L.
Blanco White's Sonnet (Vol. vii., pp. 404. 486.; Vol. ix., p. 469.).—This sonnet is so beautiful, that I hope it will suffer no disparagement in the eyes of any of your admiring readers, if I remind them of a passage in Sir Thomas Browne's Quincunx, which I conceive may have inspired the brilliant genius of Blanco White on this occasion. I regret that I have not the precise reference to the passage:
"Light" (says Browne) "that makes things seen, makes some things invisible. Were it not for darkness, and the shadow of the earth, the noblest part of creation had remained unseen, and the stars in heaven as invisible as on the fourth day, when they were created above the horizon with the sun, or there was not an eye to behold them. The greatest mystery of religion is expressed by adumbration; and, in the noblest part of the Jewish types, we find the cherubim shadowing the mercy-seat. Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living: all things fall under this name. The sun itself is but the dark simulacrum, and light but the shadow of God!"
J. Sansom.
Oxford.
"Wise men labour," &c. (Vol. ix., p. 468.).—The following version of these lines is printed in the Collection of Loyal Songs, written against the Rump Parliament between the Years 1639-1661:
"Complaint.
"Wise men suffer, good men grieve,
Knaves devise and fools believe;
Help, O Lord! send aid unto us,