Jeffreys. He died in London and is buried in Christ Church, Newgate Street. 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 invincible spirit still fought his fight, pouring forth book after book in favour of free worship, and opposing the quiet endurance of a primitive martyr to the rage and tyranny of the persecutor. His works have little to recommend them to a modern reader, save their spirit of toleration, and are little known in the present day. The Saint's Everlasting Rest (1650) is, however, still popular, and A Call to the Unconverted (1657) is remembered, if not read. GEORGE FOX, the founder of the Society of Friends, was the son of a weaver at Fenny Drayton in Leicestershire, and was so completely without education that his numerous writings are filled with unintelligible gibberish, and GEORGE FOX (1624-1691). in many instances, even after having been revised and put in order by disciples possessed of more learning, present curious and insoluble problems of meaning to the reader. The life of Fox was like that of many other ignorant enthusiasts; but he had something in him more enduring than mere fanaticism. 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 county magistrates, and the rabble, whose manners were then much more brutal than in the present day. He has left in his Journal (1694) a curious record 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 power of prophecy and to the gift of detecting witches bear witness at once to his ignorance and to his 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 Christian spirit of patience under insults and injuries. PENN (1644-1718). WILLIAM PENN, the founder of the colony of Pennsylvania, played a very active and, his enemies alleged, not always very honourable part at the Court of James II, when that prince, under a transparent pretext of zeal for religious WILLIAM liberty, was endeavouring, by giving privileges to the dissenting and Nonconformist sects, to shake the power and influence of the Church of England, and thus to pave the way for the execution of his darling scheme, the establishment of the Roman Church in the country. Penn was the son of Admiral Sir William Penn and was for a while at Christ ENG. LIT. T Church, Oxford, but early adopted the Quaker doctrines. His name will ever be respected 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 Society of Friends has always been conspicuous for peaceable behaviour, practical good sense, and much acuteness in worldly matters. Since their principles forbid them to take any part in warfare, and exclude them from almost all occupations but those of trade and commerce, the Friends 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 was a Scottish country gentleman of considerable attainments, who published a systematic defence of the doctrines of the sect which had been founded by the rude zeal of Fox. His celebrated Apology for BARCLAY the True Christian Divinity (1676) was published (1648-1690). at Amsterdam in Latin. Like many controversial books, however, it attained its subsequent fame in an English form (1678). ROBERT NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. THEOLOGIANS, &c., OF THE To the great name of Taylor we might add a host of names whose writings and piety were the bulwarks of the Anglican position in their own day, and, amid the religious deadness succeeding the Puritanism of the Commonwealth, preserved the Church of England from mere secularity. WILLIAM LAUD (15731645), Archbishop of Canterbury; JOSEPH HALL (1574-1656), Bishop of Norwich, famous too as a satirist; LANCELOT ANDREWES (1555-1626), Bishop of Winchester; and JOHN COSIN (1594-1672), Bishop of Durham, to say nothing of other names, contributed rather to the doctrinal and controversial than to the literary side of things. A few prelates and laymen, however, should be mentioned. KING CHARLES I (1600-1649) himself is reputed to be the author of the curious Icon Basilike, or the Portraiture of His Sacred Majesty in His Solitudes and Sufferings, which is a series of pious meditations upon the troubles of his reign. The book is of little literary value, but there seems to be no sufficient evidence to doubt its authorship. JOHN GAUDEN (1605-1662), a not too estimable divine, who became Bishop of Exeter at the Restoration, and was translated to Worcester and died two years later, almost certainly edited it, and even claimed its authorship; and, on the ground of this statement, Puritan detractors have gladly accepted the book as a forgery. JOHN EARLE (1601?-1665), who succeeded Gauden at Worcester in 1662, and was translated to Salisbury in 1663, wrote, while fellow of Merton, Microcosmographie, or a Piece of the World discovered in Essays and Characters, which appears to descend in a direct line from the Characters of Sir Thomas Overbury (see below). The book was published anonymously in 1628. Hallam says, "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.' This severe remark, by the way, does not correspond with Earle's actual character as known to his contemporaries, and is, besides, a shallow generalisation. "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." OWEN FELLTHAM (1602?-1668) was a Suffolk man, and lived in the Earl of Thomond's household. His work, entitled Resolves: Divine, Moral, Political, which he published first at the age of eighteen and augmented very largely in 1628, enjoyed great popularity for many years. Hallam says that Felltham is "not only a laboured and artificial, but a shallow writer." He owed much of his popularity to a pointed and sententious style, which, however, partakes too much of the literary vices of his age to be anything but obsolete. PETER HEYLYN (1600-1662), fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and prebendary of Westminster, was a divine and historian of pronounced Royalist tendencies, and was deprived of his prebend and other benefices for his loyalty. His Microcosmus, or a Description of the Great World, was published in 1621; but he is known principally as the chaplain and biographer of Archbishop Laud, whose life he wrote under the title of Cyprianus Anglicus (1668). SIR THOMAS OVERBURY (15811613), who