THE

BRITISH CRITIC,

For JANUARY, 1810.

Oderunt hilarem triftes, triftemque jocofi.

Some hate the light, and fome the serious ftyle.

HOR.

ART. 1. The Life of St. Neot, the oldest of all the Brothers to King Alfred. By the Rev. John Whitaker, B.D. Rector of Ruan-Langhorne, Cornwall. 8vo. pp. 387. 10s. Stockdale. 1809.

AS

S our late excellent coadjutor and friend, Mr. Whitaker, had, himself, a great averfion to "préfaces," we fhall, without ceremony, enter upon the merits of his work, now open before us. This we cannot better do than by making extracts, and interpofing obfervations. After having performed this talk, we shall prefent our readers, with what we are fure will be acceptable, fome account of the author's life and writings; beginning with his "MANCHESTER," and ending with his "ST. NEOT." It is thus Mr. W.commences his hiftory of the princely faint.

"A Saint, however related, and however renowned, will hardly be expected to furnish materials in his life, either attractive of themfelves, or important in their confequences; yet the prefent, I think, with proper management, will. It is my buf

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BRIT. CRIT. VOL. XXXV. JAN. 1810.

nefs,

nefs, therefore, to ufe this management, to note the connection of his opinions with our national manners, and to mark the bearings of his actions upon our national annals. I hope thus to render even the biography of a Saint, concerning whom little is told, and lefs understood, even concerning one who is now, for the first time, referred to history by the hands of criticism, useful enough to challenge the curiofity of many in the beginning, and interefting enough to engage the attention of more to the

end."

"But before we enter upon the life of a Saint, fo replete with miracles afcribed to him, we muft ftop a moment to ascertain the origin of the miracles fo afcribed, and to explain the quality of the facts fo magnified into miracles. Such an operation is requifite, antecedently to any profecution of his biography; in order to diveft the hiftory of all that appearance of incredibility which at prefent furrounds it, and to bring it down from the high æther of romance to the fober level, the perfpirable* atmofphere of reality. For this purpose we must examine the original biographers of St. Neot, find the author by whom the miracles were firft attributed to him, and fo mark the matter as well as the manner, in or on which they were attributed. We fhall thus come to fee clearly how common incidents in the Saint's life were worked up into marvellous contingencies, how the very mode of their relation originally fhewed them to have been merely common incidents only, and how the very relater of them at first appears to have been the very reprobater of them afterwards." P. 1, 2, falfely paged in the volume 3, 4.

We must here be excufed in drawing off attention from the matter to the manner; whilft we remark, that this fhort extract exhibits the author in all his peculiarities of ftyle; difcriminated as it is always by vigour and perfpicuity; at one time, by elegance and force; at another, by extreme inelegance. To proceed with the hiftory.

"The very memorials that impofed upon Ramfay at first were not, I am perfuaded, the fabrication of wilful falfehood; rioting in a wantounefs of fiction, and impofing ftudied forgeries upon the faith of the world. This is too dreadful an extreme of guilt for the generality of mankind; and efpecially for the fequeftered few who love to dwell upon the actions of a faint, to revere the graces of heaven really refplendent always in his conduct, and to contemplate the powers of heaven fuppofedly displayed in his words at times. Such men are too good to be deceivers, but are very apt to be deceived; to miftake the meaning of names or the quality of circumftances; to confider every common incident in a

For perfpirable read refpirable, without doubt. Rev.

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faint's

faint's biography as a miraculous one; to fuppofe the Deity equally prefent with the faint in vifible powers, as he certainly is in invifible graces; and to fancy thofe communicated, in order to give a kind of vifibility to the e." P. 16.

The author's integrity, fimplicity, and piety, are here moft apparent. He now examines the marvellous acts of St. Neot one by one; and is fuccefsful, we think, in proving, that at the bottom of each fiction lies the truth. The fixth miracle is well illuftrated by the manner of carrying corn in Cornwall.

"The tenants," fays Mr. W., "were once driving the lord's wains loaded with corn, in their ufual manner, to the ufual places. They had fcarce begun to move, when, wonderful to be feen, a vehement wind came rufhing among them. So great was its vehemence, indeed, that it forced wains, and oxen, and men fuddenly to turn and go back. All go back together to the field from which the corn had been taken, as with the force of a dart from a hand."

"The incident is very true, I believe, as it is certainly very probable in itself. A fudden wind arofe as the wains were be ginning to move, and in a direction oppofite to their movement. We know from our own experience in Cornwall at present, where we ftill carry our corn on wains, and ftill draw it with oxen, piled artificially in rows upon rows of fheaves, raised to a confiderable height, and bound down by a rope in feveral directions; how readily fuch a tall structure catches the force of those rushing winds that frequently annoy us from the fouth-weft. This was fuch a wind affuredly. The rifing ftories of fheaves could not ftand the violence of it; the whole mafs tottered from fide to fide, and all will inftantly be thrown to the ground. The attendants feel the distress, run to fupport the load at the fides with their protended pikes, and goad on the oxen. But their labours are all vain; the oxen are not able to advance against fuch a torrent of air fo obstructed; and the fheaves begin to fly. In this extremity, no refource is left but to turn, to move before the wind, to feek the field in which they took up the load, and there to lay it down again. Such an incident as this may have happened to many, and is likely to happen to all; our Cornish mode of forming our fheaves into round mows within the field, and there leaving them faved (as we naturally prefume to speak) till the weather permits us to carry them into our rick-yard, being calculated equally to defend them against the wind as to protect them from the wet." P. 64.

