his home; now its doors were closed to him for ever. Worse than all, he saw his Church impotent, subservient, shaken like a very reed before these winds of new doctrine. The two following years of his life are veiled. He is said to have resided for a while at Oxford University; later he must have been in London, where the first edition of his poems, Steps to the Temple, with other Delights to the Muses, was published in 1646. But one event is quite certain—morning star of this bitter night!—before leaving England, Richard Crashaw had been received into his soul's true home. Thenceforth he was a Catholic.
This step was, of course, disastrous to his prospects in England. Even the fondly appreciative London editor speaks of him as "now dead to us"; and some words of Prynne's flung out regarding Crashaw's "sinful and notorious apostasy and revolt" show what a passing over to "Popery" meant to the Puritans. So the young convert tried his fortunes for a while in Paris; and there in 1646 Abraham Cowley discovered him—in poverty, it seems, if not actually in want. Very touching is this reunion of the former college mates, both exiles now from their disowning fatherland; and from this time date Crashaw's modest little lines "On Two Green Apricocks sent to Mr. Cowley." Very characteristic, too, is our poet's answer to his friend's verses on "Hope." "Dear Hope," he cried with wistful optimism:
Dear Hope, by thee
We are not where we are nor what we be,
But where and what we would be!
Moreover Cowley (being officially connected with the suite of the exiled English Queen, then also in Paris) was able to offer help to his brother poet.
