through variety of opinions, that may be grievous or injurious to them, shall fall out. And such auditors or magistrates shall have power to examine the matter, and inform themselves, to the end that if they think it of sufficient weight, they may acquaint the phylarch [ruler of the tribe or county] with it, or introduce it into the council of religion; where all such causes as those magistrates introduce shall from time be heard and determined according to such laws as are or shall hereafter be provided by the parliament for the just defence of the liberty of conscience.' One of the liveliest passages is that in which a hearty defender of the old régime makes a very free assault, by way of reductio ad absurdum, on the new political model, the archon or supreme magistrate included : A Conservative Counterblast. Nevertheless my Lord Epimonus, who with much ado had been held till now, found it midsummer moon, and broke out of bedlam in this manner : 'My Lord Archon,- 'I have a singing in my head like that of a cartwheel, my brains are upon a rotation; and some are so merry, that a man cannot speak his griefs, but if your highshod prerogative, and those same slouching fellowes your tribunes, do not take my lord strategus's and my lord orator's heads, and jole them together under the canopy, then let me be ridiculous to all posterity. For here is a commonwealth, to which if a man should take that of the 'prentices in their ancient administration of justice at Shrovetide, it were an aristocracy. You have set the very rabble with troncheons in their hands, and the gentry of this nation, like cocks with scarlet gills, and the golden combs of their salaries to boot, lest they should not be thrown at. 'Not a night can I sleep for some horrid apparition or other; one while these myrmidons are measuring silks by their quarter-staves, another stuffing their greasy pouches with my lord high treasurer's jacobusses [sovereigns of James I.'s coining]. For they are above a thousand in arms to three hundred, which, their gowns being pulled over their ears, are but in their doublets and hose. But what do I speak of a thousand? There be two thousand in every tribe, that is, a hundred thousand in the whole nation, not only in the posture of an army, but in a civill capacity sufficient to give us what lawes they please. Now everybody knows that the lower sort of people regard nothing but money; and you say it is the duty of a legislator to presume all men to be wicked: wherefore they must fall upon the richer, as they are an army; or, lest their minds should misgive them in such a villany, you have given them encouragement that they have a nearer way, seeing it may be done every whit as well as by the overballancing power which they have in elections. There is a fair which is annually kept in the centre of these territories at Kiberton [Kirton-in-Lindsey?], a town famous for ale, and frequented by good fellows; where there is a solemnity of the pipers and fidlers of this nation (I know not whether Lacedemon, where the senate kept account of the stops of the flutes and of the fiddle-strings of that commonwealth, had any such custom) called the bull-running; and he that catches and holds the bull, is the annual and supream magistrate of that comitia or congregation, called king piper, without whose license it is not lawful for any of those citizens to enjoy the liberty of his calling; nor is he otherwise legitimately qualified (or civitate donatus) to lead apes or bears in any perambulation of the same. Mine host of the Bear, in Kiberton, the father of ale, and patron of good football and cudgel players, has any time since I can remember been grand chancellor of this order. Now, say I, seeing great things arise from small beginnings, what should hinder the people, prone to their own advantage and loving money, from having intelligence conveyed to them by this same king piper and his chancellor, with their loyal subjects the minstrills and bearwards, masters of ceremonies, to which there is great recourse in their respective perambulations, and which they will commission and instruct, with directions to all the tribes, willing and commanding them, that as they wish their own good, they choose no other into the next primum mobile [outermost and uppermost sphere and great source of motion] but of the ablest cudgel and football players? Which done as soon as said, your primum mobile, consisting of no other stuff, must of necessity be drawn forth into your nebulones [rogues] and your galimofrys [the rabble]; and so the silken purses of your senate and prerogative being made of sowes' ears, most of them blacksmiths, they will strike while the iron is hot, and beat your estates into hobnails, mine host of the Bear being strategus [supreme military commander], and king piper lord orator. Well, my Lords, it might have been otherwise exprest, but this is well enough a-conscience. In your way, the wit of man shall not prevent this or the like inconvenience; but if this (for I have conferred with artists) be a mathematical demonstration, I could kneel to you, that ere it be too late we might return to some kind of sobriety. 'If we empty our purses with these pomps, salaries, coaches, lacquays, and pages, what can the people say less than that we have dressed a senate and a prerogative for nothing but to go to the park with the ladies?' Stinginess of Cromwell's Commonwealth. 