ric; and he refused even the Mastership of his College. His favourite meditations were mystical speculations about the soul, first evolved in his poem 'Psychozoia,' or "the first part of the song of the Soul, containing a Christiano-Platonical display of life." He was an admirer of Descartes. He and a few congenial spirits formed in the reign of Charles II. a school known as the Platonising or Latitudinarian Divines.

Bishop Wilkins (1614-1672) is known as the author of an "Essay towards a real Character, and Philosophical Language." He was one of our earliest physical speculators: he contended that the moon was inhabited (Discovery of a New World,' 1638); and in a work published in 1640, one of the earliest systematic defences of the Copernican system, he maintained that the earth is probably one of the planets. During the Civil War and the Protectorate, he sided with the Parliament, and in 1656 married a widowed sister of Oliver Cromwell. He was appointed Warden of Wadham, Oxford, and afterwards Master of Trinity, Cambridge. From this preferment he was degraded at the Restoration, but he afterwards regained the royal favour, and was elevated to the bench. is illustrious as one of the founders of the Royal Society: the scientific enthusiasts afterwards incorporated with this institution held their first meetings in the lodgings of Dr Wilkins. In the Church he was an eminent member of the Latitudinarian school. But his name is most widely known in connection with his "discourse concerning the possibility of a passage to the moon."

He

Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-1665) deserves a word among the halfmystic, half-scientific men of his time. He was a strange compound of dashing soldier, accomplished courtier, successful lover, and occult philosopher. There are passages in his treatise Of Bodies and Man's Soul'-hardly surpassed in Sir Thomas Browne. He was one of the original Council of the Royal Society.

Izaak Walton (1593-1683), already mentioned as the biographer of Hooker, was another quiet and peaceable man in an age of excitement. He wrote also the lives of Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, George Herbert, and Bishop Sanderson: the respective dates of publication being, "Donne," 1640; "Wotton," 1651; "Hooker," 1662; "Herbert," 1670; "Sanderson," 1678. But the work usually coupled with his name is 'The Complete Angler' (1653), still read by the followers of "the gentle craft" for its information, and interesting to the general reader as disclosing the character of the writer-quiet, humorous, and enamoured of fresh pastoral scenery. Walton was a retired London linen-draper; he had married into a clerical family, and spent the greater part of his retirement at the houses of country clergymen.

John Milton (1608-1674) wrote a good many works in prose, although, as he said, "in this manner of writing, knowing myself

inferior to myself, led by the genial power of nature to another task, I have the use, as I may account it, but of my left hand." His first appearance was on the Puritan side, in a treatise entitled 'Of Reformation,' 1641. In the same year he put forth a treatise 'Of Prelatical Episcopacy,' as his contribution in the warfare raised by Joseph Hall's Humble Remonstrance' in favour of Episcopacy. This work he had to back up with two tracts: "Animadversions on a 'Defence' of the Remonstrance;" and "An Apology for Smectymnuus," in reply to a criticism of the Animadversions. In 1642 he came forward with a larger work-‘The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy.' This was for the time his last word on the Church government controversy. In 1644 he wrote his 'Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing,' the first formal plea for the freedom of the press. In 1645 he wrote his famous works advocating greater freedom of Divorce Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,' Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce,' Tetrachordon,' and Colasterion.' After the exertion of writing these works

I imagined," he says, "that I was about to enjoy an interval of uninterrupted ease, and turned my thoughts to a continued history of my country, from the earliest times to the present period. I had already finished four books; when after the subversion of the monarchy, and the establishment of a republic, I was surprised by an invitation from the Council of State, who desired my services in the office for foreign affairs. A book appeared soon after, which was ascribed to the King, and contained the most invidious charges against the Parliament. I was ordered to answer it, and opposed the Eikonoclastes' to the Eikon.'

