the whole description of which, a subject acutely sympathetic with the temper of Shorthouse, has always been reckoned, and justly, one of the golden passages of the book. We are still concerned with Johnny's soul more than with anything external. The scene where he receives the sacrament in the Ferrars' Chapel may be taken as the culminating point of this subjective history.

'Above the altar, which was profusely bedecked with flowers, the antique glass of the east window, which had been carefully repaired, contained a figure of the Saviour of an early and severe type. The form was gracious and yet commanding, having a brilliant halo round the head, and being clothed in a long and apparently seamless coat; the two forefingers of the right hand were held up to bless. Kneeling upon the half-pace, as he received the sacred bread and tasted the holy wine, this gracious figure entered into Inglesant's soul, and stillness and peace unspeakable, and life, and light, and sweetness, filled his mind. He was lost in a sense of rapture, and earth and all that surrounded him faded away. When he returned a little to himself, kneeling in his seat in the church, he thought that at no period of his life, however extended, should he ever forget that morning or lose the sense and feeling of that touching scene, of that gracious figure over the altar, of the bowed and kneeling figures, of the misty autumn sunlight and the sweeping autumn wind. Heaven itself seemed to have opened to him, and one fairer than the fairest of the angelic hosts to have come down to earth.' (Pp. 59, 60.)

But not alone is this passage of the Gidding visit sympathetic with the feelings of the author; it is, in its shadow of romantic love for Mary Collet mingling with its sacramentalism, an admirable piece of historic psychology, transmuting to its page the fine essence of seventeenth-century devotional poetry-the verse of Herbert and Vaughan and Crashaw-but mostly of this last. Even so the earlier-quoted discourse of the Platonic parson might be matched with a great deal of English prose of this date. Here we touch the unique quality in John Inglesant:' that out of the native sympathy which made Shorthouse become a student of English seventeenth-century literature (of the Anglican type), and the added sympathy and insight begot of this long study, he has drunk in the spirit of that age and party as few romancers have ever done for any time; more deeply even than Thackeray absorbed the spirit of our Silver Age, though Thackeray's greater literary gifts allowed him to make in some respects a wider use of his knowledge. There has sprung up at no other time in our history a stranger literary product than the verse of this Anglican

group of poets-Donne, Vaughan, Herbert, Crashaw, Herrick-which throughout has a likeness of kinship, is all instinct with beauty, yet never leaves an impress of full-the fullest-sincerity; and which graduates so marvellously— taking the verse of this Pleiad as a whole-from brutal coarseness, up through romance, into religious devotion. No description can give an idea of that poetry to a reader who is unfamiliar with some good proportion of it; but probably such readers are few. To judge it, as most of us do, standing upon the threshold is one thing; so to absorb it that one's mind has taken the very form and pressure of the time, is quite another thing; and this is what Shorthouse has achieved.

In this history of John Inglesant's spiritual developement the events of national history flit out and in of the narrative in a capricious fashion, sometimes very impressively, as in the account of Strafford's ghost-another purple patchsometimes quite the reverse, as in Johnny's proceedings during Laud's trial: never in a wholly artistic fashion. Our author is here and throughout large portions of his story in the position of a circus rider trying to ride two horses and keep them always in step: it is impossible to achieve the feat with perfect grace. Perhaps Thackeray's literary instinct was the surer in making history, as he said, step down from her high place, put off her cothurni, and mingle in every-day life. On the other hand, if Shorthouse had done the same we should have missed a great deal. We have always in his book a sense of great historical events, though they pass in the background. Excellent, for example, is the picture of Oxford during the war, even though one feels that Johnny would really have had very little part or lot in the business. Then there is the episode of the rescue of Lady Fentham, which is a separate gem: all this serves its turn in emphasising Shorthouse's doctrina, that a man should be a good Christian and a man of the world. Unfortunately, it emphasises it too obviously: the hero seems-in the unconscious cerebration of the authorto be posing for an effect: as, in truth, all Shorthouse's fine gentlemen do a little. It has been admirably said, 'Tact, as soon as it is praised, deserves no praise.' And one may say that as soon as a man's fine manners are praised they too cease (almost) to deserve it. Shorthouse is always praising the fine manners of his fine gentlemen. And what a terrible come down is that when John Inglesant hints to Mary Collet that he is too poor to marry her; one of those

sudden shocks which we have noticed also in Shorthouse's prose.

All the part of the story connected with the enlistment of the Irish and the attempted relief of Chester, ending with Inglesant's appearance on the scaffold, rises to a high level of interest, that should subdue the critical feelings of any reader. He may upon colder reflection complain of its want of naturalism, want of realism. Mere historical inaccuracies or voluntary departures from accuracy are of small momentsuch as the attitude attributed in the book to Lord Byron, who is reputed to have said, in reality, that if the King would call in the Irish, or, for that matter, the Turks, provided they would serve him, he saw nothing against it. In 'John Inglesant' Byron is filled with horror at the notion of enlisting the Irishry. The fault of this portion does not lie in such things, but in the too clear anxiety of the author to put his hero in the most favourable light, not merely face to face with his own conscience, but vis-à-vis even to his enemies. There is too much of the school-girl's hero here, or even of the child's, who, following some third brother through the troubles of his earlier years, has to 'pretend' he didn't mind. It is in this we surprise the essential weakness of Shorthouse, that which keeps his work on this side of real greatness, a flinching from reality, or thoroughness in any direction. Theoretically, John Inglesant made the most splendid sacrifice that a man could make. But as you are never really allowed to see him in his hours of weakness, and even his enemies are not permitted to think the worst of him, the result upon reflection seems like the 'pretending' of children. Then follows the vision in the crystal, which is admirably fitted to Shorthouse's style of narration, and is, moreover, quite in the spirit of the time (Meric Casaubon's Veritable Relation' has, no doubt, supplied the pattern for it). Follows the murder of Eustace, as the crystal had foretold it. And therewith the first part (the English portion of Inglesant's history) comes to an end.

