Sanders, being an enemy of the Church, is "more truly Slanders." Fuller never misses an opportunity of punning. Sometimes the puns are very elaborate, as in the following. Take first the seventh item in the character of the good widow :

If she speaks little good of him" (her dead husband) “she speaks but little of him. So handsomely folding up her discourse, that his virtues are shown outwards, and his viccs wrapt up in silence; as counting it barbarism to throw dirt on his memory who hath moulds cast on his body."

Take next an item in the character of the good master :

“The wages he contracts for he duly and truly pays to his servants. The same word in the Greek, iós, signifies 'rust and 'poison'; and some strong poison is made of the rust of metals; but none more venomous than the rust of money in the rich man's purse unjustly detained from the labourer, which will poison and infect his whole estate."

He is fond of constructing opportunities for droll rejoinders. In the introductory chapters to his 'Worthies,' already mentioned, he imagines and deals as follows with

Exception 9.- Haste makes waste.' You have huddled your book too soon to the press, for a subject of such a nature.

&c.

-Nonumque prematur in annum.

"Eight years digest what you have rudely hinted,
Ani in the ninth year let the same be printed.

“Answer.—That ninth year might happen eight years after my death,'

The following is an unexpectedly conclusive evidence. By the beginning one is prepared only for some slight doubt of the suspicion :

"The suspicion of making it" (something in the way of Church controversy)" fell on Gregory Martin: one probable enough for such a prank (as being Divinity Professor at Rheims) did not his epitaph there ensure me he was dead and buried two years before."

In the following he whimsically imagines, and objects to a strictness of literal interpretation that few would think of contending for :

"St Paul saith, 'Let not the sun go down on your wrath,' to carry news to the antipodes in another world of thy revengeful nature. Yet let us take the apostle's meaning rather than his words, with all possible speed to dispose our passions; not understanding him so literally that we may take leave to be angry till sunset; then might our wrath lengthen with the days, and men in Greenland, where day lasts above a quarter of a year, have plentiful scope of revenge."

Wit is not the only comical seasoning of Fuller's amusing productions. Throughout his Church History' and his 'Worthies,' we are kept in a perpetual smile by the purposely un ignified familiarity of his language. Sometimes this becomes open

S

burlesque, as in his account of Brown, the founder of the "Brownists":

"Some years after Brown went over into Zealand, to purchase himself more reputation from foreign parts. For a smack of travel gives a high ta-te to strange opinions, making them better relish to the licorish lovers of novelty. Home he returns with a full cry against the Church of England, as, having so much of Rome, she had nothing of Christ in her discipline. Norfolk was the first place whereon Brown (new-flown home out of the Low Countries) perched himself, and therein," &c.

As another instance of this, note how he speaks of the Round Table legends:

"As for his Round Table, with his knights about it, the tale whereof hath trundled so smoothly along for many ages, it never met with much belief among the judicious."

The strict method of his works, so far from being a shackle to his wit, furnishes him with additional opportunities for quaint turns. Thus he concludes his account of Brown by saying:

"Thus to make our story of the troublesome man the more entire, we have trespassed on the two following years, yet without discomposing our chronology in the margin."

Again, writing of Bishop Barnes and Bernard Gilpin, he says:

Seeing they were loving in their lives, in my book their memories shall not be divided, though I confess the latter died some three years before."

No other quality of Fuller's style calls for special illustration. Brevity, point, simplicity, and wit, are his conspicuous characteristics. In the examples quoted, the reader will have noticed that he is fond of alliteration, an almost unconscious habit with nearly every writer of point. Taste is not a merit of Fuller's; he is an eccentric writer, setting good taste at defiance in the pursuit of his favourite effect. An historian and an antiquary in name, he is too easy and superficial to rank high in that species of composition: he has in his favour simplicity of language, and almost unique attention to arrangement; but the subject-matter of his works is only a field for the exercise of his extraordinary memory and his irrepressible wit.

JEREMY TAYLOR, 1813-1667.

A man of genius, the most distinguished prose writer of this period. He has been called "the Shakspeare of English prose," anthe Chrysostom of the English Pulpit": and the designations are less fanciful than such designations often are.

Of his private life few particulars are known; he is said to

have written an autobiography, but it has perished. Even the main dates in his public career have been traced with some difficulty. We know in general that he suffered in the temporary eclipse of the Episcopalian party, and that he lived to be rewarded

at the Restoration.

He was born in Cambridge, of humble parentage; and educated there at the Grammar School and at Caius College. When only twenty years of age, he preached before Archbishop Laud, and his eloquence and youthful beauty made such an impression that the prelate at once took him under patronage, placed him at All Souls in Oxford, procured him a fellowship, and appointed him one of his own chaplains. In 1637-38, he was presented by the Bishop of London to the rectory of Uppingham, in Rutlandshire. At the breaking out of the Civil War, he repaid the favour of his patrons by a work in defence of Episcopacy; for this the king made him D.D., while the Presbyterians, then rapidly gaining strength, sequestrated his rectory.

About 1643 he retired to the residence of his mother-in-law in Wales, but before he had been long there, the tide of war rolling in that direction, he was taken prisoner by the forces of the Parlia ment, and kept for some time in confinement. On his release he supported himself by keeping a school, and during that time composed his 'Liberty of Prophesying.' Thereafter he found a patron in the Earl of Carbery, and lived for some years at that nobleman's seat, Golden Grove. There he wrote his Life of Christ,' and a work named after the place, 'Golden Grove.' An attack upon the Puritans in the 'Golden Grove' offended Cromwell; in 1654 he was apprehendel, and during three or four years more than once suffered imprisonment. In 1658 he obtained from his friends an alternate lectureship at Lisburne, in the north of Ireland, where he remained till the Restoration. By Charles II. he was made Bishop of Down and Connor, and subsequently of Dromore. He died at Portmore, on the 3d of August 1667.

