boundless are the claims, yet how scanty the evidence for a written Testament! Why has it no more direct impress of a divine original?

"Or why, when He was man, did He not deign

Wholly to write this Text with his own hand?
Or why (as if all written rolls were vain)

Did He ne'er write but once, and but in sand?"

Why is sin permitted to be, and is not such permission license to sin, since there is authority to repress it?

Is not sin from pleasure, and that from pleasant objects, the creatures of Nature? Next follows a question which all time cannot

answer:

Why should our sins, which not a moment last,

(For, to Eternity compared, extent

Of life is ere we name it stopt and past,)

Receive a doom of endless punishment?"

How does St. Paul's metaphor of the potter and the clay convince
reason of the Creator's justice, as well as of his irresponsible power?
"Power's hand can neither easy be, nor strict
To lifeless clay, which ease nor torment knows;
And where it cannot favour nor afflict,

It neither Justice, nor Injustice shows.
But souls have life, and life eternal too;

Therefore if doomed before they can offend,
It seems to show what heavenly power can do,

But does not in that deed that power commend."

However startling may appear such doctrines as election and reprobation, they are necessary to account for sin receiving such punishment as reason cannot justify. The poet attributes to "predestination" much the same results as the 17th article describes as its operation upon "curious and carnal persons;" and, indeed, in such category puritans would recognise the free-speaking and freeliving laureat. But does not such an ordainment supersede the universal command to pray?

The Christian replies that God has permitted man, through art, such a glimpse of knowledge, that faith may conceive how His omnipotence surpasses the reach of our reason. How He has

vouchsafed to publish this His will to man :

Religion, ere imposed, should first be taught;
Not seem to dull obedience ready laid,
Then swallowed strait for ease, but long be sought;
And be by reason counselled, though not swayed.

God has enough to human kind disclosed;
Our fleshly garments He awhile received,

And walkt as if the Godhead were deposed,

Yet could be then but by a few believed."

We grope in vain after truth because blinded by passion, which decays only at the approach of death; so we may begin to know just when all uncertainty must end with life.

"O harmless death! whom still the valiant brave,
The wise expect, the sorrowful invite,

And all the good embrace, who know the grave,
The short dark passage to eternal light!”

The Postscript to Gondibert was written in prison, while the poet was expecting a summons to death. Now if the poem above quoted was meant as a continuation, it was probably composed after the fear of death was past, but leaving a suitable and salutary record of its presence. He does not underrate the dignity of his position as a moral teacher, though knowing that his warning must be repeated again and again, before it be received. He never expected his great poem to run like his plays or his complimentary lyrics. These were like Jonah's gourd, the children of a night,-and wiser than the prophet, the poet feels no anger at their evanescence. But he demands stability where it is deserved, as the only gratitude a poet can receive: "He who writes a Heroic Poem leaves an estate entailed; and he gives a greater gift to posterity than to the present age, for a public benefit is best measured by the number of receivers, and our contemporaries are but few reckoned with those who shall succeed us." This confidence has scarcely been verified; as a moral and didactic poem, Gondibert has had probably less influence, and immeasurably fewer readers, than Paradise Lost, Watts' Hymns, The Christian Year, or Robert Montgomery. It is likely, moreover, that many of its few readers have read it from partisanship; not to admire its majestic energy of diction, nor to imbibe its truthful and elevating philosophy, but rather to convict others of dulness for neglecting it. Gondibert has owed its readers to the reason named by Elia, that "you cannot make a pet of a book which everybody reads." And these readers rather exult that they are few and select, since there is the more credit for acuteness to be divided amongst them. But for such readers, Gondibert need never have been written at all; a worse poem would serve their turn quite as well, since its obscurity is to be its attraction. The poem would have better chance of exciting interest if more were known about its author, if he had left behind him any record beside his name and his unread folio. His eldest son, Charles, was born too late to receive more than a temporary influence from his father's example; he wrote a successful play at

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nineteen, and then devoted himself to law, finance, and politics. Since his only inheritance was a share in the theatre, it is singular that he so early declined this career.. If he felt conscious that with all hereditary prestige, poetry was not his forte, then he evinced rare discretion; for his vocation was no easy one, and could hardly be easier to the son of a laureat. His works show great administrative talent, as well as a complete mastery of financial science.

Many smaller men than Sir W. Davenant have had their lives written; many duller men have left some memoir or correspondence by their own hand. The little known shows that his life was full of incidents; he lived actively through most stirring times, and we see far more of what he did, than what he was. Even the abusive attacks of his contemporaries, and few have encountered more, fail to supply any portraits of him who provoked such excess of blame and praise. One single incident in his life, which probably did not happen in early youth, was for ever thrown in his teeth. However hard it might be to prove that Gondibert lacked meaning, his tragedies lacked passion, his comedies humour, his odes brilliancy, it was easier to show that their author lacked a nose. This imperfection is the only event in our author's private life on record, except a silly fable that he was a natural son of Shakespeare, and an unpleasant fact that he died insolvent. He left a widow, who five years after his death collected his works, and dedicated them to the Duke of York, whence we learn that her name was Mary. This folio, the current edition of his works, forms the plea which he has put on record at the bar of posterity, and for nigh two hundred years he is expecting a good deliverance.

