burton.
robert burton, author of "the anatomy of melancholy," would have been despised by overbury both as "a mere fellow of a house" and as "a melancholy man," while to milton he must have seemed one of those spiritual pastors whose "hungry sheep look up and are not fed," with sufficiency of sermons. burton (born 1577) was of a landholding family, in leicestershire, was educated at the grammar schools of nuneaton and sutton coldfield, went to brasenose, oxford, in 1593, and got a "studentship" (the house's name for a fellowship) at christ church. he never married, though he professes himself not ignorant of love, and he held one living in leicestershire, and another in oxford. he lived to do the work that he was born to do, "the anatomy of melancholy," first published in 1621, with great success and with a following of later and amplified editions. he escaped the civil war, which hit no class of men harder than the clergy, by dying in 1640.
melancholy, we have seen, was then a literary and social fashion. burton analysed it, reduced it to a vast number of classes or categories, explored all its causes, physical, pathological, amorous, magical (witchcraft), and "immediately from god"; all its cures, lawful and unlawful—incantation, prayer, diet, exercise; all its moral alleviations; all medical prescriptions—blood-letting, purging, herbs; everything. he made an encyclop?dia of melancholy. the reader had but to ask, "what kind of melancholy is mine, amorous, worldly, witch-sent, or religious?" look up the right chapter, and forget his gloom in the[pg 304] huge collection of anecdotes and curious, vast, classic, medical and pleasantly useless learning. "the anatomy" was what thackeray called "a bedside book," but for the inconvenience of the edition in folio. the modern reader escapes trouble by using mr. shilleto's edition in three handy volumes. to the modern reader trouble is otherwise caused by the abundance of latin, and by endless names of authors whom all the world has, for the most part not unjustly, forgotten.
under "exercise rectified" will be found matter for izaak walton, matter on angling, from which pastime, says nic. heinselius, in his silesiographia, the silesians are so eccentric as to suck great pleasure. james dubravius, an author dear to walton, once met a moravian nobleman in waders, "booted up to the groins," but this unworthy earl was not angling, he was netting; or, as he described his pitiful pastime, "hunting carps". in england, says burton, many gentlemen wade "up to the armholes," but not after salmon, not in frank's "glittering and resolute streams of tweed" with salmon rod in hand. they are "hunting carps," a fish that loves the mud, a kind of ground-game. burton admires "false flies," he does not appear to have used them much. but he is always wise, so much so that he steals the contemplative man's consolation (when his creel is empty) without acknowledgment, from the charming passage in the "treatise pertaining to fish," printed by wynkyn de worde in 1496. this treatise influences all angling books, leonard mascal's, walton's, and the rest.
burton cannot have been a melancholy man; he was too laborious in omnivorous reading, and in writing was so copious and so pleasantly successful. his face, if his portrait at brasenose be authentic (the ruff seems of an earlier date), is that of a pleasant old humorist. he is charitably disposed towards suicides; we know so little! he leaves them to the measureless mercy of him who, understanding all, can pardon all. he is a very serious consoler of persons under religious despair; perhaps cowper studied him unavailingly, bunyan probably did not try his cures. it is vain, he says, to reason with the insane, the hallucinated, "who hear and see, many times, devils, bugbears, and mormeluches,[pg 305] noisome smells, etc.". he has prescribed for these curses when they arise from normal "internal causes". sapphires, chrysolites, carbuncles may be worn by the afflicted: "pennyroyal, rue, mint, angelica, piony" may be exhibited. there is no harm in trying st. john's wort. the physician of the emperor augustus relied on betony. where spirits haunt, fumigations are useful.
a stout protestant, burton has no belief in exorcisms, though presbyterians used them in the eighteenth century. the clerical father of the poet james thomson tried exorcism on a ghost, but failed, and was slain by a ball of fire, says legend.
ye wretched, hope!
ye that are happy, beware!
ends burton.
burton's style is admirable, if we do not weary of very long sentences, weighted with a dozen references to his queer authorities. but the art of skipping can meet the occasion, and burton can write as tersely as any man when he pleases. if burton left his rural parish to a curate, he preached well and wisely to the largest of congregations. if he really were, at heart, a melancholy moping man, he found happiness in the long task of his life; the book which teaches the lesson of the vanity of melancholy.
herbert of cherbury.
born in 1583, the brother of george herbert, the poet, lord herbert of cherbury is best remembered for his curious and amusing autobiography (edited and published by horace walpole in 1764). wealthy, beautiful, and, by his own account a desperate swordsman, herbert was deaf in childhood, spoke late, and then asked his nurse how he had come into this world; for an answer to this problem "i could not imagine," and no wonder. he pursued his reflections on the theme of birth and death in latin verse' and in prose. his soul, he averred, had developed faculties "almost useless for this life," hope, faith, love, and joy. they must therefore be destined to higher employment upon subjects not transitory, "the perfect, eternal, and infinite". but he was[pg 306] not orthodox, his "de veritate," and "religio laici," both in latin, are deemed heretical.
