life in historical sequence, and inserts from, preached; he discourses of "righteoustime to time discourses on topics sug-ness, temperance, and judgment to come, gested by the history. The work may of zeal and prayer, of feasting and marpossibly have been suggested by "Vita riage, rather than of those abstruse points Jesu Christi" of Ludolphus de Saxonia; of metaphysical theology where men "find but the two works only resemble each no end, in wandering mazes lost;" the other in the circumstance that in both plans of his Sermons are simple, the topics prayers and moral reflections are mixed for the most part obvious, so that an with the narrative; the discourses them- analysis of one of them gives no truer imselves, which form the greater portion of pression of the effect of the whole than an Taylor's "Life of Christ," are entirely his outline of a Titian does of the subtle colown, and differ little in style and manner ouring of the original. It is not ingenuity from those which were published under of structure nor newness of topic that the title of Sermons." His object was distinguishes the sermons of Taylor; not to criticize facts or harmonize appar- in these respects he is surpassed by many ent discrepancies; in an age of strife, of his contemporaries; it is the extraordiwhen men "hugged their own opinions nary wealth of illustration which he bedressed up in the imagery" of truth, and stows upon old truths and simple went on to "schisms and uncharitable schemes. In no sermons that we know of names, and too often dipped their feet in are obvious truths adorned with so gorblood," he wished to withdraw them from geous an array of thought, and fancy, and "the serpentine enfoldings and labyrinths learning. His fancy was quick, his readof dispute" to contemplate the love and ing immense, and his memory retentive; mercy displayed in the "Great Exemplar." not a subject can be suggested to him but To fill "the rooms of the understanding with airy and ineffective notions is just such an excellency as it is in a man to imitate the voice of birds;" but if a man lives "in the religion and fear of God, in justice and love with all the world," he is certain that he will "not fail of that end which is perfective of human nature."* The discourse in the "Life of Chirst" and the sermons contain the richest specimens of their author's gorgeous eloquence. In the polemical and practical treatises the style is comparatively subdued, though even here it is figurative and allusive beyond that of most of his other contemporaries; but in the Sermons he gave the reins to his fancy. He claims for them the praise, that they on subjects of great and universal interest, which are the concern of all. Here and there touches on his favourite pursuit, the resolution of cases of conscience, but generally he confines bimself to the tracing of "the greater lines of duty;" he cares but little if any "witty censurer" shall say that he has learned from them nothing but he knew before; for no man ought to be offended, "that sermons are not like curious inquiries after new nothings, but pursuances of old truths." And his description of his own work is fair enough; the Sermons are in substance, if not in form, plain, practical discourses. The subjects are those on which the greatest amount of common-place has been written and * Dedication of the "Life of Christ" to Chris there come trooping into his glowing mind illustrative images; struggles that he has beheld in the civil war; gentle landscapes from Golden Grove; words of Homer and Euripides, of Virgil and Lucan, of Dante and Tasso, of the singers of his own land; stories from the Fathers and the Lives of the Saints, from Hebrew Rabbis or Persian fabulists. Nothing comes amiss to him; he empties his cornucopiæ before us without stint or grudging; if the plan of his sermon is simple and unpretending, every part of it is garnished and decorated with the most luxuriant wealth of rhetorical and poetic trappings. We may compare one of his discourses to such a country church as we sometimes see in these days, where some loving hand has covered the simple work of village masons with rich carvings, and filled the old windows with "prophets pictured on the panes." He has often been compared to Chrysostom, and there can be no doubt that the mind of the English preacher was largely influenced by his study of the great orator of Antioch and Constantinople. There is in both the same peculiar union of real earnestness of purpose with rhetorical form and florid imagery; there is the same tendency to a gentle melancholy, and, in spite of the difference of language, there is even a resemblance in style: Taylor's style reflects Chrysostom's in much the same way that Hooker's does Cicero's. But Chrysostom, though exuberant in