Most of his works were written during his virtual exile in Wales. The exceptions were strictly professional works: Episcopacy Asserted,' published in 1642; Discourse of Confirmation,' in 1663, after his elevation to the bishopric; and Dissuasive from Popery,' in 1664. His 'Liberty of Prophesying,' Life of Christ,' 'Holy Living and Holy Dying, and Ductor Dubitantium,' were all composed during his seclusion, the last work being completed at Lisburne. His treatise on 'Repentance' was written between 1654 and 1658, during his imprisonments.

Taylor was a very handsome man, rather above the middle height, with a dark sparkling eye, aud features almost feminine in their delicacy.

The characteristic of his intellect is luxuriant activity and pio

ductiveness rather than accuracy or taste. For one that wrote so much and was not merely an unproductive dungeon of learning, his scholarship was enormous: but he does not seem to have verified his references with much care, and he has been detected in some ludicrously bad translations. Comparatively few items of his learning were allowed to sleep; all his works, whether technical, controversial, or practical, are crowded with superfluous quotations and allusions. As an evidence of his intellectual activity, consider what he wrote during his residence in Wales, the variety of subjects that he entertained; compare him in this respect with the "judicious" Hooker, a more careful scholar, but a much less active producer. The same characteristic appears in his impassioned flights; he is, says De Quincey, "restless, fervid, aspiring, scattering abroad a prodigality of life." He abandons himself without reserve to the inspiration of the moment, eagerly accumulating circumstances and similitudes, his free flight trammelled by no punctilious care to frame the particulars into a harmonious whole. In the filling out of his opulent pictures, he is equally unimpeded by a scrupulous regard for facts; in his telling illustrations of the decay of human splendour, he takes upon trust the most outrageous fables.

With all his scholarship and ingenuity, he had, if we may judge from his writings, a youthful freshness of sentiment. When thrust from his living by the great Rebellion, he did not acquiesce in silence, but, trusting probably to his distance from the centre of power and to the protection of Lord Carbery, he denounced the new Government as "disgracing the articles of religion, and polluting public assemblies," and stigmatised the new preachers as "impertinent and ignorant," fruitless "crabstocks." Thus warm

man.

:

in his expressions of dislike, he was no less warm in his expressions of affection with all his learning, a vain, warm-hearted, childlike It seems strange that there should ever have been among biographers a dispute whether or not he was a woman-hater. Tenderness would seem to have been his ruling emotion. nothing," he says, can please a man without love." contain many passages of demonstrative affection. with peculiar fondness upon children, and upon the delights of the

66

66

"There is His works He expatiates

1 We made a somewhat similar remark about Bacon, and as the two minds are so different in their general figure, in their appearance as wholes, it may be well to mention the more important analysed elements of difference. One vast difference lies in this, that Bacon was more original and constructive: Bacon, as his chaplain says, never was a plodder upon books," and had comparatively little scholarship; Taylor's scholarship is a standing subject of wonder and admiration. Bacon had very little poetical feeling; Taylor had all the gifts of a poet except metre. The two men resemble each other in their enormous powers of intellectual work; they differ immeasurably in the quality and direction of that work.

"sanctuary and refectory" of the domestic circle, "his gardens of sweetness and chaste refreshment."

In a writer of casuistical morality, profoundly versed in the interminable dusty volumes of the schoolmen, we should not expect much sensibility to the beauties and grandeurs of nature. Yet Taylor shows this sensibility in rich abundance. He was not a dry, unmoved observer like Bacon. He had a profound susceptibility to the luxuries of the eye. In our illustrations of his style, we shall quote many evidences of his delighted contemplation of external life. It probably was the charm derived from this source that commended his writings so powerfully to the naturepoets of this century. Not only was he alive to beauties of form and colour, and to tender associations: he looked with delight upon the grandeurs of nature, upon the exciting phenomena of storms and tempests. Rarely indeed do we find such scholarship and subtlety combined with so fresh an interest in the outer world.

Of gentle disposition and ingratiating manners, he had not the hardihood required for the stir and bustle of practical life. He showed none of the political capacity of Whitgift or of Laud. His eloquence and personal grace made him a favourite his learning and his services as a literary champion sanctioned his promotion to a bishopric. Warm in his expressions of resentment, he had not the courage of a martyr. When imprisoned for his outburst against the Puritans, he was not obdurate in his recriminations he did not spend his imprisonment in the refractory occupation of composing further invectives, but quietly turned to his books, and wrote his treatise on Repentance.

The most generally celebrated of Taylor's opinions are those contained in his Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying.' It is an elaborate argument for religious toleration. It does not recommend absolute freedom of opinion; it makes a stand upon the Apostles' Creed, and urges that no person subscribing to this should be denied communion by any Christian sect. It even allows difference of opinion as to the clause regarding Christ's descent into hell. The argument of the work is not abstract, a priori: he does not uphold freedom to differ as a "natural right”; this idea was of later growth. He reasons from experience; pointing out the difficulty of ascertaining the real truth; dilating upon, and, after his wont, copiously exemplifying, the fallibility of all human interpreters of Scripture-Popes, Councils, Fathers, or Writers Ecclesiastical. The work is not, as is sometimes stated, the first direct argument for toleration. It arose naturally at a time when difference of opinion, prolific of bitter dissensions for almost a century, had culminated in the distraction of civil war.