he girds on his sword for a sarcastic onslaught, he goes to work with all his heart. In the controversy with Stillingfleet, his intense feeling sometimes betrays him into bare unadorned abuse; he calls his adversary, by comparison with "the meekness, devotion, and sincerity" of the pious lady's declaration, "disingenuous, foul-mouthed, and shuffling." But this is a passage of exceptional heat; most of the sarcasm is clothed in fresh and splendid language, and takes the form of rough but brilliant wit, throwing his tamer rival into the shade: indeed, had his cause not been so hopelessly unpopular, the attack would have been overwhelming.

OTHER WRITERS

THEOLOGY.

He

The most eminent divine in the early part of this period was Isaac Barrow (1630-1677), a man of extremely fertile and versatile talents. He was the son of a linen-draper in London. In 1649 he was elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and for some time thereafter studied medicine. In 1652 he was a candidate for the Greek Professorship, but was disappointed. He then spent some years in travelling along the shores of the Mediterranean. In 1660 he again tried for the same post, and was successful. had been but two years Professor of Greek when he discovered his preference for mathematics by accepting the Professorship of Geometry in Gresham College. In 1663 he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in Cambridge. In 1669, having not yet found his life-work, he vacated his professorship in favour of his pupil Isaac Newton, and thereafter devoted himself exclusively to divinity. In 1670 he was made D.D. by royal mandate, receiving at the time a high compliment from the lips of the King. In 1672 he was nominated to the Mastership of Trinity. He published several mathematical works in Latin. His English writings are all theological, consisting of seventyseven Sermons; Expositions of the Apostles' Creed, The Lord's Prayer, The Decalogue, &c.; a Treatise on the Pope's Supremacy;' and a 'Discourse concerning the Unity of the Church.' "He was in person of the lesser size, and lean; of extraordinary strength, of a fair and calm complexion, a thin skin, very sensible of the cold; his eyes grey, clear, and somewhat short-sighted; his hair of a light auburn, very fine and curling.' He was abstracted in his manner, and of slovenly habits. Anecdotes are told of his personal courage and presence of mind. He was a great smoker, and an immoderate eater of fruit. He died of fever, to which he was subject. The most striking things in his sermons are the extraordinary copiousness and vigour of the language, and the ex

haustiveness and subtlety of the thought. He is a perfect mine of varied and vigorous expression. His sentences are thrown up with a rough careless vigour; an extreme antithesis to the polished flow of language and ideas in Addison. In his love of scrupulous definitions and qualifications we discover the mathematician; he divides and subdivides with Baconian minuteness, and in drawing parallels adjusts the compared particulars with acute exactness.

The simple and felicitous diction of John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury (1630-1694), was praised by Dryden and by Addison, and long held up as a model.1 Born in Yorkshire, of Puritan parents, he was educated at Cambridge, submitted to the Act of Uniformity in 1662, and entered the Church. Going to London in 1663, his preaching soon drew attention, and he was rapidly promoted. At the Revolution he was made Dean of St Paul's, and in 1691 was raised to the supreme height of ecclesiastical dignity. He was a man of great moderation and good sense, without excitability or enthusiasm, "loving neither the ceremony nor the trouble of a great place." Though he received preferment in the reign of Charles, he was not an extravagant royalist : his wife was the niece of Oliver Cromwell, and daughter-in-law of Bishop Wilkins. Ready to serve his friends, he was literary executor to Wilkins and to Barrow, gave an opinion on Burnet's History of the Reformation' before it was published, and edited the 'Discourses' of Dr Hezekiah Burton. A good, easy, clear-headed man, with not a little of the character of Paley. The merits of his style are simplicity, and a happy fluency in the choice and combination of words. He probably had no small influence in forming the style of Addison. The defects are considerable. his easy way he lingers upon an idea, and gives two or three expressions where one would serve the purpose; passing on, he rambles back again, and presents the idea in several other different aspects. The result is an enfeebling tautology and want of method. Taken individually, the expressions are admirably easy and felicitous; but there are too many of them, and they are ill arranged.

In

Edward Stillingfleet (1635-1699), made Bishop of Worcester in 1689, was much before the public as a controversialist during this period. He fought against Atheists, Unitarians, Papists, and Dissenters, and rendered distinguished service to his cause. His bestknown engagements were with Dryden and Locke. Against Dryden, though far inferior in style, he had the best of the argument;

1 Dryden is said to have "owned with pleasure that if he had any talent for English prose it was owing to his having often read the writings of Archbishop Tillotson.' This is but a random compliment; Dryden showed his talent for English prose before Tillotson had published a line, and long before he became famous.

Y

but in the encounter with Locke he sustained a defeat so signal and humiliating that it was said to have hastened his death. He wrote with great vigour, but his expressions are neither original nor felicitous. To a modern reader his manner seems too arrogant and personal to be persuasive. Although Clarendon professes himself "exceedingly delighted with the softness, gentleness, and civility of his language," this word-praise is not borne out by facts; there is no evidence that he had Tillotson's power of bringing over opponents.

William Sherlock (1641-1707), who succeeded Tillotson as Dean of St Paul's, was another champion of the Church against dissent and infidelity, and wrote a 'Vindication of the Trinity' in 1691; but he is now known only by his devotional works. His 'Discourse concerning Death' is a standing article in second-hand book-stalls. This continued popularity is due more to the matter than to the manner. His son Thomas was more distinguished than himself.

