The bishop of Winchester and his colleagues silenced the pleader, but it was with the argument of fire. For years he had kept in view that terrific death. In Switzerland he often expressed his expectation of it. The blazonry of the arms he assumed on his consecration reminded him of it every time he used his seal ;* and having determined to reject an opportunity for escape, he went to the flames a willing sacrifice. Utterance was denied him, and no murmuring word passed from his lips. The passions which agitated the polemic, had subsided in the martyr's breast; but suffering close to his own cathedral, and gratified in his desire to perish among his flock, there was enough of eloquence in his ashes. Enviable indeed was such an exit compared with the bishop of Winchester's. Disappointed at the continual supply of protestant confessors, Each stepping where his comrade stood, baffled in his efforts to procure sufficient pecuniary aid from the parliament, which had just reluctantly legalized Mary's generous alienations, his frame sunk beneath his toils. An agonizing disease assailed his body, and terror seized his mind. That contempt of the world which ennobled his conduct in adversity, had vanished with returning wealth and power; and if he did not feel the sanguinary persecution of his last year as a crime, his conscience could call the vulture that sat waiting on many another recollection. His attendants strove to soothe him with the consolations of religion; even Peter's fall had been forgiven. "I have sinned with Peter," replied the prelate, "but with Peter I have not wept." Death came at last, and closing this scene, left him alone to the justice that he dreaded, or the mercy he dared not hope for.† Cranmer remained a little longer. His sun set less brilliantly than Hooper's, but without the awful shadow that gathered over Gardiner's death-bed. In controversy at Oxford with the ablest Romish divines, under every disadvantage, he maintained his ground with self possession, learning, and moderation, and had he not been seduced into luring on his persecutors with hopes of his ultimate recantation, nothing could have been finer than his conduct as a prisoner. But the deed was done that tinged his last moments with regret, and he stood in St. Mary's church a penitent and humiliated man. Soon, however, the bitterness of death passed by; he went to the stake with the disputation with Cranmer, at Oxford, two questions from the "Answer to my lord of Winchester," seem to have been put by the exulting lord. Whether edere, "to eat," meant credere, "to believe," and altare," Christ," in all places of Scripture, "and Hooper answered yea," yet he had answered himself affirmatively, See Cranmer's Remains, III. 72, where Gardiner's work is printed at length. • Foxe, who adduces a letter of Bullinger's confirmatory of the former fact, describes these curious arms incorrectly. They are az. on a fess ar. three crones gules. A canton of the second, charged with clouds radiating a glory downwards. Crest, a lamb tripping in flames, proper. Such is the account in Strype, Foxe, &c. Lingard says, "he died piously;" but admits the words above quoted. See also Pole Epist. Pars. V. ep. xxii. xxiii. serenity, and, extending into the flames his "unworthy hand," the Spartan was surpassed by the Christian. Surely that mind must labour under prejudices which cannot discern a Providence in such events as these. Had the Romanists been less exasperated by Edward's government, they might not have been so ferocious in their persecutions under Mary, and what would have been the consequence? As far as human conjecture can go, the reformed church of England would have been suppressed, or survived without the honour and stability given to her by learned and holy confessors and martyrs. The Romish church, stripped of its wealth, all alienations having been legalized before the re-admission of papal authority, would have existed, shorn of the little influence for good that she was wont to exert, and the tinkling of the mass bell would have given place to the stillness, not of devotion, but solitude. Those apprehensions entertained by Elizabeth's friends on her accession, that the people would not bear another religious revolution, might have been verified, had not Mary and her Spanish consort disgusted them with unheard-of cruelties; and what Europe is, whether in superstition or infidelity, England might have been. Had Gardiner and Pole survived Mary, what obstacles would they have thrown in the way of ecclesiastical reform! Had Hooper escaped, what an established centre would the puritans have had round which to collect and disturb the church's peace! Had Cranmer lived, little could be expected from him: that peculiar temper which enabled him in times of great difficulty with one hand to sustain the cause he loved, while with the other he shaped his course rather by circumventing than removing obstacles, would have been disadvantageous; he could not have restored to the Liturgy the important clauses he had erased, and the metropolitan chair could not have been occupied by a man of unsullied character and inflexible mind, who had no party to support and no wrongs to revenge, who might devote himself without bias to the honour of his God, and the just liberties of his church and country. ON THE POEMS OF THE POOR OF LYONS.