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.

66

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,' 99 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. His 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 notions are ill defined.

The learned Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688), a student of Cambridge, and Professor of Hebrew there from 1645 to 1675, published in 1678 his 'Intellectual System of the Universe.' He seems to have been a shy, retiring man, with something of Hooker's disposition; like Hooker, also, an industrious and profound scholar. He was not of a controversial turn, but was pressed by his friends to take the field against Hobbes, atheism, and every form of heterodoxy. He stated the opinions of his opponents at such length and with such candour that his sincerity was suspected; and he was so alarmed at the outcry raised by his honourable and ingenious fashion of polemic, that he refrained from further publication. His Treatise of Eternal and Immutable Morality' was not published till 1731.

Another opponent of Hobbes was Richard Cumberland (16321718), Bishop of Peterborough, author of a work on the 'Laws of Nature. His doctrines have an independent place in the history of philosophy; but as he wrote in Latin, he has but a quasi-legitimate standing in the history of English literature.

HISTORY.

Gilbert Burnet (1643-1715), Bishop of Salisbury, an active politician, and author of several religious and other works known only to antiquarians, received the thanks of Parliament for his 'History of the Reformation' in 1676, and earned a durable fame by his posthumous History of my own Times, from the Restoration of Charles II. to the conclusion of the Treaty of Peace at Utrecht, in the Reign of Queen Anne.' He belonged to an ancient Aberdeenshire family, and was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen. At the age of twenty-six (1669) he was made Professor of Divinity in Glasgow, and before he was thirty he was twice offered a Scottish bishopric. About 1673 he resigned his professorial chair and went to London, where his powers as a preacher, no less than as a sagacious observer of politics, soon made him conspicuous. During the reign of James, he thought it prudent to retire to the Continent, and received a flattering invitation to the Hague. He came back with the Prince of Orange, and in 1689 was appointed Bishop of Sarum. He was a shrewd, sagacious Scotchman, and throughout life acted with a prudence that was disturbed neither by impetuosity nor by strong feeling. Yet he displayed at times a steady courageous sincerity where many of the sneerers at his prudence would have kept discreetly in the background. He had a peculiar power of reading character, and of insinuating himself into the confidence of the great. A tall, well-built, fine-looking man, with extraordinary powers of extempore address, he was one of the most popular preachers of the metropolis: he “ was often,"

says Macaulay, "interrupted by the deep hum of his audience; and when, after preaching out the hour-glass, he held it up in his hand, the congregation clamorously encouraged him to go on till the sand had run off once more." Natural temper and varied education concurred to make his views anti-despotic; he was a steady supporter of the Revolution; by his considerate behaviour he made himself extremely popular among the clergy of his diocese. We have evidence that he was careful about his written style, purposely aiming at "aptness of words and justness of figures," and striving to avoid "the fulsome pedantry under which the English language laboured long ago, the trifling way of dark and unintelligible wit that came after that, the coarse extravagance of canting that succeeded this, and the sublime pitch of a strong but false rhetoric, which had much corrupted not only the stage but even the pulpit, but was almost worn out" when he wrote.1 He may be said to have realised this ideal; his words are generally well chosen, his illustrations appropriate, and his diction copious without being in any way extravagant; but his dry correctness is not made up for by fluent melody or by happy originality of combination. The great charms of his 'History of my own Times' lie in the gossip from behind the scenes, and the skilful delineation of character. He had something of Boswell's faculty for noting characteristic incidents, besides the power of showing them briefly in a connected portraiture. None of our historians surpass, if any equal him, in this respect. When we compare his vivid delineations of the men of the Revolution with Macaulay's jumble of characteristic traits and high-flown moral commonplaces, we at once recognise the hand of a natural master of the art.

Along with Burnet may be mentioned Sir George Mackenzie (1636-1691), Lord Advocate under Charles II. and James II., author of Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland, from the Restoration of Charles II.,' not printed till 1821. Mackenzie was familiar with Dryden and the literary society of the time, and wrote several lively miscellaneous essays: "The Virtuoso or Stoic," "Moral Gallantry," "The Moral History of Frugality," &c. A composition in praise of Solitude led to a friendly passage of arms with John Evelyn, who entered the lists in defence of active life.

Two famous DIARISTS are usually reckoned in this generation— Samuel Pepys (1632-1703) and John Evelyn (1620-1706). Pepys was Secretary to the Admiralty in the reigns of Charles II. and James II. His Diary, which extends from 1660 to 1669, was written in shorthand, and was deciphered by Lord Braybrooke in 1825. This delightful book of gossip is one of the most interesting memorials of the domestic life of the time. Evelyn's Diary is 1 Preface to his translation of More's 'Utopia,' 1684.