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scepticism, a bridge between the old order and the new. Its suppression has played into the hands of indifference and irreligion. The unanimity with which the antimodernist oath has been taken by men whose opinions were notorious is significant. If the history of the last ten years has shown one thing beyond doubt, it is the omnipotence of the Pope in Latin Christendom. It is impossible to imagine an utterance of the Vatican which would not be received by the Church with enthusiasm. The quality of this enthusiasm may be questioned; but men must be judged by their public statements, not by presumed private beliefs which they are too timid or apathetic to express. The Church is 'the Pope's house,' and he alone is master in it; Rome is Catholicism, and Catholicism is Rome.

Tyrrell's premature death makes speculation on what might have been his future unprofitable. There were times when he looked forward to the Christianity of the future as definitely non-ecclesiastical-consisting of mysticism and charity, and possibly the Eucharist in its primitive form as the outward bond' (ii, 377). But it is certain that he had a strong and old-standing attraction, both of reason and feeling, towards the English Church. The Autobiography shows the light in which he regarded his secession. In 1905 he writes: 'The position I have come to in these last years is, in substance, more Anglican than anything else'; and, 'The Church of the "Christian Year" is, and always has been, my native air' (ii, 368–9). In 1908 these regrets reached their height. Who can dwell with perpetual burnings?' he had exclaimed in 'Mediævalism'; a return to the Church of his baptism would have been an unspeakable relief.' His case was not singular. How could it be so? The faith of many had been subjected to an intolerable strain. Among them were not a few, like himself, converts. Born free, the yoke of bondage was bitter to them; their secession seemed, at best, one of those false steps which, like an ill-judged marriage, can be remedied only by a mistake as great or greater. At this juncture a great opportunity was missed by the Anglican bishops. A National Church

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has a national calling; and Englishmen, as such, have a claim to the good offices of the English Church. It is the tendency of modern Anglicanism to ignore this, and to take up the lower, denominational standpoint. A word of counsel and sympathy, spoken in public and with authority, might have done much-it may be to recall reluctant exiles, in any case to revive faith then dying and since then in many instances dead. It was not spoken; what the latest historian of the English Church characterises as 'the more than Gamaliel-like caution' of the bishops blocked the way. Tide must be taken at the flood, if it is to lead on to fortune.' The opportunity passed, and will not return.

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In Tyrrell's case, it may be permitted to an English Churchman who knew him intimately to think that 'antiquam exquirite matrem' would have been the best and happiest solution, and that his natural home was in the English Church. One cannot go on with a withered heart and a bitter taste in one's mouth for ever,' he wrote. 'Why should I hold on to a body which hates me, and whose exclusive claims I no longer admit?' (ii, 369). Her historical background appealed to his temperament; her freedom and large horizons to his understanding 'The Church of England, while holding to the principle of Catholicism, has always opened her windows towards the rising sun.' And, had he devoted to an examination of the position of the Reformed Churches half the ingenuity which he displayed in the construction of a purely abstract Roman Catholicism to which nothing in the world of fact corresponded or could ever correspond, he would probably have got nearer solving the problems which perplexed him. That those Churches lost something -much, if we will-by the Reformation is true. But neither the greatness of the deliverance nor that of the gain must be forgotten. And the history of the Roman Church since the Reformation shows, if it shows anything, that the gain could not have been secured without the loss. Nor has the loss been final. The values have been revised, and have come back to us; time has restored what time had taken away.

* F. Warre-Cornish, History of the English Church in the Nineteenth Century,' ii, 117,

If it is asked what is Tyrrell's precise place in the modern theological movement, the answer is that it is that of a constructive and conservative critic. He was not deterred by fear of consequences; he followed where the thought led. But he was constructive in aim, and conservative in method; like Burke, he viewed history and human nature as wholes. He distrusted

'runaway solutions and spurious simplifications, that would force a premature synthesis by leaving out all the intractable difficulties of the problem; that prefer a cheap logicality to the clash and confusion through which the immanent reason of the world works order out of the warring elements of a rich and fruitful chaos. The new must be made out of the old, must retain and transcend all its values.' (Mediævalism,' 186.) His particular application of this principle is not ours; and we may doubt whether it would have satisfied him permanently. But the principle itself—¿K Tŵv diapeρóvтwv καλλίστην ἁρμονίαν καὶ πάντα κατ ̓ ἔριν γίγνεσθαι-lies at the heart both of thought and of things. The process of gestation is long and painful; but it is by way of assimilation, not of exclusion, that delivery comes.

