under the conduct of Greatheart, whose character is said—and probably with truth-to have been moulded on that of Cromwell. The surroundings of the personages concerned are those of the Calvinistic theology; but the book lives, in spite of this, by the life-like presentation of the allegorical personages which enter upon the stage.

The Puritan manifestation in literature, like the Puritan manifestation in the State and nation, had run its triumphant course, though in literature as well as in the nation it was to continue to exercise, when mingled with other elements, a powerful influence. Its decline may be traced to many causes, but above all to the growth of a conviction that it exalted the few at the expense of the many. The

highest aim of the Protectorate was the defenc: of the so-called 'people of God.' The highes aim of Puritan literature was the exaltation of the strong at the expense of the weakthe pre-eminently good at the expense of the more moderately virtuous. It was not Milton's personal misogyny resulting in the substituti of Eve or Dalila for Juliet and Rosalind: # was the habit of looking for more than was to be achieved by human nature, till the search ideal beauty and goodness led to contemptuo blindness to the beauty and goodness inhere: in our mingled nature. Human nature tox its revenge both in politics and literature. T. age of Cromwell and Milton passed away, S be succeeded by the rule of Charles II. ad the dramatists of the Restoration.

SAMUEL R. GARDINER

John Selden (1584-1654) was one of the most illustrious scholars of his time, a learned jurist, a powerful publicist, and a conspicuous political personage. He was born 16th December 1584, of a respectable family, at Salvington, near Worthing, in Sussex. After being educated at Chichester and Oxford, he studied law in London, at Clifford's Inn and the Inner Temple. Here his learning secured for him the friendship of Camden, Spelman, Sir Robert Cotton, Ben Jonson, Browne, and also of Drayton, to whose Polyolbion he furnished notes. By Milton he is spoken of as 'the chief of learned men reputed in this land.' As a conveyancer and chamber-counsel he acquired wealth, yet found time for studies at once profound and wide in range. He wrote his first treatise, Analecton Anglo-Britannicon (1606), on the civil government of Britain before the Norman Conquest, when only twenty-two years of age. In 1610 appeared his Jani Anglorum Facies Altera (Eng. trans. 1683), on the history of the laws of England to the death of Henry II., and also The Duello or Single Combat, a history of trial by battle. His largest English work, A Treatise on Titles of Honour, was published in 1614, and still continues an authority. In 1617 his fame was extended, both at home and abroad, by his Latin work on the gods of the Syrians and the heathen deities mentioned in the Old Testament. In his History of Tythes (1618), by demolishing the divine right of the Church to that tax he gave great offence to the clergy. He was summoned to the king's presence, reprimanded, and (no doubt) confuted. He was, moreover, called before several members of the formidable High Commission Court, who extracted from him a written declaration of regret for what he had done, but without any retractation of his

opinion. Several replies appeared, but to these he was not allowed to publish a rejoinder, and the Privy Council suppressed the work itself. In 162 he suffered a brief imprisonment for advising the Parliament to repudiate King James's doctrine th their privileges were originally royal grants. In 1623 he was elected member for Lancaster; in 1626 for Great Bedwin, and in 1628 for Ludgershali, both in Wilts, and henceforward till his death he took a considerable part in public affairs.

He was sincerely attached to the cause of the Parliament, and as sincerely opposed to the views of the court party and the king; but he was above all things a constitutional lawyer, and derived his ideas of the rights of the subject from the history of the nation, and not from religious fanaticism o metaphysical considerations. Still, he 'loved his ease,' as Clarendon says, and so let things be done without protest of which he did not approve. Yez he often stood up to defend the liberty of the subject. In 1628 he was active in the proceedings of the Commons that issued in the Petition of Right, and the year after he was committed to the Tower with Eliot, Holles, and the rest. eight months' rigorous imprisonment he was transferred to the Marshalsea, but soon after was released. In 1640 he was chosen member of the Long Parliament for the University of Oxford; and now, when the struggle between the king and the nation began to point towards the fatal rupture, was suspected of not being zealous enough by such as were themselves perhaps over-zealous. Already in 1636 he had dedicated to the king his Mart Clausum (an answer to the Mare Liberum of Grotius and the Dutch claims to fish off the British coasts

After

and there is evidence that Charles personally looked

on him with favour. Selden was one of the com

he

mittee of twenty-four appointed to draw up a remonstrance, and at this point his path first diverged from that of Hyde, yet without their friendship being impaired. He vigorously opposed the policy that led to the expulsion of the bishops from the House of Lords, and finally to the abolition of Episcopacy. Yet he adhered in the main to the cause of the Parliament, driven by the arbitrariness of the king's later measures. He took no part in the impeachment of Strafford, and voted against the Attainder Bill; and, though he furnished precedents for the measures taken against Laud, had no share in his prosecution.

