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Fath t) Ledtoite ee sh)44 Laits.the oh i, yey! te pet day MNERORNE Te Pd adil) mali} at RAND 444 i FUL ade ait ay oie Taha ria ah tea sth falta nil 1 betas at ti} Th ist ace rit iat stele viray pa ja lg tele bina i IELEMen trip’ ie at tyleks at } te li i arta ith a : aH rit ey iH sash Wi Latat Py § uh t Wea heya iqet Pobre Nhe jada) ebaale Latta to feet allel sila lta tag, bala Ne ( i ssh vi; nn bite ; as HE | ieetialeh nu ist ty Degebaltaye fet Laer] br ta Cy) cif La ty baila a ni 7 afi. {Geis Pay i: ila 1 DL beletaledy Lal edatten Heidiey i tests ane Gite } eh ns See tna rade) tesilt Ratatat ‘ ape ett ite silas ai its ii ‘at! ae wise CEA A atts ris itt ies bee can tite Vel \ bet de Vetadate te) aah ts tute tabs} iA We aA Vets healt a silat stat, ae Lele setaanel ole ties i ay ata te Die Te? ta ia Hailes lati be tsuy hays betetel (atthe laliiads hei stl ORE aL gD) t's tee . ak Hea a Hath tote lad VE iaty Sat tel 4 JAAS Sates ee Mialiay a eMA WG Liat : miraly Mel Cs jas inh aE BATS ee baigsdeas ey es sitet Actas tate ts GHAI R URE CH 4 hid is Lelt ‘i ia ty PayTeldaty vfetilta bs an be V ds be ait i at HN'S8 she tathqtis sighs "y nee PBIB iil: ia Ltete te ty iy Hilt ae Catt rea) whi ° ited any f ath SH "i 4 nt Ta :} Wee HH ta ess Labels /éleitalha dah Woy ad ka Mike et i! ial HAGE baa Peed taha ke thal Return this book on or before the Latest Date stamped below. A _ charge is made on all overdue books. University of Illinois Library SMUG 37 HSE L161—H41 4 * 4 tr’, Fes VE i i) \ Dae o" Tal ‘Pore es CAMBRIDGE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. es ; . eae f, ’ 5 ae ‘ = "sy s 4 a , 7 ry . CAMBRIDGE CHARACTERISTICS IN THE Seventeenth Century: OR Peo OIES OF THE UNIVERSITY AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON THE CHARACTER AND WRITINGS OF THE ‘MOST DISTINGUISHED GRADUATES DURING THAT PERIOD. BY JAMES BASS MULLINGER, BA. ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. Adéw rolvuy thy dpxaiay tadelav, ws diéxetro. ARISTOPH, Vides. — - Hondon and Cambridge: MAGMIPLEAN AND CO. 1867 [All rights reserved. | TO THE REV. JOHN EYTON BICKERSTETH MAYOR, THIS ESSAY ON A PERIOD SO SUCCESSFULLY ILLUSTRATED BY HIS OWN RESEARCHES IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED. THIS ESSAY OBTAINED THE LE BAS PRIZE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE IN THE YEAR 1867. A LARGE number of Members of the Civil Service of India who were students at the East India College at Haileybury, at various intervals during the thirty years that the Rev. C. W. Le Bas, M.A. formerly Fellow of Trinity College, was connected with that Institution, desirous of testifying their regard for Mr Le Bas, and of perpetuating the memory of his services, raised a Fund which they offered to the University of Cambridge for founding an annual Prize, to be called in honour of Mr Le Bas, The Le Bas Prize, for the best English Essay on a subject of General Literature, such subject ‘to be occasionally chosen with reference to the history, institutions, and probable destinies and prospects of the Anglo-Indian Empire. The Prize is subject to the following Regulations, confirmed by Grace of the Senate, Nov. 22, 1848. 1. That the Le Bas Prize shall consist of the annual interest of the above-mentioned Fund, the Essay being published at the expense of the successful Candidate. 2. That the Candidates for the Prize shall be, at the time when the subject is given out, Bachelors of Arts under the standing of M.A.; or Students in Civil Law or Medicine of not less than four or more than seven years’ standing, not being graduates in either faculty, but having kept the Exercises necessary for the degree of Bachelor of Law or Medicine. The subject for the Essay proposed by the Vice- Chancellor for the year 1866 was “Cambridge in the Seventeenth Century; the influence of its studies upon the character and writings of the most distinguished graduates during that period.” INTRODUCTION CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Bee SS eee eee eee Hee HR HHH HSH eee SS SETHE HITT SHS HTESSH HOH DES TH HOE HEPES CAMBRIDGE PRIOR TO THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Traditional antiquity of Cambridge.—Early studies.—Lodging- house system: its effects; extortion of the townsmen; esta- blishment of Hostels.—Numbers of the Students.—-Reli- gious Orders existing in Cambridge; overbearing conduct of the Monks; proselytism.—Tournaments.—‘‘ North” and “ South.”—“ Town” and ‘“Gown.”—Migration to North- ampton.—Period of Foundations.—Cambridge Studies be- fore the revival of learning; the Schoolmen; origin of the revival.—Hrasmus; his letters; his testimony; his Greek _lectures.—Jealousy excited by the study of Greek; Oxford and Cambridge both claim the priority in the introduction of the study; Ascham and his supporters; controversy respect- ing the pronunciation of Greek.—Statutes of Elizabeth.— Statutes of Edward VI.