To this probably small class of
exceptions to a general rule (it surely is no uncharity to say this,
since the annals of Jesuitism have confessedly been so stained with
falsehood, treachery, every insidious art, and every detestable crime)
seems to have belonged our poet. No proof was produced that he had any
connexion with the treacherous and bloody designs of his party, although
he had plied his priestly labours with unwearied assiduity. He was too
sincere-minded a man to have ever been admitted to the darker secrets of
the Jesuits.
His verses are ingenious, simpler in style than was common in his time
--distinguished here by homely picturesqueness, and there by solemn
moralising. A shade of deep but serene and unrepining sadness, connected
partly with his position and partly with his foreseen destiny, (his
larger works were written in prison,) rests on the most of his poems.
LOOK HOME.
Retired thoughts enjoy their own delights,
As beauty doth in self-beholding eye:
Man's mind a mirror is of heavenly sights,
A brief wherein all miracles summ'd lie;
Of fairest forms, and sweetest shapes the store,
Most graceful all, yet thought may grace them more.
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