he was privately educated till he went to university college, oxford, where he preferred greek to latin composition. while he was a very young undergraduate his father died, and he was married. he was all accomplished; astrology and medicine, many languages and music were mastered by him, with fencing, of course: he dilates on the fencer's need of good feet and eyes, on the "lunge," and on equestrian duels. having provided himself with a family, herbert went abroad, distinguished himself at the siege of juliers under the prince of orange, snubbed de balagny, a great french duellist, behaved like a paladin, and writes of himself like a bobadil. his triumphs with the sex are equally celebrated, and a husband who deemed himself to be, but was not "injured," lurked, to murder herbert, in scotland yard, not now a favourite ambush for criminals. in the fight that followed of one man against five, herbert, with a broken sword, fought in a manner to be described only by himself or alexandre dumas. if he fought like le brave bussy, he was also favoured by a miracle like colonel gardiner, a miracle sanctioning the publication of his book, "de veritate" (1624).
in 1629 he became a peer of england: in later politics he deserted the cause of charles i: finding himself at 60 (1643) extremely debilitated, and quite disinclined to draw his sword. he died in 1648: his "history of henry viii," much praised by horace walpole, was published in the following year. his verses, in which he uses the metre of "in memoriam," were never so popular as his brother george's, but his autobiography is highly diverting in its exhibition of character.
browne.
thomas browne, best known as sir thomas browne, came of a cheshire family. he was born in london on 19 october, 1605. early left fatherless, "he was, according to the common fate of orphans," says dr. johnson, "defrauded by one of his guardians," who seems to have lacked opportunity to strip the orphan absolutely bare. browne was educated at winchester,[pg 307] went on to broadgates hall, oxford, graduated (1629), travelled in ireland, took a doctor's degree at leyden; is said to have practised medicine at halifax, and about 1637 settled at norwich for the fifty remaining years of his life.
his earliest and probably his most popular book, the "religio medici," appears to have been written about 1635-1637. several transcripts existed; in 1642 one of them, imperfect enough, was printed without browne's knowledge and consent, and was criticized by sir kenelm digby and others. browne therefore issued an authorized edition, and the work was extremely successful both in england and on the continent.
naturally this confessor of his private ideas about religion was attacked on all sides, as an atheist, a papist, a deist, by the scribblers of the hostile sects. browne, in fact, was a christian who did not, as at that time was especially common, regard hatred of all who differed with him about a surplice or a sermon as a holier thing than the virtue of charity.
in his preface he says that almost every man suffers by the press, and that he "has lived to behold the highest perversion of that excellent invention," the king defamed, the honour of parliament impaired, a flood of printed falsehoods submerging everything, and carrying erroneous copies of browne's private papers into the market. browne opens his work by declaring that, in spite of his profession (and of the proverb, "one doctor out of three is an atheist"), he is a christian, and a tolerant christian. "holy water and crucifix (dangerous to the common people) deceive not my judgment, nor abuse my devotion at all. ...i should violate my own arm rather than a church; nor willingly deface the name of saint or martyr. at the sight of a cross or crucifix i can dispense with my hat, but scarce with the thought or memory of my saviour."
at norwich in the cathedral the puritans publicly destroyed and burned all works of art (including the organ), which they were pleased to regard as monuments of idolatry: a bitter sight for browne. "i have no genius to dispute in religion," says he. as for "sturdy doubts and boisterous objections, wherewith the unhappiness of our knowledge too nearly acquainteth us, more of these[pg 308] no man hath known than myself; which i confess i conquered, not in a martial posture, but on my knees". in that world of frenzied pamphleteers, "hating each other for the love of god," the charm and fragrance of browne's style, the "peace! peace!" which, like falkland, he "ingeminates," his refined humour, and smiling pitying sympathy, and curiosity about all things knowable, made his book delightful; and delightful to readers tolerant of exquisiteness in manner the "religio medici" can never cease to be.
we are astonished, to-day, as much by the things which browne knows, or believes, as by those which he does not know and does not believe. "i do now know that there are witches" has a surprise in it, but what does he precisely mean by "witches"? "i think at first a great part of philosophy" (science) "was witchcraft." here he agrees with modern writers who regard magic as an early and uninstructed sort of science. he believes in guardian angels, but his "metaphysics of them are very shallow," and, in modern terms, what he believes in is "the subconscious self". as for hell, "the heart of a man is the place the devils dwell in... lucifer keeps his court in my breast. legion is revived in me."
in short this good physician is a mystic: "we must therefore say that there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction of morpheus... we are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleep; and the slumbering of the body seems to be but the wakening of the soul!" a very old belief of the greeks.
in "pseudodoxia epidemica," "vulgar errors" (1646), browne's manner somewhat resembles that of burton, but his medley of strange stories, scientific, pseudo-scientific, or plainly superstitious, is even more entertaining and much more carefully and artfully written than "the anatomy of melancholy". he consciously aims at harmony and balance of style, and at selecting the right word (le mot propre), while he ranges over all ancient knowledge and modern fable. "many and false conceptions there are of mandrakes," and browne thinks but little of them, and less of the false etymologies from which his age had not delivered itself. he is engaged, like the scholar in lytton's novel "the caxtons," on a "history of human error," and with his[pg 309] humour, sympathy, learning, and irony, he makes a most entertaining book.
his "urn burial" with "the garden of cyrus" (1658) begins with antiquarianism, and ends with the famous passages on the vanity of desiring "to subsist in lasting monuments". "but man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnising nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy" (infimy?) "of his nature." "the garden of cyrus" concerning the mystic virtues of the quincunx (like cinq in dice) is more fantastic and pythagorean. the motto for the posthumously published "christian morals" might be selected from one line in its counsels,
yet hold thou unto old morality.
it wears better than the new article!
to know browne's works is no small part of a liberal education. he lived in quiet and opulence, "his whole house and garden being a paradise and cabinet of rarities," says evelyn; he was much occupied in correspondence with the learned and with his eldest son, and with local history, till his death on 19 october, 1682.
charles ii had dubbed him knight at norwich in 1671. charles, in dr. johnson's phrase, had skill to discover excellence, and virtue to reward it, with such honorary distinctions, at least, as cost him nothing.
caroline prose.
milton.
the greater part of milton's prose works is so deeply concerned with politics, mainly religious or concerned with church government, that it cannot easily be criticized without controversial interruptions, here out of place. his earliest important piece (1641) treats of the reformation in england. it had never come up to strafford's standard, thorough, never shaken off "the rags of rome"—that is milton's theme. nor, in scotland, had reformation really been more successful, for the preachers claimed at least all the powers of the priests over the liberties of the subject.
