2- & VI. 142., Skit. 18. '58.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 



235 



from the press of "Peter Targa, Printer to the 

 Archbishope ef Paris" in the year 1652. In it the 

 10th stanza of " The Weeper " is thus given, and 

 I insert it, not because it offers no sanction to 

 such an evident misprint as case for ease, but on 

 account of a variation in the hist line, which 

 differs somewhat from the version quoted by Me. 

 M'Cartht : — 



" Yet let the poore drops weep 

 (Weeping is the ease of woe) ; 

 Softly let them creep, 

 Sad that they, are vanquish't so. 

 They, thougli to others no releife, 

 Balsoin may be, for their own greife." 



As your correspondent has pointed out the se- 

 veral coincidences of thought and e.\pression be- 

 tween passages in the writings of this fine old poet 

 and Shelley, I may perhaps be allowed to refer to 

 others in his Sacred Poems, which I find reflected 

 in the works of later minstrels. They may be, in- 

 deed, " accidental resemblances," but are never- 

 theless not unworthy of notice in a periodical 

 almost exclusively devoted to literary purposes. 



In that magnificent hymn of the angelic hosts, 

 which occurs in the third book of Paradise Lost, 

 are these lines : — 



" Thou shadest 

 The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud 

 Drawn round about thee, like a radiant shrine. 

 Dark with excessive light thy skirts appear." 



Might not the line I have italicised have been 

 suggested by the following passage in Crashaw ? — 



" Lost in a bright 

 Meridian night, 

 A Darkenes made of too much da)'." 



Milton, it is true, was boi'n before Crashaw, but 

 the latter died in 1650, and the Paradise Lost, 

 although finished in 1665, was not printed until 

 two years later. 



Pope has inserted a line from Crashaw in his 

 famous " Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard," and this 

 he duly acknowledges ; but there are two lines in 

 the " Elegy to the Memory of an unfortunate 

 Lady," manifestly imitated from Crashaw, to whom 

 he makes no reference whatever : at least none 

 appears in Roscoe's edition, which is the one I 

 have consulted. The lines I allude to are the fol- 

 lowing : — 



" Oh ever beauteous, ever friendly ! tell. 

 Is it, in heav'n, a crime to love too well ? " 



Surely they were suggested by this couplet in 

 Crashaw's Alexias : — 



"And I, what is my crime I cannot tell, 

 Vnlesse it be a crime to' Laue lou'd too well." 



Tickell, in his verses on the Death of Addison, 

 finely says : — 



" 'I'licre taught us how to live ; and (oh ! too high 

 The price for knowle<Ige,) taught us how to die." 



Now this is not very remote from the following 



passage in the " Hymn to the Name and Honor of 

 Saint Teresa : " — 



" Sh'el bargain with them ; and will giue 

 Them GOD ; teach them how to liue 

 In him ; or. if they this deny, 

 For him she'l teach them how to Dy." 



Before closing the subject, I would beg to ask 

 what is known respecting Crashaw's talents as an 

 artist, beyond the meagre allusion to them in An- 

 derson's Memoir ? — for in the edition now before 

 me there are twelve vignettes of considerable 

 beauty, and these are thus referred to by his 

 friend Thomas Car, in some verses of which the 

 following is the title : — 



"AN 

 EPIGRAM 



Vpon the pictures in the following Pocnies which the Au- 

 thour first made with his owne hand, admirably well, as 

 maij he scene in his Manuscript dedicated to the right 

 Honorable Lady the L. Denbigh." 



On three of the vignettes the name " J. Messa- 

 ger, excud." appears, but, although omitted on 

 the others, the engraving of the whole is evidently 

 by the same hand. T. C. Smitu. 



WHEN DOES THE FAST OF LENT CONCLUDE ? 



(2'"' S. vi. 166.) 



A somewhat restricted interpretation of our 

 Lord's words (Mark ii. 20.) has sanctioned the 

 strict observance of " the Saturday before Easter 

 Day " as a fast. This day, called Sahbaluin 

 Magnum, the "High" or "Holy" Saturday, lost 

 none of its Lenten solemnity in the primitive 

 church. During this period of her predicted widow- 

 hood, she " went heavily, as one that mourned" for 

 the lost bridegroom. The Easter vigil termin- 

 ating at midnight (the time, according to tradi- 

 tion, at which our Lord rose,) was spent in strict 

 fasting and extraordinary devotions, as that great 

 night of expectation which would usher in the 

 second advent of the Redeemer. In process of 

 time, the nocturnal illuminations which formed 

 the splendid accompaniment to this ceremony, led 

 to serious abuses, which occasioned Vigilantius to 

 require the discontinuance of all such nightly 

 assemblies ; and to such an extent had this licen- 

 tious perversion of a pious custom prevailed, that 

 the presence of women on these occasions was 

 strictly prohibited, a.d. 305. (Riddle's Manual 

 of Antiquity, b. v. p. 636.) Mr. Brand tells us that, 

 during the last century, it was a Dorsetshire cus- 

 tom, on Easter eve, for boys to form in procession, 

 and carrying torches and a black flag to chant 

 these lines : — 



" We fasted in the light. 

 For this is the night." 



"A U'lic, no doubt," he add.s, "of the Popish cere- 

 monicH in vogue at this .season." — Popular Anticptities, 

 vol. i. p. 100. 



