persuaded by the devil that pardon must be sought for from God, rather by penances and severity of life, than by confession. Hence I either neglected my confessions altogether, or else made insincere ones; and so I fell into that melancholy of mind and that state of tribulation which has been my punishment.’” LIGHT LEADING UNTO LIGHT: A Series of Sonnets and Poems. By John Charles Earle, B.A. London: Burns & Oates. 1875. Mr. Earle has undoubtedly a facility in writing sonnets; and a good sonnet has been well called “a whole poem in itself.” It is also, we think, peculiarly suitable for didactic poetry. The present sonnets are in advance, we consider, of those we first saw from Mr. Earle’s pen. But we still observe faults, both of diction and of verse, which he should have learnt to avoid. His model seems to be Wordsworth--the greatest sonneteer in our language; but, like him, he has too much of the prosaic and the artificial. We wish we could bestow unqualified praise upon the ideas throughout these sonnets. And were there nothing for criticism but what may be called poetic subtleties--such as the German notion of an “ether body,” developed during life, and hatched at death, for our intermediate state of being--we should have no quarrel with Mr. Earle. But when we meet two sonnets (XLVIII. and XLIX.) headed “Matter Non-Existent,” and “Matter Non-Substantial,” we have a philosophical error serious in its consequences, and are not surprised to find the two following sonnets teach Pantheism. In Sonnet XLVIII. the author’s excellent intention is to refute materialism: “‘Thought is,’ you say, ‘a function of the brain, And matter all that we can ever know; … “‘From it we came; to it at last we go, And all beyond it is a phantom vain,’ etc. … “I answer: ‘Matter is _a form of mind_, _So far as it is aught_. It has no base, Save in the self-existent.’” Sonnet L. is headed, “As the Soul in the Body, so is God in the Universe.” Surely, this is the old “Anima Mundi” theory! Then, in Sonnet LI., the poet says of nature, and addressing God: “She cannot live detached from thee. Her heart Is beating with thy pulse. _I cannot tell_ _How far she is or is not of thee part_; How far in her thou dost or dost not dwell; That _thou her only base and substance art_, This--this at least--I know and feel full well.” Now, of course, Mr. Earle is unconscious that this is rank Pantheism. He has a way of explaining it to himself which makes it sound perfectly orthodox. But we do call such a blunder inexcusable in a Catholic writer of Mr. Earle’s pretensions. The title of his volume, “Light leading unto Light,” has little to do with the contents, as far as we can see; and, certainly, there are passages which would more fitly be headed “Darkness leading unto Darkness.”