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of Cowley, immense in his own day, has much diminished, which is to be attributed to that abuse of intellectual ingenuity, that passion for learned, far-fetched, and recondite illustrations which was to a certain extent the vice of his age. He has very little passion of depth of sentiment; and in his love-verses—a kind of composition then thought obligatory on all who were ambitious of the name of poet-he substitutes the play of the intellect for the unaffected outpouring of the feelings. He was deeply versed both in Greek and Latin literature, and his imitations, paraphrases, and translations show perfect knowledge of his originals and great mastery over the resources of the English language. He paraphrased the Odes of Anacreon; and his Pindarics were "written in imitation of the Stile and Manner of Pindar;" but these odes have only an external resemblance with those of the "Theban Eagle." They have the irregularity of form-only an apparent irregularity in the case of the Greek originals, which, it must be remembered, were written to be accompanied by that Greek music of whose structure nothing is now known-but they have not that intense and concentrated fire which burns with an inextinguishable ardour, like the product of some chemical combustion, in the great Bœotian lyrist. Cowley seems always on the watch to seize some ingenious and unexpected parallelism of ideas or images; and when the illustration is so found, the shock of surprise which the reader feels is rather akin to a flash of wit than to an electric stroke of genius. Cowley lived at the moment when the revolution inaugurated by Bacon was beginning to produce its first fruits. The Royal Society, then recently founded, was astonishing the world, and astonishing its own members, by the immense horizon opening before the bold pioneers of the Inductive Philosophy. In this mighty movement Cowley deeply sympathised; and perhaps the finest of his lyric compositions are those in which, with a grave and well-adorned eloquence, he proclaims the genius and predicts the triumphs of Bacon and his disciples in physical science.

One long epic poem of great pretension Cowley meditated but left unfinished. This is the Davideis, the subject of which is the sufferings and glories of the King of Israel. But this work is now completely neglected. Biblical personages and events have rarely, with the solitary and sublime exception of Milton, been transported with success out of the majestic language of Scripture; and it may be maintained, without much fear of contradiction, that the rhymed heroic couplet-the measure employed by Cowley-is not a form of versification capable of supporting the attention of the reader through a lofty epic narrative. The genius of Cowley was far more lyric than epic: and in his shorter compositions he exerted that influence upon the style of English poetry which tended very much,

during nearly two centuries, to modify it very perceptibly, and which is especially traceable in the writings of Dryden, Pope, and generally in the next succeeding generations.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

OTHER POETS.

JOHN TAYLOR (1580?-1654), known as the "Water-poet," or "the Sculler," was born in Gloucestershire, and after some service in the navy in his youth, about the year 1630 set up in London as a waterman, and in that capacity made wherry voyages along the coasts. Possessing a rough natural humour and a facile pen, he composed various strange productions-The Travels of Twelvepence, The Praise of Beggary and Begging, The World runs on Wheels, The Praise of a Jail, and the excellent Mystery and necessary use of all sorts of Hanging, &c. King James used to say jocularly that he knew no verses equal to "the Sculler's."

WILLIAM CHAMBERLAYNE (1619-1689), a physician at Shaftesbury, in Dorsetshire, wrote Pharonnida, an heroic poem, in five books, wmch contains some vigorous passages, but the versification is rugged, and the style slovenly and quaint. Chamberlayne is also the author of a tragicomedy entitled Love's Victory, acted after the Restoration under the new title of Wits led by the Nose, or the Poet's Revenge.

CHARLES COTTON (1630-1687), best known as the friend of Izaak Walton, had an estate in Derbyshire upon the river Dove, celebrated for its trout. He wrote several humorous poems, and his Voyage to Ireland, Campbell remarks, seems to anticicipate the manner of Anstey in the Bath Guide.

HENRY VAUGHAN (1621-1695), a native of Wales, born in Brecknockshire, first bred to the law, which he afterwards relinquished for the profession of physic. He published in 1651 a volume of miscellaneous poems. Campbell says of him that "he is one of the harshest even of the inferior order of the school of conceit; but he has some scattered thoughts that meet our eye amid his harsh pages, like wild flowers on a barren heath."