He was as hostile to the 'jure-divinoship' of Presbytery as to the high claims of Episcopacy, and was reputed an Erastian. He sat as a laymember in the Assembly of Divines at Westminster (1643), and perplexed his clerical colleagues sadly with his irony and his learning. Whitelocke records that in the debates he 'spake admirably, and confuted divers of them in their own learning; and sometimes when they had cited a text of Scripture to prove their assertion he would tell them: "Perhaps in your little pocket Bibles with gilt leaves (which they would often pull out and read) the translation may be thus, but the Greek or Hebrew signifies thus and thus," and so would silence them.' He was reported to have said 'he trusted he was not mad enough or foolish enough to deserve the name of Puritan.'

He was appointed keeper of the rolls and records in the Tower in 1644; in 1645 he was appointed one of the twelve commissioners of the Admiralty, and elected master of Trinity Hall at Cambridge, an office he declined. In 1646 he subscribed the Covenant, and the year after the sum of £5000 was voted to him by Parliament in consideration of his services and sufferings; but it seems doubtful if the money was paid. He constantly employed his influence in behalf of learning and learned men, and performed great service to both universities; as one of the university visitors (from 1647), he always used his influence to moderate the tyranny of his fanatical colleagues. One of his last public acts was to join in the last effort for a reconciliation between the king and the Parliament. After the execution of Charles, of which it is certain he strongly disapproved as both unlawful and inexpedient, he took little share in public matters; and when requested by Cromwell to answer the Eikon Basilike, he refused. He died at Whitefriars, 30th November 1654, and was buried in the Temple Church, London.

In 1689 a collection of his sayings, entitled Table-talk, was published by his amanuensis, who claimed to have enjoyed for twenty years the opportunity of hearing his master's discourse, and to have committed faithfully to writing 'the excellent things that usually fell from him.' It is more by his Table-talk than by the works published in his lifetime that Selden is now generally known as a writer. The eulogy by Clarendon shows how

highly Selden was respected even by his opponents, and emphasises the contrast between the embarrassed style of his published works and the ease of his spoken utterances: 'He was a person whom no character can flatter, or transmit any expressions equal to his merit and virtue. He was of so stupendous a learning in all kinds and in all languages-as may appear in his excellent writings-that a man would have thought he had been entirely conversant amongst books, and had never spent an hour but in reading and writing; yet his humanity, affability, and courtesy were such, that he would have been thought to have been bred in the best courts, but that his good-nature, charity, and delight in doing good

exceeded that breeding. His style in all his writings seems harsh, and sometimes obscure, which is not wholly to be imputed to the abstruse subjects of which he commonly treated, out of the paths trod by other men, but to a little undervaluing the beauty of style, and too much propensity to the language of antiquity; but in his conversation he was the most clear discourser, and had the best faculty of making hard things easy and present to the understanding, of any man that hath been known.'

Many of the sententious remarks in Selden's Table-talk are exceedingly acute; others are humorous; while some embody propositions which, though affirmed in familiar conversation, he probably would not have seriously maintained. Marriage he pronounces 'a desperate thing: the frogs in Esop were extreme wise; they had a great mind to some water, but they would not leap into the well, because they could not get

out again.' There are not a few satirical observations on the clergy, and plentiful indications of that cautious spirit which distinguished him throughout his career. Johnson, speaking of French Ana, said: 'A few of them are good, but we have one book of that kind better than any of them--Selden's Table-talk? Coleridge declared, not without exaggeration, 'There is more weighty bullion sense in this book than I can find in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer.' The following are extracts from the Table-talk:

He that speaks ill of another, commonly before he is aware, makes himself such a one as he speaks against ; for if he had civility or breeding, he would forbear such kind of language.

