“I regard, and ever have regarded, the obligations of Intellect among the most sacred of the claims of gratitude." -Biographia Literaria.

THE portrait of which I spoke, which reminded me of youth's affluent years, is that of Chrysostom, who was the hierophant of the new service of poetry. The strains of his poetic prose, fell with quickening power on some of the young, eager minds of his day; specially, one book on Biblical poetry was a source of much kindling of spirit. I, too, at a later date, came within the circle of his influence; an influence which I recognise as the passionate phase of Poetry.

Chrysostom was born amongst the Scottish mountains, in a region still shaken by earthquakes. His natal spot was typical of his character: massive, imperious, was he, like his northern cliffs; impetuous in his higher moods, heaving with emotion, like their central fire. Beaconsfield has striven to produce such a temperament in fiction, in which Saxon coldness and firmness are blended with Venetian fervour. With a lofty, alpine spirit, which might denote a chilling, proud, intellectual reserve, Chrysostom's

"blood

Was all meridian, as if never fanned

By the black wind that chills the polar flood."

He was educated for the ministry; and the church to

which he was called was his first and his last ecclesiastical attachment.

His earliest theological productions were marked by a boldness which alarmed the heads of his religious body; they were a prelude to the stormy, sombre triumph of his priestly career. He was reprimanded, and yet evermore rebelled.

His fame first went through the kingdom when he made excursions in the Elysian Fields of literature; when he reviewed in bright succession, novelists, sacred writers, essayists, historians, men of action, poets. He assumed the most valuable and honourable office in the republic of letters, that of critic and poetic teacher.

The Bible next became his theme. The Holy Volume requires more than exposition; its most transcendent power is obtained in times of fervent contemplation. This is the mood in which Chrysostom came to it. All he claimed for this book was to be "a Prose Poem or Hymn, in honour of the Poetry and Poets of the inspired volume;" it was more, to many a score of minds it was an awakening, and afflatus. Here began his poetic rule.

Next told he the red history of—

"the Covenant-times

Whose echo rings through Scotland to this hour!"

The Covenant-its heroes, its martyrs, its sufferings, its perseverance, its triumphs-are to be learned in his volume in simple, compacted style. Much it is for such a subject to enter into a man's life, much is it to be at one with nobleness and truth, irrespective of the world's favour, and something more is it to tell one's thought upon it. This he has done; not with the scorn, the discontent, and Pandemonium glare of Carlyle, but with earnest force and beauty; bathing the dark sorrows of the persecuted, in the gentleness and grandeur attending their refuge in Nature's strongholds; presenting their

trials as sanctified by the ministry of mountain, lake, and overhanging heavens; drawing from their summer sacraments a sweetness which their stern, unyielding form of religion withstood.

Of a lighter spirit was his next volume, half critical, half biographical, half descriptive. But now the crescent promise of his early years became fulfilled. The relation of Christianity to our times engaged his pen, and exhibited him as one of the censors of the Church. He surveyed the different aspects of religious and unreligious thought then prevailing. The volume marked his revolt from the thraldom of the leading literary thinker of his time; the burning style, and rueful thought, of Sartor Resartus preyed heavily upon him for many years; now he broke the ninefold bands. Alas, that the rupture should never have been healed! It was not the fault of Chrysostom that to the end

Like cliffs which had been rent asunder."

This was a book with a purpose. Wide and comprehensive in its views, its argument was warm and weighty. The central points of faith it maintained with zealous anxiety, but it was marked with great and gentleheartedness. The Bible was to the writer, not only the foundation for belief, but the Sacred River of Authorship. Severe in his regard for the Sabbath, his severity was mingled with a charity that was singular in his church at that time; he advocated, what was then deemed plain profanity, that his church, in ritual, music, and preaching, should demonstrate the poetical tenct, that "Beauty is Truth, and Truth Beauty." He had, then, the hope of a near Personal Divine Advent, and the close of his strenuous contention was hushed up in the vision of the new earth, ere long to be with its Sabbaths hallowed and beautified sevenfold, and clad "in the everlasting autumnal splendour of the skies."

Subsequently, he discoursed in verse. It was a gloomy, lustrous theme that he chose-nothing less than Old Night. Its phenomena, its joys, its associations and suggestions, its terrors, its poets, and its children, were rehearsed in various verse,-blank, heroic, and lyric. Fine passages there are, as frequent as the stars on a clear, cold winter's midnight. The love and the fate of Danton are told with a dramatic force which catches at the heart-strings, and makes for itself a remembrance of agony and love. But, as a whole, the poem fails, as all such poems must fail, in leaving an impression of unity. It should be a companion to Young's Night Thoughts; they are both books for poetic meditation.

But during this while, and later, and to the last, Chrysostom led an active and somewhat tumultuous life. His pen produced ceaselessly. Upon the leading spirits of his own land he failed not to descant; he brought home the hero-worship of Carlyle to Christianity, and gave it a place in the religious annals of Britain, and in many a volume he made niches for minor saints. The generous spirit, inspired through its own loving impulse with high perception, sees the great in the small, in the tiniest flower the miracle of the largest, yet possessed of a special beauty of its own. Chrysostom, it must be confessed, went at times to an extreme; his little saints were not altogether saints; he put his flies in amber. “You have accustomed yourself to talk affectionately, and write affectionately, to your friends, till your expressions of affection flow by habit in your conversation and in your letters, and pass for more than they are worth." So wrote Southey to Coleridge, and such open-heartedness caused Chrysostom to embalm what many will deem trivial names.

Nevertheless, this is a glorious transgression. From this ready appreciative charity came his recognition of merit-specially, poetic merit-wherever it crossed his

path. Beauty in life and in word he cherished whenever and wherever found, in high or low, in rich or poor. His reputation was made serviceable by many a score of youthful minds. A glittering list is known to us still; others have sunk to early silence. He took The Life Drama as a heavenly boon, and his approval made to its author all the difference between success and profitless mortification. The fate of Endymion might have been the fate of the poem, instead of its earning immediate praise and gain. How it came to pass that no Hyperion followed, it is for others to answer.

As a critic, Chrysostom was acute, genial, and extensive in his range; and one, as I have said, who combined with that office the poetic teacher. Coleridge remarked :— " He who points out and elucidates the beauties of an original work does indeed give me interesting information, such as experience would not have authorised me in anticipating." In that loving craft Chrysostom excelled, and it was exhibited in connexion with a striking mode of treatment. He gives a man's life and writings as the best novelists give their plots; he infuses into his reader's mind appreciation for all he speaks about. For variety and comprehensiveness he is a Pepys of literature:-the writings of his time can be estimated through him,-a reference to his pages, will hereafter afford to the curious an intimate knowledge of the prevailing fashion in our world. of letters, and the general modes of thought.

But a higher view of the Literary Character has been thus stated:-"Would that the criterion of a scholar's utility were the number and moral value of the truths which he has been the means of throwing into the general circulation; or the number and value of the minds whom, by his conversation or letters, he has excited into activity, and supplied with the germs of their after-growth!" Thus considered, Chrysostom's life and writings are amongst the worthiest in our literary annals. From the immediate purpose he passes into the remote and mov