.

We need not, perhaps, regret that Mr. Stoddart withdrew from the
struggles and competitions of poetic literature. No very high place, no
very glorious crown, one fancies, would have been his. His would have
been anxiety, doubt of self, disappointment, or, if he succeeded, the
hatred, and envyings, and lies which even then dogged the steps of the
victor. It was better to be quiet and go a-fishing.

"Sorrow, sorrow speed away
To our angler's quiet mound,
With the old pilgrim, twilight gray,
Enter through the holy ground;
There he sleeps whose heart is twined
With wild stream and wandering burn,
Wooer of the western wind
Watcher of the April morn!"

CHAPTER VIII: THE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE

My copy of the Confessions is a dark little book, "a size uncumbersome to
the nicest hand," in the format of an Elzevir, bound in black morocco,
and adorned with "blind-tooled," that is ungilt, skulls and crossbones.
It has lost the title-page with the date, but retains the frontispiece,
engraved by Huret. Saint Augustine, in his mitre and other episcopal
array, with a quill in his hand, sits under a flood of inspiring
sunshine. The dumpy book has been much read, was at some time the
property of Mr. John Philips, and bears one touching manuscript note, of
which more hereafter. It is, I presume, a copy of the translation by Sir
Toby Matthew. The author of the Preface declares, with truth, that the
translator "hath consulted so closely and earnestly with the saint that
he seemeth to have lighted his torch att his fire, and to speak in the
best and most significant English, what and how he would have done had he
understood our language."

There can be no better English version of this famous book, in which
Saint Augustine tells the story of his eager and passionate youth--a
youth tossed about by the contending tides of Love, human and divine.
Reading it to-day, with a mundane curiosity, we may half regret the space
which he gives to theological metaphysics, and his brief tantalising
glimpses of what most interests us now--the common life of men when the
Church was becoming mistress of the world, when the old Religions were
dying of allegory and moral interpretations and occult dreams. But, even
so, Saint Augustine's interest in himself, in the very obscure origins of
each human existence, in the psychology of infancy and youth, in school
disputes, and magical pretension