Loe this is he whose infant Muse begann Yet few by good men haue bine more approu'd S. T.I. Non pictoris opus fuit Soc sed pectoris, Unde Divince in Tabulam mentis imago fluit J.S. INTRODUCTION. 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, Commences, reigns, and ends. By the Reformation the moral atmosphere became cleared of the dark vapours with which it had so |