one of which is worth more than the empire of the whole world. Do not, I pray you, regard such a tragedy as a joke; sleep not while the enemy watches; play not while he devours his prey; relax not in idleness and vanity while he is dabbling in your brothers' blood. It is not wealth, or liberty, or station, but the eternal inheritance of each of us, the very life-blood of our souls, our spirits, and our lives that suffer. See, then, my dearest and most instructed youths, that you lose none of this precious time, but carry a plentiful and rich crop away from this seminary, enough to supply the public wants, and to gain for ourselves the reward of dutiful sons."

The other oration belonging to this period, De Laudibus Scripturæ Sacræ, is very imperfect, and what remains is not worth preserving. The speaker maintains the most rigid theory of verbal and syllabic dictation. The following simile, however, is aptly and prettily introduced :

"At Down, in the noble island of Ireland, amongst the relics of St. Brigit was found a concordance of the four Evangelists, beautified with mystical pictures in the margent, whose colours and workmanship at the first blush were dark and unpleasant, but in the view wonderful lively, and artificial. Is not this most like to the style of Scripture which seemeth to him, who only looketh in at the door, to speak unlearnedly and pedantically; whereas whoso diligently studies it finds the truth of the Prophet's praise, Thy words are like fire, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock.'"*

་

After spending more than a year at Douai, Campion became dissatisfied with his position. His biographers attribute this solely to his desire of penance and perfection. His chief study was to acquire the true science of the saints, the knowledge of God and of himself. But the more his knowledge of self increased, the more unhappy he became about that miserable Anglican diaconate. From the first it had given him the most painful scruples, which only grew more painful as his self-knowledge grew deeper, his learning more extensive, and his virtue more mature. He called it "the mark of the beast ;" and the thought of being impressed with "this infamous character" and "profane mark of ministry" grew at last too burdensome to be lightened by counsel of learned friends, or by his own study. So he determined to break entirely with the world, to make a pilgrimage to SS. Peter and Paul at Rome, and, by their good help, to become a Jesuit. He heard, as his foreign biographers add, an interior voice commanding him to repair to the see of Peter, where he should be told what to do. He resolved to obey, and immediately felt such inward comfort, that he determined not to wait a day.

A diligent study of Campion's writings does not bring to

* See Note 42.

light much evidence of this effect of his Anglican orders upon his mind; but it throws light on a divergence between his views and those of Dr. Allen, which I am disposed to think had almost as much to do with his leaving Douai as his scruples or his vocation. I need not trace here the development of the weak point in Dr. Allen's character; a point in which he suffered the usual penalty of exiles,-entire ignorance of the movements and feelings of his country, and the crystallisation of his brain in those feelings with which he first left England. In Mary's reign Philip II. was king of England, and loyalty to him was a proper sentiment. Allen preserved this sentiment all his life, and not without reason, for he lived within the Spanish king's dominions, and was a dependent on his bounty; and he allowed it to lead him into his disgraceful defence of the treachery of Sir William Stanley at Deventer, and to the composition of the more disgraceful pamphlet which he intended to be distributed throughout England as soon as the Armada should have achieved its first success. * But I will not enter upon this point now, as I shall have to discuss Campion's present political views more fully in the next chapter.

But whatever divergence there might have been politically between Allen and Campion, there was no interruption to their friendship. Even the resolution of his most promising subject to leave him did not alienate the affections of the great founder of the English seminary. With a vast harvest to gather in, and only few labourers to send; with every interest of heart and mind concentrated on the conversion of England-it would have been very excusable if he had been grievously offended at Campion's desertion, and all the more at his entrance into the Society of Jesus, which as yet had taken no part in the English mission. We might perhaps have expected Allen to offer the most strenuous opposition to the step, to show himself for years afterwards a bitter enemy of the Society, and to guard himself against any future loss of his students by forbidding them to learn from its professors, to listen to its preachers, or to perform its spiritual exercises. But he was too large-hearted and far-sighted to be swayed by such petty jealousies; he counted on receiving back his loan with interest, and, though he had to wait a while, his calculations did not fail him in the end.