'The negative peace of difficulties evaded and not conquered spells spiritual stagnation and decay. Doubtless we must not make this a reason for remaining in a society whose badness is irremediable, or so excessive as to overwhelm and carry us along in its current. But it may be a reason why a society of saints might not be the best school of sanctity; and why the better and the best men in a community must always expect to be at war with the inert and backward majority, and must strain every muscle to tow the passive, unwieldy barge up stream.' ('Scylla and Charybdis,' p. 186.)

It is not perhaps only to the Church of Rome, or even to the Churches, that these words apply.

ALFRED FAWKES.

Art. 5.-NEW FACTS ABOUT MATTHEW PRIOR.

1. Selected Poems of Matthew Prior. Edited by Austin Dobson. London: Kegan Paul, 1889.

2. The Writings of Matthew Prior. Edited by A. R. Waller. Two vols. Cambridge: University Press, 1905, 1907. 3. Life of Prior. By Austin Dobson. ('Dictionary of National Biography.') London: Smith, Elder, 1896. 4. Matthew Prior. By G. A. Aitken. (Contemporary Review,' May 1890.) London: Isbister.

5. Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission on the MSS at Longleat (vol. III). London: Wyman, 1908. And other works.

'POETRY is gone with him. The rest of the pretenders to it are but scribblers.' Thus, on the death of Matthew Prior, wrote Dr William Stratford, canon of Christ Church, Oxford, and a schoolfellow of the poet. This was friendship's hyperbole, and was doubtless meant for no more; for Swift and Gay were still alive, and Pope was at the height of his fame. Yet in a sense, though a sense certainly unknown to Stratford, there was truth in the first clause of this threnody. If poetry was not gone, something was gone from poetry; and that something was just the quality upon which we look nowadays as poetry's very spirit. The note of pure lyric, which is at its freshest in Shakespeare, descends legitimately, through Fletcher, Herrick, Waller and Dryden, to Matthew Prior. But it grows ever less spontaneous and more polite, and in Prior's Chloes and Strephons it gracefully expires. When Prior died, lyric was laid to rest until its splendid rebirth in Burns and Blake. It is this authentic note of poetry-not 'Solomon,' nor 'Henry and Emma,' nor even 'Alma-which keeps Prior among the poets who are still to be read with more than antiquarian delight. His songs charm us less by their delicate artificiality than by a certain natural gaiety which lurks beneath it. The quality which gives him an historic interest as the final voice in a great epoch of song gives him an æsthetic value for a generation which rates the lyric higher than the didactic or the polite.

If Prior were notable only for his lyric poetry, there would be little call to probe into the details of his life;

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the song would suffice. Prior, however, was a man of many activities and as many accomplishments. His 'Dialogues of the Dead,' first published a few years ago, display him as a brilliant predecessor of Landor in the art of prose dialogue. He was an excellent letter-writer, numbering all his most interesting contemporaries among his correspondents. As a diplomatist, he won approval and the confidence of those able and critical politicians, the Whig leaders under William III and the Tory leaders of Anne's reign. Against the praises of William and Portland, Oxford and Bolingbroke, Pope's narrow verdict of nothing out of verse' may be lightly valued. The Treaty of Utrecht, which marked the end of the power of Louis XIV, was known as 'Matt's Peace.' Sir William Trumbull, writing to him in 1696, said, Though I am unwilling to deny you anything you ask, yet I cannot allow you to be a better secretary than a poet, but must make you amends in saying you have found the secret of joining two things generally thought incompatible, poetry and business, and both in perfection.' It is curious that a man so versatile, at once so individual and so typical of his age, should still lack a biographer. Johnson's ill-informed and unsympathetic Life' deserves much of the contempt with which Horace Walpole and George Selwyn † greeted its appearance. The account which Prior himself is said to have drawn up for Jacob's 'Lives of the Poets' is both jejune and inaccurate; and what there is of the personal in the posthumous and largely spurious History of my own Time' is not much worthier of trust. Though Prior's name was on the titlepage of this work, he had little hand in its preparation. The best modern accounts of the poet are those by Mr Austin Dobson and Mr G. A. Aitken mentioned at the head of this article. These are invaluable; but neither Mr Dobson nor Mr Aitken, though each brings his handful of new facts, pretends to have exhausted the evidence. Nor can the following pages claim to contain anything more than a further handful from the heap which awaits the biographer.‡

Hist. Mss Comm. Longleat MSS, iii, 79.

Hist. Mss Comm. Carlisle мss, 506.

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The sources chiefly drawn on for these notes are the rich collections of papers in private hands made accessible by the Historical Manuscripts

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