Satellites burning in a lucid ring

Around meek Walton's heavenly memory."

Walton was a retired London linendraper, who, having amassed a competent fortune in business, spent his latter days in the pursuits that pleased him best, reading and writing occasionally, enjoying the society of good men, and wandering about the country in the pursuit of his favourite art.

A man of much more unique genius than Walton was Sir Thomas Browne, who has written passages of such fine, organlike rhythm as it would be difficult to parallel save in the pages of De Quincey. The son of a rich merchant, he was born in London in 1605, educated at Winchester, and afterwards at Oxford, where he studied medicine. He then travelled for some time on the Continent, taking the degree of doctor of physic at Leyden in 1633. On his return to England he practised for a short time at Halifax, after which he settled at Norwich, where he remained till his death in 1682. He was knighted, "with singular marks of consideration," by Charles II. in 1671. Browne's first work, "Religio Medici" (the Religion of a Physician) was published in 1643. This little work, which was at once successful, being "very eagerly read in England, France, Italy, Belgium, and Germany," is divided into two parts, the first containing an account of his religious opinions and feelings, and the second of his human feelings. Grave and musical in style, the book besides possesses that peculiar attractiveness which is always found in the self-por traiture of a gifted and original mind. We may quote one passage as showing the width of Browne's learning, and the odd mixture of vanity and humility which characterised him :"I thank God," he says, "amongst these millions of vices I do inherit and hold from Adam, I have escaped one, and that a mortal enemy to charity, the first and father sin, not only of man, but of the devil-pride; a vice whose name is comprehended in a monosyllable, but in its nature not circumscribed by a world. I have escaped it in a condition that can hardly avoid it. Those petty acquisitions and reputed perfections that advance and elevate the conceits of other men add no feathers

Browne's Writings.

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unto mine. I have seen a grammarian tower and plume himself over a single line in Horace, and show more pride in the construction of one ode than the author in the composure of the whole book. For my own part, besides the jargon and patois of several provinces, I understand no less than six languages; yet I protest I have no higher conceit of myself than had our fathers before the confusion of Babel, when there was but one language in the world, and none to boast himself either linguist or critic. I have not only seen several countries, beheld the nature of their climes, the chorography of their provinces, topography of their cities, but understood their several laws, customs, and policies; yet cannot all this persuade the dulness of my spirit into such an opinion of myself as I behold in nimble and conceited heads, that never looked a degree beyond their nests." In a similar half-deprecating, half-conceited way he goes on to describe his attainments in astronomy and botany. Three years after the "Religio Medici" appeared the "Pseudodoxia Epidemica," commonly known as "Browne's Vulgar Errors," devoted to the refutation of many beliefs current in the seventeenth century, such as the legends about the phoenix, that a man hath one rib less than a woman, that crystal is nothing else but ice strongly congealed, that a wolf first seeing a man begets a dumbness in him. Browne's finest effort is his "Hydriotaphia" (1658) (Urn Burial), a discourse founded upon the discovery of certain sepulchral urns found in Norfolk. The concluding chapter, in which he speaks of the shortness of life and of posthumous fame, is one of the noblest examples in English literature of solemn, impassioned eloquence. "It is," wrote Carlyle in his Diary for Dec. 3, 1826, "absolutely beautiful: a still, elegiac mood, so soft, so deep, so solemn and tender, like the song of some departed saint flitting faint under the everlasting canopy of night; an echo of deepest meaning from the great and famous nations of the dead. Browne must have been a good man." Browne's greatest fault as a writer is his excessive fondness for words derived from the Latin. His highly Latinised style no doubt adds to the diginity and sonorous

swell of his sentences, but it detracts from their general intelligibility. He was also an extensive coiner of new words, a fault common with the writers of his time.