was poisoned in the Tower, wrote a work entitled Characters (1614), which shows a great power of observation and consider. able skill in description. His character of A Fair and Happy Milkmaid has been often quoted and is one of the best in the book. Overbury also wrote poetry: his chief poem, A Wife now the Widow of Sir T. Overbury (1614), dealing with the subject of marriage, produced many contemporary imitations. ROBERT SANDERSON (1587-1663). fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, who became Bishop of Lincoln at the Restoration, was one of the most eminent Anglican divines. He wrote works on casuistry and very erudite sermons; but he is chiefly remarkable for the piety and beauty of his life, which is recorded in Walton's Lives. JAMES USSHER (1581-1656), the learned Archbishop of Armagh (1625), is best known by his chronological work, The Annals, which contains chronological tables of universal history from the Creation to the time of Vespasian. This work was published in Latin (first part 1650, second part 1654), and was translated into English in 1658, after Ussher's death. The marginal dates of the Authorised Version of the Bible are taken from Ussher. Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates (1639) should not be forgotten. Selden spoke of him as His learned to a miracle"; and probably Selden himself was his only superior in scholarship. CHAPTER XI. JOHN MILTON—A.D. 1608-1674. § 1. MILTON's early life and education. § 2. Travels in Italy. § 3. Returns to England and espouses the popular party. His Areopagitica. § 4. Made Latin secretary to the Council of State. His prose works. § 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. II. 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. JOHN § 1. ABOVE every figure of the seventeenth century, great or small, towers in solitary grandeur the sublime form of JOHN MILTON. It is no easy task to give even a cursory sketch of a life so crowded with literary as well as political activity. He was born in London on December 9th, 1608. His father's house was at the sign of the Spread Eagle in Bread Street, and his baptism took place at the neighbouring church of Allhallows. It is interesting to note that the great Republican poet His family. came of an ancient and gentle stock, which had forfeited its Oxfordshire estates during the Wars of the Roses. His grandfather had been keeper of Shotover Forest, and when his son deserted his forefathers' religion, disinherited him. This son, the father of John Milton the poet, and himself another John, was an ardent Republican with strong leanings towards Puritanism, a skilled musician, and, so far as we know, an energetic and prosperous man. After his quarrel with his father, he had embraced the profession of a money-scrivener, in which, by industry and integrity, he made some money, and was able, in 1632, to retire to a pleasant country-house at Horton, not far from Colnbrook in Buckinghamshire. The poet's mother was Sarah Jeffrey, the daughter of a merchant tailor in the City. The boy evidently gave indications, from his early childhood, of the extraordinary intellectual powers Education. which distinguished him from all other men; and his father, whose own culture was by no means small, aided his genius by giving him a generous opportunity of study and leisurely preparation for his great career. He enjoyed the rare advantage of an education which trained him admirably for the profession of letters; and the proud care with which he collected all his youthful productions, his first verses and his college exercises, shows that he was well aware that of everything proceeding from his pen, "whether . . . prosing or versing, but chiefly by this latter, the style, by certain vital signs it had, was likely to live." 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, under the supervision of Thomas Young, who afterwards became Master of Jesus College, Cambridge. This is the Thomas Junius, to whom his fourth Latin elegy (1627) is dedicated. From his private tutor he went to St. Paul's School, and from thence, a child in years, but a consummate scholar, to Christ's College, Cambridge, which he entered on February 12th, 1625. Of his residence at Cambridge very little is known. There is a legend that, from his personal beauty, he Residence at Cambridge. was known as the "lady of the college"; and the mulberry tree which he planted is still one of the sights of Cambridge. He now and then refers to the University, and always with affection; and it was at Christ's that he made the acquaintance of Edward King, whose death he bewailed so magnificently in later years. Perhaps his most direct allusion to Cambridge is his short elegy on Hobson, the University carrier, a character well known both in Cambridge and in London-but this tells us nothing about himself. But there can be very little doubt that Mr. Chappell, his tutor, and the other dons who came into contact with him were infinitely delighted with his wonderfully precocious exercises and prolusiones. Dr. Johnson, seeking internal evidence in one of his Latin poems (the first, addressed to Diodati), evolved a groundless, if not improbable, story about rustication and flogging, and, on the slightest evidence, traced in his later writings a strong hostility to the University. However, he took his Bachelor's degree in 1629, and did not go out of residence until 1632, when he graduated as Master of Arts. This fact of itself shows very little hostility to the place, and the intensely academical spirit of all his work speaks volumes in contradiction of any occasional and obscure expression of distaste with the manner of his studies. His first attempts at poetry were made in his fifteenth year, while he was still at St. Paul's; and some of his finest, most characteristic, and most intellectual verse was written during his early years at Cambridge. The sublime Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity was begun on Christmas Day, 1629; and most of his shorter occasional pieces, including the wonderful Verses at a Solemn Musick, belong to his Cambridge period. On leaving Cambridge he resided for about six years at his |