but there is nothing approaching to personal spleen in his sarcasms. In his bitterest shots at Cromwell, he keeps in view rather what he supposed to be Cromwell's vices-tyrannous ambition and hypocrisy. The man himself he admits to be an extraordinary person, and professes to look upon him with no greater animosity than upon Marius or Sylla. Besides, the invective is supposed to be delivered in a dream, and to the face of a terrible angel professing to be an admirer of the late Lord Protector. The circumstances are managed with a kind of comic effect; and, keeping in mind the situation, we see the most bitter invective through a humorous medium.

As an example of his powers of sarcastic irony, take the following ludicrously-unexpected banter by the terrible apparition, the "North-West Principality." Cowley had been proceeding in a full tide of denunciation, accusing Cromwell of tyranny, craft, and other crimes :

"Here I stopt; and my pretended protector, who, I expected, should have been very angry, fell a-laughing; it seems at the simplicity of my discourse, for thus he replied: "You seem to pretend extremely to the old obsolete rules of virtue and conscience, which makes me doubt very much, whether, from this vast prospect of three kingdoms, you can show me any acres of your own. But these are so far from making you a prince, that I am afraid your friends will never have the contentment to see you so much as a justice of peace in your own country. For this, I perceive, which you call virtue, is nothing else but either the forwardness of a Cynic, or the laziness of an Epicurean. I am glad you allow me at least artful dissimulation, and unwearied diligence in my hero; and I assure you that he, whose life is constantly drawn by these two, shall never be misled out of the way of greatness. But I see you are a pedant, and Platonical statesman, a theoretical commonwealth's-man, an Utopian dreamer. Was ever riches gotten by your golden mediocrities? or the supreme place attained to by virtues that must not stir out of the middle? Do you study Aristotle's politics, and write, if you please, comments upon them; and let another but practise Machiavel: and let us see, then, which of you two will come to the greatest preferments. If the desire of rule and superiority,'" &c.

The satire of the Essays is never long kept up; some goodhumoured familiarity of expression comes in after a short passage of keener language, and puts us into a humorous mood by revealing the easy unexcited temper of the satirist. Thus, in the Essay on Obscurity:

"If we engage into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time: we expose our life to a quotidian ague of frigid impertinencies, which would make a wise man tremble to think of. Now, as for being known much by sight and pointed at, I cannot comprehend the honour that lies in that: whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the best doctor, and the hangman more than the lord chief justice of a city. Every creature has it, both of nature and art, if it be any ways extraordinary. It was as often said, 'This is that Bucephalus,' or 'This is that Incitatus,' when they were led prancing

through the streets, as This is that Alexander,' or 'This is that Domitian; and truly, for the latter, I take Incitatus to have been a much more honourable beast than his master, and more deserving the consulship, than he the empire."

He can be humorous at his own expense, as in the description of his country experiences:

"One would think that all mankind had bound themselves by an oath to do all the wickedness they can; that they had all (as the Scripture speaks) sold themselves to sin: the difference only is, that some are a little more crafty (and but a little, God knows) in making of the bargain. I thought, when I went first to dwell in the country, that, without doubt, I should have met there with the simplicity of the old poetical golden age; I thought to have found no inhabitants there, but such as the shepherds of Sir Philip Sidney in Arcadia, or of Monsieur d'Urfé, upon the banks of Lignon; and began to consider with myself, which way I might recommend no less to posterity the happiness and innocence of the men of Chertsea : but to confess the truth, I perceived quickly, by infallible demonstrations, that I was still in Old England, and not in Arcadia, or La Forrest; that, if I could not content myself with anything less than exact fidelity in human conversation, I had almost as good go back and seek for it in the Court, or the Exchange, or Westminster-hall. I ask again then, whither shall we fly, or what shall we do?"