[pg 310]
milton at once attacks that which, to laud, was part of "the beauty of holiness," jewish and catholic survivals of "fantastic dresses, palls and mitres, gold and gewgaws fetched from aaron's old wardrobe". "the piebald frippery and ostentation of ceremonies" the church styled "decency"; henry viii "stuck where he did". under edward vi, if his sister mary were not to be persecuted most righteously, who were the slaves that interfered to secure for her liberty of conscience? who but bishops! bishops were therefore "followers of this world," they always were and always will be. you reply that they, cranmer and latimer, were also martyrs? well, says milton, "what then?" a man may "give his body to the burning and yet not have charity". the bishops had not charity, clearly, or they would have aided in depriving the princess of freedom of conscience. elizabeth, aided by bishops, persecuted puritans, but then puritans have a right to freedom of conscience, for themselves, and a right to prevent other people from exercising the same privilege. if there are to be bishops they must be of popular election, but when preachers with powers in some respects greater were elected by the people in scotland, milton did not approve of them either.
his next important tract, the apology for smectymnuus (five preachers, marshal, calamy, young, newcomen and spurstow, who had attacked episcopacy), is of 1642. bishop hall, who, in youth, had boasted that he was the first english satirist, had replied to the five in his defence of the remonstrance; milton had answered; hall in his turn published "a modest confutation," and milton's apology for smectymnuus ensued. the adversary had made scurrilous remarks, had attacked milton's manners and morals, quite causelessly, in the controversial fashion of the age. milton replied that his adversary was a "rude scavenger," and then gave that account of his own way of life in youth which lends its value to this passage in the discussion. he had never haunted "bordelloes," houses of ill-fame; he calls the women who keep them "prelatesses". a bishop, to milton, is a male of the same species. as for the theatre he had seen his fellow-students act at college, "prostituting the shame of that ministry, which either they had, or were nigh having, to the eyes[pg 311] of courtiers and court ladies...." he had always, he declares, been a remarkably pure young man; hence his life-long love of romances of chivalry, where every knight is bound by oath to defend, with his life if need be, the chastity of ladies. "the first and chiefest office of love begins and ends in the soul," he says nobly.
we need not dwell on his "doctrine and discipline of divorce," written, it seems, a few weeks after his hapless marriage in 1643. if all men were miltons and all women worthy of them, his doctrine of freedom of divorce would not have thorny consequences.
his "tenure of kings and magistrates" was published in february, 1649; charles i had been slain on 30 january of that year. it is desirable, in a history of literature, to "keep king charles's head out of the memorial".
in the "areopagitica" (1644) milton, defending freedom of printing against these friends of liberty, the then dominant presbyterians, in many passages gives us the prose of a great poet. here is a passage which must have irritated the puritans who were not so after the manner of milton.
"if we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must rectify our recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to man. no music must be heard, no song be set or sung, but what is grave and doric. there must be licensing dancers, that no gesture, motion, or deportment be taught our youth but what by their allowance shall be thought honest: for such plato was provided of. it will ask more than the work of twenty licensers to examine all the lutes, and violins, and the guitars in every house; they must not be suffered to prattle as they do, but must be licensed what they may say. and who shall silence all the airs and madrigals, that whisper softness in chambers? the windows also, and the balconies must be thought on; there are shrewd books, with dangerous frontispieces, set to sale; who shall prohibit them? shall twenty licensers? the villages also must have their visitors to inquire what lectures the bagpipe and the rebeck reads, even to the ballatry, and the gamut of every municipal fiddler, for these are the countryman's arcadias and his monte mayors." the famous sentence "i cannot praise a fugitive and[pg 312] cloistered virtue" is familiar to all memories, but such things are not common in his prose: the search for the limbs of slain and mutilated truth compared to the search for the fragments of "the good osiris" by isis, might not have been written had milton remembered the details of that savage fable, common to ancient egypt and the australian arunta. his cause has triumphed, as triumph it must, in a world where no all-wise and infallible licenser of books can be found.
