Page:Omniana.djvu/116

98 authenticity; yet adds, that there is a troubled wildness of thought and expression which may be admitted as strong internal evidence in its favour. This evidence goes to prove that the poem was written under the circumstances assigned, but by no means points to Ralegh as the author. Ralegh would not have written in that strain of piety. I believe it to be a catholic poem, and the production of one of the many good, but dangerous men who suffered in those days for a religion which it was impossible to tolerate. Is it by Robert Southwell the Jesuit? a writer of no ordinary powers; yet he was too pure a writer to have made the miserable pun upon angels: there is a levity in that, and in the conceit about wanting a head to dine with, which, if the language were older, might lead one to attribute it to Sir Thomas More. One thing, and only one, is in Ralegh's temper; the allusions to the king's attorney. It is likely that one of the last things