Sherlock's 'Vindication' was attacked with great wit and fury by a man far his superior in literary genius, Robert South (16331716). South, a brilliant Oxonian scholar, the son of a London merchant, was an ultra-royalist, appointed at the Restoration Public Orator of his University, and chaplain to the Earl of Clarendon. He accompanied Lawrence Hyde to Poland in 1676. On his return he was presented to the rectory of Islip, and, having some private fortune, steadily declined further preferment. He has been called the last of the great English divines of the century. A quick and powerful intellect, solid erudition, a superlative command of homely racy English, and wit of unsurpassed brilliancy, make a combination that, in a literary point of view, places the possessor at least on a level with Taylor and Barrow. Doubtless his fame would have been equal to his powers had he not mistaken his vocation. He shows little religious earnestness, and without that, devotional, and even controversial, religious works can hardly pretend to the first rank. He was an earnest Churchman, but not an earnest Christian. Against sectaries his abuse was hearty and hot-"villanous arts," 39.66 venomous gibberish,' ""treacherous cant," "a pack of designing hypocrites," are samples of his phrases. Satirical wit is his distinguishing quality. Even his sermons are brilliantly lighted up with flashes of ingenious mockery; he was always glad to have a victim.

Thomas Sprat, D.D. (1636-1713), Fellow of Wadham, Bishop of Rochester, friend and biographer of Cowley. Besides his 'Life of Cowley,' he wrote a 'History of the Royal Society,' of which he was a member, as well as sermons and political tracts. He is praised by Macaulay as a great master of our language, and possessed at once of the eloquence of the orator, of the controversialist,

and of the historian." He also receives a high tribute from Johnson. There is indeed a certain flow and rotund finish about his diction. Some of his sentences would pass for Johnson's. Had the matter been more substantial, he might have taken a higher place in our literature; but he was a good genial fellow, rather fond of the bottle, and his lubricated eloquence perished with him.

Thomas Burnet (1635-1715), Master of the Charter-house, is known in literature by his 'Sacred Theory of the Earth' (pub. in Latin 1680, in English 1691). It is the outcome of a poetic mind excited by the gathering interest in physical science. The theory is merely a framework for extravagant sublimities of description. He represents the antediluvian globe as disposed in regular concentric belts, the heavy solid parts in the centre, then the liquid, then on the top of the liquid a floating crust of solidified oily matter, even and uniform all over," without rocks or mountains, wrinkle, scar, or fracture." On this smooth surface, fresh, fruitful, overhung by a calm and serene atmosphere, men lived till the Flood; that calamity was caused by the generation of steam in the subterraneous water and the rupture of the crust, when "the whole fabric broke," and tumbled in fragments into the abyss. The accounts of the Flood and of the final conflagration of the existing earth are given in language worthy of such bold and spacious conceptions.

Of little importance in literature, but of considerable importance in the history of opinion, are the two chief literary defenders of the Quaker faith, William Penn (1644-1718), and Robert Barclay (1648-1690), both men of good position by birth. Penn, the son of an admiral, imbibed the proscribed views at Oxford, and was expelled the University. A course of travel on the Continent made him a fine gentleman again; the Plague reconverted him; a trip to Ireland restored him to fashionable circles; a sermon from an old master converted him a third time. This last conversion was in 1668 from that date he remained Quaker for life. In 1669 he was imprisoned for eight months. For some years thereafter his life was prosperous. He was reconciled to his father, who left him a good estate, and some claims on the Government, in liquidation of which he received a grant of Pennsylvania in America. In the later years of Charles and under James he was a great favourite at Court: his conduct there is assailed by Macaulay and warmly defended by Paget and others. The remaining thirty years of his life were spent in private, not a little imbittered by personal griefs and losses.-Barclay was a Scotsman, of the family of Barclay of Ury. He several times suffered imprisonment. His works are, 'Truth Cleared of Calumnies,' 1670; and 'An Apology for the People called in scorn Quakers.' Neither Penn nor Barclay has

any special grace or vigour of style. Penn is lively and pointed, Barclay grave and argumentative.

Thomas Ellwood (1639-1713), another of the Quakers, a meek, industrious man, of a feeble constitution, is interesting, not from his style, but from his intercourse with Milton. He was one of the blind poet's readers. He wrote an autobiography, and controversial and devotional treatises.

PHILOSOPHY.

John Locke (1632-1704). The famous author of the 'Essay on the Human Understanding' (pub. 1690) was the son of a small proprietor in the west of England. He took the degree of B.A. at Oxford in 1655, and was elected a student of Christ Church. His chief studies were medicine and physical science, on which subjects he became an authority. His approbation of Sydenham's theory of acute diseases was considered worth boasting of by this "father of English medicine"; and he signified a desire to succeed, in the event of a vacancy, to the Physic Professorship at Gresham College. His chief patron was the Earl of Shaftesbury. He divided his time between Oxford and London, living in the most cultivated society. He spent four years in France. When Shaftesbury's fortunes declined, Locke also fell into difficulties with the Government, and had to take refuge in Holland. While there he wrote in Latin his famous 'Letter on Toleration.' After the Revolution, having recommended himself by his liberal principles, he was rewarded with the Commissionership of Stamps; and also held for five years a more lucrative office as one of the Commissioners of Trade. His Two Treatises on Government,' opposing the divine right of kings, and advancing the ideas of a social compact and of the natural rights of man, appeared in 1690. In the same year were published the Essay, and the Treatise on Education.' The 'Conduct of the Understanding' was not published till after his death. Locke's health was never robust; an elder brother died young of consumption, and he himself, in spite of the utmost care, died of a decline. He was an agreeable, well-bred man, a sprightly talker, and fond of company chiefly for the pleasures of talking. At college he associated with the lively and agreeable in preference to the scholarly. He was frugal, and regular in his habits. sagacity and powers of expression were very great. All the works above mentioned drew immediate attention, and are still read by everybody professing an acquaintance with their topics. He is one of the most simple of philosophical writers. Authorities complain that this popular simplicity is bought at the expense of exactness; that his use of terms is vacillating; and that his notious are ill defined.

His