between this doctrine and the idea that 'Christ achieves our redemption by revealing God's love for us' (p. 218). They show how the doctrine is verified in the lives of Christians. Some of the objections commonly brought against the doctrine are answered, and the Atonement is regarded as being itself a revelation of God and His dealings with man, and as thus being a sign of the existence of a unique and most intimate connexion between the Son of God and the human race' (p. 258), of the freedom and willingness of God to forgive sins, and of the possibility of attaining in Christ to the Father. Amid much that is valuable, perhaps the most valuable feature is the strong sense of the guilt of sin and the necessity and reality of divine forgiveness--a sense which has been the animating force of the Church's greatest theologians, but which at the present time we seem in some danger of losing. So far as such a danger is real there is need of Dr. Dale's warning: "We cannot easily escape from the power of the life of our contemporaries. We think as they think; we feel as they feel. Only a few elect souls in any generation can leave the multitude and ascend to those Divine heights in which they can hear for themselves the voice of God; the communion of saints is necessary even to them; and even they must be more or less deeply affected by the spirit and temper of their generation. Not until the sense of the guilt of sin and the craving for the Divine Forgiveness become as general, as earnest, and as intense as the desire for moral and spiritual perfection will the Death of Christ as an Atonement for sin inspire a deep and passionate gratitude, or recover its ancient place in the thought and life of the Christian Church' (p. 254). Both in the teaching on the Atonement and in that about the Holy Spirit we have strongly felt the need of additions which might show the relation of the Sacraments to the forgiveness of sin and the gift of the Holy Ghost. It is as the sacramental means of union with Christ and of receiving the Spirit are kept in view that what Dr. Dale so well says will have its true value. There is much more in Dr. Dale's volume on the importance and power of which we should have liked to comment, and there are a few other passages which, in our opinion, call for criticism; but we must hasten on to notice the distinction which he makes between belief in and the knowledge of God. To him the belief in the existence of God' is part of a 'great tradition' (p. 5), and it becomes of real service to the soul only as it passes on to 'knowledge.' He describes various ways in which this knowledge' is attained, as the glory of Nature is seen to be the vehicle of the Divine glory, or as the splendour of Nature postulates the God who made it, or as the intelligible order in the universe denotes an intelligent Power to whom it is due, so that the ultimate realities' of 'the world, self, God' (p. 22), become known. To these are added the sense of the moral law, and of guilt in transgressing it, the dread of future judgment, and the revelation of Christ, each of which, and pre-eminently the last, postulate the existence of God. By such means as these, in his view, the old 'belief' becomes a real part of the man who has inherited it, and so is developed into 'knowledge.' 'Belief' and 'knowledge' are among the most difficult words which a theologian can use. 'Belief' may denote an easy acquiescence in something about which no thought has ever been exercised, or a mere intellectual acceptance of that which has no influence upon the life; or it may be used for that intense act of the whole soul which marks the character profoundly and is called 'Faith' by St. Paul. 'Knowledge,' again, may mean a condition of mind in which the intellect alone works, or it may have the higher meaning Dr. Dale assigns to it, of that inner and spiritual knowledge whereby the soul realizes its friendship with God. It is a thankless task to dispute about words, and if we do not altogether like the sharp distinctions in the terminology of the sermons on this subject we must express our appreciation of the truth they are evidently meant to convey, that man's need is to deeply realize and earnestly seek after God, and learn, in the sense of St. John, to know Him.' We may not conceal our belief that the work under review might have gained greatly if its author held doctrines on the Church and the Sacraments which he would repudiate as untrue additions to the Gospel of Christ. It is no light matter that these doctrines are so far set aside as they are in the present volume. It is true that the place for the full consideration of them would come rather in the second series' of sermons, which the preface (p. viii) leads us to expect; but different opinions than those which we understand Dr. Dale holds would have led to some modification of parts of the present series. But this is not the thought which is most prominent in our minds as we close the book. The impression left upon us is much more from what the sermons and the notes contain than from what they omit. A volume like this suggests to Churchmen high hopes of future possibilities. We cannot 11 St. John ii. 3, iii. 6. minimize the loss which we believe it to be to any religious body to be without the ordered government and supernatural powers of episcopacy. But Dr. Dale's positive teaching shows a wide field of common ground between him and ourselves. His earnest spirit fills our thoughts with anticipations of better understandings between Churchmen and Nonconformists. And where there is common ground and a resolution to understand one another there is hope that by degrees those who are divided may be brought together. If such a hope, so far as the reunion of English Nonconformists to the Church is concerned, is ever to be realized, it will be largely through such teaching and through such spiritual force as this volume exhibits. ART. IX.-THE YOUNGER POETS. 1. Poems. By WILLIAM WATSON. (London, 1892.) 2. Lachryma Musarum, and other Poems. By WILLIAM WATSON. (London, 1892.) 