"the defence of the people of england" in answer to salmasius's "defence of the king," had not, perhaps, the right client. it was not the people of england who slew the king. milton tells his own story of that unhappy reign (in "eikonoklastes," his reply to "eikon basilike," attributed to charles, really, as is believed, by gauden) it may be read with more profit in the history of mr. s. r. gardiner. milton declares the charge against the scots of "selling their king" to be "a foul infamy and dishonour". the scots, every soul of them who had a touch of chivalry, took up the sword to cleanse the blot, died on the field, or on the scaffold, or were sold as slaves, or were starved to death in durham cathedral. there are, in short there could not but be, noble and harmonious and stirring passages in milton's prose; but poetry was his native language, and his themes were such as to place sobriety of view, and delicate discrimination of good and evil almost beyond his power. for, as argyll said, of himself, he was "a distraught man in distraught times". otherwise milton, the proudest of men, would not have answered railing with railing.
jeremy taylor.
among the pulpit orators of the seventeenth century, none has left a name more fragrant than jeremy taylor. his devotional works, such as "holy living," and still more "holy dying," are still in the hands of the devout. but it is not easy to suppose that many readers who are not profound students of style in prose often read the many volumes of sermons, works of casuistry, and works of controversy which jeremy has left. he is not of our world or way of thinking; he dwells, for example, on "special" and easily distinguishable "providences". now when a[pg 313] tempest flooded a river, so that montrose's men could not cross and despoil the lands of a contemporary of jeremy's, brodie of brodie, that devout covenanter confided to his journal the occurrence of this "special providence". but when the river fell, and montrose crossed and drove the kye, brodie remarks in his journal that we ought not to interpret the divine will, for we may be mistaken. jeremy insists on his own interpretations. "from adam to the flood, by the patriarchs were eleven generations; but by cain's line there were but eight, so that cain's posterity were longer lived: because god, intending to bring the flood upon the world, took delight to rescue his elect from the dangers of the present impurity and the future deluge." in the same way abraham lived five years less than his son isaac, and jeremy knows why. "the jewish doctors" inform him that the idea was to prevent abraham from seeing "the iniquity of his grandchild, esau". later, speaking of other times and lands, jeremy says that "such fancies do seldom serve either the ends of truth or charity,"—for which he has the highest authority in the gospel.
we are no longer apt to reason as taylor does about the patriarchs, or on hundreds of other points, and this cannot but diminish our pleasure in reading his books. but he pleases us, exactly as burton does in "the anatomy of melancholy," by illustrations drawn from his amazing knowledge of books. thus, immediately after the passage last cited, he says "pierre cauchon died under the barber's hand: there wanted not some who said it was a judgement upon him for condemning to the fire the famous pucelle of france, who prophesied the expulsion of the english out of the kingdom. they that thought this believed her to be a prophetess" (as she certainly was), "but others that thought her a witch, were willing to find out another conjecture for the sudden death of the gentleman." "the sudden death of the gentleman" is a courteous phrase to apply to cauchon; and very unexpected in "the history of the life and death of the holy jesus". but whence did jeremy get his story of cauchon? from the latin hexameters of valerandus, a book so entirely out of the common way that perhaps not three persons in the england of to-day have read it.
[pg 314]
so our author runs on, telling of "that famous person and of excellent learning, giacchettus of geneva," whose morals were not genevan, while his death was, in an extreme degree, remarkable. jeremy more than once insists that many thousand men were slain, in one night, in the assyrian camp, for committing the offence of that famous person, giacchettus. nobody has ever found out his authority for his statement; he may have learned it "from the jewish doctors". in any case, however entertaining and instructive his divine works may be, he often raises a smile which he never dreamed of provoking. other times, other tastes!
jeremy taylor was born under james vi and i, was the son of a barber in cambridge, and was baptized on 15 august, 1613. unless he was christened two years after his birth, it is not plain how he could have been in his fifteenth year when (august, 1626) he was admitted to caius college as a sizar (at oxford, "servitor"); jeremy's eloquence attracted the notice of archbishop laud, who had him made a fellow of all souls, oxford (1636). at oxford, a cavalier university, jeremy studied casuistry, the topic of his large book "ductor dubitantium," a guide to the doubting. in 1638, jeremy obtained the cure of souls at uppingham, and in the same year preached, in the university pulpit, a guy fawkes day sermon. in 1639 he married. in 1640, laud was impeached of treason; in 1642, as chaplain, jeremy served under the standard of king charles. parliament abolished bishops; jeremy defended episcopacy ("of the sacred order of episcopacy"). in february, 1645, he was captured in a royalist defeat, but was protected by lord carbery, and became his private chaplain at golden grove in carmarthenshire, where he was safe from the persecution of the friends of freedom of conscience that called themselves "the godly". at golden grove, though far from what had been his library, he wrote "an apology for liturgy" (abolished by parliament in 1645). in 1647 appeared his "liberty of prophesying," a plea for toleration. such pleas always came from the religious party which was being persecuted, though, even when persecuted, the covenanters always denounced "the vomit of toleration," their aim being, in power or out of power, to force all mankind to be presbyterian covenanters. the frenzy of armed religious[pg 315] fanatics made taylor, like falkland, as described by clarendon, "ingeminate peace! peace!" but he himself was to be in prisons often, under the persecution of the commonwealth, and when he unhappily became, under the restoration, bishop of dromore in a covenanting part of ireland, he replaced the presbyterian ministers by anglican clergymen.
taylor's plea for toleration was an offence to all parties. these years of the king's disasters and death must have been bitterness to taylor.
he now composed his work "the great exemplar," a life of christ, filled with persuasions to godliness, with reflections far fetched but charmingly phrased, and he did not disdain legends destitute of scriptural authority. "in the country of thebais, whither they first arrived, the child jesus being by design or providence carried into a temple, all the statues of the idol gods fell down, like dagon at the presence of the ark, and suffered their timely and just dissolution and dishonour." the book makes no attempt at criticism, and is of an immense length: in those days "a great book" was not deemed "a great evil".