topher, Lord Hatton; one of the noblest of Tay- comparison with Demosthenes, is chaste lor's many excellent dedications. compared with Taylor; he shows the ing," "The oracles are dumb, And Heber would fain persuade us that Milton had Taylor in his eye when he spoke of 66 Men, whose life, learning, faith, and pure in tent Would have been held in high esteem by Paul," who yet had been "branded heretics" by such as Edwards; and certainly we can hardly help supposing that Taylor's eloquent treatise would be more attractive to Milton than those of Goodwin and Peters, which shared the wrath of Rutherford and "Scotch What-d'ye-call." an In respect of his similes Taylor is the His style is very Homer of preachers. commonly metaphorical and allusive, but here and there, when he hits upon image of unusual beauty, he seems unwilling to leave it with a mere touch, and elaborates it into a distinct and glowing picture. training of the Athenian schools, which pipes, their altars, " and that "he made still formed an "academy" of Greek their oracles silent; * words in which we style: he has none of Taylor's multifari- trace an echo of the well-known lines of ous learning; Chrysostom and Photius the "Ode on the Nativity": together might have formed a Jeremy Taylor. In truth we can recall only one other who unites wealth of learning, of Runs through the arched roof in words deceivfancy, and of expression, in the same degree as Jeremy Taylor-his contemporary, John Milton. The reading of these two extended in great measure over the same fields; we trace in both the same fondness for the Greek, Latin, and Italian poets the same tendency to decorate Christian thought with Pagan imagery the same delight in the modulation of long-drawn sentences - the same dissatisfaction with the discords and divisions of an age which must needs discuss prelacy and presbytery, synods and "classic hierarchies," while government could hardly be maintained, and Christianity itself was in danger. But with these points of likeness, how wide is the gulf between the two men! Nothing can be less like the fiery scorn of Milton than the gentle melancholy of Taylor; while Milton plunges into the arena, eager to enforce his own views of right and truth, unsparing in denunciation of those who oppose him, TaySometimes his similes are lor tenderly laments the evils of the time. and would fain persuade men and set wrought out from an anecdote in some rethem at one again: in Milton we are al- condite book, and these certainly, however ways conscious of strong wiil and fixed re- they may adorn, do not render the subsolve; Taylor sometimes seems to be ject more easy of apprehension to an orhardly master of himself, to float passively dinary intelligence; but the most beaution the full stream of his own learning and ful are those which are drawn from natfancy. It is hardly likely that the two ural objects. He evidently delighted in great masters of English prose were the varied beauty of country scenes; the known to each other personally; in early sky and the clouds, the woods and vales Cambridge days, no doubt, the young and streams, the ever-new phenomena of scholar of Caius may have met face the growth and decay of plants filled his to face the scholar of Christ's, though soul with admiration and love. With the in after times it is difficult to imagine that example of Thompson before us, who is said to have written in bed his famous deCromwell's secretary can have had occasion to meet King Charles's chaplain. scription of morning, we hesitate to infer But with each other's works they were no a man's habits from his imaginative writdoubt acquainted: it is not to be sup-ings; yet it is difficult not to believe that posed that so omnivorous a reader as Tayfor would remain ignorant of his great contemporary's "Allegro," and "Comus," and Lycidas, or that Milton would neglect a work which in many respects so chimes with his own humour as the "Liberty of Prophesying." Taylor seems to show an acquaintance with one at least of Milton's early works, when, speaking of the triumphs of Christianity, he says that "the holy Jesus made invisible powers to do him visible honours," and that " His apostles hunted demons from their tripods, their navels, their dens, their hollow VOL. XXIII. 1014 LIVING AGE. Taylor delighted in the dewy freshness of sunrise and the song of the early lark. His comparison of the ascent of the Christian's prayer to the rising of the lark sometimes soaring, sometimes beaten back by rough winds-is too well known for quotation. He more than once uses the sunrise as an illustration, and manages it with great felicity. In the "Holy Dying,"† he says that reason gradually dawns on the soul, "Duct Dubit.," Book I., c. iv. 8. 