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or other procure their liberty, and find full employment. They will be sure to create to themselves unusual and unnatural exercise, where they are cut off from such as is natural and good. And thus in the room of orderly and natural affection, new and unnatural must be raised, and all inward order and economy destroyed.

One must have a very imperfect idea of the order of Nature in the formation and structure of animals, to imagine that so great a principle, so fundamental a part as that of natural affection should possibly be lost or impaired, without any inward ruin or subversion of the temper and frame of mind.

Whoever is the least versed in this moral kind of architecture, will find the inward fabric so adjusted and the whole so nicely built, that the barely extending of a single passion a little too far, or the continuance of it too long, is able to bring irrecoverable ruin and misery. He will find this experienced in the ordinary case of frenzy, and distraction; when the mind, dwelling too long upon one subject (whether prosperous or calamitous), sinks under the weight of it, and proves what the necessity is, of a due balance and counterpoise in the affections. He will find, that in every different creature, and distinct sex, there is a different and distinct order, set, or suit of passions; proportionable to the different order of life, the different functions and capacities assigned to each. As the operations and effects are different, so are the springs and causes in each system. The inside work is fitted to the outward action and performance. So that where habits or affections are dislodged, misplaced, or changed; where those belonging to one species are intermixed with those belonging to another, there must of necessity be confusion and disturbance within.

All this we may observe easily, by comparing the more perfect with the imperfect natures, such as are imperfect from their birth, by having suffered violence within, in their earliest form and inmost matrix. We know how it is with monsters, such as are compounded of different kinds, or different sexes. Nor are they less monsters, who are misshapen or distorted in an inward part. The ordinary animals appear unnatural and monstrous, when they lose their proper instincts, forsake their kind, neglect their offspring, and pervert those functions or capacities bestowed by nature. How wretched must it be, therefore, for MAN, of all other creatures, to lose that sense

and feeling, which is proper to him as a man, and suitable to his character and genius? How unfortunate must it be for a creature, whose dependence on society is greater than any other's, to lose that natural affection by which he is prompted to the good and interest of his species, and community? Such indeed is man's natural share of this affection, that he, of all other creatures, is plainly the least able to bear solitude. Nor is anything more apparent, than that there is naturally in every man such a degree of social affection as inclines him to seek the familiarity and friendship of his fellows. It is here that he lets loose a passion, and gives reins to a desire, which can hardly by any struggle or inward violence be withheld; or if it be, is sure to create a sadness, dejection, and melancholy in the mind. For whoever is unsociable, and voluntarily shuns society, or commerce with the world, must of necessity be morose and ill-natured. He, on the other side, who is withheld by force or accident, finds in his temper the ill effects of this restraint. The inclination, when suppressed, breeds discontent; and on the contrary affords a healing and enlivening joy, when acting at its liberty, and with full scope: as we may see particularly, when, after a time of solitude and long absence, the heart is opened, the mind disburdened, and the secrets of the breast unfolded to a bosom-friend.

This we see yet more remarkably instanced in persons of the most elevated stations; even in princes, monarchs, and those who seem by their condition to be above ordinary human commerce, and who affect a sort of distant strangeness from the rest of mankind. But their carriage is not the same towards all men. The wiser and better sort, it is true, are often held at a distance; as unfit for their intimacy or secret trust. But, to compensate this, there are others substituted in their room who, though they have the least merit, and are perhaps the most vile and contemptible of men, are sufficient, however, to serve the purpose of an imaginary friendship, and can become favourites in form. These are the subjects of humanity in the Great. For these, we see them often in concern and pain; in these, they easily confide; to these, they can with pleasure communicate their power and greatness, be open, free, generous, confiding, bountiful; as rejoicing in the action itself: having no intention or aim beyond it; and their interest, in respect of policy, often standing a quite contrary way. But where neither

the love of mankind, nor the passion for favourites prevails, the tyrannical temper fails not to shew itself in its proper colours, and to the life, with all the bitterness, cruelty, and mistrust, which belong to that solitary and gloomy state of uncommunicative and unfriendly greatness. Nor needs there any particular proof from history, or present time, to second this remark.