he also wrote his manual of devotion, "holy living" (1650), followed in 1651 by the more charming "holy dying". sermons for each week in the year, sermons preached at golden grove, appeared in 1653. in 1655, "unum necessarium," a treatise on repentance, was thought less than orthodox, and gave displeasure to the retired bishop to whom it was, without his permission, dedicated. jeremy had his doubts as to whether man, after the fall, was so abjectly and utterly corrupt a creature as other divines held him to be. from 1655 onwards he suffered much, losing his refuge at golden grove, reduced to extreme poverty, and now and again imprisoned. in 1657 he lost two young sons. he wrote a work on friendship for a very friendly lady, katherine philips, a poetess, called "the matchless orinda"; in this he quoted the ancients freely. later, unfortunately, he was employed in ireland as chaplain to lord conway at portmore, and was much disturbed by the presbyterian preachers. then came the restoration (29 may, 1660), and by 6 august, taylor was sent to the irish bishopric of down and connor, and dromore,[pg 316] where he was so troubled by the presbyterians that he asked the duke of ormonde to let him withdraw to "a parsonage in munster"; or to reorganize trinity college, dublin. but, after ejecting a number of the presbyterian ministers, he died in september, 1667, worn out, it may be, by the civil and religious ferocities of his time.
taylor's writings are by no means all of them very copiously decorated with ornaments of style, and musical with organ tones of language. even when highly decorated, and when the music of his periods is prolonged, his sentences are lucid. "so have i seen" (thus he introduces his similes), "a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood, at first it was fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as a lamb's fleece; but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness, and to decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age; it bowed the head and broke its stalk; and at night, having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and outworn faces." it is not herrick's and ronsard's lesson of the roses; with taylor it is a persuasion to piety, nor is any preacher more sweetly persuasive. but jeremy, though he wrote a work to persuade the irish catholics of the errors of rome, did not alter their doctrines, and, as to them that are "the godly party," "the good people of god," he speaks his mind thus: "they may disturb kingdoms, and break the peace of a well-ordered church, and rise up against their fathers, and be cruel to their brethren, and stir up the people to sedition; and all this with a cold stomach and a hot liver, with a hard heart and a tender conscience, with humble carriage and a proud spirit."
preaching to "the little but excellent university of dublin," taylor laid before them every way by which men, since the reformation, had sought religious peace and had failed to find it. the last way was toleration, "a way of peace rather than of truth". "if we cannot have both, for heaven's sake give us peace," was the view of some good men, but, as each sect thought that it possessed truth, each, as it had the opportunity, tried to make peace by forcing the others into conformity. the godly "are[pg 317] not content that you permit them; for they will not permit you, but rule over your faith, and say that their way is not only true, but necessary". taylor gave his own counsel thus, "the way to judge of religion is by doing our duty; and theology is rather a divine life than a divine knowledge.... let your adversaries have no evil thing to say of you, and then you will best silence them...." leighton tried this method in scotland, taylor in ireland, but who can number "all the horrid things they said" about these prelates in both countries!
other anglican divines can scarcely be treated within our space, of these robert south (born at hackney, 1634, and educated at westminster and christ church) lived till 1716. he was in controversies often, and a rather tart critic of both fuller and jeremy taylor; he had much force and not a little wit. chillingworth, hales, and others, are to us little more than shadows of great names, with isaac barrow, equally great in greek and mathematics, and a preacher whom charles ii could hear with pleasure. richard baxter (1615-1691), whose conscience after the restoration caused him to throw in his lot with the nonconformists, by his "saints' everlasting rest" (1650) won and deserved popularity; he shared with glanvill and henry more the love of a good ghost story, and has left on record an excellent death-wraith. ralph cudworth (1617-1688) and henry more (1614-1687), in verse and prose a mystic and a platonist or neo-platonist, are still dear to a fit though limited audience.
thomas fuller.
thomas fuller, born (1608) like dryden, later, at the village of aldwinkle, is a writer of the same group as jeremy taylor and sir thomas browne: that is, his manner is quaint and his matter is full of learning from all quarters. though a royalist and in orders, during the civil war, he was not an extremist; and his humour and love of a jest qualified him for the post of a chaplain in a cavalier army.
no great harm befell him when the royal cause was ruined, but he died (1661) too soon after the restoration to be rewarded or disappointed. his "holy and profane states" (1642) is a set[pg 318] of sketches of historic characters; most readable, especially in the first edition, with the curious engravings. despite the vivacity of fuller's most popular work, he is but little read, in face of the hearty commendations of charles lamb, a critic who imparted his own merits to all his favourites. fuller never could resist a joke, a humorous parallel or allusion; and in works on serious subjects, "the worthies of england," and "church history," his severe contemporaries detected more than "a little judicious levity". fuller loved antiquarian details and historical study, but history to history as amurath to amurath succeeds, and fuller is read, when he is read, for his quaintnesses and for the humour that runs away with him.
hobbes.
it is impossible, within our space, to give an adequate account of the life and works of thomas hobbes. born in april, 1588, when his mother's fear of the spanish armada is said to have hastened his appearance in this world, hobbes lived into the reign of terror of the titus oates's plot, in 1679. he was born at malmesbury, the son of an unlettered clergyman, and, about 1603, went to magdalen hall, oxford, where he liked neither the puritanism of the seniors, nor the roistering ways of the juniors. he took no interest in logic and philosophy as then taught in oxford, and is said to have never seen an euclid till he was middle-aged. it might have been better for him had he never seen euclid at all. taking his degree in 1608, hobbes became tutor in the family of the earls of devonshire (cavendish), and, with a few interruptions, was their obliged friend till he died at hardwick hall, built by the famous "bess of hardwick," the she-jailer of mary queen of scots.