22. incidence is noted by Mr. Willmott. The co "As when the sun approaching towards the gates of the morning first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to mattins, and by-and-by gilds the fringes of a cloud and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting ont his golden horns like those which decked the brows of Moses when he was forced to wear a veil because himself had seen the face of God; and still, while a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shows a fair face and a full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly." The same simile is again used, with excellent effect, to illustrate the gradual spread of Christianity over the world: "I have seen the sun with a little ray of distant light chailenge all the powers of darkness, and, without violence and noise climbing up the hill, hath made night so to retire, that its memory was lost in the joys and sprightfulness of the morning and Christianity, without violence or armies.. with obedience and charity, with praying and dying, did insensibly turn the world into Christian and persecution into victory."* A good instance of Taylor's strength and weakness in the management of comparisons is found in the very beautiful simile by which he illustrates the calm sweet life of Lady Carbery†: : 66 mirably; the image is beautiful in itself, well adapted to illustrate the thought, and sufficiently suggested by the mere use of words "sliding toward her ocean.' More than this offends our modern sense; but if we concede to the florid taste of the preacher's age that he was justified in expanding his beautiful metaphor into a simile, we must still protest against the introduction of another figure within it; the words "fiscus," "exchequer," "prince.", tribute," " audit," though quite of the kind which even Milton himself might have used upon a fit occasion, must surely be felt as jarring notes here. In a word, the passage suffers, like many others, from Taylor's unpruned exuberance; he is not content to suggest an image, he must give it in detail; he gives us so fully the work of his own imagination that he leaves nothing for ours, which is always a mistake in art. He wanted, in a far greater degree han Shakspeare, "the art to blot," and few men needed it more.* The following comparison, illustrating the blessing of God's chastisements, which seems to us nearly perfect in all its parts, that Southey transferred it entire to is besides worthy of note from the fact 66 Thalaba." "I have known a luxuriant vine swell into irregular twigs and bold excrescences, and spend itself in leaves and little rings, and afford "In all her religion, and in all her actions of but trifling clusters to the wine-press, and a relation towards God, she had a strange evenness faint return to his heart which longed to be reand untroubled passage, sliding toward her freshed with a full vintage; but when the Lord ocean of God and of infinity with a certain and of the vineyard had caused the dressers to cut silent motion. So have I seen a river deep and the wilder plant and make it bleed, it grew smooth passing with a still foot and a sober face, temperate in its vain expense of useless leaves, and paying to the Fiscus, the great exchequer and knotted into fair and juicy branches, and of the sea, the prince of all watery bodies, a trib-made account of the loss of blood by return of ute large and full; and hard by it a little brook fruit." skipping and making a noise upon its unequal and neighbour bottom; and after all its talking and bragged motion, it paid to its common audit no more than the revenues of a little cloud or a contemptible vessel. So have I sometimes compared the issues of her religion to the solemnities and famed outsides of another's piety." The first clause of this passage is contrasted by Keble with Burke's famous description of Marie Antoinette, in the first freshness of her queenly beauty, rising like the morning-star above the horizon. He quotes it as an instance of the poetical as opposed to the rhetorical treatment of imagery. And it serves that purpose ad 66 Here is Southey's version: Repine not, O my son, the old man replied, this vine! Behold I found it a wild tree, whose wanton strength And bold excrescences, And spent itself in leaves and little rings; * It is interesting to compare the use of the same figure by another great master of imagination, Walter Scott. "Murmurer that thou art,' said Morton, in the enthusiasm of his reverie. why chafe with the rocks that stop thy course for a moment? There is a sea to receive thee in its bosom, and there is an eternity for man, when his fretful and hasty course through the vale of time shall be ceased and over. What thy petty fumings are to the deep and vast billows of a shoreless ocean, are Sermon on the "Faith and Patience of the our