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At the present moment some members of the Church of England deny the Reformation as an historical fact. The Church, they say, put aside the unauthorised additions which had been made to the Papal power, but left the whole fabric of medieval doctrine and ceremony untouched, and they go on to prove this in practice by taking the Use of Sarum or the Roman Use as their liturgical rule, instead of the Prayer Book. They do not prove their position in doing so; they only illustrate the weakness of ecclesiastical law and authority. Others, whilst admitting the Reformation as a fact, wish it undone and England restored to the Roman obedience, with such concessions as, it is presumed, Rome would make-which are, indeed, no more than what Rome was willing to concede three hundred years ago. Not by these means will England be recaptured. The Church may be disestablished and disendowed; a large number of clergy and laity may return to Rome; but it does not require much of the spirit of prophecy to assure us that the National Church holds by the Tudor settlement and its consequences, and is not on its way to Rome.

Though the Church of England may show signs of decay, and though its best friends may wish it reformed, it is in great measure the comprehensiveness of the Church, not only its simple and primitive doctrine and the beauty of its services, which has kept it in touch with the thought of the age, and never allowed it to become illiterate or fanatical. No Christian community has accepted the sure advances of physical and critical science with less shock to religious conviction than the Church of England, none has more walked hand in hand with freedom. The Roman Church discovers nothing and invents nothing in the intellectual sphere; free thought, in the mental as in the moral and political regions, is to her rebellion, for she holds autocratic traditions; and those who believe that God has given reason to mankind to be their guide in the search after truth must stand aloof from her, as upholding unwarranted authority. The movement which is variously styled Renaissance, Reformation, and Revolution proclaims the duty of men to think for themselves; and to this doctrine, whatever the Romanising party may say, the Church of England stands committed.

ART. II.-AUBREY DE VERE, POET.

1. Poetical Works. By AUBREY DE VERE. 1842-1893.

2. Essays. By AUBREY DE VERE. London: Macmillan. 1887-1889.

3. Recollections of Aubrey de Vere. London: Arnold. 1897. 4. Aubrey de Vere: a Memoir. By WILFRID WARD.

London: Longmans & Co. 1904. 'ToO-MORROW Aubrey de Vere will be here; will you not 'be glad to see him?' Sir W. Rowan Hamilton, de Vere's early and lifelong friend, asked his seven-year-old little son. Thinking of Latin, and thinking of trouble, ' and thinking of God, I had quite forgotten Aubrey de Vere,' was the remorseful reply. And the world, albeit its thoughts are rarely so meritoriously occupied, will always be in danger, the cultivated few excepted, of falling into a like oblivion.

The reason is not far to seek. As a poet, a critic, or, more accurately, an essayist, his works, while possessing all the qualities which ensure a succès d'estime and this was fully accorded to them-lack almost every element of popularity. The choice of themes and the treatment of the themes chosen were calculated to restrict the circle of sympathetic readers, and neither the enthusiastic eulogy of a Landor, nor the discriminative but deep admiration of many of the most distinguished literary men of his day, could lure the multitude to recognition of his poetic rank. His name amongst contemporary poets was widely known; his works, so far as the test of the book-market may be applied, were little read. As a personality, though few if any of the literary celebrities of his day inspired even casual associates with a more affectionate regard, it was still a personality unfitted to stamp any clear impress on the public mind at large. His special gift was the power to charm and captivate, not to dominate or influence, the men and women, lettered or unlettered, with whom he came into contact. Hence it came to pass that, personal charm being, unlike influence, incommunicable at second-hand, those and only those who were brought face to face with him could fully appreciate the rare nature of an individuality essentially original, combining in itself the courtesy of a Bayard, the culture of a scholar, the gaiety of a child, and the devotion of a monk. Nor is it easy for those

who knew him with the knowledge of long years to convey to a younger generation a full understanding of those endowments of race, nature, and grace which made him, of all the memorable group of his contemporaries, perhaps the most distinctively loveable.

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To few men has been accorded in equal measure and in more positive form what Southey once called 'a genius 'for friendship.' Reading the memoirs of de Vere's early associates, it sometimes would appear as though friendships constituted a more prominent feature of the times he survived than of later days. One after another their record has been written. Wordsworth's friendship with Coleridge and in later years with Miss Isabella Fenwick. Southey's friendship with Coleridge, its extent epitomised in his own words: Time and absence make strange work 'with our affections, but mine are ever returning to rest upon you-I have other and dear friends, but none with 'whom the whole of my being is intimate.' The story of Henry Taylor's devotion to Southey, a devotion to which the elder poet's whole heart responded, Taylor has told in his 'Autobiography.' It found its last melancholy utterance when, after an evening passed in Southey's company, the younger man realised the coming change, the darkening of those brilliant faculties, the overclouding of the brave strong spirit. 'I came away,' Taylor wrote to his future wife on the eve of their marriage, as he sat alone in sleepless sadness, with a troubled heart, and I could only allay its troubles by trusting I should soon ' have you to help me to hope in this deep solicitude you 'must help me to hope' (the sentence repeats itself thrice). I could not bear to think of the decay of that great mind ' and noble nature.'* These examples are but instances, which could be almost indefinitely multiplied. Nor were the affections binding de Vere to his friends less close or lasting. In friendship he gave his whole heart, and in friendship he received again what he gave, if not always in equal, at least in full measure. His friendship for Henry Taylor,' says his biographer, 'was the deepest of ' his life.' Its occasion was Henry Taylor's marriage to de Vere's cousin and friend, when de Vere's affection was not transferred but extended to her husband. A. had a cousin,' Taylor writes shortly after his marriage, 'a 'brother in everything except the one remove in blood,

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* Dowden, 'Life of Southey' (quoted in part).

