and more especially by not understanding that he carries the secret in himself, where heaven is said to be.

The Cuckoo and the Nightingale is one of the most easily understood of the smaller poems of Chaucer, and one of the most beautiful. Like most

of the minor poems of Chaucer, it is allegorical; the Nightingale being a figure for all that is good in life, while the Cuckoo, as usual, figures whatever is opposite to it a disturbing evil.

In this poem Mr. Bell finds occasion for a pointed note at page 221 (vol. iv.), in these words:

"Thus, in the Court of Love and the Assembly of Foules, the birds are represented as worshipping Nature, the God of love."

This object, here called the God of Love, is no other than the same Nature when figured as a perfect lady, to whom the lover is said to owe entire obedience, according to the injunction already recited from the Court of Love.

This object, when figured as a person, is generally represented either as masculine or as feminine, although in some few instances it is referred to as a sacred object under another name. In the 20th

Sonnet of Shakespeare the two natures are addressed as one-the master-mistress of the poet's love.

When mystic writers refer to Nature as perfect, they always mean perfect in respect to its spirit, which is regarded as One, ever the "Same," and incapable of change. But they never say this in a physical or material sense, for the poets are the living Nightingales of the human race, to whom a mere materialist is a Cuckoo-a bird of evil omen.

CHAPTER VIII.

WE find a very perfect example of the hermetic poet in

CAREW.

This poet addressed many of his poems to CELIA; and in Celia we see Cynthia-the Cynthia of Colin Clouts and of the poet Drayton; and we see also the Rosalind or Rosial of Chaucer in the same lady.

It is not known, says Mrs. Jameson, following the statements of others, who Carew's Celia was: and it does not seem to have occurred to any one that, like Shakespeare's "lovely boy," she might have been of the mystic tribe; but Lord Clarendon, probably knowing as little of Carew as of other poets with their mystical or mythical loves, does not hesitate to record as history the mere suppositions of others about the life and latter years of the poet, who was, we have no reason to doubt, as pure a

Christian as Spenser shows himself to have been in Colin Clouts and elsewhere in his writings.

We read of a certain lady in Ecclesiasticus (iv. 16-18), worthy of all love, and who might well be regarded as the very object of the mystical poets in most of what they write of Rosalind, &c.:

Ecclus. iv. 16: If a man commit himself unto her, he shall inherit her; and his generation shall hold her in possession.

17. For at the first she will walk with him by crooked ways, and bring fear and dread upon him, and torment him with her discipline, until she may trust his soul and try him by her laws—

and these laws, we are told, chap. i. 5, are everlasting commandments

18. Then will she return the straight way unto him, and comfort him, and show him her secrets.

19. But if he go wrong she will forsake him, and give him over to his own ruin.

What lady-or, to drop the feeble modern phrase, what woman-is here spoken of? She is the universal mother, who is represented as a widow when any one of her children "go wrong," or, in other words, do wrong; but we read that He that loveth her loveth life, and they that seek her early shall

be filled with joy.

* * They that serve her shall minister to the Holy One: and them that love her the Lord doth love.

These are the words of the wise man; and all experience and all observation in life tend to fortify them. But the WOMAN is WISDOM: and it was of this woman that the wise man said, "I loved her and sought her out from my youth, I desired to make her my spouse, and I was a lover of her beauty."

And where can the beauty of wisdom be seen save in the works of God, where the spirit of wisdom is said to "work all things." Hence this teaching brings the student around again to the universal mother, the Lady of the poets.

We have not intended to say or to intimate that the object of poetic adoration is always conceived in the same manner among the poets, or is always conceived in the same way by any one poet at different periods of life. If it were so, it might be defined and brought before the imagination of the reader. We say that, generally, the object is Nature conceived in the spirit as the Spirit of Beauty, and then figured as a lady; but with a freedom which makes beauty, in all objects of nature, subservient to the poet.