A gallant man is above ill words. An example we have in the old lord of Salisbury, who was a great wise man. Stone had called some lord about court, fool; the lord complains, and has Stone whipped; Stone cries: I might have called my lord of Salisbury fool often enough, before he would have had me whipped.'

Speak not ill of a great enemy, but rather give him good words, that he may use you the better if you chance to fall into his hands. The Spaniard did this when he was dying; his confessor told him, to work him to repentance, how the devil tormented the wicked that went to hell; the Spaniard replying, called the devil my lord: 'I hope my lord the devil is not so cruel.' His confessor reproved him. 'Excuse me,' said the Don, for calling him so; I know not into what hands I may fall; and if I happen into his, I hope he will use me the better for giving him good words.'

Humility is a virtue all preach, none practise, and yet everybody is content to hear. The master thinks it good doctrine for his servant, the laity for the clergy, and the clergy for the laity.

There is humilitas quædam in vitio [a faulty excess of humility]. If a man does not take notice of that excellency and perfection that is in himself, how can he be thankful to God, who is the author of all excellency and perfection? Nay, if a man hath too mean an opinion of himself, 'twill render him unserviceable both to God and man.

Pride may be allowed to this or that degree, else a man cannot keep up his dignity. In gluttons there must be eating, in drunkenness there must be drinking; 'tis not the eating, nor 'tis not the drinking, that is to be blamed, but the excess. So in pride.

A king is a thing men have made for their own sakes, for quietness-sake. Just as in a family one man is appointed to buy the meat: if every man should buy, or if there were many buyers, they would never agree; one would buy what the other liked not, or what the other had bought before, so there would be a confusion. But that charge being committed to one, he according to his discretion pleases all. If they have not what they would have one day, they shall have it the next, or something as good.

It is a vain thing to talk of an heretic, for a man for his heart can think no otherwise than he does think. In the primitive times there were many opinions, nothing

A person of quality came to my chamber in th Temple, and told me he had two devils in his h (I wondered what he meant), and just at that one of them bid him kill me. With that I began be afraid, and thought he was mad. He said he k I could cure him, and therefore entreated me to g him something, for he was resolved he would go nobody else. I, perceiving what an opinion h of me, and that 'twas only melancholy that tre him, took him in hand, warranted him, if he w follow my directions, to cure him in a short time desired him to let me be alone about an hout, ** then to come again; which he was very willing In the meantime I got a card, and lapped it up b some in a piece of taffeta, and put strings to the taf and when he came, gave it to him to hang alaneck; withal charged him that he should not dist himself neither with eating nor drinking, but ev little of supper, and say his prayers duly whet went to bed, and I made no question but he w be well in three or four days. Within that m went to dinner to his house, and asked him how bi did. He said he was much better, but not pe

well; for in truth he had not dealt clearly with me; he had four devils in his head, and he perceived two of them were gone with that which I had given him, but the other two troubled him still. 'Well,' said I, 'I am glad two of them are gone; I make no doubt to get away the other two likewise.' So I gave him another thing to hang about his neck. Three days after, he came to me to my chamber, and profest he was now as well as ever he was in his life, and did extremely thank me for the great care I had taken of him. 1, fearing lest he might relapse into the like distemper, told him that there was none but myself and one physician more in the whole town that could cure the devils in the head, and that was Dr Harvey, whom I had prepared, and wished him, if ever he found himself ill in my absence, to go to him, for he could cure his disease as well as myself. The gentleman lived many years, and was never troubled after.

To quote a modern Dutchman where I may use a classic author, is as if I were to justify my reputation, and I neglect all persons of note and quality that know me, and bring the testimonial of the scullion in the kitchen.

They talk (but blasphemously enough) that the Holy Ghost is president of their general councils, when the truth is, the odd man is still the Holy Ghost.

To preach long, loud, and damnation, is the way to be cried up. We love a man that damns us, and we run after him again to save us. If a man had a sore leg, and he should go to an honest judicious chirurgeon, and he should only bid him keep it warm, and anoint with such an oil (an oil well known) that would do the cure, haply he would not much regard him, because he knows the medicine beforehand an ordinary medicine. But if he should go to a surgeon that should tell him, Your leg will gangrene within three days, and it must be cut off, and you will die, unless you do something that I could tell you, what listening there would be to this man! Oh, for the Lord's sake, tell me what this is; I will give you any content for your pains.