'But there is such a selling, such a Jewish humour in our republicans, that I cannot tell what to say to it; onely this, any man that knows what belongs to a commonwealth, or how diligent every nation in that case has been to preserve her ornaments, and shall see the waste lately made (the woods adjoyning to this city, which served for the delight and health of it, being cut down to be sold for three pence), will tell you that they who did such things would never have made a commonwealth. The like may be said of the ruine or damage done upon our cathedrals, ornaments in which this nation excels all others. Nor shall this ever be excused upon the score of religion; for though it be true that God dwells not in houses made with hands, yet you cannot hold your assemblies but in such houses, and these are of the best that have been made with hands. Nor is it well argued that they are pompous, and therefore prophane, or less proper for divine service, seeing the Christians in the primitive Church chose to meet with one accord in the Temple, so far were they from any inclination to pull it down.' There is a Life of Harrington in the edition of his works by the famous Deist, John Toland (1700); see also Aubrey's Letters and Masson's Milton. Professor Henry Morley reprinted the Oceana in 1887, but omitted the amusing Epistle to the Reader and the amazing list of errata. A Colonel Edward Saxby, who died distracted in the Tower in 1658, lived a life of curious adventure and intrigue, and merited a place in the history of English literature by writing that most audacious of political pamphlets, Killing no Murder. Suffolk man, he took service in Cromwell's Horse about 1643, held command at the siege of Tantallon Castle in 1651, was sent to negotiate with the Frondeurs and rebellious Huguenots in France, but as an extreme Republican quarrelled finally with Cromwell when he assumed the Protectorate. He zealously intrigued against Cromwell with royalist, Catholic, and Spanish agents; tried to combine levellers and royalists against the usurper, and arranged more than one scheme for Cromwell's assassination by 'strange engines,' the firing of Whitehall and the like; and early in 1657 got his famous exhortation to tyrannicide printed in Holland and smuggled into England. The pamphlet, professing to be by one William Allen, was courteously dedicated to the Protector himself, the ironical argument being that, seeing Cromwell's life had proved such an unmitigated curse to the nation, Cromwell, if he were the public-spirited man he professed to be, was bound to welcome sudden death at the hands of a patriotic assassin as a manifest blessing to all concerned. This very ingenious irony is not long sustained, and an elaborate argument is carried out to prove-with scriptural examples and quotations from Sophocles and Tully, Plato and Aristotle, Grotius and Machiavel-that Cromwell is a tyrant of the worst description, who ought to be summarily annihilated like a wild beast by any one who had the chance. The argument is ingeniously managed; the historic parallels and applications are many of them amusingly plausible. The style is direct, effective, and at times even powerful; and the influence of the work unquestionably may be traced in the work of subsequent English pamphleteers. There is a concise statement of the origin of society in a social contract, sometimes regarded as the original contribution of Rousseau to eighteenthcentury political philosophy, but traceable in Locke, Hobbes, and even the Greek sophists. The Social Contract. And indeed, as by the laws of God and Nature, the care, defence, and support of the family lies upon every man whose it is, so by the same law there is due unto every man from his family a subjection and obedience in compensation of that support. But several families uniting themselves together to make up one body of a Commonwealth, and being independent one of another, without any natural superiority or obligation, nothing can introduce amongst them a disparity of rule and subjection but some power that is over them, which power none can pretend to have but God and themselves. Wherefore all power which is lawfully exercised over such a society of men (which from the end of its institution we call a Commonwealth) must necessarily be derived, either from the appointment of God Almighty, who is Supreme Lord of all and every part, or from the consent of the society itself, who have the next power to his of disposing of their own liberty as they shall think fit for their own good. This power God hath given to societies of men, as well as he gave it to particular persons; and when He interposes not his own authority, and appoints not himself who shall be his vicegerents and rule under Him, He leaves it to none but the people themselves to make the election, whose benefit is the end of all government Nay, when He himself hath been pleased to appoint rulers for that people which He was pleased peculiarly to own, He many times made the choice, but left the confirmation and ratification of that choice to the people themselves. So Saul was chosen by God, and anointed king by his prophet, but made king by all the people at Gilgal. David was anointed king by the same prophet, but was afterwards, after Saul's death, confirmed by the people of Judah, and seven years after by the elders of Israel, the people's deputies at Chebron. The Protector a Tyrant. This being considered, have not the people of England much reason to ask the Protector this question, Quis constituit te virum principem et judicem super nos?' Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? If God made thee, make it manifest to us. If the people, where did we meet to do it? Who took our subscriptions? To whom deputed we our authority? And when and where did those deputies make the choice? Sure these interrogations are very natural, and I believe would much trouble his Highness's Council and his Junto to answer. In a word, that I may not tire my reader, who will not want proofs for what I say if he wants not memory: if to change the Government without the people's consent; if to dissolve their representatives by force, and disannul their acts; if to give the name of the people's representatives to confederates of his own, that he may establish iniquity by a law; if to take away men's lives out of all course of law by certain murderers of his own appointment, whom he names a High Court of Justice; if to decimate men's estates, and by his own power to impose upon the people what taxes he pleases, and to maintain all by force of arms; if, I say, all this does make a tyrant, his own impudence cannot deny but he is as complete a one as ever hath been since there have been societies of men. He that hath done and does all this is the person for whose preservation the people of England must pray; but certainly if they do, it is for the same reason that the old woman of Syracuse prayed for the long life of the tyrant Dionysius, lest the devil should come next. Tyrants accomplish their ends much more by fraud than force. . . . It is but unnecessary to say that had not his Highness had a faculty to be fluent in his tears, and eloquent in his execrations; had he not had spongy eyes, and a supple conscience; and besides to do with a people of great faith but little wit, his courage and the rest of his moral virtues, with the help of his janissaries, had never been able so far to advance him out of the reach of justice that we should have need to call for any other hand to remove him but that of the hangman. . . . Lastly, above all things they pretend a love to God and religios This Aristotle calls artium tyrannicarum potissimam,' the surest and best of all the arts of tyrants; and we all know his Highness hath found it so by experience. He hath found, indeed, that in godliness there is great gain, and that preaching and praying well managed will obtain other kingdoms as well as that of heaven. His indeed have been pious arms, for he hath conquered most by those of the Church, by prayers and tears. But the truth is, were it not for our honour to be governed by one that can manage both the spiritual and temporal sword, and, Roman-like, to have our emperor our high-priest, we might have had preaching at a much cheaper rate, and it would have cost us but our tithes which now costs us all. . . . And then if he be not a tyrant, we must confess we have no definition nor description of a tyrant left us, and may well imagine there is no such thing in Nature, and that it is only a notion and a name. But if there be such a beast, and we do at all believe what we see and feel, let us now inquire, according to the method we proposed, whether this be a beast of game that we are to give law to, or a beast of prey to destroy with all means which are allowable and fair? John Pearson (1613-86), born at Great Snoring, Norfolk, son of the Archdeacon of Suffolk, was educated at Eton and at Queen's and King's Colleges, Cambridge. In 1640, appointed chaplain to the Lord-Keeper Finch, he was presented to the Suffolk rectory of Thorington; in 1659 he published his learned Exposition of the Creed, and edited the Golden Remains of Hales of Eton. In 1660 he became rector of St Christopher's in London, a prebendary of Ely, Archdeacon of Surrey, and Master of Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1661 he was Baxter's principal antagonist at the Savoy Conference, and was appointed to the Lady Margaret chair of Divinity at Cambridge; in 1662 he became Master of Trinity, and in 1673 Bishop of Chester. He defended the genuineness of the Ignatian epistles (1672), and in 1684 published his Annales Cyprianici. His Exposition of the Creed is a standard work in English divinity, remarkable equally for argument, arrangement, and style. Bentley said Pearson's very dross was gold'—an extravagant compliment; but most subsequent authorities have borne testimony to the merits of the Exposition. Admirable editions of it are by E. Burton (1833) and Temple Chevallier (1849; revised by Sinker, 1882); of the Minor Theological Works, with Life, by Archdeacon Churton (1844). The Resurrection. Furthermore, besides the principles of which he [man] consists, and the actions which flow from us, the consideration of the things without us, and the natural course of variations in the creature, will render the resurrection yet more highly probable. Every space of twenty-four hours teacheth thus much, in which there is always a revolution amounting to a resurrection. The day dies into a night, and is buried in silence and in darkness; in the next morning it appeareth again and reviveth, opening the grave of darkness, rising from the dead of night this is a diurnal resurrection. As the day dies into night, so doth the summer into winter: the sap is said to descend into the root, and there it lies buried in the ground; the earth is covered with snow, or crusted with frost, and becomes a general sepulchre ; when the spring appeareth, all begin to rise; the plants and flowers peep out of their graves, revive and grow, and flourish this is the annual resurrection. The corn by which we live, and for want of which we perish with famine, is notwithstanding cast upon the earth and buried in the ground, with a design that it may corrupt and, being corrupted, may revive and multiply: our bodies are fed by this constant experiment, and we continue this present life by succession of resurrections. Thus all things are repaired by corrupting, are preserved by perishing, and revived by dying; and can we think that man, the lord of all these