'Or for another specimen (where so many beauties crowd, the judgment has yet vanity enough to think it can discern a handsomest, till a second judgment and a third ad infinitum start up to disallow their elder brother's pretensions) turn to the Story of the Ephesian Matron in the second section of the 5th chapter of the same Holy DYING' (I still refer to the Dying part, because it contains better matter than the "Holy Living," which deals more in rules than illustrations-I mean in comparison with the other only, else it has more and more beautiful illustrations-than any prose book besides)-read it yourself and show it to Plumstead (with my LOVE, and bid him write to me), and ask him if WILLY himself has ever

twenty, to the hollowness and dead paleness, to the loathsomeness and horror, of a three days' burial, and we shall perceive the distance to be very great and very strange. But so I have seen a rose newly springing up from the clefts of its hood, and, at first, it was fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as a lamb's fleece; but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness, and to decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age; it bowed the head, and broke its stalk; and, at night, having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and out-worn faces.

portion of every man and every woman.'

Lamb was a little in error.

eighth section.

The same is the

The passage is in the

told a story with more circumstances of FANCY and HUMOUR.

The paragraph begins, "But that which is to be faulted," and the story not long after follows. Make these references while P. is with you, that you may stir him up to the Love of Jeremy Taylor, and make a convertite of him. Coleridge was the man who first solemnly exhorted me to "study" the works of Dr. Jeremy Taylor, and I have had reason to bless the hour in which he did it. Read as many of his works as you can get. I will assist you in getting them when we go a stall hunting together in London, and it's odds if we don't get a good Beaumt. and Fletcher cheap.

'Bp. Taylor has more and more beautiful imagery, and (what is more to a Lover of Willy) more knowledge and description of human life and manners than any prose book in the language: he has more delicacy and sweetness than any mortal, the "gentle Shakespear hardly excepted,-his similes and allusions are taken, as the bees take honey, from all the youngest, greenest, exquisitest parts of nature, from plants, and flowers, and fruit, young boys and virgins, from little children

perpetually, from sucking infants, babies' smiles, roses, gardens,—his imagination was a spacious Garden, where no vile insects could crawl in; his apprehension a "COURT" where no foul thoughts kept "leets and holydays."

Snail and worm give no offence,

Newt nor blind worm be not seen,
Come not near our fairy queen.

You must read Bishop Taylor with allowances for the subjects on which he wrote, and the age in which. You may skip or patiently endure his tedious discourses on rites and ceremonies, Baptism, and the Eucharist, the Clerical function, and the antiquity of Episcopacy, a good deal of which are inserted in works not purely controversial; his polemical works you may skip altogether, unless you have a taste for the exertions of vigorous reason and subtle distinguishing on uninteresting topics. Such of his works as you should begin with, to get a taste for him (after which your Love will lead you to his Polemical and drier works, as Love led Leander "over boots" knee-deep thro' the Hellespont), but read first the Holy Living and Dying, and his Life of Christ and Sermons both in folio. And, above all, try to get

a beautiful little tract on the "Measures and offices of Friendship," printed with his opuscula duodecimo, and also at the end of his Polemical Discourses in folio. Another thing you will observe in Bp. Taylor, without which consideration you will do him injustice. He wrote to different classes of people. His Holy Living and Dying and Life of Christ were designed and have been used as popular books of family Devotion, and have been thumbed by old women, and laid about in the window seats of old houses in great families, like the Bible, and the " Queene-like-Closet or rare boke of Recipes in medicine and cookery, fitted to all capacities."

Accordingly in these the fancy is perpetually applied to; any slight conceit, allusion, or analogy, any "prettiness," a story true or false, serves for an argument adapted to women and young persons, and "incompetent judgments"; whereas the Liberty of Prophecy (a book in your father's bookcase) is a series of severe and masterly reasoning, fitted to great Clerks and learned Fathers, with no more of Fancy than is subordinate and ornamental.-Such various powers had the Bishop of Down and

Connor, Administrator of the See of Dro

more !

'My theme and my story!

'Farewell,

'C. LAMB.

'April 6, 1801.'

It is magnificent. Lamb never wrote more glowingly. In his next letter, which is undated, he returned to the Bishop. Robert seems to have replied to the above letter by asking Lamb why he did not himself make a selection of Jeremy Taylor's beauties.' Lamb was properly indignant :

To your inquiry respecting a selection from Bp. Taylor I answer-it cannot be done, and if it could it would not take with John Bull. It cannot be done, for who can disentangle and unthread the rich texture of Nature and Poetry, sewn so thick into a stout coat of theology, without spoiling both lace and coat? How beggarly and how bald do even Shakespeare's Princely Pieces look when thus violently divorced from connection and circumstance! When we meet with To be or not to be, or Jacques' moralisings upon the Deer, or Brutus and Cassius' quarrel and reconciliation