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Puritan and Anglican: 
 
 STUDIES IN LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD DOWDEN 
 
 LL.D. (DUBLIN), HON. LL.D. (EDINBURGH), HON D.C.I.. (OXFORD), 
 
 HON. LL.D. (PRINCETON) 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 .v,^ 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 I 90 I 
 
'^ 
 
 ^\^ 
 
 V 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 PRINTED liY 
 
 TURNBULL AND SPEARS 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 
E. D. D. 
 
 "Truly, for mine own part, if I were as tedious] as a king, I 
 could find it in my heart to bestow it all of your worship ; yea, 
 an' 'twere a thousand pound more than 'tis." 
 
 9234S 
 
PKEFACE 
 
 The first article in this volume is reprinted from 
 The Contemporary Review ; the rest of the volume 
 has been hitherto unpublished. The Puritan writers 
 with whom I deal are such as to render the title 
 " Puritan and Anglican " not inexact, although many 
 of the Puritan party were loyal members of the 
 Anglican Communion. 
 
 In choosing my subjects 1 have been influenced by 
 two things ; first, I have spoken only of writers with 
 whom I have dwelt long and intimately ; and secondly, 
 among such writers I have spoken only of those who 
 move me to speak through some personal interest 
 which I feel in the men or their work. Hence without 
 scruple or regret I omit many great names, being 
 here content to indulge my own likings. 
 
 I have desired to remain close to my subjects. 
 In many passages, for example, of what I have written 
 on Herbert and Vaughan, it is Herbert and Vaughan 
 who are in fact the speakers ; but I did not think 
 it necessary to encumber my pages with a crowd of 
 references to scattered poems from which their thoughts 
 and phrases have been collected. 
 
viii Preface 
 
 I write not as a controversialist but as a student 
 of literature. Literature, however, and especially what 
 , is most valuable in seventeenth-century literature, 
 , / cannot be studied without reference to the history 
 of religion. All these writers, except Hooker, belong 
 to the seventeenth century ; and the influence of 
 Hooker, who died in 1600, was in great measure 
 posthumous. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. 
 
 Puritanism and English Literature . . . 1 
 
 Sources of the greatness of Elizabethan literature — Decline of 
 the drama — Art and politics — Was the work of the Renaissance 
 interrupted ? — Separation of individual religious life and national 
 life — The Catholic and the Puritan religious spirit — DiflBculty in 
 Puritanism for art — The sensuous medium — Baxter's testimony 
 — Dominant idea of Puritanism — Its cardinal error— How the 
 invisible is embodied by Puritanism — Hebrew literature supplies 
 an imaginative medium — Schoolmen of the Pieformation — The 
 fabric of doctrine — Morals and casuistry — The Puritan gentle- 
 man — His culture — Inwardness balanced by public duty — Body 
 of inspiring ideas — Co-oiDcrancy with God — Hortatory literature 
 — Moral restraint and art — Popular sympathies. 
 
 II. 
 
 Sir Thomas Browne . . . . .35 
 
 His unique character in his own age — Connection with the 
 scientific^ movement — Whitef oot's reminiscences — Browne in his 
 family — His sons Edward and Tom — " Religio Medici " — Its plan 
 — Feeling for ceremony — His heresies — His mysticism — His 
 view of nature — Final causes — Providence — Angels and demons 
 — Scale of being — Charity — Love of woman — Music — Wonder 
 in common things — " Christian morals " — " Garden of Cyrus " — 
 "Letter to a friend" — " Hydriotaphia " — Coleridge's criticism 
 — Concluding section — Browne's gift to his age. 
 
 III. 
 
 Richard Hooker ...... Qd 
 
 Belongs to both Renaissance and Reformation — Walton's art 
 as biographer — Hooker's peaceable spirit — His conduct of con- 
 troversy — ^Personal traits — Marriage — Hooker and Travers — 
 "Ecclesiastical Polity," state of the text — Historical character 
 
Contents 
 
 of the English Church — Puritanism dogmatic and not historical 
 — Hooker's comprehensive grasp of truth — The Puritan position 
 and that of Hooker— First Book of '* Ecclesiastical Polity "—The 
 reign of law — Law of man's nature — Human society under law 
 — Laws regulating supernatural duties — Reason and revelation 
 — Positive laws of two kinds — Which are permanent and which 
 transitory — Hooker's originality — Scripture and reason — Human 
 authority — Conception of the Church — Episcopacy — The fifth 
 Book — Tolerance and its limits — Cautions to rash reformers. 
 
 IV. 
 Anglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert, Vaughan . . 97 
 
 Herbert and Keble— Crisis in Herbert's life—" The Pilgrim " 
 — Desire for inward coherence — How to obtain this — Dignity 
 and poverty of man — The age of wonder renewed— God 
 the strategist — Humility and obedience leading to peace — 
 Fluctuations of feeling — Yet a link in God's great chain 
 — Herbert's pious fantasies — His love of beauty — Satisfied by 
 beauty in the Anglican Communion — Simplicity and severity 
 
 — The Christian Year — Prayer — The poem "Love" — The 
 "Country Parson" — Ideal of the parson's life — Herbert and 
 Vaughan contrasted — Vaughan an illumine — His love of light 
 
 — His nostalgia — Vaughan and Wordsworth — His "Rules 
 and Lessons" — Richard Crashaw — The mystic of flame— His 
 infirmities as a poet. 
 
 V. 
 
 Milton : Civil Liberty . . . . .133 
 
 Liberty and obedience the sum of Milton's writings — The 
 transitory and the abiding elements in his prose — Pamphlets 
 on divorce — The central proposition — Ideal of marriage — Con- 
 troversial violence — Ends of marriage — For labour and for rest 
 — Letter on education — Liberty and a higher rule in education 
 — Its religious end — Uses of an ideal — Intellectual, moral, 
 aesthetic, physical training — Ideal of the Renaissance on a 
 Christian foundation— Freedom in publishing opinions— Per- 
 petual search for truth the law of liberty— Confidence in the 
 nation of England— Sir John Seeley on Milton's politico— 
 ' ' Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth "— 
 Centralisation and decentralisation— The good old cause. 
 
 VI. 
 Milton II. — Ecclesiastical and Theological Liberty : 
 
 Poems ...... 1^ 
 
 Need of discipline— True and false glory of the Church— A 
 
Contents xi 
 
 humility that soars — Material splendoiu-s in religion— Proposal 
 for State-aided pleasures — Eeligious freedom — Hirelings in the 
 Church — An unordained clerisy — Theological liberty — Treatise 
 on Christian Doctrine — Dogma behind the poetry — Milton's 
 materialism — Matter honoured — Man not composed of soul and 
 body — What death means — Freedom of the will — Doctrine of 
 the Trinity — Obedience the central idea of the poems — "Comus" 
 — "Paradise Lost " — " Paradise Regained "—Its ideal Hebraic — 
 Active obedience — "Samson Agonistes." 
 
 VII. 
 
 An Anglican and a Puritan Eirenicon — Jeremy 
 
 Taylor : Baxter ..... 197 
 
 Rust's delineation of Taylor — Taylor's zeal — Katharine Philips 
 — Taylor on friendship — His bravura passages — His large ordon- 
 nance in composition — His fervour — " Lukewarmness and Zeal" 
 — His courageous teaching — Dangers of zeal — " Liberty of 
 Prophesying " — " Via Intelligentiije " — Temper in which to seek 
 truth — Theology "a divine life" — False ways of peace — The 
 true way — Truth implicit in goodness — Baxter's autobiography 
 — Efforts towards conciliation — His scrupulosity — Bodily in- 
 firmities — Zeal yet detachment from party — The preacher of 
 Kidderminster — His writings — The minister's wife — His breviate 
 of her life — Changes wrought in him by time and experience 
 — His best Eirenicon. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 John Bunyan ...... 232 
 
 Bunyan more than a representative of Piu-itanism — Would an 
 Anglican Bunyan be possible ? — Personal and universal elements 
 in his writings — How serviceable for modern minds — "Grace 
 Abounding " — Realisation of the unseen — Bunyan and public 
 affairs — Accusation of otherworldliness — Uncertainty of his re- 
 lig'"U3 progress — Visions and locutions — Function of fear — A 
 solitary — Macaulay on Bunyan — The Bible a book of magic — 
 Its influence on his imagination — His spiritual deliverance — 
 Saving good sense — A portrait painter — Mr Badman — Two chief 
 forms of allegory — "Holy War " — Origin of ' ' Pilgrim's Progress " 
 — The Second Part — Need of vigilance—" Piers the Plowman" 
 — "The Faerie Queene" — Change in the spirit of the age — 
 Robinson Crusoe — The epic of self-help — Tools and the man — 
 Growth in religious tolerance. 
 
 sy 
 
xii Contents 
 
 i-^. PAGE 
 
 Samuel Butler ...... 279 
 
 A slinger under the banner of good sense — Gloom beneath 
 his wit — Weakness and misery of man — The understanding his 
 citadel — A world of unreason — Unreason of enthusiasts — Un- 
 reason of sots — Unreason of science — Wit and the understanding 
 — " Elephant in the moon " — Imperfection and abuse of human 
 learning — Indictment of Puritanism — Butler's verse — Compos- 
 ing in fragments — Heroic and mean satire — " Hudibras " — Seri- 
 ous yet a drollery — Characters of knight and squire — Unreason 
 discursive and unreason intuitive — The incidents — Puritan 
 sophistications — Duke of Buckingham and Butler — Influence 
 of Selden. 
 
 X. 
 
 Transition to the Eighteenth Century . .311 
 
 A time for provisional arrangements and compromises — 
 Halifax — Character of a Trimmer — Spirit of the Revolution — ^ 
 Religious toleration — Locke — Essay on Human Understanding 
 
 — The scientific movement — Macaulay's theory — Scientific 
 movement a European phenomenon — Rationalising of theology 
 — The Church and Deism —Robert South — Honour to reason — 
 His criticism of Puritanism — Condemns the unreason of 
 voluptuaries — John Eachard — Grounds of contempt of the 
 clergy — False learning — Strained metaphors — Division of texts 
 
 — Tillotson — His reasonable piety — Addison's ecclesiastical 
 thermometer — Religion in the eighteenth century — Fielding's 
 parsons — Mr Booth's conversion. 
 
PUEITANISM AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 The greatness of Elizabethan literature arose from the 
 unity of the national mind, in which the streams of the 
 Renaissance and the Reformation had met and mincfled. 
 The enthusiasm of the years that followed the destruc- 
 tion of the Spanish Armada fused together powers which 
 often work in opposition or apart. Reason, passion, and 
 imagination co-operated one with another, and through 
 their co-operancy gave substance and form to the poetry 
 of Shakespeare and of Spenser, to the prose of Bacon and 
 of Hooker. The literature of pleasure had never before 
 attained to such seriousness in beauty, the literature of 
 knowledge had never before been so infused with ima- 
 ginative power. In such works as " Hamlet," " Measure 
 for Measure," and " The Tempest " there is a depth of 
 reflection equal to their heights of poetical vision. Spenser 
 is at once a weaver of dreams and a teacher of truth. 
 Hooker cannot discuss the sign of the cross in baptism 
 or the rites of burial until he has first expounded his 
 magnificent conception of the universe under a reign of 
 law. The scientific writings of Bacon — later as these 
 are in date — are the utterances of a great imaginative 
 seer rather than of a fully equipped scientific student. 
 If his nature was lacking in passion of other kinds, he 
 had assuredly an unbounded passion for universal know- 
 
 A ^ 
 
2 • Puritanism and English Literature 
 
 ledge, and for the power to enhance the worth of human 
 life which knowledge confers. But gradually in the 
 history of our literature there was a descent from the 
 heights. The unity of the national mind was broken 
 or impaired. Passion in large measure transferred itself 
 from literature to the affairs of politics and religion. 
 Eeason, confronted with urgent practical problems, grew 
 perplexed. Imagination waned, and often yielded to 
 the seductions of easy and vulgar pleasure. A period 
 of doubt and difficulty followed a period of steadfast and 
 daring advance. Two doctrines in religion arrayed them- 
 selves each against the other. Two parties in the State 
 entered upon a great contention. Two theories of life 
 and conduct stood opposed. All things tended towards 
 a vast disruption ; and in the strife of King and Com- 
 monwealth, of Puritan and of Anglican, that disruption 
 was accomplished. 
 
 The chief glory of Elizabethan literature was the 
 drama, with the deepest passion and the most heroic 
 actions of humanity for its theme. It had its basis in 
 what is most real in the life of man, and what is real 
 was interpreted into the highest meanings by imagina- 
 tion. During the later years of the reign of James I. 
 and during the reign of Charles the drama lost touch 
 with reality ; it was cut off from its true basis of supply. 
 It advanced with a showy gallantry, but its strength and 
 solidity of movement were gone. It relied too often, as 
 with Massinger and Fletcher, on overstrained, fantastic 
 motives. It deserted the substantial ground of national 
 history. It endeavoured to excite a jaded imagination 
 with extravagances of romantic passion or even of un- 
 
PuritanisTH and English Literattcre 3 
 
 natural lust. It sought for curiosities of prettiness in 
 sentiment and imagery. It supported its decline by 
 splendours appealing to the senses ; vast sums of money 
 were expended upon the masque. It grew shallow in 
 true passion and meditative wisdom. It grew rhetori- 
 cal ; its moralities are often those of eloquent periods. 
 And if at times less rudely gross than the earlier drama, 
 it was infected with a subtler and a baser spirit of evil. 
 Nor do other forms of poetry compensate the decline of 
 the drama. While much in the Jacobean and Caroline 
 lyric poetry is admirable in its kind, a charming inter- 
 mixture of nature with art, of grace with gay effrontery, 
 it does not often deal with the great lyric themes in a 
 spirit of serious beauty ; it ceases to be in any large sense 
 an interpretation of life. 
 
 To us, looking back upon the period, the literature 
 of pleasure may be worth far more than its theological 
 treatises or its political pamphlets : grace and gaiety are 
 always welcome gifts, fresh and living, while the theo- 
 logical and political controversy of the seventeenth 
 century concerns us chiefly as a matter of history. The 
 questions so fiercely debated then are not the questions 
 which concern us to-day, or at least they require for our 
 uses to be re-stated in modern terms. But to a man of 
 serious mind, living in the years which preceded the 
 struggle between the King and the Parliament, the 
 poetry of the time would have appeared as no more 
 than a decorative fringe ; the warp and woof of thought 
 would have been found by him in those folios and 
 quartos on which the dust now gathers in our libraries. 
 The same cannot be said of the contemporaries of Shake- 
 
4 Puritanism and English Literature 
 
 speare or of Spenser: for them the poetry of the 
 time was a large and true interpretation of life. And 
 science and theology were then a genuine portion of 
 literature. 
 
 Was there a check, an interruption, of the higher 
 intellectual life of England ? Yes — to a certain extent. 
 The Renaissance influence in literature, separated from 
 the serious temper of the Reformation, dwindled and 
 suffered degradation ; the spirit of liberty, entangled 
 with politics, set itself to resolve urgent, practical pro- 
 blems, and lost some of its nobler ideality. Human 
 freedom — that indeed was still sought ; but freedom 
 came to mean deliverance from an unjust tax or from 
 an inquisitorial bishop. The spirit of the Reformation 
 separated from the Renaissance influence lost some of 
 its more liberal temper in a narrow Scripturalism and 
 in pettinesses of moral rigour. But the political and 
 religious questions could not be put aside ; they, too, 
 supplied a stern discipline for the intellect ; in their 
 solution an effort was made on behalf of liberty of 
 thought, narrowed in its meaning though liberty of 
 thought might be by the exigencies of the time. The 
 more enli^jhtened Puritanism contained within it a 
 portion of the spirit of the Renaissance. The mun- 
 dane spirit of the Renaissance, in its lower form of 
 commercial interests, by degrees allied itself with 
 Puritanism. The higher tendencies of the Renais- 
 sance re-emerged in the great scientific movement of 
 the second half of the seventeenth century. Through 
 the strife of parties and the tangle of interests a real 
 progress is discernible. 
 
Puritanism and English Literature 5 
 
 Poetical literature, in the years of growing trouble 
 bad in some degree, as bas been said, lost toucb witb 
 reality. The Cavalier poets produced their gallant songs 
 of pleasure, of fancy, of delicate melody ; but they do 
 not, and they did not, sway the life of man. Two 
 things, however, became more real and gravely earnest. 
 One of these concerned the corpQrate_lif e of the jnation 
 — the great contention between King and people. The 
 other concerned primarily the inner life of _the indi- 
 vidual soul. In Elizabethan literature these two things 
 had not fallen apart. Spenser's '' Faerie Queene " deals 
 essentially with the life of the soul and its combat with 
 the various foes and tempters which beset that life ; but 
 it is also a poem concerning the honour and well-being 
 of England. It is a moral or spiritual allegory ; but at 
 the same time it is an historical allegory. Gloriana is 
 at once the glory of God and the Queen of England ; 
 St George is at once the knight of Holiness and the 
 patron saint of England. Shakespeare can search the 
 mysteries of the solitary soul in Hamlet, but he can 
 also celebrate the glories of his country at Agincourt, 
 and raise his chant of patriotic trmmph. Such poetry 
 became impossible in the days of James and of Charles. 
 Men who were interested in public life were putting on 
 their armour* for an internecine struggle. Men who w^ere 
 concerned for the life of the soul, if they did not carry 
 that concern into the public strife and become the zealots 
 of a party, were tempted to retreat from the world of 
 action, like the devout company at Little Gidding or 
 certain of the Puritan fugitives to America, and they 
 nourished the spirit of religion in secret or in little com- 
 
6 Puritanism and English Literature 
 
 munities. The highest Elizabethan literature is at once 
 mundane and, in the truest sense of the word, religious. 
 At a later time the mundane literature became wholly 
 mundane, often even frivolously or basely mundane ; 
 the religious literature, when it ceases from controversy, 
 often ceases to regard the affairs of earth, which is but 
 a City of Destruction or a Vanity Fair, and has its gaze 
 intensely fixed upon another world, where the Saint will 
 attain his Rest. 
 
 II 
 
 One of the first effects of the Protestant Reformation 
 was a quickening of self-consciousness in matters of 
 religion. External rites, ordinances, and ceremonies 
 seemed for many devout men and women to lose much 
 of their virtue. To some they became matters of in- 
 difference ; to others they appeared hostile to^ the true 
 life of the soul. The realm of sense was viewed as if 
 it were separated by a deep gulf from the realm of the 
 spirit. There have, indeed, always existed the two types 
 of mind which we may call the Catholic and the Puritan, 
 to one of which the visible and the invisible are only 
 different aspects of one great reality, while to the other they 
 stand apart as sundered or even as antagonistic powers. 
 In a review of Newman's ''Phases of Faith," written many 
 years ago by the most venerable of recent thinkers, 
 Dr Martineau endeavours to distinguish between these two 
 conceptions of life and the world and of God's relation to 
 it in a passage which it is worth while to quote at some 
 length. According to the Catholic conception the two 
 spheres of sense and spirit seem to melt into each other 
 
Puritanism and English Literature 7 
 
 under themediation of a kind of divine chemistry ; ''hence/' 
 he goes od, ''the invariable presence of some physical 
 element in all that Catholicism looks upon as venerable. 
 Its rites are a manipular invocation of God. Its miracles 
 are examples of incarnate divineness in old clothes and 
 winking pictures. Its ascetic discipline is founded on 
 the notion of a gradual consumption of the grosser body 
 by the encroaching fire of the spirit ; till in the ecstatica 
 the frame itself becomes ethereal and the lic^ht shines 
 through. Nothing can be more offensive than all this 
 to the Evangelical [or, as we may put it, the Puritan] 
 conception, which plants the natural and the spiritual in 
 irreconcilable contradiction, denies to them all approach 
 or contact, and allows each to exist only by the extinction 
 of the other. . . . This unmediated dualism follows 
 the Evangelical into his theory as to the state of each 
 individual soul before God. The Catholic does not deny 
 all divine light to the natural conscience, or all power 
 to the naturjil will of unconverted men : he maintains 
 that these also are already under a law of obligation, 
 may do what is well-pleasing before God, and by superior 
 faithfulness qualify themselves to become subjects of 
 grace ; so that the Gospel shall come upon them as a 
 divine supplement to the sad and feeble moral life of 
 nature. To the Evangelical, on the contrary, the soul 
 that is not saved is lost. . . . So, again, the contrast 
 turns up in the opposite views taken of the divine 
 economy in human affairs. The Evangelical detaches 
 the elect in imagination from the remainino^ mass of 
 men, sequesters them as a holy people, who must not 
 mix themselves with the affairs of Belial. . . . The 
 
8 Puritanism and English Literature 
 
 Catholic, looking on the natural universe, whether 
 material or humao, not as an antagonist but as the 
 receptacle of the spiritual, seeks to conquer the World 
 for the Church, and instead of shunning political action, 
 is ready to grasp it as his instrument." 
 
 The tendency to the one or the other of these religious 
 conceptions, adds Mr Martineau, marks the distinction 
 between two great families of minds. How, we may 
 inquire, does each conception adapt itself to literature 
 and especially to the literature of imagination? We can 
 at once perceive that what has been named the Catholic 
 conception more readily finds that sensuous vehicle for 
 its ideas which literature and art demand. It interprets 
 the invisible by the visible ; it does not suspect beauty 
 or colour or the delight of life, but seeks to inter- 
 penetrate these with what is divine. The danger is 
 that it may mistake what is arbitrary, artificial, or merely 
 traditional for that which is natural, and so may con- 
 struct a body of factitious symbolism instead of discovering 
 the veritable play of what is spiritual in and through 
 what is sensible. Such factitious symbolism debars or 
 diverts the mind from the genuine sources of light ; at 
 best it serves as a receptacle for truth or passion trans- 
 ferred to it from the mind itself In this large sense 
 of the word " Catholic " we might name Wordsworth in 
 some of his earlier poems a true Catholic, discovering, 
 as he does, the ideal in the real, the divine in the 
 natural, the invisible in the visible ; and we might 
 name Keble, in certain of his verses, a pseudo-Catholic, 
 applying, as he sometimes does, a factitious or a traditional 
 symbolism to sanctify what in reality is sacred in itself. 
 
Puritanism and English Literahire 9 
 
 For the Puritan, on the other hand, using the word to 
 describe a type of mind, the natural and the supernatural 
 exist in an uu mediated dualism, and it is a difficulty 
 with him to clothe the naked idea — reliofious or ethical 
 — in any sensuous medium or body. Hence Puritanism 
 in itself i s ill fitted to produce a great art. Yet the 
 inward life of the soul may be intense, and tbe more 
 intense because it does not readily distribute itself 
 through appointed forms ; and absorbing thoughts and 
 passions cannot fail in some way to discover or to create 
 that outward vehicle through which alone they can 
 secure a complete self-realisation. 
 
 In the Fourth Part of *' The Saints' Everlasting Rest " 
 Baxter considers the aids which the senses can afford to 
 the spirit. It is a point of spiritual prudence, he says, 
 to make friends of powers which are usually our enemies; 
 our senses and their objects would not have been given 
 to us by God if they might not be serviceable in His 
 own praise ; the Holy Ghost in the phrase of Scripture 
 sets forth the excellences of things spiritual in imagery 
 borrowed from the objects of sense ; the Son of God 
 assumed our human nature " that we might know Him 
 the better." Are we, then, to think heaven to be made 
 of gold and pearl ? Or picture Christ, '* as the Papists 
 do," in such a shape ? Or believe that departed saints 
 and angels do indeed eat and drink ? Or hold that God 
 actually is moved by human passions ? Not so : we are 
 to accept such notions as aids to our infirmity, but they 
 cease to be aids when we take them for a literal presen- 
 tation of the facts ; the condescending language of the 
 Spirit is so designed that we may "raise suppositions 
 
lo Puritanism and English Literature 
 
 from our bodily senses," and so elevate our affections 
 towards things invisible. 
 
 *' Suppose with thyself thou hadst been that Apostle's 
 fellow traveller into the celestial kingdom, and that thou 
 hadst seen all the saints in their white robes, with palms 
 in their hands ; suppose thou hadst heard those songs 
 of Moses and the Lamb ; or didst even now hear them 
 praising and glorifying the living God. If thou hadst 
 seen these things indeed, in what a rapture wouldst thou 
 have been ? . . . I would not have thee, as the 
 Papists, draw them in pictures, nor use mysterious, signi- 
 ficant ceremonies to represent them. This, as it is a 
 course forbidden by God, so it would but seduce and draw 
 down thy heart ; but get the liveliest picture of them in 
 thy mind that possibly thou canst."^ 
 
 Thus the imaginations of a Michael Angelo or a Raphael 
 are forbidden to serve their fellows, unless they can em- 
 ploy, like Baxter himself, the medium of written words 
 instead of the more suitable language of colour and of line. 
 
 In his criticism of English Puritanism, Matthew 
 Arnold strangely misconceived its essential character 
 and its governing idea. Puritanism, he told us, 
 existed for the sake of certain doctrines derived mainly 
 from an imperfect interpretation of the writings of 
 Paul — the doctrines of predestination, original sin, 
 imputed righteousness, justification by faith. The 
 historical answer is suflficieut : these doctrines, though 
 truly Puritan in their tendency, were held by many 
 members of the Church of England who were outside 
 of the Puritan party and were even opposed to it 
 
 ^ "Saints' Everlasting Rest," Part IV., section ii. 
 
Puritanism and English Literature 1 1 
 
 The ceremonial controversy preceded the controversy 
 concerning theological dogma ; it was independent, in 
 a large measure, of the controversy as to Church 
 government. To discover the dominant idea of Puri- 
 tanism we must look beyond dogma to something 
 common to every phase of the great contention. And 
 undoubtedly the unvarying central element was this — 
 Puritanism maintained, as far as was possible, that the 
 relation between the invisible spirit of man and the 
 invisible God was immediate^ rather than mediate. It 
 set little store by tradition, because God had spoken to 
 man directly in the words of revelation. It distrusted 
 human ceremonies, because these stood between the 
 creature and his Creator ; the glory of the Christian 
 temple is the holiness of the living temple which rises 
 in the heart of the child of God. The pretensions of 
 an ecclesiastical hierarchy are an estrangement of the 
 adopted son of the Father ; every lay Christian is him- 
 self a royal priest. The Calvinistic doctrines, on which 
 Matthew Arnold laid extreme and exclusive stress, were 
 maintained because they were held to be Scriptural, and 
 also because they seemed to bring the divine agency 
 immediately into every part of human life : predestina- 
 tion meant the presence of God's foreknowledge and 
 God's will in every act and thought that pulsates on 
 the globe ; imputed righteousness meant that Christ 
 and His faithful follower were regarded by the Father 
 as one ; and through faith, which justifies the believer, 
 that union is effected. / 
 
 Such was the central idea of Puritanism. Its cardinal 
 error, which in many directions tended to defeat its own 
 
1 2 Pttritanism and English Literature 
 
 purpose, lay in a narrow conception of God as the God 
 of righteousness alone, and not as also the God of joy 
 and beauty and intellectual light. The higher Puritan- 
 ism has been preached in our own day by Browning : 
 
 " no beauty, nor good, nor power. 
 Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist 
 When eternity affirms the conception of an hour." 
 
 It was taught by Goethe in " Wilhelm Meister," where 
 the uncle of the devout lady, in the eighth book, instructs 
 his niece that the lit lamp and the girt loin are needful 
 for other things than the culture of the religious spirit. 
 But among the Puritans of the seventeenth century few 
 besides Milton, who was more than a Puritan, had that 
 coherent conception of human life and human culture 
 which recognises the Divine Spirit as present and oper- 
 ative in all the higher strivings of man. Scholarship, 
 knowledge, beauty, art appeared to Milton to be sacred 
 things ; means by which the '' ruins of our first parents " 
 may be repaired ; means, therefore, by which we may 
 recover the image of God, and possess our souls in true 
 ''virtue" in its widest sense, ''which, being united to 
 the heavenly grace of faith, makes up the highest per- 
 fection." 
 
 Religious ideas and religious emotions, under the 
 influence of the Puritan habit of mind, seek to realise 
 themselves not in art, but, without any intervening 
 medium, in character, in conduct, in life. It is thus 
 that the gulf between sense and spirit is bridged : not 
 in marble or in colour is the invisible made visible, but 
 in action public and private — "ye are the temples of 
 the Holy Ghost." In an ordered life, an ordered house- 
 
PMritanisni and English Literature 13 
 
 hold, an ordered commonwealth, according to the ideal 
 of Puritanism, the spirit is to be incarnated. Let the 
 praise which Yirgil gives to the Roman people be trans- 
 lated into Evangelical meanings and it applies accurately 
 enough to the Puritan ideal : 
 
 " Others, I ween, to softer form shall mould 
 The breathing bronze, shall win the living face 
 From marble, plead the cause with happier skill, 
 Map out the skies, and name each rising star. 
 Roman ! be thine to rule the tribes of men ; 
 These be thy arts ; the discij)line of peace, 
 To raise the fallen, to lay low the proud." 
 
 Through what was practical in the Puritan spirit, when 
 seen at its highest, a noble ideality breaks forth. Its 
 canticles of joy and thanksgiving, if heard meanly in the 
 church or chapel, are heard nobly on the battlefield. If 
 Puritanism did not fashion an Apollo with the bow or a 
 Venus with the apple, it fashioned virile Englishmen. 
 
 " We that serve you," writes Cromwell to the Speaker ' 
 of the Parliament immediately after the amazing victory 
 of Dunbar, *' beg of you not to own us — but God alone. 
 We pray you own this people more and more ; for they 
 are the chariots and horsemen of Israel. Disown your- 
 selves ; — but own your authority ; and improve it to 
 curb the proud and the insolent, such as would disturb 
 the tranquillity of England, though under what specious 
 pretences soever. Relieve the oppressed, hear the groans 
 of poor prisoners in England. Be pleased to reform the 
 abuses of all professions :-^and if there be any one that 
 makes many poor to make a few rich, that suits not • 
 a Commonwealth.' If He that strengthens your servants! 
 to fight, please to give you hearts to set upon these 
 
14 Puritanism and English Literature 
 
 things, in order to His glory, and the glory of your 
 Commonwealth, — besides the benefit England shall feel 
 thereby, you shaJl shine forth to other nations, who shall 
 emulate the glory of such a pattern, and through the 
 power of God turn-in to the like." 
 
 Hce tihi erunt artes. 
 
 And since the instinct of beauty works indefatigably 
 in man, other arts may be looked for in time to grow 
 upon the foundation of a life of righteousness. Conti- 
 nental, if not English, critics have recognised the fact 
 that a Puritan strain has entered into much that is most 
 characteristic in our literature. It is present in the 
 " Faerie Queene " as well as in " Samson Agonistes " ; 
 in the '' Vision of Sin," the '' Palace of Art," the '' Idylls 
 of the King"; in the poetry of the author of ''Dipsychus " 
 and the poetry of the author of " Christmas Eve »and 
 Easter Day " ; in the prose of '* Sartor Eesartus." And 
 though Matthew Arnold said hard things, and some of 
 them not without good reason, of English Puritanism, 
 the son of Thomas Arnold could not escape from an 
 hereditary influence ; the Hellenic tendency in his poetry 
 is constantly checked and controlled by the Hebraic 
 tendency as it had been accepted and modified by the 
 English mind. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Fortunately for Puritan art in the seventeenth century 
 there was a great body of literature which was regarded 
 as sacred. Puritanism may have suspected the literature 
 of Greece and Kome ; it may have cast some scorn upon 
 the glory of Mediaeval art ; but it venerated the Old and 
 
Puritanism and English Literature 15 
 
 the New Testaments. Not with a fully enlightened 
 intelligence ; not, certainly, in the way of modern criti- 
 cism ; but it found in the Bible a rule of life and a 
 storehouse of ideas ; it fed its passions with the passions 
 of the Hebrew singers and prophets ; its imagination 
 adopted the antique garb, not in the manner of mumming 
 or disguising, but as proper for the uses of the day ; it 
 found in narrative and vision and parable a vehicle, 
 already sanctified, for the invisible ; it carried the genius 
 of the Scriptures into the very heart and soul of England. 
 The moral rigour and the anti-ceremonial spirit of 
 Puritanism in their immediate effects were unfavourable 
 to a generous development of art ; in their indirect 
 effects, quickening as they did the spiritual consciousness, 
 bracing character in a period of relaxation, and intensi- 
 fying the individual temper in matters of religion, they 
 were not wholly unfavourable. In the second half ot 
 the seventeenth century, from amid the literature of 
 moral licence, when the imagination of the time, out- 
 wardly graceful and humane, was inwardly gross — 
 
 '' To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds 
 Timorous and slothful " — 
 
 rise those creations to which the Puritan spirit contributed 
 — ''Paradise Lost," ''Paradise Regained," the "Pilgrim's 
 Progress " ; and, apart from the Puritan influence, such 
 works are inexplicable. The great intellectual fact of 
 the age was the scientific movement : it liberated the 
 minds of men from the bondage of a narrow Scripturalism ; 
 but who shall say that the large part which England 
 took in the scientific movement — itself a European 
 rather than an English phenomenon — was not aided by 
 
1 6 Puritanism and English Literature 
 
 the habit of the loins girt and by the lit lamp, by the 
 seriousness of spirit, now transferred from Scripture and 
 the moral world to external nature, which Puritanism 
 had encouraged and sustained ? In Newton and his 
 fellow inquirers of the Royal Society the seriousness of 
 the Protestant Reformation was reunited with the ex- 
 ploring intellect of the Renaissance. 
 
 In the appalling loss of a living authority which should 
 declare infallible doctrine, it was fortunate that men could 
 in some degree steady themselves by the support of the 
 infallible written Word. Puritanism helped the Protestant 
 Reformation, in its more extreme developments, to define 
 itself both in its weakness and its strength. The entire 
 ecclesiastical polity was to be modelled on the Scriptures ; 
 some thinkers desired to model on Biblical example the 
 entire polity of the State. When Milton would justify 
 the deposition and condemnation of the King, he proves 
 from Scripture that kings and magistrates hold their 
 authority from the people : " David first made a cove- 
 nant with the elders of Israel, and so was by them 
 anointed king; Jehoida the priest, making Jehoash 
 kinor, established a covenant between him and the 
 people. When Roboam, at his coming to the crown, 
 rejected those conditions which the Israelites brought him, 
 they answer him, ' What portion have we in David, 
 or inheritance in the son of Jesse ? See to thine 
 own house, David.' " It was the unqualified reference 
 of all forms of religious order and duty to Scripture 
 that Hooker set himself to oppose and to correct. 
 Every rite or ceremony, every garment worn, unless 
 it could be justified by a precedent or a text of the 
 
Ptcritanism and English Literature 1 7 
 
 Bible, was condemned as unwarrantable. The per- 
 suasions of the Oxford and Cambridge Professors of 
 Divinity, who happened to be two foreigners, Peter 
 Martp' and Bucer, were needed to induce Hooper to 
 wear his consecration robes ; once he preached in the 
 questionable garb, and never again. The ring in 
 marriage, the cross at baptism, the posture at Holy 
 Communion, the music of organ-pipes, were causes 
 of serious doubts and scruples. Somewhat later the 
 controversy turned chiefly upon matters of Church 
 government and discipline ; but still the central 
 question was the same — Could this or that be justified 
 by the authority of Scripture ? Finally, in the reign 
 of James I., when the Arminian High - churchmen 
 became dominant in the Anglican communion, the 
 questions grew of deeper import — they concerned 
 doctrine, which Hooker himself would have deter- 
 mined alone by the written Word. 
 
 A new race of schoolmen — Protestant schoolmen 
 of the Eeformation — arose. Elaborate systems of 
 theology were constructed, and the substance of those 
 of the school of Calvin may still be found operative 
 in the Westminster Confession of Faith and the 
 Longer and Shorter Catechisms. An admirable in- 
 tellectual gymnastic they afford to a certain class of 
 minds, and one who has mastered even his Shorter 
 Catechism will have all the advantages (and the dis- 
 advantages) which attend a resolute effort to interpret 
 the whole of things as a coherent scheme. The Holy 
 Scriptures were, of course, accepted as the sole basis 
 of the faith. An attempt was made to define the 
 
 B 
 
1 8 Puritanism and English Literature 
 
 nature of God, to set forth His attributes ; and the 
 body of Calvinistic theology, with the precise plan 
 of salvation, was exactly laid down. All was as de- 
 finitely mapped out as the structure of the heavens 
 in the Ptolemaic astronomy. That sense of awe and 
 mystery derived from the Unknown and the Un- 
 knowable, in which some thinkers have found the 
 essence of religion, was present only in a subordinate 
 degree. Things the angels desire to look into might 
 be boldly scrutinised by the theologian, for were they 
 not revealed in the written Word ? The source of 
 religious emotion was not the unknown but the 
 known ; and this was methodically arranged so as to 
 present it with the utmost precision to the intellect. 
 But in what had been ascertained were many things 
 wonderful, many things capable of inspiring solemn 
 awe, the brightest hope, the most overwhelming terror. 
 God's eternal decree by which, for the manifestation 
 of His glory, some men are predestined to everlasting 
 life and others are foreordained to everlasting death, 
 the creation of the world out of nothing, the con- 
 stant, wise and holy providence of the Creator over 
 His work, man's fall, God's covenant with the human 
 race, the inheritance of sin, the mediation of Christ, 
 the irresistible nature of grace, the effectual calling 
 and final perseverance of the saints, the endless joy 
 of heaven, the endless ornashino^ of teeth in hell — 
 these were themes for passionate contemplation, sources 
 of agony, sources of rapture. Undoubtedly the whole 
 scheme of belief, if imposing on some a burden which 
 they were not able to bear, was one which helped 
 
Puritanism and English Literature 19 
 
 to form certain eminent types of character, to regulate 
 conduct, to prompt steadfast and heroic action. \ No 
 believer could suppose that he lived in a world of 
 chaos or blind chance. ''• A just, intelligent, inflexible 
 Ruler presided over the material world, over human 
 society, over the course of individual lives. /At the 
 lowest the body of doctrine was a translation — in 
 part, perhaps, a mistranslation — into supposed objective 
 facts, of the monitions and premonitions, awful or 
 blessed, of man's moral nature, with such additions 
 and modifications as seemed to be required by the 
 statements of revelation. 
 
 And as there were schoolmen of the Reformation 
 who built up a huge fabric of doctrine, so there 
 were Protestant moralists and casuists who drew out 
 to the utmost detail a corresponding system of con- 
 duct. From the Puritan theologians, Perkins and 
 Ames, the study of casuistry passed to the hands of 
 Sanderson, Hall, and Jeremy Taylor. The " Christian 
 Directory, or Sum of Practical Theology and Cases of 
 Conscience," by Richard Baxter, passes from Christian 
 ethics, or the private duties of Christians, to ecooomics 
 or family duties, and so proceeds to ecclesiastics, or 
 Church duties, and Christian politics, or duties to 
 our rulers and neighbours. The catalogue of duties 
 and the catalogue of breaches of duty are elaborated 
 with a minuteness which may lose something of the 
 amplitude of a free and generous loyalty to good, 
 but which undoubtedly exhibits conscience as pre- 
 siding over every act of human life. 
 
 'After discussing thirty tongue-sins and twenty 
 
20 Puritanism and E^iglish Literature 
 
 questions for the conviction of drunkards ; eighteen 
 necessary qualifications of lawful recreation ; eighteen 
 sorts that are sinful ; and twelve convincing questions 
 to those who plead for such pastimes ; thirty-six 
 questions about contracts ; twenty about buying and 
 selling ; sixteen respecting theft ; and one hundred 
 and seventy-four about matters ecclesiastical, he yet 
 regrets that the want of his library at the time 
 when he composed the work prevented him from en- 
 larging; his enumeration of cases." ^ 
 
 With the aid of those keen scenters, '' Sayrus, 
 Fragosa, Eoderigues, Tolet," the rat-hunt for sins 
 might have yielded better sport. The excessive in- 
 wardness of the Puritan spirit quickened the mental 
 eye for every detail that tended to moral good or 
 evil. The genius of Duty which carries in its head 
 the thirty tongue-vsins and one hundred and seventy- 
 four questions concerning Church affairs may not be 
 exactly the Duty invoked in Wordsworth's ode : 
 
 " Flowers laugb. before thee in their beds, 
 And fragrance in thy footing treads." 
 
 Nevertheless, in a time of careless living and declining 
 morals, the error of too scrupulous self-superintendence 
 is not the most grievous error. 
 
 IV 
 
 We know sufficiently through the caricatures of 
 dramatists and novelists the grotesque side of Puritan 
 morals and manners— ^the affectations of the precisian, 
 
 ^Principal Tullocli in his study of Baxter; and Orme's "Life and 
 Writings of Baxter," ii. 175. 
 
Puritanism and English Literature 21 
 
 the scruples with regard to things innocent, the casuistry 
 by which self-indulgence was sanctified, the Hebraic 
 phraseology, the danger of moroseness of temper. Among 
 the various bodies of sectaries exploring their way with 
 little guidance, roused to all manner of extravagances of 
 feeling, interpreting the words of Scripture by an inner 
 light, intolerant in their rival orthodoxies, there was 
 ample material for a caricature. But among the Puritans 
 were not a few men and women who added to purity 
 of morals and the happiness of domestic affections, 
 guarded as sacred, the best graces of culture and refine- 
 ment. The Puritan gentleman might surprise a nine- 
 teenth-century drawing-room by certain peculiarities of 
 manner and of speech, but he would not offend by 
 brutal licence. His temper might be grave rather than 
 buoyantly gay, but he would possess within certain 
 springs of happiness which do not sap the genuine joy 
 of human life. He might be a scholar, a lover of music, 
 a lover of letters. Cromwell's chaplain, Peter Sterry, 
 who was an adviser in the purchase by the State of books 
 from Ussher's collection, was a lover of the work of 
 Titian and Vandyke. We remember the early home of 
 Milton, the house of a London scrivener of Puritanic 
 faith and Puritanic habits, where the father would join 
 in madrigals of his own composing, and the boy, by his 
 father's desire and through his own passion for learning, 
 would remain till midnight busy with his poets of 
 Greece and Rome and his French and Italian studies. 
 It was of a Puritan divine, Thomas Young, that Milton 
 afterwards wrote : '* First, under his guidance, I explored 
 the recesses of the Muses, and beheld the sacred green 
 
i 
 
 22 Puritanism and English Literature 
 
 spots of the cleft summit of Parnassus, and quaffed the 
 Pierian cups, and, Clio favouring me, thrice sprinkled 
 my joyous mouth with Castalian wine." We think of 
 the beautiful record of her husband's life written by 
 Lucy Hutchinson. This Puritan soldier, son of one who 
 also took the side of the Parliament, '' was apt," so his 
 wife tells us, " for any bodily exercise ; ... he could 
 dance admirably well, but neither in youth nor riper 
 years made any practice of it ; he had skill in fencing 
 such as became a gentleman ; he had a great love of 
 music, and often diverted himself with a viol, on which 
 he played masterly ; and he had an exact ear and judg- 
 ment in other music ; ... he had great judgment in 
 paintings, 'gravings, sculpture, and all liberal arts, and 
 had many curiosities of value in all kinds ; ... he was 
 wonderfully neat, cleanly, and genteel in his habit, and 
 had a very good fancy in it ; but he left off very early 
 the wearing of anything that was costly, yet in his 
 plainest, negligent habit appeared very much a gentle- 
 man ; . . . his conversation was very pleasant, for he 
 was naturally cheerful, had a ready wit and apprehension; 
 . . . everything that it was necessary for him to do he 
 did with delight, free and unconstrained." 
 
 " He was," writes his wife, " as kind a father, as dear 
 a brother, as good a master, as faithful a friend as the 
 world had." 
 
 Colonel Hutchinson, the regicide, was a member of the 
 first two Councils of the Commonwealth. It may at 
 first sight appear a strange inconsistency that the Puritan 
 party, possessed as many of its members truly were by a 
 spirit of inwardness, and looking as they did, to another 
 
Puritanism and English Literature 23 
 
 country, that is, an heavenly, should yet have taken 
 a passionate interest in mundane affairs. There were 
 doubtless material concerns which deeply moved them — 
 unjust taxation, the exercise of arbitrary power in the 
 State ; there were ecclesiastical concerns — the offence of 
 ceremonialism, the infringement of the claim to liberty 
 of worship iu the way their conscience dictated. But it 
 is a mistake to suppose that such a faith as theirs should 
 weaken or impair activity in mundane affairs. / Not 
 through sacred symbol, not through the glories or the 
 pomps of art was their faith to find an outward mani- 
 festation, but through conduct and public action. The 
 belief that the order of the world is a divine order, that 
 each man has his allotted part in maintaining it, that a 
 great contention is in progress between the powers of 
 darkness and of light, that the victory will be the Lord's, 
 but through His human instruments, nerves the believer 
 to put forth all his strength on behalf of what he holds 
 to be the cause of his Supreme Ruler. The creed of 
 Calvinism is called by Mr Froude a creed of intellectual 
 servitude, but he has hardly exaggerated the fact when 
 he declares that it was able to inspire and sustain the 
 bravest efforts ever made by man to break the yoke of 
 unjust authority. In proof of his assertion he cites 
 the names of William the Silent, Knox, Andrew Melville, 
 the Regent Murray, Coligny, Cromwell, Milton. If 
 obedience to the will of God be man's highest duty, a 
 part of that duty must be to make the will of God 
 prevail on earth, to widen the borders of light, and 
 co-operate, as far as a human creature may, in driving 
 back the edge of darkness. The Puritan had hitched 
 
24 Puritanism and English Literatui^e 
 
 his waggon to a star ; whether a star of bale or benison 
 remained to be proved. 
 
 Here was something to counterbalance the inwardness 
 of the Puritan spirit, something to maintain a just 
 equipoise of character. And if in taking the Bible as 
 their guide they often read into it their own meanings, 
 often gave it passionate misinterpretations, often applied 
 to modern life what was of transitory significance, still in 
 the Bible they had a veritable manual of moral wisdom 
 and high common sense. It has been truly said that 
 from the Bible the noblest minds among the Puritans 
 imbibed not merely the great enthusiasm which it 
 expresses, but also the strong practical sagacity and 
 broad right-mindedness of which it is the emphatic 
 teacher.^ The passion for righteousness could ally 
 itself with a spirit of prudent and patient opportunism. 
 '' If ever there was a man who suffered fools gladly, who 
 sought to influence and persuade, and who was ready to 
 get something tolerable done by consent rather than 
 get something better done by forcing it on unwilling 
 minds, that man was Cromwell."^ 
 
 We have seen some of the formative influences from 
 which a Puritan literature might arise. But we must 
 bear in mind the fact that Puritanism was only for 
 a short time triumphant. Except for a few years, 
 Puritanism was militant or Puritanism was depressed. 
 We can only conjecture whether a great literature 
 would have developed on a Puritan basis if the 
 
 ^ J. L. Sanford, "Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion, " 
 p. 81. 
 2 S. R. Gardiner, " Cromwell's Place in History," p. 48. 
 
Puritanism and Bnglisk Literature 25 
 
 Commonwealth bad existed even for one entire genera- 
 tion ; we can only surmise on the question whether 
 righteousness would have flowered in beauty and severity 
 have worn the garments of joy. Mantegna's "Triumph 
 of Caesar " and Raphael's cartoons (which Charles II. 
 was ready to sell) were saved for the nation by 
 Cromwell. Two organs stood in the great hall at 
 Hampton Court, and a pupil of Orlando Gibbons was 
 the Protector's organist. At the wedding-feast of the 
 Protector's daughter Frances forty-eight violins dis- 
 coursed excellent music, and the company frolicked 
 and danced until five o'clock of the November morning. 
 For his daughter Mary's marriage Andrew Marvell 
 furnished songs, a pastoral in which Oliver was in- 
 troduced as Menaicas, and a dialogue between Endymion 
 and Cynthia, representing the bridegroom and the 
 bride. Modest as were Cromwell's ways of private 
 living, in State ceremonial, as Protector of England, he 
 could be magnificent.^ Although Mrs Mary Netheway 
 implored that the bronze statues of Venus and Cleopatra 
 and the marble statues of Adonis and Apollo in the 
 garden at Hampton Court, " monsters which are set 
 up in Privy Gardens," might be demolished, there the 
 monsters remained. But the strife of parties during 
 the Commonwealth made it inevitable that the graver 
 mind of England should in the main occupy itself with 
 practical work of immediate importance. Theological 
 folios and political pamphlets may now slumber on 
 
 1 See Mr Frith's article, "The Court of Cromwell," in the Cornhill 
 Magazine, Sept. 1897 ; and Mr St Loe Straehey's "From Grave to Gay," 
 pp. 152, 153. 
 
26 Puritanism and English Literature 
 
 dusty shelves, but some of these in their day were 
 instinct with fire ; they were living forces helping to 
 form character, to regulate conduct, to shape public 
 action. If few of them deserve the name of literature, 
 they yet stirred the soil from which a literature might 
 have sprung. And certain works remain to us which 
 serve as more than an indication of the possibilities of a 
 Puritan literature. We have the impassioned exhorta- 
 tions of " The Saints' Rest " ; we have the epic of 
 seventeenth-century theology — the poems of the loss of 
 Paradise by man and its recovery by a greater Man ; 
 we have the Puritan drama of God's afflicted champion 
 obtaining victory by obedience unto death ; we have 
 the story, ardent, tender, humorous, of the Pilgrims* 
 wayfaring from the City of Destruction to the Celestial 
 City. And what else in the literature of the period 
 can outweigh these gifts of Puritan passion and Puritan 
 faith ? 
 
 In the Puritan inwardness of spirit, in its vivid 
 realisation of the unseen, if only these could find a 
 suitable medium of representation and vehicle of ex- 
 pression, lay important possibilities for literature. If 
 Hellenism served to broaden, Hebraism served to deepen 
 the national consciousness of England. The inward 
 drama of the spiritual life became more tragically 
 earnest ; its lyrical cries of hope and fear, of anguish 
 and joy, became more poignant. God and the soul 
 were the chief actors in the drama, but for the Puritan 
 imagination a world of magic lay around the human 
 
Puritanism and English Literature 27 
 
 soul — blessed angels, demons of the pit, special inter- 
 positions of Providence, miraculous words of Scripture, 
 preternatural voices echoing in the heart. In the 
 introspective habit which scrutinised and searched the 
 soul lor intimations of loss or gain there were grave 
 dangers ; it might pass into a diseased fascination ; but 
 it might also be a great discipline ; it might discover 
 a world of marvellous phenomena hidden from those 
 accustomed only to turn the eye outward on the world 
 of action. 
 
 Again, in the doctrine of Puritanism was a body of 
 inspiring ideas, an inspiring conception of the life of 
 man, which humbled and at the same time exalted. 
 He was the creature of a passing moment, yet a spirit 
 moving in a world at present only realised in part 
 and formed for eternity. Already his destiny was 
 sealed, yet — appalling mystery — free and responsible, 
 he became his own doomsman. As this conception was 
 made real and living, human existence — the existence 
 even of the meanest child of earth — grew in dignity, 
 since to it belonged the most awful, the most blessed 
 issues. Our threescore years and ten — an atom in 
 eternity — acquired a grandeur as the moment of a 
 solemn test and trial. Everything that seems to care- 
 less eyes trivial and accidental was in truth part of 
 a divine order ; but this order included the sudden 
 interventions of the law-maker. Man, mysteriously 
 endowed with free will, was no estray wandering in a 
 realm of chance ; rather was he a subject, loyal or 
 disloyal, of a stern and beneficent Ruler. He had his 
 appointed station in a vast warfare, his appointed place 
 
2 8 Puritanism and English Literature 
 
 in a mighty scheme. Fallen, indeed, he was, bound 
 under sin by the transgression of our first parents, con- 
 demned by the law, a defaulter under the covenant of 
 works ; but a door of escape, a radiant avenue of hope, 
 had been opened under a covenant of grace. Through 
 disobedience Adam fell : through perfect obedience to 
 the divine will a way of salvation had been wrought 
 out. In these ideas, not all peculiar to Puritanism, but 
 realised by the Puritan temper with peculiar intensity, 
 Milton found the themes for his epic of the Fall and his 
 epic of Piedemptiou. They were no mere part of a 
 theological system ; they entered profoundly into life 
 and into literature. 
 
 But obedience and loyalty to the divine will does not 
 consist solely in passive submission ; they breathe forth 
 or flame forth in an active co-operancy with that will. 
 One who has himself become a part of the heavenly 
 order in the world cannot but seek to extend that order 
 into regions not yet reclaimed. And this he may strive 
 to do in either of two ways — by appeals to the indi- 
 vidual souls of men, or by action in the social and 
 political sphere. Hence arose a literature of passionate 
 exhortation, the pleadings of the preachers ; hence also 
 arose the zeal and energy of public reform, which in 
 literature found expression in such works as the prose 
 writings of Milton. Of the hortatory literature, in 
 which meditation passes naturally into appeal, " The 
 Saints' Rest " is a conspicuous example. It was written, 
 as Baxter himself tells us, for his own use, in the time 
 of his languishment, when God took him from all pub- 
 lic employment. He was ill, and alone in the country, 
 
Puritanism and English Literature 29 
 
 given over by the physicians to death. '' I began," he 
 writes, " to contemplate more seriously the everlasting 
 rest, which I apprehended myself to be on the borders 
 of." " To despise earth," he said, " is easy to me, but 
 not so easy to be acquainted and conversant in heaven." ^ 
 But it was impossible for Baxter to meditate for himself 
 alone ; he was nothing if not a preacher, and he preached 
 from what he believed to be his dying solitude. He 
 pleads with men as if tears were in his voice. In the 
 " Epistle to the Reader " prefixed to his '' Poetical Frag- 
 ments " (1681), Baxter justifies passion and sense against 
 the invasion of Rationalism, which already was openino- 
 a way for the spirit of the eighteenth century : 
 
 " I am assured that God made not passion in vain ; 
 and that reason is a sleepy, half-useless thing, till some 
 passion excite it. ... I confess, when God awakeneth 
 in me those passions which I account rational and holy, 
 I am so far from condemning them, that I think I was 
 half a fool before, and have small comfort in sleepy 
 reason. Lay by all the passionate part of love and joy, 
 and it will be hard to have any pleasant thoughts of 
 Heaven. In short, I am an enemy of their philosophy 
 that vilify sense. . . . The Scripture that saith of God 
 that He is life and light, saith also that He is love, and 
 love is complacence, and complacence is joy ; and to say 
 God is infinite, essential love and joy is a better notion 
 than, with Cartesians and Cocceians, to say that God 
 
 ^ These words must have been in "Wordsworth's mind when he wrote 
 in "The Excm-sion," Book IV. : 
 
 " 'Tis, by comparison, an easy task 
 Earth to despise ; but to converse with heaven — 
 This is not easy. " 
 
30 Puritanism and English Literature 
 
 and angels and spirits are but a thought or an idea. 
 What is Heaven to us if there be no love and joy ? " 
 
 The Epistle from which these words are quoted is 
 solemnly dated "London, at the Door of Eternity." 
 ^ For the maintenance of high passion the habit of 
 moral restraint is in the long run more favourable than 
 the habit of moral relaxation. It may take the lifetime 
 of a whole generation to produce the consequences in 
 literature and art of base morals, but no law is more 
 inevitable than that what is sown must in due time be 
 reaped. The worst effect of a corrupt society upon 
 literature is not, perhaps, the deadness of the senses to 
 what is gross and repulsive ; this indeed comes gradually 
 and inevitably, but the odour of the sink warns off any 
 passer-by who has breathed clean air. Far more danger- 
 ous is the false homage of baseness to a virtue which, in 
 the deadness of true passion, it has lost the very power 
 of conceiving aright ; the substitution of factitious, 
 romantic, overstrained heroics for tlie plain and modest 
 realities of righteous living. It is not the facile licen- 
 tiousness of the plays of Fletcher that chiefly offends a 
 reader ; the lascivious imagination of puberty, it is true, 
 in the lapse of time will necessarily lose its gay colours 
 and youthful vivacity, and will sink into the cynical 
 brutality of Wycherle}^ But we are more offended by 
 the spurious moral ideality of Fletcher, by his fantastic 
 code of heroism, his extravagant gallantries, his indecent 
 celebration of chastity. And Fletcher's spurious ideality 
 prepared the way for the high-pitched heroics of certain 
 Restoration dramas. The one indicates the decline, the 
 other indicates the death of genuine passion. The 
 
Puritanism and English Literature 3 1 
 
 Puritan regard for righteousness in its lower forms was 
 injurious to literature and art as inducing a dull didactic 
 tendency. Wither has shown how it is possible to be 
 exceedingly moral and excessively dull during many 
 pages. In its higher forms the passion for righteous- 
 ness tempers an instrument for breathing music of the 
 Dorian mode. It was the great Puritan poet who wrote 
 those well-known words, which, if rightly interpreted, 
 convey an ascertained law of art : 
 
 *' I was confirmed in this opinion that he who would 
 not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in 
 laudable things ought himself to be a true poem ; that 
 is, a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest 
 things ; not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men 
 or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience 
 and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy." 
 
 Milton does not mean that great art will be, in the 
 common meaning of the word, didactic art. He means 
 that heroic music can be adequately breathed only 
 through a noble instrument. He means that there is 
 a music which teaches nothing, but by its very tones 
 can " raise to height of noblest temper," can " breathe 
 deliberate valour," can " mitigate and swage with 
 solemn touches troubled thoughts," and that the 
 faculty for producing such music diminishes in pro- 
 portion to. the loss of such noblest temper by the 
 musician himself. In a corrupt society the art of the 
 Dorian and the Phrygian modes is lost, or is heard 
 only from some survivor of a more strenuous age. 
 And when they are lost art recovers itself commonly, 
 not by a great enthusiasm, but by good sense, modera- 
 
32 Puritanism and English Literature 
 
 tion, and those common decencies which are found to 
 be needful for the very existence of human society. 
 
 Among the factors determining the character of a 
 Puritan literature must be reckoned the popular 
 sympathies which informed the movement for ecclesi- 
 astical and civil reform. Milton, indeed, its chief 
 representative — although he, like Hooker, would de- 
 rive all political authority from the consent of the 
 people — was essentially aristocratical in his intellect, 
 and became the advocate of an oligarchy not of birth 
 but of merit. He honoured heroic individuals, a 
 Christ in the wilderness, a Samson in captivity, a 
 Fairfax at the siege, a Cromwell in the council and 
 in the field ; he could speak more scornfully than 
 Burke ever spoke of the wayward and variable mu.lti- 
 tude. But, in a large way, Puritanism was a move- 
 ment of the people, with not a few leaders from 
 among the aristocracy. For a time its temper was 
 high and courageous, hopeful and even audacious in 
 new experiments. Its religious spirit tended to 
 abolish or to abate social distinctions : all mortal 
 men were alike sinners before God, and, peer or 
 peasant, if true members of the congregation, were 
 equally saints. Its favoured ecclesiastical schemes 
 and platforms were of a democratic kind. Its politi- 
 cal ideal was not a loose and incoherent democracy ; 
 it aimed at vigour in government, and was willing to 
 confer immense powers upon chosen individuals ; but 
 its political culmination was a Republic. A literature 
 informed by popular sympathies may lose much that 
 is of high worth ; it may, on the other hand, gain 
 
Puritanisrn and English Literature 2)Z 
 
 some things — a homely strength, a genial warmth, a 
 respect for man as man, a breadth of human interest, 
 a humour that is not supercilious, a pity which is not 
 condescending. Some of these qualities are manifest 
 in both Parts, perhaps especially in the Second Part, 
 of the " Pilgrim's Progress." 
 
 With these various possibilities for literature, Puritan- 
 ism still felt the difficulty of mediating, as art should 
 mediate, between the spiritual and the material, the 
 difficulty of finding an imaginative body for theological 
 dogma and the deepest experiences of the soul. It 
 was partly solved by Milton with the aid of an ima- 
 gination educated among classical models. The influ- 
 ence of the Renaissance came to aid him in his dealing 
 with the Puritan abstractions. But the solution was 
 not absolutely successful. There is still a portion of 
 theological doctrine in " Paradise Lost " which is not 
 vitalised for the imagination, and remains doctrinaire. 
 It is true that God the Father and His Son discuss 
 the scheme of salvation too much in the manner of 
 school-divines. The Hebraic ideas and the classical^ 
 garb do not always perfectly correspond each with the ) 
 other. We cannot assert that Milton entirely succeeded 
 in finding an imaginative vehicle to convey his Puritan 
 conceptions. Bunyan, perhaps, succeeded better; but 
 in allegory the idea has a certain detachment from its 
 body of sense ; it dwells within, but it is never indis- 
 solubly incorporated. In prose Bunyan could drop 
 more easily than Milton could in his verse from narra- 
 tive to the exposition of doctrine. The pilgrims in 
 their talk by the way are as frankly theological or 
 
 c 
 
34 Puritanism and English Literature 
 
 hortatory as if they were worthy Nonconformists of real 
 life crossing the fields from Elstow to Bedford. Bunyan, 
 as compared with Milton, had no slight artistic advan- 
 tage in the fact that his starting-point was a personal 
 experience. What he beheld in vision he had known 
 in a cruder form as a fragment of actual life. Perhaps 
 it was also an advantage that, being unlearned in the 
 culture of Greece and Eome, he drew no robe of Hellen- 
 ism around his Hebraic ideas. The " Pilgrim's Progress" 
 is derived from only one of the two antiquities ; it is the 
 prose-epic of English Hebraism. 
 
SIR THOMAS BEOWXE 
 
 *' All divinity/' writes Donne in one of his poems, 
 '' is love or wonder." If we accept Donne's definition 
 we must think of Sir Thomas Browne as amonsf the 
 greatest of • English divines. Contemplative charity ; 
 illuminated wonder — these w^ere his possessions, or 
 rather by these he was possessed. With nothing 
 unsocial or inhospitable in his disposition, these made 
 him in his best moments a solitary — Thomas Browne, 
 '' the only one." In an age of violence and strife, he 
 moved serenely, or abode in the cloudy tabernacle of 
 his own mind. In an age when religious ceremonial 
 w^as strenuously enforced for the sake of uniformity, he 
 valued ceremony — of diverse kinds — for its emotional 
 or imaginative suggestions. In an age when dogma 
 hardened into systems, and the sense of mystery de- 
 parted, as all truth was made definite in schemes and 
 plans dovetailed together from Scripture by the school- 
 men of Protestantism, he gazed into what Bishop 
 Berkeley described as the arcane part of divine wisdom, 
 and amid the humblest circumstance of our daily lives 
 he discovered something shadowy and arcane. While 
 others were alarmed by the terrors of religion, he was 
 rapt by its harmonies of beauty and of wonder. 
 
 In the affairs of state Browne's sympathies were 
 
36 Sir Thomas Browne 
 
 with the Royalist cause ; in matters ecclesiastical he 
 professed himself a loyal son of the English Church. 
 Yet in truth he stands somewhat apart from the move- 
 ments of his own day. Or if we are to connect him 
 with any of the public interests of the seventeenth 
 century, it must be with the research for scientific 
 truth. The great scientific movement of the period 
 which followed the Restoration was in the hands of 
 a younger generation than that of Browne. His 
 position was between the old view of the world and 
 the new. The fabulous natural history, the popular 
 folk-lore, the fictions of geographical speculation, the 
 mediaeval legends preserved in pictures, the strange 
 Rabbinical interpretations of Scripture interested his 
 imagination ; they had the support of antiquity and 
 of authority ; they led him into a curious labyrinth ; 
 they made him, as he says, a wanderer in " the America 
 and untravelled parts of truth " ; and such wanderings 
 in the virgin continent pleased him. He could in- 
 dulge a scholarly scepticism without any apprehension 
 that in exposing popular errors he was diminishing 
 his territory of wonder. To explode a vulgar delusion 
 was only to open an avenue for some finer apparition 
 of the marvellous. His imaginative faith discovered 
 imder every roof of Norwich and in his own soul 
 mysteries more moving than the legends of the 
 basilisk, the phoenix, and the mandrake. 
 
 Apart from the confessions and betrayals of his 
 mind, we can form some acquaintance with Browne and 
 his surroundings. His life extended from 1605, the 
 year of the Gunpow^der Plot, to the year 1682, when 
 
Sir Thomas Browne 2i7 
 
 Monmouth made bis popular progress and Shaftesbury 
 retired to Holland. It was, amid all the national 
 struggle, a scholar's life of tranquillity ; when Fairfax 
 advanced to Oxford, and the King quitted the city 
 in disguise to place himself in the hands of the 
 Scottish commissioners, Browne published his folio 
 on Vulgar Errors ; in the year of the Protector's death, 
 when dangers threatened and the army plotted against 
 his feeble successor, Browne was discoursing on the 
 sepulchral urns lately found in Norfolk, and on the 
 quincuncial plantations of the ancients. By birth 
 a Londoner, he became an Oxford student, accompanied 
 his stepfather to Ireland on a visitation of military 
 defences, travelled in France and Italy, resided for 
 a time at Montpellier and again at Padua, returned 
 through Holland, and received his doctorate of medi- 
 cine at Leyden. The " Religio Medici " was surrepti- 
 tiously published when he was thirty-seven, and 
 Browne became famous. At Xorwich he practised 
 medicine during upwards of forty years; in 1641 
 he married a lady of good family, and " of such 
 symmetrical proportion to her w^orthy husband," writes 
 his friend Whitefoot, '' both in the graces of her 
 body and mind, that they seemed to come together 
 by a kind of natural magnetism." With her he 
 lived happily for forty-one years ; she bore him twelve 
 children, of w^hom four survived their parents. Browne 
 was the friend of John Evelyn, Sir William Dugdale, 
 and other distinguished persons whose interest in 
 science or in antiquities drew them towards him. In 
 1671 he was knighted at Norwich by Charles II. 
 