Thus it may appear, how much natural affection is predominant; how it is inwardly joined to us, and implanted in our natures; how interwoven with our other passions; and how essential to that regular motion and course of our affections, on which our happiness and self-enjoyment so immediately depend.

And thus we have demonstrated, that as, on one side, to have the natural and good affections is to have the chief means and power of self-enjoyment: so, on the other side, to want them is certain misery and ill.

(From An Enquiry concerning Virtue.)

ATTERBURY

[Francis Atterbury was born at Milton, in Bucks (where his father was rector), in 1672, and was educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford. He made his first appearance in controversy as the defender of Luther against Obadiah Walker, the Roman Catholic whom James II. had made Master of the University; and a few years later intervened in the Phalaris controversy, as the supporter of Boyle against Bentley. Although the controversy was fierce, and although the whole weight of scholarship was on Bentley's side, it did not prevent a subsequent friendship between Atterbury and Bentley. After taking orders Atterbury became preacher at Bridewell, and attained to great reputation as a pulpit orator. During the next few years he was a vigorous exponent of High Church doctrine, and fought for the rights of Convocation. He was appointed successively Archdeacon of Totnes, Dean of Carlisle, Dean of Christ Church, and eventually, in 1713, Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster. Becoming involved in a charge of Jacobite conspiracy, he was committed to the Tower, and by a bill of attainder was deprived of all his appointments, and banished from the kingdom in 1723. He died in France in 1732.]

THE character of Atterbury is one which presents seeming inconsistencies, but is nevertheless transparent enough. A warm and affectionate nature, keen sensibility, much gentleness and tenderness, were united to a passionate and often turbulent temper, to a readiness for disputation, to ambition, and, it must be added, to some vanity. It was a nature neither very rare nor very complicated; which might make enemies, but which was also eminently fitted to attract friends. Mrs. Pilkington, whose gossippy reminiscences of Swift contain a few passages of real value, tells us of "the character I have heard Bishop Berkeley give to Bishop Atterbury, namely, a most learned fine gentleman, who, under the softest and politest appearance, concealed the most turbulent ambition." The picture is in outline the same as that drawn by all his contemporaries, who vary only in the amount of light and shade which they impart to it; even Pope's wellknown line

"How pleasing Atterbury's softer hour,"

implies that there were hours which were less soft; hours when disappointed ambition, love of intrigue, and the thirst of combat turned the gentle homilist, the loving father, the acute literary critic, into the fiery ecclesiastical controversialist, the bitter combatant, and the political conspirator, who was not a stranger even to prevarication.

Atterbury's personality is attractive and interesting far beyond his literary importance: and even in the domain of literature the impression upon contemporaries was greater than that which he has left upon posterity, from the fact that his literary gifts were greatly enhanced by a fine voice, a dignified personal appearance, and consummate oratorical art. As a preacher he was reckoned the most eloquent of his day, and The Tatler has described the effect of his pulpit delivery when his popularity was at its height. But as contributions to theological literature, his sermons cannot be placed on the same level with those of Tillotson, Barrow, South, or others of the day even inferior to these. Their chief attraction for us is in the delicate and graceful simplicity of their diction; not in the strength, but rather in the quaint turn of the argument-so quaint indeed as sometimes to lead their author into positions which he did not himself anticipate and in the total absence of all the cumbrous apparatus of learned allusion to which his contemporaries were prone. Atterbury was not indeed without copiousness of theological reading, and was supplied with abundant store of weapons for ecclesiastical controversy. But he seems of set purpose to have refrained from resorting to such an armoury in his pulpit oratory.

In many respects, indeed, his tastes and studies led him rather into the field of polite literature than into that of divinity. "One of the truest friends I ever had," Pope writes of him, "and one of the greatest men in all polite learning, as well as the most agreeable companion, this nation ever had." Nursed in the traditions of Westminster and Christ Church, his earliest training was in the more graceful part of scholarship, and the readiness and ease of his Latin composition, of which many specimens remain, greatly influenced, not only his own phraseology, but the critical maxims which he applied with more care than almost any of his contemporaries to the niceties of style. In an age when Milton was neglected, Atterbury found in Milton the highest type of poetic utterance, ranking him higher even than Homer and Virgil. Almost alone amongst his friends, he adhered to Milton's preference

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