There is one remarkable event in his life, which we could appreciate better with a more certain knowledge of his personal character. Just when England's troubles were culminating, Davenant, then a fugitive in France, projected a descent upon Virginia, taking with him skilled artizans from France to plant a settlement upon that loyal colony. It does not appear what was his special aim, whether his colonists were to obey the local government of the province, or if he himself was to be their lawgiver, or if he intended a diversion in favour of France. There is some greatness of mind in turning from your native country when you can serve her no longer, to do what in you lies for her dependencies, too remote to imbibe their parent's disaffection, yet near enough for their prosperity to react upon her when better days return. A man who could devise

such a scheme, and prepare to sacrifice himself for its completion, was fit for better things than to be a stage-manager and master of revels, and was worthy to have written Gondibert. Its first two books were published when he announced his mission, and Cowley, in a congratulatory address, hopes for as prosperous an issue to his expedition as to his poem. The face of each was not dissimilar. The expedition never approached America, being surprised by an English squadron soon after leaving port. The licensers had no pretence for suppressing Gondibert, though in so doing they would only have anticipated an ill-discerning public. Such an emigration has been a favourite scheme with men of a wayward, unenduring genius. Cromwell had himself felt just the same disappointment he was inflicting upon Davenant. But Southey affords the most curious parallel with our author; he too would leave England, ill at ease with the ruling politics, but before he made any effort to mend them, and while England was in every sense his home. Davenant proposed to live in Virginia, and provided means enough to ensure life, and more; while Southey with his Co-Pantisocrats could not have reasonably purposed to do aught but starve on the Susquehanna. Davenant's design was hindered by his enemies; Southey's by his best friends declining to lend him money. Davenant spent his next two years in prison, in daily expectation of trial for life and death; while no worse result befel Southey than that he got married, and went a wedding tour without his wife. Perhaps the above is quite as near a parallel as may be ventured between characters so different as the author of Gondibert and the writer of the Doctor.

Whatever merit that is his singly and alone, Davenant may claim―he is no servile copyist, trading upon borrowed brains. An admirable scholar, versed in ancient and modern learning, he has not conformed to the style of any great master in poetry, while all mere conventional rules he has invaded on every side. An extract from his preface will show how he refused to supplant his own conceptions and their meaning, with even the most amicable and wellgrounded suggestions: "But though I am become so wise, by knowing myself, as to believe that the thoughts of divers transcend the best I have written, yet I have admitted from no man any change of my design, nor very seldom of my sense; for I resolved to have this poem subsist and continue throughout with the same complexion and spirit, though it appear but like a plain family of neighbourly alliance, who marry into the same moderate quality and garb, and are fearful of introducing strangers of greater rank,

lest the shining presence of such might seem to upbraid and put all about them out of countenance." In manly self-consciousness of genius, he communes with the old poets as their equal, and while acknowledging how the labours of each have made the art easier to their successors, he trusts his own native discernment, and that only. A conscientious writer, feeling accountable for every line he wrote, he suffered no invasion either of his credit or his liability. His inferior works are as independent as his Gondibert; nearly all congratulatory verses must be of one sameness and tameness, but these attempt little more than to convey a straightforward and intelligent meaning, in as agreeable language as the writer can express. As a dramatist, he sacrificed the dignity of his calling, as a teacher by example, to mere mountebankery, merry or sedate; and he is blameable for giving currency to a style which could be successfully copied and stereotyped by inferior men. It may be that his credit during his lifetime was almost as undeserved, as has been his desertion since his death, while his sterling merit is enough to stock a first-rate poet and philosopher, in that he has not miscarried in the design of his great poem, "to strip nature naked, and clothe her again in the perfect shape of virtue."

ART. II.-Cooke's “Poor Man's Case.”

Unum Necessarium; or, the Poor Man's Case: being an Expedient to make Provision for all poor people in the Kingdome. Humbly presented to the higher Powers; begging some Angelicall Ordinance, for the speedy abating of the prises of Corne, without which the ruine of many thousands (in human judgment) is inevitable. In all humility propounding that the readiest way is a suppression or regulations of Innes and Alehouses, &c. &c. Wherein there is a Hue and Cry against Drunkards as the most dangerous Antinomians; and against Ingrossers to make a dearth, and cruell Misers, which are the Caterpillars and Bane of this Kingdome. By JOHN COOKE of Graies Inne, Barrister. London: Printed for Matthew Walbancke at Graies Inne Gate, 1648. (Quarto, pages 74.)

JOHN Cooke was a Regicide. He was in good practice as a lawyer, when," as Granger says, "he was appointed to the office of solicitor-general, by that power that dared to bring Charles I to a public trial." His hardihood was acknowledged by the Parliament; he received their thanks, and a pension; and subsequently was advanced to an Irish judgeship, in which position he was found at