38 Sir Thomas Browne 
 
 Eleven years later, after a short illness, he died oi:i 
 his seventy-seventh birthday. 
 
 Some minutes for Browne's life were set down at the 
 request of his widow by his friend Whitefoot, the rector 
 of Heigham. His complexion, and the hair, which 
 fell curling upon his shoulders, were, says Whitefoot,. 
 " answerable to his name " ; the hair was still auburn 
 when in 1840 the coffin-lid was accidentally broken by 
 the pick-axe of a workman in St Peter Mancroft. He 
 was of moderate stature, neither meagre nor of dis- 
 proportioned bulk. In dress he studied simplicity. 
 He was by the habit of his mind introspective — " a* 
 singular observer of everything that belonged to him- 
 self"; yet at the same time he loved to explore for 
 curious knowledge all the visible universe and the 
 world of books, eagerly observed the stars, had a most 
 exact acquaintance with the geography of the globe,. 
 and was a student of plants and flowers. Evelyn visited 
 Norwich on the occasion when Browne received the 
 honour of knighthood ; he found the physician's house 
 and garden ''a paradise and cabinet of rarities," chosen 
 with good judgment, " especially medals, books, plants,, 
 and natural things." So Browne balanced his intro- 
 spective tendency with the study of nature and the 
 world of past generations of mankind ; indeed his- 
 scrutiny of the world of his own mind, the microcosm 
 within, was a kind of objective observation ; he explored 
 his spirit as a singular fragment of nature, finding there- 
 the choicest rarities to add to his collection. Except in 
 the passion of contemplation, the soaring or sinking in 
 his meditative rapture, he knew no great disturbances. 
 
Sir Thomas Browne 39 
 
 of mood. " He had," Whitefoot tells us, ''no despotical 
 power over his affections and passions . . . but as 
 large a political poAver over them as any stoick or man 
 of his time. The strongest that were found in him, 
 both of the irascible and concupiscible, were under the 
 control of reason." The face familiar to us in the 
 portrait of the Bodleian confirms his friend's statement ; 
 its dominant expression is that of a calm and sweet 
 reflectiveness. " Of admiration," says Whitefoot, and 
 the word includes the idea of wonder, '\ . . he had 
 more, and less, than other men, upon the same account 
 of his knowing more than others ; so that, though he 
 met with many rarities, he admired them not so much 
 as others do." Browne's faculty of imaginative wonder 
 did, in fact, not cling to material objects ; a curiosity in 
 his collection was in itself of small account ; it was 
 precious chiefly as the starting-point of that sense of 
 mystery which soon wandered forth on a flight of its 
 own. He was never seen to be transported with mirth 
 or dejected with sadness ; but a sensitive delicacy of 
 feeling brought ever and anon a blush to his face like 
 that of youth. His friend proceeds to speak of Sir 
 -Thomas Browne's liberality in everything except his 
 time, of his devotion to study, of his acquaintance with 
 classical and modern authors : '' he was excellent com- 
 pany when he was at leisure, and expressed more light 
 than heat in the temper of his brain." He could not 
 be' eager in dispute, when he gazed through the matters 
 of controversy to something beyond them and remote, 
 where all contention was lost in contemplative quietude 
 or contemplative awe. 
 
40 Sir Tho7nas Browne 
 
 If we knew Sir Thomas Browne only through his 
 solitary musings and his ingenuities of learning we 
 might wonder what manner of man this hermit spirit 
 was in his home and among his children. Happily a 
 considerable number of his letters remains with us. No 
 one was a truer father and friend to his sons and 
 daughters. Edward Browne, the elder of two sons 
 whom we meet in the correspondence, followed liis 
 father's profession, and like his father travelled over 
 Europe. He had inherited or acquired a curiosity for 
 various knowledge, in some respects like that of the 
 elder Browne ; the element of genius, the passion of 
 contemplation was not transmitted to the son. A 
 perfect friendship existed between the old and the 
 young physician. On his continental wanderings 
 Edward Browne wrote frequently to Norwich, giving 
 his father such remarkable scraps of information as 
 he knew would be welcome, and assuring the modest 
 student of an English provincial city that his fame 
 was great throughout Europe. The information was in 
 general connected with science or with scholarshijD, but, 
 knowing as he did, Sir Thomas's mingled credulity and 
 scepticism, he sometimes ventured to report, in a spirit 
 of doubt, certain supernatural marvels. He has been 
 assured that the great sorceress of Bohemia, Libussa, 
 had foretold many things concerning the mines of 
 Cottenberg, but for his own part he believes little in 
 such matters. " In the mines of Brunswick is reported 
 to be a spirit ; and another at the tin mine at Slacken- 
 wald in the shape of a monk, which strikes the miners, 
 singeth, playeth on the bagpipe, and many such tricks. 
 
Sir Thomas Browjie 41 
 
 But I doubt if I go thither I should find them as vain 
 as Montparion's drum." When Edward Browne, dis- 
 tinguished as a London physician, delivered medical 
 lectures at Surgeons' Hall, his father gladly advised 
 and assisted him ; his sister Betty, who was skilled 
 with her pencil, made drawings of the kidney and 
 heart of a vitidus raarinus or seal ; Dame Dorothy, 
 his mother, considerate of creature comforts, sent him 
 the receipt for orange cakes. Sir Thomas cautions 
 his son against the error of undue modesty, the error of 
 hiding his talents ; exhorts him to take with him to 
 church a Greek Testament or the Septuagint, so that 
 he may learn two good things together ; and on the 
 occasion of his marriage recommends a wise frugality, a 
 prudent disposal of his money, the choice of a good 
 house, and of apparel moderately rich. 
 
 The second boy, named after his father, was all that 
 a gallant English boy should be. Had he lived, he 
 might have been one of England's great sea-captains, 
 for assuredly he was of the same breed as theirs. Did 
 he inherit his joy in action from Dame Dorothy Browne? 
 Entirely unlike his father in temperament as he was, 
 the relations between the two were delightful in their 
 cordiality. At the age of fourteen young Thomas 
 Browne w^as so far trusted to his own care that he 
 travelled in France without a companion or attendant. 
 He entered the Royal Navy in 1664, took part in the 
 Dutch w^ar, and received such commendations for his 
 courage, skill, and generous temper as highly delighted 
 his father. He thought lovingly of the Norwich 
 household, and was careful that his old pensioner, John 
 
42 Sir Thomas Browne 
 
 More, a scavenger and a centenarian, received his 
 
 weekly allowance. He was all on fire when a " grand 
 
 action " was in prospect, longing extremely for that 
 
 thundering day. '' It is impossible," he writes, " to 
 
 express unto another how a smart sea-fight elevates the 
 
 spirits of a man, and makes him despise all dangers." 
 
 At Bergen the dying gunner Blanchot left his boy in 
 
 Browne's care, and great was his joy on obtaining a 
 
 pension for Will. His own pieces of eight were always 
 
 ready for the aid of sailors whose pay was in arrears. 
 
 ''While I have a penny I cannot but relieve them of 
 
 whose fidelity and valour I can give so good testimonie." 
 
 His father writes to " honest Tom " w^ith an exultant 
 
 pride : '' God hath given you a stout but a generous 
 
 and merciful heart withal, and in all your life you 
 
 could never behold any person in misery but with 
 
 compassion and relief; which hath been notable in 
 
 you from a child." The heroic lad was like his father 
 
 a lover of learned studies. He read the " noble 
 
 straynes " of Lucan while his ship lay in Plymouth 
 
 Sound. It pleased his father that Tom was " not only 
 
 Marti but Mercurio," and had found time at sea not 
 
 only to practise his violin and his foils, but to read 
 
 divers books, especially " Homer and Juvenal with 
 
 Lubine's notes." The only danger the elderly physician 
 
 feared was from his boy's desperate courage. He had 
 
 instructed his young navigator in Aristotle's definition 
 
 of fortitude ; lahorare is well, but tolerare is no less a 
 
 duty. Tom should consider the arguments against 
 
 blowing up his ship and her crew in extremity ; to be 
 
 made prisoner at overpowering odds is no disparage- 
 
Sir Thomas Browne 43 
 
 ment ; let him remember the examples thereof, even of 
 the worthier commanders, in his beloved Plutarch. In 
 the summer of 1667 the name of young Thomas 
 Browne disappears from the household chronicles, and 
 from a later letter we learn that his gallantry and 
 generosity had passed away from earth. Another Tom 
 — the son of Edward Browne — " little Tommy," came 
 to cheer his grandfather's elder days. Like a good 
 boy he chose Dame Dorothy and his Aunt Betty for 
 valentines ; he came home laden with presents from 
 the fair ; sometimes he was taken to see a play ; and if 
 '' begging books and reading of them " is a promise of 
 scholarship, Tom gave early pledges that he would be a 
 man of learning. The records of a happy home, over 
 which the wisdom and gracious temper of Sir Thomas 
 Browne presided, are of worth as throwing light upon 
 his character ; his curious erudition and retired specula- 
 tions did not sequester him from the beloved humanities 
 of the hearth. 
 
 II 
 
 The Religio Medici w^as written about 1635, when 
 Browne, having returned from his continental wander- 
 ings, was living near Halifax, before he settled at 
 Norwich. It was not intended for publication, being 
 a " private exercise," a monologue directed to himself 
 He wrote with what seemed to him the disadvantage of 
 absence from a library, and hence the book is rather a 
 meditative overflow than like other writings of Browne, 
 a piece of architectural construction into which the 
 marble, brick, and rubble of erudition are laboriousl3r 
 
44 ^^^ Thomas Browne 
 
 built. Browne did not aim at defining and establishing 
 a four-square system of theolog}^ ; there were theological 
 systems enough, and more than enough ; nor did he 
 plead with the soul and seek to incite new fervours of 
 piety. The '' Religio Medici " is rather of the nature of 
 a philosophic poem, the expression of an unique mind 
 and its musical moods, a mind occupied with itself, and 
 with external things as beheld in its own magic mirror, 
 a series of lyrical confessions, in which philosophy is 
 quickened by being made personal, and what is personal 
 is refined and clarified by the infusion of philosophical 
 ideas. As a transcript from its author's spirit at the 
 age of thirty, it must not be taken in a literal sense ; 
 he plays around his own mind, and discerning a germ 
 of feeling here, a suggestion of thought there, he 
 develops these and refashions the whole substance of 
 his being in an ideal mould. In a period of religious 
 excitement he discourses on religious subjects in a 
 luminous serenity ; he is free from such personal terrors, 
 such spasms of fear, such cold and hot fits as attacked 
 Bunyan ; sometimes when he soars in his flights of 
 imaginative faith, he soars so smoothly that we hardly 
 discern the quiver of a wing. 
 
 Browne's manuscript pleased the friends to whom it 
 was lent ; transcripts were made, and from one of these 
 the text of the surreptitious edition of 1 642 was obtained. 
 In the following year, and in self-defence, he published a 
 ^'true and full copy." A book, personal and intimate in 
 its origin, had proved to be of interest to many readers. 
 In truth, he had elevated the personal and historical self 
 into an ideal self; he had made this self the centre of 
 
Sir Tho7nas Browne 45 
 
 his universe of thought ; he had not pronounced the 
 ponderous phrase, " relativity of human knowledge," but 
 he had found in a purified and idealised ego the inter- 
 pretation of all things ; the microcosm of his own frame 
 was that he cast his eye on ; as for the macrocosm of 
 earth and planets and spheres, " I use it," he says, " but 
 like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for my 
 recreation." The essentials of his faith are accepted by 
 him on the authority of Scripture and of the Church ; 
 these form a citadel from which he sallies forth on 
 adventures of the soul. Even as regards the beliefs 
 which he accepts on authority, he ranges at will, above 
 and around them, gazing into their mysteries until his 
 imagination and his feelings are kindled, so that the 
 statements of the Bible and the councils are for him 
 not_so_much statements as living powers, instinct with 
 spiritual fire and mysterious light. 
 
 When Browne wrote his " Religio Medici," Laud was 
 engaged in harrying the Puritan clergy ; he hoped in 
 the end to secure unity within the Anglican communion, 
 and the first step towards this object was to enforce ex- 
 ternal uniformity. His method was to work from with- 
 out inwards ; let certain postures of the body of religion 
 be required (at the cost, if need be, of Christian or human 
 charity) and the soul of religion will by degrees adapt 
 itself to those postures. The " five busy points of Ar- 
 minius " occupied the minds of Churchmen who thought 
 more of dogma than of ceremony. Both the High Church 
 and the Puritan parties stood on their defence against 
 the counter-Reformation of the Roman communion. Amid 
 these coDflicts there was a certain growing liberality of 
 
46 Sir Thomas Browne 
 
 thought, but though it drew its lines of toleration a little 
 wider than had been customary, it drew them in the same 
 manner of hard and exact precision. Browne's confession 
 is not moulded on the articles of a creed, but is far more 
 the exposition of a religious temper ; it concerns itself 
 with the Christian graces ; the first Book of the " Religio 
 Medici " deals with Faith and the Hope which attends on 
 Faith ; the second Book considers the grace of Charity, 
 and indicates certain extensions of charity little thought 
 of in his own day. 
 
 As to ceremony, to which a spirit so humanly catholic 
 as his could not be indifferent, he viewed it less as a 
 symbolism of dogma than as a vehicle of religious emo- 
 tion. His tolerance was a form not of intellectual 
 comprehension but of human sympathy ; through the 
 diversities of creeds he felt rather than argued his way 
 to the deep communities of religious sentiment. He 
 declares himself a sworn subject of the Church of 
 England, which, with its temperate wisdom and its 
 seemly ordinances was, as it were, framed to his par- 
 ticular devotion ; but holy-water and crucifix, '' danger- 
 ous to the common people," did not disturb his piety. 
 A transcendentalist may be a ceremonialist, but he can- 
 not attach supreme importance to any particular set of 
 forms ; wherever the spirit dwells in form, he reads the 
 meaning of the hieroglyph ; " I could never hear an Ave- 
 Mary bell without an elevation ; ... at a solemn pro- 
 cession I have wept abimdantly." The common satires 
 and invectives of the pulpit did not confirm his faith ; 
 many persons, he thought, through an inconsiderate zeal 
 for truth, had too rashly charged the troops of Error. 
 
Sir Thomas Browne 47 
 
 He had learnt by his own experiences that unauthorised 
 opinions may lodge in certain brains that are naturally 
 framed to receive them, and may fade away if they are 
 not fixed and supported by opposition. He had held, 
 as Milton afterwards held, that the soul perishes with 
 the body, to be miraculously raised with it at the last 
 day; it was an opinion natural to one who, as a phy- 
 sician, reflected much on the intimate connection between 
 what is spiritual and what is material in man. He had 
 believed in the final salvation of all men, and in the 
 lawfulness of prayers for the dead ; if these were heresies, 
 they were the indiscretions of charity, and, being neither 
 discussed nor defended, they had passed away insensibly 
 as his trust in the Divine wisdom had enlarged its bounds. 
 As for the deeper mysteries in Divinity and ''airy subtle- 
 ties in religion," his mind moved among them as in its 
 natural element. Argument lapsed away, and a sacred 
 awe filled his spirit : " I love to lose myself in a mystery, 
 to pursue my reason to an altitudo ! " Miracles were 
 superfluous for his faith ; he rejoiced that he believed 
 and saw not. He loved to let his thoughts play at the 
 utmost verge of human speculation, close to God's abyss, 
 and if they threw themselves forward with closed eyes, 
 he was assured that some angelical powers would bear 
 them up in their hands — Certuvi est, quia impossible 
 est. Above all, he stretched and confounded his intellect 
 with the idea of God — a circle whose centre is every- 
 where and circumference nowhere ; he brooded on the 
 thought of God's unsearchable wisdom and incompre- 
 hensible eternity — a duration which is *'one permanent 
 point, without succession, parts, flux, or division." The 
 
48 Sir Tho7nas Brow7ie 
 
 wisdom of the Creator he sought to trace particularly in 
 
 His creatures— ^such is part of a physician's piety — and, 
 
 seeing in the visible world an image of the invisible, he 
 
 believed that in the study of nature he was in truth 
 
 deciphering the supernatural : 
 
 Give Tliou my reason that instructive flight, 
 Whose weary wings may on Thy hands still light. 
 
 Even in the nineteenth century the mystic and the 
 man of science may be united ; matter may disappear in 
 force or in motion ; and the scientific intellect may lose 
 itself in the darkness or the light of the unknown cause 
 of motion. In Browne's day, with cruder conceptions 
 of science and a mysticism more emotional and imagina- 
 tive, the combination had a shimmer of colour and of 
 fantastic strangeness that has passed away. 
 
 The study of final causes may be discredited by 
 modern science, or at least may have been driven to 
 indirect methods ; it was especially final causes, as 
 leading him through narrow channels to the ocean of 
 Divine wisdom, that Browne, as he says, groped after 
 in the works of nature. This goodly habitation, the 
 earth, seemed thus to grow more luminous ; what was 
 opaque became transparent ; the quaint hieroglyphic of 
 the forms of beast and reptile and plant ceased to be 
 merely grotesque, as the hidden significance of each 
 emerged to view ; what w^as most trivial to the eye of 
 sense might give access to an abyss of intellectual light. 
 The flux and reflux of the sea, the waning and increase 
 of the Nile produced in the mind of Browne no deeper 
 sensation of awe than did the skill of the little citizens 
 of a hive. Beauty and what is ignorantly termed 
 
Sir Thomas Brow7ie 49 
 
 deformity alike served the ends of the supreme Artist. 
 Art itself is only the perfection of nature, and nature, 
 everywhere significant of ideas, is no other than the art 
 of God. 
 
 Seeking in all directions for a Divine presence, un- 
 satisfied until he had found spirit interpenetrating the 
 whole framework of things, and filling all the interstices 
 of existence, Browne loved to trace out the meanders 
 of Providence in what men misname fortune. When 
 the faculties of man — intellect, passions, and the energies 
 of faith — are justly poised, when each aids the others, 
 it is not difficult to commune with the soul of things. 
 When we are ourselves harmonical, we give a spon- 
 taneous response to the harmonies of the world. The 
 essentials of a spiritual creed naturally evolve them- 
 selves from a spirit at one with itself, while many 
 questions merely curious, or worthy of consideration, 
 but of no vital import, may remain unanswered. In 
 his highest moments Browne — anticipating Wordsworth's 
 mood — seemed to commune with some universal soul 
 of Xature, but, whether this were so in reality or not, 
 he could not doubt that some common spirit, which no 
 man can properly call his own, plays in and through 
 everyone of us like the breeze in an Eolian harp : 
 '' Whoever feels not the warm gale and gentle ventila- 
 tion of this Spirit, though I feel his pulse, I dare not 
 say he lives ; for truly, without this, to me there is no 
 heat under the tropic, nor any light though I dwell in 
 the body of the sun." 
 
 This wonderful universe becomes yet more wonderful 
 when we know that it is tenanted by noble invisible 
 
 D 
 
50 Sir Thomas Browne 
 
 guests — tutelary angels of countries and provinces, 
 guardian angels of man, woman, and child ; while, on 
 the other hand, evil spirits roam abroad by permission, 
 infuse melancholy into susceptible minds, communicate 
 secrets of unholy knowledge, delude the credulous as 
 phantasms of the dead, and possess the unhappy bodies 
 of witches. Truly, a world full of wonders, where the 
 Genius of Middlesex may be superintending the crowd 
 that flows morning and evening through the city, or a 
 demon may be gazing at you through the eyes of some 
 Rose Cullender or Amy Duny.^ Browne's imaginative 
 wonder is free from perturbation ; he could sooner pity 
 the great fallen archangel than be terrified by his 
 malice ; God's affable ministers approach us with no 
 waving of fiery swords or blast of doom, but rather on 
 gentle wings and with " courteous revelations." 
 
 A great scale of creatures ascends and descends from 
 the meanest worm to the loftiest of the cherubim ; in 
 this scale man has his place as a kind of amphibious 
 being, existing partly in a material and partly even 
 now in a superterrestrial sphere. Of death, therefore, 
 Browne had no fear ; are we not already half in the 
 sanctuary of spirits ? Only through a natural bashful- 
 ness, he thought with a certain remorse of the ignominy 
 of the body after its great change. Not by the vulgar 
 contemplation of cross bones and a skull is the true 
 theory of death to be attained. He meditated rather 
 on life than on that cloudy portal through which we 
 pass from life to life. If he mused on heaven, no 
 
 1 The names of those unhappy women whom Sir T. Browne's evidence 
 in 1664 helped to send to execution on a charge of witchcraft. 
 
Sir Thomas Browne 5 1 
 
 Apocalyptic dream came to him of emeralds, chrysolites, 
 and streets of paven gold ; he looked within to those 
 highest moments when the boundless appetite of the 
 spirit seems to be satisfied : " The soul of man may be 
 in heaven anywhere, even within the limits of his proper 
 body." Fixing his contemplations on such attainments 
 and foretastes of joy, he had little regard for those 
 terrors of hell which filled the imagination of so many 
 of his contemporaries ; gross fancies of corporal torture 
 by fire did not afflict him ; the hell which he sometimes 
 seemed to discover lay, like heaven, within his own 
 heart: "Lucifer keeps his court in my breast, Legion 
 is revived in me." Such thoughts, however, were 
 quickly encountered by thoughts of the abyss of God's 
 mercies, and even judgments put on the countenance 
 of mercies. He was not the master of his own destiny; 
 that was provided for by a higher Power ; his future 
 had been all determined for him before the world was : 
 " Thus was I dead before T was alive ; though my 
 grave be England, my dying place was Paradise, and 
 Eve miscarried of me before she conceived of Cain." 
 And so, with a flight of the intellect and imagination 
 towards eternity and the Divine will, Browne's confes- 
 sion of faith attains a resting-placCj and settles there in 
 ii calm of wonder and of love. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The second part of the '' Eeligio Medici " considers 
 the grace of charity, without which faith is a mere 
 notion. In a poem of Cardinal Newman's a warning 
 is uttered against the easy dreams of an otiose ami- 
 
52 Sir Thomas Browne 
 
 ability ; true love has rigour at its heart ; hatred 
 and zeal and fear are its awful consorts and com- 
 panions. In Browne's day zeal was not lacking in 
 either of the contending religious parties ; the zeal 
 of Laud was encountered by the zeal of Laud's op- 
 ponents ; Browne distrusted the piety of fiery indig- 
 nation ag^ainst the alleo^ed enemies of heaven : " no 
 man can justly censure or condemn another, because 
 indeed no man truly knows another." Which of us, 
 indeed, truly knows himself? Perhaps, after all, a 
 natural disinclination to unreasonable repugnances and 
 aversions is favourable to the growth of that plant 
 that springs from no mortal soil — divine charity. True 
 charity is not a weak commiseration for our fellows ; 
 it is jDart of the energy of our love of God. But 
 petty instincts of hostility to any fragments of God's 
 world — to beast, or reptile or plant — do not predispose 
 us to the reception of His highest grace. Browne 
 has pleasure in thinking that he is not palisadoed 
 with the sharp stakes of prejudice or bastioned in 
 idiosyncrasy, but lies open to every diversity of en- 
 joyment : '' I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyn- 
 crasy, in diet, humour, air, anything. ... I could 
 digest a salad gathered in a churchyard as well as 
 in a garden. I cannot start at the presence of a 
 serpent, scorpion, lizard, or salamander" — why should 
 he, who chose rather to decipher these odd hieroglyphs 
 of God ? — '' at the sight of a toad or viper I find 
 in me no desire to take up a stone to destroy them.'^ 
 If there was anything which raised his scorn, it was 
 that disorganised rabble — no true people — which 
 
Sir Thomas Browne 55 
 
 Burke afterwards named " the swinish multitude," a 
 hydra-headed beast, humanity forfeiting through mad- 
 ness and impiety, its irue prerogative ; but his disdain 
 was not a ciass-feeling, an aristocratic insolence to- 
 wards those rude mechanicals, at whose mingled folly 
 and shrewd sense Shakespeare smiled ; he discovered 
 his rabble among the gentry also, plebeian heads, 
 however dignified by rank or birth. Differences of 
 opinion, difference of race or nationality he could 
 hardly conceive of as alienating men from one another.' 
 There were but differences of degree in his universal 
 -charity ; God, his country, his friends he embraced as 
 his closest kin ; and after them all those his fellows 
 to whom he could render any human service. 
 
 At thirty years of age Browne had not yet felt 
 that " natural magnetism " which afterwards drew him 
 to Mistress Dorothy Mileham. The fascination of 
 ideas had preserved him from the passion for any 
 <;reature of flesh and blood. Xot, indeed, that he 
 who regarded a toad or salamander without hostility 
 •could be '' averse from that sweet sex " ; rather he 
 was naturally amorous of all that is beautiful. But 
 the harmony which he saw in the marriage-union 
 reached him, entered into him, became a part of 
 himself in other delightful ways, and ways less cum- 
 bered with material interests ; it ravished him in the 
 organ tones and the voices of a church ; " even that 
 tavern-music, which makes one man merry, another 
 ■mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a 
 profound contemplation of the First Composer." We 
 may suppose that when Thomas Browne pleaded his 
 
54 ^'^^ Thomas Browne 
 
 cause with Mistress Mileham in some pleached arbour 
 of the Burlingham garden, he represented to her that 
 he affected all harmony, and that to him the har- 
 monical composition of her soul was an hieroglyphical 
 and shadowed lesson of the whole world. 
 
 It was, in fact, in this noble manner that Browne 
 conceived the art of music, rather as a disciple of 
 Plato or a foreseer of Beethoven than as a seven- 
 teenth - century lover of light airs and recollected 
 terms arranged for the lute and youthful voices ; he 
 recognised ic^ music the interpreter of nature and an 
 ambassador of the divinity ; the consonance of the 
 microcosm of man's soul echoes with a music akin 
 to that of the spheral concord. He feared by per- 
 turbations, even by indignations that might seem 
 righteous, to disturb the inner harmony of the spirit^ 
 by which he was a part of the vast symphony of 
 God. Yet how could he greatly mar that " undis- 
 turbed song of pure concent," when God's abyss of 
 mercy encircled all his existence ? " As for my life, 
 it is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate were 
 not a history but a piece of poetry, and would sound 
 to common ears like a fable." '' Surely," exclaimed 
 Johnson in the spirit of eighteenth-century common 
 sense, '' a man may visit France and Italy, reside 
 at Montpellier and Padua, and at last take his degree 
 at Leyden, without anything miraculous." The stand- 
 ing miracle — as indeed Johnson remembered — is life 
 itself, with that secret labyrinth of Providence which 
 entangles and resolves the least remarkable of human 
 stories. To Browne every soul of man was a frag- 
 
Sir Thomas Browne 55 
 
 raent of the gr^at wonder, and the humblest no less 
 than the greatest : " There is surely a piece of Divinity 
 in us, something that was before the elements, and 
 owes no homage unto the sun." The progress of each 
 ordinary day was to him miraculous — darkness and 
 light, the mystery of sleep, the mystery of waking, the 
 flight of thought, the flame of love, the harmony of 
 the soul, the play of God in the human spirit. Browne 
 was learned, and, according to the standards of his 
 earlier days, a man of science ; but erudition and 
 science drop away when he contemplates the primary 
 facts of the soul and of life ; the mystic, on whom 
 the scholar and the man of science had been en- 
 grafted, alone remains, and with the prayer of a 
 mystic for the total subjugation or abolishment of 
 self, his book concludes — " Thy will be done, even 
 in my own undoing." 
 
 IV 
 
 Browne's type of mind, so curious in its research for 
 recondite facts, so elusive of facts in its meditative 
 climbings, is of rare occurrence, and among English 
 writers of his day it was unique. He was sceptical of 
 many things commonly believed ; credulous of many 
 things which others doubted. Chief among his gifts to 
 us is that gift of genius — the quickening of our sense of 
 awe and solemn wonder in presence of the familiar 
 phenomena of daily life, in presence of the external 
 world and the world of our own souls. Mr Theodore 
 Watts-Dunton,in his article on Dante Rossetti contributed 
 to the ''Encyclopsedia Britannica," has spoken of the 
 
56 Sw Thomas Br ozone 
 
 movement of recoil in literature from eighteenth-century 
 materialism as the Renascence of the spirit of wonder in 
 poetry and art, of which, he says, Rossetti became the 
 acknowledged protagonist. But the wonder derived from 
 romance is shallow or fragile compared with the wonder 
 in reality. A Blessed Damozel or a Rose Mary appears 
 |i as a pale and shadowy marvel of art-wizardry if set 
 ' beside a peasant woman nursing her infant at a cottage 
 door or an old man breaking stones by the roadside. 
 Pandora and Proserpina and Beata Beatrix are figures 
 of visionary power ; but they evoke a sense of wonder 
 less large and sane than what we feel in view of Millet's 
 plain heroic sower casting his seed into the common clay- 
 The true protagonist of the nineteenth-century Renas- 
 cence of wonder was neither Rossetti nor Coleridge, but 
 Wordsworth. And though Browne generalises rather 
 than individualises, though he troubles the simplicity of 
 feeling with paradox and with quaintness, something of 
 that same illumination which is part of the natural magic 
 of the " Highland Girl of Inversnaid " and of '* Stepping 
 Westward " touches us as we read the eloquent periods 
 of the '' Religio Medici"; we are startled out of the 
 dream of custom ; we look around on Mother Earth as if 
 we were her first-born and none had lived before us. 
 
 Browne's '' Christian Morals " is of a much later date 
 than the " Religio Medici," and was not published until 
 after the writer's death. The "Religio Medici" is a 
 confession uttered in solitude, a meditation, sometimes 
 a rapt contemplation ; '' Christian Morals " is didactic in 
 its purpose, a series of brief exhortations addressed to 
 others. It was in lonely musings that Browne attained 
 
Sii' Thomas Bi'oiviie 5 7 
 
 his clearest altitudes; yet the "Christian Morals" con- 
 tains not a few striking passages on which he has 
 impressed his characteristic sign manual. This, for 
 example, on the conquest of the passions : 
 
 " Make the quarrelling Lapithytes sleep, and Centaurs 
 within lie quiet. Chain up the unruly Legion in thy 
 breast ; lead thine own captivity captive, and be Caesar 
 within thyself." 
 
 And this on the mystery of the divine nature : 
 
 '' Where imitation [of God] can go no further, let 
 admiration step in, whereof there is no end in the wisest 
 of men. . . . Even the most wino^ed thouo'hts fall at 
 the setting-out, and reach not the portal of Divinity." 
 
 And this metaphor declaring the course of the sins 
 named deadly : 
 
 " We are carried into the dark lake, like the Egyptian 
 river into the sea, by seven principal ostiaries." 
 
 And this beautiful word on the peace of submission : 
 
 '' Guide not the hand of God, nor order the fing^er of 
 the Almighty unto thy will and pleasure ; but sit quiet 
 in the soft showers of Providence." 
 
 And this on the joyful close of life for one who has 
 ■escaped the sins of youth : 
 
 "He that hath not early suffered this shipwreck, and 
 in his younger days escaped this Charybdis, may make 
 a happy voyage, and not come in with black sails into 
 the port." 
 
 " Christian Morals," itself probably a tesselated arrange- 
 ment from Browne's note- books, bears well to be repre- 
 ■sented by fragments. A few more sentences may be 
 added : 
 
58 Sir Thomas Browne 
 
 " Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society 
 of thyself, nor be only content but delight to be alone 
 and single with Omnipresency. He who is thus pre- 
 pared, the day is not uneasy nor the night black unto 
 him. Darkness may bound his eyes, not his imagination. 
 In his bed he may lie like Pompey and his sons in all 
 quarters of the earth, may speculate the universe, and 
 enjoy the whole world in the hermitage of himself." 
 
 " To enjoy true happiness we must travel into a very 
 far country, and even out of ourselves ; for the pearl we 
 seek for is not in the Indian but in the Empyrean ocean." 
 
 " [0/ one wlio lias reached old age.] Having been long 
 tossed in the ocean of this world, he will by that time 
 feel the indraught of another, unto which this seems but 
 preparatory, and without it of no high value." 
 
 With one more passage these citations may close — that 
 which brings the first part of " Christian Morals " to a 
 conclusion ; we may, if we please, indulge the fancy that 
 when Sir Thomas Browne described the " true heroick 
 English gentleman," he thought of what his own sailor 
 lad might have been had he fulfilled on earth the promise 
 of his boyhood. '' Where true fortitude dwells, loyalty, 
 bounty, friendship, and fidelity may be found. A man 
 may confide in persons constituted for noble ends, who 
 dare do and suffer, and who have a hand to burn for 
 their country and their friend. Small and creeping 
 things are the product of petty souls. He is like to be 
 mistaken who makes choice of a covetous man for his 
 friend, or relieth upon the reed of narrow and poltroon 
 friendship. Pitiful things are only to be found in the 
 cottages of such breasts but bright thoughts, clear deeds. 
 
Sir Thomas Browne 59 
 
 constancy, fidelity, bravery, and generous honesty are the 
 gems of noble minds, wherein (to derogate from none) 
 the true heroick English gentleman hath no peer." 
 
 " The Garden of Cyrus," first published three years be- 
 fore the Restoration, is the most conspicuous example of 
 Browne's spider-like architecture of ingenious gossamer 
 webs. To brush it away would be harsh ; to trace its re- 
 ticulations is a bewilderment of the brain. In speaking 
 of the doctrine of the Trinity in the " Religio Medici " 
 Browne confesses that he had often admired the mystical 
 way of Pythagoras and the secret magic of numbers. 
 Before we of the present day can be caught in the meshes of 
 his mystical mathematics, we must dismiss more of our in- 
 tellectual sanity than is quite convenient. We are forced, 
 for our own part, to regard the exposition of nature and 
 art, and the mysteries of the universe in the light of the 
 quincunx and the number five as a kind of game ; but 
 the quincuncial game is somewhat laborious and is some- 
 what long. Browne had doubtless more than a half faith 
 in his Pythagorism, but at the same time he had some- 
 thing of a sportsman's joy in hunting his prey through 
 the heavens and the earth, until at length earth and 
 heaven so thicken with quincuncial forms that the chase 
 becomes a mystical battue. Only in the concluding 
 page, which haunts the memories of all who have once 
 read it, does Browne charm us into credulity ; and at 
 that point he is prepared for sleep and oblivion of 
 quinary arrangements : ''To keep our eyes open longer 
 were to act our Antipodes. The huntsmen are up in 
 
6o Sh"" Thomas Browne 
 
 America, and they are already past their first sleep in 
 Persia." An excellent and a poetic reason for moving 
 bedward — the wave of sleep is washing round the globe, 
 the tide that has ebbed from one hemisphere invades the 
 other, and should we not be in harmony with nature.^ 
 The reader may, if he please, slumber also, and when 
 he awakes think that he has dreamed of floral and 
 starry quincunxes or is dreaming still, exclaiming with 
 Demetrius in Shakespeare's comedy — 
 
 Are you sure 
 That we are awake ? It seems to me 
 That yet we sleep, we dream. 
 
 And indeed the Puck that misleads night-wanderers 
 had some acquaintance with the learned physician of 
 Norwich. 
 
 Highly characteristic of its author is the " Letter 
 to a Friend upon the occasion of the death of his in- 
 timate friend," which was probably written immediately 
 after " Christian Morals/' but remained unprinted until 
 1690. Some portions of the letter were conveyed 
 from " Christian Morals," which was still in manuscript, 
 to form an edifying close, so that the "memento 'niori 
 might lead to a final " Think of living." The mystery 
 of death is always potent with Browne's imagination 
 and his familiarity as a physician with all its physical 
 details leads to that conjunction of definite fact with 
 visionary imaginings, which gave the two sides of 
 his genius their appropriate play. Already, when he 
 
 1 Coleridge seems to see only the oddity in Browne's plea for sleep : 
 ' ' Was there ever such a reason given before for going to bed at mid- 
 night ? " 
 
Sir Thomas Browne 6i 
 
 wrote, the departed friend bad been in the grave 
 some little time ; be was already " no puny among 
 the migbty nations of tbe dead," to wbose dark 
 society every bour adds a tbousand. No dreams or 
 airy nuncios had announced to bis correspondent their 
 common loss, and the physician takes up bis pen 
 to make a full report of tbe case. Tbe young sufferer, 
 wbose disease was a consumptive wasting away, had 
 died in May, and when Browne, as his medical 
 adviser, bad first visited him, be perceived at once 
 that the end was not very far off: ''He was not 
 like to behold a grasshopper, much less to pluck 
 another fig." ^ The attenuated features — " I never 
 more lively beheld the starved characters of Dante 
 in any living face " — showed that fatal symptom of 
 assuming the aspect of elder kinsfolk. Change of 
 climate was useless for one on whom death had set 
 bis broad arrow ; the Morta, deity of fate, bad im- 
 pressed " her hard seal " upon bis temples. But his 
 departure was soft, as if tbe rest of sleep bad seized 
 him. With that noting of curiosities which was 
 characteristic of Browne, he observed that at the 
 hour of death the moon was in motion from the 
 meridian, " at which time an old Italian lono- ao-o 
 would persuade me that tbe greatest part of men 
 died." Some were of opinion that he would breathe 
 his last upon tbe approaching day of his nativity — 
 it was Browne's own case some years later — '' the tail 
 
 1 The grasshopper would have been a burden ; the fig is perhaps 
 named because Hippocrates had observed that the time of the year is 
 mortal when the fig-leaf resembles a daw's claw. 
 
62 Sir Thomas Browne 
 
 of the snake returning into its mouth " ; but he 
 lingered a little longer. The patient's female friends, 
 desiring some omen of life, were irrationally curious 
 to examine his dreams : " He was now past the 
 healthful dreams of the sun, moon, and stars, in their 
 clarity and proper courses. 'Twas too late to dream 
 of flying, of limpid fountains, smooth waters, white 
 vestments, and fruitful green trees." The sick man 
 dreamed of the dead ; but to dream of the dead, 
 " so they appear not in dark habits and take nothing 
 away from us," is, as Hippocrates explains, of good 
 signification. As we read the letter we assist at the 
 bed-side of the unknown youth — one of many such 
 unknown — and see the light of his spirit shining 
 through the almost translucent frame, like the gleam- 
 ing of a lamp circled by porcelain. From one ignoble 
 infirmity of some who approach their end the sufferer 
 was wholly free — he had not grown self-absorbed, 
 narrow-minded, or tenacious of the things of earth ; 
 nor, though he felt for the world a " sober contempt," 
 did he ever fall into a cynic's mood, understanding 
 well that for the very reason that the felicities of this 
 world do not satisfy the soul, we may accept them, 
 so to soften the stream of our lives. " To be dissolved 
 and be with Christ was his dying ditty," yet Browne 
 temperately adds that to be content with death may 
 be better than to desire it. His years were few ; 
 but if we reckon up only our best days, a life of 
 many decades may be only a span-long, and thus youth 
 may have a longer term than old age. With such 
 consolations as these Browne communicates the mourn- 
 
Sir Thomas Browne 63 
 
 ful tidings, from which he passes on to those ethical 
 and religious reflections that are also embodied in 
 his " Christian Morals." 
 
 VI 
 
 No theme better fitted to evoke Browne's various 
 powers can be imagined than that suggested by the dis- 
 covery in Norfolk of certain sepulchral urns, several of 
 small dimensions, one more capacious. The urns were 
 in themselves objects of curiosity, which excited his 
 interest as an antiquary and led him into paths of 
 strange learning : higher mysteries of darkness and 
 of light, of mortality and of immortality encompassed 
 them. All the burial customs of mankind from the 
 interment of Adam, perhaps near Damascus, perhaps 
 on Mount Calvary, to the funeral rites of comparatively 
 recent times are recited. Indian Brahmins, Chal- 
 deans, Jews, Egyptians, Scythians, Parsees, Mussulmans, 
 Christians, Greeks, Eomans, Britons defile before us 
 on their way to the pyre or to the tomb. But Browne 
 was more than an antiquary. There was much virtue 
 for his meditative passion and his imagination in these 
 sad pitchers silently expressing the ruins of forgotten 
 times, filled with ashes half-mortared to the sand and 
 sides, and having some long roots of quich or dog's- 
 grass wreathed about the bones. To which of the 
 great nations of the dead did they belong ? Who 
 laid them in their silent retreat beneath the soil ? 
 Did they contain the relics of warriors, or priests, or 
 children, or lamented women ? Such questions gave 
 his speculation pause, and then pushed it onward into 
 
64 Sir Thomas Browne 
 
 the obscure. Above these poor jars of human dust 
 rose the mysterious powers of Life, and Love, and 
 Death, rose the bright mystery of fire, rose Time 
 the shadow, and the deep illumination of Eternity, 
 Readers of Browne's " Hydriotaphia " are apt to pass 
 lightly over its antiquarian lore, and to dwell long 
 on the eloquence of its closing pages ; but the curious 
 pillars of his structure support the cloudy vault ; the 
 matter-of-fact details, lit ever and anon by some 
 gleam of romance, are needful as a basis for his im- 
 passioned contemplation. The material pomps and 
 ceremonies of death lead up to the sublime meditation 
 on its spiritual mystery ; the long procession conducts 
 us to an altar of worship. 
 
 The Norfolk urns were discovered but a little way 
 below the surface of the soil. Time lightly conceals 
 the varieties of which it has a number without end 
 in the heavens and in the earth. Great and small are 
 brought together by the abstracting power of imagina- 
 tion. Wordsworth, watching a butterfly poised upon 
 a flower, finds a parallel for its motionless life in 
 breadth of frozen seas as motionless. Browne makes 
 a sudden transit from the handful of dust to new-found 
 stars and to that great antiquity, America, which lay 
 buried in an unexplored ocean for thousands of years. 
 In these rural urns of Norfolk no lamps, no sealed-up 
 oil or wine, no lachrymatories or tear-bottles were 
 found. Yet it \vas customary with the ancients to 
 burn or bury things of worth, " either as farewells unto 
 all pleasure or vain apprehension that the departed 
 might use them in the other world." Witness " the 
 
Sir Thomas Browne 65 
 
 gem or beryl-ring upon the finger of Cynthia, the 
 mistress of Propertius, when after her funeral pyre 
 her ghost appeared unto him " — so Browne loved to 
 light up the gloom with some touch of romantic 
 beauty or wonder. These vessels were composed of 
 unadorned clay, but Browne was unwilling to believe 
 that they entered their graves naked, without ''the 
 old habit of flowers." Many fragments of skulls lay 
 close together ; he speculates on the possibility of a 
 passionate attachment between some who would not 
 be separated even in their dust : " The ashes of 
 Domitian were mingled with those of Julia ; of 
 Achilles with those of Patroclus. All urns contain not 
 single ashes ; without confused burnings they affec- 
 tionately compounded their bones, passionately en- 
 deavouring to continue their living unions. And 
 when distance of death denied such conjunctions, 
 unsatisfied affections conceived some satisfaction to 
 be neighbours in the grave, to lie urn by urn, and 
 touch but in their manes!' To seek out such nobler 
 magic that sleeps in mortal relics is the way to quell 
 the diseased curiosity for that petty magic attributed 
 by sorcerers to the ashes of the dead. Highest magic 
 of all is the hope that dwells in them of resurrection 
 which, indeed, is the life of the grave and "sweetens 
 our habitation in the land of moles and pismires." 
 
 " In that ' Hydriotaphia,' " exclaimed Coleridge, " how 
 earthly, how redolent of graves and sepulchres is every 
 line ! . . . the gayest thing you shall ' meet with shall 
 be a silver nail or gilt Anno Domini from a perished 
 coffin top." It is not so ; gaiety, indeed, and the grave 
 
 ■~~ E 
 
66 Sir Thomas Browne 
 
 are only forced into companionship by insensibility or 
 by the humour of fantastic melancholy, by Hamlet or 
 by the rude churchyard knave. Sir Thomas Browne 
 discovers love in kinship with grief, and life in an 
 indissoluble alliance with death. He yields to the 
 sublime attractions of the grave, finding there our finest 
 memories and our highest hope. He thinks with 
 tenderness of the rites of sorrow, and of their passion 
 or their grace ; how the mother wrapped the little 
 bones in linen, and dried them in her bosom, " the first 
 fostering part and place of their nourishment," or how 
 sweet blossoms were strewn. In the requiem music and 
 funeral chaunts he finds a symbolical expression of the 
 harmony of the soul, which had departed to enjoy the 
 primitive harmony of heaven, from whence it first 
 descended. The supine position of the corpse is an 
 emblem of the repose of profound sleep. The survivors 
 sucked in the last breath of their expiring friends, 
 through some Pythagorical opinion that the spirit 
 passed from one body into another in the desire for 
 •endless union. Oil was poured upon the pyre to 
 facilitate the ascension of the soul. " That in strewing 
 their tombs the Romans affected the rose, the Greeks 
 amaranthus and myrtle ; that the funeral pyre con- 
 sisted of sweet fuel, cypress, fir, larix, yew, and trees 
 perpetually verdant, lay silent expressions of their 
 surviving hopes." No criticism can be wider of the 
 I mark than that which describes the '" Hydriotaphia " 
 as merely redolent of graves. 
 
 His lore as an antiquary ended, Browne rises to 
 that concluding chapter in which light contends with 
 
Sir Thomas Browne 6^ 
 
 darkness and remains the victor. The opening sentence 
 strikes a chord of majestic harmony : " Now since these 
 dead bones have already outlasted the living ones of 
 Methuselah, and in a yard underground and thin 
 walls of clay, outworn all the strong and spacious 
 buildings above it, and quietly rested under the drums 
 and tramplings of three conquests, what prince can 
 promise such diuturnity unto his relics ? " ^ With every 
 appeal to the imagination and an organ-like solemnity 
 of utterance Browne urges his central thought — that 
 our memorials on earth must pass away as a dream : 
 *' Oblivion is not to be hired." Yet we shall not 
 utterly perish. Having removed all hope of terrestrial 
 immortality, Browne looks upward, and perceives the 
 dawn of a deeper light than that of earth ; and this so 
 glorifies human nature that it almost justifies the cele- 
 brations of the tomb : '' 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 of his nature." Pyramids and 
 obelisks are but " wild enormities," when judged by the 
 Christian hope. The writer's sympathy with the passion 
 
 ^ De Quincey in commenting on the sentence enters into rivalry with 
 Browne in the splendours of elaborate rhetoric: "AVhat a melodious 
 ascent," he writes, "as if a prelude to some impassioned requiem, 
 breathing from the pomps of earth and from the sanctities of the gi-ave ! 
 AYhat difl^idus decumanus of rhetoric ! Time expounded, not by genera- 
 tions or centuries, but by vast periods of conquests and dynasties ; by 
 cycles of Pharaohs and Ptolemies, Antiochi and Arsacides ! And these 
 vast successions of time distinguished and figured by the uproars which 
 revolve at their inaugurations : by the drums and tramplings rolling 
 overhead upon the chambers of forgotten dead — the trepidation of time 
 and mortality vexing, at secular intervals, the everlasting sabbaths of 
 the grave ! " 
 
68 Sir Thomas Browne 
 
 of religious mysticism carries him away ; already some 
 on earth have known the transit from death to life and 
 the rapture of immortality : " If any have been so happy 
 as truly to understand Christian annihilation, . . . the 
 kiss of the spouse, gustation of God, and ingression into 
 the divine shadow, they have already had a handsome 
 anticipation of heaven." To one in whom there lives 
 such evidence of things unseen, monuments are vain : 
 '* 'Tis all one to lie in St Innocent's churchyard as in 
 the sands of Egypt. Ready to be anything in the 
 ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six foot as 
 the r^ixoles of Adrianus." 
 
 Such is Sir Thomas Browne's stateliest prose-poem^ 
 enriched with all curious learning, and passing from 
 erudition to wonder and to faith. Its poles are 
 mortality and immortality ; it moves from darkness to 
 light. The clods of the valley are sweet to the writer's 
 brooding imagination ; but above earth and its mourning 
 trains, and fall of tears, and requiems of lament, rises,, 
 as it were, the illimitable heaven of a day in mid- 
 summer. Mortality is swallowed up in life. 
 
 It cannot be said that Browne contributed any idea 
 of capital importance to seventeenth-century thought \ 
 he ascertained no new truth ; he confirmed no old truth 
 by an original dialectic. His gift has been one for the 
 emotions and the imagination ; he felt the wonder of 
 the world ; he widened the bounds of charity ; his- 
 divinity is composed of these two elements — wonder 
 and love. 
 
RICHAUD HOOKER 
 
 The Anglican position at the close of Elizabeth's reign 
 is defined in the writings of Hooker ; more than this, 
 the best temper of English thought is exemplified in 
 his work. The spirit of the Renaissance is brought into 
 harmony by him with the spirit of the Reformation ; he 
 is serious, reverent, devout ; w4th seriousness and rever- 
 ence he does honour to human reason ; a grave feeling 
 for beauty moulds his elaborate periods ; he can soar 
 and circle aloft in a wide orbit, yet all the time he 
 remains in living relation with concrete fact and the 
 realities of human life ; he is at once humanist and 
 theologian. 
 
 Through Izaac Walton's delightful biography we are 
 familiar with the man. Walton, with much seemino^ 
 simplicity or naivete of style, was an artist in his craft ; 
 he had formed a definite conception of what Hooker 
 was, or what he ought to be for the purposes of 
 biography. A great scholar and thinker, his greatness 
 was to be enhanced by something like insignificance in 
 his outward aspect. Not that he was in any sense 
 really insignificant, but his exceeding meekness and 
 humility, together with a bodily presence which was not 
 impressive, are used by Walton's art to throw out his 
 intellectual and moral greatness. Keble, in his edition 
 
 69 
 
yo Richard Hooker 
 
 of Hooker's works, qualifies Walton's view by adding^ 
 that meekness and patience were by no means con- 
 stitutional with Hooker : '' Like Moses, to whom 
 Walton compares him, he was by nature extremely 
 sensitive, quick in feeling any sort of unfairness, and 
 thoroughly aware of his own power to chastise it ; so 
 that his forbearance . . . must have been the result 
 of strong principle and unwearied self-control. Again, 
 Walton or his informants appear to have considered 
 Hooker as almost childishly ignorant of human nature 
 and of the ordinary business of life : whereas his writ- 
 ings throughout betray uncommon shrewdness and 
 quickness of observation, and a vein of the keenest 
 humour runs through them." We cannot quite be 
 brought even by an editor's enthusiasm to regard the 
 author of ''The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity" as an 
 Elizabethan humourist, but he was master, when he 
 pleased, of a certain restrained irony. Let us think of 
 him, among his fellow-divines of the Anglican com- 
 munion, as the Elizabethan incarnation of that stranger 
 who in the days of the Oxford movement reappeared as 
 Newman's guest and lives for us in Newman's sonnet : 
 
 Courteous he was and grave — so meek of mien 
 It seem'd untrue, or told a purpose weak ; 
 Yet in the mood he could with aptness speak, 
 Or with stern force, or show of feelings keen, 
 Marking deep craft methought, or hidden pride : 
 Then came a voice, — " Saint Paul is at thy side." 
 
 But Hooker's logic is less emotional than the true Saint 
 Paul's, and he never glows with as bright an ardour of 
 charity. 
 
 Hooker's complexion, says Walton, — and we must. 
 
Richard Hooker 7 1 
 
 attend to such hints of a rude physical psychology — 
 was sanguine with a mixture of choler ; yet even in 
 youth his speech and movements were grave and de- 
 liberate. As a boy he was distinguished by the union 
 of a questioning intellect with habitual modesty and 
 " a serene quietness of nature." He was never, Walton 
 declares, known to be angry, or passionate, or extreme 
 in any of his desires ; he was never heard to repine or 
 dispute with Providence. No man, he would say, ever 
 repented him upon his death-bed of moderation, charity, 
 humility, obedience to authority, peace to mankind. 
 " There will come a time," wrote Hooker, " when three 
 words uttered with charity and meekness shall receive 
 a far more blessed reward than three thousand volumes 
 written with disdainful sharpness of wit." In reply to 
 the violence of a controversial adversary his word is 
 formidable in its moderation: "Your next argument 
 consists of railing and of reasons ; to your railing I say 
 nothing ; to your reasons I say what follows." Begging 
 to be removed from the Mastership of the Temple, '' My 
 Lord," he wrote to the Archbishop, " when I lost the 
 freedom of my cell, which was my college, yet I found 
 some degree of it in my quiet country parsonage ; but 
 I am weary of the noise and oppositions of this place, 
 and indeed God and nature did not intend me for con- 
 tentions, but for study and quietness." His desire, he 
 says, was to keep himself in peace and privacy, to 
 behold God's blessing spring out of his mother earth, 
 and to eat his own bread without oppositions. 
 
 To conduct a campaign of controversy in the interests 
 of peace — it is a rare achievement ; to possess the 
 
7 2 Richard Hooker 
 
 magnanimity which does not seek to score points 
 against an antagonist, which does not triumph in put- 
 ting an opponent to shame — it is a high distinction. 
 The rasfe of theolosfians in the sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries strikes our ear as terribly as that 
 hollow burst of bellowing " like bulls or rather lions " 
 which alarmed Shakespeare's conspirators on the en- 
 chanted island. Hooker was deeply concerned on 
 behalf of the cause which he had undertaken to 
 defend ; he gave his whole mind to the great debate ; 
 his love of peace was not a lethargic complacency or a 
 dull wooing of ease ; but he desired to bring his oppon- 
 ents, if possible, to an honourable surrender ; he saw 
 the questions in dispute in relation to first principles 
 on which an agreement might be 230ssible, and which 
 made the personal passions of controversy dwindle ; 
 possessed by a profound reverence for order, he felt 
 that intemperance or breach of charity would ill become 
 one who attempted to expound the divine idea of order. 
 This magnanimous combatant in his quiet parsonage 
 at Canterbury was already famous. Scholars, as Walton 
 tells us, turned out of their way to see the man whose 
 life and learning were so much admired — no stately 
 personage to look on, but ''an obscure, harmless man; 
 a man in poor clothes, his loins usually girt in a coarse 
 gown or canonical coat ; of a mean stature, and stoop- 
 ing, and yet more lowly in the thoughts of his soul ; 
 his body worn out, not with age, but study and holy 
 mortifications." In the pulpit he was never vehement ; 
 he used no graceful gestures of the orator ; his dim eyes 
 remained, from first to last, fixed upon one spot ; *' he 
 
Richard Hooker J 2) 
 
 seemed to study as he spake " ; his voice was grave and 
 tranquil ; "his style," says Fuller, " was long," that is, 
 involved, " and pithy, drawing on a whole flock of 
 several clauses before he came to the end of a sen- 
 tence," so that to some hearers he seemed tedious and 
 obscure. To the close of his life Hooker remained the 
 student and the thinker. When during his last illness 
 robbers plundered his house, the sick man's inquiry was, 
 '' Are my books and papers safe ? " The property in- 
 herited by his wife and daughters, to the value of a 
 thousand pounds, was in great part made up by his 
 library. His friend Dr Saravia, standing by the bedside, 
 asked what was now occupying his mind (for Hooker's 
 face wore its contemplative aspect), " to which he re- 
 plied that he was meditating the number and nature of 
 anofels, and their blessed obedience and order, without 
 which peace could not be in heaven ; and oh, that it 
 might be so on earth ! " In another of Walton's familiar 
 records it is the humanist rather than the theologian 
 who is presented ; former pupils of Hooker visiting him 
 found their master tending his small allotment of sheep, 
 with a book — the " Odes of Horace " — in his hand. 
 A contemporary of Shakespeare and Spenser and of 
 that choir of singers who made tuneful the closing 
 years of Elizabeth's reign, Hooker was no stranger, we 
 are assured, " to the more light and airy parts of learn- 
 ing — as music and poetry." 
 
 The marriage into which Hooker unwisely allowed 
 himself to be drawn was not fortunate, but Walton, 
 to exalt his meek hero, seems to make the worst of 
 what he had learnt by hearsay. The gravest charges 
 
74 Richard Hooker 
 
 that can be brought against Hooker's wife are that 
 she perhaps allowed her Puritan friends to tamper with 
 the papers entrusted to her — who was she to doubt 
 their superior learning and wisdom ? — and that, after 
 a fashion not without precedents in her day, she posted 
 with speed to a second marriage. She was guilty,, 
 indeed, of the high crime and misdemeanour of calling 
 upon Richard to rock the cradle. Richard could not 
 have had a sweeter employment; he was precisely in 
 the place assigned to him in the divine order of the 
 universe, as rightly interpreted by Mistress Joan ; 
 and while he lulled his infant daughter to sleep,. 
 Richard might appropriately have meditated on the 
 number and the order of the Holy Innocents. The 
 wife of an exalted scholar cannot always maintain the 
 adoring attitude assumed by her husband's passing 
 admirers. The fact that Hooker, whose estate was 
 valued at the considerable sum of over one thousand 
 pounds, appointed her his sole executrix and residuary 
 legatee, indicates the trust which he, who best could 
 judge, reposed in her. The only authentic portrait of 
 Hooker is the bust in the parish church where he lies 
 buried. " It is," wrote Dean Stanley, " of the same 
 style and form as the nearly contemporary one of 
 Shakespeare in the church of Stratford-on-Avon. Un- 
 like that more famous monument, this has the good 
 fortune to have retained the colour without white- 
 wash. ... It represents Hooker in his college cap, his 
 hair black, without a tinge of grey, his forehead high 
 and broad and overhanging, lively, piercing eyes, deepset 
 beneath it, his cheeks ruddy, and a powerful mouth." 
 
Richard Hooker 75 
 
 11 
 
 "We need not follow Walton through his record 
 of the events in a scholar's uneventful life. The only 
 incident that must be noted is the controversy with 
 Travers which gave its origin to the " Laws of 
 Ecclesiastical Polity." When in 1584 Richard Alvey, 
 Master of the Temple, died, it was expected that 
 according to his wish the afternoon lecturer, Walter 
 Travers, a good and learned man, a popular preacher 
 and a leader among the Puritans, would have been 
 appointed as his successor. Archbishop Whitgift, 
 who had himself been engaged in controversy with 
 Cartwright, was no favourer of Puritanical discipline. 
 The Mastership was given, by way of a compromise 
 between contending parties, to Hooker. Travers was 
 still the evening preacher, and an unseemly dissonance, 
 doctrinal rather than personal, arose in the teaching at 
 the Temple ; ''the pulpit," in the often quoted words 
 of Fuller, " spake pure Canterbury in the morning and 
 Geneva in the afternoon." The cono^reojation ebbed 
 from Canterbury and flowed to eloquent Geneva. 
 *' What Mr Hooker delivered in the forenoon, Mr 
 Travers confuted in the afternoon. At the building 
 of Solomon's temple neither hammer, nor axe, nor tool 
 of iron was heard therein ; whereas, alas ! in this 
 Temple, not only much knocking was heard, but (which 
 was the worst) the nails and pins which one master- 
 builder drave in were driven out by the other." The 
 Archbishop therefore took energetic action : on the ground 
 that Travers had received orders from the Presbytery 
 
76 Richard Hooker 
 
 of Antwerp, that he preached without a license, and 
 engaged in controversies against an order of Her Majesty, 
 he was peremptorily silenced. When about to go into 
 the pulpit, he received from the hand of a sorry fellow 
 the letter of prohibition. Travers calmly explained the 
 matter to the assembly, which dispersed, not without 
 frowns and murmurs, and shakings of the head. A 
 petition of Travers to the Privy Council was overborne 
 by Whitgift's influence. In the controversy which 
 arose between him and Hooker neither lost respect for 
 the other or self-respect. Travers quitted London to 
 receive the provostship of Trinity College, Dublin, and 
 Hooker began to meditate his great treatise on the 
 authority and order of the Church. 
 
 A word is necessary to explain the state in which 
 the " Ecclesiastical Polity " has reached us. It w^as 
 designed to consist of eight Books ; of these, four were 
 published by the author as a first instalment, probably 
 in the year 1594 ; the fifth Book, which is longer than 
 the preceding four taken together, appeared with the 
 advantage of Hooker's superintendence in 1597. Three 
 years later Hooker died. The so-called sixth Book and. 
 the eighth were first published half a century after- 
 wards in 1648 ; the seventh was issued under the care 
 of Bishop Gauden in 1662. The history of Hooker's 
 manuscripts reminds us of that of the sermons of 
 Bossuet. The sixth Book, which was to have dealt 
 with the subject of lay eldership, is in fact lost; what 
 is called '' Book VI.," though derived from Hooker's 
 notes, forms in the main no true portion of the 
 ■"' Ecclesiastical Polity." The seventh Book undoubtedly 
 
Richard Hooker 7 7 
 
 comes from Hooker's hand, but it is mutilated, thanks, 
 perhaps, to the pious care of Mrs Hooker's Puritan 
 friends and relations. The eighth and last Book was 
 presented in editions which precede that of Keble in an 
 imperfect condition ; by Keble's diligence it was re- 
 constructed and restored on the basis of manuscripts 
 in Oxford, Cambridge, Lambeth, and Trinity College, 
 Dublin. Thus to the close of the fifth Book we are 
 on safe ground ; in reading the later Books there is 
 necessarily some sense of insecurity ; even if through 
 them we come to know Hooker's mind on the subjects 
 of which they treat, it is still open to question whether 
 his whole mind is there expressed. 
 
 The development of the English Church of the Re- 
 formation, like that of the English constitution, was 
 historical rather than looical. No o-reat theological 
 and ecclesiastical systematiser, like Calvin, presided 
 over its early years. In this there were sources of 
 weakness, but also sources of strength. Shaped to a 
 considerable extent by a kind of opportunism, political 
 as well as religious, it could not possess entire logical 
 self-consistency and perfect coherence. But it had 
 a unity of life, if not an absolute unity of idea. 
 It did not wholly break with the old faith ; it 
 did not reject new developments ; it received in- 
 fluences from tradition and the past; it received 
 influences from Luther ; it received influences from 
 Calvin. At its best the Church of England has 
 been of the nature of a federal union between groups 
 of believers in a common Christianity, whose diverging 
 opinions in detail are wholly incapable of logical 
 
78 Richard Hooker 
 
 conciliation ; at its worst it has attempted to estab- 
 lish the unity of an idea, a theory, or a system, 
 a,nd has denied the right of citizenship to its lawful 
 children, shedding large portions of its population to 
 found those colonies, disdainfully named sects, which 
 <;onstitute a no less genuine part of the religious 
 life of the nation. We are assured by recent ecclesi- 
 astical historians that Calvinism is irreconcilable with 
 the idea of the Church ; as a historical fact the 
 Church of England has been Calvinist, and Arminian, 
 and Latitudinarian, and Evangelical, and Sacramen- 
 tarian. Its unity has been not the unity of an idea 
 but that of a living organism. Burke has spoken 
 somewhere of the "' clumsy subtlety " of the French 
 constitution-mongers of the period of the Revolution. 
 A theory — Calvinistic or Anglo-Catholic — may be 
 elaborate and ingenious, but still it may be clumsy 
 as compared with the incalculable complexity of life. 
 Let the rival doctrines be as uncompromising as 
 doctrine needs must be ; compromises do not really 
 conciliate. The life of the national Church as a 
 federal union can embrace both ecclesiastical Tory 
 and ecclesiastical Whig. " Bishop is not like bishop," 
 wrote Newman, '' more than king is like king, or 
 ministry like ministry," and therefore he could feel 
 no interest " of any kind in the National Church, 
 nor put any trust in it at all from its past history, 
 as if it were, in however narrow a sense, a guardian 
 of orthodoxy." The fact, as stated by Newman, is 
 historically true ; and therefore we feel the deeper 
 interest in the National Church, and put the fuller 
 
Richard Hooker 79 
 
 trust in it as a guardian of one great portion of the 
 religions life of the English people. 
 
 Keeping a middle way of its own, the Church of 
 England moved between two systems which seemed 
 each to have greater coherence and more of logical 
 consistency — the Roman Catholic system and the 
 system of extreme and rigid Puritanism. The spirit 
 of Puritanism, like that of the French Revolution, 
 was the reverse of historical. But whereas the 
 theorists of the French Revolution based their new 
 constitutions on ideas or supposed ideas of the reason, 
 Puritanism sought for its basis, and indeed its super- 
 structure also, in the written Word. N'ot only was 
 all sound doctrine to be derived directly from the 
 infallible Book, but all lawful discipline was to be 
 found within the covers of the Old and the New Testa- 
 ments. All merely human expediencies in matters 
 ecclesiastical were in theory (though not in fact) re- 
 jected as illegitimate. At every point, in theory at 
 least, an appeal w^as made to the law and to the 
 testimony. With a deep sense of the inwardness of 
 religion, Puritanism regarded the external apparatus, 
 which to the Catholic seemed avenues and inlets for 
 the Divine influence, not as avenues but as barriers. 
 With a deep sense that religion is an affair between 
 the individual and his awful Creator and Judge, 
 Puritanism conceived the Church as an assemblage 
 of elect and sanctified souls, each in direct and personal 
 relation to the invisible, rather than as a great in 
 corporation of those who had been baptised in the 
 sacred names. The Elizabethan Church, maintaining 
 
8o Richard Hooker 
 
 a balance between powers never perhaps completely 
 harmonised, was a Reformed Church, but it preserved 
 continuity with the past ; it was a Protestant com- 
 munion which claimed to be Catholic ; it asserted the 
 right of private judgment, but it respected authority ; 
 it appealed to Scripture, but it also recognised the 
 living voice of the Church ; it possessed a strong ele- 
 ment of individualism, but it restrained caprice and 
 the extravagance of private inspiration. In a word, 
 if it had not the unity of a logical system, it had 
 the comprehensiveness of a rich and varied life. The 
 scriptural dogmatism of the Puritan party is power- 
 fully expressed in the writings of Whitgift's erudite 
 antagonist, Cartwright. The more liberal spirit of 
 the Anglican communion is reflected in the pages of 
 the " Ecclesiastical Polity." 
 
