1.
In venturing some remarks on the poems just now published at Oxford under the title of the Lyra Innocentium, it is far from our intention to adopt the tone of controversialists, or even of critics. The name of their author would hinder us from so doing. That they are really Mr. Keble’s, we make no question, though we are not told so in the title-page. There are few of them which do not bear clear marks of their relationship to those in the Christian Year and the Lyra Apostolica, which are so familiar to our memories and our hearts; and, that (unlike the Lyra Apostolica,) they have all one and the same parentage, is evident, on the principle that exceptio probat regulam, from the circumstance that one of them, and one only, is ascribed, in a note appended to it, to another person. One or two there are which are somewhat different from the rest in style; and there are metres introduced which do not occur in the Christian Year; the matter too is not so condensed, nor the thoughts so recondite; but such varieties are found in the separate works of every author,—time, place, age, frame of mind, subject, circumstances, giving to each its distinctive character. The Christian Year was published in 1827; the Lyra Apostolica (as far as it is Mr. Keble’s) is the Christian Year of 1833; the Lyra Innocentium is the Christian Year of 1846. The circumstances of 1827 and 1846 differ from each other more than the character of the two Volumes which belong to those respective dates.
We have not the analytical powers which would warrant us to attempt a critical estimate of the poems contained in the Volume before us; and we have not quite the heartless officiousness to view them in a controversial aspect. If they have a special characteristic, it is that they are not controversial, in this respect differing from other poems which other writers of his school have given to the world, and he at other times. Whether we look into the Lyra Apostolica, or into the Cathedral and Baptistery, loyalty to the Anglican Church is here or there enforced or insinuated by attacks on the See of Rome and the Catholic Church; some few traces of this peculiarity are found even in the Christian Year. But the Lyra Innocentium preserves an emphatic silence on the subject of other Churches. It will teach the happy children who are submitted to its influence, at least by implication, that there is no contrariety, no separation between the different portions of Christendom; that Christianity is everywhere the same, the religion of peace and truth, with one and the same great daily rite, one and the same profession of faith. Catholics, at least, are not called upon to find fault with such a representation.
Nor do we find in this Volume any strong language against those who have recently left the Anglican Church, as is the manner with the periodicals and pamphlets which express the sentiments of the party with which the author’s name is connected. That he seriously disapproves of their step, is evident even from the fact that he does not take it himself; for such a step is either a duty or a sin; nay, he distinctly records his feeling on the subject; at the same time he records it without bitterness, violence, or injustice towards the persons concerned. In his introductory stanzas “To all friendly readers,” he desires their prayers
"that he
A true and timely word may frame
For weary hearts that long to see
Their way in our dim twilight-hour:
His lips so purged with penance-fire,
That he may guide them, in Christ’s power,
Along the path of their desire;
“And with no faint and erring voice
May to the wanderer whisper, ‘Stay:
God chooses for thee: seal His choice,
Nor from thy Mother’s shadow stray.’”
It will be observed that he here recognizes himself distinctly as “guiding” others, and that “with no faint nor erring voice.” And in another place he seems to compare those who “mistrust their elders” and leave the Anglican Church, to St. Thomas, who would himself see, before he believed the Resurrection; a kind comparison, because St. Thomas was an Apostle notwithstanding, but still of a very decided meaning. The poem is on the general subject of wilfulness and “worldly wisdom,” in refusing to “see with others’ eyes;” it ends thus:
Alas that man his breath should lose
In wayward, doubting race,
Nor his still home in shelter choose
Where Thou hast set his place.”—P. 109.
2.
Would that others had confined themselves to this—we will not say kind and gentle, but—equitable tone in their reproofs! we speak not of one person or another, but of the generality of those who have felt it a duty to animadvert on recent converts to the Catholic Church. We are not here crying for mercy, but asking justice, demanding common English fairness; we have a right to expect, but we do not find, that considerate, compassionate, comprehensive judgment upon their conduct, which, instead of fixing on particular isolated points in it, views it as a whole,—uses the good, which is its general character, to hide its incidental faults, makes one part explain another, what is strong here excuse what is weak there, and evident sincerity of intention atone for infirmity of performance;—which has a regard to circumstances, to the trial of an almost necessary excitement, to the necessity of acting beyond criticism, yet without precedent, and of reaching a certain object when all paths to it have respectively their own difficulties. We are not apologizing for their great and momentous decision itself, but for the peculiarities which have accompanied its execution; if to do as much as this be considered after all asking for mercy, not for equity, it is only such mercy, to say the least, as the parties censuring, as well as the parties censured, will require themselves on a day to come. In the well-known words of the poet—