how is he to express them, but in the songs which echo them? These will keep alive, and intensify in him, and in the children who learn them from his lips, all which is like themselves. Is it, we ask again, to be left to chance what sort of songs these shall be? As for poetry written for the working-classes by the upper, such attempts at it as we yet have seen, may be considered nil. The upper must learn to know more of the lower, and to make the lower know more of them-a frankness of which we honestly believe they will never have to repent. Moreover, they must read Burns a little more, and cavaliers and Jacobites a little less. As it is, their efforts have been as yet exactly in that direction which would most safely secure the blessings of undisturbed obscurity. Whether "secular" or "spiritual," they have thought proper to adopt a certain Tommy-good-child tone, which, whether to Glasgow artisans or Dorsetshire labourers, or indeed for any human being who is "grinding among the iron facts of life," is, to say the least, nauseous; and the only use of their poematicula has been to demonstrate practically, the existence of a great and fearful gulf between those who have, and those who have not, in thought as well as in purse, which must be, in the former article at least, bridged over as soon as possible, if we are to remain one people much longer. The attempts at verse for children are somewhat more successful-a certain little "Moral Songs" especially, said to emanate from the Tractarian School, yet full of a health, spirit, and wild sweetness, which makes its authoress, in our eyes, "wiser than her teachers." But this is our way. We are too apt to be afraid of the men, and take to the children as our pis aller, covering our despair of dealing with the majority, the adult population, in a pompous display of machinery for influencing that very small fraction, the children. "Oh, but the destinies of the empire depend on the rising generation!" Who has told us so? -how do we know that they do not depend on the risen generation? Who are likely to do more work during our life-time, for good and evil,-those who are now between fifteen and fiveand-forty, or those who are between five and fifteen? Yet for those former, the many, and the working, and the powerful, all we seem to be inclined to do is to parody Scripture, and say, "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still." Not that we ask any one to sit down, and, out of mere benevolence, to write songs for the people. Wooden, out of a wooden birthplace, would such go forth, to feed fires, not spirits. But if any man shall read these pages, to whom God has given a truly poetic temperament, a gallant heart, a melodious ear, a The Poet for the People. 183 quick and sympathetic eye for all forms of human joy, and sorrow, and humour, and grandeur-an insight which can discern the outlines of the butterfly, when clothed in the roughest and most rugged chrysalis-hide; if the teachers of his heart and purposes, and not merely of his taste and sentiments, have been the great songs of his own and of every land and age; if he can see in the divine poetry of David and Solomon, of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and, above all, in the parables of Him who spake as never man spake, the models and elemental laws of a people's poetry, alike according to the will of God and the heart of man; if he can welcome gallantly and hopefully the future, and yet know that it must be, unless it would be a monster and a machine, the loving and obedient child of the past; if he can speak of the subjects which alone will interest the many, on love, marriage, the sorrows of the poor, their hopes, political and social, their wrongs, as well as their sins and duties; and that with a fervour and passion akin to the spirit of Burns and Elliott, yet with more calm, more purity, more wisdom, and therefore with more hope, as one who stands upon a vantage ground of education and culture, sympathizing none the less with those who struggle behind him in the valley of the shadow of death, yet seeing from the mountain peaks the coming dawn, invisible as yet to them. Then let that man think it no fall, but rather a noble rise, to shun the barren glacier ranges of pure art, for the fertile gardens of practical and popular song, and write for the many, and with the many, in words such as they can understand, remembering that that which is simplest is always deepest, that the many contain in themselves the few, and that when he speaks to the wanderer and the drudge, he speaks to the elemental and primeval man, and in him speaks to all who have risen out of him. Let him try, undiscouraged by inevitable failures; and if at last he succeeds in giving vent to one song which will cheer hardworn hearts at the loom and the forge, or wake one pauper's heart with the hope that his children are destined not to die as he died, or recall, amid Canadian forests or Australian sheep-walks, one thrill of love for the old country, and her liberties, and her laws, and her religion, to the settler's heart; let that man know that he has earned a higher place among the spirits of the wise and good, by doing, in spite of the unpleasantness of self-denial, the duty which lay nearest him, than if he had outrivalled Goëthe on his own classic ground, and made all the cultivated and the comfortable of the earth desert, for the exquisite creations of his fancy, Faust, and Tasso, and Iphigenie. ART. VI.