 \ The special characteristic of Hooker's intellect is 
 its comprehensive grasp of a large body of truth. 
 The controversy of the time dealt much with matters 
 of detail — the vestments of the clergy, the dedication, 
 the naming, the sumptuousness of churches, the form 
 of the liturgy, the length of the service, the petition 
 for deliverance from sudden death, the prayer that 
 all men may find mercy, the sign of the cross in 
 baptism, the rites of burial, the authority of bishops, 
 and a hundred other questions. Hooker does not 
 decline the consideration of questions small or great. 
 He goes perhaps even too laboriously into detail ; 
 but all these details connect themselves in his mind 
 with large, general principles. He is capable of sys- 
 tem, but, being in contact with concrete fact, he is 
 
Richard Hooker 8 1 
 
 systematic without rigidity. He does honour to human 
 reason as a source of truth, yet he has none of the 
 arrogance or the dogmatism of some rationalists. He 
 has a deep feeling of the inwardness of religion, yet 
 he does not disregard its external forms, finding in 
 the senses powers which may be auxiliar to things 
 divine. He reverences the past, and would build to- 
 day on the foundation of yesterday, yet he leaves 
 space and scope for the new developments of to- 
 morrow. He condemns superstition, yet he finds that 
 truth is often intertwisted with error ; he seeks for 
 general truths, but, like Edmund Burke, he is a 
 diligent observer of circumstances, " the loose regard 
 whereof is the nurse of vulgar folly " ; his temper, 
 like the temper of Burke, is that of a liberal con- 
 servatism. 
 
 in 
 
 The cardinal principle of Hooker's Puritan opponents 
 was the sole and exclusive authority of Scripture; all 
 laws found in Scripture are of permanent and universal 
 force ; no law derived from any other original can be of 
 permanent obligation. The cardinal principle of Hooker, 
 as Dean Church correctly expressed it, is the concurrence 
 and co-operation, each m its due place, of all possible 
 means of knowledge for men's direction. " Take which 
 you please," Dean Church goes on, ''reason or Scripture, 
 your own reason or that of others, private judgment cr 
 general consent, one i[)rcsu]^i[)Oses — it is a favourite word 
 with Hooker — the existence of others, and it is not 
 intended to do its work of illumination and guidance 
 
 F 
 
8 2 Richard Hooker 
 
 without them ; and the man who elects to go by one 
 alone will assuredly find in the end that he has gone 
 wrong." The position is eminently reasonable ; far more 
 reasonable than the Puritan position. But we can readily 
 understand how Protestantism in the appalling loss of 
 the infallibility of Rome threw itself, through the instinct 
 of a supreme need, upon the infallibility of Scripture, and 
 was compelled to add as a corollary the declaration of 
 Luther that the Bible " so far as is necessary for salvation 
 is clear enough," and that it " belongs to each and to 
 every Christian to know and to judge of doctrine." And 
 it was natural that this acceptance of Scripture as a final 
 authority in doctrine should extend itself to discipline 
 and to ceremony. 
 
 Before proceeding to discuss any matters of detail. 
 Hooker sets himself to consider the ground and origin of 
 all law, the nature of that order which presides over the 
 universe, over the external cosmos and human society, 
 and to determine the principle which renders certain laws 
 of permanent and others of temporary obligation. The 
 first Book, accordingly, is rather philosophical than theo- 
 logical ; it presents a majestic conception of the world 
 as existing under a reign of law — law not arbitrary but 
 an expression of the Divine reason. Hooker's method 
 is not that of wrangling over texts, but of first grasping 
 general principles, and afterwards of viewing particulars, 
 with a full regard to circumstances, in the light of those 
 principles. It is not the shortest way of controversy ; 
 but Hooker is more than a controversialist ; he is a 
 master-builder. He admits that such delving and diving 
 towards the roots and foundations of things may be ob- 
 
Richa7'd Hooker" 83 
 
 jected to as involving the thinker in obscurity; but it 
 becomes necessary in order that the whole edifice may 
 be well based and secure. ^' The stateliness of houses, 
 the goodliness of trees, when we behold thera delighteth 
 the eye ; but that foundation which beareth up the one, 
 that root which ministereth unto the other nourishment 
 and life is in the bosom of the earth concealed ; and if 
 there be at any time occasion to search into it, such 
 labour is then more necessary than pleasant, both to 
 them which undertake it and to the lookers-on." 
 The portion of his treatise for which Hooker offers 
 an apology is that which has especially given it a 
 permanent interest for minds which are other than 
 ecclesiastical. 
 
 Hooker's conception of the universe, and of the order 
 which presides throughout and over it, is theistic. For 
 him the word law means not a general statement of the 
 changes or uniformities of phenomena, but a manifestation 
 of the Divine will. The fountain of law is God Himself. 
 Hooker's attitude of reverence is that of one who gazes 
 upward and also bows the head. Neither can we com- 
 prehend the Most High, nor can we escape from His 
 presence though we fly to the uttermost ends of the 
 earth — ''Whom, although to know be life, and joy to 
 make mention of His name, yet our soundest knowledge 
 is to know that we know Him not as indeed He is, 
 neither can know Him ; and our safest eloquence con- 
 cerning Him is our silence, when we confess without 
 confession that His glory is inexplicable. His greatness 
 above our capacity and reach. He is above, and we 
 upon earth ; therefore it behoveth our words to be wary 
 
84 Richard Hooker 
 
 and few." If, however, we are to think of God at all,, 
 we must represent the Unknowable to ourselves through 
 our highest faculties. We must think of Him, not as 
 an arbitrary tyrant, ruling His creatures by caprice, but 
 as a Will freely accepting reason as its rule ; His wisdom 
 has set bounds to the effects of His power. This reason^ 
 this wisdom — the rule of God's being — which Hooker 
 terms " the first eternal law " — goes forth from God to 
 become operative upon all His creatures visible and in- 
 visible, angels of heaven, moving worlds, stars and sun^ 
 wind and rain, the clods of the field and the waves of 
 the sea, the beast of the field, and man as an individual 
 and in societies ; constituting thus the '' second law 
 eternal." It cannot but be that " Nature hath some 
 director of infinite knowledge to guide her in all her 
 ways." In Him we live, and move, and are. 
 
 But what is the special character of this law as im- 
 pressed upon the spirit of man? Hooker's answer is the 
 same as that uttered with ardour for our own generation 
 in many of Browning's most characteristic poems; the 
 law of man's being is that it shall perpetually aspire to 
 perfection, that it shall constantly tend upwards to God. 
 Man's intellect aspires to knowledge ; man's will aspires 
 to goodness. And these two tendencies are intimately 
 connected, for in order that our will should seek after 
 goodness, goodness must first be discerned by the reason. 
 Should our attempt to identify what is best and highest 
 bv a study of its inmost nature and its essential causes 
 only lead us into perplexity, we may yet recognise it by 
 sio-ns or tokens, of which the most trustworthy is the 
 common consent of men at all times and under all 
 
Richard Hooker 85 
 
 -conditions of life : " The general and perpetual voice of 
 men is as the sentence of God Himself." 
 
 Eeason is, then, our guide to the discovery of what is 
 good ; and we support, supplement, control our private 
 judgment by the collective reason of mankind. Thus 
 may be ascertained those natural laws which should 
 govern man's life as an individual. But merely as an 
 individual no man can attain to the perfection of his 
 nature. He is a sociable being, who stands in need of 
 the aid of his fellows. Hence political communities are 
 formed; hence governments are established upon a basis 
 of common consent. The particular form of government, 
 monarchy, oligarchy, democracy, Hooker regards as a 
 matter of political expediency. He had not learnt, like 
 the High Churchmen of the next generation, the doctrine 
 •of the Divine rio^hts of kinoes ; rather he insists that 
 under every form of government the consent of those 
 who are governed is essential; otherwise what is called 
 a government becomes in fact a tyranny. In the time 
 •of the Tudors he anticipated the political teaching of 
 Locke. 
 
 So far as has been set forth man seeks his perfection 
 by the light of reason. But his desire for good is 
 infinite, a desire which can be completely satisfied by 
 nothing less than the union of his own life with the life 
 of God. We seek a threefold perfection — sensual in 
 the necessaries and the ornaments of our material exist- 
 ence ; intellectual in the possession of truth ; and last, 
 2. spiritual perfection in the attainment of things only 
 to be reached by ways which are above and beyond 
 mature in the ordinary meaning of that word. The 
 
86 Richard Hooker 
 
 laws which regulate man's supernatural duties are de« 
 livered by revealed religion. Reason, however, is not 
 displaced by revelation ; it is reason which warrants 
 our admission of the claims of revealed truth ; and, 
 indeed, many natural laws are repromulgated by the- 
 revealed word, in order that what is obscure may be- 
 made clear, and that further sanctions may be added. 
 Every natural law, whether it concerns man as an 
 individual or men in society, is of permanent obligation. 
 Positive laws, although imposed by Divine authority, 
 are not of necessity invariable. 
 
 We are at length brought to the point at w^hich the- 
 connection of all that had gone before with the Puritan 
 controversy becomes apparent. Positive laws fall into- 
 two classes ; laws, in the first place, which refer to men 
 as men, without regard to time or circumstances, and 
 these, although positive, having been once promulgated, 
 remain of perpetual and universal authority ; laws, in 
 the second place, which refer to temporary conditions,. 
 circumstances, or affairs, and such laws, though of Divine 
 imposition, have no more permanence than the matter 
 with which they are concerned. 
 
 Thus, while his Puritan adversaries asserted that no 
 law which is not found in Holy Scripture can be of 
 permanent obligation, Hooker maintains that all those 
 natural laws discovered to us by human reason are 
 binding upon man as long as he is man. And again, 
 while his Puritan adversaries asserted that every rule 
 and regulation found in Scripture is therefore a law for 
 all time, Hooker maintains that such regulations may 
 indeed be valid for ever, but may also be temporary and 
 
Richard Hooker 87 
 
 variable ; their abiding validity depends not on the fact 
 that they are declared and delivered by the voice of God, 
 but on the character of the laws themselves ; if they deal 
 with things that are unchanging, they are themselves 
 unchanging ; if they deal with matter that is transitory, 
 they also are transitory. 
 
 To degrade human reason and to set up Scripture as 
 the sole and sufficient rule of life, though it may wear 
 the appearance of humble piety, is in truth a disguised 
 arrogance, which opposes its own wisdom to the Divine 
 wisdom, manifested alike in human reason and in revela- 
 tion. The sources of truth are many ; to discredit any 
 one of these is to wronor our own nature and to wroncj- 
 the Divine order. It may render hasty and violent 
 revolution easier ; it is not the way of prudent and 
 just reform. 
 
 IV 
 
 Such, in brief, is the substance of the first book of 
 Hooker's great treatise ; such is Hooker's temper of 
 liberal- conservatism. What is most remarkable through- 
 out the whole argument is not any incisiveness or any 
 originality of thought. Hooker's originality lies rather 
 in his equable grasp of many truths, and in his power 
 of co-ordinating and harmonising those truths. He does 
 not effect a breach between what is natural and what is 
 supernatural ; both proceed from the same source ; each 
 is auxiliar to the other. He does not oppose reason to 
 revelation ; both are of celestial origin. He does not 
 discover a discordance between the inward spiritual life 
 of man and the outward manifestations of that life ; he 
 
88 Richard Hooker 
 
 rather exhibits their harmonious action. He does not 
 reduce religion to a mere affair of the individual soul ; 
 he has a feeling for the corporate life of society; each 
 man as an individual has supernatural duties ; but he 
 is also a member of a great community which has super- 
 natural duties. He conceives the whole universe as a 
 vast harmonious system ; and human creatures, who, on 
 the one side, are akin to the beasts of the field, to the 
 grass of the earth and to the clay from which it springs, 
 are on the other side only a little lower than the angels, 
 those glorious intelligences who, looking down upon the 
 children of men, in their countenance " behold them- 
 selves beneath themselves." This conception of the 
 cosmos, its wonder and its harmony, is at least a 
 majestic vision, a piece of the poetry of theology not 
 unworthy of the period which mirrored the moral world 
 of man in Shakespeare's plays and attempted a method 
 of exploring the laws of the material world in Bacon's 
 ''Novum Organum." 
 
 These great masters of strategy were also skilled in 
 tactics ; Bacon less skilled than either Shakespeare 
 or Hooker, for the tactics of science were slow in their 
 development. From his wide-orbing survey of the 
 whole field. Hooker proceeds to capture the key of 
 the position. The second Book is devoted to a refuta- 
 tion of the Puritan thesis that Scripture is the only rule 
 of all things which in this life may be done by men. 
 Hooker's contention is not against the authority of 
 Scripture ; it is against narrowing the bounds of that 
 wisdom Avhich comes to us through many and diverse 
 channels: ** Whatsoever either men on earth or the 
 
Richard Hooker 89 
 
 angels in heaven do know, it is as a drop of that un- 
 emptiable fountain of wisdom ; which wisdom hath 
 diversely imparted her treasures unto the world. . . . 
 Some things she openeth by the sacred books of Scrip- 
 ture ; some things by the glorious works of nature ; with 
 some things she inspireth them from above by spiritual 
 influence ; in some things she leadeth and traineth 
 them only by worldly experience and practice. We 
 may not so in any one special kind admire her, that we 
 disgrace her in any other." The liberal spirit of the 
 Renaissance, which does honour to every human faculty, 
 reacts in Hooker against the narrower spirit of the 
 Reformation. The argument is pressed home that 
 Scripture, apart from reason, is incapable of verifying 
 itself as a rule of life. The elephant may rest upon 
 the tortoise, but can the tortoise rest upon the void ? 
 '' For if one book of Scripture did give testimony unto 
 all, yet still that Scripture which giveth credit to the 
 rest would require another Scripture to give credit unto 
 it, neither could we ever come unto any pause whereon 
 to rest our assurance this way." The audacity of Hooker 
 as a rationalist is not the less remarkable because it is 
 tranquil and unaggressive. 
 
 Among the sources of wisdom which lie outside of 
 Scripture one in particular is justified by Hooker — that 
 of human authority, the collective good sense of many 
 minds ; " utterly to infringe the force and strength of 
 man's testimony were to shake the very fortress of God's 
 truth." There are degrees of certitude in knowledge ; 
 the first is that of the senses (a statement which in 
 another form gave much offence at the time, and in 
 
90 Richard Hooker 
 
 later days startled Coleridge) and that of what Hooker 
 terms "■ intuitive beholding " ; the second is founded 
 upon demonstrative reasoning. The authority not of 
 four but of ten thousand general councils cannot, he 
 declares, overthrow or resist a plain demonstration. 
 But in many things probability is the rule of life, and 
 as a guide to probable truth we constantly resort to 
 authority. Do we seek to interpret the law found in 
 Scripture ? Good sense directs us to call in the aid of 
 wise and learned men. God in delivering Scripture to 
 His Church did not abrogate the methods of nature. 
 But, while thus maintaining the place due to authority. 
 Hooker asserts the superior rights of reason : " For men 
 to be tried and led by authority, as it were, with a kind 
 of captivity of judgment, and though there be reason to 
 the contrary not to listen to it, but to follow like beasts 
 the first in the herd, they know not nor care not 
 whither, this were brutish. Again, that authority of 
 men should prevail with men either against or above 
 reason is no part of our belief. Companies of learned 
 men, be they never so great and reverend, are to yield 
 unto reason, the weight whereof is no whit prejudiced 
 by the simplicity of the person which doth allege it." 
 In such an utterance there may seem to be nothing 
 very profound or very novel. But at a time when one 
 angry array of disputants overbore all private judgment 
 with authority, and another gave no place to authority 
 in their assertion of the right of private judgment, 
 such a temperate statement, bringing together the dis- 
 membered fragments of truth, had the high originality 
 of good sense. 
 
Richard Hooker g i 
 
 Hooker's plea that ecclesiastical government and 
 order are in large part a matter of expediency was a 
 plea for human liberty. At the outset of the third 
 Book he confronts the Puritan conception of the Church 
 as a congregation of elect souls with the opposite view 
 arising from a recognition of the distinction between 
 the invisible Church — the mystical body, a communion 
 of saints on earth and of those departed from earth — 
 and the visible Church comprising all those who ac- 
 knowledge or profess one Lord, one faith, one baptism. 
 According to the Puritan idea the Church is an 
 imvpermm in im2^erio, a spiritual assembly existing 
 within the State, and in theory detached from the 
 State. But what if the saints should be prompted to 
 make the will of God prevail in the gross world ? 
 What if they should resolve to rule the earth ? With 
 Hooker the visible Church and the State are a single 
 society viewed from different sides : " We mean by the 
 Commonwealth that society with relation unto all public 
 affairs thereof, only the matter of true religion excepted ;. 
 by the Church, the same society, with only reference 
 unto the matter of true religion, without any other 
 affairs besides." Whether we accept such a theory or 
 not, we cannot but admit that it tends to mediate 
 between the dualism of spiritual and material interests, 
 that by a process of levelling up and levellmg down, it 
 establishes a broad plateau, where the mundane temper 
 may be elevated by a constant regard for interests that 
 are not merely mundane, and the ecclesiastical temper 
 may be held in check by worldly prudence and ex- 
 perience. It provides a basis for religious toleration. 
 
92 Richard Hooker 
 
 '' Is it possible," asks Hooker, " that the selfsame men 
 should belong both to the synagogue of Satan and 
 to the Church of Jesus Christ ? " And he replies : 
 *' Unto that Church which is His mystical body, not 
 possible," but in the field of the visible Church " tares 
 manifestly known and seen by all men do grow inter- 
 mingled with good corn, and even so shall continue till 
 the final consummation of the world." Even heretics, 
 though a maimed part, are still, Hooker maintains, a 
 part of the visible Church. Excommunicated persons 
 are not shut out from the mystical Church, nor entirely 
 from the visible Church, but only from fellowship in 
 certain holy duties. 
 
 The faith once delivered to the saints is unaltered and 
 unalterable ; with ecclesiastical regiment and order it is 
 otherwise. One and the same polity may not be ex- 
 pedient for the several national churches. For episcopal 
 authority Hooker had a deep respect ; he looked upon 
 the government by bishops as primitive, and he regarded 
 it as an arrangement excellent in itself. But he did 
 not hold that this form of Church polity is necessary. 
 He lamented that certain reformed churches, in par- 
 ticular the Scottish and the French, had accepted what 
 seemed to him a less admirable form of government, 
 and one, as he believed, less in consonance with 
 Scripture ; but their unfortunate decision was in no 
 sense fatal — " men oftentimes without any fault of their 
 own may be driven to want that kind of polity or 
 regiment which is best, and to content themselves with 
 that which either the irremediable error of former times, 
 or the necessity of the present, hath cast upon them." 
 
Richard Hooker 93 
 
 Having established the broad principle that Church 
 polity — both government and order — is a matter of 
 expediency, Hooker enters on his defence of the polity 
 of his own church. One entire Book — the fourth — is 
 occupied with meeting the general objection that the 
 national Church is corrupted with Popish orders, rites, 
 and ceremonies, which had been banished from other 
 Reformed Churches. It is a vindication of the w^ay of 
 moderation and good sense, which is also the way of 
 peace, as against extremes on either side. Having set 
 forth his reasons of an argumentative kind, he closes by 
 attempting to show, as a practical proof of the sound- 
 ness of the English method of reformation, that it had 
 worked well. Even if fault-finding should seem to be 
 warrantable, it may be that suspense of judgment and 
 the exercise of charity are safer and seemlier than the 
 hot pursuit of controversy, in which the most fervent 
 disputants are not always the persons best qualified to 
 arrive at just conclusions. 
 
 The fifth Book proceeds to details. " In careful and 
 exhaustive treatment it leads its readers " — the words 
 of Bishop Barry's brief summary may here suffice — 
 " from the consideration of the material fabric of our 
 Churches, through the discussion of the various forms 
 of teaching God's Word ; the examination of the prin- 
 ciple of a Liturgy ; and then of all the various parts 
 and accessories of our Prayer Book worship ; the 
 doctrine of the Sacraments and their forms of minis- 
 tration ; the principles of Fast and Festival ; the de- 
 tails of our Occasional Services ; the three Orders, 
 and even the accidents of our ministry and parochial 
 
94 Richard Hooker 
 
 system." ^ This is not the place in which such matters 
 of detail can be discussed. 
 
 Hooker's liberal spirit is tolerant of many diversities 
 of opinion. There is a point, however, at which his 
 tolerance 'disappears. Regarding true religion as not 
 only the root of the private virtues but also as the 
 support of all well-ordered commonwealths, he has no 
 feeling but indignation for that atheism which is bred 
 rather from intellectual conceit than from rude ignorance. 
 Towards the '' forlorn creatures " who would sap the 
 foundations of all order in the world we are '' too 
 patient." They profess to see a politic use in religion ; 
 godless themselves, they would as a piece of political 
 craft invent a God by art. For such an '' execrable 
 creed," such a " wicked brood," such " wise malignants," 
 Hooker would not shrink from making ready the faggot 
 and the stake. Towards the other chief enemy of true 
 religion, towards superstition, he is more tolerant than 
 many of his contemporaries. Its sources are zeal, 
 unguided by sobriety, and fear, which leads men to 
 employ every means suggested by fancy to propitiate 
 an angry Deity. From the East, with its subtleties of 
 the intellect, have come the ingenious creations of super- 
 stitious thought ; from the West have come the cruder 
 and grosser forms of error. Yet even in many super- 
 stitions that seem upon a first view gross or fantastical, 
 Hooker recognises a portion of truth, or, as Burke 
 would have called it, a certain latent wisdom. Thus 
 the doctrine of the transmigration of souls contained 
 within an envelope of falsehood, the truth of human 
 ^ " Masters in English Theology," edited by Alfred Barry, D.D,, p. 36. 
 
Richard Hooker 95 
 
 immortality ; the belief in auguries drawn from the 
 ■flight of birds or the entrails of beasts, contained 
 within it a recognition of Divine power and providence. 
 Hooker's respect for human intelligence had put him on 
 the track of a modern way of regarding the religions 
 of the world. He did not dismiss them in the manner 
 of many of his own contemporaries, as the inventions of 
 the fallen angels to delude mankind ; he did not view 
 them, in the manner of eighteenth-century philosophers, 
 as the frauds of priestcraft. The false religions lived 
 by that in them which was true — " no religion can 
 wholly and only consist of untruths." 
 
 Before the revolutionist ventures on the redress of 
 superstitious ceremonies in the Church, there are certain 
 considerations which he would do well to bear in mind, 
 and which may serve to temper his zeal. First, a 
 particular rite or ordinance, though not better than 
 some other which can be devised, may yet be fit and 
 convenient ; this may be the case although certain 
 inconveniences should also be present. Secondly, the 
 approval of past generations and the long-continued 
 practice of the whole Church may indicate that some 
 fitness resides in things, even should the fitness not be 
 at once apparent. Thirdly, the Church is itself a living 
 authority, having power to ordain new rites and cere- 
 monies or to ratify those that are old ; her sentence 
 concerning fitness and expediency is surely weightier 
 than any " bare and naked conceit to the contrary/^: 
 Last, it must be remembered that there are evils which 
 must needs be endured, lest, if they should be removed, 
 greater evils might take their place. 
 
96 Richard Hooker 
 
 Important as may be the results arrived at by 
 Hooker's argument, his method and his temper are 
 more important. His influence is at once to liberalise 
 and to sober the mind of one who has submitted to his 
 teaching. Possessed by a deep enthusiasm for order, 
 he had nothing of the arbitrary temper of Laud, which 
 without adequate regard to circumstances, and with a 
 pitiful indifference to the proportion of things, would 
 work from without inwards, and skin the ulcer of 
 disunion with the superficial healing of an enforced 
 uniformity. Yet Laud, who was far from intolerant in 
 matters of dogma, however harsh he was in discipline, 
 probably owed to Hooker some of his affinities to liberal 
 thought. Hooker's vindication of the claims of reason 
 prepared the way for Chillingworth and Hales. It is his 
 hicrh distinction that he cannot be identified with anv 
 party within the English Church ; in his method and 
 in his temper he represents nothing less than the better 
 mind of England ; its courage and its prudence ; its 
 audacity and its spirit of reverence ; its regard for 
 principles and its dislike of doctrinaire abstractions ; 
 its capacity for speculation controlled by its considera- 
 tion of circumstances ; its respect for the past and 
 its readiness for new developments ; its practical ten- 
 dency ; its lofty common sense. 
 
ANGLO-CATHOLIC POETS: 
 HERBERT, YAUGHAN 
 
 The poetry of the ADglican communion is most happily ' 
 represented by two books — George Herbert's "The 
 Temple" and Keble's ''The Christian Year." Each f 
 was the fruit or the foretaste of an Anglican revival. 
 But Keble's collection of poems — designed to exhibit 
 " the soothing tendency in the Prayer Book " — had 
 more of a deliberate purpose and plan than that of 
 Herbert, Many of Keble's pieces are poetical studies 
 of themes, delicately touched with personal feeling, 
 but rather meditative than possessed by lyrical j^assion. 
 Herbert's best poems are lyrical cries, taken up by the / 
 intelligence and daintily arranged as if for the viol or the 
 lute. The vitality of what he wrote is attested by the 
 witness of two centuries, the seventeenth and the nine- 
 teenth. During the eighteenth century — the Sfjeculurti 
 rationalisticum — his light shone dimly through a cloud. 
 The great event of Herbert's life was undoubtedly 
 his turning from a mundane career to the humble 
 duties and the quiet gladness of a country parson's 
 lot. As a child, Walton tells us, " the beauties of 
 his pretty behaviour and wit shined and became so 
 eminent and lovely . . . that he seemed to be marked 
 out for piety, and to become the care of Heaven, 
 
 G 97 
 
gS Anglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert^ Vaughan 
 
 and of a particular good angel to guide and guard 
 him." His classical scholarship at the age of twenty- 
 five justified his appointment as public orator at 
 Cambridge ; he was skilled in Italian, Spanish, French, 
 and hoped at one time that he might attain to the 
 position of a Secretary of State. He kept himself at 
 a distance from his inferiors, valued his parts and 
 his distinguished parentage, and enjoyed his " gentle 
 humour for clothes and court-like company." We 
 learn with some satisfaction from his brother, Lord 
 Herbert of Cherbury, that he was not exempt from 
 passion and choler, the infirmities of his race; meek- 
 ness •'•hat is grafted on ardour of temperament is 
 something far removed from tameness. 
 
 A time came when Herbert began to doubt of the 
 world and its coloured gifts : 
 
 I shake my head, and all the thoughts and ends, 
 Which my fierce youth did bandy, fall and flow 
 Like leaves about me. 
 
 In the poem named ''The Pilgrim," he appears 
 as a traveller whose eyes are set upon a distant hill ; 
 passing the dangers of the way and its meadows of 
 flowery temptation, he comes to the wild of passion, 
 which some call the wold — 
 
 A wasted place but sometimes rich. 
 At length the hill where lie his heart and hope is 
 attained ; alas ! when the brow has been reached, 
 all that the pilgrim finds is a brackish pool of tears ; 
 his true goal lies yet onward, only to be come at by 
 the way of death ; yet even so, weary but courageous, 
 he resolves to pursue his brave adventure. 
 
Anglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert, Vaughan 99 
 
 / It is an allegory of Herbert's spiritual life. We 
 may rest assured that the worst dangers of the wild 
 of passion were unknown to his experience ; his heart 
 was never concentrated in one evil desire, but it 
 had been scattered and squandered amid mundane 
 attractions which afterwards seemed to him, in com- 
 parison with joys that he had found, mere dust or 
 dross. He needed some coherence, some controlling 
 unity, some centre of activity, some central rest in 
 his spirit ; and he found there, no overmastering 
 evil perhaps, but a crowd of pestering idle wishes 
 and shallow cares — " quarries of piled vanities," 
 *' thousands of toys," " bubbles of foam/' " balls of 
 wind," '' balls of wild-fire " : 
 
 Chases in arras, gilded emptiness, 
 Shadows well mounted, dreams in a career. 
 
 How far is man, he exclaims, from power and from 
 settled peace ! He is " some twenty several men at 
 least each several hour." Herbert did not feel like 
 Bunyan's Christian that he was crushed by a burden, 
 a doomed and terrified inhabitant of the City of 
 Destruction ; he resembled rather Bunyan's other 
 pilgrim who quitted Vanity Fair to seek abiding 
 joys in the Celestial city. 
 
 He longed for constancy — a confirmed will — and he 
 longed for true rest. He, the friend of Bacon, had 
 known the ways of learning — 
 
 what the stars conspire, 
 What willing nature speaks, what forced by fire, 
 Both the old discoveries, and the new found seas, 
 The stock and surplus, cause and history. 
 
lOO Anglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert, Vaughan 
 
 He, a courtier, high in the King's favour and not 
 meanly valued by the most eminent and powerful 
 of the great lords, had known the ways of honour : 
 
 what maintains 
 The quick returns of courtesy and wit, 
 In vies of favours whether party gains, 
 When glory swells the heart. 
 
 He had known the ways of pleasure : 
 
 What mirth and music mean ; what love and wit 
 Have done these twenty hundred years, and more. 
 
 And the distractions of knowledge and honour and 
 pleasure seemed only to make an idle noise of thoughts 
 within his heart. "■ Man," he cries, '' is out of order 
 hurled. 
 
 Parcelled out to all the world." 
 
 He desired to escape from idle anarchy of the will,. 
 
 and to enter into the Divine order, which gives to 
 
 all things their set forms, making sweet walks and 
 
 bowers where the wild woods had been. * He would 
 
 fain be a link of God's great chain ; a piping reed^ 
 
 if no more, in God's great concert ; a flower, however 
 
 lowly, in God's garden ; a tree giving either fruit or 
 
 shade — 
 
 at least some bird would trust 
 Her household to me, and I should be just. 
 
 How should constancy be attained amid vicissitude ? 
 And where is the dwelling-place of Peace ? 
 
 He felt the dignity as well as the poverty of man, 
 and knew that such dignity is wronged by entering 
 as an atom into a vain whirl of dust. Man is in 
 truth a stately palace built for God ; a'noble piece of 
 
Anglo-Catholic Poets : Hci^^'crU V'ariyhhn ibi 
 
 symmetry ; a harmony made to bear a part with the 
 
 whole of the Divine creation — 
 
 For head and foot hath private amity, 
 And both with moons and tides. 
 
 Man is a master attended by the winds and the 
 
 fountains, by stars and sun, by night and day. And 
 
 yet he is a palace in decay ; a tree that bears no 
 
 fruit ; a dissonance in nature ; a master who wields 
 
 no true authority, but squanders his wealth as a 
 
 spendthrift. Since the world has grown old it seems 
 
 as if life had become more difficult and the Divine 
 
 Presence were less near. In the former days, when 
 
 God lodged with Lot, struggled with Jacob, advised 
 
 with Abraham, He might be encountered at any 
 
 moment, suddenly on the right hand or the left : 
 
 One might have sought and found Thee presently 
 At some fair oak, or bush, or cave, or well : 
 Is my God this way ? No, they would reply, 
 He is to Sinai gone, as we heard tell : 
 List, ye may hear great Aaron's bell. 
 
 Yet, with such a sigh as this for the primitive age of 
 
 wonder and direct intercourse with heaven, Herbert 
 
 felt or came to feel that the secluded Deity is not far 
 
 from every one of us, that in Him we live, and move, 
 
 and have our being : 
 
 Thou art in small things great, nor small in any : 
 
 Thy even praise can neither rise nor fall. 
 Thou art in all things one, in each thing many : 
 
 For Thou art infinite in one and all. 
 
 Tempests are calm to Thee ; they know Thy hand. 
 And hold it fast, as children do their father's, 
 
 "WTiich cry and follow. Thou hast made poor sand 
 Check the proud sea, ev'n when it swells and gathers. 
 
 And thus the age of wonder is perpetually present. 
 
i'62 i^nglO'-Catholi'c Poets : Herbert, Vaughan 
 
 In the City of Destruction by one who is oppressed 
 beneath his awful burden God is thought of at first 
 as the angry judge. Herbert thinks of God rather as 
 a loving strategist, who lures His children to Himself by 
 finer bribes than Vanity Fair can offer. He is like the 
 mother who would not startle her infant when it was 
 crawling on the edge of the precipice, but silently dis- 
 played her bosom and won the straggler back. We are 
 beset by temptations to piety more than by temptations 
 to sin. Dawn arises, and with it comes a sunbeam by 
 which the soul may climb to heaven : 
 
 I cannot ope mine eyes, 
 
 But thou art ready there to catch 
 My morning soul and sacrifice ; 
 
 Then we must needs for that day make a match. 
 
 Eveoing descends, and night shows no less love than 
 the day ; if day was the gale, evening is the harbour ; 
 if day was the garden, evening is the grove. Joy 
 should lead us Godwards, and if joy fail, then there is 
 grief; even weariness should toss us to God's breast. 
 On every side our heart is enticed to its true happiness; 
 millions of surprises waylay us ; and the sound of glory 
 is for ever ringing in our ears. The springtide of glad- 
 ness, when 
 
 Our days were strawed with flowers and happiness, 
 There was no month but May, 
 
 is followed by the mercies of affliction — 
 
 Thus thin and lean without a fence or friend 
 I was blown through by every storm and wind. 
 
 And gladness and sorrow are alike parts of the Divine 
 art by which souls are captured for their own good. 
 
Anglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert, Vaiig/ian 103 
 
 But the way to constancy and to content is through 
 humility and obedience. Wits may enter into contest, 
 and inscribe their rival posies on the pane : let our 
 posy be the words, " Less than the least of all thy 
 mercies." More than the other enthroned Virtues, 
 Humility, who sits the lowest, is \vise ; let us till our 
 own ground ; let us roost and nestle under God's tent, 
 not gadding abroad at the call of wandering thoughts 
 and passions : 
 
 Who cannot on his own bed sweetly sleep 
 Can on another's hardly rest. 
 
 Let us know how to possess our secret, and harbour 
 the flame within us as safely as the fire is hidden in 
 the flint. Whether the world rides by him or lags 
 behind, the honest man will constantly ride his sure 
 and even trot ; if trials come, he neither seeks nor 
 shuns, but calmly abides them ; his words and works 
 are all of a piece, and all are clear and straight ; if he 
 has to deal with those who are governed by passion, he 
 allows for that and keeps his steadfast course. 
 
 Constancy and content attained through humility and 
 obedience — these substantial gains Herbert must needs 
 choose rather than the various toys men chaffer for in 
 the world's fair ; and so the courtier of King James was 
 transformed into the rector of Bemerton. He viewed 
 deliberately the two methods of life, the two regiments, 
 God's and the world's — 
 
 Thine clad with simpleness and sad events, 
 
 The other fine, 
 Full of glory and gay weeds, 
 Brave language, braver deeds — 
 
I04 Anglo-Catholic Poets : He7'bert^ Vaughan 
 
 and after certain scruples of conscience had been over- 
 come with the aid of counsel from Laud, the issue was 
 decided. What it meant for Herbert we can but in- 
 adequately conceive. " When at his induction," writes 
 Walton, " he was shut into Bemerton church, being 
 left there alone to toll the bell, as the law requires 
 him, he stayed so much longer than an ordinary time 
 before he returned to his friends, that stayed ex- 
 pecting him at the church door, that his friend Mr 
 Woodnot looked in at the church window, and saw 
 him lie prostrate on the ground before the altar ; at 
 which time and place, as he after told Mr Woodnot, 
 he set some rules to himself for the future manage 
 of his life, and then and there made a vow to labour 
 to keep them." 
 
 To become part of a great and Divine Order, to 
 regulate his life by rules, to perform a round of duties 
 exactly, reverently, gracefully, gladly, and at the same 
 time to express in song the tides, the fluctuations, the 
 incursions, the ebb and flow of the spirit, made up the 
 life of George Herbert. He could not wholly shape his 
 course by rule. Still the passionate temperament of his 
 race remained with him ; but his .ardour was in great 
 measure regulated, and served before all else to quicken 
 his fidelity in duty and to prevent his observance of 
 forms from sinking into formalism. Still he was subject 
 to swift alternations of mood : 
 
 How should I praise Thee, Lord ! how should my rhymes 
 
 Gladly engrave Thy love in steel, 
 If what my soul doth feel sometimes 
 
 My soul might ever feel ! 
 
A7iglo- Cat ho lie Poets : Herbert, Vaughan 105 
 
 Although there were some forty heavens, or more, 
 
 Sometimes I peer above them all ; 
 Sometimes I hardly reach a score, 
 
 Sometimes to hell I fall. 
 rack me not to such a vast extent. 
 
 In the poem entitled " Misery," Herbert reviews the 
 infirmities and follies of the race of men ; at the close, 
 b}'' a sudden return upon himself, he gives the whole a 
 personal application. What is man, wavering on the 
 billows of the world and flung upon the sands or rocky 
 shelves? What is he but ''a sick tossed vessel" 
 
 — dashing on each thing ; 
 Nay, his own shelf : 
 My God, I mean myself. 
 
 Yet beneath all fluctuations of mood now lay steadfast- 
 ness ; beneath all restlessness of desire lay a deep content. 
 He knew that he was a tiny wheel or cog in the 
 divine machinery, a machinery which had its pulse and 
 movement in the spirit. A lover of beauty, he carried 
 his sense of beauty into his realisation of a sacred order. 
 He still could smell the dew and rain and relish versinof. 
 What are the songs that celebrate with ingenious praise 
 a girdle or a glove but " dust blown by wit " ? All his 
 inventions he would seriously lay upon the altar. He 
 had nobler beauties to sing than the red and white of a 
 woman's cheek or the trammels of golden hair. He could 
 wittily play with fancies and twist his metaphors, if the 
 mood took him ; for God does not disdain the pretty, 
 pious sports of His children. He could spread his Easter 
 wings, or build his visible altar of verse, upon the page, 
 or labour his devout anagram, or tangle his wreath of 
 rhymes ; it was the fashion of the day, and why should 
 
io6 Anglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert, Vattghan 
 
 not fashion itself be sanctified? But he could also be 
 plain and bid farewell to sweet phrases, curled metaphors, 
 trim inventions, honey of roses, winding stairs of subtle 
 meaning: — 
 
 Shepherds are honest people ; let them sing : 
 Eiddle who list for me, and pull for prime : 
 I envy no man's nightingale or spring. 
 
 And in truth Herbert's range as a poet was considerable. 
 He could wind himself into the daintiest conceits. He 
 could be gravely majestic: — 
 
 This heap of dust, 
 To which the blast of death's incessant motion, 
 Fed with the exhalation of our crimes, 
 Drives all at last. 
 
 He could write in a strain of genuine simplicity : — 
 
 r 
 
 Teach me, my God and King, 
 In all things Thee to see, 
 
 And what I do in any thing, 
 To do it as for Thee. 
 
 And whatever was within him, ornament or simplicity, 
 seriousness or innocent play, belonged to God and to 
 God's Church. 
 
 To God's Church, for that was part of the Divine order, 
 through which he had been delivered from the anarchy 
 of the world, and it was a part beautiful to his heart's 
 desire. In all visible things he was pleased by comeli- 
 ness. His gentle humour for clothes did not disappear 
 on the morning when, forsaking his sword and silk, he 
 summoned a tailor to come speedily from Salisbury to 
 Wilton to take measure and make him canonical gar- 
 ments against next day, " which," adds Walton, to satisfy 
 the reader's expectant sympathy, "the tailor did." But 
 
A7iglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert, Vaughan 107 
 
 Herbert, we know, frail and graceful as he was, would 
 not scruple to put off his canonical coat at need to help 
 a poor man with a poorer horse that was fallen under 
 his load, and never did the country parson, " which used 
 to be so trim and clean," look happier than when he 
 came soiled and discomposed into the company of his 
 musical friends at Salisbury. He had now, however, a 
 wider field than his own person on which to expend his 
 decorative skill. He was already the re-edifier of the 
 parish church at Lay ton Ecclesia, '' being for the work- 
 manship a costly mosaic, for the form an exact cross, and 
 for the decency and beauty," his biographer assures us, 
 *' the most remarkable parish church that this nation 
 affords." He proceeded forthwith to repair the chancel 
 at Bemerton, and to rebuild in great part the parsonage, 
 inscribinof it to his successor in words which exhorted 
 him to be good to the poor, that so the builder's labour 
 should not be lost. 
 
 Herbert's feeling for order and beauty was satisfied 
 by that middle way between splendour and plainness 
 which he found in the Anglican Church : — 
 
 The mean thy praise and glory is, 
 And long may be. 
 
 The title given to his poems, perhaps by his friend 
 Nicholas Ferrar, "The Temple," sounds somewhat too 
 stately ; as far as they are concerned with the public 
 ordinances of religfion " The Parish Church " would have 
 been sulBQcient. Herbert's imagination was not spacious 
 or rich enough to move at ease amid the noble pomps of 
 ritual ; these w^ould have oppressed rather than borne 
 
io8 Anglo- Cat ho lie Poets : Herbert, Vaughan 
 
 upwards his spiritual aspirations. He needed grace and 
 refinement as incentives, and he needed for repose some 
 chastened order made sensible. The parish music of 
 voices accompanied with viol and flute sufficed to lift 
 him above all temporal cares : — 
 
 Now I in you without a body move, 
 Rising and falling with your wings : 
 
 We both together sweetly live and love, 
 Yet say sometimes God, help poor Kings. 
 
 He loved to moralise the simple accessories of worship 
 or of the place of prayer into dainty meanings — the 
 checkered stones of the floor signify humility and patience, 
 the stains of the marble are the stains of sin, the storied 
 windows, in which colour and light combine to show 
 forth sacred things, are the holy preachers ; even the lock 
 and key must yield a moral. The rites of the Church 
 have for their character a spiritual power clothed in the 
 beauty of simplicity. Baptism is the little gate and 
 narrow way through which we enter into the realm of 
 divine order; it reminds us that the childlike spirit 
 should still be ours, for ''childhood is health." In the 
 Holy Communion Christ conveys Himself to the faithful 
 ''not in rich furniture or fine array" but by the way of 
 nourishment and strength. The habit of the Christian 
 priesthood is " a severe attire " ; God makes vessels of 
 lowly matter meet for high uses. The splendour of the 
 true Aarons is now only for the inward eye : 
 
 Holiness on the head, 
 Light and perfections on the breast, 
 Harmonious bells below raising the dead, 
 To lead them unto life and rest. 
 
 Thus are true Aarons drest. 
 
Anglo-Cat holic Poets : Herbert, Vattghan 109 
 
 From Walton's detailed account of the instruction 
 given by Herbert to his parishioners we learn that the 
 central thought of the teacher with respect to the whole 
 service of the Church was that it is a reasonable 
 service, and therefore acceptable to God. 
 
 A certain beautiful method and order is imparted to 
 the religious emotions, which are too apt to run wild, by 
 the progress of the Christian year. At Christmas the 
 soul of the singer arrays itself in the garments of the 
 shepherds, and leads its flock of thoughts to spiritual 
 pastures. Lent is a ''dear feast" rather than a season 
 of fasting; if Christ fasted, we should follow and, though 
 far behind His forty days of entire abstinence, we may 
 meet Him in His own way: 
 
 Perhaps my God, though He be far before 
 May turn, and take me by the hand. 
 
 At Easter we taste the joy of the sun's early light 
 
 and perfume, and are met by a deeper joy : 
 
 I got me flowers to straw thy way ; 
 
 I got me boughs off many a tree ; i 
 
 But thou wast up by break of day, 
 
 And brought'st thy sweets along with thee. 
 
 On Whitsunday we pray that the Dove may spread 
 his golden wings above our hearts. On Trinity Sunday 
 we translate the mystery into renewed faith and hope 
 and charity. There is no Sunday of all the year that 
 does not pull and turn us round from worldly cares, to 
 look on One whom if we were not very dull we should 
 look on constantly : 
 
 On Sunday heaven's gate stands ope ; 
 Blessings are plentiful and rife. 
 More plentiful than hope. 
 
no Anglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert^ Vaughan 
 
 To the Virgin mother Herbert is dutifully reverent 
 and presents her with the toy of an anagram on her 
 name. To her and to all angels and saints he is very 
 courteous ; reluctantly declining the dulia and hyper- 
 dulia because these are not bidden, he dares not go 
 beyond the divine command, which they also gladly 
 observe — 
 
 Where His pleasure no injunction lays, 
 ('Tis your own case) ye never move a wing. 
 
 Such self-denying apology on her singer's part must 
 surely gratify the blessed Maid more than any fervours 
 of misdirected homage. 
 
 Curious questions, which create divisions in religion, 
 are set aside by Herbert's piety. "Love God, and love 
 your neighbour. Watch and pray. Do as ye would be 
 done unto" — these are the Gordian knots of religion, 
 and they need no severing nor untying. Astronomers 
 invent their epicycles to save a theory of the spheres ; in 
 divinity we may burn the ingenious epicycles of the 
 theologians. The Holy Scriptures are a book of stars 
 that lights us to eternal bliss. After entire self- 
 confession to God, how lucid all things have grown ! 
 And there is the wisdom of prayer, concerning which 
 Herbert has said perhaps his deepest word. The sonnet 
 on Prayer is one of piled-up metaphors, as if no imagery 
 were sufficient to express its sweetness and its strength ; 
 prayer is God's breath in man, a plummet, an engine 
 against the Almighty, a tower, a tune, a bird of 
 paradise ; but in the last word of the sonnet all 
 metaphor is dropped, and prayer is felt like the deep 
 
Anglo-Catholic Poets : He7'bert, Vaughan 1 1 1 
 
 and satisfying and inexpressible discovery of Saint John J /, 
 as he lay on the divine comrade's breast; prayer is 
 
 Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood, 
 The land of spices ; something understood. 
 
 " Something understood," which it is impossible to utterj 
 in words, and to which no imagery corresponds. 
 
 The last word of Herbert is neither of death nor 
 doomsday, of judgment nor heaven ; it is the poem 
 named '' Love." By Love the soul, '' guilty of dust and 
 sin," is welcomed to the feast ; but the poor guest is 
 embarrassed by a sense of unworthiness — 
 
 I, the unkind, ungrateful ? Ah, my dear, 
 
 I cannot look on thee. 
 Love took my hand, and smiling did reply, 
 
 "Who made the eyes but I. 
 
 Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them : let my shame 
 
 Go where it doth deserve. 
 And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame % 
 
 My dear, then I will serve. 
 You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat : 
 
 So I did sit and eat. 
 
 Exquisite courtesy to the close, the courtesy of heaven 
 meeting the humble fears and affectionate desires of 
 earth. The last delicacy of Love, the strategist. 
 
 II 
 
 Herbert's " A Priest to the Temple, or the Country 
 Parson," is at once an expression of his own character 
 and a document which presents one aspect of the 
 religious life of the time. It exhibits, in a gracious 
 ideal, the life and practice of the rural priest of the 
 Anglican Church, who belonged rather to the school 
 
112 Anglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert, Vaughan 
 
 of Andrewes and of Laud than to that of the doctrinal 
 Puritans. The ideal is one of piety, pure, peaceable, 
 balanced, amiable, which avoids the madness of extremes, 
 which has no vast ambitions, which has no passion for 
 reforming the Reformation by revolutionary methods, 
 which rather seeks constantly to irrigate the garden 
 by the appointed channels, and yet attains originality 
 through the degree in which the beauty of holiness is 
 shown to be consistent with a reverent order. 
 
 The pastor is the deputy of Christ ; even if he is 
 chaplain in a nobleman's house, it is right that he should 
 remember the dignity of his office, and be neither over- 
 submissive nor base towards his lord and lady. The 
 country parson is " holy, just, prudent, temperate, bold, 
 grave, in all his ways " ; not greedy of worldly gain (for 
 country folk feel their own sweat, and know the price 
 of money) ; not luxurious in meats and drink ; a strict 
 keeper of his word, one whose yea is yea, and nay nay ; 
 plain in his apparel, but reverend and clean, " without 
 spots or dust or smell," the purity of his mind ''break- 
 ing out and dilating itself even to his body, clothes, and 
 habitation." His knowledge may be of many things, 
 for all will serve his uses ; but especially he studies in 
 the Book of Books, interpreting the Holy Scriptures with 
 the aids of a holy life, constant prayer, the diligent col- 
 lation of text with text, and the guidance of the Com- 
 menters and Fathers. For the Fathers, the Schoolmen, 
 and later writers are familiar to him, and have been 
 digested into a body of divinity, made by way of ex- 
 pounding the Church catechism. With simpler learners 
 he chooses a simpler manner of catechising ; for all his 
 
Ano'lo-Catholic Poets : Herbert, Vauo-kan 113 
 
 people he is skilled in resolving cases of conscience, since 
 this is far from being the least important of the duties 
 of Christ's deputy. 
 
 In public prayer the priest expresses his devotion 
 by a serious and becoming aspect, by reverent gestures, 
 by a " grave liveliness" of utterance, " pausing yet press- 
 ing." He exacts from his people the most dutiful be- 
 haviour ; when they stand up they must hold themselves 
 erect ; when they kneel it must be no half-kneeling ; 
 when they make their responses it must be with dis- 
 tinctness, not in a '' huddling or slubbering " fashion, 
 but ''gently and pausably" ; the magnates of the parish 
 must not be permitted to make a kind of state-entry 
 when half the prayers are over ; should they persist in 
 such unseemly conduct, it must be made the subject of 
 an official inquiry. As for the pulpit, it is the parson's 
 ''joy and throne" ; he procures attention for the sermon 
 by all possible art ; he enlivens his discourse by anecdote 
 and pithy saying ; but its essential character is holiness. 
 He chooses some ravishing text, rather of devotion than 
 of controversy ; he steeps his words in his own heart ; 
 he breaks forth at times in apostrophes to God, as if 
 he were alone in his Maker's presence — " such irradia- 
 tions scatteringly in the sermon carry great holiness in 
 them ; " he deals with his text as a whole, developing 
 its meaning with natural expansions, not crumbling it 
 into small fragments ; he is content with one hour of 
 such edifying interpretation and appeal, and does not 
 turn the glass. In the afternoon he chooses rather to 
 catechise than to preach, requiring all, young and old, 
 poor and rich, to be present, that they may either answer 
 
 H 
 
114 Aiiglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert, Vaughan 
 
 or attend to the Catholic answers of those whom he 
 questions with a Socratic skill, learnt in part from the 
 examples in Plato's dialogues. Sermons may " inflame " ; 
 it is catechising that "informs." The rest of his Sun- 
 day is spent in goodly offices to those who are at vari- 
 ance with one another, to the sick, and to such as have 
 been unavoidably hindered from church-going. 
 
 Virginity is held by the parson to be a higher state 
 than matrimony ; yet if his parish duties require him 
 to converse with women, he must needs marry. If un- 
 married he keeps only men-servants, and sees that his 
 linen is washed abroad. Never has he speech with any 
 woman alone, and even in the presence of others he 
 speaks seldom and seriously. A true virgin, he spends 
 his days in fasting and prayer, and in frequent reading 
 of the lives of the primitive monks, hermits, and virgins. 
 Should he take to himself a wife, he chooses her rather 
 by the ear than by the eye, with judgment rather than 
 through the impulse of passion. To her he yields half 
 the government of the house, while holding the reins in 
 his own hand. It is her part to train up her children 
 and maids in the fear of God, to be skilled in the lore 
 of simple and petty surgery, and to see that provision be 
 made for her household without contracting debts. His 
 sons he *' first makes Christians and then Common- 
 wealth's men"; they are trained in little charities to 
 other children, and in due time may be bound appren- 
 tices to respectable trades ; but to serve in taverns is as 
 unbecoming for a clergyman's son as the vain trade of 
 lace-raaking is for his daughters. The parson's house is 
 a school of religion ; on the walls pious texts are seen ; 
 
Anglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert, Vaughan 115 
 
 his servants are given time for devout reading ; every- 
 one is in his own way a preacher ; every fault is con- 
 fessed, every sin is rebuked ; maids and men kneel by 
 his side and are taught to pray ; yet he governs his 
 servants more by fear than by love. The furniture of 
 the house is very plain, '' but clean, whole, and sweet, 
 as sweet as his garden can make " ; the fare is plain — 
 beef, mutton, veal — but all is very good ; swine and 
 poultry consume the refuse. When he fasts it is 
 genuine fasting, with food not only small in quantity 
 but unpleasant. If fish gratifies his palate, then let 
 him fast on flesh. 
 
 Hospitality and charity are among the parson's duties. 
 Those who conduct themselves well he distingcuishes and 
 rewards by an invitation to his table ; he makes his alms 
 a hook by which to capture those who require such a 
 reward for dutiful observances ; on occasions, indeed, he 
 will run the risk of rash almsgiving, " since, of the two 
 commands, we are more enjoined to be charitable than 
 wise " ; yet, before giving, he will require his supplicants 
 to say their prayers, or the creed, or the ten command- 
 ments. When he is wronged in his tithes, he forgives 
 the offender as a child, if there be hope of amendment. 
 In visiting his parishioners, he enters the house with a 
 blessing, he lends good books, he furnishes recipes for 
 the cure of minor ailments, he reproves the idle and 
 exhorts the industrious not to make riches the end of 
 their labour ; he comforts the sick, persuades them to 
 private confession, and urges them to charitable works ; 
 he is particular in inquiring as to the regular religious 
 observances of every household ; while, to temper his 
 
ii6 Anglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert, Vaughan 
 
 inquisitorial duty, he indulges in innocent mundane 
 discourse for conversation's sake. In everything he is 
 the sentinel of God, or, rather, he is '' in God's stead to- 
 his parish," the re warder and the punisher of good and 
 evil doers ; the lawyer, the physician, the priest to his 
 people. 
 
 In his church all things are decent, whole and clean ; 
 at great festivals strawed and stuck with boughs and 
 perfumed with incense ; he aims at keeping the middle 
 way between superstition and slovenliness. At com- 
 munion times, having " to break and administer God," 
 he is in great awe of mind. At baptism he admits no 
 vain or idle names (such, we may suppose, as a Puritan 
 mio-ht choose), but those that are usual and accustomed \ 
 he cheerfully crosses the child. Should any in his 
 parish hold strange doctrines, he bears himself towards 
 them lovingly and sweetly, places special courtesies on 
 them and studies the particular grounds of their error^ 
 whether they be Papists or schismatics ; then, having 
 prayed for them and for his own guidance, is the time 
 to argue with them, avoiding all heat and needless 
 contention. Serious as the parson habitually is, he 
 sometimes condescends to human frailties by inter- 
 minding some mirth in his discourses. Yet, knowing 
 the general ignominy cast on his profession, he is 
 careful to maintain its dignity and authority. He 
 himself honours the powers that be ; encourages every 
 one to public spirit and usefulness ; recognises how 
 brave an institution is that of justices of the peace ; 
 commends the study of the civil laws ; esteems it wise 
 that worthy men should aspire to a seat in the great 
 
Anglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert, Vatighan 117 
 
 council of the kingdom ; exhorts young gallants to 
 become skilled in military and naval affairs, to serve 
 their mother country in the plantations, or if they 
 travel into Germany and France, to endeavour to bring 
 home profitable learning and not foreign vices. He 
 loves the old customs of England, and helps to main- 
 tain them. When he blesses his people it is but a 
 brief summary in words of that to which his whole life 
 tends. 
 
 George Herbert's ideal of the country parson's life 
 has the beauty which belongs to method and habit 
 rendered quick and energetic by the presence of an 
 animating spirit. Such an ideal w^as not without its 
 uses for the Church of England at the time when f 
 Herbert himself became incumbent of Bemerton. At 
 that date Richard Baxter was a boy of about fourteen 
 or fifteen. The old incumbent of the Shropshire parish 
 in which he was born never preached ; the services of 
 a thresher and of a tailor in reading the lessons on his 
 behalf were replaced by those of the incumbent's kins- 
 man, a stage-player turned parson. His skill on the 
 stage and in the reading-desk was supplemented by 
 skill in forging holy orders for the benefit of the pastor 
 who guided the flock at High Ercall. ''After him," ^ 
 writes Baxter, " another neighbour's son took orders 
 who had been a while an attorney's clerk and a common 
 drunkard, and tippled himself into so great poverty that 
 he had no other way to live." The people in general 
 were sunk in ignorance and irreligion. Only some two 
 or three families in twenty spoke and lived as serious 
 in the Christian faith ; these were no schismatics, but 
 
ii8 Anglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert, Vaugkan 
 
 neither were they of the revived Anglo-Catholic way of 
 thinking ; '' by the rest they were called Puritans, and 
 derided as hypocrites and precisians," to merit which 
 reproach it was enough that they read the Scriptures^ 
 prayed, and talked a few words of the life to come. 
 
 It must be said also that the leaders of that move- 
 ment with which Herbert was in sympathy did not 
 always present religion in the amiable aspect set forth 
 in "The Country Parson." Laud, who sincerely desired 
 a doctrinal comprehension within the Church, who was 
 at once the patron of Chillingworth and Herbert, who 
 regarded (or professed to regard) outward ceremonies as 
 of less importance than the inward worshijD of the heart, 
 yet by his action made those outward ceremonies the 
 seeming essentials of the religion of England. A harsh 
 Anglican intolerance was set over against a harsh Puritan 
 intolerance. The words of a writer so temperate and 
 so well-informed as Professor Gardiner are of more 
 weight than any words of any partisan on either side of 
 the great controversy : " Under Charles especially," he 
 writes, " all the forces of the Crown were placed at 
 Laud's service, and it was not merely the stricter 
 Puritans, but all who cherished the Protestant spirit, 
 who were revolted by the effort made, with the full 
 support of the King, to enforce certain ecclesiastical 
 forms upon the whole people of England. They 
 naturally forgot that, in 1629, their champions in the 
 House of Commons had attempted to silence every 
 preacher who did not chime in with their own doctrinal 
 scheme. The full tide of Puritanism dashed itself 
 against Charles, strengthened and rendered more stub- 
 
Anglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert, Vaughan 119 
 
 born by tbe obstacles which he had raised to check its 
 course. If those obstacles had not been there, we 
 should have had no revolutionary fervour, no revival 
 of thoughts and beliefs which had originally come into 
 existence in the struggle of the sixteenth century." 
 The measures taken against the Puritan party were 
 strong enough and weak enough to produce the 
 maximum of evil which unwisdom can attain ; they 
 were strong enough to cause deep and just indignation ; 
 weak enough to fail of genuine success. 
 
 The country parson of Herbert, devoted to the 
 spiritual good of his people, mildly ascetic, amiably 
 inquisitorial, benevolently despotic, the saintly " Deputy 
 of God," might train a school of docile children in the 
 ways of pious order ; he could hardly lead them to 
 attain the fulness of the stature of men. He is the 
 governor, gentle yet severe, of a people in tutelage. 
 The years that were coming tested the virility of 
 Englishmen. From the city and from the fields came 
 forth a bold and resolute race of thinkers and of actors, 
 who, whatever may have been their errors, proved that 
 they were adult, men whose virtues and whose crimes 
 had alike the quality of masculine force and inde- 
 pendence. In the same year in which Herbert's 
 volume of poems was published the Star-chamber took 
 measures to suppress the '' faithful preaching ministry " 
 of Puritan lecturers. William Prynne, for his censure 
 of plays, which was regarded as reflecting on the Queen, 
 was imprisoned, and by and by was pilloried, with the 
 loss of his ears, which were sewed on, only to be 
 effectually eradicated in 1637, in presence of a great 
 
120 Anglo-Cat holic Poets : Herbert, Vaughan 
 
 crowd, '' silent mainly and looking pale." " Sundays," 
 sang Herbert — 
 
 "the pillars are 
 On wliich heaven's palace arched lies ; 
 The other days fill up the spare 
 And hollow room with vanities." 
 
 And while his words were in the air, the grave Puritan 
 temper of England was outraged, for good or for ill, by 
 the republication with royal authority of King James's 
 '' Book of Sports." 
 
 Ill 
 
 George Herbert was not only a poet himself, he was 
 the father of poets. Henry Vaughan, a convert from 
 earthly to divine love, was Herbert's spiritual son. 
 The thoughts and phrases of Herbert which he transfers 
 to his own verse seem less an appropriation than an 
 inheritance. Yet the two poets not only differed in the 
 character of their gifts, but may be said to have moved 
 on different poetical planes. "■ The unthrift sun," 
 wrote Vaughan, "shot vital gold"; of such vital gold 
 there is far more in his poetry than can be found in 
 that of his master and model. But Herbert was better 
 skilled in coining his metal in the mint, and so he gave 
 it a more extended currency. 
 
 The essential difference, however, between the poet 
 of " The Temple " and the poet of " Silex Scintillans " 
 lies deeper. The one is the interpreter of an ideal of 
 beauty in order, an ideal of the spiritual life which 
 accepts and is assisted by rule and habit ; the regularity, 
 indeed, is far from being merely formal or mechanical ; 
 
Anglo-CatJiolic Poets : Hei'bert^ Vaughan 121 
 
 the flowers which grow in the garden are living flowers ; 
 but Herbert thinks that they flourish best and show 
 most comely when they are bedded in definite patterns 
 and are watered through nicely directed channels. He 
 is the poet of the Anglican communion, and has benefited 
 by all the advantage of harmony with an established 
 sj^stem. Vaughan was an excellent churchman ; he 
 sincerely deplored the religious dissonance of his time ; 
 he could join Herbert in a reverent delight in '' the 
 British Church " : "0 rosa campi ! lilium convallium ! 
 quomodo nunc facta es jDabulum aprorum ! " If ques- 
 tioned, he would doubtless have declared that his 
 position was identical with that of the teacher to whose 
 words and example he owed the awakening of his 
 spiritual life. But Yaughan's best and most charac- 
 teristic work came from a region below his conscious 
 intelligence. When he set himself a theme and wrote 
 deliberately, his inspiration too often deserted him. 
 On Church festivals and incidents of Scripture history 
 he could compose verses, in which, as Mr Beeching 
 observes, commonplaces are strung together without the 
 advantage of such delicate rhetoric as Herbert practised. 
 He is the poet of what cannot be methodised — the 
 incalculable beams and irradiation of the soul, the in- 
 calculable wind that blows where it listeth ; his garden 
 is watered by the sudden shower and the invisible dew. 
 The word " mystic " suggests some initiation into a 
 secret tradition of wisdom. Vaughan is rather one of 
 the illumines whose eyes are opened to a light which 
 shines, if they will but accept it, for all men. His 
 desire is not so much for order in conduct as for unity 
 
122 Afiglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert, Vaughan 
 
 in the soul. The spirit of man, as he conceives it, is 
 a beam emanating from the original source of light, and 
 holding commerce with that radiant fountain of things. 
 Nature itself is permeated, as a cloud might be, by the 
 divine streams of luminosity, or is shot through by 
 sudden pencils or single rays. The senses, though they 
 may be abused, are properly inlets for the sacred 
 actinism. The ascetic temper of Herbert is therefore 
 absent from the best poems of Vaughan. The colour, 
 the flush, the glow of life, indeed, do not speak to his 
 soul ; he rather fears their distracting influence. It is 
 light in its unity — whiteness of illumination — towards 
 which he aspires, and with which he would unite him- 
 self; a light having no intemperate heat, coming not in 
 torrid waves, but abiding clear and serene. 
 
 But here, in our mortal life, the apparition of such 
 light is intermittent ; it comes and suddenly dis- 
 appears ; it is here this moment, and the next it is 
 gone ; we cannot capture and hold it in a noose ; we 
 cannot fix it in forms ; the door opens and shuts ; the 
 brightness flashes and fades. We may prepare for its 
 arrival by inward clearness and quietness ; we cannot 
 in our present state possess it in equal measure from 
 day to day. Such is the prerogative of light ; such 
 is our infirmity, but such also is our blessedness. What 
 is most precious in life is not subject to our wills ; it 
 cannot be reduced to a method of piety ; it flows 
 from a well-head in the far-oflf hills. 
 
 We are exiles, but exiles who receive messages from 
 our native land. Hence we suffer, and may rejoice 
 because we suffer, an incurable nostalgia. We are 
 
Anglo-Cat holic Poets : Herbert, Vaughan 123 
 
 islanded between two seas of light — the bright eternity 
 from which we came, the bright eternity of the future 
 towards which we progress. Each new-born infant is 
 like the mysterious child of old romance, who is borne 
 to shore in a little ark, and brings with him tokens of 
 his royal origin, tokens of that palace whence he came. 
 Hence the radiance of our early years. " My striving 
 eye," Vaughan writes of childhood, " dazzles at it, as at 
 eternity." 
 
 O how I long to travel back, 
 And tread again that ancient track ! 
 That I might once more reach that plain, 
 Where first I left my glorious train ; 
 From whence the enlighten'd spirit sees 
 That shady city of palm trees. 
 
 And beyond the other term of earthly life there are 
 
 the happy dead who, 
 
 wing'd and free, 
 Rove in that mighty and eternal light. 
 
 The triumph of their brightness makes this life of ours 
 seem a mere glimmering: 
 
 I see them walking in an air of glory, 
 Whose light doth trample on my days. 
 
 Yet they are themselves our pillar-fires — the white 
 dead ; and such guides are needful, for he who stays 
 long on earth must pursue his course 
 
 O'er dark hills, swift streams, and steep ways 
 As smooth as glass. 
 
 Little wonder is it that such a traveller should pine 
 
 for his relinquished home and his home that is still 
 
 unreached. 
 
 But unless we clothe ourselves in cloud and mist, we 
 
124 Anglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert, Vaughan 
 
 are not left in the power of darkness. Heaven and 
 '' close eternity" abide within us : 
 
 Should poor souls fear a shade or night 
 Who came — sure — from a sea of light ? 
 
