the ground on which he treads, or the foot which treads it, the vision of an Everlasting Spiritual Substance, Most Human and yet Most Divine, who can endure; and who, standing beneath all things, can make their spiritual substance endure likewise, though all worlds and æons, birth, and growth, and death, matter, and space, and time, should melt in very deed,

"And, like the baseless fabric of a vision,

Leave not a rack behind."

If there be any to whom these sentences shall seem merely an enigmatic verbiage, darkening counsel by words without knowledge, I can only beg them not to look at Tauler's wisdom through my folly; his SICCUM LUMEN through my glare and smoke. As I said at first, he needs no Preface. There are those who will comprehend him without comment. There are those, also, who will rise up and follow him and his Master.

HENRY BROOKE, AND THE FOOL OF QUALITY.

Ir is not easy to draw a trustworthy picture of Henry Brooke. . The materials for it which remain are very scanty. Only four years after his death, in 1783, so had the memory of a once famous personage faded from men's minds, it was very difficult to get details of his early life. He had lived too long, too long, if not for the education which great joys and great sorrows give, at least for happiness and for fame. The pupil of Swift and Pope; the friend of Lyttleton and Chatham; the darling of the Prince of Wales; beau, swordsman, wit, poet, courtier; the minion once of fortune, yet unspoiled by all her caresses, had long been known to Irishmen only as the saintly recluse of Longfield; and latterly as an impoverished old man, fading away by the quiet euthanasia of a second childhood, with one sweet daughter,—the only surviving child of twentytwo, -clinging to him, and yet supporting him, as ivy the mouldering wall. She was the child of his old age, "remembering nothing of her father," says a biographer, "previous to his retirement from the world; and knowing little of him, save that he bore the infirmities and misfortunes of his declining years with the heroism of true Christianity, and that he was possessed of virtues and feelings which shone forth to the last moment of his life, unimpaired by the distractions of pain, and unshaken amid the ruins of genius."

So says the biographer of 1787, in the ambitious style of those days; but doubtless with perfect truth. Yet neither he, nor any other biographer with whom I am acquainted, gives any details of the real character, the inner life, of the man. One longs, but longs almost in vain, for any scrap of diary, private meditation, even familiar letter, from one who had seen, read, and above all suffered, so much and so variously. But with the exception of half-a-dozen letters, nothing of the kind seems to exist. His inner life can only be guessed at; and all that is known of his outer life has been compressed into one short article in the Dublin University Magazine for February, 1852, full of good writing and of good feeling. Its author is a descendant of Henry Brooke; and to him I am bound to offer my thanks for the assistance which he has given me towards this preface.

One would be glad, too, (if physiognomy be, as some hold, a key to character,) of some trustworthy description or portrait of his outward man; to have known even the color of his eyes and hair; but this, too, is not to be had. Some Irish friend describes him in terms general enough; as, when young, "fresh looking, slenderly formed, and exceedingly graceful. He had an oval face, ruddy complexion, and large soft eyes, full of fire. He was of great personal courage, but never known to offend any man. He was an excellent swordsman, and could dance with much grace." There are certainly notes here of that heroical temperament, softened withal by delicate sensibility, which shows forth in every line of his writings. And there is another sketch of him, in 1775, which gives the same notion,- "He was drest in a long blue cloak, with a wig that fell down his shoulders; a little man, as neat as waxwork, with an oval face, ruddy complexion, large eyes, full of fire. In short, he is like a picture mellowed by time." There is a drawing of him prefixed to this

edition, which seems to be the same as that prefixed to his poems. If this, and the still finer head on the title-page of "Brookiana," be trustworthy, the face must have been one of a very delicate and regular beauty. The large soft eye, the globular under-eyelid, the finely arched eyebrow, (all notes of a sweet and rich, yet over-sensitive nature,) are very remarkable. There is a certain grace and alertness, too, about the figure, which agrees with the story of his having been a good dancer and swordsman. But on the type of brain, and even of the masque, it is very difficult to pronounce. Portraits of the eighteenth century, not very trustworthy in any detail, are especially careless in these. There seems no reason to suppose that English faces were more sensual or more same a hundred years ago than they are now; yet who, in looking round a family portrait-gallery, has not remarked the difference between the heads of the seventeenth and those of the eighteenth century? The former are of the same type as our own, and with the same strong and varied personality; the latter painfully like, both to each other and to an oil-flask; the jaw round, weak, and sensual; the forehead narrow and retreating. Had the race really degenerated for a while, or was the lower type adopted intentionally, out of compliment to some great personage? Be that as it may, Henry Brooke's portrait is too like dozens of that day, to be much trusted. Even if we accept the lower part of the face, round and weak (though not coarse), as the mark of that want of perseverance which was in worldly matters his worse defect, yet we cannot accept the length between the nose and mouth (which does not appear in the head in "Brookiana"); nor, again, the narrowing forehead, however lofty, as the mark of an intellect so fanciful and so subtle; occupied, too, with the ideal more exclusively than any man of his time. Less breadth

across the eyebrows, with much greater breadth across the upper part of the forehead, is the normal form of such brain now, as it was in the Elizabethan age; and we must believe it to have been the same a hundred years ago.

Another source from which one might have expected to learn something of Henry Brooke, and from which one will learn little or nothing, are two volumes of "Brookiana," published in London, 1804. One knew that our Irish cousins, among their many charming qualities, did not always (whether by virtue of some strain of Milesian blood, or of the mere influence of that exciting atmosphere which made the Normans of the Pale Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores) possess the faculty of historic method and accuracy; but such a mere incoherence as these Brookiana one did not expect. The editor (surely an Irishman) seems to have inquired of all likely Irishmen and women for anecdotes of Henry Brooke, and to have received in almost every case the equivalent of the well-known Irish answer: "No; I don't speak German; but I have a brother who plays on the German flute;" which answer the editor has joyfully accepted as the best he could get, and filled his volumes with anecdotes of every one except Brooke, and with notes thereon; notes on the ancient Irish; notes on the town of Kilkenny, its marble houses and free school, rendered necessary by the fact that Mr. Brooke once praised a Mrs. Grierson who was born at Kilkenny; poetry on all subjects, by twenty different people, who had or had not spoken to Henry Brooke at some time or other; Dr. Brett's dedication to Lady Caroline Russell of his sermon on Wedded Love, wherein the Doctor discourseth learnedly on the three species of kisses: literal translations of Irish poems sent to Mr. Brooke by a person whose name is now forgotten, one of which begins,"Bring the high-toned harp of the many sounding