responsibilities. But his poems were all he deemed best in the world.
For a moment John stood face to face with, and he looked into the
eyes of, the Church. The dome of St. Peter's, a solitary pope,
cardinals, bishops, and priests. Oh! wonderful symbolization of man's
lust of eternal life!

Must he renounce all his beliefs? The wish so dear to him that the
unspeakable spectacle of life might cease for ever; must he give
thanks for existence because it gave him a small chance of gaining
heaven? Then it were well to bring others into the world.... True it
is that the Church does not advance into such sloughs of optimism,
but how different is her teaching from that of the early fathers, and
how different is such dull optimism from the severe spirit of early
Christianity.

Whither lay his duty? Must he burn the poems? Far better that they
should burn and he should save his soul from burning. A sudden vision
of hell, a realistic mediæval hell full of black devils and ovens
came upon him, and he saw himself thrust into flame. It seemed to him
certain that his soul was lost--so certain, that the source of prayer
died within him and he fell prostrate. He cursed, with curses that
seared his soul as he uttered them, Harding, that cynical atheist,
who had striven to undermine his faith, and he shrank from thought of
Fletcher, that dirty voluptuary.

He went out for long walks, hoping by exercise to throw off the gloom
and horror which were thickening in his brain. He sought vainly to
arrive at some certain opinions concerning his poems, and he weighed
every line, not now for cadence and colour, but with a view of
determining their ethical tendencies; and this poor torn soul stood