-No. II. THE religious poems that have come down to our age from the Poor Men of Lyons are these seven, The Noble Lesson, the Bark or Boat, The New Discourse, The New Comfort, The Eternal Father, The Contempt of the World, and The Gospel of the Four Seeds. The first of these, in 479 verses, has twice been printed entire; and it seems to furnish the most important share of information concerning the character and tenets of the sect, although it is inferior to some of the others in poetical spirit. Of the six remaining poems, the reading world possess no more than what Monsieur Raymond has extracted by * See the preparations for supporting Elizabeth's reforms by a foreign army in Hallam's Const. Hist. way of specimen in his Choix des Poésies Originales des Troubadours, printed at Paris in 1817. And the imperfect form in which he has given them, however it might be suited to his immediate purpose, is much to be regretted by us; the more so, because his object was merely philological illustration, without reference to religion or its history; and consequently the portions omitted by him as tedious or unpoetical may have been precisely those that were best adapted to our purpose. Two manuscripts of the Noble Lesson exist; and three are spoken of:-I. The first was in Morland's volume B., among the MSS. received by him from the Messieurs Leger, and deposited at Cambridge in August, 1658. It was "in parchment, and that in a very ancient but excellent character." The volume is said to have contained in all twenty-six pieces, under nineteen heads or divisions. But the whole of these documents have been in some unexplained manner spirited away, ddɛiwg äpπviai åvnoɛiavтo. II. The second was deposited by Jean Leger* in the library of Geneva on the 10th of November, 1662; and is esteemed by the present librarian to be of the twelfth century. It is on parchment, in ancient Gothic characters, and remains to this day where he placed it.+ III. The third is a copy written on paper, and preserved among Usher's MSS. in Trinity College at Dublin. It is considered to be in the same handwriting as the book which bears date 1524; and therefore may be either of that date, or of any other within the lifetime of the same amanuensis. It is probably a mere transcript from the older parchment text, and void of all authority and value. But if carefully examined, it might illus trate the progress of knavery and falsification. Where the old text has "cant venre l'Antexrist"-i. e., "when Antichrist shall come" (declaring his futurity), this paper copy exhibits "el temp de l'Antexrist"-i.e., "the time of Antichrist" (leaving his presence or futurity ambiguous); whereas Jean Leger, departing from all the three texts, and in fact perpetrating a downright forgery, prints it "a fuire l'Antexrist"-i.e., "to shun or avoid Antichrist," which almost implies his presence. Where the old text rejects all the popes "subsequent to Sylvester," the transcript expunges those words, and so makes it an absolute rejection of all popery. The character of such a copy cannot be misunderstood. Morland's volume, B. (by his account), also contained the other * Hist. Generale, etc., part i. p. 23, 4. Monsieur Raynouard errs in representing that the Geneva library obtained from Leger any other Vaudois MSS. besides the book in question. Monsieur Gerard, the librarian, in his receipt given to Leger, most expressly states that this book, No. 1, was in the Vaudois dialect; and all the other loose MSS. contained in the liasse, or bundle No. 2, were Italian and French. But those words of the receipt which so state it are omitted in Raynouard's quotation, and their place supplied by the abbreviation etc. Part i. p. 30. The same author has omitted all the lines from verse 76 to 286; and again all those from verse 418 to 455; without any intimation to his readers either in words or by mode of printing, that he was not presenting a continuous passage. Whoever examines the poem will see the motives of this artifice. poems, with the exception of "Contempt of the World" and "The Four Seeds," whereof he has made no mention. The Geneva codex contains them all; and so does the paper copy at Dublin. But there is strong ground for suspecting that no more than one genuine and original text exists; and that the Cambridge and Geneva MSS. are indeed one and the same. Volume B., a volume so curious and valuable, that only Saracens or Vandals would burn it, has vanished; and it must (probably) be existing somewhere. The truth of the matter (so far as it may be surmised from circumstances, and from the behaviour of a deceitful person) appears to be, that Monsieur Leger gave the book to Morland between the years 1655 and 1658 inclusive; that Morland placed it in Cambridge library in 1658, while the protector was dying; took it out again before the king's restoration, and gave it back to Leger; and that Leger placed it in Geneva library in 1662. When a man of credit, and employed by the state, prints a statement that he has at a certain time lodged certain documents in a given public library, we do not usually consider ourselves possessed of evidence in favour of that fact, but as simply possessed of the fact itself.