things, which thus die and revive for him, should be detained in death as never to live again? Is it imaginable that God should thus restore all things to man, and not restore man to himself? If there were no other consideration but of the principles of human nature, of the liberty and remunerability of human actions, and of the natural revolutions and resurrections of other creatures, it were abundantly sufficient to render the resurrection of our bodies highly probable. We must not rest in this school of nature, nor settle our persuasions upon likelihoods; but as we passed from an apparent possibility into a high presumption and probability, so must we pass from thence unto a full assurance of an infallible certainty. And of this indeed we cannot be assured but by the revelation of the will of God; upon his power we must conclude that we may, from his will that we shall, rise from the dead. Now the power of God is known unto all men, and therefore all men may infer from thence a possibility; but the will of God is not revealed unto all inen, and therefore all have not an infallible certainty of the resurrection. James Nayler (? 1617-60), not altogether unreasonably nicknamed the ‘Quaker Messiah,' ranks amongst the foremost Quaker writers for depth of thought, spiritual power, and unstudied eloquence. He was the son of a Yorkshire yeoman, settled in Wakefield, joined the Parliamentary army, and became a preacher. In 1651 he became a Quaker, and was the most conspicuous of Fox's early coadjutors-insomuch that Baxter regarded him as the chief leader of the movement in these years, when recruits were swarming in from amongst ranters and visionaries of all kinds. His head was turned by the enthusiastic devotion to him of 'a few forward, conceited, imaginary women,' as his friends called them, whom he allowed to kiss his feet, to call him the lamb of God,' and cry before him as he rode into Bristol, 'Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Israel.' He did not assume such titles to himself, and when arrested in 1656 affirmed that these honours were paid to 'Christ within him.' He was found guilty of horrid blasphemy by a committee of the House of Commons, just escaped sentence of death, was pilloried, whipped, had his tongue pierced with a hot iron, his forehead branded with a great B, and in this miserable case was thrown into prison, where he remained, spite of contrition and petitions to Cromwell, till after the Protector's death. He was released in 1659, made public confession, and with Fox's sanction resumed preaching and lecturing. He died in Huntingdonshire in 1660, on a journey afoot from London to his native county. He wrote a large number of short works, devotional and controversial; a 'collection' of his noncontroversial books, epistles, and papers,' published in 1716, fills a volume of nearly eight hundred pages. Others than Quakers have admitted that some of them display true spiritual genius. Nayler's 'Last Testimony, said to be delivered by him about two Hours before his Departure out of this Life,' was versified by Bernard Barton, but the paraphrase added nothing to the fervour, tenderness, and dignity of the original: There is a Spirit which I feel, that delights to do no Evil nor to revenge any Wrong, but delights to endure all things in hope to enjoy its own in the End: Its hope is to outlive all Wrath and Contention, and to weary out all Exaltation and Cruelty, or whatever is of a Nature contrary to it self. It sees to the End of all Temptations: As it bears no Evil in it self, so it conceives none in Thoughts to any other: If it be betrayed it bears it ; for its Ground and Spring is the Mercies and Forgiveness of God. Its Crown is Meekness, its Life is Everlasting Love unfeigned, and takes its Kingdom with Intreaty and not with Contention, and keeps it by Lowliness of Mind. In God alone it can rejoyce, though none else regard it or can own its Life. It's conceived in Sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it; nor doth it murmur at Grief and Oppression. It never rejoyceth but through Sufferings; for with the World's Joy it is murthered. I found it alone, being forsaken; I have Fellowship therein, with them who lived in Dens and desolate Places in the Earth, who through Death obtained this Resurrection and Eternal Holy Life. Edmund Waller, a courtly poet whose works have much of the smoothness and polish of modern verse, was born in 1606 at Coleshill, near Amersham (in Bucks since 1832, but then in Hertfordshire), and in his infancy was left heir to an estate of £3500 per annum. He was cousin to the patriot Hampden, and his uncle's wife was aunt to Oliver Cromwell, but his own family were hearty royalists. The poet, educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, was apparently Roundhead or royalist as best suited the occasion. He entered Parliament at sixteen. At twenty-five he married a rich heiress of London, who died soon after, and he immediately became a suitor of Lady Dorothea Sidney, eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester. To this proud and peerless fair one Waller dedicated the best part of his poetry, and the groves of Penshurst echoed to the praises of his Sacharissa. But Lady Dorothea was inexorable, and bestowed her hand on the Earl of Sunderland. Meeting Waller long afterwards, Sacharissa asked him when he would again write such verses upon her. 