and by Bouhours, in French.  With the merits of the latter we are well acquainted; of the former, Dryden speaks highly in the dedication.  It may perhaps be more surprising, that the present editor should have retained this translation, than that Dryden should have undertaken it.  But surely the only work of this very particular and enthusiastic nature, which the modern English language has to exhibit, was worthy of preservation, were it but as a curiosity.  The creed and the character of Catholic faith are now so much forgotten among us (popularly speaking), that, in reading the “Life of Xavier,” the Protestant finds himself in a new and enchanted land.  The motives, and the incidents and the doctrines, are alike new to him, and, indeed, occasionally form a strange contrast among themselves.  There are few who can read, without a sentiment of admiration, the heroic devotion with which, from the highest principle of duty, Xavier exposes himself to hardship, to danger, to death itself, that he may win souls to the Christian faith.  The most rigid Protestant, and the most indifferent philosopher, cannot deny to him the courage and patience of a martyr, with the good sense, resolution, ready wit, and address of the best negotiator, that ever went upon a temporal embassy.  It is well that our admiration is qualified by narrations so monstrous, as his actually restoring the dead to life;[17] so profane, as the inference concerning the sweating crucifix;[18] so trivial and absurd, as a crab’s fishing up the saint’s cross, which had fallen into the sea; and,[19] to conclude, so shocking to humanity, as the account of the saint passing by the house of his ancestors, the abode of his aged mother, on his road to leave Europe for ever, and conceiving he did God good service in denying himself the melancholy consolation of a last farewell.[20] Altogether, it forms a curious picture of the human mind, strung to a pitch of enthusiasm, which we can only learn from such narratives:  and those to whom this affords no amusement, may glean some curious particulars from the “Life of Xavier,” concerning the state of India and Japan, at the time of his mission, as well as of the internal regulations and singular policy adopted by the society, of which the saint was a member.  Besides the “Life of Xavier,” Dryden is said to have translated Bossuet’s “Exposition of the Catholic Doctrine;” but for this we have but slight authority.[21]

Dryden’s political and polemic discussions naturally interfered at this period with his more general poetical studies.  About the period of James’s accession, Tonson had indeed published a second volume of Miscellanies, to which our poet contributed a critical preface, with various translations from Virgil, Lucretius, and Theocritus and four Odes of Horace; of which the third of the First Book is happily applied to Lord Roscommon, and the twenty-ninth to Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester.  Upon these and his other translations Garth has the