On the way to Italy we stand by the death-bed of Mary Collet, a passage which, Mrs. Shorthouse tells us, was especially admired by the elder Shorthouse, who read John

* A veritable and faithful relation of what passed between Dr. Dee and certain spirits.' This was published within a year or two of the event of the vision in John Inglesant.' But Dr. Dee was already dead when the essential part of Shorthouse's story opens.

'Inglesant' for the first time in print a few months before he died. Was there, in fact, a pause in the writing between the first and second parts? We are not told. It is certain that the Italian portion is suggestive of a certain fatigue in the writer, and this notwithstanding that it contains the episode which was the germ of the whole romance. All this section is, of course, a great tour de force, seeing that the author was never in the country he describes. Passages of description are of high merit, and many of the episodes are so likewise. How good that scene is which leads to the acquaintance with the Cavaliere di Guardino, the murdered English lad, and the maskers; and then, again, the vielleplayer's story, and the Papal election, and much of the talk about music and the drama! They are utterly in the spirit of the age; but the career of the central figure has become too nebulous through all these histories; and, moreover, some of them read like imitations, like pastiches. The maskers' scene has its counterpart in Don Quixote,' and the vielle-player's story may have been suggested by more than one novella. Our author has turned his back too much on probability. The passages in which Lauretta figures are unreal as a dream. The crowning absurdity in this kind is that, though Eustace's murderer had been living for some months in Lady Cardiff's household, Inglesant should, as we are constantly told, have gone to Italy without the least idea of Malvolti's personal appearance. A second improbability almost as great is that Inglesant's friends, the Jesuits, could not trace the villain. Howbeit, these two ignorances are capital to the story, for they alone are excuse for the hero's drifting about as he does. Let us then close the book with the scene in the chapel among the mountains, which was, we know, the origin of the whole tale.

The priest, who was an old and simple-looking countryman, continued his office without stopping; but when he had received the sacred elements himself, he turned, and influenced probably by his appearance and by his position at the altar, he offered Inglesant the sacrament. He took it, and the priest, turning again to the altar, finished the mass.

Then Inglesant rose, and when the priest turned again, he was standing before the altar with his drawn sword held lengthwise across his hands.

"My father," he said, "I am the Cavaliere di San Giorgio, and as I came across the mountains this morning on my way to Rome, I met my mortal foe, the murderer of my brother, a wretch whose life is forfeit by every law, either of earth or heaven, a guilty monster steeped in every crime. Him, as soon as I had met him-sent by

VOL. CCII. NO. CCCCXIII.

K

this lonely and untrodden way as it seems to me by the Lord's handI thought to crush at once, as I would a venomous beast, though he is worse than any beast. But, my father, he has appealed from me to the adorable name of Jesus, and I cannot touch him. But he will not escape. I give him over to the Lord. I give up my sword into the Lord's hands, that He may work my vengeance upon him as it seems to Him good. Henceforth he is safe from earthly retribution, but the Divine Powers are just. Take this sword, reverend father, and let it lie upon the altar beneath the Christ Himself, and I will make an offering for daily masses for my brother's soul."' (P. 367.)

An account of Shorthouse's writings is really incomplete until not our author's social theories only have been set forth (as has in some sort been done), but his religious creed likewise. To do that would, however, open up too many controverted questions. We must at least take for granted the distinctly Christian and Anglican portions of it, assuming that the reader can reconstruct them for himself. What was peculiar to Shorthouse was his special endeavour to combine Christianity with 'culture.' That was the word he used generally, but sometimes it is Platonism, sometimes Hellenism, in the sense in which Matthew Arnold used the word. Hellenism is the best term. But it is necessary to point out that Shorthouse never penetrated to the root of Platonism or Hellenism, in so far as he confounded these influences with what is commonly called culture.' To Shorthouse it was a marriage of morality and intellect that he sought to bring about. It is a common error of our days (from which Matthew Arnold was not exempt) to overlook the moral side of Hellenism. Things which are so great do not rest on intellectual greatness alone; and that which makes the grandeur of Hellenism or sets the coping-stone upon its greatness is its embodiment of the supreme Pagan virtue, justice. It is easy to overlook this, because, in fact, the sense of justice has for our world been overlaid by other virtues-overlaid more especially by humanity, which to the Christian is charity.' Justice has been lost sight of in her dwelling-house with the gods below. And modern society is apt to confound justice with law. Yet even its law the modern world has not created, but inherited it from the union of the Greek mind and the Latin.* Thus people like Short house read Plato for what they call his 'spirituality; they are interested in his speculations about

* As in the codes of the Byzantine emperors Theodosius and Justinian.