LXVI.

Make to thy reason, man, and mock thy doubts, Looke how below thy feares their causes are; Thou art a souldier, Herod; send thy scouts, See how Hee's furnish't for so fear'd a warre? What armour does He weare? A few thin clouts. His trumpets? tender cries; His men to dare So much? rude shepheards: what His steeds? alas Poore beasts! a slow oxe and a simple asse.

_Il fine del primo Libro._

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

See our Essay for critical remarks on the original and CRASHAW'S interpretation. These things may be recorded:

St. viii. line 6. '(His shop of flames) he _fries_ himself.' This verb 'fries,' like 'stick' and some others, had not in Elizabethan times and later, that colloquial, and therefore in such a context ludicrous, sound that it has to us. In MARLOWE'S or JONSON'S translation of Ovid's fifteenth elegy (book i.) the two lines which originally ran thus,

'Lofty Lucretius shall live that hour That Nature shall dissolve this earthly bower,'

were afterwards altered by JONSON himself to,

'Then shall Lucretius' lofty numbers die, When earth and seas in fire and flame shall _frie_.'

In another way one of our most ludicrous-serious experiences of printers' errors was in a paper contributed by us to an American religious periodical. The subject was Affliction, and we remarked that God still, as of old with the 'three children' (so-called) permits His people to be put into the furnace of 'fiery trials,' wherein He _tries_ them whether they be ore or dross. To our horror we found the _t_ changed into _f_, and so read sensationally '_fries_'--all the worse that some might think it the author's own word.

St. xxviii. and xxx. The star Lucifer or Phosporos, to whom 'the droves of stars that guild the morn, in charge were given,' can never climb the North or reach the zenith, being conquered by the effulgence of the sun of day. When did the fable of the angel Lucifer, founded on an astronomical appearance, mingle itself as it has done here, and grandly in MILTON, and in the popular mind generally, with the biblical history of Satan?

St. xxxvi. line 2. TURNBULL perpetuates the misprint of 'whose' for 'my' from 1670.

St. li. line 3, 'linage' = 'lineage.' For once 1670 is correct in reading 'linage' for the misprint 'image' of 1646 and 1648. The original is literally as follows:

'Herod the liege of Augustus, a man now aged, Then ruled over the royal courts of David: Not of the royal _line_ ...'

St. lix. line 3, 'a special worm:' so SHAKESPEARE (Ant. and Cleopatra, v. 2), 'the pretty worm' and 'the worm.'

St. lx. Every one will be reminded of the tent-scene in Richard III.

At end of this translation PEREGRINE PHILLIPS adds 'cetera desunt--heu! heu!'

MARINO and CRASHAW have left proper names in the poem unannotated. They are mostly trite; but these may be noticed: st. xlii. l. 4, Erisichton (see Ovid, _Met._ viii. 814 &c.); he offended Ceres, and was by her punished with continual hunger, so that he devoured his own limbs: line 5, Tantalus the fabled son of Zeus and Pluto, whose doom in the 'lower world,' has been celebrated from Homer (_Od._ xi. 582) onward: ib. Atreus, grandson of Tantalus, immortalised in infamy with his brother Thyestes: ib. Progne = Procne, wife of Tereus, who was metamorphosed into a swallow (Apollod. iii. 14, 8): l. 6, Lycaon, like Tantalus, with his sons changed by Zeus into wolves (Ovid; Paus. viii. 3, Sec. 1): st. xliii. line 2, Medea, most famous of the mythical sorcerers: ib. Jezebel, 2 Kings ix. 10, 36: line 3, Circe, another mythical sorceress: Scylla, daughter of Typho and rival of Circe, who transformed her (Ovid, _Met._ xiv. 1-74); cf. Paradise Lost: line 4, the Parae = the Fates, ever spinning: st. xliv. lines 7-8, all classic monsters: st. xlv. line 1, 'Diomed's horses' = the fabled 'mares' fed on human flesh (Apollod. ii. 5, Sec. 8): 'Phereus' dogs,' or Fereus of mythical celebrity: line 2, Therodamas or Theromedon, king of Scythia, who fed lions with human blood (Ovid, _Ibis_ 385, _Pont._ i. 2, 121): line 3, Busiris, associated with Osiris of Egypt; but Herodotus denies that the Egyptians ever offered human sacrifices: line 4, Sylla = Sulla: line 5, Lestrigonians, ancient inhabitants of Sicily who fed on human flesh (Ovid, _Met._ xiv. 233, &c.): line 6, Procrustes, _i.e._ the Stretcher, being a surname of the famous robber Damastes (Ovid, _Met._ vii. 438): line 7, Scyron, or Sciron (Ovid, _Met._ vii. 444-447), who threw his captives from the rocks: line 8, Schinis, more accurately Sinis or Sinnis, a celebrated robber, his name being connected with {sinomai}, expressing the manner in which he tore his victims to pieces by tying them to branches of two trees, which he bent together and then let go (Ovid, _Met._ vii. 440); according to some he was surnamed Procrustes, but MARINO and CRASHAW distinguish the two: st. xlvi. line 2, Mezentius, a mythical king of the Etruscans (Virgil, _Aeneid_, viii. 480, &c.); he put men to death by tying them to a corpse: ib. Geryon, a fabulous king of Hesperia (Apollod. ii. 5, Sec. 10); under this name the very reverend Dr. J.H. Newman has composed one of his most remarkable poems: line 3, Phalaris, _the_ tyrant of Sicily, whose 'brazen bull' of torture gave point to Cicero's words concerning him, as 'crudelissimus omnium tyrannorum' (in Verr. iv. 33): ib. Ochus = Artaxerxes III. a merciless king of Persia: ib. Ezelinus or Ezzelinus, another wicked tyrant.

