Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/120

 104 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES because all is sordid and vile about it, as lights are more discerned in a thick darkness than a faint shadow." About this time Jonson, who had deeply studied the grounds of the controversy between the Reformed and Roman Churches, and convinced him- self of the delusions of Popery, made a solemn recantation of his errors, and was re-admitted into the bosom of the Church, which he had abandoned twelve years before. Drummond reports : " After he was reconciled with the Church, and left of to be a recusant, at his first communion, in token of true reconciliation, he drank out all the full cup of wyne," whereon Gifford remarks that his feelings were always strong, and the energy of his character was impressed upon every act of his life. Yet, without any pretence or authority, Gifford goes on to assert that this story is foisted into the Conversations by Drummond ! and then, with another inconsistency, he observes that more wine was drunk at the altar in the poet's day than ours, as if to make an act common which Drummond records because peculiar. But whenever Church and State are in question — the Church and State of most narrow and insular England — Gifford's logical acuteness and clear judgment desert him ; he is possessed by the demon of the Quarterly — not the old Lady of our times, with wig and false teeth and well-pared nails, and voice that quavers in its scolding, but the young Fury of the young century, brandishing fiery torches, agitating her serpent locks.