T is remarkable, that but few works written by Early English Poets are known to modern readers. Some of them are indeed lost to posterity: as the Canticum Canticorum of Spenser; while others are locked up in public or rare private libraries, either in MSS. or in the old black letter type of the period when they were first printed. Very fortunate does the collector of black letter poetry consider himself if one of these treasures falls into his hands. It is stored up as an heir-loom to the family, and its existence is known only by extracts in choice selections.

Such has been the fate of the volume now laid before the reader: but few copies of which are believed to be in existence. "This book," says Mr. Willmott, in his Lives of the Sacred Poets,' now as scarce as the first Remembrancer is common, I have not seen, but copious extracts have been given from it by Wither himself, in his Fragmenta Prophetica; by Sir Egerton Brydges, in the Censura Literaria; and by Dalrymple in his selection from the Juvenilia."

And yet the Hallelujah, or Britain's Second Remembrancer is a work of rare and singular merit. Its design is graphically described by its author in his address "To the reader," as reprinted in this volume.

Never did author on sitting down to pen his thoughts for the use and benefit of his fellow man, have a more noble end in view than Wither expresses in his address. He laboured, he says, according to his talent, with Herbert, Quarles, Sandys and others to set aside profane and immodest songs by restoring the muse to its ancient honour, that of composing songs and hymns for the inculcation of virtue and piety. Wither was born in an age when sacred song was appreciated, though there were not then wanting poets of a different order.

The full tide of sacred song came in with the Reformation. When that happy era dawned upon England, the harp which had hung silently on the willows for many generations was taken down, and its tuneful chords struck with a skill hitherto unknown. Notwithstanding the frivolity of courts, the increasing study of pagan authors, and the fashion derived from foreign lands, the muse of England loved to linger around Zion's hill, and to wander on the banks of

Siloa's brook, that flowed

Fast by the oracle of God.

Nearly all the best poets of the latter half of the sixteenth century—for that was the period when the Reformation was fully established-and the whole of the seventeenth century were sacred poets. The language of Smart in reference to the Hebrew bard David may not be inaptly applied to them: They sang of God the mighty source

Of all things, that stupendous force

On which all strength depends,

From whose right arm, beneath whose eyes,
All period, power, and enterprise,

Commences, reigns, and ends.

By the Reformation the moral atmosphere became cleared of the dark vapours with which it had so

his

long been mingled. It gave birth to a race of sacred poets. Sacred song was their delight, and willing ears drank in their holy music. Even Shakespeare and the contemporary dramatists of age sometimes attuned their well-strung harps to the songs of Zion. To this state of things the early publication of our vernacular Scriptures greatly contributed. For a long period, indeed, the Bible supplied the chief intellectual as well as spiritual food of Englishmen. The sublime thoughts and majestic style of the Hebrew prophets and historians sank deeply into the public mind. The language of Scripture became, indeed, the basis of both poetry and prose, and there could not have been a better school for training the poetic energies of a nation.

It was not long, however, before a great change came over the feelings of the nation. It became the fashion among critics of sacred poetry, to regard it as poetry of an inferior order.* For some time after the period in which Wither lived some of his religious verses were reprinted, but they were apparently more in request for their devotional than their poetical qualities. It was not considered that poetry and devotion were compatible. The poet might sing of earth, and earthly things, and his muse would be listened to by an attentive audience, but when he ventured to touch on heaven and heavenly things his song was unheeded. Critics and readers alike seem to have come to the conclusion that the essential breath of heaven, which poesy is, might be better spent in whispering the carnal loves of the creature than the divine love of God their Creator and Redeemer.

* Wither and Quarles, for instance, were looked upon as Bavius and Mævius by every poet and poetaster who deemed himself a Horace.