—The Works of John Owen, D.D. WILLIAM H. GOOLD, Edinburgh. Vols. (to be completed in Fifteen Volumes.) burgh. 1850-51. Edited by the Rev. 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 14, London and Edin Two hundred years ago the Puritan dwelt in Oxford; but, before his arrival, both Cavalier and Roundhead soldiers had encamped in its Colleges. Sad was the trace of their sojourn. From the dining-halls the silver tankards had vanished, and the golden candlesticks of the cathedral lay buried in a neighbouring field. Stained windows were smashed, and the shrines of Bernard and Frideswide lay open to the storm. And whilst the heads of marble apostles, mingling with cannon-balls and founders' coffins, formed a melancholy rubbish in many a corner, straw heaps on the pavement and staples in the wall, reminded the spectator that it was not long since dragoons had quartered in All-Souls, and horses crunched their oats beneath the tower of St. Mary Magdalene. However, matters again are mending. Broken windows are repaired; lost revenues are recovered; and the sons of Crispin have evacuated chambers once more consecrated to syntax and the syllogism. Through these spacious courts we recognise the progress of the man who has accomplished the arduous restoration. Tall, and in the prime of life, with cocked-hat and powdered hair, with lawn tops to his morocco boots, and with ribbons luxuriant at his knee, there is nothing to mark the Puritan,—whilst in his easy unembarrassed movements and kindly-assuring air, there is all which bespeaks the gentleman: but, were it not for the reverences of obsequious beadles and the recognitions of respectful students, you would scarce surmise the academic dignitary. That old-fashioned divine,-his square cap and ruff surmounting the doctor's gown, with whom he shakes hands so cordially, is a Royalist and Prelatist, but withal the Hebrew Professor, and the most famous Orientalist in England, Dr. Edward Pocock. From his little parish of Childry, where he passes for "no Latiner," and is little prized, he has come up to deliver his Arabic lecture, and collate some Syriac manuscript, and observe the progress of the fig-tree which he fetched from the Levant; and he feels not a little beholden to the Vice-Chancellor, who, when the Parliamentary triers had pronounced him incompetent, interfered and retained him in his living. Passing the gate of Wadham, he meets the upbreaking of a little conventicle. That no treason has been transacting, nor any dangerous doctrine propounded, the guardian of the University has ample assurance in the presence of his very good friends, Dr. Wallis the Savilian An Evening Walk through Old Oxford. 185 Professor, and Dr. Wilkins the Protector's brother-in-law. The latter has published a dissertation on the Moon and its Inhabitants, "with a discourse concerning the possibility of a passage thither;" and the former, a mighty mathematician, during the recent war had displayed a terrible ingenuity in deciphering the intercepted letters of the Royalists. Their companion is the famous physician Dr. Willis, in whose house, opposite the ViceChancellor's own door, the Oxford Prelatists daily assemble to enjoy the forbidden Prayer-Book; and the youth who follows, building castles in the air, is Christopher Wren. This evening they had met to witness some experiments which the tall sickly gentleman in the velvet cloak had promised to shew them. The tall sickly gentleman is the Honourable Robert Boyle, and the instrument with which he has been amusing his brother sages, in their embryo Royal Society, is the newly invented air-pump. Little versant in their pursuits, though respectful to their genius, after mutual salutations, the divine passes on and pays an evening visit to his illustrious neighbour, Dr. Thomas Goodwin. In his embroidered night-cap, and deep in the recesses of his dusky study, he finds the recluse old President of Magdalene; and they sit and talk together, and they pray together, till it strikes the hour of nine; and from the great Tom Tower a summons begins to sound calling to Christ Church cloisters the