probable that it never had. And it is certain that at Cambridge he speedily became imbued with the notions prevalent there. A thousand reasons for this are at once apparent. The influence of his tutor, John Tournay, a man whom Crashaw admired, and a clergyman in decided reaction against Puritan theology, the religious tone of the College and University generally, and a host of contributory reasons, all acted upon him to the expulsion of whatever Puritan bias he may have had. The real reason, however, is simply Crashaw's own temperament, the nature of his own mind.

We have all heard of " temperamental" converts to Rome we hear them mentioned with gentle rebuke in non-Catholic circles-people on whom the incense used in Catholic ritual is supposed to have worked to the stifling of their intellect and the drugging of their conscience. This is one explanation, at least-and the phenomenon certainly does exist. There are undoubtedly people who, whatever their religious upbringing, have only got to catch a stray glimpse of Catholicism at once to embrace it. The mental process is not of time but of eternity. It may be likened` to love at first sight. Such a soul, moreover, was Crashaw's; and in this fact lies the whole and entire reason of his immediate defection at Cambridge from the theology which presumably he was brought up to hold. There are cathedrals in Holland whose interior the Puritans are said to have whitewashed so as to conceal the frescos with which the walls are decorated, but with the lapse of time the whitewash has grown thin and now and then the warm hues of the fresco have glimmered through. This is what had happened at Cambridge. The Puritan whitewash had grown thin, and Crashaw's eye was able to perceive the glimmering of some brighter thing underneath, though he could not yet know fully that it was so.

Crashaw was one of those people whom we should call "naturally good." The "Thou shalt not of religion did not therefore greatly concern him, for he

lived above the mere letter of the law. It was the "If thou wouldst then be perfect" that awakened his soul; and to this rarer piety Protestantism has ever had too little to say. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, is generally admitted to be unique for her dealing with saints and the higher yearnings of piety; and this she is enabled to do because she is Catholic" and has made provision for every variety of soul with whose salvation she may be charged.

66

As it is with Crashaw's religious poems that this book is dealing, so it is with his religious development that I shall chiefly concern myself in this account of his life. For this reason I have adverted to the religious atmosphere of Crashaw's Cambridge; and for this reason I have attempted to describe his own religious temperament as I conceive it to have been. What was wanting, one would imagine, to a great many men of Crashaw's date was some opportunity of knowing at first hand the Catholic Church. There was assuredly at that time, as there is to-day, a tendency towards Catholicism in many quarters. There was no apathy towards religion on the part of thinking men. On the contrary it was pre-eminently the first consideration of their minds. What was needed was opportunity; and to Crashaw at least, as we are shortly to see, opportunity was given, nor was he slow in profiting by it.

In 1636 Crashaw became a Fellow of Peterhouse, and settled down to the life of a senior member of the older Universities. He was a fine scholar; and his linguistic ability would appear to have been prodigious, for in addition to the classical languages he is said to have read fluently French, Italian, and Spanish-the last two of which had, in different ways, great influence upon him—the former on his literary style, the latter on his soul. During his Cambridge. years he was naturally producing poetry, and his earlier works, both sacred and secular, belong to this period of his life, and were afterwards collected and

published under the titles Delights of the Muses and Epigrammata Sacra. He had, too, many congenial friends (as who has not at the University?) notably John Beaumont (also a Fellow at Peterhouse) and later on the poet Cowley who came up in all the freshness and sparkle of his somewhat shallow and unlovable genius from Westminster to Trinity while Crashaw was in his early years as a don at Peterhouse. For seven quiet years Crashaw was a Fellow of Peterhouse, filling his time with congenial occupation, the exercise of his talents, and the society of his friends. We hear of him as delighting in the decoration of a new church, as warmly interested in the attempt of a friend to revive the religious life in the Anglican Communion (for all the world like to-day) at the village of Little Gidding. Most likely Crashaw looked forward to ending his life at Cambridge; and probably he would have done so, had not circumstances, beneath whose roughness and rigour lay concealed in Crashaw's case the grace of God, routed him out from those quiet groves, and thrown him upon the world, there to experience the poet's proverbial lot of hardship and obscurity, but there also to make (which he might never have done had he remained secure at Cambridge) the great discovery of his life, the discovery that the Catholic Faith is not only lovely and desirable, but also true.

