both instances pourtrayed with _nimbus_, had
been actually canonized and it is deserving of notice that in no ancient
evidence hitherto cited is he designated as a Saint, but merely as Master,
or Sir John. I am surprised that Dr. Husenbeth, who is so intimately
conversant with the examples of hagiotypic symbols existing in Norfolk,
should not have given him even a supplementary place in his most useful
manual of the _Emblems of Saints_, recently published. (Burns, 1850, 12mo.)
I have sought for Sir John in vain, in either section of that valuable
work. It occurs neither under the names of saints, nor in the series of
emblems.
ALBERT WAY.
_"Her brow was fair"_ (Vol. ii p. 407.).--The author of the passage quoted
by J.M.B. is Barry Cornwall. It occurs in one of the delicious {451} little
"Miscellaneous Poems" attached to the volume entitled _Dramatic Scenes_.
The quotation is not quite accurate, the last two words of the first line,
"and look'd," being carried into the second, and thus destroying the metre
of both. The Dr. Armstrong alluded to by J.M.B. is, I suppose, a modern
celebrity of whom I must plead guilty of being ignorant. The lines could,
of course, only occur in the writings of the Dr. Armstrong who wrote _The
Art of Preserving Health_, and who was the friend of the poet Thomson,
through the interpolation of some modern editor, within the last thirty
years. Barry Cornwall's poems have never been collected, in this country at
least; and as the volume which contains the one in question is to be met
with only occasionally, on the book stalls, I send you the entire poem:--
THE MAGDALEN.
"And woman who had wept her loveliest dower
There hid her broken heart.
_Paris._ "I do remember it. Twas such a face
As Guido would have loved to dwell upon;
But oh! the touches of his pencil never
Could paint her perfect beauty. In her home
(Which once she did desert) I saw her last;
Propp'd up by pillows, swelling round her like
Soft heaps of snow, yielding, and fit to bear
Her faded figure. I observed her well:
Her brow was fair, but _very_ pale, and look'd
Like stainless marble; a touch methought would soil
Its whiteness. O'er her temple one blue vein
Ran like a tendril; one through her shadowy hand
Branch'd like the fibre of a leaf--away.
Her mouth was tremulous, and her cheek wore then
A flush of beautiful vermilion,
But more like art than nature; and her eye
Sp
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