able hard words lying by them, as dryades, hamadryades, aönides, fauni, nymphæ, sylvani, &c. that signify nothing at all; and such a world of pedantic terms of the same kind, as may serve to furnish all the new inventions and 'thorough reformations' that can happen between this and Plato's great year. . . The Puritans were constantly contending for a thorough reforma. tion of the Church of England. The Platonic year or perfect year was a great cycle at the end of which all the heavenly bodies were supposed to be in the same relative places as at the Creation. A Vintner Hangs out his bush to shew he has not good wine; for that, the proverb says, needs it not. He had rather sell bad wine than good, that stands him in no more; for it makes men sooner drunk, and then they are the easier over-reckoned. By the knaveries he acts aboveboard, which every man sees, one may easily take a measure of those he does underground in his cellar; for he that will pick a man's pocket to his face, will not stick to use him worse in private, when he knows nothing of it. . . . He does not only spoil and destroy his wines, but an ancient reverend proverb, with brewing and racking, that says, 'In vino veritas ;' for there is no truth in his, but all false and sophisticated; for he can counterfeit wine as cunningly as Apelles did grapes, and cheat men with it, as he did birds. . . . He is an anti-Christian cheat, for Christ turned water into wine, and he turns wine into water. He scores all his reckonings upon two tables, made like those of the Ten Commandments, that he may be put in mind to break them as oft as possibly he can; especially that of stealing and bearing false witness against his neighbour, when he draws him bad wine, and swears it is good, and that he can take more for the pipe than the wine will yield him by the bottle-a trick that a Jesuit taught him to cheat his own conscience with. When he is found to over-reckon notoriously, he has one common evasion for all, and that is, to say it was a mistake; by which he means, that he thought they had not been sober enough to discover it; for if it had passed, there had been no error at all in the case. A Prater Is a common nuisance, and as great a grievance to those that come near him, as a pewterer is to his neighbours. His discourse is like the braying of a mortar, the more impertinent the more voluble and loud, as a pestle makes more noise when it is rung on the sides of a mortar, than when it stamps downright, and hits upon the business. A dog that opens upon a wrong scent will do it oftener than one that never opens but upon a right. He is as long-winded as a ventiduct, that fills as fast as it empties; or a trade-wind, that blows one way for half a year together, and another as long, as if it drew in its breath for six months, and blew it out again for six more. He has no mercy on any man's ears or patience that he can get within his sphere of activity, but tortures him, as they correct boys in Scotland, by stretching their lugs without remorse. An Antiquary Is one that has his being in this age, but his life and conversation is in the days of old. He despises the present age as an innovation, and slights the future; but has a great value for that which is past and gone, like the madman that fell in love with Cleopatra. . . All his curiosities take place of one another according to their seniority, and he values them not by their abilities, but their standing. He has a great veneration for words that are stricken in years, and are grown so aged that they have outlived their employments. These he uses with a respect agreeable to their antiquity, and the good services they have done. . . . He is a great time-server, but it is of time out of mind, to which he conforms exactly, but is wholly retired from the present. His days were spent and gone long before he came into the world; and since, his only business is to collect what he can out of the ruins of them. He has so strong a natural affection to anything that is old, that he may truly say to dust and worms, 'You are my father,' and to rottenness, 'Thou art my mother. He has no providence nor foresight, for all his contemplations look backward upon the days of old, and his brains are turned with them, as if he walked backwards. He had rather interpret one obscure word in any old senseless discourse than be author of the most ingenious new one. . . . He values things wrongfully upon their antiquity, forgetting that the most modern are really the most ancient of all things in the world, like those that reckon their pounds before their shillings and pence, of which they are made up. He esteems no customs but such as have outlived themselves, and are long since out of use; as the Catholics allow of no saints but such as are dead, and the fanatics, in opposition, of none but the living. Among editions of Butler's Poetical Works may be mentioned those of Bell (3 vols. 1855) and Brimley Johnson (2 vols. 1893). Sir Roger L'Estrange (1616–1704) enjoyed in the reigns of Charles II. and James II. great notoriety as a political writer. A native of Hunstanton, Norfolk, he took up arms for the king in 1638, and in 1644 headed a conspiracy to seize the town of Lynn; but being captured, he was condemned to death, and in Newgate for almost four years constantly expected to be led forth to execution. He