CHAPTER V.

THE AGE OF SPENSER, SHAKSPEARE, BACON, AND MILTON. A.D. 1558-A.D. 1660.

SECTION THIRD: THE MISCELLANEOUS PROSE LITERATURE.

SEMI-THEOLOGICAL WRITERS. 1. Fuller's Works-Cudworth-Henry More. -PHILOSOPHICAL WRITERS. 2. Lord Bacon-The Design of his Philosophy-His Two Problems-His Chief Works.-3. Hobbes-His Political and Social Theories-His Ethics-His Psychology-His Style.-HISTORICAL WRITERS. 4. Social and Political Theories-Antiquaries-Historians-Raleigh-Milton's History of England-His Historical and Polemical Tracts-His Style.-MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 5. Writers of Voyages and Travels-Literary Critics-Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesy-Romances and Novels-Sidney's Arcadia-Short Novels-Greene -Lyly-Pamphlets-Controversy on the Stage-Martin Mar-Prelate— Smectymnuus.-6. Essays describing Characters - Didactic Essays Bacon's Essays-Selden-Burton-Sir Thomas Browne-Cowley's Essays.

SEMI-THEOLOGICAL WRITERS.

1. IN passing from theology to other quarters, we may allow ourselves to be introduced by one of the most eloquent preachers of Charles's time, a man who was accustomed to have two audiences, the one seated in the church, the other listening eagerly through the open windows.

b. 1608.

Thomas Fuller is most widely known through his “Word. 1661. thies of England." But he was a voluminous and various author, both of ecclesiastical and other works. He is the very strangest writer in our language. Perhaps no man ever excelled him in fulness and readiness of wit: certainly no man ever printed so many of his own jests. His joyousness overflows without ceasing, pouring forth good-natured sarcasms, humorous allusions, and facetious stories, and punning and ringing changes on words with inexhaustible oddity of invention. His eccentricity found its way to his title-pages: "Good Thoughts in Bad Times," at an early. stage of the war, were followed by "Good Thoughts in Worse Times" and this series closed, at the Restoration, with "Mixed Contemplations in Better Times." If this were all, Fuller might

be worthless. But the light-hearted jester was one of the most industrious of inquirers: we owe to him an immense number of curious facts, collected from recondite books, from an extensive correspondence kept up on purpose, and from researches which went on most actively of all while he wandered about as a chaplain in the royal army. In his "Worthies," the only book of his that is now valuable as an authority, he is hardly anything else than a lively and observant gossip. But elsewhere he is more ambitious Though he has little vigour of reasoning, and no wide command of principles, his teeming fancy presents every object in some new light; oftenest evolving ludicrous images, but often also guided by serious emotion. His "Church-History of Britain," his "History of the Holy War," (that is the Crusades,) and his "Pisgah-View of Palestine," have no claim to be called great historical compositions; but they are inimitable collections of spiritedly told stories: and in the portraits of character, the short biographies, and the pithy maxims, which make up his "Holy State" and "Profane State," he is, more than anywhere, shrewd, amusing, instructive, and often eloquent. His style is commendable, if compared with that which was common in his time: his goodness and piety were real, in spite of his ungovernable levity: he was a kindly man, a peacemaker in the midst of strife: and his exuberant wit never struck harshly a personal enemy or an adverse sect.*

* THOMAS FULLER.

From "The Holy State:" published in 1648.

I. The true Church Antiquary is a traveller into former times, whence he hath learned their language and fashions. 1. He baits at middle Antiquity, but lodges not till he comes at that which is ancient indeed. 2. He desires to imitate the ancient Fathers, as well in their piety as in their postures; not only conforming his hands and knees, but chiefly his heart, to their pattern. Oh, the holiness of their living and painfulness of their preaching! How full were they of mortified thoughts and heavenly meditations! Let us not make the ceremonial part of their lives only canonical, and the moral part thereof altogether apocrypha; imitating their devotion, not in the fineness of the stuff, but only in the fashion of the making. 3. He carefully marks the declination of the church from the primitive purity; observing how, sometimes, humble Devotion was contented to lie down, whilst proud Superstition got on her back. 4. He doth not so adore the Ancients as to despise the Modern. Grant them but dwarfs: yet stand they on giants' shoulders, and may see the farther. Sure as stout champions of Truth follow in the rear, as ever marched in the front. Besides, as one excellently observes, Antiquitas seculi juventus mundi. These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient; and not those which we count ancient by a computation backwards from ourselves.

II. In Building we must respect Situation, Contrivance, Receipt, Strength,

Two contemporaries of Fuller, eminent in theology, were still more so in Philosophy. Regarding existence from that lofty and spiritual point of view which had been taken up anciently by Plato, both Ralph Cudworth and Henry More are among the few instances of deviation from the track which English speculation has in modern times chiefly followed, and into which the two most celebrated philosophers of their own day co-operated in leading it. They are alike opposed to the empirical tendencies which lay hidden in the theories of Bacon, and to the sensualistic doctrines that were more directly developed by Hobbes. Cudworth's "True Intellectual System of the Universe," a work which has been very diversely estimated, has for its chief aim the confuting, on à priori principles, the system of Atheism: its ethical appendix is directed against the selfish theory of morals. More's works, very fine pieces both of thinking and of eloquence, are still more deficient in clearness than those of his friend he loses himself in a twofold labyrinth of New-Platonism and Rabbinical learning.

In the generation before the two Oxford friends, we find the meditative sceptic Lord Herbert of Cherbury, whose writings, though unfortunately teaching different lessons from theirs, resemble them in their deviation from the prevalent turn of thinking.

