Miss Barrett, and a few similar spirits, who have only published occasionally, are essentially and distinctively spiritual. True poetry in its highest forms (its only real forms, for when it descends lower it is mere verse, however witty, sensible, tender or fanciful) is based on that instiuctive reverence in man for the good and the beautiful, is coeval with the highest aspirations of the soul, is seen manifestly in the religious adoration of a grateful and reverential worship, as visibly as in any other act.

Faith is the highest speculative as Charity is the noblest active principle of human nature: speculative only, how ever, in the degree of relation. It is concerned with diviner things than the social virtue of Charity. Charity is exercised towards equals and inferiorsFaith towards our superiors; and, as an honest and worthy man, sees no object of reverence in this world, not even the highest types of human perfection, he must, it follows of course, direct his regard to a diviner and an immortal Father. He cannot evince his faith so directly in action as he can show his charity. He can still indirectly display the effects of this faith in his conduct, and honor his Maker in obeying his commands. Some thing german to these remarks are the following passages from an article, by the writer of this paper, and which he will not attempt re-writing, as he has expressed his views pretty freely already.

"The imagination should, therefore, be cultivated, if only as an aid to the strengthening of virtuous resolves and the heightning of religious aspirations. The effect of a pure imagination on the heart is one of the most cheering evidences of the real nobility of man. The highest poetry, we repeat, is religious; and the greatest poets must be necessarily devout. The common opinion sanctioned is against this position: yet the true view sanctioned by still higher authority, is directly in its favor. For who will place Dr. Johnson, Byron, and the sensual school, against Milton, Wordsworth and Coleridge, to say nothing of the grandest poetry-the poetry of the Hebrews? The old-fashioned critics thought, or said that dullness or insipidity were the genuine ingredients in religious verse. This is very true in its application to some religionists; but it is very far from true when we come on the Muse's hill-when we reach the enchanted city of poets. Their error could have arisen only from

ignorance, or else from a minuteness of poetical and critical vision, that can see a world of Poetry in Shelley and Moore, and nothing but prosaic boldness in Wordsworth and Milton. Milton is the most serious and impressive of uninspired lyrists. The whole cast of his mind was eminently religious. The Hebrew poets were his favorite reading, and after them the Greek tragedians and Shakspeare. His personal bearing is said to have been grave and austere. Even in youth he was like his own Archangel, “severe in youthful beauty."

"He was religious in his taste. He played anthems daily on the organ. What other instrument could have filled his mind with those magnificent ideas of space and sound of which his poetry is full?

"The poet, then, as priest and prophet, in an early age; so also, as a Christian and as the world's teacher, must be a man of purity and holiness. He must have clean hands and a pure heart that would hymn the glories of the Almighty.

·

"Besides the great poets we have mentioned, whose motto is, Holiness to the Lord,' there is a galaxy of lesser lights-a poetic host, just before and after the Restoration in England, professedly religious-Herbert, and Donne, and Vaughan, and Wotton, and Fletcher, and Southwell. It may be remarked further, that the most irreligious poets discover instinctively at times a vein of devotion, and even the lightest versifiers have their images of fear and terror. The gloomiest painters occasionally describe a fairer scene; and through the pitchy darkness are seen gleams of light as from a heavenly country.

"This arises out of a very natural cause. Religion, its hopes and fears, the grandeur and gentleness of the supreme intellect; the beauty of divine love; the hallowed influences of the Spirit, form the noblest themes of the poet, painter and musician. It is from interest, if from no other reason, then, the poet should be religious. Not only is the grandest poetry religious, but also the finest music, and the immortal master-pieces of painting. The souls of Milton, Raphael and Handel could not be touched by common loves, or vexed by common cares. They required something vast and awful, or exquisitely tender and sweet, to fill their minds and move their hearts. High fancies, rich colors, pealing harmoniesParadise Lost, the Holy Family, the

Messiah. No themes have inspired such eloquence as religion. In fact every art has laid its richest offerings at that shrine. The noblest cathedrals have been erected for the worship of the Most High; and in those temples the choicest paintings are hung, the most solemn music is played, accompanied by voices almost cherubic. The most admirable verses have been written for its psalmody-what poem is finer than that Rembrandt strain of mingled golden and gloomy fancies-that rich, monkish canticle, Dies iræ, dies illa? and the wisest powers of discriminative piety and judicious devotion have been exhausted in the preparation of a perfect liturgy. It must be confessed, then, the imagination is the most religious of our faculties, and consequently the grandest."

These general considerations have led us off from the main design, and have occupied so much of the space we had assigned to the subject, that we must conclude after a very brief survey of the appearance of the present age, in regard to poetry. In England, the religious poet of the day, and for all times, is Wordsworth. In him a natural piety is the characteristic trait of his genius. The followers of Wordsworth constitute a class by themselves, and have universally substi. tuted a spiritual tone for the light and fleeing spirit of the Byronic school. Coleridge and Southey, the early and late friends and fellow-poets of Wordsworth, are distinguished by the same reverential spirit, and a host of minor poets, (most of them writing on secular themes,) as Cornwall, Elliott, Mrs. Southey, Miss Barrett, and names even superior to these are strongly tinged with this same feeling of reverence and awe in sacred matters. There is, besides these, a new and small class of professedly religious poets of the school of Herbert and Donne, altered and accommodated to suit the spirit of the

age.

