Herbert, the Anglican divine. He was affected, at times, not only by the sweetness of sentiment of Herbert's poetry, but by the ingenuity in finding everywhere symbols of religious truth. The method becomes characteristic; as external nature is a divine symbolism, the old religious art, and all great poetry and philosophy, Shakespeare and Dante and Homer and the Book of Genesis, are a kind of mystic adumbration of esoteric truths. The Tempest is an allegory; the labyrinths of Crete and the legend of the Sirens contain profound wisdom. Though he did not read German, he was impressed by the second part of Faust, just because it is intolerably allegorical, and has a bearing upon the theory of usury. Quaintly enough, he complains that the greatest men have found it necessary to wrap up their truths in enigmas soluble only by the wise; and declares that even the parables in the New Testament are 'necessarily misleading' to the profane. When a man interprets books or, as sometimes happens, history by his fancy instead of his understanding, he becomes simply absurd to plain common-sense, unless one gives him credit for not being quite in earnest. But if considered merely as products of graceful fancy, investing tender feeling or sharp