—Lectures.—Indications of a pro- gressive spirit of enquiry.—Closer relations between the University and the Crown.—The Puritans; their boldness BRUNER AL OY or p35 5 5-cdis Sis sp aad epi sai x2 says the historian, “‘they and the scholars could 10t set their horses in one stable, or rather their books on me shelf.” ‘To these charges he adds the still rg one f proselytism. ©“ The Franciscans,” he says, ‘“ surprised Proselytism. pany when children into their order before they could well Bccheruish between a cap and a cowl, whose time in the Jniversity ran on from their adieideioh therein, and so hey became Masters of Arts before they were masters of hemselves. ‘l’o prevent future inconvenience of this kind, he Chancellor and University made an order that here- fter none should be admitted gremials under eighteen ears of age.” ‘This measure appears to have produced no all amount of irritation among the religious orders. “I nd not,” he continues, ‘“ what was the issue of this con- ast, but believe that the University never rescinded their der; though it stands not‘in force this day, wherein any of younger age are daily admitted’.” Another source of disquiet was the frequent celebration Tournaments. 1 Hist, of Cambridge, p. 83. 10 - CAMBRIDGE PRIOR TO [CHAP. of tournaments in the vicinity of the town. ‘The account which Fuller gives of these gatherings tends not a little to strip them of that chivalrous and romantic character with which they have so often been invested by the art of the novelist. ‘They were,” says he, “the mothers constantly of misrule, commonly of mischief. ‘Their very use was no better than an abuse, to cover malice under the cloak of manhood and merriment. Many brought personal grudges, some family feuds, into the field with them; fewer returned than went forth as either cut off or intentionally murdered.” This evil we find was finally put a stop to by a special act of Henry IIT., whereby it was forbidden to hold tourna- ments within five miles of Cambridge. Their demoralizing influences, indeed, must have ill-accorded with the first essentials of academic life; “for being,” says Dyer, “‘nerformed annually, they brought together all the idle fashionable brutes (and they were very numerous) in the county to Cambridge; and there was left -behind not only a reckoning of blood-shedding at the time, but of bicker- » ings and tumults which lasted through the year.” eo pend Towards the close of the twelfth century we find ano- ther element of discord. The conflicting schools of Real- ism and Nominalism were respectively espoused by the Northern and Southern students, between whom feuds had long been rife, and frequent endeavours were made ta settle by pitched battles and hard knocks a controversy which has lasted down to the time of Reid and Sir William Hamilton. In the sister University these contests were prolonged for upwards of another century, until they finally reached a culminating point under Duns Scotus and Occam. If to all these sources of disturbance we add the immemo- 1 Hist. of Cambridge, p. 21. * Dyer’s Hist. of the University of Cambridge, p. 63. ee THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 11 ial hostility between ‘‘ Town” and “Gown,” which at that ;Zown’ and eriod was not unfrequently attended by fatal consequences, -can be no matter of surprise that the more studious por- ion of the community longed for a calmer retreat. A ecession to Northampton had already taken place from Migration to )xford, and in 1262 a body of Cambridge students mi- ee rated to the same locality. There they endeavoured to gund another University. What success might have at- snded the scheme, had it been left to its own powers of itality, we can only conjecture; it never, as Fuller hu- 1orously remarks, “‘ attained to full Batchelor,” for within mur years of its commencement the students were com- 1anded by the king to return to their respective Univer- ities”. Such are some of the most noticeable features in the Period of istory of Cambridge before the fourteenth century. The peer ree centuries that followed the foundation of Peterhouse re the period to which all our colleges (with the sole ex- eption of Downing) owe their foundation. Clare, Pem- roke, Caius, Trinity Hall, and Corpus Christi, were yunded during the fourteenth century; King’s, Queens’, + Catharine’s and Jesus, during the fifteenth; Christ’s, t John’s and Magdalen, took their rise in the earlier part, 'yinity in the middle, Emmanuel and Sidney towards the ose, of the sixteenth. But though both royal and pri- ate munificence were active in the encouragement of arming, it is to the revival which took place in the time Erasmus that we have to look for the first indications of new spirit and anything like a progressive movement. 