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'Aubrey, a younger son of Sir A. de Vere.. 'wife had no other very intimate friend, but that one was 'worth a thousand. . . . I was not long in finding out how 'rich a dower of friendship my wife had brought me in 'Aubrey.' And, wholly dissimilar as the two men were in nature and temperament, no jar or fret, no divergences of opinion or faith, during the almost half-century of their companionship, lessened or dimmed affection's first keen edge. Each followed the other's literary fortunes with an eagerness of interest and a candour of criticism disclosed in their long and frequent correspondence. Every new or projected literary venture was chronicled and discussed. James Spedding' (who with de Vere paid annual summer visits to H. Taylor's house) has just arrived with the MS. ' of his last volume under his arm, A. de Vere with his.' 'A. de Vere's book is out at last,' H. Taylor writes on another occasion to his Oxford son, de Vere's godson. ' received it this afternoon with joy and exaltation-I have 'read more than half of it since it came.' De Vere's enthusiasm for Taylor's dramas is as ardently expressed. It might be said with truth that he held his friend's work dearer than his own. What the intimacy was to him in his own estimation is recorded at length in a letter to Mrs. E. Villiers, quoted by Mr. Ward. It is summed up in one brief sentence when, on H. Taylor's death, he wrote to a friend of the younger generation, using unconsciously the words of Goethe's lament for Schiller, with him half my life has passed away.'

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Mr. Ward has indicated the rare moral quality of the untroubled atmosphere in which the friendships of these three flourished H. Taylor, grave, just and true; Aubrey de Vere, gay, light-hearted, with enthusiasm and faith no years could age; Spedding, speculative and calm, under whose mournful serenity ran slow currents of strong feeling. Spedding,' 'Spedding,'* is Mr. Ward's commentary, had 'refused an Under-Secretaryship with 2,000l. a year to 'devote himself to the study and vindication of Bacon. 'Taylor had also refused the Under-Secretaryship for the 'Colonies.' Both were men of small fortunes. De Vere, it should be added, was equally devoid of the desire for acquisitions of wealth or place. He was accustomed,

*Of whom Professor Jowett wrote in 1882: 'He was one of a very small class who had had a very great and deserved private reputation, but never made themselves public.'

without so much exaggeration as might be attributed to the jest, to state that no one can call me a poor man when I could always double my income by laying down 'my pen.' Spedding expressed his attitude also in characteristic fashion. My own small experience makes me

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' rejoice in thinking that the whole round world does not contain a single clod or two stones one on the top of another that belongs to me. Six feet by two, allowing two inches for the woodwork, is as much as I shall want, and as I shall occupy it all myself I shall have no trouble 6 about furniture or rent.'* In the absolute and untrammelled freedom of mind implied by such indifference to worldly aims and earthly possessions, affections and sympathies become prodigal in growth; they cover the ground common ambitions, necessarily egoistic, are apt to sterilise. With de Vere friendships were, conjointly with home affections, the greatest of life's treasures, and what men prize they seek, and what they seek for the most part, when the object of search is spiritual and not material, they find. Thus de Vere's friends were not only many, but they were mostly of the intellectual and moral standard corresponding to his own ideal of human worth. He owed to Taylor and shared with him his intimacy with Miss Fenwick, the centre, or, as de Vere significantly expresses it, the connecting link' of so many affections, who, in her grey old age no less than when the most beautiful brown hair I ever saw,' was hers, retained the charm with which her clear penetrating heart, her wise and generous spirit, drew men and women, old and young, to her feet. Sara Coleridge, Mrs. Edward Villiers, again were friends belonging primarily to Henry Taylor's circle. Intersecting it, de Vere's own circle of friendships or associates, included the names of Mrs. Cameron (the artist-photographer), of Mr. G. F. Watts-who, alas! has left us without any portrayal of the refined intellectuality of the face, of the spirited uprightness of the tall spare figure- of Cardinal Newman, Mr. Hutton, Cardinal Manning, Lord Tennyson, Mr. Patmore, names which indicate the breadth and extension of his human and intellectual sympathies.

Nor was his gift of attraction confined to the region of bis intellectual companions. The universal goodwill he bore to all men evoked its counterpart: all men would appear

Letter from J. Spedding, dated 1861. † Letter of H. Taylor's.

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