2nd s, V. 127., June 6. '68.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



449 



LONDON, SATURDAY, JUNH 6. 1»9. 

 CHASHAW AND SHEIXET. 



Another of the fine old English authors, for a 

 complete edition of whose works poetical students 

 are indebted to Mr. Russell Smith, is Richard 

 Crashaw. Before submitting a few remarks which 

 have occurred to me on a somewhat hurried pe- 

 rusal of the collection in its entirety, but after re- 

 peated readings of many particular pieces, I would 

 venture to suggest to the learned editor of the 

 volume, Mr. Turnbull, a correction of the text in 

 one passage which appears to me very obvious 

 and very much required. It is the second line of 

 the tenth stanza of " The Weeper," p. 3. The 

 whole stanza, as given in Mr. TurnbuU's edition, 

 and I presume in all previous editions, is as fol- 

 lows : — 



" Yet let the poor drops weep, 

 Weeping is the case of woe ; 



Softly let them creep, . 



Sad that they are vanquish'd so ; 

 They, though to others no relief. 

 May balsam be for their own grief." 



The stanza is printed exactly in the same way at 

 p. 11. of Mr. TurnbuU's edition, from another ver- 

 sion of " The Weeper," which elsewhere presents 

 some striking differences from the first, as if it 

 were written down incorrectly from memory. A 

 few of these alterations, which are seldom im- 

 provements, I may subsequently refer to. With 

 respect to the stanza to which I have drawn the 

 attention of the reader, it seems quite obvious to 

 me that the word " case " in the second line which 

 I have Italicised is a misprint for " ease." The 

 substitution of c for e is one of the most frequent 

 errors to which the inventive genius of the com- 

 positor gives birth ; so frequent, that if Mr. Kings- 

 ley's recent suggestion that printers ought to be 

 hanged fofr their misdeeds, or rather misprints, 

 were carried out, Printing-house Yard would 

 soon become Aceldama, and The Times indeed 

 feel " out of joint." If 



" Weeping is the case of woe," 

 has any meaning, it must mean that " weeping " 

 is the condition or attribute of woe, — a prosaic 

 truism which the lyrical and subjective tendency 

 of Crashaw's genius would have never stooped to 

 express. This explanation, moreover, would de- 

 stroy the entire meaning of the stanza. The poet 

 was evidently thinking of some alleviation of woe ; 

 some " balsam of grief," as he himself says in the 

 end of the stanza itself; and for this he pre- 

 pares the reader (if he thought of readers at all) ; 

 but in any case he consistently evolves the position 

 he had laid down, that 



" Weeping is the ease of woe." 

 Mr. Turnbull having found his reading in all 



previous editions was perfectly correct in re- 

 taiiiing it, either in the text or in a note : and the 

 omission of any reference to the nearly obvious 

 emendation I suggest must have arisen from his 

 attention having been diverted to the other and 

 more important duties of his editorship. 



Having said so much on this subject, I fear I 

 cannot point out as much in detail as I would 

 wish, a very striking peculiarity ill Crashaw's 

 lyrical poems which seems deserving of special 

 attention. I refer to the extraordinary resem- 

 blance both in str-jjcture, sentiment, and occa- 

 sionally in expression, which many passages (that 

 are comparatively less spoiled than others by the 

 prevailing bad taste of Crashaw's time) bear to 

 the lyrics of that first of England's poet-ljr'ists, — 

 I of course mean Shelley. Strange as it may 

 appear, there are many things in common be- 

 tween them. They both, at great personal sacri- 

 fices, and with equal disinterestedness, embraced 

 what they conceived to be the truth. Fortu- 

 nately, in Crashaw's case. Truth and Faith were 

 synonymous ; unhappily with Shelley the abne- 

 gation of Faith seemed to be of more importance 

 than the reception of any tangible or intelligible 

 substitute. Both were persecuted, neglected, and 

 misunderstood ; and both terminated their brief 

 lives, at about the same age, on opposite shores of 

 the same beautiful country, whither even at that 

 early period " The Swans of Albion " had begun 

 to resort, there perchance in a moment of peace 

 to sing one immortal death-song, and so die. 



Mrs. Shelley has mentioned in her valuable 

 Notes to her husband's poems many of the books 

 which they read in common. Shelley, as all true 

 British Poets have been, was a warm admirer, and 

 when occasion offered a constant student, of those 

 who are called, for want of some better general 

 name, the old English Poets. Crashaw is, how- 

 ever, never mentioned; nor is it likely that among 

 the few books which their frequent change of 

 residence allowed them to bring with them, the 

 scarce and quaint old volumes of the Canon of 

 Loretto were included. There was nothing in 

 Crashaw's enthusiastic belief that would have been 

 an obstacle to Shelley's appreciation of his poetical 

 merits. On the contrary, it might have given them 

 an additional interest in his eyes, as it did in the 

 case of Calderon. Shelley was too earnest and 

 too sincere a man himself not to admire earnest- 

 ness and sincerity in another : for what he warred 

 against was not belief, but the pretending to believe, 

 which from his own personal experience he satis- 

 fied himself was the exact state of the question. 

 On the whole It is almost certain that Shelley 

 knew nothing of Crashaw, except what meagre 

 knowledge of him might be gleaned from Cowley, 

 or from writers who mentioned him merely In 

 connexion with that once more popular poet. 

 And yet there are many lines and passages in his 