escaped by the connivance of the jailer, attempted a rising in Kent, then fled to Holland, but in 1653 was pardoned by Cromwell. On the eve of the Restoration he wrote vehemently in support of monarchy. In 1663 he published Considerations and Proposals in order to the Regulation of the Press, a pamphlet for which he was rewarded by being appointed licenser or censor of the press, and also by a grant of the sole privilege of printing and publishing news. As licenser he carried out his functions rigorously. In August 1663 appeared his newspaper The Public IntelliFrom this time till a few years before his death he was constantly occupied in editing newspapers and writing pamphlets, mostly against Whigs and Dissenters, in support of the court, from which he at last received the honour of knighthood. In 1687 he prefixed to the third series of his paper called The Observator, A Brief History of the gencer. He is like an earwig, when he gets within a man's ear he is not easily to be got out again.. ears. Times, relating chiefly to the Popish Plot. After the Revolution he lost his post, and was repeatedly imprisoned. As a controversialist L'Estrange was bold, lively, and vigorous, but coarse, impudent, abusive, and by no means a scrupulous regarder of truth. He is conspicuous in the history of journalism. Johnson said he was the first writer who regularly engaged himself to support a party, right or wrong; and Defoe, Addison, and Steele accepted many useful hints from L'Estrange. He is known also as the translator of Æsop's Fables, Seneca's Morals (abridged), Cicero's Offices, Erasmus's Colloquies (a selection), Quevedo's l'isions, several French novels of startling impropriety, Bona's Guide to Eternity (compiled from the Fathers), and the works of Josephus. The elder D'Israeli commented on the curiously familiar style of L'Estrange's Esop. Ticknor thought his translation of Quevedo the most spirited, though it is hardly faithful or accurate: he altered the jokes to suit purely English contemporary conditions. Clarendon and Pepys praise his wit and conversation; Macaulay and Hallam denounce his style as a mean and flippant jargon' and 'the pattern of bad writing.' He was certainly copious, inexhaustible, and ready-witted, with a great power of raillery and vituperation, and wrote with ease and familiarity, making a free use of slang. Much in the Æsop the Greek fabulist is in nowise responsible for, though it is too much to say, as some have said, that L'Estrange's version is a new work. Further, of the five hundred fables in the volume, only two hundred and one-not to speak of the copious 'reflexions'-are professedly Æsop's, the rest being from Phædrus, Babrius, Poggio, Alciatus, La Fontaine, and many less-known authors. L'Estrange was no doubt the sole original authority for some of them. The following is a chapter on the domestic milieu in which Esop served as slave, from the Life prefixed to the Falles : Æsop's Invention to bring his Mistress back again to her Husband after she had left him. The wife of Xanthus was well born and wealthy, but so proud and domineering withal, as if her fortune and her extraction had entituled her to the breeches. She was horribly bold, meddling and expensive, as that sort of women commonly are, easily put off the hooks, and monstrous hard to be pleased again; perpetually chattering at her husband, and upon all occasions of controversy threatening him to be gone. It came to this at last, that Xanthus's stock of patience being quite spent, he took up a resolution of going another way to work with her, and of trying a course of severity, since there was nothing to be done with her by kindness. But this experiment, instead of mending the matter, made it worse; for upon harder usage the woman grew desperate, and went away from him in earnest. She was as bad, 'tis true, as bad might well be, and yet Xanthus had a kind of hankering for her still; beside that, there was matter of interest in the case; and a pestilent tongue she had, that the poor husband dreaded above all things under the sun. But the man was willing, however, to make the best of a bad game, and so his wits and his friends were set at work, in the fairest manner that might be, to get her home again. But there was no good to be done in 't, it seems; and Xanthus was so visibly out of humour upon't, that Æsop in pure pity bethought himself immediately how to comfort him. Come, master (says he), pluck up a good heart, for I have a project in my noddle, that shall bring my mistress to you back again, with as good a will as ever she went from you. What does me .Esop, but away immediately to the market among the butchers, poulterers, fishmongers, confectioners, &c. for the best of everything that was in season. Nay he takes private people in his way too, and chops into the very house of his mistress's relations, as by mistake. This way of proceeding set the whole town a gog to know the meaning of all this bustle; and Esop innocently told everybody that his master's wife was run away from him, and he had marry'd another; his friends up and down were all invited to come and make merry with him, and this was to be the wedding feast. The news flew like lightning, and happy were they that could carry the first tydings of it to the runaway lady-for everybody knew Esop to be a servant in that