The Essay on Agriculture is written in his happiest vein. He searches out the authorities for the dignity of agricultural life with great pleasantry :

He

From Homer, we must not expect much concerning our affairs. was blind, and could neither work in the country, nor enjoy the pleasures of it; his helpless poverty was likeliest to be sustained in the richest places; he was to delight the Grecians with fine tales of the wars and adventures of their ancestors; his subject removed him from all commerce with us, and yet, methinks, he made a shift to show his goodwill a little. For though he could do us no honour in the person of his hero Ulysses (much less of Achilles), because his whole time was consumed in wars and voyages; yet he makes his father Laertes a gardener all that while, and seeking his consolation for the absence of his son in the pleasure of planting, and even dunging his own grounds. Ye see, he did not contemn us peasants; nay, so far was he from that insolence, that he always styles Eumæus, who kept the hogs, with wonderful respect, dîov vpopßov, the divine swine-herd: he could have done no more for Menelaus or Agamemnon."

OTHER WRITERS.

The justification of departing from the usual chronological arrangement, which dates a period from the Restoration, is that by the present arrangement we get a more compact grouping of our authors relatively to the great Rebellion. By annexing to the period of the Commonwealth the first ten years of the reign of Charles II., we bind together those that wrote during the agitation of the political storm, and those whose literary activity was greatest, indeed, when that storm was laid, but whose

thoughts and style were powerfully influenced by the experience of their early manhood, and who belong in every way to the generation of the Commonwealth.

The writers of the Commonwealth-and they are remarkably numerous may, indeed, be divided into three classes: recluse or easy-tempered students, like Thomas Browne and Fuller, who were hardly influenced at all by the surrounding excitement ; men of bold speech, like Milton, who made their voices heard in the strife; and men, like Cowley, who composed their works when the agitation had subsided. The division is more a lcose help to the understanding and the memory than one that can be marked out with sharp and clear lines: it makes an interesting distribution of a few great men, and it is so far a clue to their character; but it cannot be made a principle of classification for the mass of writers without leading to unprofitable refinements. We here follow the same plan as for the other periods.

THEOLOGY.

Hall, Hales, and Chillingworth, all survived into this period. The Church of England boasted also two of her most famous divines, Robert Sanderson (1587-1663), and John Pearson (16131686). At the outbreak of the Civil War, Sanderson was Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, Canon of Christ Church, and a royal chaplain. Upon the Restoration he was appointed Bishop of Lincoln, and he was one of the commissioners at the Savoy Conference in 1661. His principal work in English is 'Nine Cases of Conscience.' He is the chief of Protestant casuists. Pearson, who after the Restoration succeeded Dr Wilkins in the Mastership of Trinity and in the see of Chester, published in 1659 an 'Exposition of the Creed,' which still holds its ground as a standard production. The work is laborious, calm, and acute, written in simple and clear language; it follows the easy arrangement of taking each word in order. He was profoundly versed in patristic literature; and in that department criticised with such acuteness that Bentley said "his very dross was gold."

The most eminent of the Nonconforming divines of this generation was Richard Baxter (1615-1691). He was ordained in the Church of England, and at the beginning of the Civil War was pastor of Kidderminster. He sided with the Parliament, was attached as chaplain to a regiment, and saw some active service; but his health failing, he returned to his pastoral charge, and buried himself in study. In this retirement he wrote the Saint's Everlasting Rest,' a volume of pious thoughts that have a peculiar interest when we view them as the aspirations of an infirm man turning wearily from the distractions of a time so utterly out of

joint. The violent breaking to pieces of the old monarchy and the usurpation of Cromwell were painful things to a man thirsting for quiet and security; and in a celebrated interview with the Protector he had the courage to remonstrate. After the Restoration he was offered a bishopric, but declined the offer. Subsequently, when penal enactments were passed against Dissenters, his quiet ministrations in London were interfered with, and he was exposed to considerable hardships. At last, in 1685, he was thrown into prison, taken before the infamous Judge Jeffreys, and shamefully bullied: he was released by the special intervention of the king. All his life through he was an indefatigable writer: of his multitudinous works, numbering in all 168, only the 'Saint's Rest' and the 'Call to the Unconverted' have had a durable popularity. His autobiography-Memorable Passages of my Life and Times' affords an interesting picture of an ardent impulsive nature tamed down by rude experience and infirm health to greater sobriety of judgment and closeness of observation. In the following passage he frankly owns that had his works been less numerous, their fame might have been more durable :

