"A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL" describes the rendering of the last honours to
one whose life has consumed itself in the pursuit of knowledge. The
knowledge pursued has been pedantic and minute, but for him it
represented a mighty truth; and he has refused to live, in the world's
sense, till he had mastered that truth, co-extensive, as he believed it,
with life everlasting. Like Sordello, though in a different way, he
would KNOW before he allowed himself to BE. He would realize the Whole;
he would not discount it. His disciples are bearing him to a
mountain-top, that the loftiness of his endeavour may be symbolized by
his last resting-place. He is to lie

"where meteors shoot, clouds form,
Lightnings are loosened." (vol. v. p. 159.)

where the new morning for which he waited will figuratively first break
upon him.


"JOHANNES AGRICOLA IN MEDITATION" is a glowing and fantastic description
of the privileges of the "elect," cast in the form of a monologue, and
illustrated in the person of the speaker. Johannes Agricola was a German
reformer of the sixteenth century, and alleged founder of the sect of
the Antinomians: a class of Christians who extended the Low Church
doctrine of the insufficiency of good works, and declared the children
of God to be exempt from the necessity of performing them; absolved from
doing right, because unable to do wrong; because no sin would be
accounted to them as such. Some authorities contend that he personally
rejected only the Mosaic, not the moral law; but Mr. Browning has