deal with those social and political questions then discussed in many very able writings, of which his may here suffice as examples. He, like several of his remarkable contemporaries, lived into the succeeding generation: and he may be accepted as the last representative of the eloquence of English Prose, in that brilliant stage of its history, which, when looked at from a general point of view, is found to terminate about the date of the Restoration.

It should be observed, indeed, that, in prose not less than in verse, the earliest aspirants of the new school were producing excellent assay-pieces, while the ancient masters worked with undiminished vigour after their accustomed models. The works of the eccentrically eloquent Sir Thomas Browne, who lived, though without writing, for twenty years in the reign of Charles the Second, are exaggerated specimens, both for good and evil, of all the qualities characterizing the style of his predecessors. Cowley the poet, on the contrary, who hardly survived the Protectorate, has given us a few prose writings which, in point of style, stand alone in their age: they have a modern ease, and simplicity, and regularity, which, if we did not know their date, might induce us to think they must have been composed thirty or forty years later. In a word, the anticipation of the future, with which Hooker's style surprised us at the beginning of our period, is paralleled by that which Cowley's exhibits at its close.

At this point, then, ends the first great section in the History of English Eloquence. Hardly taking more than a beginning in the last generation of Elizabeth's reign, it stretches forward till a little past the middle of the seventeenth century. In regard to the contents of the books in which the most remarkable prose compositions of our language are thus embodied, we shall learn something immediately. In the meantime, we may enable ourselves to understand the Character of the Style which prevails among their writers, by studying an analytic description of it, given by one of our highest critical authorities.

"To this period belong most of those whom we commonly reckon our Old English Writers; men often of such sterling worth for their sense, that we might read them with little regard to their language; yet, in some instances at least, possessing much that demands praise in this respect. They are generally nervous and effective, copious to redundancy in their command of words, apt to employ what seemed to them ornament with much imagination rather than judicious taste, yet seldom degenerating into commonplace and indefinite phraseology. They have, however, many defects. Some of them, especially the most learned, are full of

pedantry, and deform their pages by an excessive and preposterous mixture of Latinisms unknown before: at other times we are disgusted by colloquial and even vulgar idioms or proverbs: nor is it uncommon to find these opposite blemishes, not only in the same author, but in the same passages. Their periods, except in a very few, are ill constructed and tediously prolonged: their ears, again with some exceptions, seem to have been insensible to the beauty of rhythmical prose: grace is commonly wanting and their notion of the artifices of style, when they thought at all about them, was not congenial to our language. This may be accepted as a general description of the English writers under James and Charles; some of the most famous may, in a certain degree, be deemed to modify the censure.'

* Hallam: Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries.

CHAPTER IV.

THE AGE OF SPENSER, SHAKSPEARE, BACON, AND

MILTON.

A. D. 1558-A. D. 1660.

SECTION SECOND: THE SCHOLASTIC AND ECCLESIASTICAL
LITERATURE.

ERUDITION, CLASSICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. 1. General State of Ecclesiastical Learning-Eminent Names-Raynolds-Andrewes- Usher - Classical Studies Camden and Selden-Latin Prose and Verse.-TRANSLATIONS OF THE HOLY BIBLE 2. The Geneva Bible-Whittingham-The Bishops' Bible-Parker.-3. King James's Bible-Its History-The Translators-Its Universal Reception.-ORIGINAL THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS. 4. The Elizabethan Period-Hooker's Ecclesiastical PolityReign of James-Sermons of Bishop Andrewes-Sermons of Donne.-5. Reign of Charles-Hall and Taylor compared.-6. Bishop Hall-His Sermons-His other Works.-7. Jeremy Taylor-His Treatises-His Sermons-Character of his Eloquence.-8. The Commonwealth and Protectorate-Controversial Writings-The Puritans-Richard Baxter-His Life and Works.

ERUDITION, CLASSICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL.

1. THE Prose Literature of the illustrious period with which we are busied, is equally vast in amount and various in range. Our ambition must limit itself to the acquiring of a little knowledge, in regard to a few of the most distinguished names, and very few of the most valuable or characteristic sorts of writing.

The successive changes having already been traced hastily in the order of time, our task will now be easiest if the phenomena are regarded according to their kinds. Theology and its contributory sciences will first present themselves: philosophy will be followed by history; and, afterwards, from a varied and interesting mass of miscellaneous compositions, there may be selected and arranged the most remarkable specimens.

