even the Ugly Club, which was a favourite conception,1 is far from having the minute finish of the Everlasting Club.

The difference between the humour of the two writers is nowhere more conspicuous than in the papers upon Sir Roger de Coverley. Steele's Sir Roger is quite a different person from Addison's Sir Roger. All that is amiable in the conception belongs to Steele. His first paper (Spectator,' No. 2) represents Sir Roger as a jolly country gentleman, "keeping a good house both in town and country;" a lover of mankind, with such a mirthful cast in his behaviour, that he is beloved rather than esteemed; unconfined to modes and forms, disregarding the manners of the world when he thinks them in the wrong; when he enters a house, calling the servants by their names, and talking all the way up-stairs to a visit. He had been a man of fashion in his youth, but being crossed in love by a beautiful widow, had grown careless of his person, and never dressed afterwards. Steele's subsequent papers, Nos. 6, 107, 109, 113, 118, 174, bear out this description-give examples of his common-sense, of his considerate treatment of his servants, of his gratitude to one of them for saving his life, and of his occasional singularities of behaviour. The knight is made to explain his own eccentricities as a result of his love disappointment-" Between you and me," he says, "I am often apt to imagine it has had some whimsical effect upon my brain, for I frequently find that, in my most serious discourse, I let fall some comical familiarity of speech or odd phrase, that makes the company laugh." Such is Sir Roger according to Steele-an easy, good-natured gentleman, of good sense, purposely setting at nought the conventions of fashion, singular and eccentric, but aware of his eccentricities. In Addison's hands he becomes a very different character. He is transformed into a good-natured Tory fox-hunter. He retains the good-nature and the eccentricity; he drops, except in name, the good sense, and the familiar knowledge of town life. Addison makes him a thorough rustic; autocratic, self-important, ignorant, credulous. True, he is at great pains to repeat that Sir Roger was much esteemed for his universal benevolence-" at peace within himself,

1 The Ugly Club, and the difficulties met with in finding members, form one of the best specimens of Steele's rollicking humour. In giving an account of it, he makes the following humorous confession in the person of the Spectator: "For my own part, I am a little unhappy in the mould of my face, which is not quite so long as it is broad. Whether this might not partly arise from my opening my mouth much seldomer than other people, and by consequence not so much lengthening the fibres of my visage, I am not at leisure to determine. However it be, I have been often put out of countenance by the shortness of my face, and was formerly at great pains in concealing it by wearing a periwig with a high foretop, and letting my beard grow. But now I have thoroughly get over the delicacy, and could be contented were it much shorter, provided it might qualify me for a member of the Merry Club, which the following letter gives me an account of."

and esteemed by all about him." But this affectation of respect for the knight is a sly artifice to bring him into ridiculous situations. No. 106, the first of Addison's papers, is the most amiable part of the picture, and seems designed to let Steele's conception down softly. Yet even this paper shows Sir Roger in a ridiculous light, inconsistent with the following paper, No. 107, by Steele. Both knight and servants are pleasantly caricatured in No. 106"You would take his valet de chambre for his brother, his butler is grey-headed, his groom is one of the gravest men that I have ever seen, and his coachman has the looks of a privy councillor." His chaplain was chosen for his "good aspect, clear voice, and sociable temper: ""at his first settling with me," says Sir Roger, "I made him a present of all the good sermons which have been printed in English, and only begged of him that every Sunday he would pronounce one of them in the pulpit." Among these venerable domestics the good knight is treated like an infant. "When he is pleasant upon any of them, all his family are in good humour, and none so much as the person whom he diverts himself with: on the contrary, if he coughs or betrays any infirmity of old age, it is easy for a stander-by to observe a secret concern in the looks of all his servants." After this opening sketch of Sir Roger's good-nature, we are presented with some exquisitely-wrought pictures of his ridiculous doings. He exorcises the shut-up rooms of his house, by making the chaplain sleep in them. In church "he suffers nobody to sleep besides himself; for if by chance he has been surprised into a short nap at sermon, upon recovering out of it he stands up and looks about him, and if he sees anybody else nodding, either wakes them himself, or sends his servant to them;" he lengthens out a verse half a minute after the rest of the congregation, says Amen three or four times, and calls out to John Matthews to mind what he is about, and not disturb the congregation. He had been a great fox-hunter in his youth. He would have given over Moll White, the witch, to the County Assizes, had he not been dissuaded by the chaplain. Perhaps the most exquisitely ludicrous of his adventures are his journey to the Assizes, and his speech there (No. 122); his visit to Westminster Abbey (329); his observations on "The Distressed Mother," in the playhouse: in all these situations he is merely a good-natured, credulous, unsophisticated butt for the delicate ridicule of his companion the Spectator.