1 Fears of detriment to the interests of Oxford are alleged as the main son in the royal mandate: ‘Nunc autem cum ex relatu multorum fide orum veraciter intelleximus quod ex hujusmodi Universitate (si per- aneret ibidem) municipium nostrum Oxon, quod ab antiquo creatum est ...non mediocriter lederetur.” Cambridge studies before the revival of learning. The School- men. 12 _ CAMBRIDGE PRIOR TO [ CHAP. From the twelfth century, when Odo and Terricus first taught in barns, down to the advent of Erasmus in the sixteenth century, the additions to the subjects of human knowledge and investigation are small indeed. Aristotle and the schoolmen, the Pandects of Justinian and the Canon Law, what the Fathers thought about the Canon Law, the works of Augustine, Tertullian and Chrysostom, —these appear to have comprised nearly all the material of study during this lengthened period. Let us not, how: ever, therefore underrate the mental vigour of that time. Those who have had the hardihood to grapple with the abstruse subtleties of the schoolmen are those who speak of their labours with most respect. Of the claims of this imperfectly understood class of thinkers and their influence on more modern thought, we shall have occasion to speak more at length hereafter, but while adverting thus briefly to the attention they commanded for so long a period, we cannot but give a passing recognition to the elasticity and vigour with which the human intellect emerged, from its narrow confines and monotonous round, into the broad fields of enquiry which opened before it with the com- mencement of the sixteenth century. ‘ Absolutely const- dered,” says Huber’, “the mental activity of the twelfth century was much greater than that of more recent times? even to so feverish a degree as chiefly to give that age its unpractical character. ‘l’oo vigorous a fancy seized upor and consumed all the materials of knowledge. They vanished under the magical influence of an intellect which converted their most solid substance into artificial webs.” 1 Huber’s English Universities, 1. p. 7. 2 On the diffusion of the scholastic culture throughout the sien cf, ‘Huber, 1. p. 84. ‘To the schoolmen,” says Sir W. Hamilton, ‘the vul: gar languages are pe indebted for what precision and analy tic subtlety they possess.” Discussions on Philosophy. SS THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 13 lt was thus that when the new learning at last arose it spread with the rapidity of a flame over a long smouldering mass; and however slight the value we may be disposed — x0) pgtach to the labours on which the English intellect had up to that time expended itself, it must be conceded that it nad rusted not, but was transmitted a weapon singularly bright and Bean to the performance of those more glorious ichievements which yet awaited it. The approach of the coming revival was preceded by a narked absence of mental activity in both the Universities, At Cambridge especially, enriched though she had become dy numerous foundations, the enthusiasm of an earlier deriod seems almost to have died away. The speculative dhilosophy had lost its charms; the number of the students vad decreased; and no names of eminence appear in the ‘oll of her ows: The original cause of the great revo- Origin of the ution in her studies which was destined to ensue must be ought in a remote and apparently unconnected event. In he year 1453 Constantinople fell before the Turks'. The earned Greeks of that city, who had kept alive the study 4 their ancient tongue, took refuge in Italy. They brought vith them an enthusiasm for classical research which found » ready response, and a familiarity with authors only nown to the schdlars of Italy by name. Curiosity was xcited. The new manuscripts were eagerly purchased and xpeditions were undertaken to Constantinople for the sake 7 Ce n’est donc pas, comme on le répéte, l’introduction de la Gréce en 4urope au quinziéme siécle qui a créé nos arts et notre litterature, car ils istaient déja ; mais c’est en effet de cette source qu’a découlé dans l’ima- ination européenne le sentiment de la beauté de la forme, particuliére & antiquité...... Quoi qwil en soit, et de quelque manitre qu’on apprécie accident memorable qui a modifié si puissament au quinziéme siécle les rmes de art et de la litterature en Europe, on ne peut nier que ce méme cident n’ait eu aussi une immense influence sur les destinées de la philo- ophie.” ‘Cousin, Hist. de la Phil. p. 250. Krasmus. His letters. His testimony. 