 We can " think on our dream " ; we can fill our breast 
 with home ; through thick pangs and high agonies faith 
 can break into life. Or if we should but be silent and 
 attend, inward voices and mysterious reverberations grow 
 
 audible : 
 
 I came at last 
 To search myself, where I did find 
 Traces and sounds of a strange kind ; 
 Here of this mighty spring I found some drills,^ 
 With echoes beaten from th' eternal hills. 
 
 Scattered fragments inscribed with ancient hieroglyphics 
 lie about our feet ; if only we could bring them together 
 aright, many things would grow intelligible. Even in 
 the masques and shadows of life the discerning soul 
 may see God's sacred way — 
 
 And by those hid ascents climb to that day 
 
 Which breaks from Thee 
 Who art in all things though invisibly. 
 
 The world, with all that it possesses, is circled by the 
 great sphere of everlasting light : 
 
 I saw Eternity the other night, 
 
 Like a great sphere of pure and endless light, 
 
 All calm, as it was bright ; 
 And round beneath it. Time in hours, days, years, 
 
 Driven by the spheres. 
 Like a great shadow moved ; in which the world 
 
 And all her train was hurl'd. 
 
 ^ Drill, a small trickling stream. 
 
A^iglo-Catholic Poets : He7'bert, Vatigkan 125 
 
 Universal nature acknowledges its commerce with the 
 heavens ; its forms are " shadows of eternity." The 
 bird, through whose lodging the busy wind blew all 
 night, rejoices in the dawn : 
 
 And now as fresh and cheerful as the light 
 Thy little heart in early hvmns doth sing. 
 
 Even the speechless rocks and stones, struck by the 
 morning gleam, are "deep in admiration." Much more 
 may the heart of man possess and enjoy the divine 
 brightness : 
 
 For each enclosed spirit is a star 
 
 Enlight'ning his own little sphere ; 
 Whose light, though fetch'd and borrowed from far. 
 
 Both mornings makes and evenings there. 
 
 However long the night, however dim the way, an hour 
 will arrive when the cry, " The Bridegroom cometh," 
 will fill the heavens, and what hour should that be but 
 the dawn ? The seed grows secretly ; the dew silently 
 descends ; let us cherish the green and growing blade ; 
 the rule of life is a plain and simple one : 
 
 Then bless thy secret gro-vrth, nor catch 
 At noise, but tlirive unseen and dumb, 
 
 Keep clean, bear fruit, earn life, and watch 
 Till the white-^vinged reapers come I 
 
 And even if at the last there is in God, as some say, " a 
 deep but dazzling darkness," in that darkness, which 
 means excess of light, we may rejoice to live invisible. 
 
 Such is the vision which came to the seventeenth- 
 century illumine. It is set forth, when Vaughan writes 
 at his best, with a large utterance and a recognition of 
 the spiritual presences in external nature, which have 
 
126 Anglo- Cat ho lie Poets : Herbert^ Vaughan 
 
 more kinship with the earlier poetry of the nineteenth 
 century than with that of his own day. It anticipates 
 something of the visionary power of Wordsworth's art ; 
 but in Wordsworth the idealist was supported by the 
 strong north-country dalesman ; his wandering lights 
 and shadows played over granite cliff and scaur. 
 Vaughan lacked such support ; the framework of rites 
 and ordinances, which served the genius of Herbert, 
 may have given strength to Vaughan's life as a man ; 
 it aided him little or not at all as a poet ; the light 
 within him would not submit to a rule or measure ; the 
 breeze of the spirit would not be taken in the meshes 
 of a net. His " Eastern traffic " dealt in " bright and 
 boundless empyrean themes " ; Herbert's themes recog- 
 nised willingly and to their own advantage a bounding 
 line. 
 
 Each of the two poets has compiled a poem of pre- 
 cepts. Herbert's " The Church-porch " is designed as 
 a kind of sprinkling with holy water before the entrant 
 of the Temple bows his head in presence of the altar. 
 Its tone is therefore designedly subdued — no exaltations 
 of piety are as yet becoming. Keep clean in conduct, do 
 not get drunk, avoid profane swearing, do not tell lies, 
 be active, steadfast, manly, live by rule, be thrifty, be 
 charitable, do not run into debt, do not gamble, dress 
 well but inexpensively, be pleasant in company, seek no 
 quarrels, laugh moderately, argue temperately, be decent 
 in speech, be neither over-bold nor servile, envy no man, 
 go regularly to church, but do not, like the Puritans, 
 set preaching above prayers, each night cast up the 
 account of the day's spiritual gains and losses — all this is 
 
Anglo-Cathohc Poets : Herbert, Vaughan 127 
 
 a wholesome sprinkling, and the priest manipulates his 
 
 aspergilliim with a neat hand. Vaughan's " Rules and 
 
 Lessons," written in discipleship rather than in rivalry 
 
 to the " Church-porch," and, identical in the form of its 
 
 stanza, gives counsel for the conduct of a single day 
 
 from dawn to nightfall. With the best intentions to 
 
 be didactic, Vaughan is unable to constrain his pen to 
 
 the task of mere edification, and he loses himself ever 
 
 and anon in pure delight and wonder. On waking, it 
 
 is right that the soul as well as the body should open 
 
 its eyes : 
 
 True hearts spread and heave 
 Unto their God as flowers do to the sun. 
 
 Prayer should dawn with the day ; " they are set, awful 
 hours 'twixt heaven and us." Then, for mornino-s are 
 mysteries, the purged spirit ma}^ taste the pureness of 
 the air and observe the goings-on of the fields and 
 woods : 
 
 Walk with thy fellow-creatures : note the hush 
 And whispers amongst them. There's not a spring 
 
 Or leaf but hath his morning-hymn. Each bush 
 And oak doth know / am. 
 
 And not only in the prime but at all hours the in- 
 fluences of the visible world may serve to heighten 
 devotion or to cool the fever of the blood and brain 
 
 Here fountains flow, 
 Birds sing, beasts feed, fish leap, and the Earth stands fast ; 
 Above are restless motions, running lights, 
 Vast circling azure, giddy clouds, days, nights. 
 
 And so the hours pass by in duties and in delights, 
 until the glorious evening fades, and we can say that 
 
128 Anglo-Catholic Poets : Herbe^'t, Vatighan 
 
 one more sun is strung on our bead of days. The 
 moralising and even the piety of the " Church-porch " 
 read somewhat like copy-book headlines for the good 
 children of Bemerton parish. Vaughan's rules imply 
 a larger spirit of duty — duty in whose footing treads 
 fragrance, and through whom the ancient heavens are 
 fresh and strong. 
 
 Richard Crash aw passed from the Anglican Com- 
 munion to the Catholicism of Rome. His body lies in 
 the Chapel of Loretto, where for a few weeks he was a 
 sub-canon, and where he died in 1650. But before he 
 left the Church of England his religious passion had been 
 heightened and inflamed by the writings of the great 
 Spanish mystics. At Cambridge it was "in the temple 
 of God, under His wing, he led his life, in St Mary's 
 Church, near St Peter's College ; there he lodged under 
 Tertullian's roof of angels; there he made his nest more 
 gladly than David's swallow near the house of God, 
 where like a primitive saint, he offered more prayers 
 in the night than others usually oflfer in the day."^ 
 Perhaps he made acquaintance with Herbert's poems 
 under the guidance of Herbert's editor, Nicholas Ferrar, 
 in the devout community of Gidding. The descrip- 
 tion of a religious house which he found in Barclay's 
 " Argenis," and rendered into English verse, aptly ap- 
 plies itself to the life of those pious recluses who kept 
 the lamp of prayer burning the whole night through, 
 who translated Valdesso, compiled their Concordances 
 of the Scriptures, and knew how to bind a precious 
 
 1 ' ' Steps to the Temple " : tlie Preface to the Reader. The word 
 "nest" can never be resisted by Crashaw ; it nestles in nearly every poem. 
 
Anglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert, Vattghan 129 
 
 volume in purple velvet stamped with acorn, sprigs of 
 oak, and fleurs-de-lis: 
 
 A hasty portion of prescribed sleep, 
 Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep. 
 
 [For] reverent discipline, and religious fear, 
 And soft obedience find sweet biding here. 
 Silence and sacred rest, peace and pure joys. 
 Kind loves keep house, lie close, make no noise. 
 
 The hands of Mary Collett may have helped to bind 
 
 the little prayer book given to a young gentlewoman, 
 
 " M. R," and enhanced in its value by the ode which 
 
 Crashaw prefixed: 
 
 A nest of new-born sweets ; 
 Wliose native fires disdaining 
 To lie thus folded, and complaining 
 Of these ignoble sheets. 
 Affect more comely bands. 
 Fair one, from thy kind hands. 
 And confidently look 
 To find the rest 
 Of a rich binding in your breast.^ 
 
 It was not ''the soothing tendency of the Prayer 
 Book" that attracted Crashaw ; he found in the end 
 that its '' native fires" were too little ebullient to satisfy 
 a '* flaming heart." 
 
 The "pious orgies" of Crashaw's muse belong to a, 
 world remote from the "decent prayers" of Herbert. ' 
 He commends the poems of Herbert in a copy sent 
 to another gentlewoman than M. R. (in the Dionysiac 
 mysteries gentlewomen may toss the thyrsus) but his 
 commendation would hardly have been to the taste of 
 
 ^ See '* Nicholas Ferrar, his Household and his Friends," edited by the 
 Rev. T. T. Carter, pp. 235, 236. 
 
 I 
 
130 Anglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert, Vaughart 
 
 the parish priest of Bemerton ; the lady's eyes are to 
 kindle Herbert's sacrifice ; when her white hands open 
 the volume she will hold an angel by the wings — an 
 angel who would gladly 
 
 flutter in the balmy air 
 Of your well-perfumed prayer. 
 
 The country parson, who in a state of virginity would 
 never have spoken to a woman alone, might have chosen 
 rather to take flight than to flutter in the cell of 
 Crashaw's ''fairest." 
 
 Crashaw is as far removed from Vaughan. Vaughan 
 
 is the mystic (if we must use that inappropriate term) 
 
 of light ; Crashaw is the mystic of flame. It is not 
 
 strange that Herbert should have innocently played 
 
 with pious fancies, or should have fitted his metaphors 
 
 to his ideas, tooth by tooth, and have given the pretty 
 
 cog-wheel a twist. But we may wonder that the fire of 
 
 Crashaw's ardour did not burn away the tinsel ornament 
 
 of the school of Marino. It is to be feared that the 
 
 language of mysticism may, when the mood cools, itself 
 
 degenerate into a trick. Neither Vaughan nor Herbert 
 
 ( equalled Crashaw in his greatest lines; all the eagle, all 
 
 the dove were for a moment in his genius ; his face 
 
 might well have appeared in some Italian painting 
 
 among those of the " bright youth of heaven," who in 
 
 his own poem bear our Blessed Lady through the clouds 
 
 on golden wings, and sing "under so sweet a burden"; 
 
 he alone among poets of his time was capable of receiving 
 
 the full "dower of liglits and fires" from that Britomart 
 
 of Spanish piety. Saint Teresa. But the live coal may 
 
Anglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert, Vatigkan 131 
 
 fade, the altar-flame may sink, and still it may be 
 possible to manipulate the conventional terms — "love's 
 delicious fires," '' sweet pains," " intolerable joys," 
 ''amorous languishments," "luminous trances," "dear 
 and divine annihilations." And so we may come to 
 respect such modest pieties and edifying counsel as the 
 country parson, even in the porch of the temple, com- 
 mends to our hearts and conscience. The irradiation in 
 Yaughan's best poems is too pure and various ever to 
 pall upon the spirit of sense within us. The " amorous 
 languishments" of Crashaw may for a time melt our will 
 in a divine voluptuousness; and then it comes to our 
 recollection that the great saints often found more 
 spiritual gain in aridity than in sweetness. Saint 
 Teresa's euloo^ist miofht well have remembered her 
 strong good-sense, her power of wise organisation, her 
 genuine feeling of humour. 
 
 Crashaw's flame is full of changfinor colour; at its 
 purest, the flame is varied with beautiful surprises ; but 
 if coloured lights fail him, the poet is well pleased with 
 what Bacon calls the "oes aud spangs" of tinsel. 
 Calculated hyperboles, neat extravagances, the ineffable 
 set forth by a fanciful identity of contradictories — 
 flaming fountains, weeping fires, gold hair that is a 
 wandering mine, eyes that are walking baths, and what- 
 ever else can unhinge the sanity of imagination, are after 
 all poor temptations to draw a true poet into sin. To 
 criticise Crashaw's poetry as Johnson criticised Cowley's, 
 from the standpoint of common-sense, is legitimate and 
 is useful; to criticise it as showing a defect not of judg- 
 ment but of true passion is more important. There is 
 
132 Anglo-Catholic Poets : Herbert, Vaughaji 
 
 something to admire in almost every poem by Crashaw; 
 and there is hardly a single poem that we can admire 
 with a good conscience, for his lyrical ardour was too 
 intermittent to enable him often to achieve a beautiful 
 whole. True love should lead to quiet, or at least to con- 
 fidence in its theme; Crashaw is always alert for dazzling 
 legerdemain of pious fancy, and so little trusts his theme 
 that he must bedizen it with every paltry bead and 
 spangle of cheap religious merchandize. He praises 
 austerity; and his converted muse still loves the ear- 
 rings, the crisping-pins, and the pots of rouge. Where 
 Herbert could be content with a field daisy for an 
 offering, Crashaw^ must fasten with wire to his Magdalen 
 or his Viro^in a brilliant basketful of roses in coloured 
 muslin. 
 
V 
 
 MILTON: CIVIL LIBERTY 
 
 Milton's prose works form the true complement of his 
 poems. Two words may be said to express in brief 
 the tendency of his total effort as a poet and as a 
 combatant in prose — the words liberty and obedience. 
 All his greater writings in verse revolve around the 
 idea of obedience ; all his writings in prose are 
 concerned with liberty, with deliverance from a 
 lower rule as the condition of obedience to a higher 
 rule. He wages war against custom, tradition, 
 tyranny in Church and in State, for the sake of 
 what seems to him a nobler order and a stricter 
 allegiance. Loyalty to the Divine order, a free 
 obedience to that law which is supremely righteous 
 is Milton's dominant idea. 
 
 His writings in prose, taken as a whole, are 
 commonly represented as of temporary and transitory 
 interest, claiming attention in their own day but with 
 little significance for ours. The political historian 
 notices them in passing as incidents of a period of 
 oivil and religious strife. The biographer is tempted 
 to regard them as an unhappy episode which diverted 
 the poet from his true line of development ; he points 
 to them, with Mark Pattison, as examples of " the 
 
 133 
 
134 Milton: Civil Liberty 
 
 prostitution of genius to political party," The his- 
 torian of literature rescues from them certain shining 
 passages, in which Milton vindicates his past or utters 
 his lofty aspirations for the future ; the rest, heavy 
 with the dross of circumstance, is allowed to sink under 
 the waters of oblivion. This is to misconceive the 
 real worth of what Milton wrote. It is true that his 
 pamphlets are encumbered with much matter which 
 concerned the seventeenth century, and which has 
 long since ceased to interest England and Englishmen. 
 But behind all that is occasional lies what gives these 
 writings an enduring value^ — a series of ideals, more 
 lofty, complete, and in a high sense reasonable, than 
 can readily be found elsewhere among his contem- 
 poraries, ideals for the domestic and the corporate 
 life of England, which form a lasting contribution 
 to the higher thought of our country. The refulgent 
 passages may be presented in a collection of extracts ; 
 but that which is of highest virtue, that which shines 
 with the steadiest illumination lives through the gross 
 body of these huge pamphlets — ideals of obedient 
 freedom and of free obedience in the duties of private 
 and public life. To deliver these elements of enduring 
 worth from the wood, hay, stubble of seventeenth- 
 century controversy is not only of some service in 
 rendering justice to the memory of a great poet, 
 but may be an aid to those who seek in the past 
 for living powers to enrich and invigorate the life 
 of our own time. 
 
 His ideals for the family, the education of youth, 
 the freedom of the individual in the expression of 
 
Milt 071 : Civil Liberty 135 
 
 opinions may in a logical order take precedence of 
 his ideals of corporate life, civil and religious. 
 
 II 
 
 Milton's discussion of the principles which should 
 regulate the relations of husband and wife affords 
 a striking illustration of the passionate impulsiveness 
 of his temper, and of the way in which his reason 
 was ready to sustain and reinforce his passions. Mr 
 Masson has shown that the first pamphlet on divorce 
 was written during that brief period, immediately 
 following his first marriage, — a few weeks — which 
 preceded his wife's departure from the unhappy house 
 in Aldersgate Street. In June 1643 Milton's married 
 life began ; on August 1 of the same year his 
 " Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Restored " was 
 in the hands of the public. On a sudden Milton 
 accepted the bond of wedlock ; as suddenly he desired 
 to cast the bond away. Did any other illustrious 
 bridegroom, known to history, beguile the honeymoon 
 with the composition of a treatise on the benefits 
 of divorce ? It is like the violent swing-round of 
 a great ship, forging swiftly forward, upon the cry 
 of '' Breakers ahead." Shelley, even while a boy, 
 never acted in a way so strange, so precipitate, so 
 alien from the ordinary standards of men and women. 
 But Milton could not permit himself to suppose that 
 he yielded to a mere impulse of passion. He was 
 the servant of God, the champion of freedom, the 
 spokesman for a people ; he must preserve his dignity, 
 and cherish his self - reverence ; he must therefore 
 
136 Milton: Civil Liberty 
 
 justify the passion to his own reason and to the 
 reason of mankind ; he must, above all, prove that 
 the law of God was on his side ; he must argue 
 out the whole question of divorce. Accordingly 
 in the vehemence of his perturbation, but alleging 
 to his own consciousness that thus he might become 
 a great public Eeformer, a heroic Deliverer, removing 
 from men's shoulders a burden which they are not 
 able to bear, he rushed into print. 
 
 The Divorce pamphlets form part of his pleading 
 on behalf of domestic liberty, liberty, that is to say, 
 for God's vicegerent in domestic life — the man ; as 
 for the woman, she, according to the Hebraic doctrine 
 of Milton, exists not as an independent unit, exists 
 not for any direct relation to God, but for God in 
 and through her husband.^ What is more essential 
 for a life of heroic energy than light and joy in the 
 home ? If these are unattainable, the sacred freedom 
 of wedded union is converted into the most grievous 
 of servitudes — a servitude to sorrow. Milton's ideal 
 of marriage is a lofty one ; wholly unchivalric, but 
 perhaps higher than the chivalric ideal which reserved 
 its songs and sighs and adorations for lovers who could 
 not be wife and husband. In proportion to the 
 loftiness of his demands and expectations was the 
 passionate scorn which he felt for his timid bride 
 of seventeen years. He had not tired of her as 
 the average sensual man might, after a time, have 
 
 ^ In one passage Milton admits that if a wife be wiser than her 
 husband, she may rule, the law of sex being in such an exceptional 
 case superseded by the superior law that power should belong to wisdom. 
 
Milton: Civil Liberty 137 
 
 tired ; he saw, or believed he saw, that the spiritual 
 incorporation, which is the essential part of marriage, 
 was in this case impossible. He pleaded not for 
 license, but, as he held, for a stricter and nobler 
 marriage rule, in which rule alone, and not in im- 
 moral custom, could just liberty be found ; he pleaded 
 for this in the name of reason, of the soul, of a 
 purer life, of the Divine order as declared in Scripture. 
 Honest liberty, he assures us, is the greatest foe of 
 dishonest license : " He who wisely would restrain the 
 reasonable soul of man within due bounds must first 
 himself know perfectly how far the territory extends 
 of just and honest liberty." It seemed to him that 
 he, a private man, might suggest a way of bettering 
 the internal life of a thousand homes, and of emanci- 
 pating a multitude of sufferers from " a drooping 
 and disconsolate household captivity." A courageous 
 individual might lead the way ; England should then 
 remember her precedence in teaching nations how to 
 live ; Parliament might remove the chains which were 
 eating into the flesh of many victims who now con- 
 cealed their misery ; the whole civilised world might 
 follow the glorious example of England ; man mio-ht 
 again resume his freedom as God's noblest creature. 
 And thus, instructed by a private calamity, he him- 
 self might play the part of a great deliverer. It 
 was an amazing development from his discovery of 
 a week or two that Mary Powell had proved an un- 
 satisfactory companion. Looked at from the point 
 of view here indicated the first Divorce pamphlet is 
 a prose-poem in honour of marriage written by an 
 
138 Milton: Civil Liberty 
 
 uncompromising idealist. The sufferings of Milton's 
 young bride disappear in his vision of a great nation 
 exulting in its deliverance from a yoke which checked 
 the motions of joy and vigour and sacred gratitude. 
 Never before or since was such an Epithalamium sung. 
 
 The proposition which Miltou aimed at establishing 
 on the evidence of reason and of Scripture is this — 
 " that indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, 
 arising from a cause unchangeable, hindering and 
 ever likely to hinder the main benefits of conjugal 
 society, which are solace and peace" is a just ground 
 for a dissolution of marriage to be pronounced by 
 God's vicegerent, the husband. It seems to follow 
 as a direct consequence, that an idealist like Milton, 
 in search of the perfect wife, might repeat his ex- 
 periment until Aldersgate Street was strewed with 
 Mrs Miltons emeritce, and the not-impossible She 
 was at last found. Mutual consent, he admits, is 
 desirable in effecting a final separation ; it is not 
 absolutely necessary. Milton's thesis is general, but 
 he scarcely attempts to veil his personal interest in 
 the matter : " A discreet man may be mistaken in 
 his choice. . . . The soberest and best-governed men 
 are least practised in these affairs ; and who knows 
 not that the bashful muteness of a virgin may oft- 
 times hide all the unliveliness and natural sloth 
 which is really unfit for conversation." Obviously 
 we have a picture of the shy Royalist girl in pre- 
 sence of a Puritan admirer, discreet, sober and well- 
 governed, of more than twice her age. 
 
 Love, Milton tells us, was the son of Loneliness, 
 
Milton: Civil Liberty 139 
 
 begot in Paradise. When this original penury or 
 loneliness of soul is not removed by marriage, " then 
 enters Hate," not the hate that sins, but an in- 
 evitable, ineradicable dissatisfaction ; and surely, if 
 the woman be of a gentle spirit, not to be beloved, 
 and yet to be retained as a domestic appendage, 
 would be the highest injury. " To profane that 
 mystery of joy and union " — true wedlock — " with a 
 polluting sadness and perpetual distemper," were the 
 greatest wrong ao^ainst marriacre. When he touches 
 on the opinion of Beza that divorce was divinely 
 permitted for the release of afflicted wives, we get 
 a glimpse into his domestic interior, and can perceive 
 some of the causes which made the overawed girl 
 so speedily desirous to return to her kinsfolk. Divorce 
 permitted only for the relief of wives ! " Palpably 
 uxorious ! " cries Milton ; " who can be ignorant that 
 woman was created for man, not man for woman, 
 and that a husband may be injured as insufferably 
 in marriage as a wife ? What an injury it is after 
 wedlock not to be beloved ! What to be slighted I 
 What to be contended with, in point of house-rule, 
 which is the head ; not for any parity of wisdom, 
 for that were something reasonable, but out of a 
 female pride." So quickly can the bride of a haughty 
 idealist accumulate on her girlish head every disquali- 
 fication for wifehood ; so remorseless is the passion 
 for the unattainable perfection. " No man knows 
 hell," writes Milton, " like him who converses most 
 in heaven ; so there is none that can estimate the 
 evil and the affliction of a natural hatred in matri- 
 
140 Milton: Civil Liberty 
 
 mony, unless he have a soul gentle enough and 
 spacious enough to contemplate what is true love." 
 
 The art of creating happiness, the most beautiful 
 and most difficult of the fine arts, Milton had not 
 studied. His genius was not fired by the ambition 
 of evoking smiles from sadness. But his pamphlet, 
 futile as are its practical suggestions, is still of worth 
 as a plea for a noble joy and energy in domestic 
 life as against faintness and timidity of heart, the 
 lethargy of sadness and the indolence of despair. 
 The Puritan home, as he conceived it, would have 
 been one of heroic gladness, of comradeship in aspir- 
 ing thoughts and generous deeds. The first of wifely 
 duties is that of inward and spiritual help ; he did 
 not reflect how difficult is the part which he assigns 
 to the woman — that of confessed inferiority without 
 inadequacy. If through fault of nature or irremedi- 
 able failure of heart and soul, she deserts her chief 
 duty, she forfeits thereby all right to wedded happi- 
 ness, and her fate is placed in her husband's hands. 
 The union, as he conceived it, is no sacrament ; it 
 is no more than a civil contract terminable if the 
 purposes of the contract cannot be fulfilled. The 
 modern divorce court Milton would have looked on 
 as causing a needless injury to the weaker party. 
 Why bandy up and down a wife's unpleasingness, he 
 asks, and aggravate it in open court by hired 
 masters of tongue-fence ? Far better is it that the 
 doom should be pronounced in private ; to the hus- 
 band God has given power over his wife ; let him 
 declare that the contract is dissolved. 
 
Milton: Civil Liberty 141 
 
 Milton's writings on the subject of divorce are four 
 in number. Two of these may be disregarded. Some 
 months after the second edition of his " Doctrine and 
 Discipline of Divorce" had been published, Milton dis- 
 covered that he had been anticipated in an expression 
 of the same opinions by an eminent divine of the 
 Eeformation, Martin Bucer. He was glad to have the 
 support of an authority in high credit among Protestants; 
 accordingly he collected from Bucer such passages as 
 seemed to confirm his own views. The book is devoid 
 of interest. But the dedication to the Parliament of 
 England is written in Milton's lofty manner. If anything 
 generous, noble, and above the multitude were left in 
 the spirit of his country, he felt confident that it might 
 be found in the great council of the nation. As for 
 himself it seemed as though he were the agent of some 
 superintending Providence, prompting him to labour for 
 the general good, or rather no agent, but a " passive 
 instrument" under a power and direction higher than 
 human. He reverenced himself as God's envoy to his 
 people of England. As a poet he uttered only what it 
 was given him to say by the Spirit ; when fallen on evil 
 days he was an afflicted champion, like Samson, possessed 
 of a divine gift of invincible strength, which one day 
 perhaps might overwhelm the Philistines. Even as a 
 pamphleteer on the subject of divorce, although Milton 
 was aware that the immediate occasion of his writing was 
 a personal grief, he was still " no other than a passive 
 instrument under some power and counsel higher and 
 better than can be human, working to a general good in 
 the whole course of the matter." Perhaps we should 
 
142 Milton: Civil Liberty 
 
 reverence Milton more if he could for a moment have 
 been a mere mortal, aware of human infirmities, and 
 capable of manly protectiveness to one whose infirmities 
 were more excusable than his own. But it was his way 
 to drive haughtily from error into error. 
 
 On the same day, March 4, 1644-45, were published 
 *' Colasterion," Milton's answer to an anonymous critic, 
 and his " Tetrachordon." The former of these was 
 written in a rage of scorn. Milton follows his adversary 
 through his several arguments, the seventh, the eighth, 
 the ninth ; he denies the major ; he denies the minor ; 
 he dashes rock and stone and mud of abuse and objur- 
 gation on the foeman's head ; a serving-man, a trivial 
 fellow, a dolt, a pork, a phlegmy clod, an idiot by breeding, 
 a nameless hangman, a groom, a hoyden, a hobby-horse 
 jesting and frisking in the luxury of his nonsense — such 
 are some of the swashing blows of the controversialist 
 who wrote as '' a passive instrument under some power 
 and counsel higher and better than can be human." 
 The rapier of satire was not in fashion among learned 
 combatants ; the club was still a favourite weapon. Yet 
 some fifty years earlier. Hooker had conducted his con- 
 troversy not only with human dignity but with Christian 
 charity. Milton followed the common way of contention 
 with a Berserker fury which has in it almost a touch of 
 genius ; it is impossible to be more insulting than he 
 succeeded in being. If we compare such an urbane 
 swordsman as Newman, the antagonist of Kingsley, with 
 the mammoths and megatheria of the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, who tore each other in their learned 
 slime, we shall see reason to believe in the evolution 
 
Milton: Civil Liberty 143 
 
 of warfare, with all its decencies and tactics, from the 
 epoch of the antediluvian combats of monsters. The 
 capacity for rage and scorn is admirable ; it was possessed 
 in abundant measure by the Hebrew prophets ; but their 
 rage and scorn were purified and elevated. It is assuredly 
 a trial to the admirers of the author of '' Paradise Lost " 
 and '' Paradise Regained " to encounter such a pamphlet 
 as " Colasterion." How could the great idealist, who 
 reverenced himself and reverenced what was above him, 
 lose all sense of dignity and decency ? The answer lies 
 partly in the fact that the man who lives in ideas is often 
 the man who has learnt least a fitting behaviour towards 
 persons; the individual becomes in his eyes the symbol 
 of a hated cause ; he flings himself into the melee with 
 a cry of " I do well to be angry." Milton could soar on 
 the steady wings of an albatross ; but the albatross on 
 deck is an uns^ainlv creature. 
 
 In '' Tetrachordon " Milton enters upon an exposition 
 of the four chief passages of Scripture which treat of 
 marriage and the grounds of its dissolution. Whether 
 we as^ree with the drift of his aro^ument or not, we cannot 
 but admire the courageous spirit of the writer and the 
 genuine literary feeling which, now and again, he brings 
 to bear upon the interpretation of the Bible. Aspiration 
 towards a life of active righteousness and generous pur- 
 suit of wisdom breathes throucrh Milton's words a life 
 strong, joyous, free, yet obedient to the highest law. 
 Christ in cancelling the handwriting of ordinances has 
 '' set us in the free custody of His love, and left us vic- 
 torious under the guidance of His living Spirit, not under 
 the dead letter, to follow that which most edifies, most 
 
144 Milton: Civil Liberty 
 
 aids and furthers, a religious life, makes us holiest and 
 likest to His immortal image, not that which makes us 
 most conformable and captive to civil and subordinate 
 precepts." And as he has this ideal of a life strong in 
 the pursuit of what is highest, so he has his ideal of the 
 blessedness of rest and refreshment after toil in the 
 sunshine of the home : " No mortal nature can endure,, 
 either in the actions of religion or study of wisdom, 
 without some time slackening the cord of intense thought 
 and labour, which, lest we should think faulty, God 
 Himself conceals us not His own recreations before the 
 world was built. ' I was,' saith the Eternal Wisdom,. 
 ' daily His delight, playing always before Him.' And 
 to Him, indeed, wisdom is as a high tower of pleasure, 
 but to us a steep hill, and we toiling ever about the 
 bottom. He executes with ease the exploits of His 
 omnipotence, as easy as with us it is to will ; but no- 
 worthy enterprise can be done by us without continual 
 plodding, and wearisomeness to our faint and sensitive 
 abilities. We cannot therefore always be contemplative, 
 or pragmatical abroad, but have need of some delightful 
 intermission, wherein the enlarged soul may leave off 
 awhile her severe schooling, and like a glad youth in 
 wandering vacancy, may keep her holidays in joy and 
 harmless pastime." Such support in labour, and such 
 refreshment after toil Milton had not found in the com- 
 pany of his girl-wife. The " Tetrachordon," indeed, is 
 on fire with pain. Milton describes the wedded life of 
 those who are not united in spirit as the life of " deadly 
 enemies in a cage together " ; it is a shipwreck without 
 haven or shore ; it is the mere carcase of a marriage ; 
 
Milton: Civil Liberty 145 
 
 to endeavour to establish harmony between such wedded 
 adversaries is *'to weave a garment of dry sand." The 
 onl}'' effectual remedy for such inward disruption is 
 complete release. Such an unhappy couple could not 
 desire to be unhappy parents ; they are disqualified for 
 true fatherhood and motherhood. If children are already 
 born, let them follow either parent, as shall be agreed 
 or judged, quitting the house of hatred and discord for 
 a place of more holy and peaceable education. 
 
 Passion with such a mind as Milton naturally tends 
 to generalisation. His private grief led him to an 
 enquiry into first principles. Our rew^ard for wading 
 through the sandy wastes of controversy is that Milton 
 conducts us, as almost always is the case, to an altitude 
 from which a noble prospect may be viewed. Although 
 he accepts the Hebraic teaching that 
 
 God's universal law- 
 Gave to the man despotic power 
 Over his female in due awe, 
 Not from that right to part an hour 
 Smile she or lour — 
 
 although he asserts the inferiority of woman, his con- 
 ception of marriage is more honourable to woman than 
 the chivalric conception. Wedded happiness resides in 
 a union of hand and heart for spiritual service, for 
 joyous energy, and for delighted refreshment after toil : 
 
 Favoured of Heaven who finds 
 
 One virtuous, rarely found, 
 
 That in domestic good combines ! 
 
 Happy that house ! his way to peace is smooth. 
 
 The condemnation of Dalila is Milton's homage to 
 
 K 
 
J 46 Milton: Civil Liberty 
 
 her sex as truly as is the celebration of virginal strength 
 and purity in " Comus." 
 
 Ill 
 
 In his classification of the prose writings which treat 
 of domestic liberty Milton places after the pamphlets on 
 divorce his letter to Hartlib on Education. After the 
 wife he considers the child. He demanded freedom in 
 the training of the youth of England, but only such 
 freedom as comes throus^h obedience to a higher and 
 stricter law than that of custom and tradition. As the 
 divorce pamphlets are not merely destructive of what 
 Milton regarded as the tyranny of civil and canon law, 
 a servitude fatal to vigorous joy, but are also constructive, 
 presenting his ideal of the true union of husband and 
 wife, so his Letter on Education aims at destroying a 
 system which he held to be obsolete and enfeebling only 
 with a view to replace it by a more exacting as well 
 as a more enlightened discipline. He had himself 
 known the methods of the University ; he had himself 
 practical experience as a teacher of youth. IsTothing is 
 more obvious than that he makes extreme demands on 
 the energy of young scholars, and expects more than an 
 average student can attain ; but by one who has the 
 passion for perfection much may be accomplished before 
 one -and -twenty. Milton would relieve the student 
 from many idle burdens and preposterous exactions ; he 
 would gradate studies so that what is easy should 
 precede what is difficult ; and he had a modern sense 
 of the importance of vigorous recreation. It would be 
 a grave mistake to suppose that he wrote as a phantast. 
 
Milton: Civil Liberty 147 
 
 enamoured of the impossible. His scheme of education 
 may be regarded as ideal, as a guiding light by which 
 to steer. A prudent mariner, whose course is deter- 
 mined by the observation of the heavens, will know how 
 to make allowance, with hand on helm, for veering 
 flaws and cross and counter currents. 
 
 The tyranny of the traditional system, against which 
 Milton contends, started from the idea of making 
 scholars ; scholarship was taken to consist of a know- 
 ledge of the classical languages ; yet even with this 
 limited object in view, the methods adopted could end 
 only in failure : methods, in themselves vicious, were 
 languidly pursued, and much of the inestimable season 
 of youth was squandered in sheer idleness ; during long 
 "vacancies " what had been learnt was more than half- 
 foro:otten. No enthusiasm for knowledge could be 
 aroused by such a system ; the student, invited to ''an 
 asinine feast of sow-thistles and brambles," lost all zeal 
 for learning. 
 
 Milton starts with the idea not of making scholars, 
 admirable scholar though he was, but of making men. 
 A religious conception lies at the basis of his proposed 
 system ; man has fallen from his original high estate ; 
 his nature has shrimk and dwindled in the absence of 
 the light and warmth needful to a complete and vigorous 
 humanity ; the end of all learning is not to instruct us 
 in words or to qualify us for turning out an elegant copy 
 of Latin verses ; its end is religious — that we may know 
 God aright, and out of that knowledge may love Him, 
 imitate Him, and be like Him. To be a complete man 
 is to be God's image on earth ; education should aim 
 
148 Milton: Civil Liberty 
 
 not at the accomplishment of scholarship, bat at the 
 formation of manhood, in its plenitude of intellect, its 
 energy of passions, its strength of will : " I call a com- 
 plete and generous education that which fits a man to 
 perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the 
 offices both private and public of peace and war." 
 
 If " to know God aright" be the first end of educa- 
 tion, the Puritan Milton does not suppose that this 
 knowledge is to be gained solely or chiefly from churches 
 and creeds and catechisms, or even from Holy Scripture. 
 Through the visible world, through the nature of man, 
 through the laws of human society we make acquaint- 
 ance with what is divine. Through sense we ascend 
 to spirit. To spell our lesson aright we must begin 
 with easy and simple things. The external world lies 
 spread around us, and it is God's world ; let us try to 
 understand it, and thus the senses may become inlets 
 for the soul. Man is God's image not through any 
 special faculty, but as a complete creature. Eeason, 
 the passions, the feeling for beauty, the energies which 
 tend to action, strength and skill of hand, the principles 
 of public conduct, statesmanship, law, art, war — all are 
 sacred, because all are portions of the fully developed 
 life of man. The whole of education is religious ; no 
 fragment of it can be called profane. Such special 
 instruction in religion as is given in the seminary of 
 Milton's devising is built into the general body of 
 culture. 
 
 The uses of an ideal are related to ends rather than 
 to means. Milton's proposed means may be at times ill- 
 chosen, impracticable, or unsuited to the present day ; 
 
Milton: Civil Liberty 149 
 
 his ends are the worthiest and the highest that can be 
 conceived. At the outset he would above all else arouse 
 the honest pride of knowledge, the ardour of hope in his 
 pupils ; they are to be " enflamed with the study of 
 learning and the admiration of virtue ; stirred up with 
 high hopes of living to be " — what? masters of erudition? 
 patterns of pedantry ? ascetic saints ? No : but " brave 
 men, and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to 
 all ages." Such a high ambition might well enter into 
 the heart of a spirited boy, inspired by the words and 
 example of such a teacher as Milton desired to see. 
 
 Then, while the young scholars are acquiring the 
 elementary principles of science and receiving their first 
 lessons in language, let them look around and learn a 
 manly reverence for their mother Earth. Let it be 
 part of their ambition to leave some piece of England 
 better than they found it for the needs of their fellows 
 who till the soil and cast the seed ; such a task is 
 worthy of heroes ; " this was one of Hercules' praises." 
 The old books which tell of agriculture and country 
 life will not seem idle or dull to them if they consort 
 with professors not bred in the^ library but smelling of 
 the fields, true and honest enchanters to a vigorous boy 
 — hunters and fowlers, fishermen and shepherds and 
 gardeners, themselves the brave children of Earth. 
 Let them extend their view beyond the hills and fields 
 of England, and through maps and globes embrace the 
 prospect of this world which is our appointed home and 
 habitation ; let them look upwards on a starry night 
 and read the meaning of the heavens. And as they 
 progress in their knowledge of mathematical and physical 
 
1 50 Milton : Civil Liberty 
 
 science, let them learn how needful are these to the life 
 of human society, receiving the lesson not from the 
 lecturer's chair but from engineers and architects and 
 mariners and anatomists. Let their studies in literature 
 go hand in hand with their studies in science and in 
 the arts of life. The poetry which treats of nature, of 
 the ways of rural toil, and of the crafts of primitive 
 society, will be for them no weary exercises in syntax 
 and prosody, but will insensibly add an ideal charm to 
 what they have come to know as part of the glad 
 realities of earth. 
 
 Having observed the outer world, Milton's pupils have 
 reached that moment of culture when they may look 
 within ; having surveyed the life of man in relation to 
 external nature, they may advance to the study of man 
 in relation to his fellows. The laws of personal conduct 
 may be read in the ancient moralists, and before the 
 serious close of each day's task, by lamplight, in the 
 pages of Hebrew singer, evangelist, or apostle. From 
 the principles of individual duty, the student of the 
 moral world advances to the laws of the household ; and 
 as these are investigated, he may see them put into 
 action, and pregnant with laughter and with tears, in 
 the comedies, classical or Italian, and the great tragedies 
 that present the characters and fortunes of parent and 
 child, and lover and wife and husband. One further 
 stage, and he passes on to politics — the life of man in 
 the commonwealth — to the principles of public justice, 
 to the history of ecclesiastical organisations, and, in con- 
 nection with this, to the highest matter of theology. 
 And this is surely the moment when he can feel the 
 
Milton: Civil Libei'ty 151 
 
 life that pulses in those supreme works of art which 
 are concerned with national events, with the good of a 
 people, the glory or the shame of dynasties or races — 
 '' heroic poems, and Attic tragedies of stateliest import 
 and most regal argument, with all the famous political 
 orations." 
 
 It remains, when these have been felt and enjoyed, 
 to investigate their principles and method in logic, 
 rhetoric, and poetics.^ He only who has studied the 
 laws and possibilities of art can fully know " what 
 religious, what glorious and magnificent use might be 
 made of poetry both in divine and human things." 
 When nature and man as an individual and in society 
 have thus been explored, when the laws of reasoning, 
 of persuasion, and of fine art have been ascertained, 
 when in truth " an universal insight into things " has 
 been attained, then, and not until then, may Milton's 
 pupils aspire to become orators or writers. They will 
 have something to say ; they will have learnt by 
 example and by precept how to say it. A rational 
 sequence and an enlightened co-ordination of studies 
 is attempted throughout Milton's entire scheme ; he 
 endeavours to make it from first to last coherent, so 
 that the learners, as he says in his magnificent way, 
 may at length "have confirmed and solidly united the 
 whole body of their perfected knowledge, like the last 
 embattelincr of a Roman leojion." 
 
 1 The often-quoted sentence, attributed to Milton, that poetry should 
 be simple, sensuous, and passionate is not to be found in his writings. 
 What he says is that Poetry, by which he means Poetics, being "less 
 subtle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate " than Logic or 
 Rhetoric, should on this account precede them in the order of studies. 
 
152 Milton: Civil Liberty 
 
 But the ideal man, God's image on earth, is not yet 
 complete, nor as yet is he qualified for the full duties of 
 citizenship. Milton honours the body, and regards its 
 energy as a tributary which broadens and deepens the 
 energy of the soul. The athletics which he commends 
 are not sports but heroic duties, yet duties which are 
 also delights. They are of two orders — individual and 
 social ; some are designed for the uses of war, some for 
 the uses of peace. The exact practice of the sword, the 
 locks and grips of wrestling, concerted military evolu- 
 tions on foot and on horseback, training, if it can be 
 had, on shipboard, will prepare the youths to be " re- 
 nowned and perfect commanders " at their country's 
 need. But they must also learn through active 
 pleasure, without toil, riding abroad, " in those vernal 
 seasons of the year when the air is calm and pleasant," 
 when indeed *'it were an injury and sullenness against 
 nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake 
 in her rejoicing with heaven and earth." All the more 
 strenuous exercises and recreations are designed by 
 Milton not merely to strengthen the muscle and in- 
 vigorate the lungs, but to promote true fortitude and 
 patience, so laying the basis on which to build up a 
 heroic valour and a hatred of wrong-doing as a form of 
 cowardice. 
 
 His young athletes are at the same time to be 
 educated by the delights of fine art. Milton, himself 
 a lover of music, the son of an accomplished composer, 
 accepts the doctrine of Plato that melody and harmony 
 have a true formative effect upon character. His earlier 
 poems possess something of the quality of the lute ; his 
 
Milton: Civil Liberty 153 
 
 later poems are breathed, as it were, from the stops of 
 an organ ; he names these two instruments, which had 
 a certain kinship with his genius, as of refining and 
 calming, or arousing and elevating, influence. Sweet 
 concords of voices are also to play upon the spirit in 
 sense of the youths in his ideal academy, telling of 
 religious joy or martial enthusiasm, or the delights of 
 peaceful life. 
 
 Religion, science, literature, art, manly exercises of 
 the body — all of these enter into Milton's scheme ; each 
 is kept in close communion or interaction with the rest, 
 and one and all are directed towards, not learning 
 merely, but life. Science ceases to be abstract, and is 
 viewed in connection with the arts and crafts which 
 give application to its principles. The study of litera- 
 ture in all its forms, up to the highest, remains ; but 
 real things (as they are called) serve to quicken and 
 vitalise the feeling for literature. Great poems are 
 seen and felt in relation to human life — the life of the 
 individual, of the household, of the commonwealth. It 
 may have been an error to suppose that a young reader 
 can fully acquire such a power of interpreting art ; but 
 Milton's method would at least put him on the way to 
 acquire it. If his scheme have no other value, it is 
 assuredly significant as to Milton's manner of regarding 
 literature and its function in society. But in truth 
 no more majestic ideal of education is elsewhere to be 
 found ; it is the ideal of the Christianised Renaissance, 
 of Hebraism and Hellenism brought into harmony. 
 The Letter to Hartlib is a soul-animating strain, which, 
 if we cannot literally translate it into a method or an 
 
154 Milton: Civil Liberty 
 
 institution, may serve as a guiding-light, or as a heroic 
 call — Siirsum cor da — to those who undertake the sacred 
 charge of youth. 
 
 IV 
 
 A great and courageous faith in human nature and its 
 possibilities underlies what Milton has written on educa- 
 tion. The same faith animates the '' Speech for the 
 Liberty of Unlicensed Printing," which completes the 
 cycle of writings on what he has termed Domestic 
 Liberty. He knows that the nature of man is fallen, 
 and that we move in the midst of temptations ; it is 
 our part to accept these conditions with a righteous 
 boldness, and to work out all possible good from things 
 as they are. He would have us grapple with evil 
 as heroic combatants, not fly from its presence : "I 
 cannot praise. a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised 
 and unbreathed, that never sees her adversary, but 
 slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is 
 to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we 
 bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity 
 much rather ; that which purifies us is trial." He 
 chooses '^ a dram of well-doing before many times as 
 much of the forcible hindrance of evil-doing." He 
 desires freedom in the utterance of opinions, as in all 
 other matters, not because he loves laxity or insubordina- 
 tion, but in order that the minds of individual inquirers 
 and the mind of the whole nation may come under 
 a stricter and a higher rule than that of the licenser. 
 The higher rule is that of perpetual progress in the 
 never-ending research for truth. To press forward 
 
Milton : Civil Liberty 155 
 
 to that which is before is the one true safeguard against 
 wanderings into the illicit by-paths of literature. Such 
 a conjoint effort may not result in an outward uniformity 
 of belief, but it ensures an union of spirit, internal, free, 
 vital, and energetic, the only union which is to be 
 attained on earth. The body of truth for us exists in 
 fragments ; our task is to gather these fragments and to 
 bring them together, until, as far as may be, the original 
 and glorious form of truth reappear living and moving 
 amoncr men. " The lio-lit which we have g-ained," 
 Milton writes, ''was given us, not to be ever staring on, 
 but by it to discover onward things more remote from 
 our knowledge." This is our law, but it is a law of 
 liberty. 
 
 Milton's faith in human nature is reinforced by 
 his enthusiastic confidence in his own nation and his 
 own time. Great experiments in the affairs of Church 
 and State were being made ; a new epoch of reformation 
 seemed to have begun; God was revealing Himself 
 more fully to His servants, and, " as His manner is, 
 first to His Englishmen." Milton looked around him, 
 and saw in his country an universal zeal for freedom, 
 knowledge, and valiant enterprise. London rose before 
 his vision as a huge factory in which were being forged 
 the weapons of truth : '' Behold, now, this vast city ; 
 a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encom- 
 past and surrounded with God's protection ; the shop 
 of war hath not there more anvils and hammers working, 
 to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed 
 Justice in defence of beleaguered Truth, than there be 
 pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps. 
 
156 Milton: Civil Liberty 
 
 musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas 
 wherewith to present, as with their homage and their 
 fealty, the approaching Reformation ; others as fast read- 
 ing, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason 
 and convincement. . . . What wants there to such 
 a towardly and pregnant soil but wise and faithful 
 labourers, to make a knowing people, a nation of pro- 
 phets, of sages, and of worthies ? " This trumpet-call 
 of hope and confidence is touched with pathos when 
 we contrast it with the sad, yet courageous tone of 
 autobiographical passages of " Paradise Lost," written 
 when Milton had fallen on evil days, or with the 
 poem of the blind Samson, for whose strength no other 
 noble use remained than that of drawing down the 
 roof-tree in a common ruin of his enemies and himself. 
 
 V 
 
 Milton's writings in defence of public liberty in 
 England have for their centre that act which he regarded 
 as a solemn vindication of justice and the rights of an 
 injured and insulted people — the execution of the King. 
 A fortnight after the death of Charles he came forward 
 to identify himself by the publication of '' The Tenure 
 of Kings and Magistrates " with those who had given 
 a great example of tyrannicide. The pamphlet may 
 be styled the Contrat Social of Milton, but his social 
 contract is a divine, and not merely a human ordinance. 
 For those who hesitated to take the responsibility and 
 the praise of assisting at the sentence of the Court, 
 those who " coming in the course of these affairs to have 
 their share in great actions, above the form of law or 
 
Milton: Civil Liberty 157 
 
 custom, begin to swerve and almost shiver at the 
 grandeur and majesty of some noble deed, as if they 
 were newly entered into a great sin," he feels only 
 a commiserating shame. His fierce examination of 
 that book which Eoyalists regarded as the precious 
 testament and legacy of the royal martyr — the '' Eikon 
 Basilike " — drew Milton into a controversy which re- 
 sounded over Europe. There is much in these political 
 writings of merely temporary and transitory interest, 
 much that is truculent in temper ; but while the writer 
 often appears as a man in armour clambering, sword 
 in hand, heavily, and with ungainly postures, among 
 rocks, of a sudden he puts forth wings, and, soaring 
 in upper air, looks like one of the mailed combatants 
 of his own augelic w^arfare. 
 
 The late Professor of History at Cambridge, Sir John 
 Seeley, in a luminous study of Milton's political opinions,^ 
 repels with some indignation the notion that the great 
 poet was in public affairs an impracticable dreamer. 
 The place w^hich he assigns to IMilton is in a special 
 group of thinkers, including among those of the nine- 
 teenth century, Coleridge, Ruskin, and Carlyle, men 
 of genius who apply to politics one or two intense 
 convictions. With a comprehensive view of the national 
 well-being rare among his contemporaries, Milton was 
 equally interested in the political and the religious 
 revolutions of his day, and from his high point of vision 
 could regard these movements as essentially one. His 
 large concern for the life of his people included other 
 elements of public good — literature and education — of 
 
 1 ** Lectures and Essays," 1895, pp. 97-130. 
 
158 Milton : Civil Liberty 
 
 which politicians and ecclesiastical reformers thought 
 but little. The central idea to which he gives various 
 applications, is that of liberty, liberty, however, not 
 for its own sake, but as increasing vigour. His zeal 
 on behalf of strong and joyous living was derived partly 
 from his own sanguine temperament, and partly from 
 the spirit of courageous hope and energy which ani- 
 mated the reforming party to which he belonged. They 
 were not impatient of restraint : '' their tendency was 
 rather to strictness than to laxit}^ their excess was 
 on the side of over-government." What they opposed 
 was not severity but inefficiency of government. The 
 same idea of liberty as increasing vigour which Milton 
 applied to Church and State he applied equally to 
 education and to literature. 
 
 The criticism is just and goes to the roots of the 
 whole matter ; it may be extended so as to include 
 Milton's writings on divorce. Among his political 
 pamphlets one in a special degree gives an interpreta- 
 tion of that conception which is central in all. On the 
 eve of the Restoration, when Monk had been confirmed 
 in his dictatorship and appointed Captain - General, 
 Milton jDut forth his scheme of republican government 
 in " The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free 
 Commonwealth." The moment was one of the utmost 
 doubt and anxiety. Milton's sanguine temper was at 
 last troubled by a secret despondency. Yet he would, 
 as far as was possible, hold up his head bravely, bate 
 no jot of heart or hope, and steer right onward through 
 the waters of strife. He would make a last effort on 
 behalf of liberty ; he would show how order might be 
 
Milton: Civil Liberty 159 
 
 educed from chaos, readily and easily if only reason and 
 courage remained with Englishmen ; but it is evident 
 that Milton's hopes for his country were more than 
 equipoised by his fears. 
 
 His position is not that of any of the contending 
 parties or fragments of parties. He declares himself in 
 favour of a free commonwealth, without '' Single Per- 
 son," whether named King or Protector, and without a 
 chamber of peers. Yet he is no democrat of the modern 
 type. A mere majority, whether in Parliament or of 
 the people, did not suffice, in Milton's view, to settle 
 anything. A majority may be corrupt; ''there is little 
 virtue," he says, " in number." A licentious and un- 
 bridled democracy he abhorred ; he honoured what 
 Burke afterwards called a natural aristocracy, and he 
 v/ould distinguish them not by trappings or titles, but 
 by grave duties and laborious tasks performed for the 
 public welfare. " What government," he asks, '' comes 
 nearer to the precept of Christ than a free common- 
 wealth, wherein they who are the greatest are perpetual 
 servants and drudges to the public at their own cost 
 and charges ; neglect their own affairs, yet are not 
 elevated above their brethren ; live soberly in their 
 families, walk the street as other men, may be spoken 
 to freely, familiarly, friendly, without adoration ? " 
 
 But how was a free commonwealth to be established 
 and maintained ? How was a vio;orous crovernment to 
 arise out of anarchy and the liberty of England to be 
 preserved ? Milton distrusted Parliaments, which with 
 every new election might change their policy. He 
 desired, after so many vicissitudes of divided rule, a 
 
1 60 Milton : Civil Libei^ty 
 
 continuity of order and a continuity of progress ; this, 
 he believed, could be attained only in one way — by an 
 oligarchy of wisdom and virtue resting upon a popular 
 basis. He would have the supreme central authority 
 entrusted not to a Protector, not to a shifting crowd of 
 delegates elected on a cry of the hour or of the day, but 
 to a perpetual Grand Council of the nation. " The ship 
 of the Commonwealth," he writes, "is always under sail; 
 they sit at the stern ; and if they steer well what need 
 is there to change them, it being rather dangerous ? " 
 
 The choice of these rulers of the people could not be 
 entrusted to '' the noise and shouting of a rude multi- 
 tude." Duly qualified electors might nominate a body 
 of men, from whom by their own votes a smaller body 
 might be selected, until perhaps *' by a third or fourth 
 sifting and refining of exactest choice they only be left 
 chosen who are the due number and seem by most 
 voices the worthiest." Thus, through a series of ex- 
 clusions, a band of true patriots might be found, just 
 guardians of the liberty of England. Should it appear 
 that the permanence of this Council created a danger 
 of power too nearly absolute, or excited distrust and 
 jealousy, or excluded other deserving persons from 
 authority, an arrangement might be made for partial 
 rotation, by which a third part of the Senators should 
 annually retire and a like number be elected in their 
 place. Such a concession might prove to be necessary 
 or expedient, but it was reluctantly admitted by Milton. 
 What he regarded as essential was a strong central 
 government, placed above the risks of accident and 
 popular passions. 
 
Milton: Civil Liberty i6i 
 
 Here, then, was a supreme authority chosen, but 
 wisely chosen, by the nation, and having power to deal 
 with all imperial affairs. At the same time Milton 
 desired to quicken the vigilance and zeal of the whole 
 people ; this, he believed, could be accomplished by the 
 delegation of power in local matters to local authorities. 
 He aimed at the establishment all over the common- 
 wealth of a system of vigorous provincial governments. 
 In every chief town of every county should meet a 
 County Council, with power to enact such laws and 
 regulations for the county as might seem fit. If pro- 
 vince should conflict wdth province, formulating such 
 rules as might tend to disintegrate the Empire, the 
 several County Councils should meet together and 
 determine the issue by a vote of the majority. Thus 
 Milton's scheme Avas devised with a view to secure the 
 advantages of centralisation together with those of de- 
 centralisation ; its object was to establish freedom, but 
 freedom for the sake of vigour. Many minor common- 
 wealths were to flourish under the supreme authority 
 of one imperial commonwealth. Among the subjects 
 which should engage the attention of the local bodies, 
 Milton insists strongly on the importance of a liberal 
 system of education : " They should have here also 
 schools and academies at their own choice, wherein the 
 children should be bred up in their own sight to all 
 learning and noble education ; not in grammar only, 
 but in all liberal arts and exercises." By which 
 generous discipline the entire people of England might 
 in due time become '* flourishing, virtuous, noble, and 
 high-spirited." The question of religion should create 
 
 L 
 
1 62 Milton: Civil Liberty 
 
 no difficulty : " As for spiritual liberty, who can be at 
 rest, who can enjoy anything in this world with con- 
 tentment, who hath not liberty to serve God, and to 
 save his soul, according to the best light which God 
 hath planted in him to that purpose, by the reading of 
 His revealed will and the teaching of His Holy Spirit ? " 
 Unfettered freedom of conscience was the only law which 
 should be observed in things spiritual. 
 
 The whole scheme is of peculiar interest as exhibit- 
 ing the statesmanship of a great poet, who was not 
 without some training in public affairs. It attracted 
 immediate attention, and was fiercely assailed. In the 
 state of England on the eve of the Restoration Milton's 
 pamphlet could not of course effect its immediate pur- 
 pose ; but its underlying principles have in large 
 measure been justified by time. In recent years 
 and at the present moment the need of a supreme 
 imperial authority working in harmony with a sub- 
 ordinate system of decentralisation — such a system 
 as can enter into no rivalry with the central power 
 — has been and is recognised as in no previous period. 
 Throughout the pamphlet Milton appears as a political 
 thinker whose ends are in a high sense reasonable, if 
 the means proposed for attaining those ends were im- 
 practicable ; at its close he gathers his singing gar- 
 ments about him and rises into the prophet. A 
 prophet not, indeed, altogether of hopeful cheer, but 
 of hope mingled with fears, and of dauntless courage 
 showing through both ; " What I have spoken is 
 the language of that which is not called amiss ' The 
 good old Cause.' . . . Thus much I should perhaps 
 
Milton: Civil Liberty 163 
 
 have said, though I was sure I should have spoken 
 only to trees and stones ; and had none to cry to 
 but with the prophet, ' earth, earth, earth ! ' to tell 
 the very soil itself what her perverse inhabitants are 
 deaf to. Nay, though what I have spoken should 
 happen (which Thou suffer not who didst create man- 
 kind free ! nor Thou next who didst redeem us from 
 being servants of men ! ) to be the last words of our 
 expiring liberty. But I trust I have spoken per- 
 suasion to abundance of sensible aud ingenuous men ; 
 to some perhaps whom God may raise from these 
 stones to become children of reviving liberty . . . 
 to exhort this torrent also of the people not to be 
 so itnpetuous, but to keep their due chaonel ; and 
 at length recovering and uniting their better resolu- 
 tions, now that they see already how open and un- 
 bounded the insolence and rage is of our common 
 enemies, to stay these ruinous proceedings, justly and 
 timely fearing to what a precipice of destruction the 
 deluge of this epidemic madness would hurry us, 
 through the general defection of a misguided and 
 abused multitude." The last stand of one of the 
 company of Ironsides, maintaining the good old cause 
 against overwhelming odds, is a spectacle to animate 
 the courage of Milton's countrymen in every great 
 crisis of events. 
 
VI 
 
 MILTON II.— ECCLESIASTICAL AND 
 THEOLOaiCAL LIBERTY: POEMS 
 
 Milton's first entrance into controversy was as an 
 ecclesiastical reformer. He would fain have been a 
 messenger of gladness and contentment to his country- 
 men, the poet that he was born to be : '' but when 
 God commands to take a trumpet, and blow a dolorous 
 or a jarring blast, it lies not in man's will what he 
 shall say, or what he shall conceal." His quarrel 
 with the Church of England arose from his con- 
 viction that, under the rule of Laud, it had become 
 destructive of spiritual liberty and yet did not gain 
 in spiritual vigour. His conception of a Christian 
 commonwealth assuredly could not err on the side 
 of laxity. '' Alas, sir ! " he writes, '' a commonwealth 
 ought to be but as one huge Christian personage, 
 one mighty growth and stature of an honest man, 
 as big and compact in virtue as in body." Wisdom, 
 virtue, magnanimity, likeness to God, enjoin and 
 require national as well as individual self-government. 
 The invisible divine life must be made external, not 
 in ornament but in something that more fitly ex- 
 presses it — in conduct. Is there to be discipline in 
 164 
 
Theological L iberty- — Poems 165 
 
 the home, discipline in the State, and no discipline, 
 or an infirm and servile one, in the Church ? ''There 
 is not that thing in the world of more grave and 
 urgent importance throughout the whole life of man 
 than is discipline ; ... she is that which with her 
 musical cords preserves and holds all the parts thereof 
 together." Its function is not so much to repress 
 as to strengthen and develop : '' Certainly discipline 
 is not only the removal of disorder, but if any visible 
 shape can be given to divine things, the very visible' 
 shape and image of Virtue, whereby she is not only 
 seen in the regular gestures and motions of her 
 heavenly paces as she walks, but also makes the 
 harmony of her voice audible to mortal ears." 
 
 But sound discipline in things spiritual must itself 
 be spiritual. Fines, exactions, nose - slittings, ear- 
 croppings were not regarded by Milton as the methods 
 of Christ or of His apostles ; the extreme punishment 
 of the Church, or of its instigating, can be no more 
 than the withdrawal of spiritual communion. Its 
 officers are to be distinguished not by worldly titles 
 and carnal pomp but by brotherly love, matchless 
 temperance, frequent fasting, incessant prayer and 
 preaching, continual watchings and labours, truly apos- 
 tolical distinctions. To one who sees with purged and 
 lucid vision, the grandeur of religion is degraded, not 
 enhanced, by mundane power and splendour: ''So 
 long as the Church, in true imitation of Christ, can 
 be content to ride upon an ass, carrying herself and 
 her government along in a mean and simple guise, she 
 may be, as he is, a lion of the tribe of Judah ; and in 
 
1 66 Milton : Ecclesiastical and 
 
 her humility all men with loud hosannas will confess her 
 greatness. But when, despising the mighty operation 
 of the Spirit by the weak things of the world, she 
 thinks to make herself bigger and more considerable by 
 using the way of civil force and jurisdiction, as she 
 sits upon this lion she changes into an ass, and in- 
 stead of hosannas every man pelts her with stones and 
 dirt." 
 
 A part of the policy of Laud was to work from with- 
 out inwards; through uniformity, enforced by pains and 
 penalties, he trusted that unity might in the end be 
 attained or at the least promoted. As regards dogma, 
 he was more liberal than many of his Puritan adver- 
 saries ; as regards ceremonial order, he would tolerate 
 no irregularity. Milton desired to work from within 
 outwards ; religion should indeed incarnate itself in 
 visible acts, it should obtain expression and exter- 
 nality, not in ornament or symbol, but in deeds and 
 lives of righteousness. With a profound sense of the 
 majesty of religion, all glorious within, he believed 
 that its dignity is heightened by the fact that its ex- 
 ternal habit is plain and homespun. The beauty of 
 holiness is seen aright only in the living temple ; shall 
 altars, and cloths, and vessels, be profaned by the 
 touch of a lay Christian, who is himself the adopted 
 child of the Divine Father? If the feet of him that 
 bringeth good tidings are beautiful, how shall the 
 ''spinstry" of ceremonies add to their decency ? Milton, 
 a poet and a lover of comely things, is ready to sacrifice 
 the lower beauty of ornament in order that the inrisible 
 beauty may shine forth with intenser radiance. The 
 
Theological L iberty — Poems 1 6 7 
 
 " chaste and modest veil " of Christ's Gospel "surrounded 
 with celestial beams " loses something of its brightness 
 if it be overlaid with a " flaring tire." 
 
 Milton thought of the intercourse between God and 
 the soul as, on the part of man, an indefatigable soaring 
 upward. There are two humilities — that which bows 
 and that which soars, the humility of a servant who 
 looks down, the humility of a son who gazes up. 
 Milton's humility invigorates itself in the effort to 
 ascend. He would not prostrate himself in the presence 
 of material symbols, but would enter as a glad child 
 into the courts of heaven. He suspects a rich cere- 
 monial because it seems to him a specious mode of 
 easing the stress of devout effort ; the soul, with flagging 
 pinions, " shifts off from herself the labour of high 
 soaring." He honours the senses; but he finds within 
 himself a faculty — not the intellect, but the religious 
 faculty — which cleaves its way past things of sense, and 
 communes wdth the unseen. " Our understanding," he 
 writes in the Letter on Education, " cannot in this body 
 found itself but on sensible things, nor arrive so clearly 
 to the knowledge of God and things invisible as by 
 orderly conning over the visible and inferior creature." 
 That is God's way of utilising the senses for religious 
 purposes ; but to manufacture an artificial body of 
 material symbols, neither found in nature nor authorised 
 by the Divine word, seemed to him the way to check 
 or hamper the soul in its upward flight. Voluntary 
 humility before material objects styled sacred belongs, 
 as Milton conceives, rather to a religion of mingled fear 
 and self-will than of love and genuine self-abandonment. 
 
1 68 Milton : Ecclesiastical and 
 
 The true attitude of the soul is filial, cheerful, and 
 courageous ; son and Father may meet face to face, 
 without servile crouchings or the veils of piebald 
 frippery. 
 
