THE PROSE WRITERS.

CHAPTER V.

THE PROSE WRITERS OF THE RESTORATION.

BISHOP JEREMY TAYLOR-DR. ROBERT SOUTH-DR. ISAAC BARROW-BISHOP BEVERIDGE-DR. RALPH CUDWORTH -BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE - JOHN BUNYAN - THOMAS HOBBES-ABRAHAM COWLEY-IZAAK WALTON-JOHN DRYDEN-SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE-THOMAS RYMERDR. HENRY MORE-VALENTINE GREATRAKES-DR. THEOPHILUS GALE-JAMES HARRINGTON-SIR ROBERT FILMER BISHOP CUMBERLAND BISHOP WILKINS BISHOP SPRAT-EARL OF CLARENDON-BISHOP BURNET -ANTHONY À WOOD-SIR WILLIAM DUGDALE-ELIAS ASHMOLE ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON BISHOP KEN — RICHARD BAXTER-GEORGE FOX-WILLIAM PENNSIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE-ROBERT BOYLE-JOHN RAY -THOMAS SYDENHAM SIR ISAAC NEWTON - SIR THOMAS BRowNE.

CHARLES II. had been seven years on the throne when Jeremy Taylor died. Chronologically, therefore, we may claim the English Chrysostom as one of the Prose Writers of the Restoration; but, with a single exception, his great works had all been written in the reign of Charles I., or during the Commonwealth, and in style they are related to those of the Elizabethan rather than to those of the Caroline school. The exception is his great treatise on casuistical divinity, the "Ductor Dubitantium" on which he himself based his hopes of fame. This was issued in the year of the Restoration; and in the same year he published his tractate on the Lord's Supper, entitled, "The Worthy Communicant," and received his episcopal preferment. His sermon, "Via Intelligentiæ," was published in 1662. Also, the three sermons which he dedicated to the Duchess of Ormond; and the "Dissuasive

from Popery," which he wrote at the request of the Irish Bishops. On the strength of these post-Restoration publications, we include the great bishop in our list of "Worthies," thankful that the lustre of his name lights up the dark pages of Charles's reign.

Jeremy Taylor, who, by the consent of all, ranks as the greatest orator the English Church has produced, was the son of a Cambridge barber, or barber-surgeon, and first saw the light in his father's house about the 13th of August, 1613. He came of a reputable family, which for generations had held lands in Gloucestershire, but had been reduced to honourable poverty after the martyrdom of Dr. Rowland Taylor,* the courageous and learned rector of Hadleigh, by the confiscation of his estates.

The barber, or barber-surgeon, had education enough to be able to ground his son, as the son informs us, "in grammar and the mathematics." At the early age of three he had begun to attend Parse's Grammar School, then recently founded; and it was probably some indications of more than ordinary capacity which led his father to enter him, when only thirteen years of age, at Caius College, in the University of his native town, as a "poor scholar." It is pleasant to remember that he was the contemporary of John Milton, who entered Christ's College in 1625, and it is not an unreasonable conjecture that sympathy of tastes and intellectual power united in friendly relations the future author of "Holy Living and Dying" and the future poet of the "Paradise Lost."

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Though in after life," remarks Prebendary Humphreys, "a wide gulf was interposed between the poet and the divine, the one becoming secretary to the Protector, the other chaplain to the King, at this

* In the third year of Queen Mary."

time they might be friendly opponents in the dreary exercises of the schools; they might well be companions in lighter and more congenial studies; they might go up to the house of God together; they might be compared for their poetical temperament, for their love of ancient learning, for the beauty of their souls, and for their outward comeliness." During his University career Taylor must also have heard of George Herbert, the "sweet singer" of "The Temple; " nor is it unlikely that he was familiar with the name of Oliver Cromwell, then an undergraduate of Sidney Sussex College.

The course of study then in vogue at Cambridge was not adapted to develop Taylor's imaginative faculties. His Alma Mater did not nourish him with satisfying food; she was still teaching that old scholastic philosophy which Bacon censured for its "unprofitable subtlety and curiosity," while Millar characterised its "ragged notions and brabblements" as "an asinine feast of sow-thistles and brambles." Duns Scotus and Avicenna still perplexed their students with intricate speculations and vain hypotheses. To a genius so subtle as Taylor's it was easy, perhaps, to detect some grains of gold even in sandy wastes of Ockham, Lauretus, and Suarez; but we can fancy with what delight he turned from this disappointing pursuit to the study of the great masters of the Greek and Roman literature.

In 1631 Taylor took his Bachelor's degree, and soon afterwards was elected to a Fellowship. Before proceeding to his degree of M.A. be received holy orders, though, like the illustrious Usher, he wanted two years of the canonical age of twenty-three. He quickly became celebrated for his pulpit eloquence; but his future career seems to have been decided by one of those