LORD COLERIDGE ON KEBLE. [To THE EDITOR OF THE "
SPECTATOR.']
Sin,—Lord Coleridge has obliged us, and no one can be more
sincerely grateful to him than I am, with a paper on Mr. Matthew Arnold in the New Review, a paper, as it seems to me, by far the most important, distinguishing, and satisfying
utterance we have yet had upon a subject so interesting and so dear to us all. Every line of Lord Coleridge's paper is full of suggestiveness, so much so that almost every word would require careful definition before discussion. I have no thought, tempting as such a task might be, of following Lord Coleridge in many passages; but there is one sentence which is liable, I think, to a possible misapprehension, which I almost venture to think he would be the first to wish to avoid. Speaking, with a kind of eloquence which Lord Coleridge attributes to others, of "the moods of Time that will not last for ever," he says :—
" But that passed ; and so did the temper which made Donne popular and Herbert and Vaughan and Crazhaw ; so did that -which found its best literary expression in the poetry of Cowper; so is that passing which is embalmed for future time in the 'Christian Year,' and the ' Lyra Innocentinm.' " . I hesitate, as I do in reading all Lord Coleridge's pregnant prose, to suppose that I understand the exact meaning of -" embalmed for future time ;" but I feel confident that there ;is danger that the sentence, as a whole, may to some minds convey the impression that Lord Coleridge thinks that the 4‘ Christian Year" is passe. I would refer any one who is
inclined to think that this is possible, to the magnificent chapter, the eighth, in Sir John. Coleridge's memoirs of the poet-priest; and I pray to be pardoned if I record my con-
viction that when the Prayer-Book is passi, this divinely inspired book will be passg, but not before.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Previous page