'When you are as young, madam, and as handsome as you were then,' the ungallant poet replied, giving us therein a key to his witty, shallow, selfish character. As a member of Parliament he was distinguished as a speaker on the popular side, and was chosen to conduct the prosecution against Judge Crawley for his opinion in favour of levying ship money (1641). His speech for the impeachment was printed, and 20,000 copies of it sold in one day. But he seems to have really been royalist in heart. He was one of the commissioners sent to the king at Oxford in 1643; and having joined in a plot to surprise the city militia and let in the king's forces, was arrested, expelled the House, and tried. He behaved in an abject manner, confessed freely to the injury of his associates, and had a sentence of death commuted to a fine of £10,000 and banishment. He lived in France and Switzerland. travelled with Evelyn, and was popular amongst the royalist exiles for his hospitality as well as for his wit. He was allowed to return in 1652, and wrote a panegyric on Cromwell, which seems one of his sincerest as it is certainly one of his best poems. After Cromwell's death, however, he wrote verses On the death of the late Usurper 0.1. The Commonwealth fell to pieces under Richard Cromwell, and Waller was ready with a congratulatory address to Charles II. The royal offering was considered inferior to the panegyric on Cromwell, and when the king himself who admitted the poet to terms of courtly intimacy-commented on this inferiority,, 'Poets, sire,' replied the witty. self-possessed poet, 'succeed better in fiction than in truth.' In the first Parliament summoned by Charles, Waller sat for Hastings, and he served in all the Parliaments of that reign, and Bishop Burnet admits he was the delight of the House of Commons; and in spite of his water-drinking, he was a great favourite at court. But Clarendon frustrated his scheme to be made Provost of Eton though a layman; and if Waller sought to revenge himself after that Minister's fall in 1667, the falien Minister had his final revenge in the portrait he has left of Waller's cowardice and meanness. At the accession of James II. in 1685, the aged poet, then well-nigh eighty, was elected representative for a borough in Cornwall. The issue of James's mad career in seeking to subvert Church and constitztion was foreseen by this wary and sagacious observer: 'He will be left,' said he, 'like a whale upon the strand.' The editors of Chandler's Debates and the Parliamentary History ascribe to Waller a remarkable speech against standing armies, delivered in the House of Commons in 1685; but according to Lord Macaulay, this speech was really made by Windham, member for Salisbury. 'It was with some concern,' adds the historian, 'that I found myself forced to give up the belief that the last words uttered in public by Waller were so honourable to him.' Waller purchased a small property at Coleshill, with the feeling that he would be glad to die like the stag, where he was roused.' The wish was not fulfilled; he died at Hall Barn, Beaconsfield, his home for fiftysix years, on 21st October 1687; and in the churchyard-where also rest the ashes of Edmund Burke-a monument was erected to his memory. Waller's poems comprise an early epic on the Summer's Islands, or Bermudas, and a serious poem on Divine Love, written in his later years; but most of his things are short and occasional, about a half of the whole being the elegant but artificial love-verses to Sacharissa. His verses were widely circulated, but not published till 1645-again in 1664. His feeble character is reflected in his poetry, which is easy, flowing, polished, and felicitous, but lacking in sincerity, passion, or strength. With various modifications of his own, he revived the heroic couplet, and handled it dexterously in the form it retained for over a hundred years. In his own time he was ranked next to or the equal of his younger contemporary Cowley, and at his death was accounted the greatest of English poets. In 1729 Fenton called him 'maker and model of melodious verse.' 'Dryden said that the excellence and dignity of rhyme were never fully known till Mr Waller taught it: he first made writing save an art, first showed us to conclude the sense most commonly in distichs.' His predecessors in writing heroic rhyming verse frequently made the sense outrun the couplet: Waller (though it has been proved that Sandys and others before him used the distich in the same way) established the more regular French fashion, and was by-and-by followed by Denham, and then by Dryden and by Pope. Of Waller it may be said that he was herald of the classical school in forsaking the Elizabethan conceits for reiterated antithesis, in which Dryden and Pope were again followers of Waller. Pope praised Waller's sweetness; Gray and Johnson were hostile critics; and since Cowper's time Waller has perhaps been unduly belittled, even by writers who are wont to praise style in manner more than strength or vehemence in thought. His love-ditties are frigid, no doubt; but many of his shorter poems show a real, if slender, gift of true song. His method of using rhyming couplets is well shown in one of his very first poems, written about 1623, on the difficulty Charles I. (then prince) had, on his return from Spain in that year, in getting on board the English fleet awaiting him at Santander. A gale of wind, with a thunderstorm and heavy rain, made the passage in a barge difficult and even dangerous. Of the Danger His Majesty escaped in the Roads at St Andrews. These mighty peers placed in the gilded barge, So fares the doubtful barge 'twixt tide and winds, On Love. Anger, in hasty words or blows, From the Portrait by John Riley in the National Portrait Gallery. Affect the haughty and the proud, Who first the generous steed oppressed, While her high pride does scarce descend To mark their follies, he would swear |