family. It gathered in the rolling, as all other stories do in the telling, especially where women's tongues and passions have the spreading of them. The wife, that was in her nature violent and unsteady, ordered her chariot to be made ready immediately, and away she posts back to her husband; falls upon him with outrages of looks and language; and after the easing of her mind a little; No, Xanthus, says she, do not you flatter yourself with the hopes of enjoying another woman while I am alive. Xanthus look'd upon this as one of Esop's mas terpieces; and for that bout all was well again betwixt master and mistress. How very far we have got from Æsop will be sufficiently plain from Fables ccccxcviii. and ccccxcix., even without premising that the Reflexion,' or moral, on the first discusses the 'political robbers' of these times, 'cabals of sharpers,' and the 'Committee of Safety;' while that on the second recites an illustrative story 'from the French farce.' The Conscientious Thieves. There was a knot of good fellows that borrow'd a small sum of mony of a gentleman upon the king's high-way when they had taken all they could find, Dam ye for a dog, says one of the gang, you have more mony about you sirrah, some where or other. Lord, brother, says one of his companions, can't ye take the gentleman's mony civilly, but you must swear and cali names! As they were about to part, Pray by your favour gentlemen, says the traveller, I have so many miles to go, and not one penny in my pocket to bear my charges; you seem to be men of some honour, and I hope you'l be so good as only to let me have so much of my mony back again, as will carry me to my journeys end. Ay, ay, the Lord forbid else, they cry'd, and so they open'd one of the bags, and bad him please himself. He took them at their word, and presently fetch'd out a handfull, as much as ever he could gripe. Why how now, says one of the blades, ye confounded son of a ha' ye no conscience? , The Trepanning Wolf. There's a story of a man of quality in Ireland, that a little before the troubles there, had wall'd in a piece of ground for a park, and left only one passage into 't by a gate with a portcullis to 't. The Rebellion brake out, and put a stop to his design. The place was horribly pester'd with wolves; and his people having taken one of 'em in a pit-fall, chain'd him up to a tree in the enclosure; and then planted themselves in a lodge over the gate, to see what would come on't. The wolf in a very short time fell a howling, and was answer'd by all his brethren thereabouts, that were within hearing of it; insomuch that the hubbub was immediately put about from one mountain to another, till a whole herd of 'em were gotten together upon the outcry; and so troup'd away into the park. They were no sooner in the pound, but down goes the portcullis, and away scamper the wolves to the gate, upon the noise of the fall on 't. When they saw that there was no getting out again where they came in, and that upon hunting the whole field over, there was no possibility of making an escape, they fell by consent upon the wolf that drew them in, and tore him all to pieces. The following is an extract from the Brief History, of which the point is in the original emphasised to the eye not merely by the multiplication of capitals, but by the printing a large proportion of the whole in italics and black-letter : The Popish Plot. At the first opening of this plot, almost all people's hearts took fire at it, and nothing was heard but the bellowing of execrations and revenge against the accursed bloudy Papists. It was imputed at first, and in the general, to the principles of the religion; and a Roman Catholique and a regicide were made one and the same thing. Nay, it was a saying frequent in some of our great and holy mouths, that they were confident there was not so much as one soul of the whole party, within his majesty's dominions, that was not either an actor in this plot, or a friend to 't. In this heat, they fell to picking up of priests and Jesuits as fast as they could catch 'em, and so went on to consult their oracles the witnesses (with all formalities of sifting and examining) upon the particulars of place, time, manner, persons, &c.; while Westminster Hall and the Court of Requests were kept warm, and ringing still of new men come in, corroborating proofs, and further discoveries, &c. Under this train and method of reasoning, the managers advanced, decently enough, to the finding out of what they themselves had laid and concerted beforehand; and, to give the devil his due, the whole story was but a farce of so many parts, and the noisy informations no more than a lesson that they had much ado to go through with, even with the help of diligent and careful tutors, and of many and many a prompter, to bring them off at a dead lift. But popery was so dreadfull a thing, and the danger of the king's life and of the Protestant religion so astonishing a surprize, that people were almost bound in duty to be inconsiderate and outrageous upon't; and loyalty itself would have looked a little cold and indifferent if it had not been intemperate; insomuch that zeal, fierceness, and jealousy were never more excusable than upon this occasion. And now, having excellent matter to work upon, and the passions of the people already disposed for violence