hobbes travelled with his pupil, making the acquaintance of foreign men of science. in england, in 1629, a man of 40, hobbes published his first book, a translation of the great athenian historian, thucydides. the english is excellent, but the translation is extremely free, and of no use to the reader who desires a "crib," or literal version. the ideas of thucydides about the qualities of a democracy, as in athens, were congenial to hobbes,[pg 319] while the task of rendering into idiomatic english a writer so condensed as thucydides, combined with study of the other classics, and practice in latin prose composition, made up for the indolence of his youth. in 1631 he became tutor to the new young earl of devonshire, and gave him an admirable education, including law, astronomy, logic, rhetoric and the "opinions of a good christian".
in 1634 he went to paris, florence, and rome with his pupil, returning to england in 1637. he now, at 55, began to reckon himself as a philosopher in a kind of metaphysics, and physics about which he did not know much. an unfortunate accident had led him to read "euclid," book i, proposition 47. "begad," said hobbes, "this is impossible!" he pursued his studies, found out that it was possible, and became convinced that it is also possible to square the circle. easy as it seems, this feat has never been accomplished with pedantic accuracy, and hobbes, from about 60 to 80, was engaged in controversy on the subject.
oxford mathematicians, annoyed by his attacks on the university, replied with scientific precision, and such banter as mathematicians enjoy when they would be merry among themselves. in this long war, hobbes was mercilessly handled, partly by way of discrediting his ideas in politics and religion. he had laid out for himself a system of the universe, "of the body," "of the man," "of the citizen". in the political storm and stress of the great rebellion he wrote, in latin, his book of "the citizen," "de cive," much of which he had already done, with other such work, in english.
these papers had been circulated; hobbes thought himself in danger—it was "time for him to go," and in 1640 he fled to paris. he hated puritans without loving bishops. in 1642 he published "de cive"; he then turned to philosophy, and next worked at his great work on the relations of rulers and ruled, and on religion, called "leviathan". in 1646-1647 he tutored charles, prince of wales, in jersey, and charles always liked him as a witty companion.
in 1647, believing himself to be on the point of death, he behaved in an orthodox manner. to the witness, dr. cosin, later bishop of durham, he always referred when his orthodoxy was[pg 320] doubted. when charles i had been slain, in 1649, hobbes, who in 1650 had published his "human nature," the briefest statement of his general view of mankind, thought of returning home, for now a government, that of cromwell, was firmly seated, and hobbes's main political principle was "settled government".
by 1651 he had "leviathan" fairly written out as a present for charles ii in paris. but the king's advisers thought it a most unholy book (not that charles himself cared, or had a bad opinion of hobbes); he was rebuffed; he was afraid of being murdered for his religion (which, says de quincey, "is a high joke; tom hobbes afraid of suffering for his religion!") and he fled back to england.
hobbes, by 1655, had published his "de corpore," and with that and "leviathan," his most popular work, his philosophy of the universe was before the public. he gives his natural history of religion, as (saving christianity), the result of curiosity about first causes, belief in ghosts (of which he is said to have been afraid), of superstitions about luck, and of priestly imposture designed to keep men in order. in politics he believes in an imaginary state of nature, or anarchy, from which men, who are naturally equals, sought shelter in a contract, never to be broken, with a sovereign power, in fact with the state, though hobbes prefers a single despot. the sovereign is supreme in religion as well as in secular matters, and hobbes hates nothing more than the so-called "kingdom of christ" of the presbyterian preachers, which really, he says, means their own domination. hobbes's general doctrine, with its reservations and subterfuges, cannot be discussed here: it made enemies for him in every camp, religious and political, and now his unlucky mathematics were fallen upon, while he had an endless controversy with bishop bramhall on the freedom of the will.
at the restoration charles ii renewed his friendly intercourse with his old tutor, granting, him a pension, when hobbes could get it paid. in 1666 he was threatened with a persecution for heresy, and went to church, but did not wait for the sermon.
his "behemoth," a history of the civil war, was suppressed by the king, and was posthumously published. he translated the "iliad" and the "odyssey" into very poor verse; he wrote his[pg 321] autobiography in latin verse, and was still writing in 1679 when he died on 4 december.
the style of hobbes is lucid and succinct, without added ornaments. he had a clear idea of what he wanted to say, though inconsistencies appear as his mood varied, or as his argument led him into difficult places. his ideas provoked many replies which pervade english literature for long after his death; but such exercises in psychology and metaphysics belong rather to the history of philosophy than of literature. the doctrine of hobbes is not optimistic. "when all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man, by victory or death." the idea is that expressed in a greek poem "the cypria," of about 750 b.c. hobbes thought himself an authority on epic poetry, among other things, and especially commended, in davenant's "gondibert," the really pleasing passage which describes the birth of love in the heart of bertha. hobbes expanded his ideas about the epic in his translation of homer. we do not know what he thought of "paradise lost".
izaak walton.
