820 OUR HYMNS r
One of the best is his sole contribution to the " New Congre gational Hymn Book :"
" Spirit Divine, attend our prayers." No. 441.
Another that is deservedly commended is the hymn beginning- " There is an honr when I must part."
It is not found in the " New Congregational Hymn Book." This hymn was read to Dr. Eecd, at his own request, when he was approaching his end. After hearing it, he said, " That hymn I wrote at Geneva : it has brought eomfort ta many, and now it brings comfort to me/
��KIRKE WHITE.
17851806.
THIS poet of promise, who has been named " The Crichton of Nottingham," averts the arrows of criticism by the melancholy brevity of his career. We think more of what he would have accomplished than of the works he had actually produced. Before the critic with searching eye has had time to find spots in the sun, he weeps because that sun has set to rise no more. But there is compensation. That departure can scarcely be called untimely which gained for Kirke White an apotheosis from the fathers of song, giving him Southey for his enthusiastic biogra pher, and Byroa for his brilliant eulogist.
Kirke White s father was a butcher at Nottingham, and at first the son is said to have followed his father s business. Southey says that the youth was, at the age of fourteen, placed in a stocking loom, with the view at some future period of getting a situation in a hosier s warehouse. But in his fifteenth year the young poet was removed from his uncongenial toil to enter an attorney s office, Messrs. Coldham and Enfield s, at Nottingham, where, after two years service as the price of his articles, he was
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