Devotional Phraseology. 269 the style which pervades the devotions of the Brethren, and which has its most peculiar and extravagant expression in their hymns. A history of their hymnology will soon be given by themselves to the world; and until that appears, it would be impossible to do justice to the subject. It may suffice to say, that if the keynote and strain of most of them is taken from the Scriptures, the variations played upon them are often altogether unscriptural. The presence of the Head of the Church in all their assemblies is a truth which they hold fast with affectionate tenacity. But His presence is not viewed under its scriptural aspect. As the Lamb,-and this is His central name in this book,-He does not represent Himself as present in His visible Church; but as its ascended and glorified Lord, manifesting, confirming, and sealing His presence by the Holy Spirit. There is another state in which He who bears the name of the Lamb is followed whithersoever He goeth; but neither the congregations of the Brethren, nor any other assemblies of His people, are yet in that state. Faith has a different, and in some respects a higher, object to contemplate than the wounds of the Lamb. Expressions like these, varied in ten thousand ways, produce upon our minds the impression of a Christian feeling and expression robbed of its highest glory, and seem to us to reduce the glorified God-Man to a Christ after the flesh. Yet there is not a page in this book, nor a page in the active history of the Unitas Fratrum, which does not prove that they are true servants of Him who is exalted into a higher region than Golgotha, with its blood, and wounds, and mortal agony. Well, therefore, would it be, if their hymns, and prayers, and the testimonies of their Agape, were purged of their sensuous element, and conformed to the higher strain of their own sublime Easter Morning Litany. BRIEF LITERARY NOTICES. The Miscellaneous Works in Prose and Verse of Sir Thomas Overbury, Knight. Now first collected. Edited, with Notes and a Biographical Account of the Author, by E. F. Rimbault, LL.D. London: J. Russell Smith. 1856. THE works collected in this handsome volume have rather the rime of age than the dew of youth for their distinction; but the one is only a crystallization of the other. The characteristic beauty of these pieces, preserved to us and enshrined by the kindly frost of two centuries and a half, proves that they originally sparkled with the freshest hues of genius. There are many reasons which induce us to welcome publications of this class. They afford a grateful relief from the tumultuous strife of modern thought. They enable us to preserve that finer relish of the mind which is so much endangered by the excitements of literary novelties. Their age imparts a slightly archaic tinge to our now hacknied language; their long obscurity insures a novel interest in the reader; and their real merit inspires a sudden and unexpected sense of originality and power. There is also this advantage in the perusal of our elder authors, that compositions which have survived so many rivals, and earned a re-production in our busy, boastful age, furnish thereby some proof of their superior merit, and have a certain claim to the guidance of our taste. Of course this remark supposes that the revivals promoted by our editors and publishers are generally approved by those best qualified to judge of their moral and literary worth. If age is not necessarily an evidence of superior wisdom in the individual, still less does the mere antiquity of a book establish its claim to immortality. The antiquarian who resorts to the dust-bin will often load himself with rubbish; and there are many of our poets,-Elizabethan as well as Caroline,-whose utmost desert is to be utterly forgotten, whose genius pleaded against their faults can claim only an act of oblivion for them both, and for whom the annihilating verdict of justice is coincident with the merciful dictate of charity. Under this sentence the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, so unduly praised, ought certainly to come; and we have nothing to say in commendation of the reverend editor who recently assisted to delay the righteous Brief Literary Notices. 271 judgment. But on the whole the reprints of the last twenty years are creditable alike to the taste and enterprise of British publishers; who are no longer content to pander to the popular taste, while it is in their power so largely to improve it. We hope shortly to fulfil a long-cherished purpose, and invite our readers to visit with us some of these pure refreshing springs of English literature; and in the meantime the work before us will afford a favourable illustration of these remarks. The tragical fate of Sir Thomas Overbury has engrossed so large a share of the interest attaching to his name, that his literary claims have long been overlooked; and some of our readers may now learn for the first time that he was the most popular humourist and poet of his day. Yet his poem of The Wife, and the Characters which form his most considerable prose production, seem to have merited the popularity which they attained with the readers of the reign of James the First, and the admiration which they inspired in his literary contemporaries; and what these amounted to may be judged from the numerous editions through which the compositions passed, and the flattering 'commendatory verses' by which they are preceded. There is one of our author's Characters, which is known to most of the lovers of English literature it is a description of A fair and happy Milk-mayd.' This beautiful prose pastoral is equal in merit to The Shepherd of Christopher Marlowe, quoted at length in Walton's Angler, and beginning, 'Come, live with me.' Most of the others are rather curious than diverting to modern taste; written with point and wit, and displaying a keen observation of class features and peculiarities, but seldom glancing below the surface of character. In The Wife there is something of deeper truth and more permanent excellence. We extract a few verses of this poem, which even at this distance of time may justify to some extent the enthusiasm of our ancestors. 