The head-quarters of this body is Oxford, whence have emanated some of the sweetest strains the Church of England has ever breathed. We say nothing of the particular doctrinal views of these writers-defenders of the Oxford Tracts, and in some instances among the writers of them-but we admire, generally, some of their finest efforts as worthy of true poets. We refer, more particularly, to Mr. Keble, the Poetry Professor and author of the Christian Year; and to the author of the Cathedral. Here, at home, it has been noticed that our

finest poetry is of the reflective and meditative cast; and this is one of the finest traits of the American character. To go no further, our three finest poets are deeply religious-Dana, Bryant and Longfellow. The poetry and prose of Dana is overspread with a grave and solemn hue befitting a teacher of men and a spiritual thinker. The Thanatopsis of Bryant, alone, is, after the poetry of Wordsworth, perhaps the finest sacred poem since the time of Milton; and the Psalms of Life, by Longfellow, are rich harmonies from a soul deeply touched with the sad notes of humanity, but cheered and invigorated by consolations from a superior source.

In the present paper, we shall devote our attention chiefly to reviving the memory of two rare poets, now quite forgotten by the mass of even cultivated readers, and barely known to literary, antiquary and poetical students-Quarles and Crashaw. Geo. Herbert, the Fletchers, Donne and Vaughan, have been so admirably commented upon by the most delicate critic of poetry, especially of old English minor verse, in this country, that we shall not attempt a critical rivalry. To the readers of the early numbers of the New York Review, Arcturus and the " Democratic," we need not mention a name so well-known and highly cherished, as the author of the several articles on the poets just mentioned, in the first two journals.

The author of the "Emblems" is truly a neglected Poet. The sometime darling of the plebeian judgments is now known to most readers only by name, as one of the victims of Pope's satire. But like certain others of those about whom Pope wrote, rather as a malignant, foe than as a keen critic, Quarles has strong grounds of desert to prefer as a claim on our attention. Cibber was no less a brilliant comic writer than Quarles a deep and earnest religious Poet, yet both are enbalmed in the Dunciad :-a monument of elaborate malice, and in their cases, at least, unjust satire.

The best argument for the worth of any man, is a knowledge of his intimate associates and assured friends: next to that the strongest proof is, the good report of those good men amongst his contemporaries to whom he was personally unknown, and whose disinterested applause is the fruit of his irreproachable life and fair actions. If we allow this, we must concede the noblest qualities of the man,

and the genius of the Poet, to one who could unite the suffrage of such men in his favor as Drayton the Poet, Fuller the Church Historian, Dr. Hammond the eloquent Divine, and Archbishop Usher. His wife, also, was his warm eulogist, and she should have known his domestic character best. It is delightful from time to time to read the affectionate memorials of the wives and daughters of men of genius. We have lately seen pleasing instances of this kind, in the wife of Shelley and the daughter of Coleridge; of a similar nature is the sisterly regard for the fame of her admirable brother in the case of Mary Lamb.

Francis Quarles was descended from a respectable family of some wealth and local reputation. At an early age, he entered the University of Cambridge, where he is said to have surpassed all his mates, and was graduated from the same College at which Milton and Henry More, the Platonist, studied.

This fact is alluded to in a line by George Dyer, the friend of Charles Lamb, in his History of Cambridge. On leaving College, Quarles read Law for the same reason that Shelley walked the Hospitals, rather to learn how to defend the rights as the greater Poet, to ease the lives of his fellow creatures, than from any motive of profit or advantage. Though a lover of quiet, and of a retired way of life, yet so strong was his loyalty and almost romantic devotion to the most celebrated woman of her day, that he became cup-bearer to the Queen of Hungary. We next hear of Quarles as Secretary to Archbishop Usher, who valued him very highly. At the breaking out of the rebellion Quarles left Ireland for London, where, at the request of the Earl of Dorset, he was created "City's Chronologer," an office supposed to resemble that of Master of Ceremonies. Quarles held this situation until his death.

We have selected the following contemporary notices of our Poet. Fuller says of him, that if Quarles had been contemporary with Plato, he would not only have allowed him to live, but also advanced him to an office in his commonwealth. The same quaint author speaks of Quarles making Mount Zion his Parnassus, and allows him the just praise of uttering strains of a very different character from those the Poets generally gave birth to in his time. Aubrey adds, in a sentence to a notice of some

other worthy: "Mr. Quarles was a very good man.” One of the nearest friends of Quarles was a Doctor Aylmer, Archdeacon of London, "a great favorer and fast friend to the Muses," who died of the plague in 1625. We introduce this name for the sake of the anecdotes connected with it. Being asked on his deathbed how he felt, he exclaimed, "I thank God heart-whole." He also declared in that solemn hour that his own eyes" had ever been his overseers ;" and it is recorded that "he shut his own eyes with his own hands."

A man and poet possessed of such friends in such an age, can hardly deserve the contempt of modern witlings, who affect to speak of the trash of Quarles. There is, undoubtedly, a great proportion of worthless poetry in his works, but there is also a genuine vein. Quarles was often quaint, sometimes coarsenever weak or effeminate. He has sublimity with his harshness, force with his distortion, energy with his extravagance. The Muse of Quarles is dedicated wholly to the service of religion. He wrote none but devotional poetry, and all his strains are inspired by a sincere, affectionate piety.

His Emblems is his chief work; a species of illustrated poetry and piety that forms a rather heterogeneous mixture. Some years ago we had a copy in our possession-the only one we ever met with. From our recollection of that, we should infer it to be a work in which it is hard to tell whether piety or an absurdity of pictorial conception predominate. The Hieroglyphics, "an Egyptian dish dressed after an English fashion," forms an appropriate companion-piece to the Emblems. The eccentricities of Quarles' fancy are here paralleled by the eccentricities of his measure.

From Cattermole's Religious Poetry of the Seventeenth Century, we select the most favorable specimens of the best manner of Quarles. These are sententious and dogmatical, full of thought and serious feeling. The style is as hard as enamel and as polished, pointed to conciseness, and weighty with the dignity of religious truth.

VANITY OF THE WORLD.

False world thou liest, thou canst not lend

The least delight;
Thy favors cannot gain a friend,
They are so slight;