THE LAST MEDITATIONS OF SAVONAROLA.
Savonarola : Meditations on Psalm li. and part of Psalm xx.ri. in Latin, with an English Translation. By E. H. Perowne, D.D., Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. (Cambridge University Press. 10s. 6d.)—From the Cambridge University Press we have received a beautifully got up new edition of the " Meditations " Savonarola wrote while awaiting death in his prison cell. Breathing the spirit of the most exalted devotion, these documents have also a vein of natural pathos which makes their interest as intensely human as it is religious. The texts upon which Savonarola grafted his thoughts were the Fifty- first, and part of the Thirty-first, Psalms,—the one an out- pouring of contrition, the other a welcoming of solemn Hope. After the Reformer's death, the papers recording his soul's last communing with its Maker were very widely circulated. Dr. Perowne's introduction tells us that the book was " printed in the vernacular for the consolation of prisoners condemned to death : in England it was embodied in the elementary devotional works called ` Primers,' first in the Salisbury Primer of 1533, and subsequently in that of 1543, which is known as Henry VIII.'s Primer." Within two years of Savonarola's death twenty-one editions were published, and translations were made before the middle of the sixteenth century into English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian. By the end of the century the popularity of the Treatises was on the wane, and they became scarce. The present edition gives the Latin text, a new transla tion by Dr. Perowne, a facsimile page of the manuscript copy in the library of Corpus Christi College, and an introductory essay by the translator. A touching extract from Mrs. Oliphant's " Makers of Florence," serving as frontispiece, calls up a picture of the martyr composing in his cell : " With the right hand which had been spared to him in diabolical mercy that he might be able to sign the false papers which were intended to cover him with ignominy, he still had it in his power to leave a record of that last intercourse with his 'Heavenly Master in which his aria& thug found strength and comfort." How sorely stricken, andlow tempted to despair and unfaithfulness, his own words tell us best :--" Heaviness hath besieged me, with a great and strong host hath hedged me in; she hath oppressed my heart with clarnobrs and with weapons, day and night she ceaseth not to fight against me. My friends are in her camp and are become mine enemies. Whatsoever I see, whatsoever I hear, they bring the banners of Heaviness. The memory of friends saddens me ; the remembrance of my children grieveth me; the thought of cloister and of cell tortures me ; when I think upon my own studies it affects me with sadness; the. consideration of my sins weighetb me down." And then, a few pages later, it is beautifully said how, while the temptation to apostasy is busy with his heart, "a great shout" is heard in the camp of Heaviness, and with a " clashing of arms " and a blast of trumpets Hope "came shining with divine lustre," and, "smiling," rebuked the soldier of Christ. " When I heard it," Savonarola says, "I blushed thereat." But the strain of consolation is too sacred for analysis or quotation in a newspaper notice.
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