 Such was the Puritan position ; but it is enlarged 
 and strengthened by the genius of its defender. He 
 was no enemy of art, as were some of those who stood 
 upon his side ; he was no enemy of pleasure. But, 
 although his approved polity in state and church was 
 in theory democratic, Milton was deficient in popular 
 sympathies. He found in the sacred writings magnifi- 
 cent examples of lyric poetry, as well as of tragedy 
 (the Apocalypse of St John) and of pastoral. But 
 in the Sunday afternoon dance of villagers upon the 
 green, permitted by the Declaration of Sports, he saw 
 only a provocation to drunkenness and lust. Instead 
 of desiring that recreations should be suppressed by 
 authority, he desired that the pleasures of England 
 might be regarded by the government as part of a 
 public schooling, and might be studied and super- 
 intended with a view to their just honour an(i stateliness: 
 ''It were happy for the commonwealth if our magistrates, 
 as in those famous governments of old, would take into 
 their care, not only the deciding of our contentious law- 
 cases and brawls, but the managing of our public sports 
 and festival pastimes ; that they might be . . . such 
 as may inure and harden our bodies by martial exercises 
 to all war-like skill and performance, and may civilise, 
 adorn, and make discreet our minds by the learned and 
 affable meeting of frequent academies, and the procure- 
 ment of wise and artful recitations, sweetened with 
 
Theological L iberty — Poems 169 
 
 elegant and graceful encitements to the love and practice 
 of justice, temperance, and fortitude, instructing and 
 bettering the nation at all opportunities, that the call of 
 wisdom and virtue may be heard everywhere, as Solomon 
 saith : * She crieth without, she uttereth her voice in 
 the streets, in the top of high places, in the chief 
 concourse, and in the opening of the gates.' Whether 
 this may not be, not only in pulpits, but after another 
 persuasive method, at set and solemn paneguries, in 
 theatres, porches, or what other place or way may 
 win most upon the people to receive at once both 
 recreation and instruction, let them in authority con- 
 sult." The proposal for the organisation of pleasure, 
 its recognition and development with government aid, 
 came not from courtier or cavalier but from the Puritan 
 Milton. 
 
 In his liberality tOAvards differences of opinion in 
 matters of religion Milton had more in common with 
 the prelates whom he so passionately attacked than with 
 the Presbyterian party on whose side for a time he 
 ranged himself There was something which seemed 
 to him a greater evil than a conflict of sects — the 
 insensibility of spiritual palsy, the uniformity of intel- 
 lectual death. Weeds do not flourish in a December frost; 
 but neither do wholesome herbs and flowers. He had 
 little fear of the " fond errors " and " fanatic opinions " 
 which arise at a time when truth and error engage 
 in fierce encounter. The English people is at bottom "a 
 right pious, right honest, and right hardy nation " ; with 
 wise nurture the uncouth opinions of a period of excited 
 conflict will gradually pass away. Before long Milton 
 
1 70 Milton : Ecclesiastical and 
 
 discovered that his friends of the Westminster Assembly 
 were themselves the chief forcers of conscience : 
 
 "Men, whose life, learning, faith, and pure intent, 
 Would have been held in high esteem with Paul, 
 Must now be named and printed heretics 
 By shallow Edwards and Scotch AVhat-d'ye-call." 
 
 Unquestionably Milton's progress to broad principles 
 of toleration was accelerated by the fact that he himself, 
 the advocate of divorce, was among the heretics ; but 
 his personal indignation only brought more vividly into 
 the light of consciousness what had lain within him 
 from the first. 
 
 In the same year in which Milton proposed his ready 
 and easy way to establish a free commonwealth he turned 
 away from his great epic to address the Parliament, or such 
 members of it as Vane, who might support his views 
 on the subject of the relations of Church and State. 
 He was now assured that their respective provinces were 
 of right distinct and separate. The civil magistrate 
 shall not lift a finger against any form of religious belief 
 as such. Popery, indeed, cannot be tolerated, but this 
 is because Popery involves allegiance to a foreign 
 sovereign. For the rest, the law of Christian liberty 
 requires that every man be free to search the Scriptures 
 and to hold fast that which he deems good. The word 
 heresy, even the word blasphemy had no terrors for 
 Milton; let truth and error grapple, and there need be 
 no fear as to the issue. A commonwealth is not Christian 
 because it establishes one form of religion, but because, 
 establishing none, it recognises the freedom of Christ, 
 
Theological L iberty — Poems lyi 
 
 whose kingdom is not of this world, and of all those 
 communities which make up the Church universal. 
 
 Opinion, however, though not forced may be bribed. 
 Against this danger also Milton would guard. Let a 
 free ministry be supported by free gifts or, like Paul the 
 tent-maker, by the labour of their own hands. He 
 thought with indignation of that form of persecution, as 
 it appeared to him, which consists of exactions made for 
 the benefit of spiritual hirelings bound to teach some 
 authorised system of religious belief. Birth, marriage, 
 death — why should each of these be made the occasion 
 of taxing the poor ? Did John the Forerunner demand 
 fees for baptising or Christ for His christenings ? What 
 scriptural ground is there for the meddling of priests 
 with the contract of wedlock, which is but a civil 
 ordinance ? What have ministers of religion to do with 
 the interment of a corpse ? 
 
 If villages and rural districts are unable to maintain 
 a minister without a system of ecclesiastical taxation, 
 the state of things is not desperate. Have they not the 
 Scriptures and God's assisting spirit ? " It is not neces- 
 sary to the attainment of Christian knowledge that men 
 should sit all their life long at the feet of a pulpited 
 divine." The wealthier congregations may of their good 
 will aid the poorer by sending some of their members 
 on circuit as itinerary preachers ; let these appoint duly 
 qualified elders who may teach and govern the rest. 
 Let the English Scriptures be published with sufficient 
 notes ; let a body of divinity be issued unencumbered 
 with scholastic terms and metaphysical notions. Thus 
 instructed the poor folk may meet for mutual edification 
 
172 Milton: Ecclesiastical and 
 
 in house or barn, needing neither incumbent, incum- 
 brance, nor incubus. 
 
 That the whole people of England should be educated, 
 spiritually alive, and eager for things of the mind, was 
 Milton's aspiration and his ideal. He was a prophet of 
 the movement for free national education, and, holding 
 that a collection of books is the true university, a prophet 
 of the movement for free libraries of public endowment. 
 The writer of a good book, the teacher of youth, the 
 guardian of a library, he viewed as members of the true 
 clerisy of a nation, more diligent for the general welfare 
 than the hired parson, pledged to a particular set of 
 opinions and droning out his dole on one day in seven 
 to earn his state wages. " So all the land would be 
 soon better civilised," and those who receive the free 
 gift of education might reasonably be required not "to 
 gad far out of their own country," but continue there, 
 thankful for what they had received, bestowing it on 
 others as need arose, without soaring above the rank in 
 which they were born. Education, as Milton conceived 
 it, should be not merely literary ; it should be also 
 technical ; every boy should be taught an honest trade. 
 And why should not worthy teachers of religion arise 
 from among such cultivated craftsmen ? Let Christians 
 but know their own dignity, their liberty, their adoption, 
 their spiritual priesthood, "whereby they have all equally 
 access to any ministerial function, whenever called by 
 their own abilities and the Church, though they never 
 came near commencement or university," let them but 
 know their true prerogatives, and with liberty a new 
 and noble vigour will be infused throughout the whole 
 
Theological L iberty — Poems 173 
 
 spiritual life of the country. If Milton's ideal was half 
 a dream, it was also half a prophecy. Schools and 
 libraries at the close of the nineteenth century in some 
 measure realise what he anticipated in his vision. And 
 of the spiritual teachers of our century not a few of 
 the most influential have been unsalaried by the State, 
 sprung from the people, and claiming their function 
 by no other title than their ability. " Hirelings," as 
 Milton named them, have not been removed from the 
 Church ; but the sense of responsibility and duty has 
 been quickened ; side by side with the national church, 
 the free churches of England may grow unharried and 
 unharassed, and the unorganised clerisy of letters has 
 asserted its dignity and widened its sphere of influence. 
 
 II 
 
 Milton's prose writings are not a mirror held by the 
 artist to reflect the forms of his own time ; they are a 
 sword or some fiercer two-handed engine wielded on 
 behalf of civil and religious liberty ; they are them- 
 selves a portion of the strife. The illustrations which 
 they afford of his poems are found in occasional 
 passages, in autobiographical episodes or outbreaks, 
 and to some extent in their general spirit. But 
 among the prose works there is one which was not 
 written in a combative mood, one which sets forth in 
 great detail the results of prolonged research after 
 religious truth, a work begun early, but probably, in 
 the main, of Milton's elder years, and this constitutes 
 an undesigned commentary upon the poems, and a 
 eommentary as valuable as it is authoritative. The 
 
174 Milton: Ecclesiastical and 
 
 Treatise on Christian Doctrine, a Latin manuscript, 
 lay forgotten in the old State Paper Office until the 
 year 1823. Milton seems to have entrusted the 
 manuscript to the care of young Daniel Skinner, a 
 Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1674, 
 nephew of his friend, Cyriac Skinner, with a view to 
 its publication. Troubles caused by the appearance 
 of Milton's " State Letters " led to the suppression of 
 the daring Treatise on Theology ; the manuscript was 
 forwarded by the publisher, Elzevir, to the English 
 Secretary of State, and it waited for nearly a century 
 and a half before it found an editor in the chaplain 
 of King George IV., Sumner, afterwards a successor of 
 Bishop Andrewes in the See of Winchester. 
 
 The general idea around which Milton grouped the 
 cycle of his prose writings is that of liberty ; in his 
 earliest series of pamphlets he pleaded for ecclesiastical 
 liberty ; in others he presented his ideal of domestic 
 liberty ; and in yet others he vindicated the civil 
 liberties of his country. The treatise on Christian 
 Doctrine — including both faith and morals — exhibits 
 in an example the importance of theological liberty — 
 " the liberty," as Milton declares, '' not only of winnow- 
 ing and sifting every doctrine, but also of thinking and 
 even of writing respecting it, according to our individual 
 faith and persuasion." It is the attempt of one man, 
 and that man the most cultivated of his time, to deter- 
 mine for himself, and, as far as may be for others, the 
 truth concerning religion as it is found in Scripture. 
 Of all its author's prose works it is the most ambitious ; 
 it is also the most modest. He will construct a com- 
 
Theological L ibe rty — Poems 1 7 5 
 
 plete theology ; but no article of that theology shall be 
 of human invention. The Holy Scriptures are accepted 
 without discussion as the rule of faith and as the law of 
 conduct ; by human reason, with the enlightenment of 
 the Divine Spirit, the Scriptures are to be interpreted. 
 Milton's audacity is founded in obedience ; he aspires 
 because he submits. Propositions deduced from the 
 Bible are supported by an array of texts. Much of the 
 book — to be frank — is unreadable ; but many of its 
 conclusions are of interest, as throwing light upon the 
 body of dogma which lies behind the imaginative work 
 of his elder years ; " Paradise Lost " is built upon a 
 creed ; in the Treatise on Christian Doctrine we can 
 study the lines of its foundation. 
 
 Milton's intellect supports his imagination. He 
 would build no cloud-palaces of a fancy in nuhihus. 
 His art was not like Bunyau's, the outcome, almost 
 involuntary, of a personal experience. He never knew 
 Bunyan's agonies of hope and fear ; he saw hell, but 
 he did not feel its terrors ; he explored heaven, but 
 he was not smitten senseless by its radiancy of joy. 
 From his earliest years Milton toiled steadily, as under 
 a great task-master's eye ; his higher life w^as not like 
 Bunyan's, the outcome of a conversion ; it was rather a 
 going-on towards perfection. He worked as an artist, 
 consciously and deliberately, not without a deep inspira- 
 tion, but with all the powers of intelligence and will, 
 hammering on the anvil his material — doctrine, emotion, 
 and image — until they were (as he conceived) insepar- 
 ably welded together. It may be confidently said that 
 every idea of importance which lies within or behind 
 
iy6 Milton: Ecclesiastical and 
 
 Milton's poetry was held by him cot merely as service- 
 able for his art, but as warranted by his reason on 
 scriptural authority. His fancy might body forth de- 
 tails, as where modern artillery is employed in the 
 angelic warfare ; but every cardinal thought of his 
 poems was an article of belief. He regarded the poetic 
 function as that of a prophet ; he could not toy or trifle 
 with the sacred truth ; he must deliver it as he found 
 it, or as it was revealed to him. His theological convic- 
 tions were, accordingly, formative influences with his 
 poetry. These, in the " Treatise on Christian Doctrine," 
 are nakedly stated, with their appended proofs from 
 Scripture. In " Paradise Lost " and " Paradise Regained " 
 they are clothed with a body of the imagination. 
 
 We shall understand Milton aright only when we 
 follow the track of his mind from ideas to imagery. 
 " How strange an inconsistency," wrote Sir John Seeley, 
 " lies in the construction of ' Paradise Lost.' A Puritan 
 has rebelled against sensuous worship. He has risen 
 in indignation against a scheme of religion which was 
 too material, too sensuous, which degraded invisible 
 and awful realities by too near an association with 
 what was visible and familiar. But in the meanwhile 
 a poet, who is the same person, having a mind in- 
 veterately plastic and creative, is quite unable to think, 
 even on religious subjects, without forms distinctly 
 conceived. And, therefore, while with one hand he 
 throws down forms, with the other he raises them 
 up. The iconoclast is at the same time an idolater. 
 For one of the most striking features of ' Paradise Lost ' 
 is the daring materialism that runs through it, the 
 
Theological L iberty — Poe77is 177 
 
 boldness with which the Divine Persons are intro- 
 duced, the distinctness with which theological doc- 
 trines are pragmatised." And the critic goes on to 
 affirm that Milton, the Puritan, is as mythological as 
 Dante, the Catholic, but that the mythology of Dante 
 is Christian, and sprang up naturally, whereas the 
 mythology of Milton is Greek. 
 
 Now the answer to such criticism as this — the 
 answer, at all events, which Milton would have given 
 — is supplied by the Treatise on Christian Doctrine. 
 He was an iconoclast of those sensuous forms which 
 were the growth of human tradition. He reverenced 
 those forms which were authorised by God Himself. 
 His mythology, if we must use that word, was not 
 Greek, but exclusively and strictly scriptural ; or, rather, 
 it was no mythology, but the divinely approved way of 
 representing God to ourselves, with faculties which are 
 incapable of comprehending Him as He essentially is. 
 In His revelation God has condescended to our capacities; 
 to accept His representation of Himself is safe ; to take 
 flights of our own above the reach of human under- 
 standing is dangerous mysticism ; to conceive God in 
 other than the authorised forms is idolatry. When 
 the Scripture says "it repented God," let us believe 
 that He indeed repented ; when the Scripture says 
 that God was grieved, let us believe that He was in 
 truth grieved. If God habitually assigns to Himself 
 the members and form of a man, why, asks Milton, 
 should we be afraid of attributing to Him what He 
 attributes to Himself? God may not actually be in 
 form like a man ; but, in as far as He can be known 
 
 M 
 
178 Milton: Ecclesiastical and 
 
 to us, that is the truest way of conceiving Him, for it 
 is the way prescribed to us by God Himself. 
 
 The materialism of " Paradise Lost " has surprised and 
 offended many of its readers. How could the Puritan 
 Milton, so ardent in his spirituality, present a material 
 heaven, angels who fling rocks and fire off heavy 
 batteries of artillery, angels who dine and digest, a 
 Messiah, who, seated in His chariot, bears upon His side 
 a bow and quiver, as though he were some far-shooting 
 Apollo ? Are we reading a Pagan or a Christian poem ? 
 Christian and scriptural, Milton would reply. If to 
 think scorn of visible things was a Puritan habit of mind, 
 if the party with which Milton was most closely con- 
 nected strove to make a breach and division between 
 the spiritual and the material, then he had assuredly 
 transcended the Puritan modes of conception, and in 
 so doing he held that he was following the guidance, 
 not of his own imagination, not of classical literature, but 
 of the Divine Word. Milton, the theologian, and Milton, 
 the poet, were in entire agreement. He looked on the 
 earth, indeed, as suffering from the consequences of 
 the fall of man ; but he was the reverse of a Manichean ; 
 he honoured the material universe ; he did not suppose 
 that there is any opposition between soul and body, 
 or between God and His effluence in sun and stars 
 and earth. 
 
 God the Father is the primary and efficient cause 
 of all things. What, then, is the origin of matter ? 
 That matter should have existed of itself from all 
 eternity is inconceivable. Some original it must have 
 had ; and no other source was in existence from whence 
 
Theological L iberty — Poems 1 7 9 
 
 material substance could have proceeded save the sub- 
 stance of the Divine Being. Matter — so Milton held — 
 was not created out of nothing ; it was an efflux from 
 God's own nature ; nor was matter evil or worthless ; 
 it was essentially good, as the bodying forth of Himself 
 by God must needs be. How, it may be asked, can 
 that which is corruptible proceed from the incorruptible? 
 With a touch of indignation, Milton answers that matter 
 came forth incorruptible from God, and, even though 
 Adam fell, incorruptible it remains, as far as concerns 
 its essence. ;The sin of Adam lay in his will and 
 was spiritual ; matter has never sinned ; at the utmost 
 it may have contracted some taint or contamination 
 from the evil spirits who during so many ages have 
 possessed the earth and the air. As a corollary of the 
 belief that God drew all things out of Himself, Milton 
 adds that no created substance can ever be annihilated, 
 for that were to destroy a portion of God's own being. 
 Matter and spirit are alike indestructible. 
 
 Surely the Puritan Milton must regard the nature 
 of man as twofold — material and spiritual, the flesh 
 warring against the spirit and the spirit warring against 
 the flesh ? This warfare is indeed real, but it is 
 a spiritual warfare, a warfare within the himan will. 
 On grounds which he believed to be in harmony with 
 Scripture Milton rejected the bi-partite conception of 
 man's nature. Man, he maintained, is a living being 
 intrinsically '' one and individual, not compounded and 
 separable, not, according to the common opinion, made 
 up and framed of two distinct and different natures, 
 as of soul and body." The whole man is soul, and the 
 
1 8o Milton : Ecclesiastical and 
 
 soul man, " that is to say, a body or substance individual, 
 animated, sensitive, and rational." ^Body and spirit, 
 according to Milton, are not two separate things ; they 
 are different aspects of one and the same thing ; " That 
 the spirit of man should be separate from the body, 
 so as to have a perfect and intelligent existence in- 
 dependently of it, is nowhere said in Scripture," 
 and the doctrine is evidently at variance both with 
 nature and reason. Into the organic clay God at first 
 breathed some vital and rational virtue, and the clay 
 became a living soul, or, as perhaps we should rather 
 render the words, a living animal ; there is nothing 
 spiritual in a human creature which is not also material, 
 and nothing material which is not also spiritual. 
 Milton does not imagine that at some unascertained 
 moment of an unborn infant's existence God creates a 
 soul, and, as it were, inserts it in the body ; he held, 
 on the contrary, that the complete human being is the 
 natural offispring of its parents. Refusing to sever 
 our manhood into two parts, a superior part and an 
 inferior, the Puritan poet never casts contempt upon 
 the body. V^ He honours the entire spiritual animal 
 Adam, and the entire spiritual animal Eve ; he regards 
 every natural appetite and passion, the craving for food, 
 the joys of wedlock, as sacred : 
 
 AVliatever hypocrites austerely talk 
 Of purity, and place, and innocence, 
 Defaming as impure what God declares 
 Pure. 
 
 Only when these appetites and passions transgress the 
 Divine rule and order does sin come into existence. 
 
Theological L iberty — Poems 1 8 1 
 
 Even the angels of God are material creatures, though 
 of finer substance than man. They are not pure spirit, 
 the existence of which Milton cannot conceive, and does 
 not feel authorised to attempt conceiving, since such an 
 attempt seems forbidden by God's revelation. Like 
 human beings, the angels possess five senses ; they re- 
 quire food ; they feel hunger ; they digest and assimilate, 
 turning corporeal to incorporeal, that is to say, turning 
 the gross matter of food to a finer and more tenuous 
 consistence ; they sleep, for heaven has alternations of 
 evening and of morning. Whatever pure delight of love 
 man and woman know, that in nobler ways the angels 
 eminently enjoy. If in Milton's account of the warfare 
 with the rebel angels there is a certain condescension 
 to the powers of human imagination, and things of heaven 
 are shadowed forth by things of earth, in this he follows 
 the Divine method, which is the best and truest method, 
 of instructing our faculties to apprehend what in its own 
 nature is beyond the scope of those faculties. 
 
 Man being one, indivisible, spiritual animal, what is 
 the meaniug of that punishment pronounced against 
 Adam and his descendants for the sin of disobedience? 
 What is death? The common notion that it signifies 
 the separation of soul and body is of course inadmissible. 
 If man dies, he dies not in part, but altogether ; the 
 whole man ceases from activity and conscious existence. 
 But no created thing — the efflux of Deity — is destruc- 
 tible ; man dies to be restored as a complete being, 
 spiritually material, on the morning of resurrection. But 
 death in a true sense entered into the world before Abel 
 fell under the stroke of Cain ; the guilt of Adam was 
 
1 82 Milton: Ecclesiastical and 
 
 a mortal blow directed against his own moral nature ; 
 the obscuration of his reason by the mists of sin was 
 intellectual death ; that which we commonly name death 
 is only the third stage in a sequence of dreadful con- 
 sequences, moral, intellectual, and physical. 
 
 If we may speak of a central point in the nature of 
 man, we may call his will that central point. In the 
 '' Treatise on Christian Doctrine " as strongly as in 
 " Paradise Lost," Milton insists on the freedom of the 
 human will. It was a faith difficult to reconcile with 
 the Calvinistic dogma of the Divine decrees. But Milton 
 was not a Calvinist. By a long array of passages from 
 Scripture he shows that nothing which God has left in 
 the power of free agents is the subject of an absolute 
 decree. Such decrees are contingent ; and thus man's 
 liberty is in no sense controlled by God ; or, as the 
 Father Himself declares it, in one of His scholastic dis- 
 sertations to the inhabitants of heaven : 
 
 Without least impulse or shadow of fate, 
 
 Or aught by Me immutably foreseen, 
 
 They trespass, authors to themselves in all 
 
 Both what they judge and what they choose ; for so 
 
 I formed them free ; and free they must remain 
 
 Till they enthrall themselves ; I else must change 
 
 Their nature, and revoke the high decree, 
 
 Unchangeable, eternal, which ordained 
 
 Their freedom ; they themselves ordained their fall. 
 
 " God," says Milton in his prose, " has Himself decreed 
 that some things should be left to our free-will." 
 
 The publication of the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine'* 
 in the third decade of this century gave somewhat of a 
 blow to Milton's popularity with many excellent people, 
 
Theological L iberty — Poems 183 
 
 who then for the first time discovered that the greatest 
 religious poet of England was far from theological ortho- 
 doxy. " Paradise Lost " could no longer be considered 
 a safe soporific for Sunday afternoons. Not only did 
 the Puritan Milton declare that the entire decalogue was 
 abrogated by a law of love, not only did he come forward 
 as a pronounced anti-Sabbatarian, not only did he degrade 
 marriage to a civil contract, advocate divorce ^or other -^ 
 causes than adultery, justify polygamy as lawful for '^ 
 Christians, but he deliberately rejected the orthodox ' 
 doctrine of the Trinity. In " Paradise Lost " the unique 
 position of dignity assigned by the Almighty to the Son 
 arouses the jealousy of the revolting angels ; it is not 
 God who, in the second person of the Blessed Trinity, is 
 made to rule over them ; supreme honours have been 
 granted to one who, like themselves, is less than Deity. 
 In his digest of Christian doctrine Milton expresses 
 himself without the slightest ambiguity ; the Son is not 
 coeval or equal with the Father ; He is not of the same 
 numerical essence ; it was in God's power to have dwelt 
 alone without bringing the Son into existence ; by the 
 Father's will was the Son begotten ; by His will did 
 the Son receive a portion of the Divine nature. The 
 essential attributes of Deity — omniscience, omnipotence, 
 supreme goodness, supreme glory — belong to the Father 
 to the exclusion of the Son. The Holy Spirit is evi- 
 dently — so Milton declares — far inferior to the Father 
 and to the only-begotten Son of God ; He is a minister 
 and creature of the Almighty, produced probably before 
 the foundations of the world were laid, but certainly not 
 until after the Son had come into existence. 
 
1 84 Milton : Ecclesiastical and 
 
 Thus with a patient and serene audacity Milton 
 compiles his theology from the words of Scripture. In 
 estimating the intellectual effort which went to the 
 creation of his epic poems, we must bear in mind that 
 Milton does not merely handle imaginatively an accepted 
 body of thought on religious questions ; on the contrary, 
 as a dar-Dg thinker he constructed on a scriptural basis, 
 or what seemed to him to be such, his own theology. 
 In Scripture he found authority for his method of treat- 
 ment : ■ he imaginative medium by which he shadowed 
 forth the abstractions of his creed was provided for him 
 by the Old and the New Testaments. The creation of 
 these poems was a far bolder and vaster undertaking 
 than is commonly supposed. A theology and a philo- 
 sophy of his own, akin in some respects to the Puritanism 
 of his time, yet independent, and identical with no 
 current doctrine, a theology and a philosophy original 
 and extraordinary form the foundation of his amazing 
 poetic structures. Few feats of the human mind have 
 equalled that of collecting a complete faith and of 
 transporting such a faith into art. 
 
 Ill 
 
 When Milton in his prose writings considered man in 
 relation to his fellows, his central thought was that of 
 freedom tending to a higher obedience; he w^ould cast 
 away injurious human bonds that he might enter into 
 the liberty of a stricter service under the divine order. 
 When he wrote as a poet he stood in the immediate 
 presence of God, and his central thought was that of 
 obedience as the condition of true freedom. Let man 
 
Theological L iberty — Poems 185 
 
 falter for a moment from loyalty to his supreme Ruler, 
 and he passes into the servitude of sin. The Lady of 
 his Masque is set in the enchanted chair ; at the waving 
 of a wand her nerves can be chained up in alabaster. 
 But what of that ? While she maintains the inward 
 law of chastity, she is freer than the air: 
 
 Fool, do not boast. 
 Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind 
 With all thy charms, although this corporal rind 
 Thou hast immanacled while Heaven sees good. 
 
 It is the ugly-headed rabble, rolling with pleasure in 
 a sensual sty, who are slaves. The Spirit who acts as 
 the envoy and representative of Providence is but an 
 attendant Spirit ; yet on his happy missions he can run 
 to the green earth's end or soar to the corners of the 
 moon. In his farewell words he expounds the meaning 
 of this trial of the brothers' and sister's patience, faith 
 and truth : 
 
 Mortals that would follow me, 
 Love Virtue ; she alone is free. 
 She can teach ye how to climb 
 Higher than the sphery chime. 
 
 With all the opulence of Nature spread abroad, it 
 must be refused or wisely used, for loyalty alone is 
 highest liberty. The test of virtue is not merely 
 negative ; the commandment of prohibition '' Thou shall 
 not" is accompanied by a higher commandment of 
 rapturous freedom — " Thou shalt." The doctrine of 
 virginity is no fragment of frigid ethics ; chastity is 
 dear and beautiful and saintly ; a thousand angels wait 
 upon it ; clear dream and solemn vision are open to it 
 
1 86 Milton: Ecclesiastical and 
 
 alone ; it illuminates with a sacred ray the outward 
 shape of loveliness ; it turns by some divine process the 
 very temple of the mind to the soul's essence, " till all be 
 made immortal." To exchange such light and freedom 
 for liquorish baits, fit to ensnare a brute, were treason, 
 inevitably followed by the degradation of serfdom. 
 
 In " Paradise Lost " earth and hell and heaven are 
 conjoined in most solemn interest about what great 
 affair ? The eating of an apple. But that crude apple 
 which diverted Eve serves as a sufficient test of the 
 supreme duty of obedience. All the joys of Paradise 
 were on one side, the blessedness of labour and the 
 blessedness of rest, lordship over the docile and innocent 
 tribes, the fountain of pure love, communion with God 
 and angel guests, the freedom of glad allegiance to the 
 divine law-giver ; on the other side were ''foul distrust" 
 and " breach disloyal," revolt and disobedience, with 
 servitude to an evil master. To Milton's imagination 
 the contest around the apple seemed a more heroic 
 argument for song than any warfare of fabled knights 
 .on behalf of honour or of love. The most eventful 
 act in the world's history is an inward decision of the 
 will. All tyrannies, civil and ecclesiastical, against 
 which Milton fought lay involved in that first disloyalty 
 to true authority. Adam beholds in vision one of his 
 sons, a mighty hunter of men, who arrogates dominion 
 over his brethren, and Adam execrates his own off- 
 spring ; but such external domination of brute force 
 is only the natural development of his own disloyal 
 deed. The angel Michael interprets the significance of 
 the vision : 
 
The logic a I L iberty — Poems 187 
 
 Since tliy original lapse, true liberty 
 
 Is lost, whicli always with right reason dwells 
 
 Twinned, and from her hath no dividual being. 
 
 . . . Tyranny must be, 
 Though to the tyrant thereby no excuse. 
 Yet sometimes nations wall decline so low 
 From virtue, which is reason, that no wrong, 
 But justice, and some fatal curse annexed, 
 Deprives them of their outward liberty. 
 Their inward lost. 
 
 The spectacle of the Church oppressed by spiritual 
 despots, employing secular power, follows, to be com- 
 mented upon in like manner by that Independent 
 Ironside of the angelic host : 
 
 What will they then 
 But force the Spirit of Grace itself, and bind 
 His consort. Liberty ? what but unbuild 
 His living temples, built by faith to stand — 
 Their own faith, not another's ? for on Earth 
 Who against faith and conscience can be heard 
 Infallible I Yet many will presume. 
 
 And Adam, having seen the evils that were coming 
 upon his successors and had his fill of knowledge, is 
 ready to descend from the speculative mount, taking to 
 heart the lesson : " Henceforth I learn that to obey is 
 best." The highest heroism possible to man, he per- 
 ceives, is loyalty in meekness of spirit : 
 
 Suffering for Truth's sake 
 Is fortitude to highest victory. 
 
 To know this is to possess one's soul '' in peace of 
 thought " ; to have learnt this much is '' the sum of 
 wisdom." 
 
1 88 Milton: Ecclesiastical and 
 
 IV 
 
 It pleased Milton little to hear ** Paradise Lost" 
 commended to the disadvantage of his later and briefer 
 epic. '' Paradise Regained " bears to " Paradise Lost " 
 somewhat of the relation which a lady-chapel bears to 
 a cathedral ; it is less vast, but not less sacred ; it 
 is an extension of the whole, yet an unity in itself; 
 it harmonises with the general design, while it pos- 
 sesses a special grace and dignity of its own. The 
 lesson which Adam had been taught before he was 
 dismissed to wander abroad on earth is here enforced by 
 a great example. The scene is not the happy garden 
 but the austere landscape of the desert. An ideal man, 
 beautiful in youth's full flower, ardent in patriotism and 
 the passion of humanity, at a most critical moment, when 
 he has just received the highest assurance of his public 
 mission, is to be exposed to the temptation of greatness, 
 and to remain victor through meekness, patience, forti- 
 tude, and entire obedience. He, like Adam, is the 
 representative of our race ; his victory is ours, and as 
 by disobedience Paradise was lost, so '' by one man's 
 firm obedience fully tried," Paradise is to be regained. 
 
 The moment was one of peculiar danger. Assured 
 of his high destiny, the young leader of men might be 
 eager to start on his career, to take his own way, to 
 choose his own time. Satan, no longer the proud arch- 
 angel, majestic though ruined, but a crafty counsellor 
 with the experience of half a myriad of years, a Satan- 
 Machiavel, a grey dissimulation, knows that his last 
 chance has come, and he will put forth all his wiles. In 
 
Theological L iberty — Poems 189 
 
 deep agitation of mind, which begets a swarm of thoughts, 
 the divine man is led into the wilderness. From child- 
 hood his aspiration has been for the public good ; he had 
 boldly appeared as a boy among the doctors of the Temple ; 
 as a youth he had aspired to patriotic achievements : 
 
 Victorious deeds 
 Flamed in my heart, heroic acts — one while 
 To rescue Israel from the Roman yoke ; 
 Then to subdue and quell o'er all the earth 
 Brute violence and proud tyrannic power, 
 Till truth were freed, and equity restored, 
 
 Satan's best hopes are founded on the liability of a 
 heroic leader, bent upon disinterested ends, to overlook 
 the legitimacy of the means by which such ends may 
 be attained, and on the impatience of that zeal which 
 would hasten to the tasks of love. 
 
 After the salutation of combatants in the great duel, 
 the first thrust, aimed at the common humanity of Christ, 
 which knows the need of bread, and at his fears that he 
 may perish in the wilderness with all his tasks unaccom- 
 plished, is instantly met and foiled. Few passages in 
 either epic have more of the Miltonic grandeur than that 
 in which the "aged man in rural weeds," detected and 
 repulsed, declares himself with a majestic melancholy : 
 
 'Tis true, I am that Spirit unfortunate, 
 and like some dark bird of prey wheels in mournful 
 flight above the thought of his eternal loss, only to 
 recover his poise and watch his opportunity : 
 
 Though I have lost 
 Much lustre of my native brightness, lost 
 To be beloved of God, I have not lost 
 To love, at least contemplate and admire, 
 What I see excellent in good, or fair, 
 Or virtuous : I should so have lost all sense. 
 
1 90 Milton : Ecclesiastical and 
 
 The old peasant has been suddenly transformed into the 
 most dignified of sophists. 
 
 A pause and resting-place is afforded by the interlude 
 of Andrew and Simon on the bank of Jordan in con- 
 verse concerning the lost Messiah and that of Mary 
 pondering motherly cares and fears in her heart. Then 
 the duel is renewed. Charles Lamb was of opinion 
 that the banquet spread by Satan's command in a 
 scene, though in the wilderness, of visionary beauty, was 
 wanting in poetic decorum — a temptation for a Helioga- 
 balus rather than for the meek Saviour. But Milton's 
 Saviour is a man, and a man whose brain has been dis- 
 turbed by long abstinence from food. He had rejected 
 food as a necessity ; now he is an-hungered, perhaps 
 light-headed, and food may be accepted as a delight. 
 The art of gastronomy is conceived by Milton as a 
 species of poetry ; stripling youths and fairest nymphs 
 are the attendants ; harmonious airs are heard from 
 pipe and string ; the scent of vernal blossoms floats on 
 the breeze ; it is not a civic feast, nor the luxury of 
 a gaudy day at Cambridge, but an enchantment of the 
 senses and the imagination. And Satan, though he 
 will make his experiment, accepts his failure without 
 surprise. It is at least an exhibition of his power — 
 power which if worthless to gratify the appetite may 
 be serviceable in other ways to one whose heart is set 
 on high designs. 
 
 But the seduction of riches as a means to beneficent 
 ends is met by a like tranquil yet unsubdueable resist- 
 ance. True kingship begins by self- mastery, and 
 more kingly than temporal power is the influence of 
 
Theolog ical L iberty — Poems 1 9 1 
 
 truth which governs the inner man, the nobler part. 
 True glory lies not in popular applause, but in God's 
 approbation won by patience, temperance, genuine wis- 
 dom, deeds of peace. Climbing from the senses to the 
 higher passions, and thence to the last infirmity of noble 
 mind, Satan, inly racked yet maintaining a mastery 
 under his successive defeats, appeals to Christ's sense 
 of duty and his religious zeal. If he will not choose 
 his own means of enterprise, has he a right to linger 
 on his beneficent way ? He is a heroic youth, unversed 
 in the world's affairs. Should he not understand the 
 situation, and learn, even from an old Satan-Machiavel, 
 how a Jewish alliance against Rome may be cemented 
 with the Parthian ? But regal mysteries and politic 
 maxims are a cumbrous learning little needed by the 
 prophetic Son of God ; he who best can suffer best can 
 reign ; all things are to be fulfilled in their due time. 
 
 The wisdom of Greece moves the spirit of Jesus no 
 more than does the imperial power of Rome. Under 
 the Roman magnificence he detects servility of soul : 
 
 What wise and valiant man would seek to free 
 These, thus degenerate, by themselves enslaved, 
 Or could of inward slaves make outward free ? 
 
 The alleged kingship over self of the Greek stoical 
 philosophy he regards as a vain boast. The fear of the 
 Lord, taught by the Hebrew prophets and singers, that 
 is wisdom. Milton, says Sir John Seeley, draws in the 
 person of Christ "a more gifted and energetic Marcus 
 Aurelius." Classical virtue, he tells us, " is self- 
 dependence, love of country, contempt for pleasure in 
 comparison with great deeds, love of fame " ; the 
 
192 Milton: Ecclesiastical and 
 
 Christian ideal is founded not on self-respect, but on 
 self-sacrifice. In " Paradise Regained " we find the 
 Renaissance through Milton's adoption of " the classical 
 conception of virtue." Surely the criticism flies wide 
 of the mark. Whatever Milton may have built into 
 his structure from classical sources, the foundation is 
 essentially Hebraic. The classical ideal of virtue is 
 presented by Satan and is rejected by Jesus. His 
 might is derived from dependence upon God. By 
 " humiliation and strong sufferance " his weakness over- 
 comes Satanic strength. His victories are those of 
 entire obedience. But his obedience is filial. Self- 
 respect, self-veneration Milton conceived as part of the 
 Christian ideal of virtue, and such in truth it is. " Ye 
 are," wrote St Paul, " the temple of the living God." 
 True worship, as Milton understood it,_ is no servile 
 crouching, but the happy boldness of a son, rejoicing 
 in his Father's presence. The humility of Christ is the 
 humility that soars and gladly obeys. 
 
 Satan's devices and sophistries are all but exhausted. 
 The night of rage and tempest passes away ; it is radiant 
 morning again, and the Son of Man, after the dismal 
 hours, is no worse than wet. The great gambler's last 
 stake alone remains ; his despair reduces him to the 
 effrontery of the last temptation. Jesus is challenged 
 to substitute a demonstration of His Divine Sonship for 
 filial faith in the meaning of the Father's testimony ; 
 and no elaborate reasonings are needed to foil the 
 antagonist ; a single word suffices : 
 
 Also it is written, 
 " Tempt not the Lord thy God." 
 
Theological. L iberty — Poems 193 
 
 And at the word the event is ended — " But Satan 
 smitten with amazement fell." 
 
 The decorum which Lamb found wanting in the 
 banquet scene is at least fully observed in the close of 
 Milton's poem. Had " Paradise Regained " ended with 
 the vast cowp de thMtre of Satan's fall, or with the 
 oratorio chorus of the angelic choir we should have felt 
 that the humanity of Jesus was somewhat obscured. 
 A classical triumph must not celebrate this great series 
 of victories ; no chariots and horsemen and captive 
 slaves must accompany this greatest of conquerors to 
 the Capitol. We need something more truly human, 
 more truly divine : 
 
 He, unobserved 
 Home to his mother's house private returned. 
 
 Nothing more : other tasks await the Son of God, 
 which will be accomplished with the quietude and the 
 dignity of humiliation and strong sufferance. 
 
 Though the forms of Attic tragedy are observed 
 in "Samson Agonistes," its inner spirit, like that of 
 " Paradise Eegained," is essentially Hebraic. The central 
 idea is still that of obedience and loyalty to a divine 
 ruler in the great contention between good and evil ; the 
 human actors of the drama stand forth from a background 
 of providentiaL-xiisposal. No poem perhaps leaves a 
 more single or a more inexhaustible impression — that 
 of commiseration lost in victory, that of victory subdued 
 
 N 
 
1 94 Milton : Ecclesiastical and 
 
 by the solemnity of death, that of divine purpose 
 controlling both life and death. The protagonist is in 
 truth not Samson but Jehovah. The great combatant, 
 pre-eminent in strength and valour, the champion of his 
 people, chosen of God for a high purpose, has fallen. 
 Through no merit of his own but as an act of free grace 
 the divine gift of strength had been conferred upon 
 him; all that was demanded was that he should keep a 
 secret entrusted to him ; in that test he had failed. 
 He had forgotten his loyalty to God in a woman's lap, 
 when nothing was required save the passive obedience 
 of silence. As the consequence of that dereliction the 
 Hebrew patriot and hero is reduced to blind servitude 
 at the mill in Gaza, oppressed above all by the sense of 
 his own unfaithfulness and of heaven's desertion, a man 
 who is not "in the list of them that hope." Old Manoa 
 with his uninspired reason and good-will, hoping to 
 obtain his son's ransom and vainly dreaming that his 
 eyesight may be restored, can bring him no true help. 
 Dalila, a mist of frauds, Harapha, a storm of brute force, 
 serve him only by rousing his spirit from supine despair 
 to indignant passion. 
 
 Yet help there is for Samson, but his help can be 
 from God alone. He has failed in the test of passive 
 obedience; there is also obedience of an active kind: 
 will he fail in this? Pleasure he was unable to resist; 
 will he be able to confront pain and death? A second 
 test of obedience is proposed to determine the issue of 
 his life. When he is summoned to appear before the 
 Philistine lords at their profane festival, Samson at first 
 refuses — "I will not come." But presently sudden 
 
Theolog ical L iberty — Poe^ns 195 
 
 promptings stir within his mind, and he is aware that 
 these promptings are from God: 
 
 I begin to feel 
 Some rousing motions in me, which dispose 
 To something extraordinary my thoughts. 
 I with this messenger will go along — 
 Nothing to do, be sure, that may dishonour 
 Our Law, or stain my vow of Nazarite. 
 If there be aught of presage in the mind. 
 This day will be remarkable in my life 
 By some great act, or of my days the last. 
 
 In this final test Samson will not fail; even to his 
 own destruction he follows out the divine promptings. 
 And therefore after the hideous noise, the shoutinsf, the 
 universal groan, destruction and ruin at the utmost 
 point, there follows deep peace of mind, a peace as pure 
 as it is profound. Samson lies a ruin of manhood, but 
 at the last the will of God has been loyally fulfilled, 
 and through obedience he has obtained God's enfran- 
 chisement of death : 
 
 Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail 
 Or knock the breast ; no weakness, no contempt, 
 Dispraise or blame ; nothing but well and fair. 
 And what may quiet us in a death so noble. 
 
 Not through Manoa's prudent diplomacy but through 
 one act of heroic obedience, the blind and dejected 
 captive has passed from servitude to freedom. 
 
 Critics have lamented that Milton did not embody 
 his political experience in epic or in drama; ''the epic 
 of liberty, virtue, and religion, which he had it in him 
 to write, remained unwritten." It seems at first sight 
 as if his prose writings, devoted to the cause of freedom, 
 and his poems were separated by a gulf that is wide 
 
196 Milton: Ecclesiastical and Theological Liberty 
 
 and deep. But is this really the case? Or were not 
 the prose pamphlets an attempt to give an application in 
 detail to the one great principle which inspires masque 
 and epic and drama? When Milton was a poet he 
 could soar with no middle flight; he could occupy 
 himself with none of the secondary truths which regulate 
 conduct private or public. One primary truth filled all 
 his mind — acceptance of the divine rule, submission to 
 the divine mandate; heroic patience in accepting the 
 will of God, heroic energy in making the will of God 
 prevail; entire obedience, and, through obedience, 
 freedom. 
 
VII 
 
 AN ANGLICAN AND A PURITAN EIRENICON 
 JEREMY TAYLOR: BAXTER 
 
 A FUNERAL panegyric is not and cannot be a complete 
 
 criticism ; but true sorrow may be keen-sighted for 
 
 the characteristic virtue of a mind and life. No 
 
 better word, when allowance has been made for the 
 
 occasion, has been spoken of Jeremy Taylor than that 
 
 found in the sermon preached a few days after his 
 
 death by his friend and follower Dean Rust, himself 
 
 a writer of some distinction, whose affinities were with 
 
 the school of the Cambridge Platonists. Taylor was 
 
 not a great or original thinker ; he was not always 
 
 as wise as he was learned ; the spirit of authority 
 
 sometimes overbore with him the spirit of conciliation. 
 
 " He was not unseen," says Rust, '' in the subtleties 
 
 and spinosities of the schools, and upon occasion could 
 
 make them serve his purpose." It was not always an 
 
 advantage to Taylor that he delayed among these 
 
 subtleties and spinosities, and the panegyrist adds with 
 
 a half apologetic touch : " Yet, I believe, he thought 
 
 many of them very near akin to the famous knight of 
 
 La Mancha, and would make sport sometimes with the 
 
 romantic sophistry, and fantastic adventures of school- 
 
 197 
 
198 An Anglican and a Puritan Eirenicon 
 
 errantry." We may remain unconvinced when Rust 
 ascribes to his friend " the profoundness of a philo- 
 sopher, the sagacity of a prophet, the reason of an 
 angel." But when he speaks of the natural ardour of 
 Taylor's temperament, the opulence of his endowment, 
 the harmonious richness of his genius, and when he 
 adds that this ardour and these great gifts were 
 directed towards piety, we feel that he has found 
 the centre, and said a final word : '' Nature had 
 befriended him much in his constitution ; for he was 
 a person of a most sweet and obliging humour, of 
 great candour and ingenuousness ; . . . his soul was 
 made up of harmony ; ... all his words and his 
 very tone and cadences were unusually musical. But 
 that which most of all captivated and ravished his 
 hearers was the gaiety and richness of his fancy;. for 
 he had much in him of that natural enthusiasm which 
 inspires all great poets and orators ; and there was 
 a generous ferment in his blood and spirits, that 
 forcibly excited his imagination, and raised it to 
 such a degree of luxuriancy as nothing but the great- 
 ness of his wit and judgment could have kept within 
 due bounds." The truth could hardly be better told. 
 And Rust adds elsewhere in his doge : " His humility 
 was coupled with extraordinary piety ; and, I believe, 
 he spent the greatest part of his time in heaven ; his 
 solemn hours of prayer took up a considerable portion 
 of his life ; and we are not to doubt but he had learned 
 of St Paul to pray continually ; and that occasional 
 ejaculations, and frequent aspirations, and emigrations 
 of his soul after God, made up the best part of his 
 
Jeremy Taylor, Baxter 199 
 
 / 
 devotions." There we have the whole man, his 
 
 ardour, his rich endowments, his various learning, 
 (of which Rust tells us also) and the zeal of his 
 piety. 
 
 The restraint of Taylor's affluence, that which saved 
 it from expanding into a luxuriant marsh, came less from 
 his judgment than from his zeal. At his best he flows 
 forward with a harmonious impetuosity, like a river 
 that is wide, and is swifter than it seems, exultant, 
 with many a refluent eddy which cannot check, but 
 rather is part of, the sweep and progress of the stream. 
 Nowhere perhaps does the natural ardour of Taylor's 
 heart appear more attractively than in the discourse 
 addressed to Mrs Katherine Philips — the matchless 
 Orinda — on the nature, oflices, and measures of Friend- 
 ship. Orinda, whom Mr Gosse calls the first English 
 sentimentalist, had erected friendship in her Arcady 
 of the sweet shire of Cardigan into a kind of fine art. 
 " The noble Palsemon," Jeremy Taylor, in his letter to 
 her is passionate, with wise and sacred passion, but 
 certainly is untouched by any effeminate sentimentality. 
 He tells us how every common sorrow of the world, if 
 brought home to the imagination, wounds the spirit of 
 charity within him, yet he reserves his best affections 
 for those whom kinship or circumstances have brought 
 near : " I pray for all mankind ; I am grieved at every 
 sad story I hear ; I am troubled when I hear of a 
 pretty bride murdered in her bride-chamber by an 
 ambitious and enraged rival ; I shed a tear when I 
 am told that a brave king was misunderstood, then 
 slandered, then imprisoned, and then put to death 
 
200 An Anglican and a Puritan Eirenicon 
 
 by evil men ; ^ and I can never read the story of 
 the Parisian Massacre, or the Sicilian vespers, but my 
 blood curdles, and I am disordered by two or three 
 affections. . . . But though we must pray for all 
 men, yet we say special litanies for brave kings and 
 holy prelates, and the wise guides of souls ; for our 
 brethren and relations, our wives and children." 
 
 Not even the poet of " Leaves of Grass " has sung 
 more enthusiastically of comradeship than Taylor in 
 this Discourse. Friendship is like the sun, the eye 
 of the world ; but men, according to their worth, differ 
 in their capacity to receive its showers of warmth and 
 light. The emanation of the beams of the sun is 
 for all the world ; for the scalded Indian and the 
 poor boy that shakes at the foot of the Riphseean hills ; 
 but men receive of friendship only what they can ; 
 '^ and some have only a dark day and a long night, 
 snows and white cattle, a miserable life, and a per- 
 petual harvest of catarrhs and consumptions, apoplexies 
 and dead palsies ; but some have splendid fires and 
 aromatic spices, rich wines and well-digested fruits, 
 great wit and great courage ; because they dwell in 
 his eye, and look in his face, and are the courtiers of 
 the sun, and wait upon him in his chambers of the 
 East." Such splendid fires and aromatic spices were 
 the gifts of the sun to Taylor in his best creations. 
 Addressing in this Discourse a woman celebrated 
 for her genius in friendship, he must needs touch 
 upon the subject of friendships in which a woman 
 
 1 The reference seems to be to Charles I. ; the discourse was published 
 in 1657. 
 
Jeremy Taylor, Baxter 201 
 
 bears a part, and he does so with a noble enthusiasm. 
 Marriage in its ideal he conceives as friendship 
 brought to perfection ; and beyond this passage we 
 have little to lead us to any inference as to the 
 happiness which Taylor found in his first or his 
 second wife : ^ " You may see how much I differ 
 from the morosity of those Cynics who would not 
 admit your sex into the communities of a noble 
 friendship ... I cannot say that women are capable 
 of all those excellencies by which men can oblige the 
 world ; and therefore a female friend in some cases 
 is not so good a counsellor as a wise man, and cannot 
 so well defend my honour, nor dispose of reliefs and 
 assistances, if she be under the power of another ; 
 but a woman can love as passionately, and converse 
 as pleasantly, and retain a secret as faithfully, and 
 be useful in her proper ministries ; and she can die 
 for her friend as well as the bravest Roman knight." 
 Over which fine outbreak Orinda may well have given 
 a sigh of satisfaction. 
 
 It is unfortunate for Taylor that he should be known 
 chiefly by ornaments detached from his larger com- 
 positions. The lark rising from his bed of grass, and 
 beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, 
 the rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood, and 
 dismantled of its too youthful and unripe retirements — 
 these and the like are beautiful and memorable, but 
 if read as elegant extracts they leave an impression that 
 Taylor's excellence lay in filigree work, and that sweet- 
 
 1 His second wife is believed to have been a natural daughter of 
 Charles I. 
 
202 An Anglican and a Puritan Eirenicon 
 
 ness with him was not united with severity or strength. 
 Nor, indeed, was it always. But Taylor's happiness of 
 temper and his florid graces, growing freely like the little 
 rings of the vine, were not inconsistent with habits of 
 almost ascetic discipline and with an energy of imagina- 
 tion which shows itself in greatness of composition. The 
 large ordonnance of some of his discourses will surely 
 strike any reader of those which treat of Christ's advent 
 to Judgment. There is in them a magnificence of 
 terror, but of terror relieved by a solemn joy, which 
 reminds one, if not of the splendid mastery of Tintoretto, 
 yet, at least, of the constructive power of Poussin. 
 The sweep and grandeur of the whole are the true 
 evidence of the preacher's imaginative passion. He 
 puts the trumpet to his lips, and it is a 
 
 Tuba minim spargens sonum 
 Per sepulchra regionum, 
 
 such as might penetrate the ears, let us not say of 
 the watchful dead, but rather of Hogarth's sleeping 
 contestation. 
 
 Fervour in the pursuit of devout ends is what Taylor 
 above all desires to breathe into his hearers. If we 
 pray, let our prayers be as flames of fire ascending from) 
 the heart's altar. When you reckon up your prayers/ 
 ''you must reckon, not by the number of the collects) 
 but by your sighs and passions, by the vehemence of 
 your desires, and the fervour of your spirit, the appre- 
 hension of your need, and the consequent prosecution 
 of your supply." For cold prayers are not put into 
 the account, but are laid aside " like the buds of roses, 
 which a cold wind hath nipped into death, and the 
 
Jeremy Taylor, Baxter 203 
 
 discoloured tawny face of an Indian slave." And again, 
 without elaborated metaphor, yet in words no less char- 
 acteristic of Taylor than the last : " He that is cold and 
 tame in his prayers hath not tasted of the deliciousness 
 of religion and the goodness of God ; he is a stranger 
 to the secrets of the Kingdom, and therefore he does not 
 know what it is either to have hunger or satiety ; and 
 therefore neither are they hungry for God nor satisfied 
 with the world ; but i*emain stupid and inapprehensive, 
 without resolution and determination, never choosing 
 clearly, nor pursuing earnestly, and therefore never enter 
 into possession, but always stand at the gates of weariness, 
 unnecessary caution, and perpetual irresolution." 
 
 Three sermons are specially devoted to the subject 
 of " Lukewarmness and Zeal ; or Spiritual Fervour." 
 Taylor's own fervour makes him courageous in his 
 teaching. Contrasting the spirit of Christian worship 
 with that of the Mosaic ritual, he utters words which we 
 might rather have expected to hear from the lips of a 
 Puritan divine. By the shadow of the ceremony, under 
 the law of Moses, God did indeed require the substantial 
 worship ; '' yet because they were to mind the outward 
 action, it took much off from the intention and activity 
 of the spirit; man could not do both busily." Milton 
 has used the same argument against elaborate ceremony. 
 The preacher again dares to declare boldly, though 
 under the shadow of St Augustine's authority, that 
 sin may be the cloudy porch which leads to sanctity ; 
 the loss of chastity by one — virgin or widow — who is 
 chaste and proud, may be, in a true sense, a means 
 to grace ; to fall into offence is sometimes a remedy. 
 
204 An Anglican and a Puritan Eirenicon 
 
 He asserts that a lukewarm religion, if it be not in 
 progress to a better state, is " much worse " than 
 no religion at all. He does not scruple to say, that 
 to give to the poor is better than to give to a church. 
 And for one whose preaching, no doubt, was hung upon 
 by many enraptured auditors of the sex that most looks 
 up to a gracious pulpiteer, it needed, perhaps, yet higher 
 courage to announce pretty plainly that certain of them 
 had better be at home attending to their household 
 duties. '' Martha was troubled with much serving ; 
 that was ' more than needs,' and therefore she was to 
 blame ; and sometimes hearing in some circumstances 
 may be ' more than needs ' ; and some women are 
 ' troubled with over much hearing,' and then they 
 had better have been serving the necessities of their 
 house." It would be base to conjecture that a popular 
 Puritan lecturer was holding forth in the neighbourhood 
 of Golden Grove. 
 
 Easy ways to salvation were viewed by Taylor with 
 distrust ; strait is the gate ; the Kingdom of Heaven 
 suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. In 
 the second sermon on " Godly Fear " he had ventured 
 to say that our sins are not pardoned easily and quickly ; 
 pardon fluctuates like the wave when the tide has 
 turned, and only gradually invades the shore ; we 
 are to expect it upon such terms as are revealed, which 
 include time, and labour, and uncertainty, and fear, 
 and holy living. How shall we know that we have 
 received the grace of forgiveness ? Not by some sudden 
 inward light, which may be a false phosphorescence 
 sprung from our own heart. There is a surer way of 
 
Jeremy Taylor, Baxter 205 
 
 knowledge : " If I have sinned against God in the 
 shameful crime of last, then God hath pardoned my 
 sins, when, upon repentance and prayers. He hath given 
 me the grace of chastity. My drunkenness is forgiven 
 when I have acquired the grace of temperance and a 
 sober spirit. My covetousness shall no more be a damn- 
 ing sin, Avhen I have a loving and charitable spirit ; 
 loving to do good, and despising the world." In all 
 things let us base our confidence on grounds that are 
 solid and stable. '' Let us proceed," says Taylor in 
 one of his noblest words, '' from causes to effects, . . . 
 and believe felicity not to be a chance but a choice." 
 And it is in such words as these rather than in the 
 well-known decorative passages that we reach to the , 
 strength of the great preacher's spirit. I 
 
 All the highest spiritual teachers have declared that 
 a state of aridity is sometimes as profitable to the 
 soul as a state of refreshment. Taylor exhorts his 
 hearers to fill the dry places at least with duties well 
 done : " This delight is not to be understood as if it 
 were always required that we should always feel an 
 actual cheerfulness and sensible joy ; such as was that 
 of Jonathan, when he had newly tasted honey, and 
 the light came into his eyes, and he was refreshed 
 and pleasant. This happens sometimes, when God 
 pleases to entice, or reward a man's spirit, with little 
 antepasts of heaven ; but such a delight only is 
 necessary, and a duty, that we always choose our duty 
 regularly, and undervalue the pleasures of temptation, 
 and proceed in the work of grace with a firm choice 
 and unabated election." If we elect to go still forward 
 
2o6 An Anglican and a Puritan Eirenicon 
 
 under our load of difficulty and pain it is enough ; 
 what we choose, that we delight in.^ 
 
 Out of the strong came forth sweetness ; and here 
 the strength is that of an eager, ardent nature. Let us 
 see Taylor aright, and we shall perceive that his sweet- 
 ness grows out of an inward severity, and that the 
 blossoming passages of his writings mean often that the 
 passion of hie heart must break forth in beauty. The 
 following, from the second sermon " Of Lukewarmness 
 and Zeal," may serve as an example, which is highly 
 characteristic of the writer; it is no ornament attached 
 externally, but the flowering of sap ascending from 
 roots that strike deep in earth : " You may observe 
 it, that so long as the light shines bright, and the fires 
 of devotion and desires flame out, so long the mind of 
 a man stands close to the altar, and waits upon the 
 sacrifice ; but as the fires die, and desires decay, so the 
 mind steals away, and walks abroad to see the little 
 images of beauty and pleasure, which it beholds in the 
 falling stars and little glow-worms of the world. The 
 river that runs slow and creeps by the banks, and begs 
 leave of every turf to let it pass, is drawn into little 
 hollownesses, and spends itself in smaller portions, and 
 dies with diversion ; but when it runs with vigorous- 
 ness and a full stream, and breaks down every obstacle, 
 making it even as its own brow, it stays not to be 
 tempted by little avocations, and to creep into holes, 
 but runs into the sea through full and useful channels ; 
 so is a man's prayer, if it moves upon the feet of an 
 abated appetite ; it wanders into the society of every 
 ^ "Of Lukewarmness and Zeal," Part II. 
 
Jeremy Taylor, Baxter 207 
 
 trifling accident, and stays at the corners of the fancy, 
 and talks with every object it meets, and cannot arrive 
 at heaven ; but when it is carried upon the wings of 
 passion and strong desires, a swift motion and a hungry 
 appetite, it passes on through all the intermediate 
 region of clouds, and stays not till it dwells at the foot 
 of the throne where mercy sits, and thence sends holy 
 showers of refreshment." The sermons on Lukewarm- 
 ness and" Zeal close with certain warnings, for Taylor's 
 religions prudence was great and taught him that true 
 zeal has its measures, and intemperate zeal its dangers. 
 His age seemed to him an age of violent passions tending 
 to strife, but of much lukewarmness towards what is 
 sincerely good. He pleads therefore for a zeal accord- \ 
 ins: to knowtedo^e, not for a via media of tameness, ; 
 but for a pure ardour in the pursuit of what he terms 
 a persevering, a great, a passionate religion. \ 
 
 In days of trouble and division Taylor put forth an 
 Eirenicon in his " Liberty of Prophesying." To reduce 
 the essential articles of Christian belief to those of the 
 Apostles' Creed, to maintain the prerogative of human 
 reason, to exhibit the uncertainty of theological opinions, 
 and to write in the temper of charity was certainly to 
 serve the cause of toleration. But a man may widen < 
 the bounds of toleration, yet draw the line with a rigid 
 pen. He may shrink from giving his fundamental 
 principles their complete application. As an Irish, 
 bishop Taylor's action certainly did not result in peace ;1 
 but it would be unjust not to bear in mind the diffi- 
 culties of his position. He insisted on order and 
 obedience within his own communion ; and his 
 
2o8 An Anglica7i and a Puritan Eirenicon 
 
 opponents were not of a compliant temper. *'We 
 find," he writes in the dedication of his sermon preached 
 at the opening of the Irish Parliament, " that all 
 Christian churches kept this rule ; they kept them- 
 selves and others close to the rule of faith, and 
 peaceably suffered one another to differ in ceremonies, 
 but suffered no difference amongst their own ; they gave 
 liberty to other churches, and gave laws, and no liberty, 
 to their own subjects : and at this day the churches of 
 Geneva, France, Switzerland, Germany, Low Countries, 
 tie all their people to their own laws, but tie up no 
 man's conscience ; if he be not persuaded as they are, 
 let him charitably dissent, and leave that government, 
 and adhere to his own communion." Taylor's principles 
 of conformity were rather defensive than designedly 
 aggressive, yet in its result his action savours too much 
 of Black Bartholomew day, and those who should cele- 
 brate his memory with most applause are the Presby- 
 terians of the north of Ireland, who were gainers by his 
 
 \ over-strained spirit of legality. 
 
 Yet to his Irish days belongs a second and a very 
 admirable Eirenicon — the sermon which he named 
 " Via Intelligentife," preached before " the little but 
 excellent University of Dublin," and published in 1662. 
 It is addressed to such earnest seekers for truth as a 
 sanguine person might suppose would specially gather 
 
 . around a universit}^, and the text is the conciliating one 
 " If any man will do his will, he shall know of the 
 doctrine." Such a text is indeed two-edged, and may 
 lend itself to uncharitable handling. We, of this com- 
 munion or of that, do God's will and know of the 
 
Jeremy Taylor, Baxter 209 
 
 doctrine ; those who maintain another doctrine have 
 erred because of evil affections and unrighteous lives, 
 and cannot be among the doers of God's will. There is 
 something naive in such sophistry as this ; but Taylor 
 in the sermon sophisticates his text with most sincere 
 conviction. Kings and bishops are of divine ordinance ; 
 to submit to them is to be loyal to the will of God. 
 What criminals therefore are they who oppose bishops 
 and a king, men who " rise up against their fathers, 
 and are 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." And in like 
 manner consider, he cries, the " infinite unreasonable- 
 ness " that is in the Popish religion, how against 
 common sense their doctrine of transubstantiation is, 
 how against the common experience of human nature is 
 the doctrine of the Pope's infallibility, how against 
 Scripture is the doctrine of indulgences and purgatory. 
 How is belief in these absurdities possible ? Simply 
 enough ; the devisers of the doctrines were not among 
 those w^ho did God's will ; the doctrines were imposed 
 upon the credulous for the sake of temporal ends. 
 Every proposition of the Popish religion which differs 
 from those held by us is meant " to serve the end of 
 money or of power." Taylor does not raise the question 
 w^hether a like argument could have been effectively 
 used by a nonconformist against the Anglican establish- 
 ment. 
 
 But putting aside matter of controversy, there is 
 much that is of high excellence in the " Via Intelli- 
 
 o 
 
2IO An Anglican and a Puritan Eirenicon 
 
 gentise." It admirably describes the temper in which 
 truth should be sought ; it admirably distinguishes 
 between a notional assent to propositions and the real 
 and vital apprehension of truth ; it justly rebukes some 
 of the trifling or over-curious learning of the schools. 
 The drift of the whole is that " theology is rather a 
 divine life than a divine knowledge." 
 
 Men of his time, says Taylor, had been wrangling 
 about peace, and seeking the ascertainment of some 
 common body of truth as the ground of religious unity. 
 Each rival communion was prepared to exhibit a system 
 of belief, and tell you that is the true religion, and 
 they are the Church, and the peculiar people of God. 
 Of this, says Taylor, there will be no end — "for divide 
 the Church into twenty parts, and, in whatsoever part 
 your lot falls, you and your party are damned by the 
 other nineteen." Another imagined way to reconcile 
 the differences of Christendom is that of moderation, a 
 way favoured by Erasmus, Grotius, and others. Let 
 each sect abate its asperities, and pare away something 
 of its distinctive doctrine, and let all join in common 
 terms and phrases of accommodation. "From hence" — 
 such is Taylor's remorseless statement of his conviction 
 — " can succeed nothing but folly and a fantastic peace : 
 this is but the skinning of an old sore ; it will break 
 out upon all occasions." Something, he thinks, may be 
 gained by clearness of definition in questions of con- 
 troversy ; but, after all, this is nothing else but " a 
 drawing up the armies in battalia with great skill and 
 discipline " ; it brings the combat to a precise issue, 
 and the next thing the combatants do is to thrust their 
 
Jei'emy Taylor, Baxter 2 1 1 
 
 swords into one another's sides. What remedy, Taylor 
 asks, after all this ? Is it to be found in the complete 
 toleration of all opinions? This is a way of peace rather 
 than of truth. It is indeed a highly reasonable way ; 
 yet how can the intolerant, who seek not equality 
 but absolute rule, be themselves tolerated ? Complete 
 toleration — Taylor spoke of his own time, and the words 
 were spoken in Ireland — " is better in contemplation 
 than in practice." Mere opinions certainly are not to 
 be persecuted ; but it is equally certain that opinions 
 which lead to violence in states ought not to be made 
 public and permitted. 
 
 The human ways towards truth and peace have failed 
 and must fail. What is God's way ? "If any man do 
 His will he shall know of the doctrine. . . . The 
 way to judge of religion is by doing of our duty : and 
 theology is rather a divine life than a divine knowledge. 
 In heaven, indeed, we shall first see, and then love ; 
 but here on earth, we must first love, and love will 
 open our eyes as well as our hearts ; and we shall then 
 see, and perceive, and understand." 
 
