will not be found in a passage burning with all the poetry and tenderness of Milton. It breathes, indeed, the thought of the Penseroso:— "There let the pealing organ blow, As may with sweetness through mine ear, And bring all heaven before my eyes.” One represents the power of sacred music, in lifting the hearer out of earthly thoughts into the choir of angels; the other shows it in bringing down the vision of glory, and changing the house of prayer into the gate of heaven. It was not, indeed, so much Taylor who differed from Milton, as Milton who differed from himself, when, in his darker hour of bigotry, he denounced the anthems and beauty of those cathedrals which once he had frequented and loved, and spat all the venom of puritanical rancour “ upon the painted copes and chanted service-book of the church." Taylor had a practical knowledge of music; and he sometimes introduced an illustration from it, with something of the singular effect that marks Milton's astronomical allusions. One example is very noticeable:-"As in an accurate song, you must keep minim time, or else you will put the whole choir out, so look that you sing the new song of the Lord with trembling and accurate observation; miss neither clef nor note, that is, Q 2 In neither sound doctrine nor pious practice."1 the passage of the Ductor Dubitantium,2 where, he treats of this subject, he does not mention the organ—the Greek word opyavwv, which he translates from Justin Martyr, signifying any musical instrument whatever. He regards instrumental music as a help to psalmody, but objects to make it a circumstance of the divine service. Nor will this conditional approval surprise us, if we remember the account given by Erasmus of English churches at the beginning of the sixteenth century, when elaborate and theatrical harmonies were accompanied by a tumultuous diversity of voices, and the ear was stunned by "trumpets, cornets, pipes, and singing;"3 when people came to "church as to a playhouse," and the choir and the flock divided the oversight of the bishop. 1 Christian Consolations, Works, i. 116. 2 Works, xiv. 115. 3 Annotations on the New Testament; Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography, í. 171, (Note.) It sometimes happens that Taylor's musical predilections lead him into a very unfortunate illustration; as in the following passage, where, speaking of the efficiency of prayer, he says-" The Spirit of Christ is the precentor or rector chori-the master of the choir."-Return of Prayers, Part ii. CHAPTER XIV. II. Taylor's - III. Artistic I. The cultivation of the rhetorical mind. reading in English poetry Spenser. decorations of style-Poussin. — IV. Universality of his genius; examples of the terrible. - V. Compared with Thomson; Southey. VI. Dramatic vividness of his imagery; representation of Time. - VII. His poetical remains. ICERO believed that the abundant harvest of CICERO eloquence can only be reaped by him, whose mind is sown with the seed of all sciences, and cultivated by every beautiful art. It is knowledge that blossoms into rhetoric. Of the acquirements of Taylor, his surviving friend' speaks with zealous admiration. He notices his familiarity with the Greek and Latin Fathers, the sophistries of the schoolmen, and the elegances of classical oratory, poetry, and ethics. The "refined wits of the later ages," the quaint exaggeration of French fiction, and the more graceful gaiety of Italian fancy, were also known to him; he mentions the Grand Cyrus, and makes an unfortunate quotation from Poggio. To the genius of Dante he could scarcely have been a 1 See the Sermon of Rust. stranger; and we are reminded of the dark picturings of the Purgatory and Inferno in his own appalling delineations of the suffering sinner, tormented by a melancholy confusion of seasons, and plunging from regions of fire into eternal frost. His reading in English poetry seems to have been confined within narrower limits than the other branches of his studies. We look in vain for any reference to Spenser; yet to what author was his eye more likely to be drawn? When he took his bachelor's degree at Cambridge, little more than thirty years were passed since the concluding canto of the Faery Queen appeared with wide and spreading applause; becoming the delight and model of the minstrel and the knight; a book of piety for the old, and a picture-gallery for the young. A kindred spirit seemed to beckon him to the page. If Cowper, looking back in the grey evening of a late autumn of fancy, remembered the rude Spenser of the people,1 the 'Ingenious dreamer, in whose well-told tale Sweet fiction and sweet truth alike prevail;" we might have expected to see Taylor stooping, with a gentler reverence, over the changeful lights and colours of that allegory through which Christian virtue is conducted, by the Spenser of all time, to its heaven of promise and crown of victory. Heber makes several ingenious remarks upon what he calls Taylor's indiscriminate appetite for 1 Bunyan. the marvellous, and quotes his allusion to the alabaster and golden houses of Egyptian Thebes, and the magnificent city of Quinsay, with its eighty millions of inhabitants. The "undoubting mind" of the poet believes much; and Gray lost his identity in the "Bard" when he composed it. This is the credulity of the imagination, not of the understanding. The wonderful embellishments of Taylor resemble the enchantments of Ariosto, or the combats of Spenser; they are picturesque circumstancesartifices of colour. Like the crimson curtain of the painter, he introduces them to soften or to decorate the picture. When Wood said that he was esteemed a complete artist, he unconsciously presented us with a key to the imperfections, as well as to the beauties of his style. His classical illustrations are generally perfect landscapes; and he uses old words to dignify a metaphor, as Poussin gave a nobler air to a figure by his familiarity with antique proportions. His inharmonious combinations of imagery might be defended by similar eccentricities in the highest art; while the occasional intermixture of serious truths with familiar images, reminds us of the wild and melancholy humour of Holbein. Perhaps the following passages present this peculiarity of manner in the most striking light. He is speaking of the afflictions of the saints, as emblematic of the sufferings of Jesus Christ:-"It is he who is stoned in Stephen, flayed in the person of St. Bartholomew; he was roasted upon St. Laurence's gridiron, exposed to lions in St. Ignatius, burnt in |