every changeable puff and blast, is rather to be laughed at and scorned for his ridiculous levity than imitated in his sinful and notorious apostacy and revolt' (cxxxviii.). The short and crushing answer to all this Billingsgate is: The poems of Crashaw are now fully before the reader, and he will not find, from the first page to the last, one line answering to Prynne's jaundiced representations: 'flatteries,' 'adulations,' 'railings,' you look for in vain. The wistfulness of persuasion of the Verse-Letter to the Countess of Denbigh would have been trampled on as a blind man or a boor tramples on a bed of pansies, by the grim lawyer-Puritan. Then, the very lowliness and (alleged) mendicancy of his post in the Church of Rome might have suggested a grain of charity, seeing that worldly advancement could not be motive to an all-but friendless scholar. As to the 'birth of his own brains,' and 'conversing with himself in verse,' would that we had more such 'births' and 'conversings'! Other accusations are malignant gossip, where they are not nonsense. Far different is the spirit of Dr. John Bargrave; whose MS. has at last been worthily edited and published for the Camden Society.[20] His notice of Crashaw at Rome is as follows: 'When I went first of my four times to Rome, there were there four revolters to the Roman Church that had been Fellows of Peterhouse in Cambridge with myself. The name of one of them was Mr. R. Crashaw, who was one of the _Seguita_ (as their term is): that is, an attendant or of the followers of this Cardinal, for which he had a salary of crowns by the month (as the custom is), but no diet. Mr. Crashaw infinitely commended his Cardinal, but complained extremely of the wickedness of those of his retinue; of which he, having the Cardinal's ear, complained to him. Upon which the Italians fell so far out with him that the Cardinal, to secure his life, was fain to put him from his service, and procuring him some small employ at the Lady's of Loretto; whither he went on pilgrimage in summer time, and, overheating himself, died in four weeks after he came thither, and it was doubtful whether he was not poisoned' (p. 37). That brings before us a true, white-souled Man 'of God,' resolute to 'speak out,' whoever sinned in his sight; and it is blind sectarianism to deny that, from the noble and holy Loyola to our own Faber and Spencer and the living Newman, the Church of Rome has never been without dauntless preachers of the very righteousness of God, or unhesitant rebukers of the wickedness, immoralities, and frivolities of their co-religionists. The suspicion of 'poyson' I am unwilling to accept. Onward I shall give our recovered record of his death. Summarily, then, the 'change' of Crashaw from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism had its root and carries its solution in his 'mystical' dreamy temperament and yearnings, as these were over-encouraged instead of controlled; and as formative influences there