Only one historian of any eminence appeared during the period with which we are dealing. This was Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, a prominent actor in the events which he recorded. He was born in 1608 at Dinton, in Wiltshire, the son of a country gentleman. Destined for the Church, he turned aside to the study of the law, and in 1640 began his public career as member of Parliament for Wootton Basset. By his caution and prudence he soon rose to high favour; in 1643 he was knighted and made Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1646 he went with the Prince of Wales to Jersey, where he began his "History of the Rebellion." He afterwards accom panied the Prince and the Queen Mother to France, returning to England at the Restoration, which he had no inconsiderable share in bringing about. He was made Earl of Clarendon and Lord Chancellor in 1660; but his prosperity did not continue long. In 1667 he was impeached of high treason by the Commons and ordered to quit the kingdom. He never returned to England, dying at Rouen in 1674. He completed his "History of the Rebellion" during his second exile, writing besides his "Life and Continuation of the History," published from his manuscripts in 1759; the History having appeared previously in 1707. No active partisan can be a fair chronicler of a movement in which he was himself engaged. It is therefore not surprising that though many facts are to be found in Clarendon's account of the Great Civil War which add to our knowledge of that struggle and the men who figured in it, it is often exceedingly incorrect and prejudiced. Its main excellence consists in its noble gallery of portraits, drawn with great skill and with much discernment of character. The style of the history, looked at from what may be called the mechanical point of view, is exceedingly bad, prolix and tautological, full of parentheses and endless involutions.

That English style was, however, advancing in the right direction is proved by the writings of one of Clarendon's

Thomas Hobbes.

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contemporaries, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), in which we find, with much less literary genius, an infinitely larger portion of that clearness and accuracy which are the note of modern prose. "A permanent foundation for his fame," writes Sir James Mackintosh, "consists in his admirable style, which seems to be the very perfection of didactic language. Short, clear, precise, pithy, his language has never more than one meaning, which never requires a second thought to find.... He had so thoroughly studied the genius of the language, and knew so well to steer between pedantry and vulgarity, that two centuries have not superannuated probably more than a dozen of his words. His expressions are so luminous, that he is clear without the help of illustration." This extravagant eulogium, which bears all the marks of Sir James's over-laudatory disposition, must not be understood to mean more than that Hobbes wrote with a lucidity and precision rarely found in philosophers. During his long life, Hobbes mingled in much of the best society, intellectual and social, both of England and the Continent. In his earlier years he was secretary to Bacon, and was, we are told by the antiquary Aubrey, "beloved by his Lordship, who was wont to have him walk in his delicate groves, where he did meditate; and when a notion darted into his mind, Mr. Hobbes was presently to write it down. And his Lordship was wont to say that he did it better than any one else about him; for that many times when he read their notes he scarce understood what they writ, because they understood it not clearly themselves." Hobbes was also greatly in favour with the Cavendish family, acting as tutor to two successive Earls of Devonshire, with whom he wandered over a large part of the Continent, making acquaintance with the more prominent literary men there. Hobbes's literary career began with a translation of Thucydides, designed to show the evils of popular rule. From 1640 to 1660 appeared the works on which his fame as a thinker rests: "De Cive; "Treatise on Human Nature;" "De Corpore Politico;" "Leviathan, or the Matter, Power, and Form of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil;" and "De Corpore."

The latter years of his life were embittered by a controversy on certain mathematical points, in which he got decidedly the worst of it. At the age of eighty-six, the versatile old man published translations of the "Iliad” and “Odyssey,” not remarkable save as literary curiosities. Hobbes's philosophical theories had immense influence on the Restoration period. He became the philosopher par excellence of the court and the society which surrounded it. His selfish theory of morals and his theory of government, which, though setting out with the statements that the origin of all power was in the people, and that the end of all power was for the common weal, practically inculcated a sort of divine right, were very acceptable to King and courtiers. As frequently happens, Hobbes's followers often carried his views to an extreme length, and the name "Hobbism" was given to doctrines which Hobbes himself would have been the last to countenance.

With the great exception already mentioned, the poets of the era preceding the Restoration do not compare favourably with the prose writers. It is a sad contrast to leave the magnificent efflorescence of the Elizabethan era and to study the works of the many poetasters who flourished about the time of Charles I. Even those who tower above the common herd, and have not long since been consigned to obscurity, are now remembered chiefly by a few happy verses, and not by their writings as a whole. Such is the case with the unfortunate cavalier Richard Lovelace, who died in 1658 at the age of forty. Two or three of his lyrics are perfect gems, to be committed to heart and conned over by all who care anything about poetry, but his genius was the reverse of prolific, and "rubbish" is the only fit epithet by which to characterise most of what he wrote. Much the same may be said about Sir John Suckling (1608– 1641). A few sprightly society verses, of which the well-known and justly celebrated "Ballad on a Wedding" is the best, is all of his work that can in any sense be said to live. Of even "Holy George Herbert," whose "Temple," published in 1633, has received warm praise from some of the best judges of poetry, can it be said that he is at all generally known or appre