3. Odes, and other Poems. By WILLIAM WATSON. (London, 1894.) 4. Fleet Street Eclogues. By JOHN DAVIDSON. (London, 1893.) 5. Ballads and Songs. By JOHN DAVIDSON. 1894.) (London, 6. Poems. By FRANCIS THOMPSON. (London, 1893.) SPECULATION in minor poets is nearly as exciting and uncertain a pursuit as speculation in mining shares. The market varies with almost equal rapidity, and with (to the outsider) apparently an equal lack of reason. There are certain publishers who make a speciality of this form of literary investment, just as there is a Kaffir Circus,' as it is elegantly termed, on the Stock Exchange. From time to time certain issues are 'boomed' for all they are worth, and, it may be, a trifle more; the commodity is duly unloaded on the receptive world, and then relapses to a more natural level when the speculation is diverted towards a different object. In the literary gamble all the objects of this speculation have a certain intrinsic value, no doubt, which is more than can be said for their commercial counterparts; but it is very hard for the outsider to ascertain at first precisely what that value is. I have seen three-and-twenty leaders of revolts,' murmurs the Pope's legate as he rides into Faenza to take stock of the twenty-fourth; and the literary student may say much the same of the real poets' who have been successively introduced to his notice, have lived their little day, and then gone the way of the last year's snows. Some disheartened readers give up the pursuit in despair, and, falling back on the advice of a person of importance in his own day, and therewith a minor poet himself, read an old poet whenever a new one is announced. Others persevere, faint yet pursuing, looking always hopefully for the coming of the true poet, that they may be ready to give him proper greeting when he comes. It is an obvious truth that we are at present passing through a period of depression in poetry, not, indeed, in respect of quantity, but of quality. One of the great poets of the Victorian age is still left to us, and the marvellous music of his verse seems to suffer little change or diminution from the lapse of years. Another, less great but yet a true poet, is alive, but silent, declining any longer to be the idle singer of an empty day.' The rest are gone, and we are left with a crowd of lesser writers, gifted with many of the qualities that go to make up a poet, but lacking the final grace of greatness. In this there is nothing strange, and nothing to cause despondency for the future of our literature. The history of English poetry is the history of successive ebbs and floods. Chaucer, Spenser and Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Wordsworth and Shelley, Tennyson and Browning, are the high-water marks of our poetic achievement, and between them lie periods of relapse, of declining vigour and returning strength. Complaints of decadence in every branch of human achievement are as old as the human race, and have an unbroken pedigree from that earliest relic of Egyptian literature which laments the deterioration of mankind about the year 3400 B.C., to the newspaper articles which sum up the occurrences of 1894. We have suffered worse things than these, and it may be that the future historian of the nineteenth century, looking back over another age of splendid literary performance, will be able to say that at this very time another of the immortals was among us, and had even begun to carve out his way to fame. Whether this be so or not, the actual verse of to-day is in itself, and without reference to its promise for the future, well worth the attention of to-day, and it is with a generous competition that the critics try to discern the first sign of poetic merit, and to bring forward those who strive for the poetic name. The three writers whose most notable works we have prefixed to this article are those who occupy for the moment the principal place among our younger poets. It may be that one of them is the coming poet for whom we seek; but it is certain that they have already written verse of no mean or inconsiderable merit. It can hardly be other than a pleasant task to review the work that they have done, and to try to gather up what there is in it of excellence in the past and what hope of higher achievement in the future. In both respects we have no hesitation in giving the first place among the younger poets of the day to Mr. William Watson. It is little more than two years since the general public became aware of his name, when the beauty of his panegyric on the dead Laureate made some eager admirers believe that he would be found the fittest successor to the vacated dignity. More sober judgments hesitated, and they hesitate still; but few lovers of poetry will deny to Mr. Watson a certain distinction and loftiness of tone which gave much ground for his admirers' estimate. Mr. Watson has been writing, or rather has been giving his writings to the world, for fourteen years, but the bulk of his work is still small. Five thin volumes hold all the verse that he has published, and no great economy of space would be needed to concentrate all their contents into a single volume of very moderate size. He has as yet tried no long poem; the most are odes, sonnets, epigrams, and occasional pieces. Partly this is due to a very praiseworthy fastidiousness, which forbids him to give anything but finished work to the public; partly-and this is a fact that will have to be considered in estimating his rank as a poet-it arises from a scantiness of inspiration. It is no impertinence to say this, for he has told us so himself: 'Not mine the rich and showering hand, that strews The facile largess of a stintless Muse. A fitful presence, seldom tarrying long, Three only of Mr. Watson's five volumes need be taken into serious consideration. The Prince's Quest (1880, reprinted in 1893) is a slight collection of early verse, reissued when Mr. Watson had begun to make a name by his later work; and The Eloping Angels (1893) is, as its title-page declares, a caprice, graceful enough, like all Mr. Watson's writings, but 1 Poems, p. 3. |