 Taylor does not mean that one who does the duty 
 that lies nearest to him will be enlightened by new 
 revelations, and be conducted by ecstasy, and pray in a 
 transfiguration, and live upon raptures. The spirit of 
 God does not spend its holy influences " in disguises 
 and convulsions of the understanding." It does not 
 destroy but rather heightens reason. The process is 
 simple ; good men see what is good, and they lay hold 
 of it ; '' half a word is enough to make them under- 
 stand ; a nod is a sufficient reproof ; the crowing of a 
 
212 An Anglican and a Puritan Eirenicon 
 
 cock, the singing of a lark, the dawning of the day, 
 and the washing their hands, are to them competent 
 memorials of religion and warnings of their duty." 
 Human learning, indeed, brings excellent aids to the 
 true knowledge of religion ; but by arguing and dispute 
 we see no more than the shadow of God, in which are 
 many dark appearances, little certainty, and much con- 
 jecture. If by human learning we have attained to the 
 meaning of a divine word, there is still " a meaning of 
 the meaning " (for the leaves of the book are written 
 within and without), a living secret, which can only be 
 made real for us through practice — " this is to be felt, 
 and not to be talked of; and they that never touched 
 it with their finger may secretly perhaps laugh at it in 
 their heart, and be never the wiser." Taylor himself 
 was a man of multifarious learning, a theologian and a 
 casuist, but it seemed to him that scholars too often 
 lived upon air and empty notions, troubling themselves, 
 as he admirably puts it, with tying and untying knots, 
 like hypochondriacs in a fit of melancholy, raising foolish 
 questions, spending zeal in things unprofitable, mak- 
 ing religion to consist of outsides. " No, no " ; he cries, 
 "the man that is wise, he that is conducted by the Spirit 
 of God, knows better in what Christ's kingdom does con- 
 sist than to throw away his time, and interest, and peace 
 and safety — for what ? for religion ? no : for the body of 
 religion ? not so much : for the garment of the body of 
 religion?" no, not for so much: but for the fringes of the 
 garment of the body of religion. A word that has meanings 
 for the nineteenth century as truly as for Taylor's own day. 
 Stated in a word, Taylor's teaching is that truth 
 
Jeremy Taylor, Baxter 213 
 
 resides implicitly in goodness ; it may never attain to an 
 explicit statement in words or propositions, but it abides 
 in the heart as a hidden wisdom, which regulates conduct 
 and contains all that is needful for life and godliness. 
 He does not shrink from illustrating his central thought 
 by a striking example. Who is he that best knows, as 
 far as it can be known to man, the unintelligible mystery 
 of the Divine nature ? Not he who can do no more 
 than recite the " Quicunque vult," and brandish his 
 sword in honour of the credenda. We may amuse 
 ourselves, says Taylor, with essences and hypostasies 
 and personalities, distinctions without difference, priority 
 in coequalities, and unity in pluralities, and may be 
 none the wiser ; we may build three tabernacles for the 
 Trinity in our head, and may talk something, and know 
 not what. But the good man, who feels '' the power of 
 the Father," he to whom " the Son " is become "wisdom, 
 righteousness, sanctification and redemption," he in 
 " whose heart the love of the Spirit of God is spread " ; 
 he — though he understands nothing of what is unin- 
 telligible — alone understands the mystery of the holy 
 Trinity, for, vigorous in holy actions, he sees with his 
 heart what his tongue can never express, and his meta- 
 physics can never prove. 
 
 Such is Jeremy Taylor's '' Eirenicon " ; one which 
 settled nothing, and could settle nothing immediately ; 
 one which could not on the instant avert grave errors of 
 judgment or stay unhappy courses of action ; but one 
 which, if taken to heart, and made real to the con- 
 science and to conduct, must in the end form a temper 
 favourable both to truth and peace. 
 
2 14 -^^ Anglican and a Puritan Eirenicon 
 
 II 
 
 This was an Eirenicon which came from the victorious 
 side, from the party in power, and in the hour of triumph. 
 A still more remarkable and beautiful utterance of that 
 spirit which is peaceable and pure came from the party 
 that suffered persecution. Baxter's autobiography, one 
 of the most interesting books of nonconformist literature, 
 was not published until after the author's death, but the 
 first part, which is not, as are the later parts, encum- 
 bered with a chaos of documents, was written about two 
 years after the disaster of Black Bartholomew day. 
 Baxter was not then an old man ; he was not quite 
 fifty ; but in experience he was old ; and bodily in- 
 firmities, incessant labours, and the intensity of his zeal 
 on behalf of others had worn him and brought on what 
 he terms a lorcemiatura senectus. No matter lay nearer 
 to his heart, except the salvation of souls, than concilia- 
 tion in the religion of Protestants ; he gave his best 
 endeavours, not always perhaps with wisdom in details, 
 but always with entire and disinterested sincerity, 
 towards attaining a " comprehension," which should 
 reconcile and unite the. moderate "Episcopal men" with 
 the moderates among the Presbyterians and the In- 
 dependents ; and, though he succeeded for a time and 
 in a measure in his own neighbourhood of Kidder- 
 minster, we know how completely his larger hopes and 
 purposes were wrecked. These efforts towards a com- 
 prehension form a well - known piece of English 
 ecclesiastical history, and cannot be considered here. 
 But there is a passage at the close of the first part 
 
Jeremy Taylor^ Baxter 215 
 
 of the autobiography — " Reliquiae Baxterianse," as it 
 was named by his colleague and editor, Matthew 
 Sylvester — which tells of the changes that came over 
 his mind and temper and opinions with advancing years, 
 and it is in these memorable pages that Baxter's best 
 " Eirenicon " may be found.^ 
 
 Baxter's autobiography has one quality which is 
 among the rarest in books of its kind, and which gives 
 it a value almost unique — it is written with absolute 
 sincerity. He dresses up nothing; he does not project 
 before his imagination any ideal self, and fit things to 
 correspond with that ideal; he aims simply at telling 
 what he knew or what he believed to be true. We 
 can see that he often viewed public affairs too much 
 from what we may call the ministerial stand-point, but 
 that was natural, and the fact is neither obtruded nor 
 disguised. We perceive how his scrupulosity of con- 
 science, his habit of balancing all the reasons for and 
 against a course of conduct in some degree disqualified 
 him for doing justice to men of action, who grasped 
 truth largely and roughly, and who knew that lack of 
 promptitude might be a greater evil than many errors 
 committed on the way to a great end. The animal 
 basis for audacity which lies in a vigorous body and 
 hearty spirits was with him wholly absent ; he was 
 almost constantly a sufferer from physical infirmities, 
 
 1 While preparing this chapter I noticed that admirable use was made 
 of this passage from Baxter's autobiography in Jowett's "Sermons Bio- 
 graphical and Miscellaneous," pp. 73-78, and that he added a nineteenth- 
 century application and extension. Sir James Stephen, "Essays in 
 Ecclesiastical Biography," II., 60, spoke of the passage as "familiar 
 to most students of English literature," which, I fear, was an amiable 
 form of politeness to his readers. 
 
2]6 An Anglican and a Puritan Eirenicon 
 
 with his acrimonious blood, his excoriated finger-ends, 
 his rheumatic head, his flatulent stomach, his extreme 
 chilliness without, his bleedings at the nose, his pearls 
 in the eyes, his latent stones in the reins, and all else 
 of which he has to tell his readers, because '* the 
 case of his body had a great operation on his soul." 
 But he found that the best palliative for his ailments 
 was incessant activity ; there was much to be done ; 
 death stood always, as he thought, at hand ; the spirit 
 lodged in this crazy tenement of clay was aflame with 
 love for the souls of men ; and he toiled as if with the 
 strength of ten. The union in Baxter of the indefatig- 
 able pastor and the inquisitive and restless schoolman 
 of Protestant theology is perhaps his distinguishing 
 characteristic. His intellect pursued logical distinctions 
 and subtleties with an almost morbid curiosity ; his 
 heart was quick with a passion of charity, which did 
 not expend itself in mere contemplation, but animated 
 a life made up of methodical and industrious habits. 
 
 He belonged to no party; in each he saw some things 
 to applaud and some things to condemu.-^ He was 
 neither Episcopal (in what he calls the diocesan sense) 
 nor strictly a Presbyterian ; he was too Arminian for 
 the high Calvinists and too Calvinistic for the 
 Arminians. He thought kneeling at the Communion 
 lawful, and made no scruple about the ring in marriage; 
 he doubted of the surplice, and never could bring him- 
 self to use the Cross in baptism ; he admitted that a 
 form of prayer and liturgy is not in itself forbidden, but 
 held that the English liturgy has much disorder and 
 
 ^ See the opening of Part II. of " Reliquiae Baxterianae." 
 
Jeremy Taylor, Baxter 217 
 
 defectiveness in it. He had duly subscribed to the 
 thirty-nine articles, but, in his maturer days, came to 
 judge subscription unlawful. In each matter of con- 
 science he tried, with the aids of Scripture and much 
 study and prayer, to puzzle out for himself the right or 
 the wrong. 
 
 " How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of 
 him that publish eth peace." Baxter's feet were often 
 upon those Delectable mountains of which Bunyan 
 speaks, from whose heights the celestial city can be 
 seen, but his work lay among the weavers of the streets 
 of Kidderminster. Sermons, catechisings, visitings, the 
 resolution of doubts, meetings for parish discipline, con- 
 ferences and discussions with ministers, works of charity, 
 the unpaid practice of physic, and, with all this, the 
 incessant exercise of his pen, filled up fourteen years 
 with what he calls sweet employment. " For ever 
 blessed be the God of mercies," he cries, " that in times 
 of usurpation I had all this mercy and happy freedom, 
 when under our rightful king and governor I and many 
 hundreds more are silenced, and laid by as broken 
 vessels, and vilified as scarce to be tolerated to live 
 privately and quietly in the land ! " Preaching to a 
 people who had not been made sermon-proof — the word 
 is Baxter's own — by an awakening ministry, he lit up 
 a spirit of piety hitherto unknown in the town. Five 
 galleries were added to the church ; on the Lord's day 
 there was no disorder to be seen, "but you might hear an 
 hundred families singing psalms and repeating sermons 
 as you passed through the streets." Wheu Baxter 
 preached at Worcester the poor nailers and other 
 
2 1 8 An Anglican and a Puritan Eirenicon 
 
 labourers would not only crowd the church, but would 
 hang upon the windows and the leads without. The 
 preacher was not of an over sanguine temper — a man, 
 indeed, " of a discouraged spirit " — but he believed that 
 were it not for the faction of the prelatists on the one 
 side, and the factions of the giddy and turbulent sec- 
 taries on the other, '' England had been like, in a 
 quarter of an age, to have become a land of saints and 
 a pattern of holiness to all the world." He admits that 
 new and strange sects, some of which he has described 
 in a passage of great interest, arose ; but though he was 
 a lover of religious harmony, he called to remembrance 
 " that sects have most abounded when the Gospel hath 
 most prospered." It is better, he thinks, that men 
 should be purblind, and make the mistakes of the pur- 
 blind, than that they should make no mistakes, being 
 blind : '' He that never regardeth the word of God is 
 not like to err much about it ; men will sooner fall out 
 about gold or pearls than swine or asses will." 
 
 His books and pamphlets, most of which had some 
 immediate work to do, and having done their work 
 might well fall on sleep, were the outpourings of an 
 eager intellect and a fervid heart. " Indeed, for the 
 ' Saints' Rest,' I had four months' vacancy to write it 
 (but in the midst of continual languishing and medi- 
 cine) ; but for the rest I wrote them in the crowd of 
 all my other employments, which would allow me no 
 great leisure for polishing and exactness, or any orna- 
 ment ; so that I scarce ever wrote one sheet twice over, 
 nor stayed to make any blots or interlinings, but was 
 fain to let it go as it was first conceived ; and when my 
 
Jeremy Taylor, Baxter 219 
 
 own desire was rather to stay upon one thing long than 
 run over many, some sudden occasion or other extorted 
 almost all my writings from me ; and the apprehensions 
 of present usefulness or necessity prevailed against all 
 other motives." He tells us that in little more than a 
 year twenty thousand copies of '•' A Call to the Un- 
 converted " were printed in authorised editions, while 
 many thousand copies appeared in surreptitious impres- 
 sions which poor men stole for lucre's sake. His wife 
 was of opinion that he "had done better to have written 
 fewer books, and to have done those few better"; he 
 maintained that while he wrote none needlessly, the 
 imperfection of two was a less evil than the total 
 omission of one. But in the end he came round to his 
 wife's point of view, and confesses that fewer well 
 studied and polished had been a real gain. 
 
 A notice of Baxter, however slight, would do him 
 wrong, if it failed to make some mention of the noble 
 and tender woman who devoted her life to him and to 
 his work. The two figures, that of the zealous pastor, 
 the great divine, touched with premature old age and 
 worn with bodily infirmities, and the young wife once 
 ''glittering in costly apparel and delighting in her 
 romances," who was stronger and weaker than he, and 
 who for nineteen years supported him with her wisdom 
 and her faithful affection, live in oar imagination side 
 by side ; and each leans upon the other. The minister's 
 love story was never fully told ; some passages of it 
 were too wonderful and too intimate for public record. 
 Margaret Baxter, with her tender, over-passionate nature, 
 had still " a concealing temper " ; she could not often 
 
 rfl LISP? 
 
2 20 An A7iglican and a Puritan Eirenicon 
 
 speak of her deepest inward experiences, erring, her 
 husband thought, through her morbid dread of hypocrisy, 
 loving deeds more than words ; confessions of the soul, 
 written by her at various times and printed by Baxter, 
 were first seen by him after her death among the 
 papers which she left ; and in that most beautiful and 
 touching memorial of her life, the outpouring of his age, 
 weakness and grief, he respected her temper of reserve 
 as to the full opening of her case and his, and the many 
 strange occurrences which brought it to pass. 
 
 Margaret Charlton was of the same county as 
 Baxter, but of a higher social station; she had wealth 
 and he was poor; she had youth, and he had infirmity 
 and advanced years; and she saw that she could bring 
 him help. He insisted that he should have nothing of 
 her wealth, and that she should expect none of the 
 time which his ministerial duties might require; she 
 consented, and they lived together ''in inviolated love 
 and mutual complacency." When he was carried to the 
 common jail she cheerfully went with him, and, he 
 thinks, had scarce ever a pleasanter time in her life. 
 All worldly affairs were left in her hands with perfect 
 confidence ; she busied herself to find or create spheres for 
 her husband's usefulness, and spent her money in estab- 
 lishing him as far as was possible, under great difficulties 
 and restrictions, in his work; she was especially proud, 
 with a noble kind of pride, that he should not be 
 dependent on the liberality of patrons or of his people. 
 She had an incredibly quick and penetrating wit, an 
 incredibly ardent heart, and the finest and most delicate 
 self-control. Her mind, says Baxter, was '' like the 
 
JereTfiy Taylor, Baxter 221 
 
 treble strings of a lute, strained up to the highest, 
 sweet, but in continual danger." The troubles and 
 calamities of the time preyed upon her sensitive spirit, 
 and at length the lute-strings snapped. "Perhaps love 
 and grief," writes her husband, "may make me speak 
 more than many will think fit"; and again; ''I am 
 waiting to be next: the door is open. Death will 
 quickly draw the veil, and make us see how near we 
 were to God and one another, and did not sufficiently 
 know it." Assuredly through the past, carried on into 
 the present, she was always near him as an impulse and 
 a control, as the most loving of helpers, the most 
 faithful of monitors. It was no posthumous remorse 
 for things ill said or done that quickened Baxter's 
 sorrow when he wrote the Breviate of her life. He had 
 little to remember with sorrow except a certain "im- 
 patience with her impatiency," when the wranglings of 
 divines, or other things which she could not approve, 
 wounded her charitable spirit. But he must always 
 have had a touch of grief in feeling that he could not 
 give as much as he received. " Dear heart," he wrote 
 to her, " the time of our mutual help is short ; O let us 
 use it accordingly ; but the time of our reaping the fruit 
 of this and all holy endeavours and preparatory mercies 
 
 will be endless The Lord forgive my great 
 
 unprofitableness, and the sin that brought me under any 
 disabilities to answer your earnest and honest desire of 
 greater help than I afford you, and help me yet to amend 
 it towards you. But though my soul be faulty and dull, 
 and my strength of nature fail, be sure that He will 
 be a thousand-fold better to thee, even here, than such 
 
222 An Anglican and a Puritan Eirenicon 
 
 crooked, feeble, useless things as is thy R.B." She died 
 in the summer of 1681, at the age of forty-two. Her 
 knife, say Baxter, was too keen, and cut the sheath. 
 
 And now let us turn to that passage in the autobio- 
 graphy in which Baxter reviews his former self and 
 notes the alterations which time and experience and 
 perhaps also the decline of youthful vigour had brought 
 to him. There were losses, but there were also gains ; 
 and he balanced the one against the other. He felt 
 that he had now less energy, affection, and fervency in 
 preaching than in earlier years, yet his discourses then, 
 though more moving to his hearers, had both less 
 substance and less judgment than of late. His under- 
 standing was formerly quicker ; now it is better furnished 
 and better balanced. On reperusing some of his earlier 
 writings he was struck in certain places by their empti- 
 ness and insufficiency. Where he had thoroughly studied 
 a subject even in those early years his judgment was not 
 deficient ; but many things he had studied only slightly 
 and by halves, yet he would then write confidently, and 
 many things he took wholly upon trust from others, so 
 that he scarcely knew what he seemed to know. " And 
 this token of my weakness accompanied those my younger 
 studies, that I was very apt to start up controversies in 
 the way of my practical writings, and also more desirous 
 to acquaint the world with all that I took to be the 
 truth, and to assault those books by name which I 
 thought did tend to deceive them, and did contain 
 unsound and dangerous doctrine." This was partly, 
 he believes, because he was then in the vigour of 
 his youthful apprehension of truth, but also partly 
 
Jeremy Taylor, Baxter 223 
 
 because he ''did not discern how much in most of our 
 controversies is verbal, and upon mutual mistakes." 
 Now he knows how seldom men are convinced against 
 their will, and that nothing so much hinders the recep- 
 tion of the truth as urging it with harsh importunity 
 and falling too heavily on the errors of others; ''for 
 hereby you engage their honour in the business, and 
 they defend their errors as themselves, . . . and to 
 confess the truth, I am lately much prone to the 
 contrary extreme, to be too indifferent what men hold, 
 and to keep my judgment to myself." He felt impatient, 
 faultily impatient, he admits, with the frowardness and 
 self-conceit of some, from discussion with whom he was 
 tempted to take refuge in silence ; he did not perhaps 
 so sensibly bring home to himself — and this was a loss 
 — the worth of truths which had long^ found a dwellino-- 
 place in his mind. But on the other hand there was a 
 gain in his increased feeling that a holy life, founded 
 upon the principles of religion which we are all agreed 
 in, and fusing these in practice, was of more importance 
 than many opinions. In his youth he was " quickly 
 past his fundamentals," and ran up into a multitude of 
 controversies and was greatly delighted with metaphysical 
 and scholastic writings; "but the elder I grew the smaller 
 stress I laid upon these controversies and curiosities 
 (though still my intellect abhorreth confusion), as finding 
 far greater uncertainties in them than I at first discerned, 
 and finding less usefulness comparatively, even where 
 there is the greatest certainty." The creed, the Lord's 
 prayer, and the ten commandments seemed now to 
 Baxter to contain all that is essential, and in these he 
 
2 24 ^^ Anglican and a Puritan Eirenicon 
 
 found themes of meditation less easy to exhaust than 
 those suggested by the school niceties. A like change 
 of mind he had observed, he tells us, in his friend "old 
 Bishop Ussher" and in others; and he would ascribe 
 it partly to a certain decay of vitality, the inward life 
 quitting as in autumn the leaves and branches and 
 drawing down into the root ; and partly to a better 
 cause — the fact that experience leads us to value things 
 according to their use and ends. No portion of true 
 learning can be called useless ; but the best learning is 
 that which makes men better and tends to make them 
 happier. 
 
 These are simple things, easy to understand ; but 
 they are often forgotten, and they come from Baxter 
 not as abstract statements, but as realities learnt through 
 experience. He goes on to tell us of other changes. 
 In his younger days he was never tempted to doubt the 
 truth of Scripture or of Christianity; all his doubts and 
 fears were concerning his own salvation. But since then 
 his sorest assaults were on the other side, and he had 
 certainly apostatised, he says, to infidelity had he been 
 void of inward experience and the adhesion of love. 
 Now he feels and sees that the great witness to the 
 world for Christ is the Spirit as known through the 
 hearts and the lives of good men. He recognises that 
 there are degrees of belief, and even with respect to the 
 mysteries of the gospel, whatever men may pretend, the 
 subjective certainty cannot go beyond the objective 
 evidence. Nor is he ashamed to acknowledge his want 
 of complete assurance as to many things — " I am not so 
 foolish as to pretend my certainty to be greater than it 
 
Jeremy Taylor^ Baxter 225 
 
 is, merely because it is a dishonour to be less certain." 
 He does not lump all matters of belief together, and 
 swallow them by a single act of faith : '' My certainty 
 that I am a man is before my certainty that there is a 
 God. My certainty that there is a God is greater than 
 my certainty that he requireth love and holiness of his 
 creature. My certainty of this is greater than my 
 certainty of the life of reward and punishment hereafter. 
 My certainty of that is greater than my certainty of the 
 endless duration of it, and of the immortality of individu- 
 ate souls. My certainty of the Deity is greater than 
 my certainty of the Christian faith. My certainty of 
 the Christian faith in its essentials is greater than my 
 certainty of the perfection and infallibility of all the 
 Holy Scriptures. My certainty of that is greater than 
 my certainty of the meaning of many particular texts, 
 and so of the truth of many particular doctrines, or the 
 canonicalness of some certain books." And accordingly 
 as Baxter held that the truths of natural religion are 
 better established than those of revealed, the work of an 
 evidential writer should base itself, he maintains, on 
 what is most clearly ascertained. 
 
 " God, forgive my sins," murmured the indefatig- 
 able Ussher on his death-bed, " especially my sins of 
 omission." In his earlier years Baxter's trouble for sin 
 was chiefly for actual faults of thought, or word, or 
 deed ; but now he is much more troubled for inward 
 defects, and omission or want of the vital duties or 
 graces in the soul. It seems to him that some immor- 
 alities are less grievous evils than such defects as these. 
 Yet he does not set so much store as he once did on 
 
 p 
 
2 26 An Anglican and a Puritan Eirenicon 
 
 sorrow for sin or penitential tears ; love of what is best 
 and highest, joy and praise, he reckons as more profitable 
 parts of spiritual life than any lamentation over the 
 stains upon our sorry selves. For his mind has greatly 
 turned away from self and striven to fix itself upon out- 
 ward objects which alter and elevate the mind that lives 
 in communion with them. He is much more sensible 
 than formerly of the breadth and length and depth of 
 the radical sin of selfishness, and of the excellency of a 
 public spirit, and of loving our aeighbours as ourselves ; 
 and he is much more concerned than formerly about his 
 duty to God, and less solicitous about God's dealings 
 with him, dealings which may indeed be trusted to 
 the Father of our spirits. He finds great mutability 
 in his own moods, and places small confidence in 
 them ; but if anything gives him assurance of his 
 own sincerity, it is constant action and duty that 
 can do this. 
 
 Again, Baxter contrasts his early state of mind, when 
 he knew much less than now, but was much less aware 
 of his ignorance — daily delighted by new discoveries 
 of truth — with his present state when he has far meaner 
 thoughts of his own understanding, and finds far greater 
 darkness upon all things. Formerly, he had an exalted 
 opinion of learned persons and of books that professed 
 much wisdom or scholarship ; now experience has con- 
 strained him against his will to recognise that reverend, 
 learned men are imperfect : " and the better I am 
 acquainted with them, the more I perceive that we 
 are all yet in the dark ; and the more I am acquainted 
 with holy men, that are all for heaven and pretend not 
 
Jeremy Taylor^ Baxter 227 
 
 much to subtleties, the more I value and honour them." 
 As to books, he takes them less on credit than formerly; 
 he is less captivated by the style, attends more to the 
 matter, and does not, as once, accept the whole, but can 
 accept and reject in the same author. He is himself 
 less influenced than in earlier years by applause, partly 
 perhaps from having been glutted and surfeited with it. 
 He loves solitude more than formerly, and could be 
 willing to fly from the press of men ; yet, while he 
 finds it easy to despise earth, it is not easy to be con- 
 versant in heaven. He sees the dangers and tempta- 
 tions to which the great ones of the world are exposed, 
 and laments their unhappiness ; he values more the life 
 of poor labouring men, and especially the life of one that 
 has neither poverty nor riches. 
 
 In brief, he perceives more good and more evil in all 
 men than heretofore : '' I see that good men are not so 
 good as I once thought they were, but have more im- 
 perfections. . . . And I find that few are so bad as 
 either their malicious enemies or censorious separating 
 professors do imagine." Accordingly, his sympathies 
 have widened ; he cannot limit his Christian charity to 
 any one communion ; he thinks of his brother men in 
 remote parts of the world : '' Could we but go among 
 Tartarians, Turks, and Heathens, and speak their lan- 
 guage, I should be but little troubled for the silencing 
 of eio'hteen hundred ministers at once in England." 
 And yet, he adds, " I am not so much inclined to pass 
 a peremptory sentence of damnation upon all that never 
 heard of Christ ; having some more reason than I knew 
 of before to think that God's dealings with such is much 
 
2 28 An Anglican and a Puritan Eirenicon 
 
 unknown to us." As for nearer neighbours, the "Papists," 
 his judgment has greatly altered ; formerly he thought 
 that their errors in the doctrine of faith were their most 
 dangerous mistakes : '' but now I am assured that their 
 mis-expressions and misunderstanding us, with our mis- 
 takings of them, and inconvenient expressing our own 
 opinions, hath made the difference in these points to 
 appear much greater than they are; and that in some 
 of them it is next to none at all. But the great and 
 unreconcilable difficulties lie in their Church tyranny 
 and usurpations, and in their great corruptions and 
 abasement of God's worship, together with their be- 
 friending of ignorance and vice." Yet he does not now 
 doubt that God has " many sanctified ones among them," 
 and that the errors of such are like a conquerable dose 
 of poison which nature can overcome. 
 
 Baxter would still labour for a comprehension among 
 Protestants ; but he is less sanguine of its attainment 
 than formerly. He no longer lays that stress upon the 
 external modes and forms of worship which many young 
 and ardent spirits do. " I have suspected," he says with 
 his characteristic sincerity, " as perhaps the reader may 
 do, that this is from a cooling and declining from my 
 former zeal (though the truth is, I never much com- 
 plied with men of that mind) ; but I find that judgment 
 and charity are the causes of it, as far as I am able to 
 discover." He cannot be so narrow in his principles as 
 to refuse communion with a Church on the ground of 
 ceremonial differences, and were he among the Greeks, 
 the Lutherans, the Independents, or the Anabaptists, he 
 would hold occasional communion with them as Christians, 
 
Jeremy Taylor, Baxter 229 
 
 if they would give him leave. But he is farther than 
 ever from expecting great matters of unity, splendour, 
 or prosperity to the Church on earth. 
 
 One other change in his mind, which indeed makes 
 much for charity, Baxter notices : " I am much more 
 cautious," he says, " in my belief of history than hereto- 
 fore." The prodigious lies published as matters of fact 
 in his own age, and that with unblushing confidence, 
 made him incredulous of the statements of past ages, 
 unless there were freedom at the time to challenge such 
 statements, and both sides had a hearing. " Therefore, 
 I confess, I give but halting credit to most histories that 
 are written, not only against the Albigenses and Wal- 
 denses, but against most of the ancient heretics, who 
 have left us none of their own writings, in which they 
 speak for themselves ; and I heartily lament that the 
 historical writings of the ancient schismatics and heretics 
 (as they are called) perished, and that partiality suffered 
 them not to survive, that we might have had more light 
 in the Church affairs of those times, and been better 
 able to judge between the Fathers and them. And as 
 I am prone to think that few of them were so bad as 
 their adversaries made them, so I am apt to think that 
 such as the iSTovatians and Luciferians, and Indians, &c., 
 whom their adversaries commend, were very good men, 
 and more godly than most Catholics, however mistaken 
 in some one point." Baxter's discreet and charitable 
 scepticism has its application to civil as well as to 
 ecclesiastical history. The lost causes have not always 
 been the worst. 
 
 Finally, he considers some of the faults of his later 
 
230 An Anglican and a Puritan Eirenicon 
 
 years. He grieves especially over any rash words 
 uttered to those who were near and dear to him. 
 There is a pathos of a beautiful kind in his tender 
 passion of remorse : " When such are dead, though we 
 never differed in point of interest or any great matter, 
 every sour or cross provoking word which I gave them, 
 maketh me almost unreconcilable with myself, and tells 
 me how repentance brought some of old to pray to the 
 dead whom they had wronged, to forgive them in the 
 hurry of their passion." He perceives in himself, and 
 mentions by way of penitent confession, that in his 
 controversial writings he has even of late been much 
 inclined to words that are too keen and provoking. 
 It may partly be that age has soured his spirit, partly 
 that much thought and study has wearied him, and 
 rendered him impatient, partly that he revolts from 
 the flattering humour of the time ; but doubtless the 
 principal cause is, that being accustomed to address 
 common, ignorant, and ungodly people, who need the 
 plainest and keenest language, he has acquired a habit 
 which is liable to abuse : ''I repent of it, and wish 
 all over-sharp passages were expunged from my writ- 
 ings, and ask forgiveness of God and man." In 
 truth, he cares now less than ever for disputation, 
 and most approves a learning or a teaching way of 
 converse. 
 
 Such, reduced from its large dimensions in the auto- 
 biography, is Baxter's " Eirenicon." It is no array of 
 intellectual formulae, no piece of moving rhetoric ; it is 
 a simple record of personal experience, an account of the 
 growth of character. When these pages were written 
 
Jeremy Taylor, Baxter 231 
 
 the close of Baxter's life was still remote, and he had 
 much work, as a Christian teacher and as a great 
 Englishman, still to do. But he had already learnt 
 the deepest lessons of life, and was ready to depart. 
 " Ripeness," in Hamlet's phrase, " is all." 
 
VIII 
 JOHN BUNYAN 
 
 To consider Bunyan merely as a representative of Eng- 
 lish Puritanism or Nonconformity in the second half 
 of the seventeenth century would be to do an injustice 
 to his genius and his work. Had he interpreted only 
 what was peculiar to a special period and a particular 
 phase of religious thought and feeling, what he has 
 written might still be valuable as a document for his- 
 torical students, but it could not be a living power 
 with successive generations of readers of every class and 
 in almost every region of the globe. What gives vitality 
 to the " Pilgrim's Progress " is not its Puritanism as 
 such, but rather its Christian spirit and more than this 
 its profound humanity. Yet the " Pilgrim's Progress " 
 is a characteristic product of Puritan faith and feeling ; 
 and to bring this fact home to ourselves we have only 
 to imagine what Bunyan would have been if all his 
 life had been passed as that of a member of the Anglican 
 communion ; or, rather, we have to put the question 
 to ourselves — " Would an Anglican Bunyan have been 
 possible ? " If we desire to see a typical representative 
 of Anglican piety in Bunyan's century we may find such 
 
 a representative in George Herbert. It is a beautiful 
 
 232 
 
John Bunyan 233 
 
 type of religious temper, ardent withiu appointed bounds, 
 spiritual, and finding in forms and ceremonies an aid 
 to spiritual life, exalted without extravagance, regardful 
 not only of holiness but of the visible beauty of holiness, 
 delicate, pure, not driven to passionate extremes, not 
 the prey of intolerable terrors and blissful raptures ; 
 a type of piety as it lives and moves in an organised 
 and cultivated community, with a high tradition, and 
 making use of all those adjuncts to the inward life 
 which are afforded by habit and rite and emblem, those 
 regular means of relieving and systematising the emo- 
 tions, those calculated channels and aqueducts which 
 irrigate and refresh the soul. Gracious flower in the 
 garden of the Master, we are not unmindful of its 
 comeliness or its fragrance. 
 
 In such a community there is reasonable scope for 
 the play of individual feeling ; yet individual feeling 
 is directed and controlled by a general method and 
 order. In the smaller religious communities a public 
 opinion exists, which is stricter in reference to conduct, 
 and may even result in a close and tyrannous surveil- 
 lance ; but in the drama of the private passions of 
 religion there is often an intenser energy ; religion is 
 less of a complex, organised institution, and more of a 
 personal unique experience ; the relations of the soul 
 to God are less determined in appointed ways ; hence 
 wilder aberrations become possible ; but also there may 
 be an incandescence of the inward life, unallayed in its 
 glow, a flame of devout passion wdiich touches heights 
 and depths beyond what can be safely approached in 
 forms suited for the general and habitual uses of religion. 
 
2 34 John Bunyan 
 
 In a great and comprehensive community a place is 
 found for such nobly intemperate souls in some special 
 Order, which converts the enfant "perdu of piety into 
 the leader of a forlorn hope. 
 
 All that is best and most characteristic in Bunyan s 
 writings proceeds from that inward drama, in which the 
 actors were three — God, Satan, and a solitary human 
 soul. If external influences from events or men affected 
 his spirit, they came as nuncios or messengers from God 
 or from the Evil One. Institutions, churches, ordinances, 
 rites, ceremonies, could help him little, or not at all. 
 The journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial 
 City must be undertaken on a special summons by each 
 man for himself alone ; if a companion join him on the 
 way, it lightens the trials of the road ; but of the com- 
 panions '^ach one is an individual pilgrim, who has 
 started on a great personal adventure, and who as he 
 enters the dark river must undergo his particular ex- 
 periences of hope or fear?) Yet through what is most 
 personal in each of us we come upon the common 
 soul ; let any man record faithfully his most private 
 experiences in any of the great affairs of life, and his 
 words awaken in other souls innumerable echoes ; the 
 deepest community is found not in institutions, or 
 corporations, or Churches, but in the secrets of the 
 solitary heart. And because Bunyan, rich as his nature 
 was in our common humanity, put into his writings the 
 central facts of his personal life, his books are not for 
 himself alone, but for all men of like passions, who 
 must each tread for himself the same arduous way. 
 
 Must tread the same way ; but not necessarily 
 
John Biinyan 235 
 
 in the same manner. Bunyan's religious history, re- 
 corded in his wonderful autobiography "Grace abound- 
 ing to the Chief of Sinners," may be repeated age after 
 age in its essentials, for it is the history of a soul 
 struoforlinor from darkness to light, from confusion to 
 clearness, from self-division to unity, from weakness 
 to strength, from wretchedness to peace and joy ; but 
 if truths of the seventeenth century remain truths in 
 the nineteenth, they operate under different conditions ; 
 they mingle with new elements in our minds ; they 
 require new adjustments ; they must be translated into 
 modern speech. And who will say that in the religious 
 passion of an Englishman of the mid-years of the 
 seventeenth century the parallax of truth was not con- 
 siderable ? who will assert that gross mists arising from 
 his own brain did not cloud and distort the light ? If 
 the deep realities of Puritanism remain — its seriousness, 
 its ardour, its plea for the loins girt and the lamp lit — 
 yet its exact modes of thought and feeling, which did 
 their work and have been replaced by others, can no 
 more be revived than its exact forms of speech. '' Grace 
 Abounding " may truly be described as an awakening 
 book, and the moment we are really awake we perceive 
 that if we are to attempt a solution of the problems 
 and a conquest of the difficulties which beset us, we 
 must apply ourselves to the task with Bunyan's resolution 
 indeed, but not with Bunyan's intelligence. 
 
 The writings of John Bunyan fill some thousands 
 of large and closely printed pages. The strength of his 
 heart and mind are adequately felt in four works — 
 his religious autobiography, " Grace Abounding," the 
 
236 John Bunyan 
 
 *' Pilgrim's Progress," the " Holy War," and the '' Life 
 and Death of Mr Badman." Among these four there 
 is a marked inequality ; the " Holy War" is an allegory 
 rather manufactured, — manufactured with admirable 
 skill — than inspired ; the " Life and Death of Mr 
 Badman " is a religious tract of portentous size put into 
 the form of a narrative. These are remarkable books ; 
 but the one is an ingenious construction ; the other 
 is a study of the vices of middle class English life in 
 Bunyan's day, turned to purposes of warning and edifica- 
 tion. Neither of them is an immediate living experience ; 
 neither of them is an inspired vision. But these are 
 the words that describe aright the other two books 
 which form the most vital part of Bunyan's work. 
 '' Grace Abounding " is a fragment of life ; we touch, 
 in reading it, a quivering human heart ; the '' Pilgrim's 
 Progress" is a vision of a man of genius, the "Divina 
 Commedia " of Puritanism. 
 
 II 
 
 " Grace Abounding," written while Bunyan was in 
 Bedford gaol, was published in 1666, when he was 
 thirty-eight years old. It is a work of the writer's 
 maturity, not a collection of the reminiscences of old 
 age. The story which it tells was comparatively recent; 
 nothing in it is blurred or faded. Bunyan died at the 
 age of sixty, but if he had lived to be fourscore, and his 
 natural powers had remained with him, he could never 
 have spoken vaguely or faintly about events in the life 
 of his soul which had so deeply branded themselves into 
 his memory. The first characteristic of the book is 
 
John Bunyan 237 
 
 assuredly its intense realisation of things unseen. 
 Nothing else by comparison was actual to Bunyan ; 
 robust, observant, shrewd, kindly, humorous as he was, 
 the external world when set beside the invisible became 
 to him as a shadow or a dream. Heaven and hell were 
 at least as substantial for him as the roads and the 
 Bedford field-paths trodden by his feet. He carried his 
 English plainness and energy into his dealings with the 
 affairs of eternity. Our few mortal years on earth, 
 overw^helmingly important because they determine the 
 issues of life and death, were, as regards all else, lost in 
 the abyss of unending joy or anguish. He must square 
 his accounts with God as a piece of practical business, 
 awful business indeed, but one that must be settled 
 somehow on business principles. He, as truly as the 
 American idealist, but in his own positive British way, 
 must hitch his waggon to a star. 
 
 Dormant genius in youth is often awakened by the 
 love of a woman. Bunyan was capable of deep and 
 tender affection. " You must think that my wife and 
 poor children were very dear unto me," Christian con- 
 fesses ; yet having a wife he must needs be as those 
 who have none. We remember Bunyan's attachment 
 to his blind child. He regarded with honour that 
 mother in Israel, Christiana : he loved his own Mercy 
 for her early devotion to the pilgrim's way and to 
 charitable works ; he felt a manly protectiveness 
 towards Mr Despondency's daughter, whose name was 
 Much-Afraid. But he could not abandon his heart to 
 any creature of earth. Perhaps he feared his own ruder 
 passions. From his first conversion God made him 
 
238 John Bunyan 
 
 " shy of women " ; it was a rare thing to see him carry- 
 it pleasant towards any one of them : " The common 
 salutation of a woman I abhor ; 'tis odious to me in 
 whomsoever I see it. Their company alone, I cannot 
 away with. T seldom so much as touch a woman's 
 hand, for I think these things are not so becoming me." 
 And he noticed with disapproval — Butler has said 
 nothing more severe — that others when they gave the 
 holy kiss made baulks, saluting the most handsome and 
 letting the ill-favoured go. For Bunyan the difference 
 between human beings was of another kind than their 
 good looks or their uncomeliness — they were inhabitants 
 of the City of Destruction, or were on their way to the 
 Celestial City. The nobler aspects of human passion 
 he did not attempt to interpret ; from one of the most 
 inspiring motives of imaginative genius he was cut off. 
 
 Public affairs, which rouse the ambition of manhood, 
 left Bunyan almost untouched. As a youug man he 
 served for a short time in the army, doubtless on the 
 side of the Parliament ; but, though his marchings and 
 counter-marches may have served to give exactitude to 
 his account of the military evolutions of Emmanuel's 
 captains in the " Holy War," he had no enthusiam for 
 the good old cause ; he was probably a reluctant fighter, 
 who would not of his own accord choose to cut short a 
 human life, whether of saint or sinner ; and his most 
 vivid recollection of that episode of his career was that 
 on one occasion he was himself by special Providence 
 preserved from death at a time when death would have 
 meant the eternal perdition of his soul. At a later 
 date, in Restoration days, whatever interest Bunyan 
 
John Bunyan 239 
 
 took in public affairs seems to have been connected 
 with the freedom of worship of God's suffering faithful, 
 the Nonconformists ; even for them he would not pur- 
 chase indulgence at the price of an accommodation with 
 Giant Pope. The degradation of his country in the 
 councils of Europe counted as nothing with Bunyan 
 in comparison with the ruin of a single soul. Pre- 
 eminently English in the character of his genius, he 
 was lacking in an Englishman's patriotic pride or 
 shame. 
 
 The word '' otherworldliness " is sometimes used as 
 a term of reproach for such a temper as that of Bunyan ; 
 one who devotes himself to the concerns of this earthly 
 sphere is worldly ; is it not the same self-interested 
 habit of mind, fastening on the affairs of futurity, which 
 creates such alarms and hopes, such agonies and raptures 
 as beset the mind of Bunyan ? And thus we are given 
 to understand that there is little real difference between 
 the man who is absorbed in the business of time and 
 him who is devoted to the interests of eternity, except 
 perhaps that the latter is possessed of a superior kind 
 of selfishness. Such a criticism as this may contain a 
 just censure of the fastings and macerations of a hermit 
 in the Thebaid ; yet even he may believe that he serves 
 mankind by his prayers, that a retreat from the evil 
 world is necessary to preserve the regenerating ideal 
 of sanctity, or that, in view of the endless tasks of 
 eternity, his brief days of mortal life may be well spent 
 in processes of self-imposed discipline and education. 
 For one who firmly grasps this earth, and dismisses 
 as a dream the life beyond the grave, worldliness. 
 
240 John Bunyan 
 
 pursued on his own behalf and that of his fellows, 
 is a virtue. This is to live, at least for an hour, 
 wisely, with his loins girt aud his lamp burning. 
 He does well to drink a deep draught of existence 
 while it is still possible. And for one who believes 
 in a life eternal, " otherworldliness," pursued vigor- 
 ously on his own behalf and that of his fellows, is a 
 virtue ; it is at once the highest prudence and the 
 noblest charity. Whoever — was it Charles Kingsley ? 
 — spoke scornfully of the anxiety to " save one's own 
 dirty soul " indulged in an idle flourish of rhetoric. 
 St Paul, in a passion of charity, wished that he were 
 accursed from Christ for his brethren ; but the very 
 words imply that what he was prepared to surrender, 
 in the heroism of self-abandonment, was an inestimable 
 possession. Bunyan, like St Paul, was no merely 
 egoistic devotee ; he was abundant in labours for 
 others ; his years of imprisonment were endured be- 
 cause he could not consent to cease from those labours. 
 But he felt that he could not direct others on the 
 pilgrimage, and do the work of a Great-heart, until 
 he himself was acquainted with the way. For one 
 who accepted Bunyan's premises, it was right and it 
 was inevitable to be profoundly concerned about future 
 bliss or woe. Imagine any man of serious and ardent 
 nature, imagine Bunyan, or read his autobiography, 
 and see him, possessed by an assurance — though not 
 undisturbed now and again by cold spasms of doubt — 
 that heaven was a veritable fact, that hell was real 
 as his own soul ; on the one hand everlasting felicity, 
 purity, light, on the other everlasting torture, darkness, 
 
John Bunyan 241 
 
 and gnashing of teeth ; on this side the presence of 
 God and of his shining ones for ever, on that the 
 perpetual companionship of devils and the damned ; 
 imagine him aware of the fragility of human life — 
 a breathing, sensitive, passionate human creature, sus- 
 pended by a thread between paradise and the pit ; 
 imagine this, and applaud him for the fervour of his 
 otherworldliness. ^ 
 
 Such was the situation ; his own soul overwhelmed 
 by blood guiltiness ; death imminent, judgment certain ; 
 God inviting him, and a thousand devils waiting to 
 lay hold upon him. What could Bunyan do but put 
 his fingers in his ears to shut out all voices of earth, 
 refuse to look behind him, and run forward with the 
 cry '' Life, life, eternal life." But the way that 
 stretched before him was neither short nor smooth. If 
 the most striking characteristic of " Grace Abounding " 
 is its vivid realisation of the unseen, hardly less im- 
 pressive is the sense it leaves with us of the difficulty 
 and uncertainty of the writer's progress. He was 
 like a swimmer making for shore in a heavy sea, 
 beset by cross and contrary currents. Now he strikes 
 out with resolute arms, and makes a slight advance ; 
 instantly he is overwhelmed by some violent wave, 
 is buffetted hither and thither, is swept sideways, or 
 is caught by some refluent surge and hurried back 
 
 1 In "The Saint's Everlasting Rest " (I. vi,) Baxter considers the ques- 
 tion •' Whether to make salvation our end be not mercenary or legal ? " 
 " It is properly mercenary," he answers, " when we expect it as wages for 
 work done . . . Otherwise it is only such a mercenariness as Christ 
 commandeth. For consider what this end is — it's the fniition of 
 God in Christ, and if seeking Christ be mercenary, I desire to be 
 30 mercenary." 
 
 Q 
 
242 John Bunyan 
 
 against his utmost effort. All the time Bunyan's 
 mind was working terribly ; yet it seems as if no 
 advance were made. In some records of spiritual 
 experience we read of an immediate transit from 
 darkness to light ; and who that has an open mind 
 for facts would doubt the reality of sudden conversion 
 any more than he would doubt the reality of love 
 at first sight ? We read in other lives of a steadfast 
 progress towards good. St Teresa could say " This 
 attainment is at present beyond my reach ; but with 
 the aid of discipline and Divine grace, twelve months 
 hence I shall be able to do things that are now 
 impossible." She knew how to labour and to wait ; 
 she knew how to turn to her advantage a season of 
 aridity. With Bunyan, during the period of which 
 he has given us an account it was otherwise ; we may 
 call the whole process of his conversion, if we please, 
 a crisis ; but it was a crisis prolonged over what 
 seemed long ages of agony. Doubtless from first to 
 last he was making advance ; but he could not reckon 
 on it for an hour; he was the victim of Divine grace, 
 the puppet of Satanic temptation. 
 
 This resulted in part from the undisciplined violence 
 of his emotions and his imagination. When he wrote 
 the " Pilgrim's Progress " Bunyan was master of his 
 imaginative power ; the visions which came to him 
 were controlled and ordered ; when he underwent the 
 experiences related in ''Grace Abounding" his imagina- 
 tion mastered him. His fears and hopes haled him 
 this way or that ; his visions attacked him as if they 
 had an objective life ; they were of the nature of 
 
John Bunyan 243 
 
 an obsession. One Sunday, in the midst of a game 
 at cat, a voice suddenly darted from heaven into his 
 soul, uttering the words, '' Wilt thou leave thy sins 
 and go to heaven or have thy sins and go to hell ? " 
 When at his favourite recreation of bell-ringing in 
 the steeple-house, the thought came quickly '' How 
 if one of the bells should fall ? " ; and then '' How 
 if the steeple itself should fall ? " and he dared not 
 stand there any longer but was forced to flee. Doubt- 
 ing whether he had faith, as he walked between Elstow 
 and Bedford, he felt that he must put the vital question 
 to an immediate test, and he was on the point of de- 
 termining the matter by the success or failure of an 
 experiment in the miraculous : " I must say to the 
 puddles that were in the horsepads Be dry and to 
 the dry places Be you the puddles." The words 
 '' Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you " 
 sounded within his soul, and were called after him 
 so distinctly that he turned his head to see the 
 speaker. He compared himself in his temptations 
 to a child whom some gipsy has taken up under 
 her apron and is carrying from friend and country : 
 "Kick sometimes I did, and also shriek and cry, and 
 yet I was as bound in the wings of the temptation, 
 and the wind would carry me away." With a horrible 
 fascination he longed, as it were, to precipitate himself 
 to destruction, so to foreclose all uncertainty, by sinning 
 the sin against the Holy Ghost, and was often ready 
 to clap his hand to his chin to hold his mouth from 
 opening, or to leap with his head downwards into some 
 muck-hill hole to keep his mouth from speaking. 
 
244 John Bunyan 
 
 In prayer he was assailed by the Tempter, who dealt 
 with his victim in the way of scornful grotesquerie, 
 presenting to his fancy the form of a bush, a bull, 
 a besom, and bidding him pray to these. The direst 
 of his trials was the terrible suggestion that as Esau 
 sold his birth-right for a mess of pottage, so should 
 he sell the Christ whom he had found. The words 
 ''Sell him, sell him, sell him," echoed through his 
 heart for hours together, and in opposing the tempta- 
 tion, " my very body," he says, '' would be put into 
 action or motion, by way of pushing or thrusting 
 with my hands or elbows, still answering, as fast 
 as the destroyer said ' Sell him,' ' I will not, I will 
 not, I will not, I will not, no, not for thousands, 
 thousands, thousands of worlds'." His soul was like 
 a broken vessel, driven as with the winds — " I was 
 but as those that jostle against the rocks, more broken, 
 scattered, and rent." 
 
 Looking back, when he wrote the ''Pilgrim's Progress," 
 Bunyan thought that fear tends much to men's good at 
 their beginning to go on pilgrimage. But fear has its 
 special risks. There was one Temporary, a forward 
 man at one time in religion, who often had tears in his 
 eyes, but now a backslider ; his conscience was awakened 
 by the terrors of hell, but his mind was not changed by 
 the desire for heaven for its own sake ; the fear of 
 damnation chilled ; hardness of heart was left behind ; 
 and so the last state of that man was worse than the 
 first. 
 
 During these trials Bunyan was in essentials a 
 solitary, or in company with only God and the 
 
John Bunyan 245 
 
 Destroyer. If external influences reached him, they 
 were seized by the forces of his own soul, and were 
 converted into part of the secret, inward drama. The 
 parson preached against Sabbath desecration, and 
 Bunyau became a prey to the alarms of conscience. 
 A woman of loose life reproached him for his profane 
 oaths, and instantly he stood in shame, not before her but 
 before the God of heaven : '' hanging down my head, I 
 wished with all my heart I might be a little child 
 again, that my father might learn me to speak without 
 this wicked way of swearing." Three or four poor 
 women sitting in the sun, were overheard by Bunyan 
 while they talked about the things of God, speaking of 
 the new birth as if joy made them speak, and he felt 
 his own heart begin to shake. Now and again he tried 
 to break his mind to humble folk of Bedford, and they 
 brought him as a counsellor holy Mr Gifford, but 
 Bunyan seemed only to grow worse and worse. The 
 people of God would pity him, and tell him of the 
 promises ; " but they had as good have told me that I 
 must reach the sun with my fingers as have bidden me 
 receive or rely upon the promise." If he fell into the 
 slough of Despond, '' whither the scum and filth that 
 attends conviction for sin doth continually run," no 
 man whose name was Help came to pluck him out. 
 
 In truth Bunyan's case was too complex to be dealt 
 with successfully by the spiritual physicians of Bedford 
 nonconformity. And we may doubt whether a nineteenth- 
 century pathologist could have served him effectually 
 with modern therapeutics. It is more interesting to 
 conjecture how it would have fared with Bunyan had he 
 
246 John Bunyan 
 
 come under the influence of some wise old Catholic 
 director, a master of the learning of the confessional, 
 skilled in the secrets of the human heart, severe yet 
 gentle, bold yet full of discretion. Such a director 
 would hardly have attempted to stem the tide of 
 Bunyan's passions, but he might have diverted some 
 of the current into a course of discipline, and so have 
 eased for a time the onset and turbulence of the flood. 
 Yet it may have been better that Bunyan should work 
 his own way to clearness and to calm after the strife. 
 Certain it is that Mr Worldly- wiseman would have 
 made the case only tenfold worse ; nor could the fair 
 speeches of that pretty young man, his son, whose name 
 is Civility, have comforted the pilgrim's agonised heart. 
 The burden 'Would but have seemed mure crushing, and 
 flashes of fire issuing from the hill would have- made 
 the sufferer's heart tremble within him. 
 
 Macaulay, sane and strong for the generous uses of 
 earth yet not quite a sure searcher of spirits, attempts 
 to gauge the actual dimensions of Bunyan's burden, and 
 finds that after all it was not so very bulky ; to a 
 reasonable wayfarer it need not have proved oppressive. 
 The honest tinker was not vicious ; he married when 
 young and was a faithful husband ; he was quickly 
 cured of swearing ; bell-ringing, and playing at hockey 
 on Sundays were his worst offences. Why should he 
 have brought railing accusations against himself? On 
 the whole Bunyan might have been moderately com- 
 fortable. But he was ignorant and excitable, and he 
 lived in an age of excitement. The old director whom 
 we have imagined, Father Discretion or Father Experi- 
 
John Bunyan 247 
 
 ence, would not have spoken thus. He would have 
 known the difference between measuring sin from 
 without and discovering unworthiness in the inward 
 parts. He would have known that the depth of shadow 
 is proportioned to the brightness of the light ; that the 
 consciousness of our own abjectness and defilement is 
 inexpressibly deepened by our apprehension of a 
 righteousness and purity above and beyond our poor 
 attainment. Undoubtedly it is part of the duty of a 
 biographer of Bunyan to show that he was far from 
 being an outrageous reprobate ; such a reprobate would 
 probably not have suffered from Bunyan's griefs. Un- 
 doubtedly Bunyan 's religious perturbation was extreme ; 
 but we interpret the drama of his soul in the poorest 
 and shallowest way if we ascribe the vividness of his 
 sense of sin to excitement in an excitable age. 
 
 Much of Bunyan's torturing alarm, but also much of 
 his blessedness, many accesses of sudden joy, came from 
 the manner in which texts from the Bible fastened upon 
 his imagination and his feelings. He had not learnt to 
 think of the. books of Scripture as pieces of Hebrew 
 literature to be approached in a critical spirit. He had 
 not learnt to regard them as utterances of the highest 
 moral genius of humanity. Nor did he attenuate the 
 idea of inspiration to some vague and wandering 
 luminosity. For Bunyan the Bible from cover to 
 cover was the authentic voice of God. It was a living 
 power able to dart forth terrors or comfort. That 
 drama of the inner life, in which the actors were God, 
 Satan, and a human soul, was a drama in which magic 
 played a part, and the talisman instinct with firiest 
 
248 John B tiny an 
 
 force was the Bible. Bunyan was the martyr, but also 
 the glorified child, of Puritanic scripturalism. He did 
 not ask the doctors or the Church to interpret the dark 
 sayings of the Divine word ; they leaped out upon him, 
 now like angels waving swords of flame, now like 
 winged messengers of consolation. At one season of 
 gloom the sentence fell with weight upon his spirit 
 "Did ever any trust in God and were confounded?" 
 Blessed words ! and he turned to search for them in his 
 Bible. He could not find them ; yet still they abode 
 upon him. After about a year he lighted upon the 
 sentence, not in the Bible, but alas ! in the Apocrypha, 
 at which he confesses he was daunted. In great 
 distress he feared that the day of grace might be past, 
 or at least that God had already reckoned up the 
 number of his elect in Bedford ; but the words, '* And 
 yet there is room " broke in upon his mind, and they 
 were sweet words to him. The terror assailed him that 
 he was predestinated to reprobation ; but the text of a 
 sermon which he heard, " Behold, thou art fair, my 
 love," kindled in his spirit; "thou art my love " sang 
 itself over and over in his heart, so that he could not 
 tell how to contain till he got home : " I thought I 
 could have spoken of his love and of his mercy to me 
 to the very crows that sat upon the ploughed lands 
 before me." Doubts that his zeal would soon be 
 quenched caused him icy shivers ; but he had a sweet 
 glance from the fifth of second Corinthians, with hints, 
 and touches, and short visits from other words of 
 comfort — " only they lasted not long, but like to 
 Peter's sheet of a sudden were caught up from me to 
 
John Bunyan 249 
 
 heaven again." For some time he was under the 
 horrible apprehension that he had committed the un- 
 pardonable sin, and was an uglier man than Judas. 
 Bodily pain afflicted him ; he felt as if his breast-bone 
 would have split asunder ; and this perhaps was the 
 mysterious mark of Cain. But once, while he was 
 walking to and fro in a good man's shop and lamenting 
 his state, a noise of wind rushed in upon him, and he 
 heard a voice speaking — '' Didst ever refuse to be 
 justified by the blood of Christ ? " ; upon which that 
 word of God fell on him with power " See that ye 
 refuse not him that speaketh." At length he could 
 venture to come nigh unto some most fearful and 
 terrible Scriptures, and found that their visage was 
 altered — " they looked not so grimly on me as before 
 I thought they did." 
 
 These are only a few examples, out of many, of the 
 spells cast on Bunyan's spirit by that mighty book of 
 wizardry, the Bible. He read it not as literature, but 
 as the scroll of doom ; yet, unconsciously, it became a 
 literature for him, and acted as the chief formative 
 influence on his imagination and his style. Its words 
 were not only the rallying points for his hopes and fears, 
 but their music lived within the cells of his fancy. The 
 portion which his first wife brought him consisted of 
 two books, which her good father had left her at his 
 death, " The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven," by 
 Arthur Dent, and Bishop Bayly's " Practice of Piety." 
 Bunyan's biographer, Dr Brown, discovers some traces 
 of the influence of Dent's homely dialogue in the " Life 
 and Death of Mr Badman." The " Acta Sanctorum " 
 
250 Jo hit Bunymt 
 
 of Protestants — Foxe's "Book of Martyrs" — doubtless 
 stimulated Bunyan's heart and his imagination ; there 
 he read how many of the kindred of Faithful had played 
 the man ; how they had been scourged and buffeted, 
 and burnt to ashes at the stake, and how the chariot 
 and horses had carried them up through the clouds, 
 with sound of trumpet, the nearest way to the celestial 
 gate. In his earlier religious trials the only volume, 
 beside the Scriptures, which wrought powerfully upon 
 him was Luther's commentary on the Galatians. An 
 old copy, falling to pieces, came into Bunyan's hands, 
 and it seemed as if the book had been written out 
 of his own heart : " I do prefer this book of Martin 
 Luther," he writes, "... (excepting the Holy Bible) 
 before all the books that ever I have seen, as most fit 
 for a wounded conscience." 
 
 The fluctuations of Bunyan's passions obscure the fact 
 that a real though variable progress was being made to- 
 wards clearness and strength. First came the conviction 
 of sin and the terrors of death and judgment. Than for 
 a time, like his own pilgrim, Bunyan turned aside to- 
 wards the village of Morality, where Mr Legality dwells ; 
 he laboured to establish his own righteousness ; he was 
 reputed to be godly, yet he found that, after all, he was 
 nothing but ''a poor painted hypocrite." In the end 
 he yielded himself wholly to something without and be- 
 yond himself, something which he felt to be the highest ; 
 there was some great power of God to which of right he 
 belonged ; not by agonised introspection, not by moral 
 manipulation could he save his soul ; he must abandon 
 all spiritual egoism, and simply cast himself in with the 
 
Joint Bunyan 251 
 
 divine order of things ; its meaning was good, its end was 
 righteousness, and he was himself inchided in its great 
 movement. Bunyan would not have used such words 
 as these ; they would have sounded to him like the 
 phrases of Talkative, mere notion, as empty of religion 
 as the white of an Qgg is of savour ; but they interpret 
 the fact of his experience to modern ears. His own 
 word would have been that unless he obtained the 
 righteousness of a man that never had sinned, neither 
 his own nor all the righteousness of the world could save 
 him. It was his way of asserting that the entrance to 
 the blessed life is through deliverance from self; it was 
 his way of hitching his waggon to a star. 
 
 '' One day," he writes, " as I was passing in the field, 
 and that too with some dashes on my conscience, fearing 
 lest yet all was not right, suddenly this sentence fell 
 upon my soul, ' Thy righteousness is in heaven,' and 
 methought withal I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus 
 Christ at God's right hand. There, I say, was my 
 righteousness ; so that wherever I was, or whatever I 
 was adoing, God could not say of me, ' He wants my 
 righteousness,' for that was just before Him. I also 
 saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of mind 
 that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad 
 frame that made my righteousness worse ; for my 
 righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself, ' the same 
 yesterday, to-day, and forever.' Now did the chains 
 fall off" my legs ; I was loosed from my afflictions and 
 irons ; my temptations also fled away ; so that, from 
 that time, those dreadful Scriptures of God left off to 
 trouble me ; now went I also home rejoicing for the 
 
252 Johi Btmyan 
 
 grace and love of God.' Clouds of darkness came now 
 and again after this crisis ; but a sun had arisen of 
 power to dissipate the clouds. 
 
 Amid all his violences of religious emotion, Bunyan 
 never lost a certain saving good sense. Shrewdness and 
 manly energy are written on that face, which is familiar 
 to us throuo^h the animated drawins^ of Robert White. 
 The dreamer of the " Pilgrim's Progress " as little 
 resembled in aspect the visionary of the Divine Comedy 
 as Elstow of the seventeenth century resembled medi- 
 aeval Florence. He was a sturdy Englishman of the 
 midlands, tall of stature, strong-boned, with ruddy 
 cheeks and sparkling eyes. ' The voices that haunted 
 him were commonly brought to the test which he and 
 his contemporaries regarded as the most trustworthy — 
 that of Scripture. It was indeed by the same test that 
 Saint Teresa distinguished between diabolic and divine 
 locutions — '' that which purports to come from God," 
 she declares, '' is to be received only in so far as it 
 corresponds with the sacred writiugs." As a preacher 
 Bunyan, although it was not the habit of the time, in 
 general avoided controversy and made edification his 
 chief object. During his earlier years he met with some 
 of the Ranters' books, which were held in high esteem 
 by several of his acquaintances ; one of his intimate 
 friends, indeed, turned a most devilish ranter, and, on 
 the plea that the saints are delivered from the moral 
 law, gave himself up to all manner of filthiness. Bunyan 
 rebuked the young man for his wicked ways, and then 
 separated from his company. For his own part he held 
 fast to the old plain rules of morality, and cared not if 
 
John Bunyan 253 
 
 wayward enthusiasts condemned him as legal and dark. 
 That ancient gentleman, Mr Conscience, once recorder 
 of Mansoul, was appointed by Emmanuel subordinate 
 preacher under the Lord Chief Secretary, and was 
 authorised to express his master's will in all terrene 
 and domestic matters. Bunyan did not slight the sub- 
 ordinate preacher's office. His animal appetites might 
 plead on behalf of the " Ranting errors," but he would 
 not suborn his conscience, and he had his safeguard in 
 the words of the Old and New Testaments — " the 
 Bible," he says, " was precious to me in those days." 
 Those keen eyes of Bunyan brought him reports of all 
 the homely facts of life ; his Puritan inwardness was 
 balanced by his faculty of shrewd observation. He 
 had that happy adjunct of common sense — the gift of 
 humour. 
 
 Some things are of that nature as to make 
 His fancy chuckle while his heart doth ache ; 
 When Jacob saw his Rachel with the sheep, 
 He did at the same time both kiss and weep. 
 
 So Bunyan justifies the wholesome laughter of the 
 '* Pilgrim's Progress." He was no mystic in the 
 vulgar meaning of that word, but a downright, 
 practical Englishman, who happened to be also a 
 man of imaginative genius. 
 
 Ill 
 
 With such powers of observation and of insight, he 
 was no mean discerner of characters. The " Pilgrim's 
 Progress " is a gallery of portraits, admirably dis- 
 criminated, and as convincing in their self-verification 
 
2 54 John Bunyan 
 
 as those of Holbein. His personages live for us as 
 few figures outside the drama of Shakespeare live. 
 They are not, like the humourists of Ben Jonson's 
 plays, constructed by heaping a load of observations 
 on a series of ethical abstractions ; they are of a 
 reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. We are 
 on terms of intimate acquaintance with each of them ; 
 with Talkative, the son of one Say-well, who dwelt in 
 Prating-row, — wherever the notional apprehension of 
 things is taken for the real apprehension, there is that 
 discoursing wit to-day ; with By-ends, always zealous 
 when a good cause goes in silver slippers, a gentleman 
 of excellent quality, though his grandfather was but a 
 waterman, looking one way and rowing another ; with 
 that brisk lad Ignorance, who came into the path by a 
 little crooked lane leading from the country of Conceit ; 
 there is a narrow gate in science and in art as well as 
 in religion, which the kinsfolk of Bunyan's Ignorance 
 decline to enter ; with Mrs Lightmind, who yesterday 
 at Madam Wanton's was as merry as the maids — surely 
 she is cousin to the brothers Jolly and Griggish, who 
 came to an ill fate at the hands of my Lord Willbewill, 
 and so ended their ticking and toying with my Lord's 
 daughters ; with Mr Brisk, who, since Mercy was of a 
 fair countenance and therefore the more alluringf, offered 
 her his love, but was dashed when she explained that 
 her needlework was meant to clothe the naked, and 
 decided on reconsideration that she was indeed a pretty 
 lass, but troubled with ill conditions ; with that old 
 pilgrim Father Honest, a cock of the right kind, for he 
 had said the truth ; with Mr Fearing, one of the most 
 
John Bunyan 255 
 
 troublesome of pilgrims, a chicken-hearted man, yet 
 having the root of the matter in him, and who at last 
 almost dryshod crossed the river, when it was at its 
 lowest ebb ; with Mr Feeble-mind, who must needs be 
 carried up the Hill Difficulty by one of the Interpreter's 
 servants, yet bravely resolved to run when he could, to 
 go when he could not run, and to creep when he could 
 not go ; with Mr Ready-to-halt, who, despite the crutch, 
 footed it well in view of the dead giant's head, hand in 
 hand with Despondency's daughter Much-afraid, both 
 answering the music handsomely ; with Madam Bubble, 
 that tall comely dame, somewhat swarthy of complexion, 
 speaking very smoothly, and giving you a smile at the 
 end of a sentence, w^hile still she kept fingering her 
 money as if it were her heart's delight ; with Mr 
 Valiant-for-truth, Mr Standfast, who crossing the river 
 in a great calm, like the saintly John Wesley, when he 
 was half-way in, stood for a while and talked to his com- 
 panions ; with the dozen enlightened jurymen of Vanity 
 Fair, and many another. Yet these are but examples 
 from the drawings of the Holbein of spiritual England. 
 
