There is some obscurity in these Donne- or Ben-Jonson-like rugged lines, but none as to the opinions of their writer on Popery. Thus up to 1634 at least, or until his twenty-second or twenty-third year, Crashaw the younger was as thoroughly Protestant, in all probability, as his father could have desired. The '_change_' accordingly was a radical one when he left his mother-Church, and one laments that our light is so dim and our view so distant. Anthony a-Wood (as before) and the usual authorities state that our Crashaw became famous as a preacher: he became, says Willmott, 'a preacher of great energy and power,' _id est_, in England, and therefore while still belonging to the Church of England. I have an impression that somehow the son has been confounded with the father, whose renown as a preacher was lasting; just as it seems certain that son and father have been confounded by the continuous editors of Selden's 'Table-Talk,' wherein the illustrious Thinker recounts somewhat proudly that he had converted Crashaw from his opposition to stage-plays. We may as well expiscate this point here. The younger Crashaw, then, never expressed himself, so far as is known, against stage-plays: contrari-wise, in his fine Epigram on Ford's 'Love's Sacrifice' and 'Broken Heart' he is in sympathy with these 'stage-plays.' On the other hand, in one of his most impassioned sermons, his father had, with characteristic pungency, condemned 'Plaies and Players'--as given below.[17] To return: be this as it may in the matter of 'preaching,' the matter-of-fact is, that our Crashaw retained his Fellowship up to his ejection on the 11th of June 1644 (vol. i. pp. xxxiii.-iv.), or when he was in his 32d-33d year; or, as gentle Father Southwell gently put it, about his 'dear Lord's' age. We get a glimpse of his religious life while a Protestant, in the original 'Preface to the Reader' of 'Steps to the Temple,' &c. as follows: 'Reader, we stile his Sacred Poems, Steps to the Temple, and aptly; for in the Temple of God, under His wing, he led his life, in St. Marie's Church neere St. Peter's Colledge: there he lodged under Tertullian's roofe of angels; there he made his nest more gladly than David's swallow neere the house of God, where, like a primitive saint, he offered more prayers in the night than others usually offer in the day; there he penned these poems, STEPS for happy soules to climbe heaven by' (vol. i. p. xlvii.). Coinciding with this is the love he had for the writings of 'Sainte Teresa,' when (in his own words) 'the Author' of 'A Hymn to the Name and Honor of the admirable Sainte Teresa' was 'yet among the Protestants.' In his 'Apologie for the foregoing Hymn'--than which, for subtle, delicate, fin_est_ mysticism, in words that are not so much words as music, and yet definite words too, changing with the quick bright changes of a dove's neck, there is hardly anything truer--the Poet traces up his devotion to her to his 'reading' of her books; as thus: