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his plain, direct way: "I have now preached three Lents. The first time I preached Restitution. Restitution!' quoth

some, 'what should he preach of Restitution? Let him preach of contrition, quoth they, and let restitution alone; we can never make restitution. Then, say I (what a wholehearted Christian man!) if thou wilt not make restitution, thou shalt go to the devil for it. Now choose thee, either restitution or endless damnation. But now there be two manner of restitutions, secret restitution and open restitution; whether of both it be so that restitution is made, it is all good enough. At my first preaching of restitution, one good man took remorse of conscience, and acknowledged himself to me, that he had deceived the king, and willing he was to make restitution; and so, the first Lent came to my hands twenty pounds to be restored to the king's use. I was promised twenty pounds more the same Lent; but it could not be made, so that it came not. Well, the next Lent came three hundred and twenty pounds more. I received it myself, and paid it to the king's council. So I was asked what he was that made restitution? But should I have named him? Nay, they should as soon have this weasand of mine. Well, now this Lent came one hundred and fourscore pounds ten shillings, which I have paid and delivered this present day to the king's council. And so this man hath made a godly restitution. And so, quoth I, to a certain nobleman that is one of the king's council, if every man that hath beguiled the king, should make restitution after this sort, it would cough the king twenty thousand pounds, I think, quoth I. Yes, that it would, quoth the other, a whole hundred thousand pounds. Alack, alack! make restitution for God's sake, make restitution; ye will cough in hell else, that all the devils there will laugh at your coughing." In such a

channel flowed the simple but vigorous rhetoric of the old

master.

As adviser and defender of their rights, Latimer was the people's friend; no less than by his ripping open the abuses of the rich and powerful. He was, in one view, a democrat, more from disgust of the aristocracy, than from any individual tendencies. His true position was rather that of a conservative, or perhaps, if living, he would bear the same relation to the prevailing parties that the moderate whig sustains to the violen♦ tory, or reckless radical. Robin Hood was a type of the perfect democrat, without many of the vices, and free from all the meanness of the modern demagogue and to show Latimer's estimation of the generous freebooter, we read the following incident in one of his sermons, of which the burden is, the decay of religion, the necessity of preaching, and bells without clappers. On a holy day, Latimer stopped once at a village church, having sent word the night before that he would preach there the next morning. He found the door locked, and the key could not be found until more than half an hour's delay. He was then told, "Sir, this is a busy day with us, we cannot hear you-it is Robin Hood's day." Robin Hood carried the day away from the good Father. But ignominiously he styles the bold outlaw (in many features of his character, as, in his love for the poor, regard for female chastity, indignation at legalized corruption, strongly resembling himself,) a traitor and a thief,' forgetting what was really sound in the favorite ideal of the populace, and their generous defender.*

*Robin Hood is rather to be regarded as a patriot, one of the last of the chieftains of the old Saxon race, who denied the Con

All Latimer's virtues partook of the same direct and inartificial character. He was honest, bold, simple, and pious. His honesty was enlightened by judgment and experience; his boldness was confirmed by truth and sincerity; his simplicity was the transparent veil of his free thoughts and manly actions, and his piety gave a tone to, and cast a lustre over, all of these. Instances of all these qualities are numerous. A single fact may prove his honest frankness, fearing no evil, as it had intended none, and utterly unsuspicious of malice, as he was free from guile. It was a current custom to present the king (Henry VIII.) every New Year's day with an annual offering: a purse of gold was the common oblation. Latimer sent, as his tribute, a New Testament, with the leaf doubled down in a very conspicuous manner at the passage, "Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge." Previously to this, and afterward, he had opposed Henry with a manly unconcern, and, by his fearlessness, gained the respect of that tyrannical despot.

The martyrdom of Latimer is one of the bloodiest spots even upon the reign of bloody Queen Mary. The familiarity of the relation in Fox's Book of Martyrs, renders it superfluous to re-state the details here: neither can any student of English history be supposed ignorant of the particulars of that disgraceful scene.

quest, and persisted in living out of the law of the descendants of foreigners, than as a mere freebooter, the character commonly assigned to him. [Vide Thierrys History of the Norman Conquest.] Robin was canonized, and the holy day above referred to was his annual festival. The French historian, one of the ablest of the modern school, quotes this very passage out of Latimer, to show the strong hold the brave outlaw had on the popular affection.

The style and eloquence of Latimer were characteristic of the man and of his age; homely almost to rudeness, yet vigorous, learned, manly, idiomatic, and practical in the highest degree. He was a humorous satirist, a sharp debater, a grave and ornate orator, and a keen student of human nature combined. His simplicity confirmed his honesty; and he was utterly free from any equivocation or duplicity. His understanding and talents, generally, were of the true old English stamp, and which we see reproduced in the best modern writers of English. His age was a pedantic one, that had not left quoting Latin by the page; but in his case, the English mind was formed chiefly out of the best Saxon traits. The old Saxon formed the best parts of the moral character, as well as of the language, of the modern Englishman. Latimer has some of Hogarth's humor, and Morland's naturalness. He enjoys a talent in common with Cobbett, of calling names. He has not a little of honest John Bunyan's allegorical fancy. His style, like all of these, is completely English, and smacks of that sterling vein.

Inheriting the democratic tendencies of the Saxon, he feared not to rebuke nobles and prelates, though himself a priest; nor to recognise the godlike characteristics of humanity in the meanest individual; loved in life, honored in his death, though a suffering martyr, and venerated by all after ages. This comprises the history of good Father Latimer.

XI.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S "DEFENCE OF POESY."

Ir may appear unseasonable and superfluous at this epoch of the literary history of the world, to re-write the defence of poesy, so much better done in the works of the best poets themselves; and such a defence would be no less illtimed than impertinent, as if that divine art needed any advocates, and therefore we shall merely recur, for the purpose of analysis and criticism, to the earliest and perhaps the most elaborately eloquent argument in the English language, in behalf of the claims of the poet and his vocation.

The Defense of Poesy, is the richest gem in the poetic crown of Sidney. It is a pure and lofty appeal to the gòdlike in human nature; it contains in itself the essence of an art of poetry; is full of generous sentiment, all clenched and compacted by the fine logic and finer declamation of the poet of the Arcadia. Indeed, so much at least to us critical readers is it to be preferred to the Romance of that name, that Warton recommended a separate publication of the Essay, since being generally printed at the end of the Arcadia, no one would be likely to read it.

Bad poets, unskilful critics, dull made verse well nigh contemptible. by a loyal zeal to recover the lost

scholars, had united to Sidney was influenced purity and splendor of

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