so great a length, of more condensation of thought, or in which fewer languid verses will be found. Yet, according to some definitions [of poetry] the 'Nosce Teipsum' is wholly unpoetical, inasmuch as it shows no passion [a greater blunder still] and little fancy [a third mistake]. If it reaches the heart at all, it is through the reason. But since strong argument in terse and correct style fails not to give us pleasure in prose, it seems strange that it should lose its effect when it gains the aid of regular metre to gratify the ear and assist the memory. Lines there are in Davies which far outweigh much of the descriptive and imaginative poetry of the last two centuries, whether we estimate them by the pleasure they impart to us, or by the intellectual vigour they display. Experience has shown that the faculties familiarly deemed poetical are frequently exhibited in a considerable degree, but very few have been able to preserve a perspicuous beauty without stiffness or pedantry (allowance made for the subject and the times), in metaphysical reasoning, so successfully as Sir John Davies."4 The alleged "no passion" is contradicted by the various pathetic autobiographic introspections and confessions brought out in this Memorial

Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries: Vol. II., p. 227, edn. 1860.

Introduction, and not less so by the outbursts of adoration and praise that thunder up like the hosannahs before the great White Throne. The similarly alleged "little fancy" is one of manifold proofs that the critic was the most superficial of all imaginable readers with so much pretention. "Nosce Teipsum" is radiant as the dew-bedabbled grass with delicacies of fancy, not a few of the "fancies" being as exquisitely touched as divine work.

Campbell in his "Essay on English Poetry" (prefixed to his "Specimens ") may be read with interest after Hallam. Accepting from Johnson as Johnson from Dryden the name of " metaphysical poets," he observes:

-“The term of metaphysical poetry would apply with much more justice to the quatrains of Sir John Davies and those of Sir Fulke Greville, writers who, at a later period, found imitators in Sir Thomas Overbury and Sir William Davenant. Davies's poem on the Immortality of the Soul, entitled " Nosce teipsum," will convey a much more favourable idea of metaphysical poetry than the wittiest effusions of Donne and his followers. Davies carried abstract reasoning into verse with an acuteness and felicity which have seldom been equalled. He reasons undoubtedly with too much labour, formality, and subtlety, to afford uniform poetical pleasure.

The generality of his stanzas exhibit hard arguments interwoven with the pliant materials of fancy so closely, that we may compare them to a texture of cloth and metallic threads, which is cold and stiff, while it is splendidly curious. There is this difference, however, between Davies and the commonly-styled metaphysical poets, that he argues like a hard thinker, and they, for the most part, like madmen. If we conquer the drier parts of Davies' poem, and bestow a little attention on thoughts which were meant, not to gratify the indolence, but to challenge the activity of the mind, we shall find in the entire essay fresh beauties at every perusal for in the happier parts we come to logical truths so well illustrated by ingenious similes, that we know not whether to call the thoughts more poetically or philosophically just. The judgment and fancy are reconciled, and the imagery of the poems seems to start more vividly from the surrounding shades of abstraction."

The coldness' of 'cloth and metallic threads' which the critic applies to the hard arguments' of Nosce Teipsum is a mere imagination. But besides, the ( metallic threads' are not for warmth but for splendour. The lining of the splendidly curious' garment is to be looked for for warmth. Similarly the hard argu

ments' would have been unpoetical as unphilosophical

had they been 'warm

with the warmth of the 'clothing' in similes and fancies. The hardness' is where it ought to be—in the thinking: but it is a hardness like the bough that is green with leafage and radiant with bloom and odorous with 'sweet scent' and pliant to every lightest touch of the breeze. The leaf and bloom start from the 'hard' bough rightly, fittingly 'hard' to its utmost twig. The alleged 'too much labour' is singularly uncharacteristic.

As for the

'madness' I can but exclaim-Oh for more of such 'fine lunacy' as in Donne is condemned! His and compeers'' madness' is worth cart-loads of most men's sanity.

In our own day Dr. George Macdonald has spoken more wisely if still somewhat superficially of "Nosce Teipsum" in his charming "England's Antiphon." Having explained that by "Immortality of the Soul" is intended "the spiritual nature of the soul, resulting in continuity of existence," he proceeds :-"It [Nosce Teipsum] is a wonderful instance of what can be done for metaphysics in verse, and by means of imaginative or poetic embodiment generally. Argumentation cannot of course naturally belong to the region of poetry, however well it may comport itself when there natural

ized; and consequently, although there are most poetic no less than profound passages in the treatise, a light scruple arises whether its constituent matter can properly be called poetry. At all events, however, certain of the more prosaic measures and stanzas lend themselves readily, and with much favour, to some of the more complex of logical necessities. And it must be remembered that in human speech, as in the human mind, there are no absolute divisions: power shades off into feeling; and the driest logic may find the heroic couplet render it good service." (pp. 105-6). The 'scruple' must be 'light' indeed that has to decide whether the reasoning' of "Nosce Teipsum" be or be not 'poetry.' It is astounding that at this time o' day any should attempt to exclude the highest region of the intellect and its noblest occupation from poetry. Poetry I must hold absolutely is poetry, whatever be its matter and form if the thinking be glorified by imagination or tremulous with emotion. It is sheer folly to refuse to the Poet any material within the compass of the universe. Especially deplorable is it to have to argue for possibilities of poetry in the greatest of all thinking, viz., metaphysics, in the face of such actualities of achievement as in Davies and Lord Brooke and Donne.