After the publication of the first three books of the "Faery Queene" in 1590, he received a pension of fifty pounds a year from the Queen. He married an Irish girl of low degree; the well-known "Epithalamium," exquisite in language and music but immoderately voluptuous, describes the happiness which he felt or anticipated. In 1596, the year of Southwell's martyrdom, he gave to the world Books IV.-VI. of the "Faery Queene." Soon after the retribution came. The down-trodden Irish turned for a moment on their oppressors, and almost broke their chains. Rudely awakened from the dream of sensuous and æsthetic pleasure-dislodged, burnt out by the people whose extermination he had so scientifically planned-Spenser, fleeing in such panic haste that his infant child, it is said, was left to perish in the flames of his castle, escaped to London, where he died early in 1599.

When advised to turn to Spenser for "lessons of religious and moral truth," Catholics will consider his life, of which we have given this brief outline, and find in it alone sufficient reason for rejecting the advice. But it does not follow from this that Spenser should not hold a place of honour in that enlarged curriculum of the "humanities," embracing what is best and greatest in the productions of modern genius, which the circumstances of our times require. His allegory should be left to take care of itself, and neither the entire " Faery Queene," nor even any single book, should be taught as a whole, because of the difficulty of getting rid of the sensual taint by which it is pervaded. But-to say nothing at present of his other poems, which are full of beauty-long passages in the "Faery Queene," and even entire cantos, may easily be found, written in his best manner, which display all that wealth of language and imagery which he had at his command, and breathe the lofty idealism which English writers of that age drew from the Platonizing schools of Italy. As there is no fear of Spenser's losing the homage of the general cultured world, so there is no reason why, if circumspection be used, he should not be read largely in our schools; but, for the reasons assigned, we doubt the wisdom of employing any of his works as a separate textbook,

T. ARNOLD M.A.

ART. V.-THE TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD OF
M. RENAN'S LECTURES.

Lectures on the Influence of the Institutions, Thought, and
Culture of Rome, on Christianity and the Development of
the Catholic Church. By E. RENAN. Translated by
C. BEARD, B.A. London and Edinburgh: Williams and
Norgate. 1880.

M.

RENAN has produced a book which it is very easy to rate too high, or too low, and different readers will no doubt estimate its merits at very different values. On the one hand, we feel sure that those who have even a tolerable acquaintance with the destructive criticism which has been prevalent in Protestant Germany for the last forty years, will find that little or nothing can be learnt from M. Renan's pages. Not that his book is without a show of learning. The notes abound with references to the original documents from which our knowledge of early Church history is derived, and the author assumes with great skill and cleverness the air of an independent investigator. But almost any one, we think, who has made a serious study of New Testament criticism, and made himself familiar, for example, with the view propounded in Baur's History of the Church in the first three centuries, will see easily enough, how little of the matter in M. Renan's volume, is due to M. Renan himself. We are certain that such a person, when he has perused the Lectures from cover to cover, will find that he has not met with a single view which has not been stated over and over again. We doubt if he will come across a single fact which is new to him, or even one which is put at least in a new light. M. Renan has not even the merit of exercising his own judgment on the writings of the Tübingen school, for though he does protest against the extravagances and extremes into which this school has run, still he contents himself with this expression of his opinion, supports it by no reasons, and no arguments, and borrows his own views and facts from the Tubingen critics, with very scant and inadequate acknowledgment. On the other hand, we readily admit that it would be most false and one-sided to deny that these Lectures are likely to have a great and important influence on the minds of many among our countrymen, nor are we disposed by any means to make light of them. It is, in itself, a significant fact, that a man, whose want of Christian belief is so notorious, should have been asked to address an English audience of high

character, on the rise of Christianity. It is one of the many signs which indicate with a clearness which admits of no mistake, how rapidly the Protestant orthodoxy of our land is losing its hold on society, and giving way beneath the powerful solvents of foreign infidelity. Moreover, given an audience educated in the ordinary English acceptation of the word, and fairly intelligent, interested in religion, but without any pretensions to theological learning, not accustomed to trouble itself much with very close or accurate reasoning; given, we say, such an audience, and we can scarcely imagine a book more likely to persuade them than these Lectures of M. Renan. True, he advances nothing which German critics have not put forward long ago; but how few of his hearers or readers have anything beyond the vaguest knowledge of German criticism, and its results? And if most English laymen begin to study German criticism, they are soon repelled by the length of the books, the minuteness of detailed inquiry, the absence, for the most part, of any attempt at style or artistic form, of any effort to avoid technicalities, or appeal to a popular audience. M. Renan has changed all that. In a book of two hundred pages, octavo, he conducts his readers through three centuries, and these the most eventful in the world's history, and professes to explain the rise of Christian belief by plausible theories which can be understood and adopted without preliminary study, and with small expense of mental labour. Moreover, in one respect the book does possess superlative excellence. M. Renan may have borrowed his ideas and his learning, but the matchless beauty of his style is all his own. In a limpid clearness, in striking historical painting, in the interest with which he clothes his subject, in the plausible way in which he puts his theories, in the adroitness with which he diverts attention from objections and makes assertion pass muster for argument, he has no rivals across the Rhine, and very few, we suspect, in any part of the world. Something, no doubt, is due to the qualities of the French language, but even in the English translation (which by the way is admirably done), the fascination of style is by no means entirely lost.

