laws are of so great force, of so great use in the world; and to inform their minds with some method of reducing the laws whereof there is present controversy unto their first original causes, that so it may be in every particular ordinance thereby the better discerned, whether the same be reasonable, just, and righteous, or no."

In another place he declares his purpose to be to show that "Scripture is not the only law whereby God has opened His will touching all things that may be done." Some study enables us to reconcile in some sort the two declarations of purpose; but in the book itself he loses all sight of this purpose, and frames it as what he elsewhere declares it to be an introduction to solve “a number of doubts and questions about the nature, kinds, and qualities of laws in general."

This confusion of expression is a thing apart from any confusion of thought; on that we do not enter here. A farther evidence of Hooker's imperfect expression is seen in the opposite theories that are fathered upon him. That so many should take shelter under his authority is a proof of their respect, but not of his clearness.

The emotional qualities of Hooker's style may be dismissed briefly. He is for the most part intent upon quiet argument, quoting authorities and expounding principles. It is in the First Book chiefly that we find occasional passages having a poetical glow.

Strength.-Viewed as a definition and exposition of the various modes of law, this First Book drew from the scrupulously clear and exact John Austin the strong epithet of "fustian"; but whatever be its value in a scientific point of view, undoubtedly several parts are written in a highly poetical strain of subdued grandeur, in admirable harmony with the sonorous dignity of the rhythm. The exciting causes of these warmer passages are the author's admiration of beneficent cosmic power, and his dread of what might happen were this power withdrawn. He shrinks with his whole heart from every form of jarring irregularity, from everything that disturbs and agitates; he worships whatever keeps these horrors in subjection, and admires warmly whatever follows a quiet and peaceable course. His conception of the operations of nature would be very impressive and poetical were it not so familiar by repetition :

Although we are not of opinion, therefore, as some are, that nature in working hath before her certain exemplary draughts or patterns, which subsisting in the bosom of the Highest, and being thence discovered, she fixeth her eye upon them, as travellers by sea upon the pole-star of the world, and that according thereunto she guideth her hand to work by imitation although we rather embrace the oracle of Hippocrates, that 'each thing, both in small and in great, fulfilleth the task which destiny hath set down;'. nevertheless, forasmuch as the works of nature

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are no less exact than if she did both behold and study how to express some absolute shape or mirror always present before her; yea, such her dexterity and skill appeareth, that no intellectual creature in the world were able by capacity to do that which nature doth without capacity and knowledge. It cannot be but nature hath some director of infinite knowledge to guide her in all her ways."

In the above, the glow of his admiration for order is chilled by his being compelled to own that nature is an unconscious instrument. He finds more congenial scope in admiring the perfect obedience of the "huge, mighty, and royal armies" of angels.

His apprehension of a collapse of the order of nature contains some good expressions; but the conclusion, as a piece of art, is very lame and ineffectual-indeed, an anti-climax :

"Now if nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether, though it were but for a while, the observation of her own laws; if those principal and mother elements of the world, whereof all things in this lower world are made, should lose the qualities which now they have; if the frame of that heavenly arch erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve itself; if celestial spheres should forget their wonted motions, and by irregular volubility turn themselves any way as it might happen; if the prince of the lights of heaven, which now as a giant doth run his unwearied course, should, as it were, through a languishing faintness, begin to stand and to rest himself; if the moon should wander from her beaten way, the times and seasons of the year blend themselves by disordered and confused mixture, the winds breathe out their last gasp, the clouds yield no rain, the earth be defeated of heavenly influence, the fruits of the earth pine way as children at the withered breasts of their mother no longer able to yield them relief;-what would becoine of man himself, whom these things now do all serve? See we not plainly that obedience of creatures unto the law of nature is the stay of the whole world?"1

Pathos. In nearly every exhibition of feeling in Hooker's works there is a tinge of pathos. His craving for rest, quiet, and order is perpetually appearing. When, in his office at the Temple, he conceived the design of writing a final defence of Episcopacy, and had read many books, he made the following pathetic appeal to Whitgift:

"But, my lord, I shall never be able to finish what I have begun, unless I be removed into some quiet country parsonage, where I may see God's blessings spring out of my mother earth, and eat mine own bread in peace and privacy."

Throughout his Polity we trace the working of the same spirit. There is a large mixture of pathos in the examples that we have quoted of his loftier flights. The rhapsody on law, which was so

1 This passage is an instance of Hooker's want of originality and native power. The imagined confusion of the world is translated particular for particular from Arnobius, an unacknowledged plagiarism pointed out by Keble. Besides the noble rhythm, no part of the vigorous conception is Hooker's except the concluding particular. Arnobius supposes the earth to be too dry for seeds to germin ate; Hooker too dry to "yield relief to her fruits.

distasteful scientifically to John Austin, we regard with a kindlier feeling when we keep in mind the character of the man. We see a feeble, dependent soul clinging with ecstasy to an idea that gives him comfort and strength :

"Of law, there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage; the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power. Both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy."

Another favourite subject in a similar vein is the desirability of peace and unity between Puritan and Prelatist

“Far more comfort it were for us (so small is the joy we take in these strifes) to be joined with you in bonds of indissoluble love and amity, to live as if our persons being many our souls are but one, rather than in such dismembered sort to spend our few and wretched days in a tedious prosecuting of wearisome contentions."

