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RICHARD BAXTER (1615-1691) was during nearly the whole of his long life the victim of. unrelenting persecution. Few authors have been so prolific as he; the multitude of his tracts and religious works almost defies computation. He was the consistent and unconquerable defender of the right of religious liberty; and in those evil days when James II. endeavoured forcibly to re-establish the Roman Catholic religion in England, Baxter was exposed to all the virulence and brutality of the infamous Jeffries and his worse than inquisitorial tribunal. He was a man of vast learning, the purest piety, and the most indefatigable industry. In prison, in extreme poverty, chased like a hunted beast, suffering from a weak constitution and a painful and incurable disease, this meek yet unconquerable spirit still fought his fight, pouring forth book after book in favour of free worship, and opposing the quiet sufferance of a primitive martyr to the rage and tyranny of the persecutor. His works, which have little to recommend them to a modern reader but the truly evangelic spirit of toleration which they breathe, are little known in the present day, with the exception of The Saints' EverLasting Rest, and A Call to the Unconverted.

GEORGE FOX (1624-1690), the founder of the Quaker sect, was a man born in the humblest rank of life in 1624, and so completely without education that his numerous writings are filled with unintelligible gibberish, and in many instances, even after having been revised and put in order by disciples possessed of education, it is hardly possible, through the mist of ungrammatical and incoherent declamation, to make out the drift of the author's argument. The life of Fox was like that of many other ignorant enthusiasts; believing himself the object of a special supernatural call from God, he retired from human companionship, and lived for some time in a hollow tree, clothed in a leathern dress which he had made with his own hands. Wandering about the country to preach his doctrines, the principal of which were a denial of all titles of respect, and a kind of quietism combined with hostility not only to all formal clerical functions and establishments, but even to all institutions of government, he met with constant and furious persecution at the hands of the clergy, the country magistrates, and the rabble, whose manners were, of course, much more brutal than in the present day. He has left curious records of his own adventures, and in particular of two interviews with Cromwell, upon whose mind the earnestness and sincerity of the poor quaker seem to have produced an impression honourable to the goodness of the Protector's heart. Fox's claims to the gift of prophecy and to the power of detecting witches bear witness at once to his ignorance and simplicity, and to the universal prevalence of gross superstition; but we cannot deny to him

the praise of ardent faith, deep, if unenlightened, benevolence, and a truly Christian spirit of patience under insults and injuries.

WILLIAM PENN (1644-1718), the founder of the colony of Pennsylvania, played a very active and not always very honourable part at the court of James II. when that prince, under a transparent pretext of zeal for religious liberty, was endeavouring, by giving privileges to the dissenting and nonconformist sects, to shake the power and influence of the Protestant Church, and thus to pave the way for the execution of his darling scheme, the re-establishment of Romanism in England. Penn was a man of good birth and academical education, but early adopted the doctrines of the Quakers. His name will ever be respectable for the benevolence and wisdom he exhibited in founding that colony which was afterwards destined to become a wealthy and enlightened state, and in the excellent and humane precepts he gave for the conduct of relations between the first settlers and the Indian aborigines. The sect of Quakers has always been conspicuous for peaceable behaviour, practical good sense, and much acuteness in worldly matters. Their principles forbidding them to take any part in warfare, and excluding them from almost all occupations but those of trade and commerce, they have generally been thriving and rich, and their numbers being small they have been able to carry out those excellent and well-considered plans for mutual help and support which have made their charitable institutions the admiration of all philanthropists.

ROBERT BARCLAY (1648-1690) was a Scottish country-gentleman of considerable attainments, who published a systematic defence of the doctrines of the sect founded by the rude zeal of Fox. His celebrated Apology for the Quakers was published, originally in Latin, in 1676.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

OTHER THEOLOGICAL AND MORAL

WRITERS.

JOSEPH HALL (1574-1656), bishop of Norwich, whose satires have been already mentioned (p. 83), was also a distinguished theological writer. His Contemplations and his Art of Divine Meditation are the most celebrated of his works. As a devotional writer he is second only to Jeremy Taylor.

ROBERT SANDERSON (1587-1663), bishop of Salisbury, one of the most celebrated of the High-Church Divines, wrote works on casuistry, and sermons distinguished by great learning.

OWEN FELTHAM (circa 1610-1677), lived in the house of the Earl of Thomond. His work, entitled Resolves, Divine, Moral, and Political, was first published in 1628, and enjoyed great popularity for many years. But Mr. Hallam's judgment is that "Feltham is not only a laboured and artificial, but a shallow writer." He owed much of his popularity to a pointed and sententious style.

SIR THOMAS OVERBURY (1581-1613), who was poisoned in the Tower in the reign of James I., wrote a work entitled Characters, which displays skill in the delineation of character. His description of the Fair and happy Milkmaid has been often quoted, and is one of the best of his characters. He also wrote two didactic poems entitled The Wife and the Choice of a Wife.

JOHN EARLE (1601-1665), bishop of Worcester, and afterwards of Salisbury, the reputed author of a work, Microcosmography, or a Piece of the World Discovered, in Essays and Characters, published anonymously about 1628.

"In

Some of these short characters Earle is worthy of comparison with La Bruyère; in others, perhaps the greater part, he has contented himself with pictures of ordinary manners, such as the varieties of occupation, rather than of intrinsic character, supply. In all, however, we find an acute

observation and a happy humour of expression. The chapter entitled the Sceptic is best known; it is witty, but an insult throughout on the honest searcher after truth, which could have come only from one that was content to take up his own opinions for ease or profit. Earle is always gay and quick to catch the ridiculous, especially that of exterior appearances; his style is short, describing well with a few words, but with much of the affected quaintness of that age. It is one of those books which give us a picturesque idea of the manners of our fathers at a period now become remote, and for this reason, were there no other, it would deserve to be read." (Hallam.)