THE HYMN OF SAINTE THOMAS,

IN ADORATION OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT.[42]

Ecce panis Angelorum, Adoro te.

With all the powres my poor heart hath 1 Of humble loue and loyall faith, Thus lowe (my hidden life!) I bow to Thee Whom too much loue hath bow'd more low for me. Down, down, proud Sense! discourses dy! 5 Keep close, my soul's inquiring ey! Not touch, nor tast, must look for more But each sitt still in his own dore.

Your ports are all superfluous here, Saue that which lets in Faith, the eare. 10 Faith is my skill: Faith can beleiue As fast as Loue new lawes can giue. Faith is my force: Faith strength affords To keep pace with those powrfull words. And words more sure, more sweet then they, 15 Loue could not think, Truth could not say.

O let Thy wretch find that releife Thou didst afford the faithful theife. Plead for me, Loue! alleage and show That Faith has farther here to goe 20 And lesse to lean on: because than _then_ Though hidd as God, wounds with Thee man: Thomas might touch, none but might see At least the suffring side of Thee; And that too was Thy self which Thee did couer, 25 But here eu'n that's hid too which hides the other.

Sweet, consider then, that I Though allow'd nor hand nor eye To reach at Thy lou'd face; nor can Tast Thee God, or touch Thee man, 30 Both yet beleiue; and witnesse Thee My Lord too and my God, as lowd as he.

Help, Lord, my faith, my hope increase, And fill my portion in Thy peace: Giue loue for life; nor let my dayes 35 Grow, but in new powres to Thy name and praise.

O dear memoriall of that Death Which liues still, and allowes vs breath! Rich, royall food! Bountyfull bread! Whose vse denyes vs to the dead; 40 Whose vitall gust alone can giue The same leaue both to eat and liue; Liue euer bread of loues, and be My life, my soul, my surer-selfe to mee.

O soft self-wounding Pelican! 45 Whose brest weepes balm for wounded man: Ah! this way bend Thy benign floud To a bleeding heart that gaspes for blood. That blood, whose least drops soueraign be To wash my worlds of sins from me. 50

Come Loue! come Lord! and that long day For which I languish, come away. When this dry soul those eyes shall see, And drink the vnseal'd sourse of Thee: When Glory's sun, Faith's shades shall chase, 55 And for Thy veil giue me Thy face. Amen.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

The original title is 'A Hymne to our Saviour by the Faithfull Receiver of the Sacrament.' As before in the title of 'The Weeper' 'Sainte' is misspelled 'Sanite.'

Line 1 in 1648 reads 'power.'

" 8, 'sitt still in his own dore.'

" 9, 'ports' = openings or gates. So in Edinburgh the 'West-port' = a gate of the city in the old west wall.

Line 21, 'than' = 'then.' See our PHINEAS FLETCHER, as before.

Line 29, TURNBULL leaves undetected the 1670 misprint of 'teach' for 'reach.'

Line 33, 1648 supplies 'my faith,' which in our text is inadvertently dropped; 1670 continues the error, which of course TURNBULL repeated.

Line 36, 1670 edition reads 'Grow, but in new pow'rs to name thy Praise.'

Lines 37-38 are inadvertently omitted in 1648 edition.

Our text, as will be seen, is arranged in stanzas of irregular form. In 1648 edition it is one continuous poem thus printed:

--------------------- --------------------- --------------------- --------------------- G.

LAVDA SION SALVATOREM:

THE HYMN FOR THE BL. SACRAMENT.[43]