ing of vulgar superstitions, he notices the custom of foretelling events by spots upon the nails in the following curious manner.

"That temperamental dignotions, and conjecture of prevalent humours, may be collected from spots in our nails, we are not averse to concede. But yet not ready to admit sundry divinations, vulgarly raised upon them."-And again

"Of lower consideration is the common foretelling of strangers from the fungous parcel, about the weeks of candles: which only signifieth a moist and pluvious ayr about them, hindering the avolation of the light and favillous particles." Or, to adduce one more example :

"A strange kind of exploration and peculiar way of rhabdomancy is that which is used in mineral discoveries; that is, with a forked hazel, commonly called Moses his rod, which freely held forth, will stir and play if any mine be under it *."

That in any age such a style as this should be admired, and should create numerous imitators, who, not content with its adoption on subjects of science or natural history, employed it in biography, criticism, and miscellaneous literature, cannot but excite astonishment. Of its effect

* Pseudodoxia, p. 229, 230.

when chosen for biographical detail the following is the most extraordinary instance that I have ever met with. It is taken from a Life of the admirable Crichton, written by Sir Thomas Urquhart. Crichton had composed a drama in the Italian language, which included fifteen characters, all of which he himself personated; his success in the attempt Sir Thomas thus describes :

"The logofascinated spirits of the beholding hearers and auricularie spectators, were so on a sudden seized upon, in the risible faculties of the soul, and all their vital motions so universally affected in this extremity of agitation, that, to avoid the inevitable charms of his intoxicating ejaculations, and the accumulative influences of so powerful a transportation, one of my lady dutchess chief maids of honor, by the vehemence of the shocks of these incomprehensible raptures, burste forth into a laughter, to the rupture of a veine in her bodie, &c."-Another young lady "not being able to support the well be loved burthen of so excessive delight and intransing joyes of such mercurial exhilarations, through the ineffable extasie of an overmastered apprehension, fell back in a swoon, without the ap pearance of any other life in her than what, by the most refined wits of theological speculators, is conceived to be exerced by the purest parts of

the separated entelechies of blessed saints, in their sublimest conversations with the celestial hierarchies *"

From this intolerable affectation let us turn to the manly and majestic diction of MILTON, whose prose works, owing to the controversial nature of their contents, have been too much neglected. Than the style of Milton, however, in these his polemic writings, nothing frequently can be more lofty, sonorous, and strong; his words are pure and of native growth, and his only fault appears to have arisen from an indiscriminate adoption of classical arrangement in the structure of his sentences. This, though it impart an air of dignity and forced splendour to his composition, has too often rendered his pages to the mere English reader, stiff, obscure, and harsh. Notwithstanding this objection, it may without fear of contradiction be asserted, that no author previous to the restoration has written with greater energy or purity.

Milton early commenced his ecclesiastical warfare, and, in 1642, published The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy. In this production he nobly declares, and in the spirit of sincerity and truth, his motives for the undertaking. The passage is forcible and eloquent, * Urquhart's Vindication of Scotland.

and proves that for conscience sake alone, relinquishing the pleasures of fancy and of taste, he embraced a task which might expose him to obloquy and reproach.

"Concerning this wayward subject against prelaty," he remarks, "the touching whereof is so distasteful and disquietous to a number of men, as by what hath been said I may deserve of charitable readers to be credited, that neither envy nor gall hath entered me upon this controversy, but the enforcement of conscience only, and a preventive fear, lest the omitting of this duty should be against me, when I would store up to myself the good provision of peaceful hours so lest it should be still imputed to be, as I have found it hath been, that some self-pleasing humour of vain glory has incited me to contest with men of high estimation, now while green years are upon my head; from this needless surmisal I shall hope to dissuade the intelligent and equal auditor, if I can but say successfully, that which in this exigent behoves me, although I would be heard, only if it might be, by the elegant and learned reader, to whom principally for a while I shall beg leave I may address myself: to him it will be no new thing, though I tell him, that if I hunted after praise by the ostentation of wit and learning, I should not write

thus out of mine own season, when I have neither yet completed to my mind the full circle of my private studies (although I complain not of any insufficiency to the matter in hand) or were I ready to my wishes, it were a folly to commit any thing elaborately composed to the careless and interrupted listening of these tumultuous times. Next, if I were wise only to my own ends, I would certainly take such a subject, as of itself might catch applause; whereas this has all the disadvantages on the contrary; and such a subject, as the publishing whereof might be delayed at pleasure, and time enough to pencil it over with all the curious touches of art, even to the perfection of a faultless picture; when, as in this argument, the not deferring is of great moment to the good speeding, that if solidity have leisure to do her office, art cannot have much. Lastly, I should not chuse this manner of writing, wherein, knowing myself inferior to myself, led by the genial power of nature to another task, I have the use, as I may account, but of my left hand."

The ardent spirit of Milton, and the malignant accusations of his opponents, not unfrequently brought forth in his controversial publications a warmth and asperity of expression not probably well calculated to promote his views. In ex