Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: falls to us to examine the most illustrious of all these friendships (unless Ralegh’s is to be excepted, or at least paralleled) – viz., with Sir Philip Sidney. VIII. LOVE-EXPERIENCES – SHINE AND SHADOW. In peace, Love tunes the shepherd’s reed; In war, he mounts the warrior’s steed; In halls, in gay attire is seen; In hamlets, dances on the green; Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, And men below, and saints above; For love is heaven, and heaven is love. Sir Walter Scott. When some years ago it was my good fortune to reveal for the first time in their several ‘ Lives, that in the case of Phineas Fletcher – poet of the Locusts and Purple Island, – JOHN DONNE – subtle Singer and great Preacher, – and JOHN Howe – most illustrious of Nonconformist Divines, – a strenuous conflict of
flesh and spirit preceded their ultimately beautiful, meek and holy lives, it came as a surprise upon most. For the ideal of them all was of flawless un-passioned men. It ought not to have been a surprise. One finds that with large and sensitive natures the tranquillity and
beauty of holiness
of the regenerate life are rarely if ever attained without strivings, stumblings, fallings. Nor is this other than we might wish. It humanizes the
great ones
to thus discover that they were of like passions with ourselves, and no 'perfect monsters’ or monsters of perfection. St. John, the apostle As this, though of profoundest importance, is in a sense ancillary, its statement and discussion I transfer to Appendix I. The genuine Spenserian will not fail to turn to'this, of his grace. of Love, is none the less but all the more near and dear to us that by the inflexible integrity of Holy Scripture we ascertain how fiery, fierce, rash-spoken, am…