The Ludicrous. Such a genuine lover of peace as Hooker was not likely to exasperate by keen sarcasm. And, on the other hand, a man of his feeble constitution was not likely to have a genial flow of humour, or a broad, hearty sense of the ludicrous. Such humour as he has is very faint, and takes a sarcastic, ironical turn. In answering the Puritans, he states their doctrines gravely, very seldom allowing any trace of ridicule to cross his statement, and even then making the ridicule apparent, not by epithets, but by bringing ludicrous incongruities to the surface in his exposition. His manner was very different from the boisterous wit of Tom Nash, a champion on the same side. We have seen one example of his irony (pp. 219-20). Here is another:

"Where they found men in diet, attire, furniture of house, or any other way, observers of civility and decent order, such they reproved as being carnally-minded. Every word otherwise than severely and sadly uttered seemed to pierce like a sword through them. If any man were pleasant, their manner was presently with deep sighs to repeat those words of our Saviour Christ, Woe be to you which now laugh, for ye shall lament.' So great was their delight to be always in trouble, that such as did quietly lead their lives, they judged of all other men to be in most dangerous case.'

To quote one or two passages like this without any of the context would give an exaggerated idea of the power of Hooker's irony. Read with the grave body of context, they strike us as but a very slight departure from the general gravity. In the above, which is a favourable example, the point is not brought out with equal force in all the sentences.

Melody. The general movement of Hooker's language is stiff, cumbrous, but richly musical. Here and there, as we have seen,

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his stiffness relaxes, and he warms into flowing strains of solemn melody. The majority of our quotations are favourable examples of his rhythm. The opening sentence of the Polity (p. 219)— "Though for no other cause, yet for this," &c.—is a fine example of a crescendo effect. The first sentence of his paragraph on the angels" But now that we may lift up our eyes (as it were) from the footstool to the throne of God," &c.—has something of the movement of the sentence in Sir Thomas Browne's 'Hydriotaphia' that drew such exclamations of delight from De Quincey.

The great cause of clumsiness in his general rhythm is an excessive use of heavy relative constructions:—

"That which hitherto we have set down is (I hope) sufficient to show their brutishness which imagine that religion and virtue are only as men will account of them."

"Of what account the Master of Sentences was in the Church of Rome, the same and more amongst the preachers of Reformed Churches Calvin had purchased; so that the perfectest divines were judged they which were skilfullest in Calvin's writings. Till at length the discipline, which was at the first so weak, that without the staff of their approbation, who were not subject unto it themselves, it had not brought others under subjection, began now to challenge universal obedience, and to enter into open conflict with those very churches, which in desperate extremity had been relievers of it."

Even these passages are not without a certain musical charm, especially if we disregard the meaning and attend only to the succession of the syllables.

KINDS OF COMPOSITION.

Exposition.-Hooker's powers of exposition are tested by the book on Law, his most abstruse subject. Viewed simply as a piece of exposition, this book contains little to profit the student. In this particular respect, it is bad even by the standard of the time. Its main faults have been specified under the Paragraph and the quality of Clearness. The paragraph on the discovery of rules of action, quoted to illustrate his worst, is a piece of very confused writing. On a subject requiring closeness of thought, he has not the qualities that made up for bad method in some of his contemporaries; he has neither felicity nor variety of expression, nor fulness of example and illustration. These remarks apply chiefly to the First Book: his imperfect expression is most apparent there. In his arguments on ritual and doctrine he is more on beaten ground, and proceeds with less confusion.

Persuasion. The Ecclesiastical Polity' is said to have had great influence. It is a good example to show how much in persuasion depends upon the manner. Hooker added little or nothing to what Whitgift had urged against the Presbyterian champion,

Cartwright; and in clearness, terseness of expression, and logical force, is far inferior to his patron. His main contribution is his elaborate and (in a logical point of view) clumsy attempt to prove what Whitgift had simply asserted or taken for granted, that not everything required for the conduct of human affairs is to be found in Scripture. His arguments in the first two Books had little weight with the Puritans. Once they saw his drift, they admitted the general propositions, but questioned his implied conclusions. Law was a good thing, and should be obeyed, but not bad law; not everything was found in Scripture-but the Presbyterian government, and their views about liturgies, vestments, and sacraments, were found in Scripture. While Hooker's arguments were neither new nor convincing, his moderation, singular in that age, gained him a hearing, and his earnest advocacy of the blessings of union and order was like oil on the troubled waters. Whitgift's strenuous hostility and unsparing rigour of argument set his opponents on edge, and steeled them against conviction; Hooker's mild and occasionally hazy statement of the same arguments won the doubtful at once, and by degrees made friends out of decided enemies.

JOHN LYLY or LILLIE, 1554-1606.

This ingenious writer deserves a place of minor prominence in a history of prose-partly from the intrinsic merits of his style, and partly from the voluminous controversy that has been raised upon it. He is generally known as "The Euphuist," and his style is called Euphuism. We shall analyse this Euphuism, and try to make out what it is, where its elements came from, and what influence it had upon its age as a model of composition.

Few particulars of Lyly's life are on record. We know only that he was born in Kent, that he was a student at Magdalen, Oxford, that he was patronised by Lord Burghley, and that from 1577 to 1593 he was a hanger-on at Court and wrote plays. His plays had no small reputation, coming immediately before Shakspeare. Ben Jonson gives him honourable mention; and, in a bookseller's puff of the next generation, he is described as "the only rare poet of that time, the witty, comical, facetiously quick and unparalleled John Lilly, Master of Arts." His chief work in prose, apart from prose dramas and some assistance to Tom Nash in the Marprelate controversy, is a moral romance known as 'Euphues' (whence his name Euphuist). It is in two parts, Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit' (1579), and Euphues and his England' (1580). Euphues, a gay young Athenian of good family, travels in the first part to Naples, in the second part to England; the plot is subservient to the development of the young man's moral nature, and gives occasion for discourses on religion, educa