hundred and one students of the old foundation. And returning to the Deanery, which Mary's cheerful management has brightened into a pleasant home, albeit her own and her little daughter's weeds are suggestive of recent sorrows, the Doctor dives into his library. For the old misers it was pleasant to go down into their bullion vaults, and feel that they were rich enough to buy up all the town, with the proud Earl in his mortgaged castle. And to many people there is a peculiar satisfaction in the society of the great and learned; nor can they forget the time when they talked to the great poet, or had a moment's monopoly of Royalty. But "That place that doth contain My books, the best companions, is to me A glorious court, where hourly I converse And sometimes for variety I confer With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels." Not only is there the pleasant sense of property,—the rare editions, and the wonderful bargains, and the acquisitions of some memorable self-denial,-but there are grateful memories and the feeling of a high companionship. When it first arrived, yon volume kept its owner up all night, and its neighbour introduced him to realms more delightful and more strange than if he had taken Dr. Wilkins' lunarian journey. In this biography, as in a magician's mirror, he was awed and startled by foreshadowings of his own career; and, ever since he sat at the feet of yonder sacred sage, he walks through the world with a consciousness, blessed and not vain-glorious, that his being contains an element shared by few besides. And even those heretics inside the wires -like caged wolves or bottled vipers-their keeper has come to entertain a certain fondness for them, and whilst he detests the species, he would feel a pang in parting with his own exemplars. Now that his evening lamp is lit, let us survey the Doctor's library. Like most of its coeval collections, its foundations are laid with massive folios. These stately tomes are the Polyglotts of Antwerp and Paris, the Critici Sacri and Poli Synopsis. The colossal theologians who flank them, are Augustine and Jerome, Anselm and Aquinas, Calvin and Episcopius, Bellarmine and Jansenius, Baronius and the Magdeburg Centuriators,―natural enemies, here bound over to their good behaviour. These dark veterans are Jewish Rabbis, Kimchi, Abarbanel, and, like a row of rag-collectors, a whole Monmouth Street of rubbish,behold the entire Babylonian Talmud. These tall Socinians are the Polish brethren, and the dumpy vellums overhead are Dutch divines. The cupboard contains Greek and Latin manuscripts, and those spruce fashionables are Spencer, and Cowley, and Sir William Davenant. And the new books which crown the upper shelves, still uncut and fresh from the publisher, are the latest brochures of Mr. Jeremy Taylor and Mr. Richard Baxter.* * In his elaborate "Memoirs of Dr. Owen," (p. 345,) Mr. Orme mentions that "his library was sold in May 1684, by Millington, one of the earliest of our book auctioneers" and adds, "considering the Doctor's taste as a reader, his age as a minister, and his circumstances as a man, his library, in all probability, would be both extensive and valuable." Then, in a footnote, he gives some interesting particulars as to the extent of the early Non-conformist libraries, viz., Dr. Lazarus Seaman's, which sold for £700; Dr. Jacomb's, which sold for £1300; Dr. Bates's, which was bought for five or six hundred pounds by Dr. Williams, in order to lay the foundation of Red Cross Street library; and Dr. Evans's, which contained 10,000 volumes; again subjoining, "it is probable Dr. Owen's was not inferior to some of these." It would have gratified the biographer had he known that a catalogue of Owen's library is still in existence. Bound up with other sale-catalogues in the Bodleian, is the "Bibliotheca Oweniana: sive catalogus librorum plurimis facultatibus insignium, instructissimæ Bibliothecæ Rev. Doct. Viri D. Joan. Oweni (quondam Vice-Cancellarii et Decani Ædis Christi in Academia Oxoniensi) nuperrime defuncti ; cum variis manuscriptis Græcis, Latinis, &c., propria manu Doct. Patricii Junii aliorumq. conscriptis: quorum auctio habebitur Londini apud domum auctionariam, adverso Nigri Cygni in vico vulgo dicto Ave Mary Lane, prope Ludgate Street, vicesimo sexto die Maii, 1684. Per Eduardum Millington, Bibliopolam." In the Preface, the auctioneer speaks of Dr. Owen as "a person so generally known as a generous buyer and great collector of the best books;" and after adverting to his copies of Fathers, Councils, Church Histories, and Rabbinical Authors, he adds, "all which considered together, perhaps for their number are not to be paralleled, or upon any terms to be procured, when gentlemen are desirous of, or have a real occasion for the perusal of them." The |