cares, hopes, fears, joys, and sorrows to the obSaints." Pri. s. 1. jects which must occupy us through the awful and boundless succession of ages."" "Old Mortal In the Funeral Sermon on Lady Carbery. ity." So in the flourish of its wantonness The hand that wisely wounded it.” * The laureate, who fully acknowledged his appropriation of the image, altered as little as possible what he himself called Taylor's unimprovable" language; yet the whole passage.has in Southey a heaviness which it has not in Taylor: Taylor was, in truth, much the better poet of the two. 66 ment, there shall come together, he says, "all kingdoms of all ages, all the armies that ever mustered, all the world that Augustus Cæsar taxed, all those hundreds of millions that were slain in all the Roman wars, from Numa's time till Italy was broken into principalities and small exarchates. ." It seems to us a perversity to spoil a striking passage with those “principalities and small exarchates:" they add nothing to the picture; on the contrary, they draw off the attention from the thronging multitudes to the curious nicety of the describer. And such instances as these are not isolated; we can hardly read a discourse without finding its solemSuch beauties as those which we have nity marred here and there by illustrations quoted meet us everywhere in Taylor's which remind us rather too forcibly of sermons and practical works: his fancy the ingenuity and learning of the preacher. always glows; yet it must needs be con- The truth is, we are afraid we must fessed that his superabundant illustrations, needs confess it, that Taylor's "linked especially those which are drawn from sweetness long drawn out" tends here books, very much detract from the impres- and there to mawkishness: the banquet sion of earnestness which a sermon ought of sweets is too much for us; we long for to produce. They give to his discourses plain wholesome fare. And this tendency the appearance of tideises, or show-speech- is very much increased by the preacher's es, rather than of the didactic and persua- singular want of humour. We may persive oratory which ought to characterize haps do him injustice; his face might perthe utterances of a Christian preacher. haps have suggested his perception of the After making all possible allowance for ludicrous side of some passages in his serthe florid and learned style of the seven-mons, if we could have seen him deliver teenth century, we cannot but feel that them; but whatever the subject, he never the preacher is rather amusing than per- smiles at us from the printed page. In suading or instructing us when, inveigh- the peroration of the "Holy Dying," where ing against luxury, he tells us that there he is dissuading us from excessive grief at are, in the shades below no numbering the death of friends, he does not seem to of healths by the numeral letters of Phil-perceive the exquisite incongruity of that enium's name, no fat mullets, no oysters of Lucrinus, no Lesbian of Chian wines," and bids us "now enjoy the delicacies of nature, and feel the descending wines distilled through the limbeck of thy tongue and larynx, and seek the delicious juices of fishes, the marrow of the laborious ox, the tender lard of Apulian swine, and the condited bellies of the scarus," and speaks desiring “to have the wealth of Susa, or garments stained with the blood of the Tyrian fish, or to feed like Philoxenus, or to have tables loaded like the boards of Vitellius." It is not to much purpose that he tells an English congregation, speaking of the somewhat more delicate food which is necessary for the mental activity of the student, that "neither will the pulse and the leeks, Lavinian sausages and the Cisalpine suckets or gobbets of condited bull's flesh, minister such delicate spirits to the thinking man." In a very remarkable description of the Last Judg "Thalaba," Book viii. st. 17. choice story from Petronius about the Ephesian widow who was so remarkably consoled, though he tells it in a manner not unworthy of Boccaccio. He illustrates the folly of a rash marriage by the following apologue: "The stags in the Greek Epigram, whose knees were clogged with frozen snow upon the mountains, came down to the brooks of the valleys, hoping to thaw their joints with the waters of the stream; but there the frost overtook them, and bound them fast in ice, till the young herdsmen took them in their stranger snare. It is the unhappy chance of many men, finding many inconveniences upon the mountains of single life, they descend into the valleys of marriage to refresh their troubles; and there they enter into fetters, and are bound * "Christ's Advent," Serm. I. 8. 