MALIM CONVIVIS QVAM PLACVISSE COQVIS.

We need not, perhaps, regret that Mr. Stoddart withdrew from the struggles and competitions of poetic literature.  No very high place, no very glorious crown, one fancies, would have been his.  His would have been anxiety, doubt of self, disappointment, or, if he succeeded, the hatred, and envyings, and lies which even then dogged the steps of the victor.  It was better to be quiet and go a-fishing.

   “Sorrow, sorrow speed away
      To our angler’s quiet mound,
   With the old pilgrim, twilight gray,
      Enter through the holy ground;
   There he sleeps whose heart is twined
      With wild stream and wandering burn,
   Wooer of the western wind
      Watcher of the April morn!”

CHAPTER VIII:  THE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE

My copy of the Confessions is a dark little book, “a size uncumbersome to the nicest hand,” in the format of an Elzevir, bound in black morocco, and adorned with “blind-tooled,” that is ungilt, skulls and crossbones.  It has lost the title-page with the date, but retains the frontispiece, engraved by Huret.  Saint Augustine, in his mitre and other episcopal array, with a quill in his hand, sits under a flood of inspiring sunshine.  The dumpy book has been much read, was at some time the property of Mr. John Philips, and bears one touching manuscript note, of which more hereafter.  It is, I presume, a copy of the translation by Sir Toby Matthew.  The author of the Preface declares, with truth, that the translator “hath consulted so closely and earnestly with the saint that he seemeth to have lighted his torch att his fire, and to speak in the best and most significant English, what and how he would have done had he understood our language.”

There can be no better English version of this famous book, in which Saint Augustine tells the story of his eager and passionate youth—­a youth tossed about by the contending tides of Love, human and divine.  Reading it to-day, with a mundane curiosity, we may half regret the space which he gives to theological metaphysics, and his brief tantalising glimpses of what most interests us now—­the common life of men when the Church was becoming mistress of the world, when the old Religions were dying of allegory and moral interpretations and occult dreams.  But, even so, Saint Augustine’s interest in himself, in the very obscure origins of each human existence, in the psychology of infancy and youth, in school disputes, and magical pretensions; his ardent affections, his exultations, and his faults, make his memoirs immortal among the unveilings of the spirit.  He has studied babies, that he may know his dark beginnings, and the seeds of grace and of evil.  “Then, by degrees, I began to find where I was; and I had certain desires to declare my will to those by whom it might be executed.  But I could not do it, . . . therefore would I be tossing