object of the preent publication will be attained if any person find assistance from it in bringing his own thoughts and feelings into more entire unison with those recommended and exemplified in the Prayer Book. The work does not furnish a complete series of compositions; being in many parts rather adapted, with more or less propriety, to the successive portions of the Liturgy than originally suggested by them. Something has been added at the end concerning the several occasional services; which constitute, from their personal and domestic nature, the most perfect instance of that othing tendency in the Prayer Book which it is the chief purpose of these pages to exhibit." + 1870. * John Henry Newman. † Advertisement, "The Christian Year." F The purpose here enunciated, Keble has consistently carried out, even at the expense of strength and vigour, elements in which his poetry is, upon the whole, we may admit, deficient, being characterized rather by an almost womanly tenderness and grace; not but that he can strike on occasion a martial and spirit-stirring note. As in the case of another and far greater poet, it may indeed be regretted that he did not give us more of these "soul-animating strains," these rousing trumpet tones-trammelled and hampered as he was by the exigencies of a somewhat narrow and limited plan, which precluded the giving of free scope to the exercise of his genius, or reaching the highest range of his poetical powers, high as these undoubtedly were. But while this may be matter of regret, let us, remembering the sage critical maxim of Pope, "In every work regard the writer's end, Since none can compass more than they intend," thankfully take him for what he is the sweet poet and singer, the Coryphæus of the sacred minstrelsy of the nineteenth century. The idea of embodying in verse the teaching of the Church of England in the yearly course of her services-an idea wrought out and perfected by Keble-did not, however, wholly originate with him, having been already to some extent anticipated by Herbert in "The Temple," and at a later period by Wordsworth in his Ecclesiastical Sonnets, of which that on "The Liturgy" seems 80 like a distinct presage or forebodement of his successor's more finished and elaborate work that we feel constrained to quote it:“THE LITURGY. "Yes, if the intensities of hope and fear Attract us still, and passionate exercise From His mild advent till His countenance (To be continued.) The Reviewer. A Synoptical History of England. London: James Walton. THIS is a good idea ingeniously worked out. It presents "the events of English and general history in a form hitherto unattempted in this country," and constitutes "a work combining the interest of a continuous narrative with the clearness of the tabular form." It is an oblong quarto, which, on being opened, displays on each page three columns. "The first column in each page contains in chronological order a brief abstract of the leading events of the period under review. In the second column fuller details are given with reference to those points which require a more lengthened notice. The third column is occupied by a summary of the principal occurrences in contemporaneous history." "At the end of each line of kings a rapid sketch is given of important constitutional and legal changes." The genealogies of each line are also presented, tables of the battles of the civil wars are given, as well as of the principal treaties and statutes, and there is appended to the work a summary of the present state of the British Empire, and of the condition of its people. This arrangement enables great clearness of statement to be maintained, and has a most effective influence on the memory, at the same time that the statement can be made in the fewest possible words. In no other study is it of such importance to introduce orderliness of thought and explicitness of statement, and hence any means by which these essentials can be had in combination, with fair views of events and accurate estimates of their effects, confer great advantages on students. This book would be exceedingly useful we would say in all classes of history, in connection with young men's mutual improvement associations, and in the private studies of those who are under training for the Civil Service examinations. To teachers, as affording them fine examples of condensed statements and orderly arrangement, it would be very useful as showing how to bring into one view, by black-board illustration, the chief events of a period. The book has a capital index, and has quite the appearance of being what it is, a handy guide to the easy comprehension and sure retention of the facts of the story of our own land in connection with the events which were transpiring at the same time. The present reviewer, who knows not a little of the difficulties of historic compilation, in synoptic form, in small compass, truly believes that this is a really good manual for school teaching and private study. It may often, too, be serviceable in the casual consultations, the need of which arises so often in connection with the reading of the day. The Bible Plan unfolded. By JAMES BIDEN. London: Elliot Stock. THIS is a wonderful book. In it Mr. Biden has outdone himself. |