PETER HEYLIN (1600-1662), a divine and historian, deprived of his preferments by the Parliament, was the author of many works, of which the most popular was his Microcosmus, or a Description of the Great World, first published in 1621.

JOHN SELDEN (1584-1654), one of the most learned men of his age, and the author of numerous historical and antiquarian works; but the one by which he is best known in English literature is his TableTalk, published after his death, containing many acute sayings, and well worth reading.

JAMES USSHER (1581-1656), archbishop of Armagh, likewise distinguished for his great learning, is best known by his chronological work, entitled Annals, containing chronological tables of universal history from the creation to the time of Vespasian. The dates in the margin of the authorized version of the Bible are taken from Ussher.

JOHN GAUDEN (1605-1664), bishop of Exeter, and afterwards of Worcester, was the author of Ikon Basiliké, a work professing to be written by Charles I. The authorship of this book has been the subject of much controversy; but there can be no doubt that it was written by Gauden, who, after the Restoration, claimed it as his own.

CHAPTER XI.

JOHN MILTON, A.D. 1608-1674.

§ 1. JOHN MILTON. His early life and education. § 2. Travels in Italy. § 3. Returns to England. Espouses the popular party. His Areopagitica. § 4. Made Latin Secretary to the Council of State. His Defensio Populi Anglicani, and other Prose Works. His Tractate of Education. § 5. History of his life after the Restoration. His death. § 6. Three periods of Milton's literary career. FIRST PERIOD: 1623-1640. Hymn on the Nativity. Comus. § 7. Lycidas. § 8. L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. § 9. Milton's Latin and Italian writings. His English Sonnets. § 10. SECOND PERIOD: 1640-1660. Style of his prose writings. § 11. THIRD PERIOD: 1660-1674. Paradise Lost. Analysis of the poem. Its versification. § 12. Incidents and personages of the poem. Conduct and development of the plot. § 13. Paradise Regained. § 14. Samson Agonistes.

§ 1. ABOVE the seventeenth century towers, in solitary grandeur, the sublime figure of JOHN MILTON (1608-1674). It will be no easy task to give even a cursory sketch of a life so crowded with literary as well as political activity; still less easy to appreciate the varied, yet all incomparable, works in which this mighty genius has embodied its conceptions. He was born, on the 9th December, 1608, in London, and was sprung from an ancient and gentle stock. His father, an ardent republican, and who sympathised with the Puritan doctrines, had quarrelled with his relations, and had taken his own independent part in life, embracing the profession of a money-scrivener, in which, by industry and unquestioned integrity, he had amassed a considerable fortune, so as to be able to retire to a pleasant country-house at Horton, near Colnbrook, in Buckinghamshire. It was undoubtedly from his father that the poet first imbibed his political and religious sympathies, and perhaps also something of that lofty, stern, but calm and noble spirit which makes his character resemble that of the heroes of ancient story. The boy evidently gave indications, from his early childhood, of the extraordinary intellectual powers which distinguished him from all other men; and his father, a person of cultured mind, seems to have furthered the design of Nature, by setting aside the youthful prophet and consecrating him-like Samuel-to the service of the Temple-the holy temple of patriotism and literature. Milton enjoyed the rare advantage of an education specially training him for the career of letters; and the proud care with which he collected

every production of his youthful intelligence, his first verses and his college exercises, shows that he was well aware that everything proceeding from his pen, "whether prosing or versing," as he says himself, "had certain signs of life in it," and merited preservation. What in other men would have been a pardonable vanity, in him was a duty he owed to his own genius and to posterity. He was most carefully educated, first at home, then at St. Paul's School, London, whence he entered Christ's College, Cambridge, yet a child in years, but already a consummate scholar. We may conceive with what admiration, even with what awe, must have been regarded by his preceptors both in the Schoo. and the University the first efforts of his Muse, which, though taking the commonplace form of academical prolusions, exhibit a force of conception, a pure majesty of thought, and a solemn and organlike music of versification that widely separate them from even the matured productions of contemporary poets. He left Cambridge in 1632, after taking his Master's degree, and there are many allusions in his works which prove that the doctrines and discipline of the University at that time contained much that was distasteful to his haughty and uncontrolled spirit. His first attempts in poetry were made as early as his 13th year, so that he is as striking an instance of precocity as of power of genius; and his sublime Hymn on the Nativity, in which may plainly be seen all the characteristic features of his intellectual nature, was written, as a juvenile exercise, in his 21st year. On leaving the University he resided for about five years at his father's seat at Horton, continuing his multifarious studies with unabated and almost excessive ardour, and filling his mind with those sweet and simple emanations of rural beauty which are so exquisitely reflected in his poetry. His studies seem to have embraced the whole circle of human knowledge: the literature of every age and of every cultivated language, living and dead, gave up all its stores of truth and beauty to his all-embracing mind: the most arduous subtleties of philosophy, the loftiest mysteries of theological learning, were familiar to him: there is no art, no science, no profession with which he was not more or less acquainted; and however we may wonder at the majesty of his genius, the extent of his acquirements is no less astounding. It was during this, probably happiest, period of his life that he wrote the more graceful, fanciful, and eloquent of his poems, the pastoral drama, or Masque, of Comus, the lovely elegy on his friend King entitled Lycidas, and in all probability the descriptive gems L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. At this epoch his mind seems to have exhibited that exquisite susceptibility to all refined, courtly, and noble emotions which is so faithfully reflected in these works, emotions not incompatible in him with the severest purity of sentiment

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