The study of the Oriental Languages, and other pursuits bearing immediately on Theology, flourished largely throughout our period, or, at any rate, from the middle of Elizabeth's time. Several of those churchmen whose English writings will soon call for notice, were honourable examples of the high professional knowledge possessed by their order. Hooker, however, is said to have been the first divine of the Reformed Church who was both remarkably learned and remarkably eloquent. The credit of having been the most erudite among the theologians of the great

queen's reign, is assigned to Thomas Raynolds, whose opinions tended to puritanism, and whose works are very little known. The path of learning in which he and other ecclesiastics were most highly distinguished, was that which was called Patristic Theology, that is, the study of the early Fathers of the Christian Church. The reputation which Raynolds had enjoyed in this field, devolved, in the time of James, on Bishop Andrewes, whose celebrity as an orator will present him again to our view. He may here be described as having been one of the best and wisest of those who held the ecclesiastical views, developed afterwards so uncompromisingly by Archbishop Laud; indeed, if not the founder of this High Church party, he is said to have been certainly the earliest of its literary advocates. In the next reign, the Low Church party, and the Irish nation, possessed the man most famous of all for Patristic learning; one indeed who, while his knowledge extended widely beyond the studies of his profession, has been declared to have been in these the most profound scholar whom the Protestant Church of our country has ever produced. This learned man was Archbishop Usher, who was at the same time one of the most pious and devoted of ministers.

While Theological erudition prospered thus signally, the study of the Pure Classics was by no means prosecuted with so much success. It could not boast of any very celebrated name, either in the more exact school which had formerly prevailed, or in that historical method of philology which was followed so actively on the continent throughout the first half of the seventeenth century. When it is said that the times of James and Charles were learned, what is meant is this: that the literary men were deeply read in classical books, but not that they were deeply versed in classical philology. Greek, likewise, was not so well known as Latin. Probably the most correct and profound of our scholars were such laymen as Camden and Selden: and they, as it has already been remarked, were far from bounding their studies by the limits of the ancient world. Among those men whose pursuits were chiefly classical, Gataker was eminently distinguished. The name of the industrious Farnaby will sometimes come in the way of the Latin reader: and Sir Henry Saville, eminent for his own learning, was still more so for the munificence with which he aided the studies of others.

Many of the philosophical and polemical writings of the times were couched in Latin: so likewise were some of its histories. In the last stage of the period, poetry was composed elegantly in that tongue by May and Cowley, and still more finely by Milton.

THE TRANSLATIONS OF THE HOLY BIBLE.

2. Oriental learning and Classical, a love of goodness, and a zeal for national enlightenment, co-operated in producing the most valuable of those efforts which present themselves in the field of Theology. We have to mark a second series of Translations of the Holy Scriptures: and, to reach its beginnings, we look back, for the last time, to the middle of the sixteenth century.

The first of the three versions whose appearance is now to be recorded, came from the same little knot of exiles, English and Scottish, who had sought refuge in Geneva, and had there already published a revised edition of the New Testament. Their entire Translation of the Bible was printed at the cost of the congregation, one of the most active of whose members was the father of the founder of the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Being completed soon after the accession of Elizabeth, it was published in 1560: it was accompanied by a dedication to her, and a prefatory epistle "To our beloved in the Lord, the brethren of England, Scotland, and Ireland." Coverdale, John Knox, and several others, have been said to have had some share in the work; but three only can positively be named, all of whom were afterwards ministers in the Church of England. Whittingham, Calvin's brother-inlaw, who had edited the New Testament, was for nearly twenty years Dean of Durham, though troubled by his metropolitan for his Genevese tendencies; Gilby died at a good old age as Rector of Ashby-de-la-Zouch; and Sampson, refusing a bishopric, became successively Dean of Christ Church, and a Prebendary of Saint Paul's, losing the first office by being a non-conformist in the matter of costume. The Geneva Bible became, and long continued to be, the favourite version among the English Puritans and Scottish Presbyterians.

d. 1575.

It was not, indeed, adopted by the Church of England. But Cranmer's version, which had been restored to public use, was admittedly open to improvements; and measures were quickly taken for the purpose. The chief promoter of the good work was b. 1504. Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, one of the most eminent among the fathers of the English Church. He had the honour, in early life, of declining to become a professor in Oxford, under the patronage of Wolsey; and, attaching himself to the Protestant party, and losing valuable preferments on the accession of Queen Mary, he improved his knowledge still further in his enforced leisure, and was held to be, both in theology and history, one of the best informed men of his day. Now placed at the head of the church, he conducted its organi