and tumult, there needed no more than blowing the coal of Oates's narrative, to put all into a flame; and in the meantime, all arts and accidents were improved, as well toward the entertainment of the humour, as to the kindling of it. The people were first hayred [hared, worried, frightened] out of their senses with tales and jealousies, and then made judges of the danger, and consequently of the remedy; which upon the main, and briefly, came to no more than this: The plot was laid all over the three kingdoms; France, Spain, and Portugal taxed their quotas to 't; we were all to be burnt in our beds, and rise with our throats cut; and no way in the world but exclusion and union to help us. The fancy of this exclusion spread immediately, like a gangrene, over the whole body of the monarchy; and no saving the life of his majesty without cutting off every limb of the prerogative: the device of union passed insensibly into a league of conspiracy; and, instead of uniting Protestants against Papists, concluded in an association of subjects against their sovereign, confounding policy with religion. A poem on The Liberty of the Imprisoned Royalists, supposed to have been written by him when in Newgate in 1645, is ascribed to L'Estrange on no very convincing evidence. There are in it echoes from other Cavaliers, as will be seen from the following stanzas : Beat on, proud billows! Boreas, blow! That innocence is tempest-proof. Though surly Nereus frown, my thoughts are calm; A private closet is to me, Locks, bars, walls, leanness, though together met, My soul is free as ambient air, Although my baser parts be mewed; To company my solitude; Have you not seen the nightingale A pilgrim cooped into a cage, In that her narrow hermitage? I am the bird whom they combine But though they do my corps confine, Yet, maugre hate, my soul is free ; Walter Charleton, M.D. (1619-1707), born at Shepton Mallet, studied at Oxford, was physician to Charles I. and II., a friend of Hobbes, and senior censor 1698–1706 in the College of Physicians in London. He wrote many works on theology, natural history, natural philosophy, medicine, and antiquities. He was a disciple of Van Helmont, and his medical theories were as speculative as his arguments for the immortality of the soul. In his Chorea Gigantum (1663) he maintained the Danish origin of Stonehenge, in opposition to Inigo Jones, who still more absurdly believed it to be a Roman temple. Charleton held it was a place of assembly, and the scene of the coronation of the Danish kings of England. His Brief Discourse concerning the Different Wits of Men (1675) contains lively and accurate sketches of character, two of which we quote; and, anticipating the phrenologists, attributes the varieties of talent found among men to differences in the form, size, and quality of their brains. The Ready and Nimble Wit. Such as are endowed wherewith have a certain extemporary acuteness of conceit, accompanied with a quick delivery of their thoughts, so as they can at pleasure entertain their auditors with facetious passages and fluent discourses even upon slight occasions; but being generally impatient of second thoughts and deliberations, they seem fitter for pleasant colloquies and drollery than for counsel and design; like fly-boats, good only in fair weather and shallow waters, and then too more for pleasure than traffic. If they be, as for the most part they are, narrow in the hold and destitute of ballast sufficient to counterpoise their large sails, they reel with every blast of argument, and are often driven upon the sands of a 'nonplus;' but where favoured with the breath of common applause, they sail smoothly and proudly, and like the City pageants discharge whole volleys of squibs and crackers, and skirmish most furiously. But take them from their familiar and private conversation into grave and severe assemblies, whence all extemporary flashes of wit, all fantastic allusions, all personal reflections are excluded, and there engage them in an encounter with solid wisdom, not in light skirmishes, but a pitched field of long and serious debate concerning any important question, and then you shall soon discover their weakness, and contemn that barrenness of understanding which is incapable of struggling with the difficulties of apodictical knowledge, and the deduction of truth from a long series of reasons. Again, if those very concise sayings and lucky repartees wherein they are so happy, and which at first hearing were entertained with so much of pleasure and admiration, be written down and brought to a strict examination of their pertinency, coherence, and verity, how shallow, how frothy, how forced will they be found! how much will they lose of that applause, which their tickling of the ear and present flight through the imagination had gained! In the greatest part therefore of such men you ought to expect no deep or continued river of wit, but only a few plashes, and those too not altogether free from mud and putrefaction. The Slow but Sure Wit. Some heads there are of a certain close and reserved constitution, which makes them at first sight to promise as little of the virtue wherewith they are endowed, as the former appear to be above the imperfections to which they are subject. Somewhat slow they are indeed of both conception and expression; yet no