moderation and enlightened inquiry, which not only became a powerful influence in their own day, but also sensibly affected no inconsiderable portion of our English literature. At the same time, by their loyalty to the national Church, which it was their endeavour to widen, adorn, and purify from within rather than to assail from without, they set a salutary example to those numerous sectaries whose rapid rise and mischievous activity were regarded with alarm by the thoughtful Protestant and with exultation by the Papist.

CHAPTER XII.

MISCELLANEOUS PROSE WRITERS.

Of the minor prose writers of the period not dealt with in preceding chapters two only-Selden and Cowley—require more than a passing notice.

! John Selden (1584-1654).

John Selden, who shared with Ussher the reputation of the most learned antiquarian of the time, was a voluminous writer of English and Latin treatises on legal and theological subjects. He came to London from Oxford in 1604, and became a student of the Inner Temple. Through the patronage of Sir Robert Cotton, he secured the friendship of Ben Jonson, Camden, and other men of letters, and in 1613 supplied notes to the first eighteen cantos of Drayton's Polyolbion. His earliest English work, A Treatise on Titles of Honour, was published in 1614; three years later his fame as an oriental scholar was established by a Latin volume on the Semitic mythology, entitled De Diis Syriis. In the following year appeared his History of Tithes, a learned enquiry into the origin of the tax which the Church. claimed a divine right to enforce. The moderate tone of the treatise did not save its author from the censure of the High Commission Court, which compelled him to retract his assertions, and secured the suppression of the book. Though this experience of religious intolerance did not bring about any open breach between Selden and the

ecclesiastical authorities, it led him to support the popular party in their struggle with the king. But when the Petition of Right had been won, Selden was received back into royal favour, and in 1635 obtained the King's sanction for the publication of his Mare Clausum, a treatise that had been written about fifteen years earlier as a rejoinder to the claim to freedom of the high seas put forward by Grotius in the Mare Liberum.

As the political contest grew keener, Selden gradually withdrew from active political life, and devoted himself to Oriental and legal studies. He remained on friendly terms with the leaders of the party in power, and in 1646 subscribed the Solemn League and Covenant. The respect in which he was held among men of all parties is attested by Clarendon's warm eulogy. 'He was of so stupendous a learning in all kinds and in all languages-as may appear in his excellent writings-that a man would have thought he had been entirely conversant amongst books, and had never spent an hour but in reading and writing; yet his humanity, affability, and courtesy was such, that he would have been thought to have been bred in the best courts, but that his good nature, charity, and delight in doing good exceeded that breeding.'

The volume of Table Talk, on which Selden's literary reputation now chiefly rests, was published in 1689 by his amanuensis, Richard Milward. The genuineness of this collection of sayings has been called in question, but there seems to be no reason to doubt the assertion of the editor, who states that he had been in the habit of committing to writing from time to time fragments of his master's conversation.

Selden's style is crabbed and sometimes obscure, while most of his treatises are overweighted with the ponderous learning of their author. Clarendon, while admitting the

harshness and obscurity of his writings, records that "in ' his conversation he was a most clear discourser." His Table Talk bears out this description. It is full of quaint humour and pleasant satire, combined with much admirable common sense. Many of the sententious remarks in the volume indicate Selden's strong resentment against religious bigotry and intolerance, but there is no malice in the whimsical anecdotes and allusions in which the book abounds. Altogether, the Table Talk shows Selden as a genial, shrewd, and sensible observer of men and things, whose mind had neither been soured by theological controversies, nor warped by legal studies.

Cowley, whom his contemporaries regarded as one of the greatest of English poets, claims recogniAbraham Cowley tion here as the writer of a few essays, (1618-1667). the easy grace and unaffected humour of which give them a high place among the prose writings of the period. These essays were written during the quiet years that followed on the Restoration, and they breathe a spirit of tranquil resignation, with here and there a slight touch of bitterness at the inadequate reward given to faithful service for the royalist cause. Mr. Minto suggests that the purity and ease of Cowley's prose style was due to the fact that for ten years he had conducted the correspondence of the exiled royal family, 'a kind of experience likely to purify his language both from bookish terms and from poetical ornaments.'

The total amount of his prose work is small, consisting of eleven essays and two papers-a short Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy and a Discourse by way of Vision, concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell. There is little that is fresh in the other topics with which he deals-Solitude, Procrastination, Avarice, and the like but the treatment is relieved by amusing

anecdotes, witty sayings and happily applied quotations. The following passage, from the essay on Obscurity, is a fair specimen of the general style of his prose :

'Upon the whole matter, I account a person who has a moderate mind and fortune, and lives in the conversation of two or three agreeable friends, with little commerce in the world besides, who is esteemed well enough by his few neighbours that know him, and is truly irreproachable by anybody; and so, after a healthful quiet life, before the great inconveniences of old age, goes more quietly out of it than he came in—for I would not have him so much as cry in the exit: this innocent deceiver of the world, as Horace calls him, this muta persona, I take to have been more happy in his part than the greatest actors that fill the stage with show and noise; nay, even than Augustus himself, who asked, with his last breath, whether he had not played his farce very well.'

John Wilkins (1614-1672).

Cowley is perhaps the earliest master of the new style of prose writing that came in with the Restoration- a style which Burnet sums up as clear, plain, and short.' The same characteristics appear in the writings of his contemporary and friend, Dr. John Wilkins, whose Discovery of a New World, published in 1638, has a special interest as one of the earliest products of the new school of scientific investigation. The author, a partisan of the Parliament, became master of Wadham College, Oxford, during the Commonwealth, and in 1656 married a sister of the Protector. He was appointed to the headship of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1659, but was ejected at the Restoration. He subsequently made his peace with the Court, and, through the influence of the Duke of Buckingham, became Bishop of Chester four years before his death. His great learning and high position made him a connecting link between the new scientific movement that centred in the Royal Society and