For air is a dish one feeds on Wood and water are two staple former I confess hath made so

and Beauty. 1. Chiefly choose a good air. every minute; and therefore it need be good. commodities where they may be had. The much iron, that it must now be bought with the more silver, and grows daily dearer. But 'tis as well pleasant as profitable, to see a house cased with trees, like that of Anchises in Troy. Next a pleasant prospect is to be respected. A medley view (such as of water and land at Greenwich) best entertains the eyes, refreshing the wearied beholder with exchange of objects. Yet I know a more profitable prospect; where the owner can only see his own land round about. 2. A fair entrance with an easy ascent gives a great grace to a building: where the hall is a preferment out of the court, the parlour out of the hall; not as in some old buildings, where the doors are so low pigmies must stoop, and the rooms so high that giants may stand upright. Light, Heaven's eldest daughter, is a principal beauty in a building; yet it shines not alike from all parts of heaven. An east window welcomes the infant beams of the sun before they are of strength to do any harm, and is offensive to none but a sluggard. In a west window, in summer-time towards night, the sun grows low and over-familiar, with more light than delight. * 3. As for receipt, a house had better be too little for a day, than too great for a year. And it's easier borrowing of thy neighbour a brace of chambers for a night, than a bag of money for a twelvemonth. 4. As for strength, country-houses must be substantives, able to stand of themselves. 5. Beauty remains behind as the last to be regarded; because houses are made to be lived in, not looked on. * * *

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PHILOSOPHICAL WRITERS.

2. At the extremes of our period we encounter, in the Philosophical field, two of the strongest thinkers that have appeared in Modern Europe. Francis Bacon's smaller writings belong to the last years of the sixteenth century, his great efforts to the reign of James: Thomas Hobbes, beginning to write in the reign of Charles the First, continued to do so for many years after the Restoration. b. 1561. Some of Bacon's minor writings will come in our way by d. 1626. § and by, and will exemplify that union of wide reflection with strong imagination, which, while it gave its character to his philosophy, was not less active in its effect on his style. In the meantime, we are concerned with those efforts of his for aiding in the discovery of truth, which have made his name immortal in the records of modern science.

An attempt at exactly expounding the philosophy of Bacon would here be as much out of place, as it would be to aim at accounting for the differences of opinion that have arisen as to the value of his doctrines. But we may prepare ourselves for understanding his position in the history of intellect, if we consider him as having aimed at the solution of two great problems. The answers to these were intended to constitute the "Instauratio Magna," the Great Restoration of Philosophy, that colossal work, towards which the chief writings of the illustrious author were contributions.

The first problem was, an Analytic Classification of all Departments of Human Knowledge; the laying down, as it were, of an intellectual map, in which all arts and sciences should be exhibited in their relation to each other, their boundaries being distinctly marked off, the present state of each being indicated, and hints being given for the correction of errors and the supplying of deficiencies. Imperfect and erroneous as his scheme may be allowed to be, D'Alembert and his French coadjutors, in the middle of last century, were able to do no more than copy and distort it. The accomplishment of the task which Bacon undertook, at a time when materials enough had not been amassed, is now beginning to be acknowledged as one of the weightiest desiderata in philosophy. It has anew been attempted, in its whole compass, by two powerful though irregular thinkers of our century, the one in France, the other in England: and it has been prosecuted very successfully in the physical sciences, especially by Whewell and Ampère. This part of Bacon's speculations may be studied by the English reader, in his own eloquent exposition of it. It occupies,

chiefly though not wholly, his treatise "On the Advancement of Learning." Desiring, however, to make his opinions accessible to all learned men in Europe, he caused the book, with large additions, to be translated into Latin, under the title "De Augmentis Scientiarum."

In the same language only did he teach the other sections of his system. The most important of these he called the "Novum Organum," challenging, in the courageous self-confidence of genius, a comparison with the ancient "Organon," the logical text-book of Aristotle. In this treatise mainly it is, that he expounds the methods he proposed for solving the second of his problems. This is the portion of his speculations which has been most studied, and which has given rise to the greater part of the controversies in regard to the value of his philosophy. The design on which he worked may easily be understood.

:

The "Novum Organum" is a contribution to Logic, the science which is the theory of the art of Reasoning: it undertakes to supply certain deficiencies, under which the Ancient or Aristotelian Logic admittedly labours. In all sciences, mental as well as physical, the premises on which we found are of such a character, that we are in a greater or less degree liable, in reasoning from them, to infer more than they warrant. The ancient logic is able to show that such inferences are bad, as involving, in one way or another, the logical fallacy of inferring from a part to the whole but it is powerless when, presenting to it several conclusions, all invalidly inferred, none of them certainly true, but all of them in themselves more or less probable, we ask it to aid us in determining their comparative probability. What Bacon did was this. He endeavoured to purify our reasoning from such premises, by subjecting it to a system of checks and counter-checks, which should have the effect, not indeed of totally expunging the error of the conclusion, but of making it as small as possible, and of reducing it in many cases to an inappreciable minimum. This is, on the one side, the purpose of those laws by which he guards our assumption of premises, as in his famous exposition of the "idols" or prejudices of the human mind: and it is also, on the other side, the use designed to be served by the rules he lays down, for determining the comparative sufficiency of given instances as specimens of the whole class in regard to which we wish to draw inferences from them.

The perfect solution of this ambitious problem is unattainable; but, in every science, progress will be proportional to the extent to which the partial solution is carried. In the physical sciences it may be worked out very far; and, in this wide region of knowledge,