born near stafford in 1593, izaak walton went to london, lived in fleet street, two doors west of chancery lane, and was in business as an ironmonger. donne the poet was then vicar of the neighbouring church of st. dunstan's; walton and he became friends: walton was also intimate with hales of eton, sir henry wotton, bishop king, and ben jonson. in 1640 walton's brief life of donne, already quoted, was published. in 1651 walton had the dangerous task of carrying secretly to a royalist in london the smaller george jewel of charles ii, after the king's crushing defeat at worcester, on 3 september. a royalist and a sound churchman (his wives were of the families of cranmer and ken), walton's natural cheerfulness, his sincere religion, and his habit of angling "with n. and r. roe," were needed to keep him from melancholy in the evil days of 1642-1660. but he, for a writer of his age, is strangely free from the melancholy then in fashion, and his "compleat angler," first[pg 322] published in 1653, might have been composed in days of idyllic peace. this famous work is too well known to need description or praise. the natural history is as fantastic as that of euphues, the instructions on angling come from a mere fisher with bait, but the beauty of the style, the sweetness of the thought, keep the book fresh as with lavender and rosemary. to later editions charles cotton and colonel venables added practical instruction on fly fishing, up stream, in clear water like cotton's own dove in derbyshire. the brief biographies by walton of donne, wotton, herbert, hooker, and sanderson are little masterpieces in their manner.
walton lived in old age at farnham with bishop morley and then at winchester where he doubtless fished with worm in the pellucid streams of the itchen. walton's connexion with a pastoral poem "thealma and clearchus," is of doubtful nature. was he author, or did he edit the work of chalkhill? he died at the age of 90, and is buried in winchester cathedral. byron is almost the only critic who has thrown a stone at the kind memory of izaak walton, to which wordsworth devoted a sonnet.
john bunyan.
the two writers of this period whose works now come most closely home "to men's bosoms and business" are john bunyan and izaak walton. copies of the little plain volumes clad in sheepskin which they published at a shilling or eighteen-pence, fetch spurns like ￡1000, more or less, when they come into the market. the masterpieces of both are constantly being republished, and though perhaps few people have a fairly good knowledge of the contents of "the pilgrim's progress," or "the compleat angler," yet most people have had these works in their hands.
the popularity of bunyan, the non-resisting ever-preaching dissenter; and of walton, the angling churchman, rests to a great extent on their characters. differing as they did about the right of bishops to exist, and about justification by faith, could the two men have met, and kept off these topics, they would "have had good talk". each had abundant humour, each was a keen observer of nature and of human nature, each was a lover of[pg 323] peace, each had a modest little fount of poetry within him. of each it may be said, as of scott, "he is such a friendly writer," and each is plain and intelligible, bunyan had no artifices of style, though walton sometimes, by study, is able to rival the harmonies of sip thomas browne.
bunyan, who came of a very old landed family which had steadily lost all its lands to the last acre, was born in a cottage at elstow, near bedford, in 1628. he was taught reading and writing; and pursued his father's trade—that recommended by mr. dick for david copperfield,—he was a brasier, or tinker, but not a wandering tinker. in early youth he was a leader in sports and games; you would have said "he wasna the stuff they made whigs o'". far from that, a native genius for expression first declared itself in his being "the ungodliest fellow for swearing"—which was not recognized as a literary exercise. he was under arms, like other lads of his age, but we have no reason to suppose that he was ever under fire, and his militia (parliamentary, probably) was soon disbanded.
in his "grace abounding for the chief of sinners" (1666) he writes his religious autobiography; a work composed in prison, to which he was consigned because he would not cease to be instant in preaching. "the philistines understand me not," he says in his preface. he writes for lowly devotees, "have you forgot the close, the milk house, the stable, the barn, and the like where god did visit your souls,"—with "terrors of conscience and fears of death and hell?" even in his joyous youth, bunyan had dreamed of "devils and wicked spirits," which probably did not trouble shakespeare or walton. at 9 years old he suffered from the nightmares that haunted r. l. stevenson. his book is the most vivid description possible of the life of an imaginative lad, standing between gross pleasures and terrors of hell. a voice and an appearance came to him while playing at a kind of rudimentary cricket: he went on playing, but fell into religious hypochondria. the vividness of his imagination conjured up such scenery as he uses in his great allegory: he beheld comforting words "that seemed to be writ in great letters," and so at last found consolation in faith.
thus, and in his conflicts against the magistrates, he acted[pg 324] and suffered, in his youth, all the adventures of his own christian and faithful, in "the pilgrim's progress" (published in 1678). he left an unfading picture of some elements in english society: seventy years later he might have been a fielding. "he was a born novelist," it has been said: but the novels of his day were the interminable romances of the french type of scudéry. his "grace abounding" is as brilliant in its way as the "confessions of saint augustine". his secular characters in "the pilgrim's progress" are as good, by way of sketches, as are the finished portraits in "tom jones".
in 1680 he published "the life and death of mr. badman"; in which mr. wiseman gives convincing reasons for his opinion "that mr. badman has gone to hell". mr. badman, in life's gay morn, like st. augustine, had "great pleasure in robbing orchards and gardens". "the beginning of the lord's day was, to mr. badman, as if he was going to prison." as for his eloquence he was "a damme blade". in literature his taste was all for "beastly romances". in church he either slept or flirted, like mr. pepys. in the long run, mr. badman departed from his prodigal life, "quietly, peaceably, and like a lamb". it cannot be said of mr. badman that he had no redeeming vices; he was ill-tempered and envious; he occasionally went on the high toby lay, and his masterpiece was a fraudulent bankruptcy. mr. badman is amusing, but his history, interwoven with many strong and simple anecdotes of other ruffians, cannot be compared in merit with "the pilgrim's progress," where the characters are so many and various; the imagination so vivid, many passages so rich in poetic qualities, and the language so simple. it is a great prose epic, a great novel of the road; and beside it "the holy war" is tame and indistinct.
bunyan wrote many works, now forgotten, on religious themes, and in controversial style his weapon was the cudgel. in his later days he was the most popular of dissenting preachers. he died just before "king james was walked out of his kingdom," in 1688. if critics sneered at bunyan throughout the nineteenth century, dr. johnson, at least, heartily appreciated the genius of the non-conformist brasier.