While there is such a difference between the conceptions of the two writers, there is a still greater difference in the execution. In

1 Esteemed.-Steele had said that Sir Roger was rather beloved than esteemed. But this was estimating the knight by the standard of his town friends. Addison places him entirely in the country; and represents him as an object of great admiration and respect to the simple country-people, thereby getting a double gratification for his contempt of the country or Tory party.

point of literary skill, any one of Addison's papers is worth all Steele's put together. Steele is sketchy and rude, and mars the portraiture with patches of moralising. Addison fills in the minute touches with his most exquisite skill.1

OTHER WRITERS.

THEOLOGY.

Towards the end of the seventeenth century the Church of England began to rest from her labours against Papacy, and to turn her forces against a new enemy. A new topic engaged all clergymen of a literary and controversial disposition, and the general tone of their sermons underwent a corresponding change. For such changes one cannot assign a definite year; it takes time to give a new direction to the energies of a large body of different men. We must be content to say that a religious revolution took place during the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth. If we dip into the writings of Churchmen twenty years before the end of the century, we find their polemic tracts burning with zeal against Papacy, and their sermons administering the consolations and warnings of Christianity, in full assurance of its divine origin. Twenty years after the end of the century we breathe a different atmosphere. The Church was then on the alert against a new antagonist-the all-absorbing topic was the controversy with the Deists. Tracts poured from the press; young aspirants to the bench were eager to break a lance with Toland or with Collins. Sermons were largely influenced by the prevailing controversy. Devotional ardour was replaced by polemical ardour, by a desire to "prove the reasonableness" of Christianity. ever was the preacher's text, his anxiety was to "prove" that it was eminently suited to the condition of men, eminently calculated to make them happy. Sublimity and pathos were banished from the pulpit, and argument reigned in their stead. The great majority of the sermons preached in the eighteenth century were "tedious moral essays:" their favourite exhortations were "to abstain from

What

1 It is an example of the injustice done to Steele by the admirers of Addison, and also of the want of discrimination in their homage, that they give Addison credit for the amiability of the character as well as for the skill of the portraiture. There can be no doubt that, in this as in other cases, Addison profited greatly by his alliance with Steele; the original suggestiveness of discursive Dick gave many a hint for the elaborating skill of his friend. The laborious Dr Drake thinks it a subject for regret that Steele's first draughts do not combine better with Addison's full and accurate picture; condescends to say that Nos. 107 and 109 "carry on the costume and design of Addison with undeviating felicity;" and thinks it "an ingenious conjecture of Dr Aikin, that Addison intended, through the medium of Sir Roger's weakness, to convey an indirect satire on the confined notions and political prejudices of the country gentle

man!"

vice, to cultivate virtue, to fill our station in life with propriety, to bear the ills of life with resignation, and to use its pleasures moderately."

Not a few of the theologians of this period might be grouped together as taking part in the trial of the Bible by common reason. Towards the end of the seventeenth century rationalism was predominant among learned students of religion, whether in the Church or out of it. By nearly all theologians it seemed taken for granted that the Bible was not to be received without question as the authoritative word of God, but was to be tried by its agreement with reason. Some accepted these evidences, some did not; orthodoxy was sharply assailed by heterodoxy, and issued numerous sharp replies. The controversy did nothing appreciable for the advancement of English style. None of the combatants could be called great masters of language.1

The three most distinguished Churchmen of this generation, Atterbury, Hoadley, and Clarke, did not win their reputation in the war against the Deists. Atterbury is known chiefly as a politician; Hoadley by his views regarding Church and State; Clarke as a scholar, and a writer on Natural Theology and Ethics. In literary power they are much inferior to the three great divines of the preceding age, Barrow, Tillotson, and South.