1. He was fond of these exarchates." In the "Holy Dying," (ch i sec. iv s. 4) he speaks of the ants dividing their little mole-hills into provinces and exarchates. Here, however, the big word contrasts well with the little subject; we feel the ants' assumption of dignity. to sorrow by the cords of a man's or woman's tacking the weak points in his opponent's peevishness." case. When we add to these qualifications his power of “getting up” a subject His manner betrays here no sense of and of finding apt language and ready ildrollery; and yet his audience must have lustration, we surely have before us the been made of sterner stuff than we are if very ideal of a successful candidate for the they did not smile at this quaint descrip-highest honours of the bar. But we betion of the unfortunate case of those who lieve that a genuine vocation brought rush from the ills of celibacy to "others Taylor into the ranks of the priesthood; that they know not of." he could not have borne to waste his а Yet this want of humour was not incom-splendid powers on fines and recoveries, patible with a great power of sarcasm; in or in making the worse appear the better the "Dissuasive from Popery," in particu- reason; his arguments may sometimes be lar he directs against certain practices of rather specious than sound, but they are the Roman Church and its various orders a | always employed in favour of what he besarcastic irony not unworthy to be com-lieved to be just, and true, and noble. pared with Pascal's. And if in his stately His great defect is a certain want of solemnity Taylor sometimes indulges in masculine firmness and vigour; his intelovermuch amplification, he shows himself |lect and fancy are dominant over his will. nevertheless, upon oceasion, a master of Hence, we sometimes desiderate a greater terse, vigorous, vernacular phraseology. force of rough moral indignation; he disHis controversial treatises are not written in the florid style of his sermons; in truth, nothing is more remarkable than the instinctive tact with which he adapts the style to the subject, though, no doubt, his strain is always pitched in a key somewhat too high for modern ears. Nor does his exuberant fancy preclude the exercise of remarkable keenness and subtlety. Mr. Hallam thought that Taylor could never have made a great lawyer. We are by no means of his opinion. The author of the "Ductor Dubitantium" might surely have been a great equity lawyer; and both his excellences and his defects fitted him for the profession of an advocate. For he is always rather rhetorician than philosopher; he does not reason up to his conclusions; he takes a proposition and defends it by ingenious arguments; and he shows great skill in discovering and at-in our literature. approves rather than condemns; he rather shows the ugliness of evil than dashes it from him as a twining monster; perhaps he hardly knew it nearly enough to be really moved to loathe its deformity. Where Milton would thunder and South would spurn, Taylor deprecates. But apart from this cardinal defect, how noble is his character! He is unstained, so far as we know, by any suspicion of intrigue or meanness; his personal sweetness and attractiveness seem to have been as manifest as Shakspeare's; we can well imagine the gentler spirits of a disturbed time joyfully adopting him as a “ ghostly father." As long, probably, as Englishmen retain a taste for elevated thought, pure aspiration, and quaint imagery clothed in rich and ornate diction, so long will Jeremy Taylor retain his high place - WE learn from a correspondent in New Zea- | food as he walked the closeness of the stride land that footprints of the Moa have recently favouring this belief. Hard by this spot Mr. been detected in a new district in the province Worgan picked up an old stone hatchet, which, of Auckland. The locality is at the mouth of from the signs of traces it bears, is doubtless the Waikenei Creek, near the settlement of Gis- as ancient as the tracks of the Mo. Casts of borne, Poverty Bay, near the Taruheru River. these footprints have been presented to the muThe slabs in which the impressions were found seum of the Auckland Institute. The length were about five feet below a deposit of silt and of the footmark from the heel to the tip of the alluvium of different kinds which had been centre toe was seven and seven-eighths inches; washed away by the action of the water, leav- from the heel to the tips of the inner and outer ing the stone in which the footprints were found toes, six inches; the distance of tips of the visible, very plainly indented and following outer and inner toes was seven inches; the each other in succession. On either side of length of the stride was twenty inches from this track were dents here and there, as though heel to heel, and there were eight impressions made by the bird's short beak in picking up altogether. Nature. |