Studies in Poetry And Philosophy

alone, so Heaven has willed, we die, Nor even the tenderest heart, and neit our own, Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh ?"' On glancing to the footnote to see who the wise poet of our own time might be, the reader saw, for the first time perhaps, the name of Keble and The Christian Year. To many, in Scotland at least, this was the earliest announcement of the existence of the poet, and the work which has immortalized him. If some friend soon afterwards happened to bring from England a copy of The Christian Year, and make a present of it, the young reader could not but be struck by a lyric here and there, which opened a new vein, and struck a note of meditative feeling,not exactly like anything he had heard before. But the little book contained much that was strange and unintelligible, some things even startling. Very vague were the rumours which at that time reached Scotland of the author. Men said he belonged to a party of Churchmen who were making a great stir in Oxford, and leavening the University with a kind of thought which was novel, and supposed to be dangerous. The most definite thing said was that the new school had a general Romanizing tendency. But this must be a mistake or strange exaggeration. Folly and sentimentalism might no doubt go far enough at Oxford. But as for Romanism, the revival of such antiquated nonsense was simply impossible in this enlightened nineteenth century. If such an absurdity were to show itself openly, was the...