What we have already written, is enough to acquaint the reader with our own opinion of the lectures, their merits and their defects. But there is another question on which we wish to say a word or two before we grapple with the subject on which M. Renan treats-the question, we mean, of the good or evil which this book is likely to do. It may seem strange at first sight, that we can suppose it possible for any considerable good to come from such a source. And in fact we do not for a moment doubt that its influence, as a rule, will be almost entirely for evil. Many, we may be certain, will be lured by

the charms of an author who assumes a tone of philosophical candour, makes everything easy and simple, and enables them to disbelieve with so little trouble. Still, it seems to us perfectly possible that a thoughtful Protestant who has common sense enough to sift M. Renan's facts and arguments, may rise from the perusal of the book much nearer to the Catholic Church than he was before he began it. M. Renan sets before us some of the most important conclusions to which Protestantism in its latest phase has come. Now we are convinced that it is a mistake to regard the effect produced by German critics of the Negative school as an unmixed evil. An evil of course it is in many respects; an evil so far as it has destroyed reverence for the sacred Scriptures; an evil so far as it has loosened the hold of Protestants upon those sacred truths which they have inherited, unawares, from the Catholic Church. But at the same time, it must be remembered that German criticism in carrying out Protestantism to its legitimate consequences, has largely helped to make men see that they must choose, if they would be consistent, between a belief in the Catholic religion, and the rejection of all Christian dogma together. It has brought home to men's minds the folly of accepting any evidence, however weak, in favour of a book of scripture, and rejecting any evidence, however strong, if it tells in favour of the Church. We are, however, justified in going farther than this. It is only fair to say, that in many respects the modern" critical" school are far less prejudiced, far readier to acknowledge plain facts, than Protestant writers who have retained a larger portion of Christian belief. Any one who turns to M. Renan after being accustomed to the older Protestant historians, will be struck at once by the admissions he makes on the Catholic side, with regard to such questions as the rise of the Papacy, or the influence of the episcopate. We might search in vain even in the works of High Anglicans for anything nearly so just and so accurate. Moreover, it must be remembered that these concessions are not due to M. Renan's personal views, to his own inquiry, or to that lingering affection which still attaches him to the religion of his youth. On the contrary, we consider it worth while to comment on his presentation of Early Church history, just because his Lectures are merely an epitome of the works of men who are far superior to himself in knowledge and ability, and who have never known the Catholic religion, except from the outside. This it is, which makes his witness to Catholic truth worthy of serious attention, but before we set it before our readers, we must pause for a moment to meet an objection which may be made at the very outset to our method of dealing with M. Renan.

It may be alleged, and not without apparent reason, that when we quote his testimony, where it helps our cause, we are really playing fast and loose with his evidence and reasoning in a most illogical way. What right, a Protestant opponent may ask, what right have you to make light of M. Renan whenever he is against you, and to quote him with an air of triumph whenever he happens to be on your side? None at all, we reply, but we have no intention of entering on such an inconsequent kind of pleading. M. Renan, as we shall try to prove, makes some most important admissions, and this, not out of carelessness or caprice, but because he, or rather because the scholars whom he repeats in a more popular form, do, to a certain extent, prefer history to prejudice. So far, he is an example and a rebuke to English Protestants less philosophical and less candid than himself. We take nothing, we wish others to take nothing, on his authority, and we hope to show that his views, so far as they are Catholic, are also historical. We do not for a moment forget that the main object of his book is to explain the growth of Christianity by natural causes. We shall give our reason for looking on this explanation as absolutely worthless, and having taken advantage of M. Renan to confute Protestants, we shall do what we can to confute M. Renan himself. We shall begin for the sake of clearness, with a short summary of M. Renan's hypotheses.

The founder of the Christian religion, we are told by M. Renan, occupied himself very little with doctrine, but he taught an exalted morality, and inculcated love and mercy. The religion which he taught was no other than Judaism, Judaism "with its fertile principles of almsgiving and charity, with its absolute faith in the future of humanity, with that joy of heart of which Judaism has always held the secret." But one important change had been made in the old religion. "It is more than doubtful whether pure Judaism, the Judaism which was developed in a Talmudic form and which still retains so much. of its power, would ever have had so extraordinary a fortune" as that which fell to the lot of Christianity. But by means of Christ's teaching, Judaism lost its peculiar features and distinctive observances, and so received a new and purified form, which fitted it for its destinies as the religion of the civilized world.

The age, says M. Renan, was adapted as no other ever had been, for the Christian propaganda. Heathen Rome had paved the way for the mission of the Apostle. She had united the whole world in peace. She had swept the pirates from the Mediterranean, and now the emissaries of the Christian religion could pass in peace and safety from land to land till they