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OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY,

VOL. I.

INCLUDING THE WHOLE OF

GILES FLETCHER'S

CHRIST'S VICTORY AND TRIUMPH,

MAY STILL BE HAD, PRICE 4s. 6d.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

"We desire to direct attention to the volume which contains the whole of Giles Fletcher's Christ's Victory and Triumph,' and copious selections from the poets who, during the Seventeenth Century, kindled the fire of their genius on the altar of religion-Spenser, Davies, Sandys, P. Fletcher, Wither, Bishop King, Quarles, Herbert, Crashaw, and Milton.

"The most useless and worthless of all imaginable Collections' or 'Specimens' of Poetry, sacred or profane, are those in which we find two or three entire compositions, at the most, of celebrated writers, and bits of all the rest who have any name at all-bits and no more, cruelly cut out, gasping or dead. Not a few such have been printed of late years; and it is agreeable to know that they have been rejected with contempt and disgust. In some cases the editors who knew better, were thus constrained to act irrationally and inhumanly, by the command of senseless and sordid publishers; in others, they followed their own folly, and hacked, and hewed, and mangled, and murdered the objects of their admiration and love, without pity and without remorse. But the editors with whom we have now to do, understand the injunction of Wordsworth,

'With gentle hand

Touch, for there is a spirit in the leaves;'

and in this volume that spirit lives in every leaf, and every leaf is bright and fragrant as when to the breath of genius it first expanded its petals into the gracious light. The specimens of each poet are numerous and entire; so that from them, without any farther acquaintance with their works, the peculiar genius of each can be comprehended and felt.

"The Introductory Essay is of great merit; and will of itself declare the character of the Editorship of the Sacred Classics far better than any praise of ours, and induce many to procure the whole Series."-Blackwood's Magazine.

"This is a delightful volume, and is sure to be received with gratitude by the admirers of true poetry.

"Giles Fletcher's poem, 'Christ's Victory and Triumph,' is Miltonic, though written while as yet Milton was not. The author of the Paradise Lost' and 'Regained,' himself acknowledged this emphatically, not in choosing a similar subject, but in the frequent use he made of thoughts which had been Fletcher's, and were entitled to be his own. For they lived in the same world of thought, and shared its sublimity and glory. The whole poem is a series of glorious pictures, such as Rubens and Rembrandt might have united to furnish.

*

"Here we unwillingly close our extracts from Giles Fletcher, commending the reader to Mr. Cattermole's volume. We shall be glad to meet him in another as speedily as he finds himself able to furnish it."-Examiner.

WORKS PREPARING FOR PUBLICATION.

BISHOP BUTLER'S FIFTEEN SERMONS.

BISHOP HORNE ON THE PSALMS.

BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.

JEREMY TAYLOR'S HOLY LIVING AND DYING.

PALEY'S HORE PAULINE, AND NATURAL THEOLOGY.

BISHOP BURNETT'S PASTORAL CARE.

SELECT PRAYERS, AND TRACTS ON THE SACRAMENTS.

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