As soon as Campion had determined to depart from Douai to Rome, and had fixed the day for starting, his preparations did not occupy much time. He went on foot as a poor pilgrim. He allowed his friends to accompany him

*See Note 43.

one day's journey, but would receive no other assistance or protection. The rest of his journey he accomplished alone, and never afterwards spoke of its incidents. But he was met on the road by an old Oxford acquaintance, a Protestant, who had known him "in great pomp and prosperity," and who on his return from a tour to Rome came across a pilgrim in a mendicant's dress. They passed each other without recognition; but the traveller, struck with some familiar expression, rode back to see who the poor man was. He soon recognised him, dismounted, shook hands, exhibited the greatest sympathy, and asked whether he had fallen among thieves that he was in such a plight. When he heard that it was all voluntary mortification, he pooh-poohed the idea as unworthy of an Englishman, fit only for a crazy fanatic, and absurd in a man of moderate means and a frame not over robust; so he pulled out his purse, and told Campion to help himself. The pilgrim refused, and, says Parsons, "made such a speech of the contempt of this world, and the eminent dignity of serving Christ in poverty, as greatly moved the man, and us also his acquaintance that remained yet in Oxford, when the report came to our ears." Campion arrived in Rome in the autumn of 1572.

CHAPTER III.

CAMPION's biographers, Parsons, Bombinus, Bartoli, and More, who write rather to edify their readers than to trace the character and opinions of the subject of their memoirs, tell us nothing of what occurred to him at Rome beyond his conformity to the pious usages of pilgrims, his gradually-formed conviction that he was called to be a Jesuit, and his admission into the order at the end of April 1573. It appears, however, by his own statements, that he had already made up his mind about his vocation when he first arrived; so that all the stories about the interior voice which miraculously directed him in answer to his protracted devotions, and the severe trial which he made of its authenticity, are shown to be at least great exaggerations, if not pure fancies.

"On my first arrival into Rome," he said at his trial, in November 1581, "which is now about ten years past, it was my hap to have access to [Cardinal Gesualdi, of St. Cecilia], who, having some liking of me, would have been the means to prefer me to any place of service whereunto I should have most faculty; but I, being resolved what course to take, answered that I meant not to serve any man, but to enter into the Society of Jesus, thereof to vow and to be professed."

Then Gesualdi began to question him about the Bull of Pius V. against Elizabeth. Not that any hesitation was felt at Rome about its propriety, or any doubt of the ultimate success of the policy; the Cardinal simply wished to know what had been the effect of this step. If it had failed, like the Bull of Paul III. against Henry VIII., that failure was not calculated to produce discouragement. Had not the Israelites, when they marched by God's express command against the men of Benjamin, been twice overthrown before they conquered ? Still, there was some wish to make its bearings on the Catholics as easy as possible. "Being demanded farther," Campion continues, "what opinion I had conceived of the Bull, I said, it procured much severity in England, and

the heavy hand of her majesty against the Catholics; whereunto the Cardinal replied, that he doubted not it should be mitigated in such sort as the Catholics should acknowledge her highness as their queen without danger of excommunication. This, Campion urged, could not be construed as an offence, much less as treason. But it was objected to him, that he had only asked for a mitigation of the Bull in favour of the Catholics, leaving the excommunication of the queen still in force and undetected; and his privity thereto was treason. My privity thereto," he replied, "enforceth not my consenting, nay, rather it proved my disagreement, in that I said it procured much severity: and therefore, being here published before I could detect it (for who knew not that the Queen of England was excommunicated ?), it excused my privity and exempted me from treason.”*

Campion urges that his conduct rather implied dissent from than agreement with the Bull. That this disagreement was a fact, not a mere plea, he might have proved from his History of Ireland, had the book been forthcoming. Just as the writers of the sixteenth century show that Otho of Freising disagreed with the temporal policy which had been pursued by Gregory VII., because he persisted in calling the risings against the excommunicated emperor by the name of "rebellion," so Campion might have produced the strong terms of condemnation in which he had spoken of those Irishmen who had risen against Elizabeth and Henry VIII. Shane O'Neil is a "wretched man," who "quenched the sparks of grace that appeared in him with arrogancy and contempt against his prince."+ Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, Deputy of Ireland, who, upon the receipt of false intelligence that his father had been put to death in England, had risen in arms, is represented by Campion as saying: "If all the hearts of England and Ireland that have cause thereto would join in this quarrel,-as I trust they will, -then should he (Henry) be a by-word-as I trust he shall -for his heresy, lechery, and tyranny, wherein the age to come may score him among the ancient princes of most abominable and hateful memory." This is language quite in conformity with that of the Bull of Paul III.; yet Campion's comment on it is, "With that he rendered up the sword (of state), and flung away like a bedlam, adding to his shameful oration many other slanderous and foul terms, which, for regard of the king's posterity, I have no mind to utter."‡ Can we doubt how the man who spoke in these terms of the risings in Ireland would have qualified the rebellion of the † See Note 45.

See Note 44.

See Note 46.