What a gentleman is, 'tis hard with us to define. In other countries he is known by his privileges; in Westminster-Hall he is one that is reputed one; in the court of honour, he that hath arms. The king

cannot make a gentleman of blood. What have you said? Nor God Almighty: but he can make a gentleman by creation. If you ask which is the better of these two, civilly, the gentleman of blood, morally, the gentleman by creation may be the better; for the other may be a debauched man, this a person of worth.

Gentlemen have ever been more temperate in their religion than the common people, as having more reason, the others running in a hurry.

The court of England is much altered. At a solemn dancing, first you had the grave measures, then the corrantoes and the galliards, and this is kept up with ceremony; at length to Trenchmore and the cushiondance, and then all the company dance, lord and groom, lady and kitchen-maid, no distinction. So in our court, in Queen Elizabeth's time, gravity and state were kept up. In King James's time things were pretty well.

But in King Charles's time, there has been nothing but Trenchmore and the cushion-dance, omnium gatherum, tolly-polly, hoite come toite.

'Tis a fine thing for children to learn to make verse; but when they come to be men, they must speak like other men, or else they will be laughed at. 'Tis ridiculous to speak, or write, or preach in verse. As 'tis good to learn to dance, a man may learn his leg, learn to go handsomely; but 'tis ridiculous for him to dance when he should go.

'Tis ridiculous for a lord to print verses; 'tis well enough to make them to please himself, but to make them public is foolish. If a man in a private chamber twirls his band-strings, or plays with a rush to please himself, 'tis well enough; but if he should go into Fleet-street, and sit upon a stall, and twirl a bandstring, or play with a rush, then all the boys in the street would laugh at him.

Prayer should be short, without giving God Almighty reasons why he should grant this or that; he knows best what is good for us. If your boy should ask you a suit of clothes, and give you reasons, 'otherwise he cannot wait upon you, he cannot go abroad but he will discredit you,' would you endure it? You know it better than he; let him ask a suit of clothes.

If a servant that has been fed with good beef, goes into that part of England where salmon is plenty, at first he is pleased with his salmon, and despises his beef, but after he has been there a while, he grows weary of his salmon, and wishes for his good beef again. We have a while been much taken with this praying by the spirit; but in time we may grow weary of it, and wish for our Common-Prayer.

There's all the reason in the world divines should not be suffered to go a hair beyond their bounds, for fear of breeding confusion, since there now be so many religions on foot. The matter was not so narrowly to be looked after when there was but one religion in Christendom: the rest would cry him down for an heretic, and there was nobody to side with him.

The following passage on the value of doubt and free inquiry is from the preface to Selden's History of Tythes:

For the old sceptiques that never would profess that they had found a truth, yet shewed the best way to

search for any, when they doubted as well of what those of the dogmatical sects too credulously received for infallible principles, as they did of the newest conclusions they were indeed questionless too nice, and deceived themselves with the nimbleness of their own sophisms, that permitted no kind of established truth. But plainly he that avoids their disputing levity, yet, being able, takes to himself their liberty of inquiry, is in the only way that in all kinds of studies leads and lies open even to the sanctuary of truth; while others, that are servile to common opinion and vulgar suppositions, can rarely hope to be admitted nearer than into the base court of her temple, which too speciously often counterfeits her inmost sanctuary.

The chief of Selden's twenty-seven separate publications, besides those already mentioned, are Marmora Arundeliana (1624), on the marbles brought that year from Smyrna and Greece by the Earl of Arundel's agents; and three books on Hebrew law and usages, in which, as in all his biblical studies, he is inevitably more learned than critical. His works were collected by Dr Wilkins, and published in 1726 in three folio volumes. See the biography prefixed to that edition, Aiken's Lives of Selden and Usher (1811), G. W. Johnson's Memoir (1835), and S. H. Reynolds's introduction to the Clarendon Press edition of the Table-talk (1892).