But during the seven years of Crashaw's residence at Cambridge as a senior member of that University, a crisis in the history of England was slowly but surely maturing; and watchers of the political skies must have begun to feel a little uneasy about the future, especially if they conducted their observations from any snug position on earth. The two elements in English society at that date were daily drifting further and further apart. The Puritans, who were composed chiefly of the yeoman or what we should call middle-class element, could not be brought to stomach the king's spiritual elevation, particularly when they

found both the king himself and his ministers prepared to make an anything but spiritual use of this new and highly convenient doctrine-which was of course to be expected. Having got rid of the Pope, the pugnacity of the Puritans turned itself upon these new aspirants and not without justification. It cannot be claimed that either the King or his advisers made a wise use of the new powers they sought to arrogate to themselves. One is tempted to suppose that they cannot have been aware that it was a crater upon which they had elected to picnic, though there was plenty of smoke and a pungent odour of sulphur rising to warn them. However, quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat!—and it was not very long before the volcano erupted, as volcanoes will, blowing off the heads of Laud and Strafford, nor even respecting that anointed one of his semi-divine majesty King Charles I.

In 1643 the Parliamentary authorities swooped down on Cambridge and administered the Covenant, like a nauseous black draught, to the reluctant members of that University. The chapels and other evidences of Laud's influence we may well imagine their zeal made short work of. Most of the Fellows and masters swallowed the dose perforce (their wind-pipes were roughly clutched if they did not-figuratively that is, for ejection was the only alternative) but some few were resolute in declining it, and fled from Cambridge to seek either retirement abroad or the King's standard at Oxford. Amongst the latter were numbered Cowley and Crashaw. They gave up their positions and joined the King where he mustered his legions in St. Giles' (perhaps) and held his court in Christ Church Hall.

At this point for the ensuing three years-from 1643 to 1646-Crashaw disappears. How long he stayed at Oxford is unknown-probably not long, for there was at Oxford in that time little enough provision, one would imagine, even in a material sense, for

any besides soldiers. Crashaw, moreover, the mild don and studious poet, can hardly have made a very competent man-at-arms. Be this as it may, he disappears and nothing certain is known about him till the year 1646, when he was discovered by Cowley in Paris in a state of great penury. How long he had been in Paris is unknown; nor is it recorded how he employed his time in this interval. My own theory (and I give it for what it is worth) is that one thing he did during this time, probably in Paris, was to be come acquainted with, and thoroughly to devour, the ✔ writings of the Counter-Reformation School of Spanish Mystics.

His poems seem to bear witness that he had known previously of St. Teresa; and it is probable that he had read some part at least of these mystical writings while still at Cambridge. I think it likely, however, that he came to them really at this time in his life; and their influence upon him was certainly enormous. There is commonly some one agency (trivial often in itself) in a conversion which precipitates matters, and quickens the slow consideration of many years into swift resolution. In Crashaw's conversion I am inclined to assign the Spanish mystical writings as the determining factor.

However, in the year 1646, Cowley, who appears to have combined with his poetic genius a happy knack of looking after himself, arrived in Paris as Secretary to my Lord Jermyn, then told off to attend the Catholic Queen of Charles I., Henrietta Maria, in her retirement at Paris. Here the fortunate poet discovered the unfortunate one; and, while feeling a slight pitying contempt for this shiftless brother, befriended him, and gained him an audience with the Queen. Be it noted particularly, that Crashaw, at the time of his discovery by Cowley in Paris, was already a Catholic. From the obscurity of his unrecorded years this great fact emerges-Crashaw had at length found his destination, and was placed just where his poetical genius might flourish.