And yet, as Angels, in some brighter dreams, Call to the soul, when man doth sicep; So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes, HENRY VAUGHAN, THE HE work which is now again published was the result of too many years' steady application, and has served too great an intellectual use in the special départment of thought of which it treats, to be allowed to fall into oblivion. Certainly the reading which the author thought it necessary to accomplish before he presented his conclusions to the public was vast and varied. That the fruit of his labours was commensurate may be gathered from the honest admiration which has been expressed by men knowing what hard study really means. The first edition of the 'Hours with the Mystics' appeared in 1856; the second was, to a great extent, revised by the author, but it did not appear until after his death. It was edited by his father, though most of the work of correction and verification was done by the author's widow. There is no intention of writing a memoir here. That has already been done. But it has been suggested that it might be interesting to trace how Mysticism gradually became the author's favourite study. To do that it may be well to give a very short sketch of his literary career. From the time he was quite a child he had the fixed idea that he must be a literary man. In his twenty first year (1844) he published a volume of poems, entitled 'The Witch of Endor, and other Poems.' The poetry in this little volume-long since out of print—was held to give promise of genius. It was, of course, the production of youth, and in after years the author was fully conscious of its defects. But even though some critics (and none could be a harder critic of his own work than himself) might point out an 'overcrowding of metaphor' and a 'want of clearness,' others could instance evidences of 'high poetical capability' and 'happy versification. But at the time it was thought desirable that the young poet should turn his attention to prose composition with the same earnestness. With that object his father proposed to him the study of the writings of Origen, with a view to an article on the subject in the British Quarterly Review. When just twenty-two the author finished this task, his first solid contribution to the literature of the day. The article showed signs of diligence and patient research in gaining a thorough knowledge of the opinions of the great thinker with whom it dealt. 'It is nobly done,' Judge Talfourd wrote. 'If there is some exuberance of ornament in the setting forth. of his (Origen's) brilliant theories, it is only akin to the irregular greatness and the Asiatic splendour of the mind that conceived them.' And the words of the late Sir James Stephen were not less flattering: 'If I had been told that the writer of it (the article) was a grandfather, I should have wondered only that the old man had retained so much spirit and been able to combine it with a maturity of judgment so well becoming his years.' We believe it is no pre |