This was in the end of 1649. Before this, in the beginning of the year, immediately after the King's execution, he published his Tenure of Kings and Magistrates.' Thereafter he engaged in a Latin controversy with Salmasius, a rhetorical Leyden Professor, said to have been hired to defend the memory of the King, and asperse his executioners; the titles of Milton's works were, 'A Defence of the People of England' (1651), and ‘A Second Defence' (1654). An earnest champion up to the last moments of the dissolving Commonwealth, he wrote in 1659-'A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes,' 'Considerations towards the likeliest Means to remove Hirelings out of the Church,' and 'A Letter to a Friend concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth.' Next year he addressed a letter to Monk-'The present means and brief declaration of a free Commonwealth, easy to be put in practice, and without delay.' When the fatal moment came nearer, he issued a last appeal-The ready and easy way to establish a free Commonwealth, and the excellence thereof compared with the inconvenience and dangers of readmitting kingship in this nation. The author J. M.' Immediately after the Restoration he was busy

with his 'Paradise Lost.' His remaining works in prose are-a History of Britain, down to the Norman Conquest' (1670); a treatise Of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and what best Means may be used against the growth of Popery;' and a 'Brief History of Muscovia, and of other less known Countries lying eastward of Russia, as far as Cathay.' He wrote also in Latin a Treatise on Logic;' published a collection of Latin Familiar Letters; spent several years on an extensive Latin Dictionary; and left at his death a system of Christian Doctrine, the discovery of which, in 1823, and its publication by royal order, gave an opportunity for Macaulay's celebrated Essay.

Concerning Milton's style the most diverse opinions have been pronounced. Everything depends upon the point of view. Rich and powerful it is undeniably, coming from such a master of words, and yields in the highest degree the pleasure of luxurious expression. But the student need hardly be warned that Milton's prose is to be enjoyed without being imitated: for modern purposes the language and idiom are too stiffly Latinised, and the imagery too fantastic. Further, for a work of controversy the style is too ornate, too unmethodical, and too coarsely vituperative to have much convincing or converting power. In Milton still more than in Taylor the application is lost in the gorgeous splendour of words and imagery, and all but decided adherents are repelled by the unmeasured discharge of abuse and ridicule.

The author of 'Eikon Basilike; or the Portraiture of his Most Sacred Majesty in his Solitude and Sufferings,' was Bishop Gauden (1605-1662).1 Purporting to be written by Charles himself, and published a few days after his execution, this work had a prodigious effect, fifty editions being sold within the year. There is nothing in the style deserving notice; it professes to be a simple record of the King's meditations.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), "the philosopher of Malmesbury," is notorious for his views of human nature, and of the relations between the governing power and the subject. His long life covers three generations. The works that have immortalised his name were written between 1640 and 1660: the dates of publication being- De Cive,' privately circulated in 1642, published with notes in 1647, and translated into English in 1650; Treatise on Human Nature,' 1650; 'De Corpore Politico,' a concise summary in English of his main political views, 1650; 'Leviathan, or the Matter, Power, and Form of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil,' 1651; De Corpore,' the fundamental work of his philosophical system, 1655, done into English 1656.

Malmesbury was the place of his birth. It is said that his

1 The authorship of the Eikon Basilike' was the great literary puzzle of the seventeenth century, as 'Junius' was of the eighteenth.