* [The remark is perfectly just; and as it regards the argument, very important; but I lay hold of the words "a man of credit" as a peg on which to hang a few remarks on the credit which is really due to Morland. The reckless manner in which some writers have quoted him, as well as Perrin and Leger, as if they were first-rate authorities, absolutely requires that the truth on this point should be brought forward and borne in mind. We may reasonably, as well as charitably, hope that in a wretched old age, embittered by poverty, blindness, and a bad wife, when, supported on the alms of an archbishop, he used to play himself psalms and religious bymns on the theorbo," he was a better man than when he was one of Mr. Secretary Thurloe's tools, and according to his own account betrayed his employers. It was his boast and his ground of claim that when employed in a confidential station by Cromwell, he had given private information to the king. That such a man, when he was sent out to get up a history of the Vaudois, would stick at trifles, is not to be imagined. It was all right to take what he could get in the way of documents, while the Protector was protector, and as right to throw them overboard when the King was, or was like to be, king. He seems to have been a vain weak man, with some talent for mechanics, but as to his politics, with some spice of craft and knavery, very little better than That knaves do work with, called a fool." For though he did perhaps receive as much from the king as his services deserved, especially in a gold medal from his own royal hands, yet, if not the king, some of the king's party, had filled his head with such extravagant conceits, that be ran through what he did get in keeping up a style fit to receive what he expected. They had promised him the garter, and advised him by all means not to ask the king for anything whatever, for he meant out of his own royal generosity to do something for him, far beyond anything that he could imagine; and they so wrought on bis wife, that she fell down on her knees before him in the garden, and begged him of all love to swear that he would not ask for anything, for she had good assurance that she was going to be made a duchess. This is stated on the authority of his own autograph letters. Some interesting information respecting his mechanical as well as political proceedings, may be found in "A Brief Account of the Life, Writings, and Inventions of Sir Samuel Morland," published by Johnson at Cambridge, and Whittaker, London, and supposed to be from the pen of Mr. Halliwell. By the way, did the author of this paper ever give attention to the preface to Morland's work on the Vaudois? It seems impossible that he could have written it himself; and if he did not, one would like to know who did.-ED.] But Monsieur Leger, in 1669, speaks in another tone :-"That all the abovenamed originals (he says) were delivered to the said Sieur Morland, and by him deposited in the famous library of Cambridge, we do not need any more solemn voucher or proof than the declaration of it which he inserts with the list of them, prefixt to his history, printed in London in 1658." No living soul could have then disputed the veracity of Morland. For if the disappearance of the MSS. had been discovered, Leger could not have spoken thus on the subject, in this as well as other passages; and if it had not, there was nothing in the declaration of Morland to move any scepticism. But this is the language of a conscious man, well knowing that their deposit at Cambridge had been transitory, and that they were not there at the moment when he was writing. By disclaiming the need of further vouchers and proofs, he reminds us to examine the transaction narrowly. Thus do the guilty very often betray themselves; for unaccused innocence never professes to be innocent. If the book remained at Cambridge but a few months or weeks, some people must have seen it, and would bear in mind its general appearance. When a black duck with a white neck dives under water, and some yards off there comes up a black duck with a white neck, it is naturally supposed to be the same duck. And the like conjecture would arise if a manuscript vanished mysteriously from one library, and shortly afterwards an exactly similar one made its appearance in another library. Let us observe how honest Jean Leger handles this rather ticklish topic :-" Extrait d'un Traité intitulé la Noble Leiçon datté de l'an 1100, qui se trouve tout entier en un livre de parchemin ecrit a la main, en vielle lettre Gothique, dont se sont trouvés deux exemplaires, l'un desquels se conserve a Cambridge et l'autre en la Bibliotheque de Geneve." Of poems and other works copies are made; and each copy must be written on vellum, paper, or some particular substance, and in some particular character. But here the work itself, and the copies made of it, are strangely mixed up together. The words might signify that there was (in some unnamed place) one parchment and black-letter original, from which two copies (of unnamed materials and character) had been made, and sent to Cambridge and Geneva. If indeed they have any proper and grammatical meaning, it is that. But Monsieur Leger's intention was, to insinuate that he had found two twin-sister manuscripts of the same poems, equal in age, and similar in all things, and had sent one to England and the other to Geneva. The improbability of such a circumstance, the questions it was not unlikely to call forth, and the monitions of conscience, deterred him from saying it out plainly and grammatically, and caused him to stammer it forth in such prevaricating phrase. Θέλω τί τ' εἰπεῖν, ἀλλά με κωλύει If the above-cited words are ambiguous and suspicious in themselves, they become still more so when we consider how they are employed by him. They introduce a long garbled extract of the Noble |