24-i E. B. Reed, 



interesting that I have reprinted but four Psalms, enough to 

 show his method.^ In his hymns we notice most of all that he 

 writes in an impersonal style, for we have in them no picture of 

 his own mind, no account of his spiritual conflicts, his doubts, his 

 defeats, or his victories. Religious verse is valuable in proportion 

 as it shows us the soul of a man, and this is precisely what Fair- 

 fax does not attempt to do. 



This same lack of the personal element in his writing is a marked 

 defect of the secular verse also, for he gives us practically nothing 

 of his own life, even in remote allusion. When we consider the 

 great scenes he had witnessed, the part he had played in shaping 

 the destinies of England, it is rather surprising that he should choose 

 to write on Envy, Temperance, Anger. Surely he might have written 

 with more spirit on Liberty, Tyranny, or Valor. He collects many 

 popular proverbs, but he does not jot down the song of his soldiers. 

 For a fighting man, how faint and unrealistic are such lines : 



As men besieged with mines about 

 Ready to spring and ruing \sic\ all, 

 Hearing the alarm beat, runne out 

 To th' assault and gard ther wall. 

 And by the blast in ruins sinke 

 Vanquist are when they least thinke.^ 



And yet they are quite unusual, so rarely does he refer to the 

 shock of battle. As Fairfax does not tell us what he has felt, so 

 he has little desire to write down what he has seen. Apart from 

 all considerations of the immeasurable distance that separates 

 Andrew Marvell's work from that of Fairfax, it is yet surprising 

 that Marvell should describe Appleton House and the estates so 

 fully, and that Fairfax, who delighted in them, should give us but 

 a few faint lines on the new-built house. Similarly we should 

 expect the sympathetic picture of the last moments of Charles to 



* Markham, in liis Life of Fairfax^ p. 369, mentions another copy of 

 Fairfax's version of the Psalms, owned by Mr. Cartwright of Aynho. 

 I have not attempted to trace this. At the end of the MS. of the 

 Short Memorial.^ at Leeds Castle, are versions of the 18th, 24tli, 30th, 

 and 85th Psalms. He prefaces Psalm 18 with the following : ' That I 

 chuse this 18 Psalm let none think that I arrogate anything to myself, 

 for farre be it from me to applie it otherwise than as David's triumph 

 over his enemies.' See Markham's Fairfax.^ p. 415. 



* A Hymne to Christ the Messiah. 