mother, overpowered by the national excitement at the coming of the Armada, brought him forth prematurely. He mentions this himself to account for a certain constitutional timidity that never left him. He was a precocious child. He graduated at Oxford in 1608; and being almost immediately appointed half tutor, half companion to the son of the first Earl of Devonshire, he spent the next twenty years of his life in ease, travelling on the Continent, and at home forming the acquaintance of the most eminent men of the time, Bacon, Lord Herbert, Ben Jonson, and others. His pupil and patron died in 1628, and in that year he made his first publication, a translation of Thucydides, undertaken to show the evils of popular rule. From 1631 to 1637 he was tutor to the third Earl of Devonshire, a boy; and travelling in that capacity, made the acquaintance of Galileo, Mersenne, and other eminent men, in whose company he had his thoughts turned towards physical science. For eleven years, from 1640 to 1651, he sought shelter in Paris from the apprehended hostility of the Long Parliament, having by this time become known as a political thinker, and was active, as we have said, in the composition of his leading works. In 1651, fearing persecution at Paris in consequence of his obnoxious opinions, he ventured back to England, and lived unmolested with the Devonshire family through the remainder of the Commonwealth, and the first nineteen years of the restored monarchy. Though free from material discomfort, his old age was not a little troubled. He was assailed by swarms of hostile critics for his obnoxious views of human nature and politics, and his works were formally censured by Parliament in 1666. To add to this vexation, he had provoked a quarrel with mathematicians, Dr Wallis and others, maintaining that he had discovered the quadrature of the circle, and defying the whole race of geometers and natural philosophers with acrimonious contempt. In extreme old age he "wrote in Latin metre a history of the Romish Church and an autobiography; and in his eighty-sixth year, amid other occupations, translated the Odyssey' and 'Iliad' into vigorous, if not elegant, English verse. After his death was published his last work, entitled 'Behemoth; or a History of the Civil Wars from 1640 to 1660.'

Sir

The merits ascribed to his style are brevity, simplicity, and precision. These merits are sometimes extravagantly overrated. James Mackintosh says:

"A permanent foundation of his fame remains in his admirable style, which seems to be the very perfection of didactic language. Short, clear, precise, pithy, his language never has more than one meaning, which it never requires a second thought to take. By the help of his exact method, it takes so firm a hold on the mind that it will not allow attention to slacken."

This is mere reckless hyperbole. The words put in italics describe

an ideal that every expositor should try to attain, but which no expositor can hope to reach. Undoubtedly Hobbes took great pains to be simple and precise. He makes an effort to express himself in familiar words, explains his general positions by examples, and his order of exposition is such as can be easily followed. Having a deep sense of the evils of ambiguous language, he is careful to define his terms. Further, he has great powers of terse and vigorous statement, his figures are studied and apt, and his didactic strain is enlivened by ingenious and occasionally sarcastic point. Yet he is far from being a perfect expositor, as he is by no means always a consistent thinker. When he enters upon details, he is often perplexed, does not keep his main subject prominent, and introduces statements out of their proper order. There are passages in his works that Sir James could not have taken up at first sight without a superhuman quickness of apprehension. The truth is, that Hobbes owes his reputation for simplicity and clearness in a very large measure to the simplicity of his leading ideas. The plain language and exact method would not have made the style so famous had not the matter been simple to the degree of slurring over difficulties. Both upon mind and upon politics he superinduces simple and plausible theories, assembles the facts that support them, and says nothing about the facts that they do not explain. That there is an external world and a mental experience; that thought consists merely in a continuance of movements communicated to the organs of sense by the external world; that man's motives are originally selfish; that the aboriginal men lived in war and anarchy; that government arose when they came to an understanding, and entered into a contract to observe certain rules; that these rules constitute right, and must at all risks be obeyed,-such doctrines are simple, immediately and clearly intelligible, but their simplicity is gained by glossing over the complicacy of the actual problems. Not that Hobbes had any conscious desire to skip over difficulties. The inaccurate simplicity of his doctrines is to be attributed to his strong feeling of the vagueness of previous speculations, his endeavour to attain greater certainty by applying the method of mathematics, and his failure to verify his results by an appeal to actual life.

Along with Hobbes may be mentioned, as a political speculator, James Harrington (1611-1677), author of Oceana' (published 1656), an ideal republic. In his review of the literature of the period, Hume has the following:

"Harrington's Oceana' was well adapted to that age, when the plans of imaginary republics were the daily subjects of debate and conversation; and even in our time it is justly admired as a work of genius and invention. The style of this author wants ease and fluency, but the good matter which his work contains makes compensation."