Francis Atterbury (1662-1732), Bishop of Rochester, was an uncompromising champion of the High Church and Tory party. The son of a rector in Buckinghamshire, he was sent to Westminster School and to Christ Church. As a scholar, he was, according to Macaulay, more brilliant than profound. He took part in the celebrated "Battle of the Books." He was tutor to Charles Boyle, the editor of 'Phalaris,' and is generally understood to have written the reply to Bentley's first short criticism of the Letters (1694). He distinguished himself greatly in 1700 by supporting the High Church view of the powers of the Lower House of Convocation. He is supposed to have borne a chief part in framing the speech pronounced by Sacheverell at the bar of the House of Lords. When the Tories rose into power, he was made Dean of Christ Church, and afterwards Bishop of Rochester. After the accession of George, he was suspected of intriguing with the Pretender, and formally banished in 1723. He died in France. He was a bold, turbulent man, having an ambition that would not rest short of the highest power; eloquent, a dazzling master of controversial fence; so audacious in his statements and clever in his personalities, that on two occasions he vanquished his superiors in learning, and made the worse appear the better reason. "Such arguments

1 The best succinct account of the religious thought of this generation and the following is contained in Mr Mark Pattison's "Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688-1750," one of the Essays and Reviews.'

as he had he placed in the clearest light. Where he had no arguments, he resorted to personalities, sometimes serious, generally ludicrous, always clever and cutting. But whether he was grave or merry, whether he reasoned or sneered, his style was always pure, polished, and easy." His diction is not quite so pure as Swift's or Addison's; and it is easy in the sense of fluent and racy, not in the sense of languid.

Benjamin Hoadley or Hoadly (1676-1761), successively Bishop of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury, and Winchester, wrote against the pretensions of High Churchmen and Tories. On more than one occasion he crossed swords with Atterbury. His most famous work was a sermon preached before George I. soon after his elevation to the bench, on the 'Nature of the Kingdom of Christ.' The text-"My kingdom is not of this world”. -was a good clue to the contents. He strongly advocated the subordination of the Church to the State. The sermon made a great sensation. It drew upon the author a formal censure from the Lower House of Convocation, whose independent privileges had been maintained by Atterbury; and it originated what is known as the Bangorian controversy, an engagement of some forty or fifty pamphlets. His collected works occupy three volumes, published by his son in 1773. His style is in general vigorous and caustic; he seems careless of elegance, and his dry sarcasms have lost their interest.

The other eminent divine of the period is Dr Samuel Clarke (1675-1729), the pupil and friend of Newton. As a scholar, he translated Rohault's Physics' into English, Newton's 'Optics' into Latin, edited Cæsar's Commentaries,' and published the first twelve books of the 'Iliad' with a Latin version. As a theologian, he is known chiefly by an illusory attempt to give a mathematical demonstration of the existence of God, which he undertook upon the suggestion of Sir Isaac Newton. In the Boyle Lectures (1704-5) he promulgated an ethical system whose chief proposition is that goodness and virtue consist in the observance of certain "eternal fitnesses." In 1715 he joined Newton in a famous controversy with Leibnitz, who had represented the Newtonian philosophy as both false and subversive of religion. His views on the Trinity and on some other points hindered his advancement in the Church. As regards style, Clarke's sermons may almost be said to have been the models of the Scotch "moderate" school of preachers heavy, prolix, argumentative, full of practical good sense, and possessing none of the ardour familiar to us under the name "Evangelical."

The leading "Deists" (so-called) were Toland, Collins, Woolston, and Tindal. With these might be reckoned Shaftesbury: only he, from his rank (as Mr Pattison thinks), was refuted