"Concerning almost all my writings, I must confess that my judgment is, that fewer, well studied and polished, had been better; but the reader who can safely censure the books, is not fit to censure the author, unless he had been upon the place, and acquainted with all the occasions and circumstances. Indeed, for the 'Saint's Rest,' I had four months' vacancy to write it, but in the midst of continual languishing and medicine; 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 ornament; 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 own desire was rather to stay upon one thing long than run over many, some sudden occasions or other extorted almost all my writings from me.'

Another eminent Dissenter was John Owen (1616-1683), first a Presbyterian, thereafter an Independent. He was a man of singular moderation and sweetness of temper. He was a special favourite with Cromwell, who took him to Ireland to organise the College of Dublin, and subsequently to Scotland. After the Restoration, Clarendon offered him preferment in the Church if he would conform, and Charles himself desired his acquaintance. His voluminous writings are exclusively on religious subjects. The style is bad. "I can't think how you like Dr Owen," said Robert Hall. "I can't read him with patience; I never read a page of Dr Owen, sir, without finding some confusion in his thoughts, either a truism or a contradiction in terms." "Sir, he is a double Dutchman, floundering in a continent of mud."

Less accommodating and pliable, less sweet if not less enlightened, was George Fox (1624-1690), the Founder of the Society of

Friends, an illegitimate son of the Church in a time of religious excitement, one of the most extraordinary men of genius in this eccentric generation. He was a grave, sober, reflective man, with no outgoings of volatile imagination, buoyant egotism, or healthy energy in any shape; as passive, unexcited, vacuous, as Bunyan was active, excitable, teeming with creative energy,—not pouring out force, but letting the world flow in upon him, judging and measuring the traditions and opinions floating about him, and striving in a calm way to reduce the bewildering mass to consistent clearness. Probably the more he pondered, the more he entangled himself in perplexing mazes, and he finally ceased to ponder, and took refuge in a set of arbitrary dogmas. He originated the prominent ideas of Quakerism, the use of "thou," the objection to uncover the head before dignitaries, the objection to oaths, the aversion to war, the doctrine that inner light and not the Bible is the rule of life. Like Bunyan he was an illiterate artisan of an inferior craft, a cobbler or shoe-mender-holding to the shoemaker the same relation that the tinker holds to the brazier. His style is more compact, and has greater graphic felicity of plain language, than Bunyan's, but it has none of the Pilgrim's figurative richness.

Another character of the time, of wider reputation than George Fox, was the man just mentioned, John Bunyan (1628-1688), “the wicked tinker of Elstow." We need not dwell upon the incidents of his early life and conversion, minutely and vividly related in his autobiographic Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners.' later biographers accuse himself and his early biographers of exaggerating his youthful enormities by way of magnifying the divine grace. He says himself that "he did still let loose the reins of his lust, and delighted in all transgressions against the law of God; so that until he came to the state of marriage, he was the very ringleader in all manner of vice and ungodliness." The only sins that he specifically confesses to are Sabbath-breaking and swearing. From another sin pretty plainly stated in the above passage, Southey, followed by Macaulay, exculpates him on the ground of a subsequent specific denial-exculpates him somewhat hastily; for though the natural interpretation of one plain-spoken sentence is that the denial covers his whole life, yet, when we reflect and look closely, we see that the charge was pointed at his conduct after conversion and marriage, and that, in the course of his indignant denial, he brings in the qualifying clause "from my first conversion until now," and so does not contradict his previous confession that he was not better than he should have been before he "came to the state of marriage." "After he had been about five or six years awakened," "he was desired, and that with much earnestness, that he would be willing at sometimes to take in hand, in one of the meetings, to speak a word of exhortation unto them;"