[pg 325]
with bunyan-the student of the religious ferment of england in his age may well read the "journal" of the founder of the society of friends, quakers, george fox (1624-1691). like bunyan, fox was an untrained thinker and author; like bunyan he was persecuted: he had not the genius, but he had the art of bunyan in drawing "with his eye on the object".
clarendon.
edward hyde, later earl of clarendon (1609-1674) of a cheshire family, was educated at magdalen hall, in oxford, and proceeded to the middle temple. he inherited his family's property, was distinguished for his legal knowledge, sat in parliament when the strife between the king and the parliament began, and took part in preparing the indictment against the great strafford. none the less, when a general attack was made on the order of bishops, he came over to the king's party, in 1641; and in 1646 accompanied the young prince of wales in his flights and wanderings, in march, to the scilly isles (where he began his history), and presently to jersey. he remained with charles ii after the death of charles i, and, if he and montrose had been heard, the young king would never have disgraced himself by signing the covenant; and consequently his cause would never have been defeated at dunbar, nor his very life imperilled after worcester fight.
clarendon, seven years after the restoration, was banished by the influence of faction, as thucydides was exiled at an early period of the war which he chronicles. it is not conceivable that histories written in such circumstances should be free from partisanship and bias: in fact no historians are exempt from prejudice.
clarendon's history was, in the making, somewhat of a patchwork. what he wrote far away from books and papers, in 1646-1648, depends much on his memory: the book improves when he obtains contemporary narratives and letters. in exile, in 1668-1670 he wrote a life of himself, which he later interwove with his "history of the rebellion". clarendon's heirs did not permit the publication of his history till 1704, from regard to the feelings of the descendants of the king's opponents. the book, in one[pg 326] respect, resembles the history of the peloponnesian war by thucydides. much of it was written during the actual course of the events by one who bore a great part in them.
whether in favour or in exile, clarendon was too loyal to say all that he knew and thought about charles i and charles ii. but when we look at his pages "touching the scottish canons," which preceded the despotic introduction of the liturgy, the cause of "the bishops' wars" (1639), we perceive, the fairness of clarendon. he makes it perfectly clear that these canons could only be accepted by a people inclined tamely to endure the worst excesses of tyranny. but, on scottish affairs, clarendon is not always trustworthy; for example he dislocates the dates as to the general assembly of 1638, permitted (though he does not say so) by the king, and the subscribing of the covenant, which he places after the assembly. mr. gardiner, a fair historian, speaks of clarendon's "usual habit of blundering". in his remarks on the catholics, too, under charles i, clarendon can scarcely be acquitted of unfairness; considering how bitterly, in scotland at least, they were persecuted under charles i, and how loyally they stood by him.
however, a historical examination of clarendon's great work is not here in place. the occasional defect of his style is the enormous bulk of some of his sentences. two occupy two large pages and each contains some 400 words. here are structureless agglutinations of parentheses: with the promising word "lastly" left stranded far from the conclusion. but such examples are not very common, and clarendon describes action and intrigue with lucidity, and especially excels in his set pieces, delineations of characters, for example of cromwell[1] and argyll. his "characters" may not be exact, of course, but his knowledge of secret motives was extensive, and such knowledge, if not always accurate, is ever entertaining. all histories, as sources of knowledge, are sure to be superseded by the discoverer of new information. but the history of clarendon can never cease to be of the highest interest, moral, political, and personal. he possessed, in his own[pg 327] words, "the genius, spirit, and soul of an historian," combined with knowledge of great affairs, important personages, and intrigues of court.
among writers of prose of the age it would be ungrateful not to mention an author so familiar and readable as the gossiping james howell (1594-1666) of the "epistol? ho-elian?," a favourite bedside book of thackeray. howell was imprisoned by the puritans, and wrote essays in form of letters which are full of curious anecdotes and reminiscences of travel.
much later comes the prince of gossips, mr. samuel pepys (1633-1703), whose diary in shorthand, written for his personal diversion, can never cease to divert, and, in a way, as a picture of a strange age and a strange character, to instruct. each new dip into mr. pepys's manuscript, by each bolder editor, makes us like him less from the extended candour of his unparalleled confessions, which is a pity.
john evelyn (1620-1706) depicts the same period as pepys, as it was seen by a gentleman of stainless honour, unblemished virtue, and great curiosity in the arts, and in the nascent science. his diary is much more entertaining than his memoir of the lady in the "comus" of the merry monarch's court, the lovely and religious mistress margaret godolphin (née blague), to whom evelyn was virtuously devoted.
roger north (1653-1733), is admirably readable, and very modern in the tone of his satire of the godly whigs, in the "examen,"—when he drops into slang it is with the careless grace of thackeray. his "lives of the norths," himself and his brothers, is most interesting.
[1] to him he attributes a coarse pun which might seem more familiar in the mouth of james i.