 One book of Bunyan's is, indeed, a detailed study 
 of English middle-class life and of its vulgar vices. 
 Recent criticism has assigned to "The Life and Death 
 of Mr Badman " a higher place in literature than it 
 deserves ; but it presents one side of its author's mind 
 more fully than any other of his writings. Having 
 published the first part of the " Pilgrim's Progress," and 
 enjoyed the surprise of its extraordinary success, Bunyan 
 seems to have thought of presenting a counterpart in 
 the story of one who had travelled another road than 
 
256 John Bunyan 
 
 that of Christian, the road leading not to the Celestial 
 City, but to the gates of hell. The book is not a vision 
 or a dream ; it lacks the beautiful ideality of the " Pil- 
 grim's Progress," which has made that allegory of uni- 
 versal interest. It has, on the other hand, something of 
 Hogarth's naturalism and something of Hogarth's enforce- 
 ment of morality by means of the tomahawk ; it is the 
 tale of an Idle Apprentice ; it is a bourgeois Pake's Pro- 
 gress. The narrative, thrown into the form of dialogue, 
 is interrupted by discourses on the several species of sin 
 practised by that rascally provincial tradesman, the hero, 
 with many examples drawn from real life of God's judg- 
 ments against sinners. 
 
 The book had its origin not in Bunyan's personal 
 experiences, idealised and purified by the imagination, 
 but in his observations of the evil that lay around him. 
 Even as a child Badman was a highly promising pupil 
 of the destroyer — addicted to lying, a pilferer, abandoned 
 (like young Eichard Baxter) to the joy of robbing 
 orchards, a blackmouthed wretch who cursed and swore, 
 a boy who could not endure the Lord's Day, swarming, 
 indeed, with sins as a beggar is with vermin. When 
 his good father would rebuke him, what would young 
 Badman do but stand gloating, hanging down his head 
 in a sullen pouching manner, while he secretly wished 
 for the old man's death ? As an apprentice he read 
 beastly romances and books full of ribaldry, slept in 
 church, or stared at pretty faces and whispered and 
 giggled during sermon, being thus grown to a pro- 
 digious height of wickedness. His knavish fingers 
 found their way to his master's cash-box, and soon 
 
John Bunyan 257 
 
 his first apprenticeship closed disgracefully in flight. 
 After a second apprenticeship, during which a base-born 
 child was laid to his charge, Badman set up in business, 
 but through dissipation, high-living, idleness, and evil 
 company quickly came to the end of the money obtained 
 from his over-indulgent father. To retrieve his fortunes 
 he sought out a maid who had a good portion, and as 
 she was godly, he made religion his stalking-horse ; but 
 after marriage he hanged his religion upon the hedge, 
 oppressed his unhappy wife, squandered her coin upon 
 his drabs, and towards morning would come home as 
 drunk as a swine. He reached a yet lower depth of 
 degradation, when he turned informer, obtaining a 
 wretched hire by betrayal to the authorities of the 
 nonconformist religious assemblies. Running up credit 
 and paying five shillings in the pound — the neatest 
 way of thieving — Badman in time gained hatfuls of 
 money. He knew all tricks of the trade — the art of 
 deceitful weights and measures, that of mingling com- 
 modities so that what was bad might go off, and he 
 was skilled in misreckoning men in their accounts. So 
 he goes, with hardly an interruption, from bad to worse. 
 During a dangerous fit of sickness, indeed, consequent 
 on the breaking of his leg in a drunken bout, he thought 
 of death and hell-fire, and altered his carriage to his 
 wife, who was now his duck and dear ; but his repent- 
 ance was worth no more than the howlincr of a dosr. 
 The broken-hearted wife dies, and Badman is tricked 
 into marriage with a woman as wicked as himself. At 
 last dropsy and consumption seize their victim ; he lies 
 upon his bed given up to hardness and stupidity of 
 
 R 
 
258 John Bunyan 
 
 spirit. " Pray how was he," asks Attentive, " at his 
 death ? was death strong upon him ? or did he die with 
 ease, quietly ? " The last and severest earthly judgment 
 of God is not an agony of remorse ; it is apathy. He 
 died ''as quietly as a lamb." And with this terrible 
 word Bunyan's book concludes. 
 
 Such a narrative as this could not connect itself with 
 work of an order so different as the " Pilgrim's Pro- 
 gress." The two inventions move on different planes. 
 The " Pilgrim's Progress " is the poetry of Bunyan's 
 soul ; the '' Life and Death of Mr Badman " is the 
 prose of his moral observation of the world. Successive 
 generations may in general be trusted to preserve the 
 heirlooms of literature. " Mr Badman " is not one of 
 these ; but it deserves the attention of a student of 
 Bunyan, and the attention of a student of Bunyan's 
 
 age. 
 
 IV 
 
 The great allegories of human life commonly make 
 choice between two modes of representation ; they 
 describe life as a journey or they describe life as a 
 warfare. The '' Divine Comedy " is a journey through 
 the realms of eternal life and death ; the ** Vision of 
 Piers Plowman " is a pilgrimage in search of the 
 highest good ; the '' Faerie Queene " is a series of 
 knightly crusades against the powers of evil. In his 
 two allegories Bunyan has presented both conceptions ; 
 the " Pilgrim's Progress " is a journey from the City 
 of Destruction to the Celestial City ; the '' Holy War " 
 tells of the assault upon the town of Mansoul by 
 
John Bunyau 259 
 
 Diabolus, his conquest by fraud and force, the recapture 
 of the town for Shaddai, its lawful possessor, by Prince 
 Emmanuel, its invasion and partial ruin by the enemy, 
 and the final victory of righteousness. 
 
 In one respect, and in that alone, can Bunyan's 
 later allegory the " Holy War " be said to surpass 
 the " Pilgrim's Progress " — it is more ingenious in the 
 adaptation of its details. The design was not fortunate ; 
 there is no central personage having the parts and 
 passions of a man ; the town, with its walls, and gates, 
 and citadel, is an inanimate abstraction — a generalisa- 
 tion of humanity, not a living and breathing human 
 creature. The multitude of its inhabitants, the multi- 
 tude of their foes and of their friends, parcel out the 
 powers of good and evil in the soul into fragments and 
 atoms. No single figure interests us supremely ; not 
 one lives in the popular memory. We hardly feel on 
 closer terms of familiarity with Captain Credence, or 
 Captain Goodhope, or Captain Patience, than with the 
 five points of Calvinistic controversy. In the '' Pilgrim's 
 Progress " womanhood is presented side by side with 
 manhood ; even in the first Part gracious female forms 
 appear ; in the '' Holy War " counsellors and warriors 
 leave no place for women ; half of our human society 
 is unrepresented. The pilgrimage of Christian is an 
 individual experience idealised in art ; it is the Wahrheit 
 und Dichtung of Bunyan's spiritual life ; the allegory 
 of Mansoul is a piece of universal history ; it is the work 
 of Bunyan the preacher, who, having taken his side 
 in the warfare of good and evil, was interested in a 
 great cause. But the epic of a cause requires as its 
 
26o John Bunyan 
 
 representative a champion exposed to the vicissitudes 
 of fortune and in the end falling or triumphant. Bun- 
 yan's Emmanuel is too much of a deus ex machina ; 
 his beleaguered city is an abstraction of humanity ; 
 the epic is one without a hero. Bunyan's ingenuity 
 in detail astonishes and fatigues the reader ; poetry is 
 replaced by wit in the form of allegory. One episode, 
 indeed, rises to the height of Bunyan's nobler work, 
 but it is difficult to find a second of equal merit. The 
 town of Mansoul has been conquered by Emmanuel, 
 who has not yet made his entrance and remains in the 
 fields. The guilty inhabitants, freed from the tyranny 
 of their oppressors, are still uncertain of the temper of 
 their deliverer. The prisoners, with ropes about their 
 necks, go forth to stand before the Prince ; trembling 
 and amazed they hear his doom of mercy ; " the grace, 
 the benefit, the pardon, was sudden, glorious, and so big 
 that they were not able, without staggering, to stand 
 up under it." The joy of Bunyan's own heart, when 
 he could have spoken of God's love and mercy to the 
 very crows sitting on the furrows, returned upon him : 
 *' They went down to the camp in black, but they came 
 back to the town in white ; they went down to the camp 
 in ropes, they came back in chains of gold ; they went 
 down to the camp in fetters, but came back with their 
 steps enlarged under them ; they went also to the camp 
 looking for death, but they came back from thence with 
 assurance of life ; they went down to the camp with 
 heavy hearts, but came back again with pipe and tabor 
 playing before them. So, as soon as they were come 
 to Eye-gate, the poor and tottering town of Mansoul 
 
John Bunyan 261 
 
 adventured to give a shout ; and they gave such a shout 
 as made the captains in the Prince's army leap at the 
 sound thereof." 
 
 The '' Holy War " is a construction, not a vision. 
 The '' Pilgrim's Progress " came to Bunyan unsought. 
 His imagination seemed to be the subject of its own 
 involuntary creations. He tells us in ''Grace Abounding" 
 how, in the days of his spiritual distress, the blessed 
 state of the poor and pious folk of Bedford was imaged 
 before his inner eye. He saw them set upon the sunny 
 side of a high mountain, refreshing themselves with the 
 pleasant beams of the sun, while he was shivering and 
 shrinking in the cold, afflicted with frost, snow, and dark 
 clouds. A wall compassed the mountain, through which 
 his soul greatly desired to pass ; by and by he perceived 
 a narrow gap, like a little doorway, in the wall, through 
 which he attempted, but in vain, to enter : " at last 
 with great striving methought I at first did get in 
 my head, and, after that, by a sidling striving, my 
 shoulders and my whole body. Then was I exceeding 
 glad, and went, and sat down in the midst of them, 
 and so was comforted with the light and heat of 
 their sun." This parable was no deliberate shaping 
 of Bunyan's intellect or imagination ; it came to him 
 and announced itself. And in like manner arose his 
 dream of the pilgrim, uncalled for and with no laboured 
 research, as if it were the courteous revelation of some 
 ministering spirit. 
 
 Bunyan's biographer, Dr Brown, conjectured that the 
 ** Pilgrim's Progress " was begun not during his long 
 imprisonment of twelve years in the county gaol of 
 
262 John Bunyan 
 
 Bedford, but during a later and shorter imprisonment 
 of 1675-76 in the town prison and toll-house on 
 Bedford Bridge. Mr Thorpe's discovery of the warrant 
 of 1674 confirmed Dr Brown's happy conjecture.^ 
 Bunyan was engaged upon another book — perhaps 
 " The Strait Gate " — as he himself informs us, when 
 he '' fell suddenly into an allegory " ; the vision seemed 
 hourly to grow by virtue of its own vitality. When 
 he had set down twenty things, twenty more were in 
 his head ; ideas and images rose into his consciousness 
 '' like sparks that from the coals of fire do fly ; " lest 
 they should distract him wholly from the book on which 
 he had deliberately resolved, he found that he must 
 make a place for them, he must bestow them in a fit 
 receptacle. The '' Pilgrim's Progress," he declares, was 
 not written to instruct his neighbours but to gratify 
 himself; that is to say, it was the work of a devout 
 artist, like those mediaeval craftsmen who carved a 
 capital or illuminated a missal, and being such a work, 
 done for his own contentment, with no laboured didactic 
 purpose, it is the one book of Bunyan's which has de- 
 lighted every generation, and edified, while it delighted, 
 more than all the rest. Dr Brown supposes that the 
 portion of the book written in prison closes where 
 Christian and Hopeful part from the shepherds on the 
 Delectable Mountains. At that point a break in 
 the narrative is indicated — '' So I awoke from my 
 dream ; " it is resumed with the words — " And I slept 
 and dreamed again, and saw the same two pilgrims 
 
 1 See Mr Thorpe's article "How I found the Bunyan Warrant," 
 OfnUemvoLTi s Magazine, February, 1890. 
 
John Bunyan 263 
 
 going down the mountains along the highway towards 
 the city." Already from the top of an high hill called 
 " Clear," the Celestial City was in view ; dangers there 
 were still to be encountered ; but to have reached that 
 high hill and to have seen something like the gate, and 
 some of the glory of the place, was an attainment and 
 an incentive. There Bunyan could pause. 
 
 The second part — the pilgrimage of Christiana — was 
 written several years later. Another Christian on the 
 same journey could only have repeated in essentials the 
 adventures of the first with artificial variations, and the 
 book must have been a feebler version of the original 
 narrative. But women and children desire the Celestial 
 City as well as men. It has been suggested that in 
 Christiana we have an idealised portrait of Bunyan's 
 second wife, Elizabeth, who in the Swan Chamber 
 pleaded his cause before Sir Matthew Hale, while Mercy 
 may perhaps have been created from memories of the 
 wife of his youth. The second part is doubtless inferior 
 to the first in its intensity and directness ; it was less 
 a record of Bunyan's personal experiences. The terrors 
 of the way are softened ; its consolations, if not more 
 exquisite, are more freely distributed — " and one smiled, 
 and another smiled, and they all smiled for joy that 
 Christiana was become a pilgrim." There is no moment 
 in the women's pilgrimage so dreadful as that when 
 Christian in the Valley of the Shadow of Death took 
 the voice of the wicked one, suggesting many grievous 
 blasphemies, for his own utterance. Roaring giants 
 armed with clubs are less appalling than the soft-footed 
 and whispering fiend ; and Great-heart is at hand, con- 
 
264 John Btcnyan 
 
 voying his weak ones, a conductor sufficiently skilled in 
 the art of decapitating giants or piercing them under the 
 fifth rib. 
 
 Yet we could ill spare the second part of the *' Pilgrim's 
 Progress." Mr. Froude was surely in error when he 
 called it a feeble reverberation of the first; on the con- 
 trary, it is the best of all after-pieces. And the manly 
 tenderness of Bunyan's heart finds expression here as it 
 does nowhere else. He honours Christiana for her 
 courage ; he leans lovingly over Mercy — a little tripping 
 maid who followed God. Beelzebub shoots no arrows at 
 the women as they stand knocking at the gates ; it is 
 ■bad enough that a dog (and a great one too) should 
 make a heavy barking against them ; while they knock 
 the Master gives them a wonderful innocent smile. If 
 the two ill-favoured ones cause them alarm, the Reliever 
 is presently at hand. The Interpreter, with a " sweet- 
 heart " and a " dear-heart " to encourage Mercy, shows 
 them things easy to understand, His garden where was 
 great variety of flowers, the robin with a spider in his 
 mouth, the hen walking in a fourfold method towards 
 her chickens — a simplified text of an Evangelical ^sop's 
 fables. When arrayed in fine linen, white and clean, the 
 women, fair as the moon, had more than joy in their 
 beautiful garments ; they seemed to be a terror one to 
 the other, for in their marvellous humility " they could 
 not see that glory each on herself which they could see 
 in each other." They are comforted in departing with 
 a bottle of wine, some parched corn, together with a 
 couple of pomegranates — delightful fare for pilgrims. 
 Before descending to the Valley of Humiliation they hear 
 
John Buiiyan 265 
 
 the birds singing their curious melodious notes, which 
 had been learnt, as might happen with pious birds, from 
 Sternhold's version of the Psalms. The valley, beautified 
 with lilies, was for them as fruitful a place as any the 
 crow flies over, and there it was that they espied the 
 fresh-favoured shepherd-boy feeding his father's sheep, 
 who sang of the blessedness of a lowly spirit, and 
 wore more of that herb called heart's-ease in his 
 bosom than he that is clad in silk and velvet. 
 Even in going through the Valley of the Shadow 
 they had daylight. They heard the celebration of their 
 sex from the lips of the good Gaius ; they had a 
 medical adviser as well as a beloved spiritual conductor ; 
 they had the happiness of being interested in several 
 weddings ; and instead of lying in the dungeon, nasty 
 and stinking, of Despair, they enjoyed a pious dance 
 around the giant's head ; the shepherds decorated them 
 wath such bracelets and earrings as Delectable Mountains 
 afford ; and it was the men of Bunyan's earlier pilgrim- 
 age — so courteous is he — not the adorned women, of the 
 later, who were taken in the flatterer's net. The token 
 sent to Christiana that she should make haste to cross 
 the river was an arrow with a point sharpened with 
 love ; and even Despondency's daughter. Much-afraid, 
 went through the waters singing — singing of some in- 
 comprehensible consolation, for none on the hither side 
 could comprehend what she said. 
 
 Yet the dangers of the way are many and great. 
 Until Paradise is entered wary walking must be the 
 pilgrim's rule. From the moment when Christian aban- 
 dons the doomed city to the moment when he touches 
 
266 Joh7i Bunyan 
 
 the heavenward riverbank, he is exposed to peril ; at 
 every point of the road vigilance is needed ; the wayfarer's 
 loins must be ever girt ; he must at every instant be 
 addressed to quit him like a man. At the first step 
 Christian is plunged into the Slough of Despond ; he 
 escapes from it only to be sent astray by Mr Worldly- 
 wiseman and to endure the terrors of the mount ; the 
 refreshment at the Interpreter's house is followed by the 
 ascent of the Hill Difficulty, where in an arbour the 
 pilgrim- slumbers and lets his roll fall from his hand ; 
 the lions, whose chains are unseen, test his courage as 
 he approaches the House Beautiful ; thence he descends 
 into the valley where he encounters Apollyon ; the Valley 
 of Humiliation leads to the more dreadful Valley of the 
 Shadow of Death, having on the right hand a very deep 
 ditch and on the left a dangerous quag, where in the 
 darkness Christian hears doleful voices and mysterious 
 rushings to and fro ; even the second part of the valley 
 is full of perils, being set with snares, traps, gins, and 
 nets, and abounding in deep holes and desperate shelv- 
 ings ; after the valley comes the wilderness ; and after 
 the wilderness the town of Vanity-Fair, where one pilgrim 
 endures the cage and the other seals his witnessing with 
 a martyr's death ; escaped from Vanity-Fair, Christian 
 enters into discourse with By-ends, and is tempted by 
 Demas to explore the fatal silver- mine ; a little farther 
 on is By-path meadow — " one temptation," comments 
 the marginal note, " does make way for another " — 
 where, sleeping, the wanderers fall into the hands of 
 Giant Despair. Even from the Delectable Mountains 
 terrible things are viewed, men dashed to pieces at the 
 
John Bunyan 267 
 
 bottom of the hill Error ; men, seen from the hill 
 Caution, walking up and down among the tombs, and 
 stumbling because they are blind ; and, yet more awful, 
 the door in the side of an hill, by-way to hell that 
 hypocrites go in at. The Celestial City is now visible 
 through a perspective-glass, but it is with warnings in 
 their ears that Christian and Hopeful part from the 
 shepherds ; of a sudden they are snared by the Flatterer's 
 net ; delivered and scourged by the Shining One, they 
 go for a while softly along the right way, but presently 
 Atheist is at their side, and when he turns from them 
 they have reached the Inchanted ground ; the pious 
 converse by which they resist the invasion of sleep is 
 interrupted by the volubility of young Ignorance ; at 
 length they have arrived at the country of Beulah, where 
 every day the flowers appear in the earth and the voice 
 of the turtle is heard in the land. But still the river 
 lies before them, a river that is very deep ; they set 
 foot in the water ; all the waves and billows go over 
 Christian's head, and he is troubled with apparitions of 
 hobgoblins and evil spirits. Only when the heavenly 
 shore is attained are all dangers at an end ; the City, 
 indeed, is set upon an hill, but up that hill the pilgrims 
 go with ease, for they have left behind them their mortal 
 garments, and the rest is glorious joy which neither 
 tongue nor pen can express. Yet the final word of 
 Bunyan is one of solemn warning. Ignorance, who had 
 crossed the river in the boat of one Vain Hope, a ferry- 
 man, finds no entrance into the golden city ; he is bound 
 hand and foot, and thrust through a door that is in the 
 side of the hill : " Then saw I that there is a way to 
 
268 John Bunyan 
 
 Hell even from the gates of Heaven, as well as from the 
 City of Destruction. So I awoke, and behold it was 
 a dream." 
 
 A dream of terrors, but also of consolations, hope, and 
 joy ; more than a dream, the veritable history of a 
 human soul, lifted into a higher reality by the power of 
 imagination. Bunyan's material was given to him by a 
 series of agonising personal experiences, which seemed 
 at times to border on insanity, and by a great deliver- 
 ance wrought in his own heart.^ Nothing is more 
 remarkable than the mastery with which his imagination 
 controls and pacifies and purifies his memories of pain 
 and rapture ; the humblest realities coalesce with 
 spiritual passions that belong to eternity as much as 
 to time. Every thing verifies itself as actual, yet the 
 total eflf'ect is ideal. And thus the book acquired an 
 universal import, and may serve as a manual of the 
 inner life even for persons whom Bunyan, with his 
 Puritan theology, would have classed among heathen 
 men and infidels. All his powers co-operated harmon- 
 iously in creating this book — his religious ardour, his 
 human tenderness, his sense of beauty, nourished by the 
 Scriptures, his strong common sense, even his gift of 
 humour. Through his deep seriousness play the lighter 
 faculties. The whole man presses into this small volume. 
 The purport of what he writes in its most general 
 significance is no other than that exhortation of all great 
 spiritual teachers — to live for what is best and highest 
 
 1 Mr Heath, in articles contributed to the "Contemporary Review," 
 October 1896 and July 1897, endeavours to trace much in Bunyan's 
 designs in the Pilgrim's Progress and the Holy War to Anabaptist 
 tradition and history. 
 
John Btinyan 269 
 
 and most real, and to live for these with the loins girt 
 and the lamp lit — " Viriliter age, exspectans Dominum" 
 quit ye like men. 
 
 A comparison between the great Puritan allegory 
 and two other memorable works of a like kind — the 
 Mediaeval allegory of Langland and the Renaissance 
 allegory of Spenser — naturally suggests itself. " The 
 Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman " 
 deals like " The Pilgrim's Progress " with matter of 
 abiding interest for every age — the higher life of the 
 individual soul; but far more than ''The Pilofrim's 
 Progress " is Langland's poem a study of contemporary 
 society, a satire, a rebuke, an exhortation addressed to 
 England of the fourteenth century. In its art it is 
 primitive, lacking in imaginative unity, deficient in 
 imaginative construction, resembling some strange page- 
 ant or procession without a centre, in which one quaintly 
 disguised figure succeeds another, which itself disappears 
 to give way to a third, while ever and anon the proces- 
 sion is interrupted or delayed by incursions of a mis- 
 cellaneous crowd. Its unity is to be found in the moral 
 spirit which pervades the whole, and in the fact that its 
 purpose is eminently social. Bunyan's wistful desire 
 is concentrated on that celestial city which shines very 
 far off. How shall the pilgrim meet the dangers of the 
 way so that at last he may part with his mortal garments 
 and enter those blessed gates amid hosannas of the 
 heavenly company ? Langland considers the bettering 
 of man's life on earth, while never losing sight of God 
 
270 John Bunyan 
 
 above and heaven in prospect ; he sets forth a programme 
 of social reform ; he examines the duties, one to another, 
 of the various classes of society from the king to the 
 peasant ; he protests against the wrong-doings of lord 
 and labourer, of priest and layman ; he warns his 
 countrymen against the danger of unreal, factitious, 
 extravagant virtues pursued to the neglect or detriment 
 of the simple, homely honesties of life, which indeed are 
 not less difficult of attainment and are not less divine. 
 Chastity without charity is of little worth. Depth of 
 theological learning will not produce right conduct, for 
 theology is a "misty" subject, and grows mistier the 
 farther you advance into it. Yet learning is good, and 
 learned men are fortunately placed for their moral 
 welfare. Above all Langland insists on the importance 
 of love and of work. Love and work — these words strike 
 the keynote of his poem. The pursuit of truth, indeed, 
 is named as the chief object of our earthly pilgrimage, 
 but by truth the poet means no statement of abstract 
 doctrine ; he means truth embodied in a life, precious 
 because it tends to action and is quickened by 
 charity. 
 
 On a superficial acquaintance with Langland's allegory 
 we may exclaim " What title has this incoherent dreamer 
 to be placed by Chaucer's side?" If we remain longer 
 in his company, we enter into fellowship with a true 
 brother, seeking in his fourteenth century, through all 
 perplexity and amid much moral confusion, for the same 
 truth, the same goodness which we need in this our 
 day, seeking these not for himself alone, that he may 
 escape from some wrath to come, but because men 
 
John Bunyan 27 1 
 
 and women on the right hand and the left, straying, 
 suffering, sinning, were dear to his heart ; a man full of 
 fearless indignation because he was full of love, hating 
 evil because he zealously cherished what was good; a man 
 who must see matters out for himself; who could not 
 put his conscience or his intellect into another's keeping ; 
 who must live the veritable life of an individual soul, 
 not a factitious life of forms and ceremonies, or the 
 life of a mere member of a class or an ecclesiastical 
 corporation. 
 
 The close of the series of visions, in their best 
 redaction, is peculiarly noble. Piers the Plowman has 
 risen into the ideal representative of all truth and good- 
 ness, and Conscience, that which is most inward in man, 
 is seeking for Piers. But does he in the end attain the 
 object of his great desire ? Has Langland a complete 
 solution of the moral difficulties and imperfections of life 
 to offer ? The answer is stern in its honest heroism — 
 "I count not myself to have apprehended." Conscience 
 as the poem closes has not found Piers ; but in the 
 concluding lines he declares his resolve still to forget 
 those things that are behind and to reach forth unto 
 those things that are before. This at least is possible in 
 our mortal life — to seek for what is highest : 
 
 " By Christ," quoth Conscience then, " I will become a pilgrim, 
 And walk as wide as all the world lasteth, 
 To seek Piers the Plowman, that Pride may destroy." 
 
 For who indeed annihilates all our earthly and 
 spiritual pride save Piers? And with the cry of 
 Conscience the dreamer awakes. It is a conclusion 
 perhaps more full of strenuous encouragement than even 
 
272 John Bunyan 
 
 the celestial shawms and trumpets which greet those 
 happy pilgrims of Bunyan, who are pilgrims no more. 
 
 VI 
 
 The " Faerie Queene " is an Odyssey of culture — of 
 culture moral and religious rather than intellectual. 
 The purpose of the whole poem is to present an 
 ideal of noble character, and to exhibit the discipline 
 by which such character is formed. It is an ideal — 
 aristocratic, not popular — meant for the heroic uses 
 of earth. Upon the basis of active godliness, manifest- 
 ing and training itself in generous enterprise, is built 
 a structure of moral virtues and courtly graces. While 
 Spenser was essentially a man of the Reformation, in 
 sympathy — at least in his earlier years — rather with 
 the Puritan than the high Anglican or Catholic 
 tendency of the English Church, he was also essen- 
 tially a man of the Renaissance. Prophets and Evan- 
 gelists hold hands in his teaching with Aristotle and 
 Plato, and the group of masters, sacred and profane, 
 is encircled by a bright arabesque of Italian ornament. 
 The discipline of virtue is stern ; there is an unceasing 
 knightly encounter with evil ; the field of virtue is 
 this world of ours, no place of pilgrimage, but our 
 goodly habitation, to forsake which were treason against 
 the queen and mistress of our lives ; a habitation which 
 we should rejoice to cleanse, to beautify and to 
 strengthen. 
 
 For corporate human life Bunyan had little feeling ; 
 for national life, for the play of England's sword-arm 
 among the peoples of Europe he had still less. 
 
John Bunyan 273 
 
 Spenser's knights, though each is entrusted with his 
 single enterprise, form a goodly fellowship under their 
 great queen and empress. A strain of lofty patriotism 
 animates them to high achievement. The first to start 
 forth in defence of injured Truth is no other than 
 Saint George, the patron of our land. Spain and 
 the Papacy are not only hostile to true religion but 
 are the foes of that free people, whose avenging might 
 they had lately tempted. And yet while Spenser 
 writes as an English patriot and Bunyan as the 
 member of a despised and persecuted sect, it might 
 be truly maintained that the genius of England is 
 expressed more characteristically in the " Pilgrim's 
 Progress " than in '' The Faerie Queene." The union 
 of a high spiritual intention with a homely realism 
 is Bunyan's achievement and is not Spenser's. The 
 strong objective touch is Bunyan's ; his pathos is 
 deeper ; his passion, less diffused than that of Spenser, 
 is more intense ; his humour, though the author of 
 '' Mother Hubbard's Tale " was not devoid of humour, 
 is more direct and genial ; his personages are more 
 substantial and less abstract — bone of our bone and 
 flesh of our flesh. The endless visions of Spenser's 
 imagination deploy themselves as tranquilly and con- 
 tinuously as the Indian tree, which rises and descends 
 and roots itself anew, and spreads into a forest. 
 Bunyan's gaze is steadied amid the agonies of his 
 fear and the raptures of his joy only by the power 
 of faith controlling his imagination. It may be added 
 that Bunyan's design is happier in its conception 
 than Spenser's, less vast, less liberal in its humanities, 
 
 s 
 
2 74 John Bunyan 
 
 but more susceptible of a treatment which respects 
 the law of artistic unity, and that Bunyan accomplished 
 what he designed. Had Spenser completed his twelve 
 books of the Faerie Queen e, and added another twelve 
 on the public virtues, few readers would have followed 
 him through the interminable maze of allegory and 
 adventure; no reader could have held before his 
 imagination the varied and interminable prospect. 
 But no one who has started with Christian from his 
 doorway in the doomed city ever failed to accompany 
 him through all the trials of the way ; we know 
 every ascent and descent of the pilgrim's path ; we 
 do not find that anything can be added ; we do not 
 desire that anything should be omitted ; every incident 
 and every episode contributes to the unity of the 
 whole. 
 
 VII 
 
 Such a comparison between the religious allegories of 
 three periods, each exhibiting a different stage in the 
 growth of the English mind, inevitably presents itself 
 to the student of literature. But the moral temper 
 of Bunyan's time is perhaps more vividly felt if we set 
 ** The Pilgrim's Progress," the most popular work of 
 the religious imagination of the seventeenth century, 
 side by side with the most popular imaginative work 
 of the generation which followed Bunyan, a work as 
 characteristically English as his, and one which like 
 his has been accepted by the world at large as an 
 interpretation of the genius of our race. The author 
 like Bunyan sprang from the people — a man of vulgar 
 
John Bunyan 275 
 
 origin ; like Bunyan he belonged to a community of 
 religious nonconformists ; his book, like Bunyan's, pro- 
 fesses to be an allegory ; and, if we are to regard it 
 as such, the allegory, like Bunyan's, had a direct relation 
 to his own life. The points of community are real ; 
 yet no two books can express tendencies more essen- 
 tially different than " The Pilgrim's Progress " and 
 " Robinson Crusoe." 
 
 The mundane spirit had invaded Puritanism even 
 before the Restoration of King Charles II. Wars of 
 trade, as Professor Gardiner notices, had succeeded 
 the wars of religion. With the Restoration material 
 interests became predominant throughout the nation. 
 Milton and Bunyan are, in a certain sense, survivals 
 from the past. The temper of the age is represented 
 more truly by Butler's " Hudibras " than by " The 
 Pilgrim's Progress." Theological passion was by de- 
 grees in large measure replaced by scientific curiosity. 
 The violent exhortations of the pulpit were succeeded 
 by lessons, in which Tillotson was a master, in Christian 
 morals. A series of political, ecclesiastical, and philo- 
 sophical compromises served as temporary expedients 
 to smoothe the path of progress. The middle classes 
 advanced in wealth, in power, and in influence. After 
 the jagged precipices and forlorn valleys — scenes of 
 spiritual exaltation or despair — a table land was 
 reached — safe, if unheroic — where men might plough 
 and build. To make the best of both worlds was the 
 part of prudence, and of the two worlds that on which 
 our feet are planted is, at least, the nearer and the 
 more submissive to our control. Divine providence is 
 
276 John Bunyan 
 
 doubtless to be acknowledged, but it is highly desirable 
 to supplement Divine providence by self-help. 
 
 Defoe's narrative of the castaway mariner is the 
 English prose epic of self-help. Crusoe, the forlorn 
 hero, a tradesman's son, with intelligence above the 
 common, yet far from super-eminent, and with a rare 
 force of will, is no pilgrim following after a divine Piers, 
 no Arthur devoted to the service of Queen Gloriana, 
 no Christian struggling through a Valley of Shadow, 
 buffeted in Vanity Fair, climbing Delectable Mountains, 
 or listening to the song-birds in the country of Beulah. 
 He needs a cover for his head, food to eat, tools to pro- 
 cure his food, a home, even if a parrot and a kid are his 
 fellow-lodgers, some appearance of British decency and 
 comfort, and, in order that he may square accounts with 
 heaven, a copy of the English Bible. By-and-bye he 
 will become a colonial governor and an amateur mis- 
 sionary provided with firearms and the Gospel, not 
 indifferent, at the same time, to effecting a good 
 exchange for his " knives, scissors, etc.," with those 
 untutored barbarians whom he would fain convert to 
 the use of civilised garments and a Scriptural faith. 
 The moral is broad and plain — with energy, ingenuity, 
 and resolution it is possible under the most unfavour- 
 able conditions to make this life more than tolerable 
 and even to arrange one's future affairs on a satisfactory 
 footing with an offended Deity. 
 
 Whatever sense of mystery is to be found in Defoe's 
 narrative must be sought in that deep, irrational passion 
 for wandering which possessed Crusoe from boyhood, 
 unchecked by his good father's warnings and often to 
 
John Bunyan 277 
 
 the obvious detriment of his material interests ; in this 
 and in certain strange premonitions and forefeelings, 
 secret oracles of the heart, which he never could dis- 
 regard without loss or danger. For the rest, all is the 
 domain of intelligence and will. The island is no 
 enchanted territory of Prospero, full of 
 
 Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not ; 
 
 nor has Crusoe any magic book and wand by which to 
 control the elements, or command his airy spirits. His 
 most vivid surprise is to hear poor Poll articulate his 
 name ; his moment of superstitious fear is when he sees 
 an old goat's eyes shining in the dark ; his staggering 
 terror is caused by the imprint of a human foot upon 
 the sand. He is neither a poet nor a sentimental wor- 
 shipper of nature. The everlasting wash of waves is 
 only a musical accompaniment to the ring of his wood- 
 man's axe ; the sunrise lights him to labour and the 
 sunset invites him to repose. 
 
 It is the epic of brave human endeavour. " Tools 
 and the man," sings Defoe, with the inspiration of a 
 British muse, vigorous and bourgeois. There is much 
 virtue in subduing a piece of the earth, in sowing corn, 
 in weaving a basket, in shaping a boat. The reckless 
 youth will be transformed into a prudent God-fearing 
 man, and when prosperous days arrive will be saved 
 from mere respectability by that hidden fire of adven- 
 ture in his heart, which even old age cannot extinguish. 
 We accept him as a hero of our race. Adventurer, 
 trader, colonist, missionary, we give him hail as one of 
 our makers of empire. He it is who will announce 
 
278 John Bunyan 
 
 laws and establish order. Wild Caribbean and grave 
 Spaniard will acknowledge him — the resourceful, un- 
 wearied artificer — their master. To him the world is 
 no Vanity Fair, but a waste to till, a forest to clear, a 
 market for which to cater. And knowing the world 
 and men as craftsman and tradesman, he has learnt the 
 lesson of tolerance. The Spaniards of Defoe are Papists, 
 but they are far more estimable and honourable persons 
 than his wild Will Atkins ; and yet Will, being British 
 and a clergyman's son, has it in him, if he is but 
 reclaimed and moralised, to be worth a wilderness of 
 Spaniards. It is the pious Roman priest who points 
 out to Crusoe how improper it is that his subjects 
 should live in adultery with unconverted wives, and it 
 is he who by a pious fraud succeeds in making them 
 honest men and women ; otherwise God's wrath might 
 have come upon the island. The gain in tolerance since 
 Bunyan's time was the gain of Defoe's generation. The 
 turning to earth, with its sanities of hopeful toil, was 
 assuredly not altogether loss. 
 
IX 
 
 SAMUEL BUTLER 
 
 The device of wringing pathos out of the jester's life is 
 common. The circus clown parts with tears from his 
 djdng wife, i^allid and lean in her lonely garret, and 
 presently he appears in motley with antic and grin 
 amid the roar of applauding spectators. He returns 
 despairful, seats himself on the wretched bed, and the 
 copious tears are renewed. No pathos of this kind 
 forms part of the story of the author of " Hudibras " ; 
 but until we have perceived that he was more than a 
 jester, until we have brought home to ourselves the fact 
 that his jests were flashes of merriment which played 
 over a gulf of gloom, we have not known Samuel Butler 
 aright. His wit was a missile, hard and keen as the 
 stones of a sling; we may name him captain of the 
 slingers who fought under the banner of reason and 
 sense. 
 
 The life of Butler extended over nearly seventy years 
 of his century — from 1612 to 1680. He saw the rise 
 and progress of the Civil War, rejoiced at the downfall 
 of the Commonwealth, and died in poverty some twenty 
 years after the restoration of monarchy in England. We 
 
 know too little of Butler apart from his writings to feel 
 
 279 
 
2 8o Samuel Butler 
 
 towards him as we do towards authors who have become 
 our intimates or friends ; nor do his writings commend 
 him to our affection. We may indeed doubt whether 
 he ever cultivated the friendship of men ; he was a great 
 observer, and seems to have kept his fellows at arm's 
 length, the better to study their aspect and bearing. 
 He could live and move among Puritans, noting their 
 infirmities and extravagances, while he himself remained 
 unnoticed and unknown. He had none of the g&nerous 
 illusions and gallantries of the cavalier. He did not 
 write amiable flatteries to be prefixed to the volumes of 
 contemporary poets. He could join with others in a 
 sneer at Edward Howard's "British Princes"; he could 
 tell Sir John Denham that " Cooper's Hill " was bought 
 to be passed off under a false name, and that " The 
 Sophy" was borrowed ; but he could not say a word of 
 generous praise. He held himself in reserve, or he 
 repelled and was repelled. And, accordingly, we know 
 little of his private life ; his celebrity was a mask behind 
 which the man lay hidden. When Lord Dorset con- 
 trived a meeting with Butler at a tavern, he found the 
 illustrious wit very flat and heavy, until the second 
 bottle roused his spirit ; at the third bottle Butler sank 
 into a deep stupidity and dulness. " He is like a nine- 
 pin," said his lordship, " little at both ends, but great in 
 the middle." It is evident that Butler was not a person 
 of light and bright temper ; he needed something to lift 
 him above himself. He speaks of wine as given to man 
 in order that he may cherish his frail happiness, given 
 to teach him judgment, wit, and sense. 
 
 And, more than all these, confidence. 
 
Samuel Butler 281 
 
 We are told that he was a lover of music ; but he 
 writes no songs for the lute ; his verse, though skilled 
 in its craftsmanship, is mean, and nowhere in all that he 
 composed can we find a strain of noble melody. We are 
 told that he was passionately fond of painting, and thought 
 at one time of devoting his life to that art ; but nowhere 
 has he created for our imagination one picture of har- 
 monious and coloured beauty. Living in a time of social 
 and political strife, melancholy in temperament, keen 
 of intellect, an observer and an anatomist of human 
 follies, he used his intelligence as a scalpel in the pro- 
 cesses of pathological dissection. 
 
 One of Butler's shorter pieces — that '' Upon the 
 Weakness and Misery of Man " — betrays the gloomy 
 abyss that lay below his wit. Its mood is like that 
 whicli grew upon Swift as the world became arid to 
 his disenchanted gaze, the mood of passionate revolt 
 against life. The poem is not a satire directed against 
 contemporary follies ; it is a general indictment of 
 humanity. Nature brings us forth only to be found 
 guilty, and at best to be forgiven. What are our offer- 
 ings to God but begging presents to get more ? What 
 is our purest zeal but a pious intention which effects 
 more harm than the worst deeds ? What is our devout 
 humility but a vain glory in our wretchedness ? What 
 is our birth but a sentence of condemnation, and our 
 life but a series of reprieves ? 
 
 Our pains are real things, and all 
 Our pleasures but fantastical ; 
 
 Our noblest piles and stateliest rooms 
 Are but outhouses to our tombs. 
 
282 Samuel B title r 
 
 The stars have conspired to imprint a fatal brand and 
 signature of impurity on the human race. Yet the ills 
 inflicted on mankind by nature are as nothing compared 
 with those wrongs which men inflict on their own hated 
 species. If for a moment the heavens forget to seek 
 recruits for death by pestilence, brother rises in civil 
 strife to slay his brother. Or if there be peace, what 
 is peace but luxury and excess, which are more fatal 
 than the earthquake ? What is wealth but disease, 
 discontent, debt, or at most the means to purchase six 
 feet of earth in the parish church ? Yet greater than 
 these curses is the curse of the intellect, by which man 
 shapes out of his own bow^els a rack for his sins, or hangs 
 his soul upon subtle curiosities of speculation. The in- 
 telligence which was meant to be a sword we break 
 against the anvil on which it was made ; we torment 
 ourselves most to know that which we can never shape 
 into a deed ; we are busy in creating for ourselves the 
 misery of eternal doubt ; we start at the spectres which 
 we have projected upon the darkness ; we spend our- 
 selves in hypothetic dreams and visions, and are sceptics 
 in those things which are evident. In this poem Butler 
 does not jest, or if he jests, the flash only illumines for 
 an instant the surrounding darkness. He writes with a 
 passionate melancholy not far removed from despair. 
 
 In this scene of human life, so dim and troubled, 
 where did Butler look for some security, some consola- 
 tion ? He distrusted the ardours of the heart ; he had 
 no wing for imaginative soaring. The enthusiasm of 
 religious emotion was in his eyes utterty discredited ; he 
 could not abandon himself to either a person or a cause. 
 
Sam uel Butler 283 
 
 He looked for what is best in man to the understand- 
 ing, limiting itself to what can really be ascertained, to 
 judgment, to good sense. He anticipates the rational- \ 
 ising spirit of the eighteenth century. Human reason 
 is in a high degree fallible ; but let us not essay Icarian ^ 
 wings ; let us rather use our tolerable crutch. Among 
 Butler's papers were found certain " Reflections upon 
 Reason," which were posthumously published. "Reason," 
 he writes, " is the only helm of the understanding ; the 
 imagination is but the sail, apt to receive and be carried 
 away with every wind of vanity, unless it be steered by 
 the former. And although, like the lodestone, it have 
 some variations, it is the only compass man has to sail 
 by ; nor is it to be contemned because it sometimes 
 leads him upon a rock — that is but accidental, and he 
 is more apt to hit upon those without it." Reason, and 
 reason alone, is the foundation of religion : '' Faith can 
 determine nothing of Reason, but Reason can of Faith ; 
 . . . the very being of Faith depends upon Reason." 
 But how little rational is the mass of men 1 True ; and 
 therefore certain lures and frauds are provided by which 
 to practise on their hopes and fears, so to restrain their 
 blind and inordinate passions. 
 
 In the eighteenth century reason was not merely 
 destructive ; it laid a great basis for construction ; it 
 was united with a boundless faith in the progress of 
 science and the progress of humanity ; it helped to create 
 a new conception of the material universe and to reform 
 human society. With Butler the work of the under- 
 standing was in the main destructive, or, if not destruc- 
 tive, critical. He looked abroad, and saw, or thought 
 
284 Samuel Butler 
 
 he saw, a world of UTireason ; in politics he saw, or 
 thought he saw, no broadening out of great principles, 
 for which to surrender life would be a little thing, but ( 
 rather civil fury, a rage for democratic licence, a war 
 against established authority ; in religion he saw the 1 
 extravagances of hot-headed zealots, the presumptuous 
 confidence of ignorance, the sanctification and glorification 
 of nonsense, the jar of rival follies, piety made a cloak 
 for ambition and greed. And over against the unreason" 
 of the saints he saw another form of human madness — 
 the rage of brutal pleasure, the reversion to the beast. 
 Aloof and detached even from his own party, Butler was 
 a critic of the followers of the exiled King and of the 
 wantons who gathered to the Restoration court. The 
 cavalier who risked everything for loyalty was especially 
 loyal in forsaking all that he could no longer keep, in 
 order to be a burden to his master, and truly and faith- 
 fully to eat and drink at his expense : '' He forsook his^ 
 native country because it forsook him before, and cast 1 
 himself upon the King, who knew as little what to do i 
 with him as he did with himself" Raillery and fooling 
 are found to be higher qualifications for statesmanship 
 under the monarchy than the old-fashioned virtues of 
 wisdom and judgment. The degenerate noble is an 
 empty house haunted, to his extreme disquiet, by the 
 ghost and shadow of his ancestors' honour. The 
 decorative courtier is no better than the furniture for 
 X a room, a walking picture, a moving piece of arras.^ 
 It was not Puritanism only that Butler detested ; he 
 
 1 Butler's characters of "A Risker," "A Modern Statesman," "A 
 Degenerate Noble," "A Huffing Courtier. " 
 
Samuel Butler 285 
 
 loathed the vileness of the Eestoration ; and in the orgies | 
 alike of saints and sinners he perceived one and the ] 
 same phenomenon — violence done to human reason, 
 good sense, decency, and moderation. Twice the foolish 
 world has been turned topsy turvy ; no sooner was the 
 juggler's pocket emptied of hypocrisy, than the reversed 
 receptacle was filled with impotent iniquity and sin ; 
 the hypocrisy of piety was followed by the hypocrisy of 
 wickedness — pretensions to greater vice than it is pos- 
 sible for human nature to achieve ; Paradise was to be 
 regained, not by grace, but by the newer way of shame- 
 less debauchery. The sectaries had drowned the light 
 of reason in spiritual ignorance ; the voluptuaries and 
 sots of the newer generation tried as laboriously to 
 quench that light in carnal brutality.^ 
 
 II 
 
 The second half of the seventeenth century, if it had 
 little faith in religious ardour or in the voice of the 
 higher imagination, had an eager interest in scientific 
 research. The arrested work of the Renaissance was 
 resumed. England, isolated for a time by her internal 
 troubles, from the European movement, now took a 
 foremost place in investigation and discovery. Men of 
 letters were caught into the general stream. Cowley 
 saluted the Royal Society with a greeting of cheer, and 
 made his propositions for the advancement of experi- 
 mental philosophy. Evelyn was one of the earliest 
 fellows of the Society, and in 1672 became its secretary. 
 Butler, although he leant upon the understanding as his 
 ^ " Satire upon the licentious age of Charles II." 
 
286 Samuel Butler 
 
 crutch, had too low an estimate of human powers to hope 
 that the mind of man could range through untried 
 regions. Here also he perceived a revolt agaiust good 
 sense and sobriety of judgment ; here also were vain 
 pretenders and impostors : here were hypocrites of the 
 intellect ; here were the inventors of a novel cant. 
 The bounds of genuine knowledge — so Butler held — 
 are narrow ; let us admit our ignorance of what lies 
 beyond our tether ; let us occupy our understanding 
 to some profit with such modest truths as are accessible. 
 In the zealots of science he recognised such foes of 
 human intelligence as Swift found in his ''Academy 
 of Lagado " ; the rest are not madmen but self-interested 
 knaves. 
 
 It was a desolating outlook on the world ; religion, 
 morals, politics, the search for scientific truth were alike 
 the possession of madmen, knaves, and dupes ; every- 
 where the pretender was enthroned ; everywhere good 
 sense suffered violence and outrage. Even in literature 
 the innovations made in the name of reason were 
 essentially irrational. The subjugation of the several 
 species of poetry to arbitrary rules derived from other 
 ages and other countries was another form of unreason ; 
 the ridiculous aping of French fashions was a fantastic 
 departure from the old common sense of England. The 
 new school of critics were literary Puritans, who, pro- 
 fessing a stricter code than that of nature, were really 
 debasers of wit ; they carried things before them by the 
 audacity of their nonsense ; they were fierce inquisitors 
 of the new law and doctrine ; or, if in themselves 
 contemptible, still like malicious insects they could sting. 
 
Samuel Butler 287 
 
 Yet Butler clung to reason ; lie remained loyal to 
 his central faith — the faith in human intelligence. He 
 did not aim at construction or reconstruction ; that, he 
 believed, would come naturally of itself, if only reason 
 had once again its legitimate play. Meanwhile, for his 
 own part, might he not contribute something to the cause 
 of good sense by an onset against the entrenchments of 
 error ? The heavy-shotted battery of argument delivers 
 projectiles which sink into the earthworks and do little 
 damage ; might they not be captured by an escalade of 
 laughter ? No one had a more vivid perception of the 
 ridiculous than Butler, no one had a gift like his for 
 the illustration of absurdity by ingenious analogies. Of 
 that genial feeling for the laughable which is founded 
 on a sympathy with the abiding infirmities of human 
 nature, of that humour which lies close to pathos, the 
 humour of his master Cervas^es, he had little or none. 
 His wit was intellectual, a malice of the brain, a light- 
 armed auxiliary of the reason, as Butler himself conceived 
 it. The proper sphere of wit, he says, lies somewhere 
 between truth and those diverc^ences from the straio^ht 
 line of truth which we call error or falsehood. Wit 
 constantly detects and exposes the departure from truth, 
 and exists only by its unfailing reference to right reason. 
 Though wit may seem to incline to falsehood, it does so 
 only to give intelligence of the truth ; " for as there is a 
 trick in arithmetic by giving out a false number to find 
 a true one, so wit by a certain sleight of the mind delivers 
 things otherwise than they are in nature by rendering 
 them greater or less than they really are, which is called 
 hyperbole, or by putting them into some other condition 
 
2 88 Samuel Butler 
 
 than nature ever did. . . . But when it employs those 
 things which it borrows of falsehood to the benefit and 
 advantage of truth . . . it is of excellent use, as making 
 a deeper impression into the minds of men than if the 
 same truths were delivered plainly." ^ Butler here uses 
 the word " wit " in the extended sense of the seventeenth 
 century, including what we should call the work of the 
 imagination, but it includes also that wit in the narrower 
 sense which characterises his own writings. Ridicule, 
 therefore, should be his weapon. But the laughter 
 which he desired to evoke was not the laughter of hio^h 
 spirits, nor that laughter, closely allied to pity, which 
 smiles at the deep incongruities of human nature ; it 
 was laughter of the intellect, which triumphs in the 
 illumination of truth by the exposure of folly. 
 
 An excellent example of Butler's method, on a 
 miniature scale as compared with his long mock-heroic, 
 may be seen in his satire on the scientific movement 
 of the time. "■ The Elephant in the Moon " is a 
 criticism of the spirit, the methods, the rash hypo- 
 theses, the crude theorising — as they appeared to 
 Butler — of the members of the Royal Society. The 
 Society was new, and Butler did not love novelties. 
 It aimed at the extension of knowledge in provinces, 
 some of which were seemingly remote from human 
 life ; and Butler suspected all attempts to be wise 
 above what is granted to the man of average 
 good sense. As he distrusted the inner light of 
 the religious enthusiast, so he distrusted the am- 
 
 1 Reflections upon Reason in Butler's "Genuine Remains," 1759, 
 vol. i. p. 394. 
 
Sam uel Butler 289 
 
 bitious conjectures of the philosophers. As religion 
 had its contending sects and factions, so had science ; 
 and as the religious sects had their jargon, so there 
 was a jargon of the scientific sects. An observer 
 of men and a critic, holding aloof alike from the 
 assemblages of the ignorant and the learned, he 
 nourished a deep suspicion of the schwdrTYierei both 
 of religion and philosophy ; he believed that these 
 gatherings heated men's natural folly, set up a state 
 of unwholesome fermentation, and engendered mon- 
 strosities of nonsense as strange as those that swarm 
 in the slime of African rivers. Truth, he held, is 
 to be found, if at all, by the solitary thinker ; co- 
 operative effort only pieces or piles together the 
 fragments of absurdity which lie ready at hand for 
 every fool to seize. 
 
 The members of Butler's learned society one summer 
 night agree to explore the moon with their telescope, 
 and to record in their transactions the phenomena 
 which have been observed. One after another the 
 philosophers approach the eye-piece of the instrument. 
 The first, who is known to be the wisest in solving 
 impossibilities, perceives that the lunar population 
 are actively engaged in civil war ; an aristocracy, 
 possessed of luxurious cellars, eight miles in depth, 
 are opposed by a rude peasantry exposed to the torrid 
 rays of the sun. The second philosopher applying his 
 nose to the optic glass — for has he not proved that 
 the nose is an excellent substitute for the visual oro-an? 
 — observes the progress of the internecine strife. The 
 third perceives with astonishment that from one of 
 
 T 
 
290 Samuel Butler 
 
 the contending armies an elephant has broken loose. 
 Of a sudden the elephant is seen to race across the 
 whole surface of the satellite, and in a moment he 
 is gone. Rival hypotheses are confidently put forwanl 
 to account for the phenomenon. While the discussion 
 proceeds, certain foot-boys, attendants on the sages, 
 are amusing themselves with the instrument, and 
 notice some object moving in the tube. A modest 
 man of science, not yet wedded to theory, forms his 
 own conjecture, and presently verifies it by discovering 
 a mouse imprisoned between the glasses of the telescope. 
 But is he qualified to consider a question involving the 
 nature of mice ? The further investigation is claimed 
 by an eminent specialist who has devoted his life to the 
 study of vermin. He urges that bare truth is mean 
 and unworthy of a learned corporation ; they are 
 members of a joint-stock scientific company, and like 
 other speculators their business is to impress the public 
 imagination : 
 
 If nothing else but truth we allow, 
 ^ 'Tis no great matter what we do. 
 ^ For truth is too reserved and nice 
 
 To appear in mixed societies ; 
 
 Delights in solitary abodes, 
 
 And never shows herself in crowds ; 
 ( A sullen little thing, below 
 
 All matters of pretence and show. 
 
 In which opinion all agree ; for it is surely a nobler 
 task to create things like truth than to ascertain mere 
 facts. Some still swear by the elephant ; a few 
 suspend judgment ; a third party is in favour of 
 deciding the question by ballot ; a fourth proposes 
 
Samuel Butler 291 
 
 to unmount and open the tube. Finally, this last 
 is accomplished, when the inhabitants of the moon, 
 a prodigious swarm of flies and gnats, make their 
 escape, and presently the impostor of a mouse issues 
 from his trap. The real discovery, for those who are 
 wise enough to be humbled is this — 
 
 That those who greedily pursue 
 Things wonderful instead of true, 
 
 Hold no truth worthy to be known 
 
 That is not huge and overgrown, 
 
 And explicate appearances 
 
 Not as they are, but as they please. 
 
 In vain strive nature to suborn, 
 
 And, for their pains, are paid with scorn. 
 
 Butler, we have reason to suppose, designed to treat 
 the problems and experiments of the Royal Society 
 in a more extended satire, but only a short fragment 
 seems to have been written. It recites the various 
 subjects of the philosophers' learned speculations — 
 matters celestial and matters terrestrial ; they hope 
 to predict the appearance of the next meteor, to 
 ascertain whether fishes sleep, whether grass be green 
 and snow be white in themselves or only as the rays 
 of light impinge upon them : 
 
 And in the braying of an ass 
 Find out the treble and the bass, 
 If mares neigh alto, and a cow 
 A double diapason low. 
 
 An intellectual revolution more important to human- 
 ity at large than the political revolution of England 
 was proceeding in Butler's day. He had no sense of 
 its true significance. The old truths of human life 
 
292 Samuel Butler 
 
 and human conduct were enough for him ; they had 
 all been ascertained long since ; why pervert our in- 
 telligence with vain ambitions ? 
 
 In close kinship with *' The Elephant in the Moon " 
 is Butler's unfinished " Satire upon the Imperfection 
 and Abuse of Human Learning." Considering man 
 as ruled and guided partly by nature and partly 
 by custom, he would attempt a study of our natural 
 imperfections and our acquired errors. He values 
 that education most which invigorates and does not 
 overload the intellect. Like Comenius and Milton 
 and Cowley he condemns the excessive study of words 
 to the neglect of the study of things. One who can 
 express " no sense at all " in several languages is 
 esteemed as more learned than he who can speak 
 the strongest reason in his own. Foreign rarities 
 may be bought at too high a price. Even the models 
 of ancient eloquence do not afford the best training 
 for an English speaker ; let him use his own language 
 ■to good purpose and all will be well. Butler pleads 
 against the terrors of the school-room — rod and whip 
 — and urges the use of sport as essential to mental 
 clearness and energy. Without intervals of rest and 
 recreation a man is " never broad awake." A mind 
 of native vigour occupied v/ith reality, and sporting 
 between whiles to recover its spring and resilience — 
 such is Butler's ideal. He recurs to his persistent 
 inought of the folly of those who attempt to pass 
 beyond the limits which are set to human knowledge. 
 All the industry of philosophers who delight to stretch 
 their talents towards things beyond their reach is only 
 
Samuel Bjitler 293 
 
 an industry to err. Yet precisely in proportion to a 
 man's abuse of his faculties lie grows bold and confident. 
 Such theorists 
 
 Can tell us easy how the world was made, 
 As if they had been brought up to the trade, 
 
 When all their wits to understand the world 
 Can never tell why a pig's tail is curled. 
 
 And the motive alike of pseudo-philosophy and erudite 
 pedantry is only a pitiful self-conceit. If a scholar cannot 
 seize the finer spirit and vital power of knowledge, what 
 is learning but the index to a book ? Such men may 
 have travelled with the eye over many printed pages ; 
 but what if they never '' bring the world and books 
 together " ? Yet without this they can never rightly 
 judge either of books or of the world. 
 
 Ill 
 
 To find in brief Butler's indictment of the Puritan we 
 may turn to his Pindaric ode " Upon a Hypocritical 
 Nonconformist!' Satire, which has in it necessarily 
 much of the critical spirit, may at times become l3^rical ; 
 the most impressive example in literature is Hugo's 
 volume, " Les Chatiments." Butler's genius was not 
 that of a singer ; he was nothing if not critical. The 
 ode is a winged form of poetry, and Butler's verse in 
 general trots upon the highway. If the ode be applied 
 to the purposes of satire, it should be winged with 
 indignation and have something of the eagle's infallible 
 pounce upon its prey. A certain power of kindling his 
 passions lay in Butler's understanding, but his heat is 
 
294 Samuel Butler 
 
 not the prophetic flame of moral indignation, it is 
 criticism heightened by anger. Butler reduces into a 
 few stanzas a view of Restoration Puritanism, as seen 
 from outside. Naming his own pitiful ignorance and 
 vanity by exalted titles — spiritual gifts and divine out- 
 goings — the Puritan falls down, in reverence before 
 himself and is guilty of the grossest form of idolatry. 
 By a pretence of zeal for gospel truths he justifies every 
 folly and barbarism ; he has discovered a new method of 
 sanctifying nonsense and crime. AVith spurious dis- 
 tinctions of right and wrong he sophisticates the simplicity 
 of the human conscience ; where self-interest or self-will 
 prompts him, he grants ingenious dispensations, and 
 compensates these by a series of vexatious prohibitions 
 in things indifferent. He draws his life and influence 
 from the weak, the ignorant, the credulous, the vain, the 
 factious — " for trouts are tickled best in muddy water." 
 He cries down human learning and plain morals ; he 
 carries the day by the sheer impudence of self-assertion. 
 He sets himself deliberately against the laws of his 
 country, and gladly accepts fine or imprisonment as the 
 best trading advertisement of a saint. What are his 
 prayers but legal suits prosecuted against his Creator, or 
 wrangles and disputes with the Deity ? With zealous 
 agonies and groans he *' drowns the nonsense in the 
 noise." He is intolerant in matters of opinion, imperi- 
 ously orthodox, a persecutor when he has the power, the 
 follower not of Christ but of Mahomet, propagating his 
 creed with fire and sword. In Butler's poem there is 
 little that can be called burlesque ; it is a vigorous 
 statement of the case against Puritanism by one who 
 
Samuel Butler 295 
 
 applied a strong and clear-sighted intelligence to the 
 study of a phenomenon which intelligence alone could 
 not fully explore or rightly interpret. 
 
 The form of the Pindaric ode was ill suited to 
 Butler's genius, and he attempted it only on two or three 
 occasions. The ode tends to the generalisations of passion 
 or of thought ; and Butler is happiest when he particu- 
 larises, or conveys his maxim in some hard and definite 
 image. The irregular ode should move to some in- 
 calculable law, like that which determines the rise and 
 fall of waves in a broken sea ; that verse of which 
 Butler was an accomplished craftsman is made up of a 
 series of calculated jolts. His octosyllable is not that 
 written by Fletcher and the youthful Milton, varied with 
 exquisite surprises of accent and pause, passing at will 
 from an iambic to a trochaic movement, now loitering 
 and now speeding on its way. Butler's verse is c6nceived 
 in couplets, and in such couplets as admit of no grace, 
 no dignity, no fluctuant motion, no breezelike stay or 
 breezelike sally. To produce variety and to effect sur- 
 prise he trusts to the special device of which he was 
 master — the ingenious grotesqueness of his rhymes ; 
 that is, he arranges his surprise where it will be most 
 obtrusive, where it will force itself on the attention ; it 
 is never a gentle surprise of beauty ; it is a hard surprise 
 of cleverness, often of clever jugglery. If we could 
 forget that " pulpit drum ecclesiastic " was quoted a 
 thousand times before and has been quoted a thousand 
 times since it served the nightly uses of the ancient 
 bencher of Steele's Trumpet Club, and if we were to 
 read the line for the first time, we should wonder for an 
 
 '^^ ^^%. 
 
 OF THE ^y 
 
 IVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
296 Samuel Butler 
 
 instant how the master of rhymes could pull himself 
 out of the difficulty which he had himself created ; finding 
 the verse follow pat, " Was beat with fist instead of a 
 stick," we should smile only the more because the accent 
 is misplaced, and applaud the effrontery of Butler's 
 legerdemain the more vehemently because the jugglery 
 is undisguised. 
 
 In the case of " The Elephant in the Moon " Butler 
 made a singular experiment ; he wrote the entire poem 
 in two forms, his characteristic octosyllables and the 
 longer decasyllabic couplet, preserving in both versions 
 the same rhymes. It is as if he would demonstrate the 
 superior efficiency for his own purposes of the lively 
 vehicle which he preferred ; the longer lines are padded 
 with superfluous adjectives and nouns ; everything that 
 has to be said fits into the octosyllabic verse ; the rhyme, 
 which is the crack of the satiric whip, comes quick, 
 and signifies that the flagellation is proceeding briskly. 
 Butler thought less continuously than in fragments ; 
 a spark, a flash, a snap, and the little electrical sting or 
 twitch — all are the affair of an instant. A great obser- 
 ver, he kept a commonplace book in which to enter his 
 comments on life and society, and those ingenious similes 
 in which his ideas crystallised. Not a few passages of 
 " Hudibras " were probably constructed by m'oving side 
 by side fragments that had originally existed apart from 
 one another. 
 
 When the first part of " Hudibras " appeared, at the 
 close of 1662 or the opening of 1663, Butler was over 
 fifty years of age ; he had already accumulated a store 
 of observations and reflections on his times. The second 
 
Sa muel Butler 297 
 
 part followed in 1664; the third part, a belated rear- 
 guard, emerged to view after an interval of fourteen 
 years. The heroical epistle from Hudibras to Sidrophel, 
 printed at the close of the second part in 1674, does 
 not form an integral part of the poem ; the second 
 canto of the third part is an interpolation of the author 
 unconnected with the story ; it has much in common 
 with certain prose pieces to be found among his ''Genuine 
 Remains" — the "Two Speeches made in the Rump 
 Parliament when it was restored by the Officers of the 
 Army in the year 1659," and ''A Speech made at the 
 Rota," in which the confusion of contending parties is 
 exhibited in arguments assigned to their several repre- 
 sentatives. In writing these harangues, parliamentary 
 and military, it is not improbable that Butler had the 
 "Satire Menip^e " before his mind. 
 
 The immediate and extraordinary vogue of "Hudibras" 
 is attested by passages which have been often cited from 
 the Diary of Pepys. A lover of books, Pepys was re- 
 luctant to squander the coin which he collected and 
 counted with so much diligence and satisfaction. He 
 lamented his half-crown expended on silly abuse of the 
 Presbyter Knight going to the wars, and was glad to 
 transfer the book for eighteenpence to an acquaintance. 
 But the celebrity of " Hudibras " compelled him to buy 
 a second copy ten days later, only to find that he could 
 not bring himself to think it witty. On the appearance 
 of the second part Pepys prudently looked it over in 
 Paul's Churchyard, and decided to borrow, not to buy. 
 It was impossible to escape from a book " now in the 
 greatest fashion." He confesses that he could not see 
 
298 Samuel Butler 
 
 where the wit lay ; yet it became inevitable that he 
 should again part with his coin ; when the King carried 
 *' Hudibras " in his pocket and quoted its couplets at 
 table, it was the part of loyalty to bow before the Court 
 favourite. 
 
 Heroic satire is resonant with heroic indignation ; it 
 has in it something of prophetic faith and fire. "Cry 
 aloud ; for he is a god ; either he is talking, or he is 
 pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he 
 sleepeth, and must be awaked " ; the scorn of Elijah 
 arises not merely from sight of the ineffectual madness 
 of Baal's votaries, but from a lofty assurance of the 
 power of Jehovah, whose servant he himself is. The 
 satirist of the Restoration was not among the sons of 
 the prophet ; there was no fire from heaven which he 
 hoped to call down ; there is more of intellectual con- 
 tempt than of spiritual wrath in his satire. We feel 
 that any enthusiasm, however pure and generous, would 
 have appeared a form of madness to Butler. If in all 
 his writings we could find one outbreak of noble charity, 
 we should value at a higher rate the criticism of his 
 remorseless intelligence. 
 