'Give me next good, an understanding wife, By nature wise, not learned by much art, Besides her inborne vertue fortifie. They are most firmly good, that best know why. 'A passive understanding to conceive, And judgment to discerne, I wish to finde : Beyond that, all as hazardous I leave; Learning and pregnant wit in woman-kinde, What it finds malleable, makes fraile, And doth not add more ballast, but more saile. Else, being plac'd from many vices free, In transcribing these verses we have retained the punctuation and spelling of the present reprint, which in these particulars follows the old copies, and especially the ninth edition issued in the year 1616; the typographical emphases are also preserved. With some of these features we are disposed to quarrel as useless or misleading. There can be little merit or significance in a system of spelling which is in no respect consistent, which gives on the same page leisure and leysure, woman-kind and woman-kinde. The use of Italic letters is also more frequent than satisfactory. We cannot help thinking that the penultimate line of the penultimate verse would more faithfully convey the author's meaning if printed thus: 'Will make me, if not her, her love respect.' For the poet would affirm that man's self-esteem will lead him to appreciate the love which his wife may bear to him, even if she possessed no other title to his regard. In the third line of the last stanza we should prefer to read 'adapted' for 'adopted,' as more consonant with the prevailing thought; but this, we admit, is a conjectural emendation that would need to be justified by the testimony of some at least of the early copies. Though carefully edited as a whole, we meet in some other parts of this volume with a doubtful or disputed reading. Thus of the Fair and happy Milk-mayd' it is said, 'She doth not, with lying long abed, spoile both her complexion and conditions; nature hath taught her, too immoderate sleepe is rust to the soule: she rises therefore with chaunticleare, her dames cock, and at night makes the lamb her courfew.' In this passage it is certain that her dames cock' is a very needless synonyme of 'chaunticleare;' but if we read her dames clock,' we have a phrase of considerable point and beauty, and one to which the 'courfew' of the following clause very prettily responds. We have no space to pursue these observations into further detail, though publications of the present class especially invite such petty criticism. It gives us pleasure to repeat that Dr. Rimbault has performed his duty in the main with judgment and ability. The 'Life' of Overbury affords the reader a sufficient glimpse into the author's character and fortunes; into the gray promise of his youth and the dreadful mystery of his fate; and thus all that claims to be remembered of a gifted and unfortunate man is comprised in the limits of a cheap, and handsome, and convenient volume. Brief Literary Notices. 273 Seven Lectures on Shakspeare and Milton. By the late S. T. Coleridge. A List of all the MS. Emendations in Mr. Collier's Folio, 1632; and an Introductory Preface by J. Payne Collier, Esq. Chapman and Hall. 1856. ANOTHER fragment of Coleridge, and another illustration of Shakspeare!-Once more the sage is upon the wizard's track :-once more the curious, tireless, but still uncertain critic follows, with keen eyes, but lazy, shambling gait, in a sinuous course, but with a settled purpose, the wilful and never-resting Puck of poetry, seen for a moment and then bounding far out of sight, as he runs to 'put a girdle round the world.' The appearance of this volume is both interesting and suggestive in many points; and one of these relates to the philosophical critic whose name it bears. The endless productiveness of genius is even more characteristic than its perfect operation, and nowhere is this fecundity more strikingly displayed than in the literary career of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The way in which every topic became multiplied and extended in his hands is almost of the nature of a miracle; and although it is more than twenty years since he retired from the feast of life, and to those around him, to his hearers as well as to his readers, it was a continual feast of imagination and reason,his disciples and friends have not yet ceased from taking up the fragments which remain. Many volumes, compiled from table-talk, letters, and reminiscences,-of marginalia gathered from all sorts of books, and of articles collected out of daily papers and other ephemera of the press, have been set before the readers of the present day; and perhaps another generation must pass before the accumulation of materials is complete which will form the basis of that final estimate which awaits him in the future of this world. In the meantime we may briefly indicate the nature of the present contribution. The central portion of this book-for it consists of three almost equal parts-consists of a few broken fragments of a course of lectures delivered by Mr. Coleridge in the years 1811-12, on Poetry in general, and the genius of Shakspeare and Milton in particular. The editor, who was present, was then a very young man, and his notes were naturally imperfect even at the first; for Coleridge was a rapid and uncertain speaker, and one unaccustomed to his manner both of speech and thought would be likely to misapprehend and misreport him. But this is not all. Mr. Collier's notes, written in short-hand, were transcribed in a number of manuscript books, and only a part of them have been recovered from the misplacement and obscurity of forty years. The original series extended to fifteen lectures; but only seven are now placed before the reader, and these in a more or less imperfect state. Every allowance must be made for a publication issued under such unfavourable circumstances. We must not bring these fragments to a standard of perfection. The lecturer, indeed, was probably in his intellectual prime; but the reporter was young and inexperienced, his notes were necessarily brief and hurried, and even these are further marred by many breaks and interruptions. Yet the relics merited the careful preservation which is now secured to them. The first two lectures are, perhaps, the least important; they contain nothing more valu |