whit the less provided with solid prudence. When they are engaged to speak, their tongue doth not readily interpret the dictates of their mind, so that their language comes as it were dropping from their lips, even where they are encouraged by familiar entreaties, or provoked by the smartness of jests, which sudden and nimble wits have newly darted at them. Costive they are also in invention; so that when they would deliver somewhat solid and remarkable, they are long in seeking what is fit, and as long in determining in what manner and words to utter it. But after a little consideration, they penetrate deeply into the substance of things and marrow of business, and conceive proper and emphatic words by which to express their sentiments. Barren they are not, but a little heavy and retentive. Their gifts lie deep and concealed; but being furnished with notions, not airy and umbratil ones borrowed from the pedantism of the schools, but true and useful-and if they have been manured with good learning and the habit of exercising their pen-oftentimes they produce many excellent conceptions, worthy to be transmitted to posterity. Having, however, an aspect very like to narrow and dull capacities, at first sight most men take them to be really such, and strangers look upon them with the eyes of neglect and contempt. Hence it comes that excellent parts remaining unknown often want the favour and patronage of great persons, whereby they might be redeemed from obscurity, and raised to employments answerable to their faculties, and crowned with honours proportionate to their merits. The best course therefore for these to overcome that eclipse which prejudice usually brings upon them, is to contend against their own modesty, and either by frequent converse with noble and discerning spirits to enlarge the windows of their minds, and dispel those clouds of reservedness that darken the lustre of their faculties; or by writing on some new and useful subject to lay open their talent, so that the world may be convinced of their intrinsic value. He wrote some of his things in Latin, translated from Latin iuta English, and rendered into Latin the Duchess of Northumberland's Life of her husband. Some thirty works are credited to him. William Chamberlayne (1619-89) practised as a physician at Shaftesbury, but wielded the sword as well as the lancet, for he fought among the royalists at the second battle of Newbury. He complains keenly of the poverty of poets, and of being debarred from the society of the wits of his day. His works consist of Love's Victory, a Tragi-Comedy (1658), of which an altered form was acted in 1678; and Pharonnida, an Heroick Poem (1659). The scene of the first is laid in Sicily; that of Pharonnida chiefly in Greece. Pharonnida is the daughter of the King of the Morea; Argalia, a Christian warrior who had fought at Lepanto. They love at first sight; and jealous relations, rival suitors, Turks, bandits, sieges, abductions, imprisonment, poison, and amazing adventures innumerable fail to prevent the triumph of true love. With no light or witty verses to float him into popularity, and relying solely on his two long (and not seldom tedious, works, Chamberlayne was an unsuccessful poet. His works were almost totally forgotten when Campbell, in his Specimens (1819), by quoting largely from Pharonnida, and pointing out the 'rich breadth and variety of its scenes,' and the power and pathos of its characters and situations, drew attention to the passion, imagery, purity of sentiment, and tenderness of description, which lay, like metals in the mine,' in the neglected volume. Southey was an admirer. But Chamberlayne's beauties are marred by infelicity of execution; he had some of the gifts of a poet, but little of the skill of the artist, though parallels have been found in him both to Endymion and to Don Juan. The impossible names and the lack of local colour and vraisemblance irritate a modern reader. The rather awkward heroic couplet, the rather lumbering blank verse, wandered sometimes into a 'wilderness of sweets,' but at other times into tediousness, mannerism, and absurdity. His discontent with his own obscurity and poverty breaks out in a description of a rich boor in his (blank verse) play : How purblind is the world, that such a monster, Souls that make worth their center, and to that The noble soldier sits, whilst in his cell The leading thought of the splendid opening lines of Dryden's Religio Laici is anticipated in this dream from Pharonnida: A strong prophetic dream, Long hovering through the portals of her mind Chamberlayne, like Milton, was fond of describing the charms of morning. For example: Where every bough Maintained a feathered chorister to sing Of virgin purity he says: The morning pearls, Dropt in the lily's spotless bosom, are Hath kissed them into heat. In a grave narrative passage of Pharonnida, he stops to note the beauties of the morning : The glad birds had sung A lullaby to night; the lark was fled, On dropping wings, up from his dewy bed, To fan them in the rising sunbeams. When commanded by her father to marry a neighbouring prince, Pharonnida soliloquises (Argalia being happily within earshot) thus: 'Is 't a sin to be Born high, that robs me of my liberty? Termed uncommanded lust--sharp poverty, As those far more malignant powers that stand, |