Let us next view St. Neot in his retirement.

"In an eager defire (notes Leland) for the life of a hermit, he went into Cornwall. Yet in this eagerness he atted pru

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dently,

dently, by not burying himself alone amid the wilds of St. Gueryr; but taking a companion with him, and fettling near to a church with its prieft. From this conduct, folitude fmoothed her rugged looks for him; a hermitage loft its drearinefs of af pect, and by the irradiations of focial religion,

"There did a fable cloud

Turn forth her filver lining on the night,

And caft a gleam over these tufted groves."

P. 110.

But the grand magnet to the lovers of folitude was always a fine fountain of water; and at St. Neot's is a well of high celebrity, about a quarter of a mile from the

church.

"At this well (which is to the weft of the church, lying in what is called a meadow under a wood at prefent) St. Neot refided as a hermit with Barius, and communicated that reputed holinefs which still adheres in part to its waters. That there was a good arch of ftone over it, with a large oak springing from the arch, and with doors to the entrance, is well remembered now. This beautiful fpring," fays a late author, (who has happily caught fome deferiptive touches concerning it)" with a rill iluing from it, that conftantly fupplies the neighbouring village with water, is yet to be seen at the foot of a steep wood. About thirty (now forty) years ago, a very large and spreading oak, which grew almoft horizontally from the bank above, and overfhadowed the well" in a fan like form, "was cut down by the tenant of the eftate for repairs," when it had been spared for centuries, probably from a principle of religion. Weakly children ufed alfo, within memory, to be brought from a diftance, even from the distance of Exeter itself, to be bathed in the waters on the three first (we should have written, first three) mornings in May. Even now the parish clerk reforts to it in all weathers, as his predeceffors in office have immemorially reforted, to fetch from it the water for the baptifmal font in the church. The water itself is very fine to the eye, and very * pleafing to the tafte. Here, adds Ramfay, St. Neot "was daily wont to repeat the whole pfalter throughout;" thus going through a length of private prayer, to which our faint and languid fpirits in devotion could never extend. But our fpirits in devotion are not to be compared with a hermit's. When the foul is conftantly engaged in the contemplation of that awfully important point of

The author in this place refers to his "Hiftorical Survey of the Cornish Cathedral." There the defcription of the well of St. Ruan, very fimilar to the above, was written by the Rev. R. Polwhele, who vifited that well for Mr. Whitaker. Rev.

time on which it ftands; is tremblingly alive to its deftiny in heaven or in hell, for the whole round of eternity; THEN SEES

ONLY THE SLIGHT TRANSPARENCY OF LIFE, RISING UP

BEFORE BOTH; and is continually breathing forth its fupplications to God, its hopes or its fears concerning both. Under this habitual difcipline of devoutnefs, what must be the intensenefs, the fervidnefs, and the ardency of prayer? Infinitely fuperior muft they be to those sensations of devoutnefs, which the man of bufinefs, or the man of Яtudioufnefs, even if very devout, can ever feel in his bofom. The latter can be no more to the former, than THE FUGITIVE CORRUSCATIONS (corufcations) of AN AUTUMNAL NIGHT, TO THE STEADY RADIATIONS OF A SUMMER'S SUN.

St. Neot, therefore, might well indulge himfelf in fuch a length of prayer, as to go through the whole pfalter every day; by the frequent recurrence of his prayers in the day, and by the continuance for them for a long time at every recurrence." P. 115.

We have given in capitals two fine illuftrations which occur in the above beautiful paffage. In the hands of fuch an author, no fubject, however dry in itself, can be either uninterefting or unedifying. Of Wolflan, who was made precentor of Winchester, on account of his fine voice and fkill in finging, the following is a curious memoir: as alfo of venerable Bede, who died " Linging."

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"Wolftan, a monk of Winchester cathedral, in the tenth cen tury, (fays Leland) was not without a voice finely mufical, or without very great fkill in finging; on both accounts he became much efteemed by his fellow collegians, and was thus at last made even præcentor, a kind of magiftrate in high honour among the monks formerly," in high honour among ourselves ftill, and the leader purely of the chants in our cathedral fervices.

"But in the eleventh century, when Edmund Ironfide, under 1016, engaged Canute and his Danes within the county of Effex, we behold an amazing picture of devoutnefs in the midst of a camp, in the open field, and in the heat of a battle; Ednod, bishop of Lincoln, "chanting the communion fervice there," even while the battle was at its very height, being overtaken by the clofe of it before he had concluded; and, while he was praying with lifted hands, having one of them cut off by the victorious Danes. So early do we find (what we do not find in our cathedrals at prefent) the prayers of the Euchariit chanted! Yet ftill carlier do we perceive the chanted prayer in private. In thofe illuftrious moments of death, when the celebrated Eede fhone more than ever he had fhone before, and was placed by the altar at which he had ufed to pray, there he chanted," even with his expiring breath, "glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit;" but as foon as he had invoked

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the