DR. HENRY KING (1591-1669), chaplain to James I., and afterwards bishop of Chichester, wrote chiefly religious poetry. I

His thoughts are elevated, and his language is choice. His style is not free from the conceits so fashionable in the writers of this age, but the little fancies he indulges are chaste and full of beauty.

JOHN CLEVELAND (1613-1658), son of a Leicestershire clergyman, distinguished himself as a soldier and poet on the king's side during the Civil War. In 1647 he published a severe satire on the Scotch; was imprisoned in 1655, was released by Cromwell, but died soon after. Some of his writings are amatory, and though conceited contain true poetry. It is said that Butler borrowed not a little from him in his Hudibras.

SIR RICHARD FANSHAWE (1607-1666), brother of Lord Fanshawe, and secretary to Prince Rupert. He was made ambassador to Spain by Charles II., and died at Madrid. He translated Camoens' Lusiad, and the Pastor Fido of Guarini. He wrote also some minor poems. His song, The Saint's Encouragement, 1643, is full of clever satire, and all his verse is forcible, with here and there a touch of the true poet's beauty.

THOMAS STANLEY (1625-1678), a native of Hertfordshire, studied at Cambridge, and entered the Middle Temple. In 1651 he published some poems, chiefly on the tender passion, full of beautiful thought and happy fancy, but marked by the too common quaintness of the times.

DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE (d. 1673). daughter of Sir Charles Lucas, and maid of honour to Queen Henrietta Maria. In 1653 she published Poems and Fancieswas assisted by her husband in many of her writings, according to Horace Walpole in the Royal and Noble Authors. Twelve folio volumes were issued by the industrious marquis and his wife, but the value of the writings is not great.

MRS. KATHERINE PHILIPS (1631-1664), . a Cardiganshire lady, known by the name of Orinda, exceedingly popular as a writer with her contemporaries. Her style is more free than that of most of the poets of the age from quaintness and conceit,

CHAPTER X.

THEOLOGICAL WRITERS OF THE CIVIL WAR AND THE COMMONWEALTH,

§ 1. Theological writers. JOHN HALES and WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH. § 2. SIR THOMAS BROWNE. §3. THOMAS FULLER. § 4. JEREMY TAYLOR. His Life. § 5. His Liberty of Prophesying and other works. § 6, His style compared with Spenser. § 7. RICHARD BAXTER. Quakers: Fox, PENN, and BARCLAY.

The

§ 1. THE Civil War, which led to the temporary overthrow of the ancient monarchy of England, was in many respects a religious as well as a political contest. It was a struggle for liberty of faith at least as much as for liberty of civil government. The prose literature of this time, therefore, as well as of a period extending considerably beyond it, exhibits a strong religious or theological character. The blood of martyrs, it has been said, is the seed of the Church; and the alternate triumphs and persecutions, through which passed both the Anglican Church and the multiplicity of rival sects which now arose, naturally developed to the highest degree both the intellectual powers and the Christian energies of their adherents. The most glorious outburst of theological eloquence which the Church of England has exhibited, in the writings of Jeremy Taylor, Barrow, and the other great Anglican Fathers, was responded to by the appearance, in the ranks of the sectaries, of many remarkable men, some hardly inferior in learning and genius to the leaders whose doctrines they opposed, while others, with a ruder yet more burning enthusiasm, were the founders of dissenting communions, as in the case of the Quakers.

JOHN HALES (1584-1656), surnamed "the ever-memorable John Hales," was a man who enjoyed among his contemporaries an immense reputation for the vastness of his learning and the acuteness of his wit. He was born in 1584, and in the earlier part of his life had acquired, by travel and diplomatic service in foreign countries, a vast amount not only of literary knowledge but practical acquaintance with men and affairs: he afterwards retired to the learned obscurity of a Fellowship of Eton College, where he passed the sad and dangerous years filled with civil contention. During part of this time his writings and opinions rendered him so obnoxious to the dominant party that a price was set upon his head, and he was obliged to hide, being at the same time reduced to the

extremest, privations. He for some time subsisted by the sale of his books. He died in 1656, and left behind him the reputation of one of the most solid and yet acutest intellects that his country had produced. The greater part of his writings are controversial, treating on the politico-religious questions that then agitated men's minds. He had been present at the Synod of Dort, and has given an interesting account of the questions debated in that assembly. While attending its sittings as an agent for the English Church he was converted from the Calvinistic opinions he had hitherto held to those of the Episcopalian divines. Both in his controversial writings and in his sermons he exhibits a fine example of that rich yet chastened eloquence which characterises the great English divines of the seventeenth century, and which was carried to the highest pitch of gorgeous magnificence by Taylor and of majestic grandeur by Barrow.

WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH (1602-1644), also an eminent defender of Protestantism against the Church of Rome, was converted to the Roman Catholic faith while studying at Oxford, and went to the Jesuits' College at Douay. But he subsequently returned to Oxford, renounced his new faith, and published in 1637 his celebrated work against Catholicism, entitled The Religion of the Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation, in reply to a treatise by a Jesuit, named Knott, who had maintained that unrepenting Protestants could not be saved. "In the long parenthetical periods," observes Mr. Hallam, 66 as in those of other old English writers, in his copiousness, which is never empty or tautological, there is an inartificial eloquence springing from strength of intellect and sincerity of feeling that cannot fail to impress the reader. But his chief excellence is the close reasoning which avoids every dangerous admission, and yields to no ambiguousness of language. He perceived and maintained with great courage, considering the times in which he wrote and the temper of those whom he was not unwilling to keep as friends, his favourite tenet, that all things necessary to be believed are clearly laid down in Scripture. In later times his

book obtained a high reputation; he was called the immortal Chillingworth; he was the favourite of all the moderate and the latitudinarian writers, of Tillotson, Locke, and Warburton."

§ 2. The writings of Sir THOMAS BROWNE (1605-1682), though not exclusively theological, belong, chronologically as well as by their style and manner, to this department. Both as a man and a writer this is one of the most peculiar and eccentric of our great prose-authors; and the task of giving a clear appreciation of him is unusually difficult. He was an exceedingly learned man, and passed the greater part of his life in practising physic in the ancient city of Norwich. It should be remembered that the great provincial

towns at that time had not been degraded to that insignificance to which the modern facility of intercourse has reduced them in relation to the Metropolis: they were then so many little capitals, possessing their society, their commercial activity, and their local physiognomy, and had not yet been swallowed up by the monster London. Browne was born in 1605, and his life was unusually prolonged, as he died in 1682. His writings are of a most miscellaneous character, ranging from observations on natural science to the most arduous subtleties of moral and metaphysical speculation. Among the most popular of his works are the treatise entitled Hydriotaphia, or UrnBurial, and the Essays on Vulgar Errors, which bear the name of Pseudoxia Epidemica. The first of these treatises was suggested by the digging up in Norfolk of some Roman funeral urns, and the other is an attempt to overthrow many of the common superstitions and erroneous notions on various subjects. But a mere specification of the subject will altogether fail to give an idea of Browne's strange but fascinating writings. They are the frank and undisguised outpourings of one of the most original minds that ever existed. With the openness, and discursive simplicity of Montaigne, they combine immense and recondite reading: at every step the author starts some extraordinary theory, which he illustrates by analogies so singular and unexpected that they produce upon the reader a mingled feeling of amusement and surprise, and all this in a style absolutely bristling with quaint Latinisms, which in another writer would be pedantic, but in Browne were the natural garb of his thought. His diction is stiff with scholastic terms, like the chasuble of some mediæval prelate, thick-set with pearl and ruby. The contrast between the simplicity of Browne's character and the out-of-the-way learning and odd caprices of theory in which he is perpetually indulging, makes him one of the most amusing of writers; and he very frequently rises to a sombre and touching eloquence. Though deeply religious in sentiment he is sometimes apparently sceptical, and his sudden turns of thought and strange comparisons keep the attention of the reader continually awake. He stands almost alone in his passion for pursuing an idea through every conceivable manifestation; and his ingenuity on such occasions is absolutely portentous. For instance, in a treatise on the Quincunx he finds quincunxes on the earth, in the waters, and in the heavens, nay, in the very intellectual constitution of the soul. He has a particular tendency to dwell on the dark mysteries of time and of the universe, and makes us thrill with the solemnity with which he suggests the nothingness of mortal life, and the insignificance of human interests when compared to the immeasurable ages that lie before and behind us. In all Sir Thomas Browne's works an intimate companionship is established between the writer and the reader; but the book in which

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