 The romantic epic finds its themes in war and love. 
 Butler's mock-heroic selects the same themes ; but the 
 military operations are directed against a bear^leader 
 and his attendant crew — Crowdero, the wooden-legged 
 fiddler ; Talgol, the butcher ; Magnano, the tinker ; 
 Trulla, the tinker's female follower ; Cerdon, the 
 cobbler ; Colon, the ostler ; such is the army opposed 
 to the champion of Puritan morality ; and the amorous 
 siege is laid by the ungainly Knight rather against the 
 
Samuel Butler 299 
 
 purse than the person of a not unwary widow. The 
 supernatural element proper to romantic narrative is 
 furnished by the astrologic impostures of Sidrophel and 
 of Whackum, his assistant cheat. The action is trivial 
 and tedious ; Butler's invention worked among ideas, 
 not among incidents. The hero and his squire attack 
 the bear-baiting rabble ; after an illusive victory they 
 are routed ; Hudibras is placed in the parish stocks ; 
 the widow visits him in his distress, releases him, and 
 requires as the test of his true love a self-inflicted 
 flagellation. War is waged between the Knight and cer- 
 tain celebrants of the Skimmington, a procession in which 
 a virago and her subjugated husband are led in derisive 
 triumph. Hudibras and his squire, bedaubed with filth 
 and rotten eggs, take to flight. They consult the 
 astrologer, and the interview closes with another battle- 
 royal. The astrologer feigns death ; Hudibras flies to 
 his lady-love, leaving the squire, as he supposes, to be 
 dealt with by the officers of justice. The squire betrays 
 to the widow his master's feigned passion and feigned 
 flagellation ; she treats her lover to a masquerade of 
 furies and hob-goblins, which is followed by a cudgel- 
 ling. Hudibras at last invokes the aid of the law 
 against his coy mistress, and with this the story closes. 
 There is little in the paltry narrative that assists the 
 poem as a satire directed against the political and 
 religious parties, of Eepublican England ; the action 
 rather tends to reduce the satire to a drollery. 
 
 Yet the way in which we should regard " Hudibras " 
 is not as a drollery, but as a work of serious intention, 
 put into a jest of portentous dimensions. Butler, as 
 
300 Samuel Butler 
 
 we have seen, though possessed of great intellectual 
 vivacity, was not a man of gay temper. His outlook 
 upon the world was the reverse of joyous. He rendered 
 homage to human reason before all else, while he was 
 far from sanguine in estimating the capacity of our 
 intelligence. He put his whole mind, as far as it could 
 find literary expression, into this grotesque poem. He 
 wrote it with all his wit, and with seriousness behind the 
 laughter. It is a plea on behalf of what he thought 
 his age most needed — good sense. The purpose of the 
 whole is to put laughter to use in the cause of reason. 
 Tlie chief enemies of human reason in his time, it 
 seemed to Butler, were the religious enthusiasts and 
 the pretenders to religion who had set the State of 
 England in an uproar, who had overthrown the con- 
 stitution, prohibited innocent pleasures, set up a new 
 tyranny, denounced learning, exalted ignorance, sophis- 
 ' ticated morals, and who, after all their follies and their 
 \crimes, had ended by a fierce internecine strife of party 
 Vith rival party, and of sect with opposing sect. It is 
 only by thus viewing the poem as written by a serious 
 thinker, somewhat embittered by the course of events, 
 that we can extract its true meaning. But at the same 
 time we must accept "Hudibras" as a drollery; and the 
 progress of the whole poem is determined partly by its 
 graver purpose, and partly by its author's intellectual 
 pleasure in the detection of absurdity. 
 
 Butler's collection of '' Cbaracters " in prose forms a 
 long gallery of portraits, which were meant to be types, 
 each one as hard in line and colour as we may suppose 
 those other portraits of his to have been, which, though 
 
Samuel Butler 30 1 
 
 they attracted the attention of Samuel Cooper, found 
 their final use in stopping broken windows. The open- 
 ing pages of " Hudibras " — and these are the pages 
 least forgotten and least forgetable — present two char- 
 acters in verse, those of Sir Hudibras and Ralph his 
 squire. The rhyme forbids us to doubt that some of 
 the features of Butler's " valiant Mameluke " were 
 studied from the Presbyterian colonel, justice of the 
 peace, and member of Parliament, Sir Samuel Luke, in 
 whose house the taciturn observer had found employ- 
 ment for a time. Bunyan's biographer, Dr Brown, 
 thinks it probable that when the future author of " The 
 Pilgrim's Progress " was a soldier in the Parliamentary 
 ranks, he served under Sir Samuel, the chief military 
 leader of his county. Luke was important enough to 
 be in communication with Cromwell, Fairfax, and other 
 Parliamentary chiefs. His Letter-book still exists in 
 manuscript, and gives a reader the impression, says Dr 
 Brown, that he was a man of shrewd observation, of 
 unquestionable valour, of godly life, and of " considerable 
 breadth of humour and humanness." But Dr Brown is 
 mistaken if he supposes that Sir Samuel's appreciation 
 of good feeding, good wine, and worldly gear differentiates 
 him from the fat Knight of Butler's mock-heroic. It 
 concerns us little to identify a living original of Hudi- 
 bras. In Sir Samuel Luke's house Butler must needs 
 have had abundant opportunity for studying the Puritan 
 species, and out of the infirmities of many individuals 
 he probably compounded his grotesque ideal. The 
 general notion of master and man riding forth on their 
 adventures, and the enjoyment taken in repeated drub- 
 
302 Samuel Butler 
 
 bings is all that can be said to be common to Butler 
 and Cervantes ; no contrast can be greater than that 
 which Butler's gross hero presents to the romantic 
 Knight of La Mancha ; Sancho Panza's homely good 
 sense is equally far removed from the pretended inner 
 light of Ralpho ; and the discreet widow wooed by Sir 
 Hudibras in no feature resembles the country wench of 
 Don Quixote's romantic devotion. In all essentials 
 Butler is wholly original. 
 
 In his portraits of the Presbyterian knight and the 
 Independent squire Butler dwells rather upon intel- 
 lectual than moral qualities. It is the perversions of 
 the understanding which he studies in his scornful 
 analysis, and seems to regard as prime sources of evil. 
 Hudibras is a man of narrow brain ; if he has wit, as 
 his admirers allege, he is '' very shy of using it." Upon 
 this narrow brain has been heaped the learning of the 
 schools, and with what result ? His knowledge of the 
 tongues — Greek, Latin, Hebrew — only enables him to 
 be a pedant. His skill in logic qualifies him to be 
 disputatious, to sophisticate the truth by spurious dis- 
 ( tinctions, to palter with his conscience. His rhetoric 
 ( is of service in dignifying with pompous titles the 
 ( absurdities of his speech. His mathematics instructs 
 / him to measure geometrically a pot of ale, or to 
 
 Kesolve by sines and tangents straight 
 If bread or butter wanted weight. 
 
 His philosophy supplies him with mysterious terms 
 to misapply, or assists him in mistaking his fantastic 
 notions for the truth of things. His Puritan school- 
 
Samuel Butler 303 
 
 divinity has made him a master in twisting theological 
 ropes of sand, and in solving unprofitable questions in 
 the wrong way. His religion of the Covenant and the 
 cause is not that of peace, but of pike and gun. The 
 Church reformation at which he aims is one which must 
 still be doing, never done — 
 
 As if Religion were intended 
 
 For nothing else but to be mended. 
 
 His devotion lies in perverse antipathies; he seems to 
 worship God for spite ; by proscribing what is innocent 
 he compensates the indulgence of his peculiar sins — 
 
 As if hypocrisy and nonsense 
 
 Had got the advowson of his conscience. 
 
 In brief — for this is the sura of the matter — he repre- 
 sents the dominance of discursive and disputatious 
 unreason in temper, in intellect, and in will. 
 
 But unreason may be intuitive rather than discursive. 
 Ralph, the squire, a sectary of a rival school, by birth 
 a tailor, owes less to human learning misused than to 
 immediate inspiration. He has received special gifts 
 and new-lights from heaven, which cost no pains of 
 industry or study. He supplements his inspiration by 
 a certain lore in all things mystical and supernatural, in 
 all things which do not admit of comprehension by the 
 intellect. Hudibras acquires the learning of the schools, 
 and renders it worse than barren. Ralph, with a bolder 
 flight of folly, soars into the region of cloudy nonsense ; 
 master and man are agreed in deserting the modest way 
 of good sense, and in employing their powers, whether 
 derived from spurious learning or false new- lights, to the 
 satisfaction of their lusts and oreed. The poem is a 
 
304 Samuel Butler 
 
 satire or a libel of Puritan ideals ; but do one can study 
 the history of the time without acknowledging that there 
 were materials at hand apt for the satirist ; and in 
 pleading for reason and sense Butler was not a common 
 libeller of religion. 
 
 We summon all our fortitude to endure the rough- 
 and-tumble incidents of the narrative, the melees, the 
 cudgellings, the flights of stones and rotten eggs. But 
 the dialogues between the two chief worthies, knight and 
 squire, the love-making by ratiocination of Hudibras, 
 the widow's argumentative entrenchments and sallies 
 make amends. As for bear-baiting it is demonstrated 
 by Hudibras to be a form of strife which serves neither 
 the Covenant nor the good old Cause; it results neither 
 in the sequestration of the property of malignants nor in 
 the seizure of church -lands by the saints. The pre- 
 cedents for the practice are anti-christian and heathenish 
 — Indian, Egyptian, Roman. Ralph is of the same 
 opinion, and with a first, secondly, and thirdly proves 
 that the name is unscriptural and the thing is human 
 and idolatrous — as much so, indeed, as Presbyterian 
 synods (for Ralph does not spare a thrust against his 
 master's friends), which have much in common with 
 the popular sport. Hudibras, in addressing the rabble, 
 recalls to their minds those purer days, the memory of 
 which is wronged by this profane and carnal recreation, 
 blessed days when tinkers bawled aloud to settle Church 
 discipline, and 
 
 Oyster-women locked their fish up 
 
 And trudged away to cry " No Bishop " ; 
 
 days when the gospel-preaching minister invented honied 
 
Samuel Butler 305 
 
 tones to win the women, thereby to draw in the men, or 
 
 directed Providence what it ought to do, or informed the 
 
 Deity of news arrived by the latest express, or, acting 
 
 as plenipotentiary of the saints, made overtures and 
 
 propositions to heaven, 
 
 Such as the army did present 
 To their creator, Parliament. 
 
 The fiddler and his instrument fall into the power of 
 the reforming knight ; conquest, as Ealpho explains, 
 cannot give a right to the property of the defeated party, 
 but the wicked never had a title to worldly possessions ; 
 the saints must inherit the earth and the fiddle. 
 
 When the tide of battle has turned, and master and 
 man are in the parish stocks, Hudibras comforts 
 himself with cold scraps of philosophy ; his legs are 
 prisoners, but his mind is free ; it is perturbations 
 alone that can enchain the spirit ; drubbed soundly 
 he has been, but as the field of battle is for the 
 slain a stately bed of honour, 
 
 He that is beaten may be said 
 To lie in honour's truckle-bed. 
 
 Whereupon the captives beguile their time of durance 
 with a learned disputation of Ralph's pronouncement 
 that Presbyterian Synods are mystical bear-gardens. 
 Bears, argues Hudibras, go on four legs ; synod-men 
 have but two ; it may be admitted that teeth and 
 nails are common to both species ; but can the Inde- 
 pendent disputant prove that synod-men have tails ? 
 Moreover bears are licked into shape, but it is of their 
 own will and inclination that Presbyters become what 
 they are. Ralph's retort convicts the knight of mere 
 
 u 
 
3o6 Samuel Butler 
 
 human learning — learning that cobweb of the brain 
 which encumbers gifts and darkens the inner light. 
 And Hudibras responds by proving that learning and 
 Presbytery are worlds apart from each other. 
 
 The coy widow advances, recognises her imprisoned 
 
 lover 
 
 Not by his individual whiskers, 
 But by his dialect and discourse, 
 
 and the conversation passes from ecclesiastical to amorous 
 
 topics. Hudibras, while frankly admitting that his 
 
 affections are inflamed not by her person but by her 
 
 better part — goods and lands — rises to poetic raptures 
 
 of which his mistress makes small account : — 
 
 She that with poetry is won 
 
 Is but a desk to write upon, 
 
 And what men say of her, they mean 
 
 No more than on the desk they lean. 
 
 Let the lover's sincerity be brought to a test ; she does 
 
 not exact any of those cruel martyrdoms which lovers 
 
 profess with pride ; all she exacts is that for her sake 
 
 he will try the toughness of his back with one simple 
 
 scourging ; there is much virtue in whipping ; there are 
 
 noble precedents. The fat knight ardently swears assent. 
 
 But, with time granted for reflection, he perceives that 
 
 the moment of castigation may lawfully be postponed ; 
 
 and, after a night's repose, in that dewy hour 
 
 When like a lobster boiled, the morn 
 From black to red began to turn, 
 
 certain scruples arise in his mind. The act to which 
 he has pledged himself is carnal ; to be forsworn might 
 be the lesser offence. Ralpho luminously explains that 
 the strife between soul and body should be of a mystical 
 
Samuel Butler 307 
 
 nature ; our vessel, the body, is sanctified ; it suffers 
 enough at the hands of the wicked; self-inflicted penance 
 is Papistical, and is therefore sinful. As for forswearing, 
 saints may claim, and often have claimed, a dispensation; 
 oaths are only words, a whipping is an act, and the 
 weaker should yield to the stronger ; the devil to serve 
 his turn can tell the truth ; should saints prove inferior 
 to Satan, and be unable to tell an advantageous lie ? 
 Besides for a saint to break an oath is really a form of 
 self-denial ; the examples of devout perjury are many 
 and recent; oaths are meant to restrain the unrighteous, 
 not to check the liberty of a free-born, conscience. Fin- 
 ally the widow is one of the wicked, and to the wicked 
 no faith is due. Hudibras admits the truth of these 
 views which, however, partake of the nature of mysteries, 
 not to be communicated to profane men. An oath, so 
 far as it is an oath, remains itself intact even when it is 
 formally broken, just as the law remains law though it 
 be violated ; indeed law is of no force until its efficacy 
 is proved by its violation ; and so an oath receives its 
 truest honour by a breach. Admit that there is a court 
 of conscience ; like other courts it requires a vacation. 
 Still there would be a convenience in being able to affirm 
 that the flagellation had been inflicted ; would Ealph 
 kindly submit his own back, and allow his master to 
 take the whipping by proxy? Ealph is disinterested, but 
 he cannot be the occasion of sin ; how should he permit 
 a Christian knight to maltreat the saints ? So proceeds 
 the discussion ; Butler's intellectual ingenuity serves him 
 better than moral vehemence could have done, in winding 
 his way through the tortuous paths of sophistical casuistry. 
 
3o8 Samuel Butler 
 
 We follow the hero through his later astrological 
 adventures and debates with a growing sense of fatigue. 
 The catechetical examination in the first principles of 
 morality and religion through which Hudibras is put by 
 the disguised Ralpho rewards the reader of the first 
 canto of the closing part. " Pulpit, drum ecclesiastic " 
 has hardly delighted the lovers of grotesque rhymes 
 more than the question and answer on the infallible 
 method of theological illumination has delighted the 
 lovers of straightforward reasons : 
 
 What makes all doctrines plain and clear ? 
 About two hundred pounds a year. 
 And that which was proved true before 
 Prove false again ? Two hundred more. 
 
 But hardly less effective a thrust is the answer of 
 
 Hudibras when his catechist inquires why human 
 
 morality is an offence to the saints : 
 
 'Cause grace and virtue are within 
 Prohibited degrees of kin ; 
 And therefore no true saint allows 
 That they be suffered to espouse : 
 For saints can need no conscience 
 That with morality dispense ; 
 As virtue's impious when 'tis rooted 
 In nature only, and not imputed. 
 
 No wonder that Butler's satire was the favourite 
 piece of wit with the courtiers of the Restoration. 
 It provided them with a quiver of epigrams to be 
 shot against all who professed a stricter way of morals 
 or a more serious spirit of religion than that of White- 
 hall. It seemed, no doubt, to some of them a storehouse 
 of arguments in favour of licentious living. But they 
 abused Butler's gift to his time, they failed to under- 
 
Samuel Btitler 309 
 
 stand his spirit, and they left him to die in poverty. 
 The Duke of Buckingham — Dryden's Zimri — on one 
 occasion was engaged by Wycherley to meet Butler 
 with a view to rendering him a service at court. The 
 meeting took place, but as ill-Iuck would have it, on 
 the moment a follower of the Duke tripped past with a 
 brace of ladies ; instantly his Grace was gone, having 
 other business to pursue than the patronage of letters. 
 Once, and only once, in his collection of characters 
 Butler presents not a type but an individual ; it is 
 Dryden's Zimri. He is " as inconstant as the moon " ; 
 he is "governed by some mean servant or other that 
 relates to his pleasures " ; he has " dammed up all those 
 lights that Nature made into the noblest prospects," 
 and has '' opened other little bliud loopholes backward." 
 It was not for such spirits, whose laughter is the crack- 
 ling of thorns under a pot, that Butler wrote. His 
 " Hudibras " is not directed against the decencies of 
 morality, but against the follies and frauds, as the 
 satirist conceived them, of pretended piety ; it is, in its 
 own way, a plea for reason and good sense. Incapable 
 as Butler was of comprehending the true significance of 
 religious passion, his work remains as a document of 
 value to the historian of the English mind, a document 
 which tells us what aspect Puritanism presented to a 
 man of keen observation, who viewed it wholly from j 
 outside, and who feared the madness of extremes. 
 
 What personal influences went to form Butler's 
 mind we cannot tell. It is stated that in early life 
 he was acquainted with Selden, and even acted as that 
 great scholar's amanuensis. The authority of age and 
 
3 1 o Samuel Butler 
 
 the authority of learning — learning wielded with judg- 
 ment and penetrated by intelligence — must needs have 
 made Selden a power with such a youth as Samuel 
 Butler. Did materials for investio^ation exist we migrht 
 find that Selden was for a time the master of his mind. 
 With a broader intellect and a more generous temper 
 than Butler's, Selden had a rationalising turn of thought, 
 an independence of parties in state and church, a shrewd- 
 ness, a felicity in witty metaphor, a zest in exposing 
 the ignorance and folly of adversaries which must have 
 won admiration from the young observer of men. As we 
 read his " Table-Talk " we seem to see Butler listening 
 with a smile upon his silent lips. '' They [divines] talk 
 (but blasphemously enough) that the Holy Ghost is 
 president of their General Councils ; when the truth is, 
 the odd man is still the Holy Ghost." " We look after 
 religion, as the butcher did after his knife, when he had 
 it in his mouth." "Religion is made a juggler's paper; 
 now 'tis a horse, now 'tis a lanthorn, now 'tis a boat, 
 now 'tis a man. To serve ends, religion is turned into 
 all shapes." In such sayings as these perhaps we 
 approach one of the sources of " Hudibras " not less 
 important than the "Satire Menipee " or "Don 
 Quixote." 
 
X 
 
 TRANSITION TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 The interval between the publication of the second part 
 of the " Pilgrim's Progress " and that of Swift's " Tale 
 of a Tub " is only twenty years. Yet in passing from 
 the one to the other we seem to enter another country ; 
 we are sensible of an altered climate. And this is not 
 merely because the individual genius of the one writer 
 stands so wide apart from that of the other. The 
 questions which occupied the minds of the younger 
 generation were new ; the way of regarding them was 
 different; the temper in which they were dealt with 
 was a different temper. The entire view of life, both 
 individual and social, had undergone a considerable 
 [nodification. In place of absolute dogma and un- 
 qualified conclusions, we find a sense that truth is 
 relative ; in place of passion driving men to extremes, 
 we lind a spirit of compromise, a willingness to accept 
 provisional arrangements. 
 
 In politics the doctrine of the divine right of kings 
 and the doctrine of the divine right of the saints to 
 rule the earth were replaced by constitutional expedients. 
 At the Revolution the crown, as Hallam expresses it, 
 gave recognizances for its good behaviour, and the several 
 
 3" 
 
3 1 2 Transition to the Eighteenth Century 
 
 parts of the Constitution were kept in cohesion by the 
 tie of a common interest in its preservation. The Revolu- 
 tion was based not on absolute ideas, but on political 
 expediency. One party in the State might now cry for 
 improvement ; the other might plead for conservation ; 
 each miofht revile the other with all the bitterness of 
 party spirit ; but both were agreed in the maintenance 
 of the constitution. The reigns of Anne and the first 
 two Georges formed a period of comparative tranquillity 
 in the constitutional history of England. At one time 
 the authority of the crown and of the executive seemed 
 to be enlarged ; at another, the power of the people and 
 their representatives ; in the main a certain balance was 
 maintained. "Happy is the nation," exclaims Mr Leslie 
 Stephen, '^ which has no political philosophy, for such a 
 philosophy is generally the offspring of a recent, or the 
 symptom of an approaching revolution. During the 
 quieter hours of the eighteenth century, Englishmen 
 rather played with political theories than seriously 
 discussed them." The political philosophy of Locke, 
 founded partly on utilitarian ethics, partly on the theory 
 of a social compact, is a doctrine of compromise. But 
 it served well as a provisional resting-place — it gave the 
 word for a much-needed halt. 
 
 The temper of moderation, reasonableness, detach- 
 ment from the violence of party, appears conspicuously 
 in the writings of Halifax, the literary merits of which, 
 Macaulay justly said, entitle their author to a place 
 among English classics. The book which Halifax found 
 the most entertaining in the world was that translated 
 by Cotton in 1685 — the "Essays" of Montaigne. A 
 
Transition to the Eighteenth Ce7itury 313 
 
 constant lover of Montaigne may be a sceptic ; he can 
 hardly be a bigot. It has been shown that Halifax's 
 most characteristic pamphlet, " The Character of a 
 Trimmer," was a retort upon an article of Roger 
 L'Estrange, which appeared in '' The Observator " of 
 December 3, 1684. A trimmer, says L'Estrange, is 
 an advocate for liberty of practice in the State and for 
 liberty of conscience in the Church — " a man of project 
 every inch of him, and one that, for the ease of travellers 
 toward the New Jerusalem, proposes the cutting of the 
 broad way and the narrow, both into one." ^ To explain 
 and justify the position of the trimmer in Church and 
 State was a task which precisely suited the genius of 
 Halifax. 
 
 He would not add to the race of scribblers were it 
 possible to let the world alone; but when madmen in 
 the two extremes agree to make common-sense treason, 
 he cannot but speak. Names of reproach are invented 
 in order that those who cannot frame an argument may 
 have something which their dull malice can throw at 
 the heads of those they do not like. But in reality the 
 word " trimmer " in its rio^ht meanino: '•' might do as 
 much to put us into our right wits as ' Whig ' and 
 ' Tory ' have done to put us out of them." In a boat 
 one part of the company may choose to weigh it down 
 on this side, while another would make it lean as much 
 to the contrary ; but there may possibly be a third 
 opinion, that the boat should go even, without endanger- 
 ing the passengers ; they who hold this heretical opinion 
 
 ^ The Life and Letters of Sir George Savile, Bart., first Marquis of 
 Halifax, by H. C. Foxcroft, IL, 273. 
 
3 1 4 Transition to the Eighteenth Century 
 
 will set themselves to trim the boat, and will therefore 
 be accounted criminals. 
 
 The trimmer venerates law, but he also honours 
 liberty. He accepts and approves of monarchy, but 
 he recognises a natural right of self-preservation in a 
 people, and would have a king, feeling himself part of 
 a whole made up of king and subjects, reign in his 
 people's hearts rather by love than fear. The trimmer 
 perceives that no government is free from imperfections, 
 and would rather keep our own with all its faults than 
 suffer it to be shattered to pieces. 
 
 He recognises that religion is not only good in itself, 
 but needful for a state ; nor among religions is that of- 
 England the least to be esteemed. Among the graces 
 of religion, as our trimmer bears in mind, charity holds 
 a place. He would, if it were possible, draw back by 
 ways of gentleness and love those sheep that stray from 
 the Church's fold. He fears that in some of the Anglican 
 clergy there may be " a too great eagerness to extend the 
 ecclesiastical jurisdiction." He thinks that a nation will 
 hardly be mended by principles of religion where morality 
 is made a heretic ; " and therefore, as he belie veth devo- 
 tion to be misplaced when it getteth into a conventicle, 
 he concludeth that loyalty is so too when it is lodged in 
 a drunken club." He holds that even on the right side 
 some knowledge may fitly go along with zeal. He has 
 no relish for the impertinent wanderings of those who 
 pour out long prayers upon the congregation, yet he 
 considers that too great restraint may be put upon men 
 whom God and nature have blessed with a happier 
 talent, a powerful utterance, and, withal, good sense, 
 
Transition to the Eighteenth Century 315 
 
 beside whom the regulation " Pray-wees " look like so 
 many statues or men of straw. As for the other re- 
 cusants, we must distinguish between the Popish priest, 
 witb whom it is impossible to make a treaty, since he 
 has pinned himself to a principle which has no mean, 
 and the laity, who are not pledged to extremes, who 
 have an interest in the realm, and often the feelings of 
 true Englishmen. With these latter our trimmer would 
 deal discreetly and even gently ; nor would he enact 
 against them any passionate laws. Trimmer as lie is, 
 he has one idolatry, which he is willing to confess : " He 
 doth not worship the sun, because it is not peculiar to 
 us ; it rambleth about the world, and is less kind to 
 us than it is to other countries. But for the earth of 
 England, though perhaps inferior to that of many places 
 abroad, to him there is divinity in it, and he would 
 rather die than see a spire of English grass trampled 
 down by a foreign trespasser." The conclusion of 
 Halifax's pamphlet sums up the whole in a series of 
 statements, in which the writer's seriousness is heightened 
 by touches of humour. He ventures to assert " That our 
 climate is a Trimmer between that part of the world 
 where men are roasted and the other where they are 
 frozen ; that our Church is a Trimmer between the frenzy 
 of fanatic visions and the lethargic ignorance of Popish 
 dreams ; that our laws are Trimmers between the ex- 
 cesses of unbounded power and the extravagance of 
 liberty not enough restrained ; that true virtue hath 
 ever been thought a Trimmer, and to have its dwelling 
 in the middle between the two extremes ; that even 
 God Almighty Himself is divided between His two great 
 
3 1 6 Transition to the Eighteenth Century 
 
 attributes, His mercy and His justice. In such company, 
 our Trimmer is not ashamed of his name, and willingly 
 leaveth to the bold champions of either extreme the 
 honour of contending with no less adversaries than 
 nature, religion, liberty, prudence, humanity, and com- 
 mon sense." 
 
 The fierce passions which encountered one another in 
 the civil wars of the seventeenth century were in a 
 measure assuaged, or they had contracted themselves 
 within the bounds of party strife under the overarch- 
 ing unity of an established constitution. Reason, not 
 perhaps in its highest deliverances but in its meanings 
 of temporary expediency, had been applied to public 
 life, and the result was a conciliation which made 
 political order and political progress possible, and party 
 warfare not quite intolerable. A conciliation was also 
 effected in the religious life of the nation. Here also 
 reason was applied to circumstances, not perhaps in the 
 form of a theory four-square and coherent, but in a way 
 that worked sufficiently well for practical purposes. 
 The Toleration Act exempted from penalty such persons 
 as took the oath of allegiance and subscribed the de- 
 claration against Popery ; it secured from vexatious 
 interference such ministers of religion as could bring 
 themselves to accept not the thirty-nine articles, but 
 thirty-six, or, to speak more exactly, thirty-five and 
 a half As Locke provided the political Revolution 
 with a theory of compromise which was its justification 
 for the intelligence, so in his Letters on Toleration he 
 supplied a doctrine, not invulnerable in its logic but 
 eminently workable, of religious liberty. He held that 
 
Transition to the Eighteenth Century 
 
 o 
 
 fn 
 
 in religion and morals certitude is attainable, but that 
 the bounds of certitude in matters of theology are 
 narrow. His Christian faith was sincere, but he divested 
 religion of mystery, he suspected enthusiasm, he reduced 
 the essentials of belief to the single tenet of Christ's 
 Messiahship, he attached more importance to conduct 
 than to the acceptance of creeds and catechisms, he 
 placed the basis of belief not in the authority of 
 Churches, of Fathers, of Councils, but in the reason 
 of the individual, seeking and accepting whatever shows 
 itself to be reasonable. He would exclude from tolera- 
 tion those who are themselves intolerant, those who 
 profess allegiance to a foreign power, and those who, 
 denying the existence of a God, are, as he conceived, 
 lost in universal scepticism as to the order of the world 
 and of human society, and are thereby disqualified for 
 the duties of citizenship. In his interpretation of the 
 Bible the reasonable temper, characteristic of Locke's 
 entire habit of thought, is strikingly manifested. The 
 sacred writings were not for him, as for the theologians 
 of a preceding generation, a vast treasury of elaborated 
 dogma ; they did not constitute for him, as for Bunyan, 
 a living book of magic, from which darted forth fiery 
 sentences of terror or words of irresistible consolation. 
 He tried to place himself in the position of each writer, 
 to follow the writer's track of thought, to put to use the 
 aids of history ; he distrusted the inner light of private 
 inspiration or enthusiasm ; he recognised the misleading 
 parallax of personal passion. 
 
 The better spirit of that movement which trans- 
 formed our literature in the interval between the 
 
318 Transition to the Eighteenth Century 
 
 Commonwealth and the age of Queen Anne found its 
 chief representative in Locke, whose aims were not 
 those of literary ambition, but the aims, large and yet 
 modest, of a simple seeker for truth. It was a move- 
 ment of concentration, of retirement within a limit 
 intellectual and emotional. Truth was now to be 
 pursued, if at all, not by any winged flight into the 
 empyrean, but by careful treading of the substantial 
 earth. The passions were to be retracted within the 
 bounds of what is reasonable./ To ascertain facts, to 
 observe phenomena, to analyse known combinations of 
 things, seemed better than to manipulate mysterious 
 words or to start from magnificent assumptions. ' The 
 ''Essay on Human Understanding" had its origin in 
 a discussion which took place, probably in the winter of 
 1670-71, between Locke and a few friends concerning the 
 principles of morality and of revealed religion. There 
 were systems of ethics and vast treatises on theology in 
 abundance for those who could find satisfaction in them. 
 Locke could find no such satisfaction. He must first 
 ascertain what knowledge really means, what are the 
 bounds of certainty, what is the field of probability ; 
 and in order to do this he must look into the mind of 
 man, bringing no preconceived theory, relying on no pre- 
 tentious phrases, but viewing the human understand- 
 ing as a phenomenon to be scrutinised and analysed 
 like any other fact in nature : ''I thought that the first 
 step towards satisfying several inquiries which the mind 
 of man was very apt to run into was to take a survey of 
 our own understanding, examine our own powers, and 
 see to what things they were adapted. Till that was 
 
Transition to the Eighteenth Century 319 
 
 done I suspected that we began at the wrong end, 
 and in vain sought for satisfaction in a quiet and 
 secure possession of the truth which most concerned us, 
 whilst we let loose our thoughts into the vast ocean of 
 Being, as if that boundless extent were the natural 
 and undoubted possession of our understanding. . . . 
 These men extend their inquiries beyond their capacity, 
 and letting their thoughts wander into the depths, 
 wherein they can find no sure footing, 'tis no wonder 
 that they raise questions and multiply disputes, which 
 never coming to any clear resolution, are proper only 
 to continue and increase their doubts, and to confirm 
 them at last in perfect scepticism. Whereas were 
 the capacities of our understanding well considered, 
 the extent of our knowledge once discovered, and the 
 horizon found whicli sets the bounds between the en- 
 lightened and the dark part of things, between what is 
 and what is not comprehended by us, other men would 
 perhaps with less scruple acquiesce in the avowed ignor- 
 ance of the one, and employ their thoughts and discourses 
 with some advantage and satisfaction in the other." In 
 these sentences we have in brief the spirit of Locke's 
 effort towards truth, and the spirit which was to preside 
 over much of the work of the eighteenth century. It 
 was a spirit of sobriety, of courageous moderation ; a 
 spirit opposed to the dogmatism of philosophers and 
 theologians ; a spirit no less opposed to the enthusiasm 
 of the sectaries. From authority, from the tyranny of 
 words, from the visions of an inner light, Locke turned 
 to a patient examination of facts. His programme was 
 modest, yet without any inordinance of ambition he 
 
320 Transition to the Eighteenth Century 
 
 became for successive generations an acknowledged legis- 
 lator of thought. It would be difficult, or rather it 
 would be impossible to reduce the philosophy of Locke 
 to a perfectly coherent system ; but he aimed less at 
 becoming the builder of a system than at investigating 
 facts. His polemic against innate ideas, his empirical 
 turn of thought did much to reduce the pretensions 
 of philosophy, to deprive it of a certain mysterious 
 grandeur, and to bring it nearer to the general intelli- 
 gence. The " Essay on Human Understanding " was an 
 eminent example of the application of reasonableness 
 — though not perhaps of reason in the highest sense 
 of the word — to the subjects of speculation. 
 
 Locke's early training had been in a Puritan house- 
 hold, where the boy was carefully instructed by his father. 
 At Oxford his college was presided over by that great 
 systematiser of Puritan theology, John Owen. But the 
 vounsf student had small satisfaction in what seemed to 
 him the trifling and the sophistry of the schools. The 
 minds of many men were turning away from the elabor- 
 ate systems of the schoolmen of the Reformation and 
 from the mystic illumination of religious enthusiasts to 
 the investigation of nature. Locke was eager in the 
 study of chemistry ; he filled his commonplace books 
 with notes on meteorology ; he made careful inquiries 
 in the phenomena of bodily diseases. If the student 
 of literature is forced to confess that the years from 
 the Restoration of Charles II. to the accession of Queen 
 Anne were marked by a decline in the imaginative 
 genius of England — for Milton and Bunyan belong 
 to the formative influence of an earlier period — there 
 
Transition to the Eighteenth Century 321 
 
 is compensation in the fact that these years were 
 eminent in the history of science. While the courtiers 
 plunged into a mad whirl of sensual pleasure, and the 
 wits were shamelessly gay, or grossly saturnine, or spuri- 
 ously exalted, the serious mind of England held its own 
 course. If the reaction from Puritanism hurried the 
 shallower spirits of the time into an extreme opposite to 
 that of the saints, and for many the extravagance of the 
 pietist was succeeded by the extravagance of the voluptu- 
 ary, so that an age of unreason might seem to be followed 
 by a counter-age of unreason, in truth the main tendency 
 of the second half of the seventeenth century was not 
 towards the senses but towards reasonableness, and the 
 bases of a great development of science were securely laid. 
 In that remarkable chapter of Macaulay's History in 
 which he describes the state of England in 1685, he 
 puts forward a theory — already old in the days of 
 Addison's "Spectator"^ — to account for the passionate 
 interest of the time in scientific investigations. The 
 revolutionary spirit in politics was dammed up by 
 the settlement of the Restoration ; that spirit, ceasing 
 to operate in politics, began to exert itself with un- 
 precedented vigour and hardihood in every depart- 
 ment of physics : " The transfusion of blood, the 
 ponderation of air, the fixation of mercury, succeeded 
 to that place in the public mind which had lately 
 been occupied by the controversies of the Rota. 
 Dreams of perfect forms of government made way 
 for dreams of wings with which men were to fly 
 from the Tower to the Abbey, and of double-keeled 
 
 1 See "Spectator" No. 262. 
 X 
 
322 Transition to the Eighteenth Century 
 
 ships which were never to founder in the fiercest 
 storm. All classes were hurried along by the pre- 
 vailing sentiment. Cavalier and Roundhead, Church- 
 man and Puritan were for once allied. Divines, 
 jurists, statesmen, nobles, princes swelled the triumph 
 of the Baconian philosophy." It is perhaps true that 
 the excitement of the public mind caused by the 
 great political struggle roused men's faculties to exer- 
 tion in many fields. But the scientific movement 
 of the time was a European, not merely an English, 
 phenomenon. In 1660 the Royal Society came into 
 existence ; two years later it received its charter. But 
 the Royal Society of England was a younger sister 
 of the Experimental Academy of Florence, and only 
 by a little the elder sister of the Academy of Sciences 
 at Paris. In truth natural and experimental science 
 had advanced to a point which rendered a sudden 
 expansion possible, and, as it were, inevitable. Crude 
 observations, chance - medley experiments, fantastic 
 theorisings, though these might still be found, had 
 in large measure given place to regulated methods 
 and reasonable inference. The Restoration of mon- 
 archy in England, and the check to revolutionary 
 politics exerted no influence on the chemical investiga- 
 tions of the German Becker or the French Lemery, 
 on Redi's studies at Florence, on Malpighi's anatomical 
 inquiries at Pisa and Bologna, on Swammerdam's 
 dissections at Amsterdam. But England took an 
 active and a distinguished part in the European move- 
 ment, and a power at once enlarging and tranquillising, 
 after the turmoils of politics and the passions of 
 
Transition to the Eighteenth Century 323 
 
 religious strife, lay in the pursuit — patient and courage- 
 ous — of truth as presented in the phenomena and the 
 laws of the external universe. The comedies of Ether- 
 edge and Sedley, the tragedies of Lee, the poetry even 
 of Dryden and Otvvay do not represent the best mind 
 of England in their day. It is represented on the 
 one side by Locke, in his faithful and laborious inquiry 
 into the facts of the intellectual and moral world, and 
 on the other side by those eminent students of external 
 nature who observed and collected, who arranged and 
 methodised, who rose to theory from a basis of reality, 
 who revealed the laws of phenomena, and perceived a 
 cosmos emerging from the chaos of accident and of 
 miracle. The roll of illustrious names — Boyle, Flam- 
 steed, Halley, Willis, Sydenham, Eay, Morison, Wood- 
 ward, Grew, Newton — has been often recited. Such 
 a recital is indeed inspiriting to the student of science ; 
 for the student of literature it may seem of little im- 
 portance. But in fact its importauce is great. It serves, 
 in the first place, to account in part for the comparative 
 barrenness and frivolity of the literature of pleasure 
 which followed the Eestoration ; that literature stood 
 apart from the higher mind of England, which had 
 been drawn away in another direction. It serves, again, 
 to account in part for the claim made by reason and 
 sense to control imagination in the literature of the 
 early eighteenth century. In the development of the 
 critical spirit the principles of the understanding, or 
 what were held to be such, were directly applied to 
 literature. " Return to nature " was inscribed upon 
 the banner of the classical school no less broadly, 
 
324 Transition to the Eighteenth Century 
 
 though with a different meaning, than upon the 
 banner of the romantic school a hundred years later. 
 
 II 
 
 If religion was to hold its own in an age when the 
 understanding became the leading authority, it must 
 be shown to be in harmony with the understanding ; 
 religion must be rationalised. ^ The God of nature 
 was seen as the first cause in a vast and orderly chain 
 of causation ; He was the President in a constitutional 
 system, acting through general laws, which formed, 
 so to speak. His executive. The God of revelation 
 must, if possible, be identified with the God of 
 nature ; his methods must bear some analogy to the 
 methods which preside over the constitution and 
 course of nature. The motives to a religious life 
 must be exhibited as addressing themselves to the 
 rational part of human nature, to the intelligence, 
 the common sense, the prudence of men ; the temper 
 in which religion is set before men must be a temper 
 of reasonableness and moderation. If the revelation 
 of Christ be an intervention of the supreme Ruler 
 of the world, it must prove its divine origin by 
 evidence establishing at least a strong probability in 
 its favour ; miracles and prophecy must be supported 
 by such witnesses or such historical evidence as could 
 be tested in a court of law ; Christian doctrine must 
 justify itself as consonant with man's moral nature, 
 and as tending to promote his welfare. Christianity 
 must appear as the religion of good sense. " He that 
 takes away reason to make way for revelation," wrote 
 
Transition to the Eighteenth Century 325 
 
 Locke, " puts out the light of both, and does much- 
 what the same as if he would persuade a man to 
 put out his eyes, the better to receive the remote 
 light of an invisible star by a telescope." In order 
 to retain an enlightened intelligence on the side of 
 Christianity, it might be well to place no emphasis 
 on any distinctive doctrines which seem to be re- 
 pugnant to human reason. As in our own century 
 the Oxford movement has held many persons — so it 
 is alleged — within the Anglican communion by its 
 Catholic exhibition of truth, persons who otherwise 
 must have found satisfaction for their spiritual needs 
 by passing over to the Catholicism of Rome, so in 
 the eighteenth century an attenuated Christianity was 
 held to be the prophylactic against Deism. It is 
 certain that Deism was deprived of much of its 
 aggressive force by the tendency of Christian writers 
 to pursue a via media. 
 
 Eobert South stands midway between the older and 
 the newer generation. He preached good sense and 
 good morals with masculine force, but he was not a 
 reconciler, rather he was an unflinching combatant, 
 and a too truculent victor ; among his gifts the grace 
 of charity can hardly be reckoned ; he sets forth his 
 gospel of good morals with great intellectual clearness 
 and energy, but rarely with what we understand by 
 unction. The supreme faculty of the soul, he tells 
 us, is reason ; the state of grace is that of reason grown 
 adult, reason forsaking the childish things of the senses 
 and attaining, through Divine assistance, the highest, 
 that is, the most rational happiness. The ways of 
 
326 Transition to the Eighteenth Century 
 
 wisdom are ways of pleasantness ; and therefore " such 
 as are not ways of pleasantness are not truly and properly 
 waj^s of religion." He that thinks to expiate a sin by 
 going barefoot does the penance of a goose ; if our re- 
 ligion lies no deeper than the skin, self-scourging may, 
 indeed, effect a great improvement. To exhort men to 
 be religious is only in other words to exhort them to take 
 their pleasure — '' a pleasure high, rational, and angelical, 
 ... a pleasure made for the soul, and the soul for that ; 
 suitable to its spirituality, and equal to all its capacities." ^ 
 South's preaching was not dry or cold; through 
 the vigour and perspicacity of his intellect, aided by 
 the power of a strong rhetoric, he rises at times to a 
 kind of rational enthusiasm. New lights, sudden im- 
 pulses of the spirit, extraordinary calls, irresistible 
 motions, are only the whimsical cant of the ignorant ; 
 yet South can contemplate the greatness and strangeness 
 of the future beatific vision, marvelling ^' how a created 
 eye should be so fortified as to bear all those glories 
 that stream from the fountain of uncreated light, the 
 meanest expression of which light is that it is inex- 
 pressible." He has no toleration for the '' popular, 
 rambling, incoherent stuff (seasoned with twang and 
 tautology) " which passes for moving preaching — " such, 
 indeed, as a zealous tradesman would even live and die 
 under ; " but he can speak nobly of the rational illumina- 
 tion which carries with it authority : " The sun is said 
 to rule the day, and the moon to rule the night ; but 
 do they not rule them only by enlightening them? 
 
 1 "The Ways of Wisdom are Ways of Pleasantness," Sermons I. 
 p. 21 (ed. 1842). 
 
Transition to the Eighteenth Century 327 
 
 Doctrine is that that must prepare men for discipline ; 
 and men never go on so cheerfully as when they see 
 where they go." Our religion, he declares, is a religion 
 that dares to be understood ; true teaching is not a flow 
 of words, nor the draining of an hour-glass, but " an 
 effectual procuring that a man comes to know something 
 that he knew not before, or to know it better." ^ As 
 for prayer, it also is a reasonable service to be rendered 
 with premeditation of thought and brevity of expression. 
 God does not need that we should supply Him with 
 a notification of facts ; how can ignorance inform 
 omniscience ? Nor will He be wrought upon by 
 rhetoric and pathetical harangues ; nor is He to be 
 wearied into acquiescence by our importunity : *' men 
 may tire themselves with their own prayers, but God 
 is not to be tired. The rapid motion and whirl of 
 things here below interrupts not the inviolable rest and 
 calmness of tlie nobler beings above. While the winds 
 roar and bluster here in the first and second regions 
 of the air, there is a perfect serenity in the third." 
 Prayer is prevalent because it is the fulfilling of that 
 condition upon which God has freely promised to convey 
 His blessings. Decency, sense, and reason are expected 
 in our prayers ; God does not command sanctified 
 grimace, solemn wink, or foaming at the mouth ; nor 
 '' to set forth our prayers with dress and artifice, to 
 flourish it in trope and metaphor, to beg our daily bread 
 in blank verse, or to show anything of the poet in our 
 devotions," Can any sober person think it reasonable 
 that the public devotions of a congregation should be 
 1 Sermon on "The Duties of the Episcopal Function." 
 
328 Transition to the Eighteenth Century 
 
 '' at the mercy of a pert, empty, conceited holder-forth, 
 whose chief (if not sole) intent is to vaunt his spiritual 
 clack, and (as I may so speak), to pray prizes." The 
 only necessary prayer which is not found in the Anglican 
 liturgy is this — that God would vouchsafe to continue 
 the liturgy itself in use, honour, and veneration in this 
 Church for ever. So concludes the second of South's 
 sermons "Against Long Extempore Prayers," in which 
 it pained him — though the pain seems courageously 
 and cheerfully borne — to have to " rake into the dirt 
 and dunghill " of other men's devotions. 
 
 Reason and conscience — these are the true lights 
 which lighten every man that cometh into the world. 
 Gifts of the Spirit there are ; but amongst these divine 
 gifts South has to declare that he cannot find " the gift 
 of canting and whining, and making faces ; that is, of 
 speaking bad sense with worse looks ; which yet those men 
 used to call the language of Canaau." ^ The generality 
 of mankind, blind to the lights which should show them 
 the plain and safe way, " is wholly and absolutely 
 governed by words or names." Two or three popular, 
 empty words in the mouth of a rabble- driver will serve 
 to impel the whole rout whithersoever the driver pleases. 
 '* Right of the subject," " liberty of conscience," " Lord 
 Jesus Christ," will do well enough, although no mean- 
 ing be attached to any one of these. Thus, the religion 
 of the Church of England is " Popery " (and South 
 himself has many swashing blows to deliver against the 
 " Papists ") ; those who have schismatically deserted it 
 are " true Protestants " ; the subversion of the Church 
 
 ^ Sermon on " The Christian Pentecost." 
 
Transition to the Eighteenth Century 329 
 
 is " reformation " ; the execution of the laws in behalf 
 of the Church is " persecution " ; a sneaking spirit of 
 compromise is " moderation." What does one in five 
 thousand of the exclaimers know of the word " Popery," 
 except that it is made up of six letters, that it has rung 
 in their ears since infancy, and sounds big in the mouths 
 of carmen, broom-men, scavengers, and watermen on 
 a fifth of November ? Yet with such words as these, 
 " well tuned and humoured," the expert demagogue may 
 whistle his herd backwards and forwards, upwards and 
 downwards till he is weary, and when weary, adds South, 
 with the malice of shrewd good sense, the rabble-driver 
 may rest himself " by getting up upon their backs." ^ 
 
 It would be unjust to South to suppose that the 
 driving logic and bold invective of his sermons are 
 directed only against religious enthusiasts and hypocrites 
 who assumed the garb of religion. On occasions the 
 Court preacher could boldly attack the shameless im- 
 morality of the Restoration. Among the terms popularly 
 abused in that day were '' ill nature " and "good nature." 
 Who is an ill-natured man ? Not one who is false 
 or cruel, revengeful or ungrateful, but rather one who 
 is unwilling to spend his time, his health, and his estate 
 upon a crew of idle, spunging sots, and so play the 
 prodigal among a herd of swine. Who is a good-natured 
 man ? If the word be used by his superiors, he is 
 doubtless some slavish, glavering, flattering parasite, 
 whose business is to fetch and carry ; if by equals, he 
 is either some soft-headed piece of simplicity, who suffers 
 
 1 Four Sermons : "Of the Fatal Imposture and Force of Words," and 
 " Of the Fatal Influence of Words and Names Falsely Applied." 
 
330 Transition to the Eighteenth Century 
 
 himself to be led by the nose, or a painful, able, and 
 laborious soaker, whose good nature is born of the pot 
 and the pipe, a good nature which he takes to bed over- 
 night in an abundant quantity, but which, the chance 
 is, he sleeps away before the morning. 
 
 South saw around him a practical atheism and a 
 theoretical scepticism and cavilling at religion, and he 
 found in the former the cause of the latter ; these " sons 
 of Epicurus," moreover, would pass for the only wits of 
 the age.^ Language almost fails him to describe the 
 rage and rampancy of vice ; it is '' an ocean, which now 
 swells, and roars, and lifts up itself above all banks and 
 bounds of human laws " ; it is a monster that walks 
 abroad with a bare face and a brazen forehead, looking 
 down with scorn upon virtue as a contemptible and a 
 mean thing : " we have sinned apace, and at a higher 
 strain of villainy than the fops our ancestors (as some 
 are pleased to call them) could ever arrive to." Old 
 age encourages greenness of years in wickedness ; it is 
 evil-doing which is the best means of preferment to the 
 favour of the great, and doubtless men are well pleased 
 " to serve their interest and their sensuality together." * 
 Women, whose proper ornament should be bashfulness 
 and modesty, now brave it in theatres and taverns, 
 " where virtue and modesty are drunk down, and 
 honour left behind to pay the reckoning. . . . This, 
 I say, is the guise of our age, our free-thinking and free- 
 practising age, in which people generally are ashamed 
 
 ^ Sermon on *' Why Christ's doctrine was rejected by the Jews." 
 2 Sermon "Of the heinous guilt of taking pleasure in other men's 
 sins." 
 
Transition to the Eighteenth Century 331 
 
 of nothing but to be virtuous, and to be thought old." ^ 
 And while vice kept his house like a strong man armed, 
 South did not perceive that the stronger than he, who 
 shall come upon him and overcome him, must be another 
 than reason and good sense. 
 
 In 1670 the Rev. John Eachard, who a few years 
 later Succeeded Lightfoot as master of Catharine Hall, 
 Cambridge, published his admirably witty letter to 
 L'Estrange on " The Grounds and Occasions of the 
 Contempt of the Clergy and Religion." It may be 
 that we are not to accept all its statements as literally 
 exact ; that something must be allowed for the writer's 
 vein of humorous exaggeration. The value of Each- 
 ard's book as a plea for common sense, characteristic of 
 the time, cannot be questioned. He deplores the ignor- 
 ance of some of the clergy as a cause of the contempt, 
 not altogether unjust, in which they were held ; un- 
 doubtedly there were '' Caroline divines " less learned 
 and less skilled in dialectic than those whom we 
 remember under that name. How could it be other- 
 wise, asks Eachard, when lads were ordinarily kept to 
 sixteen or seventeen years of age " in pure slavery to a 
 few Greek and Latin words ? " Why might they not 
 be permitted to read some innocent English authors, to 
 write some English themes, and so learn to apprehend 
 common sense and to judge what is true ? But, no : it 
 seems more important to their wise instructors that they 
 should be informed how Phaeton broke his neck, or how 
 many nuts and apples Tityrus had for his supper. 
 
 ^Sermon on "Shamelessness in sin the certain forerunner of 
 destruction. " 
 
332 Transition to the Eighteenth Century 
 
 Dieted, as the schoolboy is, with rules and exceptions, 
 he somehow comes to regard nine-pins and span-counter 
 as much more heavenly employments than learning ; 
 and indeed in Eachard's own opinion the boy who 
 catches frogs or hunts butterflies, though he may not 
 acquire a great reverence for antiquity, is a happier 
 boy than he who is bound to get before breakfast " two 
 or three hundred rumblers out of Homer" in com- 
 mendation of Achilles' toes or the Grecian's boots. 
 The student may at last acquire the fine art of rope- 
 dancing upon classical phrases, thinning his judgment 
 by academic wit ; but academic wit when turned from 
 Latin into English, is a dismally shrimped thing. For 
 the most part an ordinary cheesemonger or plum-seller 
 will write much better sense than these young philo- 
 sophers whose main business is to hunt injudiciously for 
 curious words. 
 
 When the parson mounts his pulpit, too often he 
 conceives his business as that of fastening on some text 
 of Scripture, and tearing and tumbling it for the space 
 of an hour. If he is plain and practical, he may pass for 
 an honest, well-meaning man, but he is evidently no 
 scholar. He therefore finds it more to his credit when 
 addressing farmers and shepherds, to besprinkle his ser- 
 mon with Greek and Latin, or to swagger over his poor 
 parishioners with the original Hebrew, though nothing 
 in the church, or near it by a mile, unless it be God 
 Almighty, can understand his learning. Perhaps the 
 sound of it may flatter some patron or all-understanding 
 justice of the peace, who reposes in the great pew. And 
 yet one might suppose that simple words and useful 
 
Transition to the Eighteenth Century 333 
 
 instruction were as fit for an esquire, or for one who 
 holds the King's commission, as for him that holds the 
 plough or mends hedges. 
 
 Eachard makes merry over the strained metaphors, 
 childish similitudes, and ill-applied tales of the 
 preachers. Our Saviour spoke in parables, but He was 
 pleased to go no farther than the field, the seashore, 
 the garden, and the vineyard. As for our metaphor- 
 mongers and similitude-men, there is little on this side 
 the moon that will content them. But it is in the 
 division of the text that the preacher finds the happiest 
 opportunity for a display of his genius. If the words 
 do not naturally fall asunder of themselves, what notable 
 hacking and hewing takes place, what an exhibition of 
 slivers and shivers. '' Weep not for me, but weep for 
 yourselves " — an excellent text of eight words, and 
 obviously consisting of eight parts : (1) Weep not ! (2) 
 But weep ! (3) Weep not, but w^eep ! — and the rest in 
 due order as may be easily distinguished ; that is to 
 say, adds Eachard, " North, north-and-by-east, north- 
 north-east, north-east-and-by-north," with all the other 
 variations of the same quarter of the compass. The 
 censures of the critic are not specially directed against 
 preachers of any one party in the Church ; some of 
 them indeed apply to the highest pulpit eloquence of 
 the elder generation, to such sermons as those of Donne, 
 even to such sermons as those of Jeremy Taylor. South 
 himself was not indisposed to deliver now and again a 
 blow at the style of florid metaphor in which Taylor 
 indulged at the expense, as the younger orator held, of 
 plain and square sense. " •' I speak the words of sober- 
 
334 Transition to the Eighteenth Century 
 
 ness/ says St Paul, ' aod I preach the Gospel, not with 
 enticing words of man's wisdom.' This was the way of 
 the apostles," South comments, '' discoursing of things 
 sacred. Nothing here of the fringes of the North Star ; 
 nothing of ' nature's becoming unnatural ' ; nothing of 
 ' the down of angels' wings, or the beautiful locks of the 
 cherubim'; no starched similitudes, introduced with a 
 * thus have I seen a cloud rolling in its airy mansion.' 
 No ; these were sublimities above the rise of the apostolic 
 spirit." 
 ; The representative preacher of the new school was 
 Tillotson. He died in 1694, but his influence remained 
 as a conciliating power during the first half of the ensuing 
 century. He was the friend of Locke and of Barrow ; 
 a member of the Royal Society ; a correspondent of the 
 astronomer Halley. " More than any one," said Bishop 
 Burnet, " he brought the city to love our worship " ; he 
 was named by Voltaire the wisest and the most eloquent 
 of English preachers; D'Albiac and again Barbeyrac trans- 
 lated his sermons into French ; Le Clerc celebrated their 
 merits in the " Bibliotheque Choisie"; Dryden declared 
 that he had formed his prose style by a study of Tillot- 
 son ; '' he was the best man I ever knew," said King 
 William, " and the best friend I ever had " ; Addison 
 describes him as '' the most eminent and useful author 
 of the age we live in." Tillotson's influence is not to 
 be explained by any extraordinary power of individual 
 genius, unless it be genius to have caught the better 
 spirit of the time and to have given it expression. It 
 was his part to exhibit the duties of religion as a reason- 
 able service, to set forth the harmony of natural and 
 
Transition to the Eighteenth Century 335 
 
 revealed religion, to show that piety is a branch of wise 
 living, making, as it does, for happiness and peace both 
 in this life and the life that is to come, to exemplify in 
 his own person the temper of moderation and good sense. 
 Tillotson, like his friend Locke, had come from a 
 Puritan household. The writings of Chillingworth 
 widened the basis of his theology, and prepared his 
 mind to receive influences from the eminent group of 
 Cambridge thinkers — Cudworth, Whichcote, John Smith, 
 and others — who found in revealed truth rather the 
 illumination of the natural reason than its suspension 
 at the voice of authority. In later years he incurred 
 the reproach of being one of the " Latitude-men," or 
 something worse. His charitable bearing towards dis- 
 senters condemned him in the eyes of the altitudinarians. 
 Tillotson, during the reigns of the later Stuarts, appre- 
 hended the revival of Roman Catholicism in England, 
 and saw in the atheistical humour and the profaneness 
 and immorality of the time unacknowledged allies of 
 superstition. " Nothing," he writes, '* is more natural 
 than for extremes in religion to beget one another, like 
 the vibrations of the pendulum, which the more violently 
 you swing it one way, the farther it Avill return the other." 
 It was his desire that all sober-minded Christians should 
 "jointly endeavour to retrieve the ancient virtue of the 
 nation, and to bring into fashion again that solid and 
 substantial, that plain and unaffected piety (free from 
 the extremes both of superstition and enthusiasm) which 
 flourished in the age of our immediate forefathers : 
 which did not consist in idle talk, but in real effects, in 
 a sincere love of God and of our neighbour, in a pious 
 
33^ Transition to the Eighteenth Century 
 
 devotion and reverence towards the Divine Majesty, and 
 in the virtuous actions of a good life." The popularity 
 of Tillotson's writings suffered an eclipse when religious 
 enthusiasm revived in the second half of the eighteenth 
 century. For Whitefield, though he afterwards regretted 
 his unjust words, Tillotson was '' that traitor who sold 
 his Lord." But if Whitefield had lived in the days of 
 the good Archbishop his preaching would have been to 
 little purpose. C Tillotson did for his own time the work 
 that was most needful in the way that was most suitable. 
 /After the orgies of the saints and the orgies of the 
 sinners he made sanity acceptable to a whole generation. 
 There is indeed a beautiful kind of enthusiasm in the 
 long devotion of a life to^ things that are pure and 
 peaceable and of good report. 
 
 The temper of the lay mind as to ecclesiastical ques- 
 tions a few years after the Archbishop's death is happily 
 indicated in one of the papers contributed by Addison 
 to '' The Tatler." In an earlier number it had been 
 announced that Mr Bickerstatf was the possessor of a 
 political barometer or state weather-glass, which, by the 
 rising or falling of a certain magical liquor, presaged all 
 changes and revolutions in government. Addison enlarges 
 the jest by his invention of an ecclesiastical thermometer, 
 adapted to the constitution of the Church, as divided 
 into "high" and " low." The fluid used consists of a 
 fiery spirit very apt to ferment, combined with a sort of 
 rock-water, colder than ice and clearer than crystal. At 
 precisely the middle point of the glass, where the fluid 
 reaches the mean position, the marking of the thermo- 
 meter indicates the Church, which stands directlv between 
 
Transition to the Eighteenth Century 337 
 
 Zeal on the upper register and Moderation on the lower. 
 Passing upward beyond Zeal, we find the markings 
 Wrath, Persecution, and Ignorance ; descending below 
 Moderation we come upon Lukewarmness, Infidelity, and 
 again Ignorance. In a via media between Zeal and 
 Moderation the Church best flourishes, and it is there 
 that every good Englishman, who is a friend to the 
 constitution, wishes her to be. However, when the fluid 
 rises to Zeal it is not amiss ; when it sinks to Moderation 
 it is still in a most admirable temper. " The worst of 
 it is," says Addison, " that when once it begins to rise, 
 it has an inclination to ascend, insomuch that it is apt 
 to climb from Zeal to Wrath, and from Wrath to Per- 
 secution, which always ends in Ignorance, and very often 
 proceeds from it. In the same manner it frequently 
 takes its progress through the lower half of the glass ; 
 and, when it has a tendency to fall, will gradually descend 
 from Moderation to Lukewarmness, and from Lukewarm- 
 ness to Infidelity, which very often terminates in Ignor- 
 ance, and always proceeds from it." Excellent and 
 devout spirit as Addison was, he escaped the dangers of 
 zeal, and to him party-spirit appeared to be a deplorable 
 form of madness. He could not understand why multi- 
 tudes of honest gentlemen, who entirely agree in their 
 lives, should take it in their heads to differ in their 
 religion. We have travelled far from the inflexible 
 temper of the days of Laud and his Puritan antagonists. 
 Tillotson had been doing for religion the work needful 
 in his own time ; yet we cannot describe it as other 
 than provisional. The point attained was a point of 
 recovery, a halting-place, an indispensable resting-place 
 
 Y 
 
33^ Transition to the Eighteenth Century 
 
 for a season. In one sermon Tillotson tells a story of a 
 woman who went about with a pitcher in one hand, and 
 a pan of coals in the other, and being asked what she 
 meant to do with them, she answered, " with the one 
 to burn heaven, and with the other to quench hell, that 
 men might love God and virtue for their own sakes 
 without hope of reward or fear of punishment." This 
 woman, he says, may have been devout, but he does 
 not think that she was overwise.^ 
 
 With Tillotson, whose piety was pure and peaceably 
 ardent, the motive to religion of self-interest was taken 
 / up among higher motives and was ennobled ; but when 
 we read the appeals of later preachers to all that is self- 
 regarding in human nature, and note their deadness to 
 all that is loftiest in man — his passion for righteousness, 
 his enthusiasm of self-surrender — we may come to regard 
 the poor woman of the story as the genius of heroic 
 piety gone distracted in an age of ignoble good-sense. 
 The mid years and the second half of the eighteenth 
 century with its preachings of Whitefield, its growth of 
 Methodism, its Evangelical revival, its new philanthropy, 
 are the justification by Wisdom of her distracted child. 
 The discovery came to religion and to literature that 
 '; neither of these is a mere affair of the understanding ; 
 in the hidden depths of passion and imagination lie 
 springs which murmur at the right moment to the rod of 
 the true diviner, and which, when discovered, bring life 
 
 ^ I borrow the sentences in which the Rev. John Hunt cites the story 
 ("Religious Thought in England," vol. ii. p. 103). His reference to 
 Barker's edition (ix. 49) does not guide me to the sermon in my copy 
 of Birch's edition. I have some recollection of having read the story 
 elsewhere — possibly in Joinville. 
 
Transition to the Eighteenth Century 339 
 
 and refreshment to the dry places. The general con- 
 clusion to be derived from the history of religion in 
 the eighteenth century I shall not venture to state in 
 words of my own. It has been stated by a writer, who 
 knew the eighteenth century well, and who can hardly 
 be charged with the errors of enthusiasm — the late 
 Mark Pattison : ''To abstain from vice, to cultivate 
 virtue, to fill our station in life with propriety, to bear 
 the ills of life with resignation, and to use its pleasures 
 moderately — these things are indeed not little ; perhaps 
 no one can name in his circle of friends a man whom 
 he thinks equal to their demands. Yet the experience 
 of the last age has shown us unmistakably that where 
 this is our best ideal of life, whether, with the Deist, 
 we establish the obligation of morality on ' independent' 
 grounds, or, with the orthodox, add the religious sanction 
 — in Mr Mill's rather startling mode of putting it, 
 ' Because God is stronger than we, and able to damn us 
 if we don't ' — it argues a sleek and sordid epicurism, in 
 which religion and a good conscience have their place 
 among the means by which life is to be made comfort- 
 able." 
 
 Fielding, although his standard of masculine morals, 
 if only *' good nature," that is, a benevolent heart, be 
 present, is not very exacting, was a sincere friend of 
 religion as it was conceived in the first half of the 
 eighteenth century. He ridicules Methodism, to which 
 sect Mr Blifil attaches himself, after his villainies have 
 been discovered, adding the estate of a very rich and 
 devout widow to the two hundred a year settled upon 
 him by his good uncle. But Fielding with even greater 
 
340 Transition to the Eighteenth Century 
 
 zest ridicules the hypocrisy of the free-thinker in the 
 person of his philosopher Square. The clergy of the 
 Church of England are treated by that great observer of 
 English social life on the whole with consideration and 
 respect, and it is a happiness to learn from Fielding 
 how much of true piety and goodness was to be found 
 among the representatives of the elder school, who 
 dreaded or suspected the new outbreak of religious 
 enthusiasm. Dr Harrison, the kind friend and father 
 of Amelia and her children, was serving England in his 
 own way less extensively but not less truly than White- 
 field or Wesley ; and, no doubt, there were many 
 Dr Harrisons. Yet we may doubt whether many 
 conversions were effected in the manner in which Mr 
 William Booth is so pleasingly converted with a view 
 to making Amelia's felicity complete, and qualifying 
 him for the part of an honest country gentleman. 
 Mr Booth was never a rash disbeliever, but he had his 
 doubts respecting religion, of which the chief arose 
 from his notion that, as men act entirely from their 
 passions, their actions can have neither merit nor 
 demerit. In the bailiff's house he employed his time 
 with great profit in reading Dr Barrow's sermons in 
 proof of the Christian religion, and before long not 
 a doubt remained unsatisfied — " if ever an angel might 
 be thought to guide the pen of a writer, surely the pen 
 of that great and good man had such an assistant.'' 
 Dr Harrison does not question Booth's assertion that 
 men act entirely from their passions ; but since that is 
 so, surely the religion which applies immediately to the 
 strongest of these passions, hope and fear, must be 
 
Transition to the Eighteenth Century 341 
 
 true ; a religion, writes Fielding, that chooses *' rather 
 to rely on its rewards and punishments than on that 
 native beauty of virtue which some of the ancient 
 philosophers thought proper to recommend to their 
 disciples." The utilitarian argument for Christianity 
 was never more nakedly stated. 
 
 To make life comfortable was assuredly not the chief 
 aim of the Evangelical Revival, nor has it been the 
 chief aim of the Oxford movement. The one attempted 
 to bring earth somewhat nearer to heaven ; the other, 
 through sacrament and symbol, thought to bring heaven 
 somewhat nearer to earth. Each was opposed to the 
 characteristic spirit of the earlier half of the eighteenth 
 century, the one more in the temper of individualism, 
 the other with a stricter sense of the importance of 
 corporate religious life. 
 
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