John Hales (1584-1656), 'the Ever-memorable,' is usually classed with Chillingworth as a prominent defender of rational and tolerant principles in religion. Born at Bath, he was bred at Corpus Christi, Oxford, and became a fellow of Merton. He was highly distinguished for his knowledge of Greek, on which he was appointed lecturer at Oxford in 1612. Four years afterwards he went to Holland as chaplain to Sir Dudley Carleton, ambassador at The Hague; and on this occasion he attended for four months the meetings of the famous Synod of Dort (November 1618-May 1619), the proceedings of which are recorded in his published letters to Sir Dudley. Till this time he held the Calvinistic opinions in which he had been educated; but the arguments of the Arminian champion Episcopius, or his view of contentious orthodoxy and the conviction that neither side possessed a monopoly of truth, made him, in his own phrase as reported by the editor of the Golden Remains, 'bid John Calvin good-night.' His letters from Dort are characterised by Lord Clarendon as 'the best memorial of the ignorance, and passion, and animosity, and injustice of that convention.' Although the eminent learning and abilities of Hales would certainly have led to high preferment in the Church, he chose rather to live in studious retirement, and accordingly withdrew to Eton College, where he had a private fellowship under his friend Sir Henry Savile as provost. Yet he was no recluse: he delighted in the conversation of Chillingworth and Falkland, of Ben Jonson and Suckling. His famous Tract concerning Schism and Schismatics (c. 1636), in which the bad effects of episcopal ambition are freely discussed, greatly displeased Laud; but Hales defended himself so well in a letter and at a conference that Laud in 1639 gave him a prebendal stall at Windsor. In 1649 he was deprived of his offices for refusing to take the 'engagement,' or oath of fidelity to the

as

Commonwealth of England, as then established without a king or House of Lords. His ejection reduced him to such straits that at length he was under the necessity of selling for £700 the greater part of his library, on which he had expended £2500, though from a spirit of inde pendence he refused to accept the bounty of his friends. The learning, abilities, and amiable disposition of John Hales are spoken of in the highest terms not only by Clarendon, but by Pearson, Heylin, Marvell, and Stillingfleet. He is styled by Anthony Wood 'a walking library: and Pearson considered him to be a man of as great a sharpness, quickness, and subtilty of wit ever this or perhaps any nation bred. His industry did strive, if it were possible, to equal the largeness of his capacity, whereby he becam as great a master of polite, various, and universal learning as ever yet conversed with books. His extensive knowledge he cheerfully communicated to others; and his liberal, obliging, and charitable disposition made him a determined foe to intoler ance in religious matters. Clarendon says that 'nothing troubled him more than the braw's which were grown from religion; and he therefore exceedingly detested the tyranny of the Church of Rome, more for their imposing uncharitabl upon the consciences of other men, than for the errors in their own opinions.' Aubrey, who saw him at Eton after his sequestration, describes him as a pretty little man, sanguine, of a cheerf countenance, very gentle and courteous.'

The following is a fragment of a sermon, preached at The Hague in 1619, on the folly and wickedness of duelling, a subject on which Hales was in advance of some eminent Continental Christiars of the present day :

Murther, though all be abominable, yet there ar degrees in it, some is more hainous then other. Gross malicious, premeditated, and wilful murther are by oc laws, so far as humane wisdom can provide, sufficiently prevented but murders done in haste, or besides the intent of him that did it, or in point of honour, ar: reputation, these find a little too much favour; or law in this respect are somewhat defective, both in prevent that it be not done, and punishing it when it is docemen have thought themselves wiser then God, presuming to moderate the unnecessary severity (as they seem t think) of his laws. And hence it comes to pass, in military companies, and in all great cities and places of mart and concourse, few moneths, yea, few weeks pas without some instance and example of bloudshed, either by sudden quarrel, or by challenge to duel and single combat. How many examples in a short space have seen of young men, men of hot and fiery dispositi mutually provoking and disgracing each other, and the taking themselves bound in high terms of valour 201 honour, to end their quarrels by their swords? The therefore we may the better discover the unlawfulness challenge and private combat, let us a little enquire examine in what cases bloud may lawfully, and with u offence, be shed; that so we may see where, amongs these, single combat may find its place. . . .

27