14 . CAMBRIDGE PRIOR TO ~ [CHAP of rescuing the literary treasures which might yet remain. The efforts of Chrysoloras, Guarino, and John Aurispa were rewarded with signal success. They returned t Italy laden with manuscripts of inestimable value Among the authors thus again introduced into Italy, anc through Italy into Western Europe, were Plato, Plotinus Diodorus, Arrian, Dio Cassius, Strabo, Pindar, Callima: chus; and Appian. The literature and philosophy of am: cient Greece rose from their long sleep to reassert them old supremacy, no longer dimly seen through the mediur: of half-barbarous Latin versions, but in all the inimitable grace of that matchless diction which first led captive thé intellect of Rome. C _ The accession of Erasmus to the Greek Professorshiy marks the commencement of the new era in our own Uni: versity. His letters have preserved to us in an interesting form some valuable traits of the Cambridge life of his day Fuller has noted with more than his usual humour some 0 the minor incidents in the sojourn of the lively Dutchman How high he “kept” at the top of the south-west tower 11 the old court of Queens’; how he disliked the college ale: how he resented the roughness of the townsmen ; how per: plexed he was to find copyists to assist him in his labours His testimony to the new life which had been infused inte the studies of the University is worthy of quotation :— ‘“‘ Almost thirty years ago, nothing else was handled o1 read in the Schools of Cambridge besides Alexander, the Little Logicals (as they call them), and those old dictates 0 Aristotle and questions of Scotus. In process of time, there was an accession of good learning, the knowledge of Mathe: matics came in; a new and, indeed, a renewed Aristotle came in: so many authors came in, whose very name: were anciently unknown, To wit, it (the University) hath flourished so much that it may contend with the prime | THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 15 ichools of this age; wad hath such men therein, to whom if uch be compared that were in the age before, they will eem rather shadows of divines than divines?,” In the discharge of his dities as professor we find that nis creck x : lectures. urasmus began by “readi g the grammar of Chrysoloras 0 a thin auditory, which increased when he begun the srammar of Theodorus.” “Then took he,” says Fuller, ‘by Grace freely granted unto him, the degree of B.D., uch his commendable modesty, though over-deserving a Joctorship, to desire no more as yet, because the main of Lis studies were most resident on Humanity. Some years fter he took upon him the Divinity Professorship place, understand it the Lady Margaret’s) invited thereunto not vith the salary, so small in itself, but with desire and hope 0 do good in the employment.” As is the case with all innovations upon established Jealousy ex- outine, the increased attention bestowed upon the study of shudy of Greek mreek did not fail to excite the jealousy of some of the lore conservative members of the University. Fuller lludes to a report, which, though he denies its truth , suf- ciently attests the existence of the feeling it implies, to 1e effect that some went so far as to withdraw to Oxford, eing ‘“‘Grecitatis hostes,” hearty haters of the Greek ongue. ‘I’hey called themselves by the names of doughty ‘rojans, Priam and Hector, condemning all other for arro- nt and perfidious Greeks*.”” Whether, however, Oxford oxtora ana as not the first to revive the study appears to be a dis- Doth clatin the priority of its ted point. The author of the Athen Oxondenses ex- introduction. essly claims the honour in her behalf. Crooke, again, in oration before the University of Cambridge, De Greca- wm Disciplinarum Laudibus, maintains the contrary; and must be admitted that the above anecdote tends to con- A Epistole, Bk. 11. to. 2 Hist. of Cambridge, p- 152. Ascham and his supporters. 16 CAMBRIDGE PRIOR TO [CHAI firm his statement. However this may have been, it i certain that the study of Greek soon became a recognize branch of learning at both Universities. Fuller thus chre nicles the changes of the times. “Towards the middle ¢ the sixteenth century the old learning began to be left 1 the University, and a better succeeded in the room thereo: Hitherto Cambridge had given suck with but one breas' teaching Arts only without languages. Her scholars’ Lati was but bad, though as good as in any other place; Gree! little; Hebrew, none at all; their studies moving in circle (I mean not, as it ought in a cyclopedia of sciences but) of some trite school questions over and over again But now the students began to make sallies into the learne languages, which the industry of the next age did com pletely conquer’. Foremost among the supporters of th new learning comes the honoured name of Roger Ascham fellow of St John’s, and Public Orator. He was abl seconded by Sir Thomas Smith and Sir John Cheke, bot. of whom successively filled the chair of Erasmus, and c whom Ascham speaks as “ the stars of the University ¢ Cambridge, who brought Aristotle, Plato, Tully and De mosthenes, to flourish as notably as ever they did in Greec and Italy*.” A sufficient proof of the importance to whie. 1 As a proof of the frivolous character of some of the disputatior of the period, we may instance the subjects selected for a controversi: passage of arms by two ‘‘ knights errant” from Oxford, who in the yes 1532 voluntarily rode into the lists at Cambridge defying all comers combat. The first was, “An Jus Civile sit prestantius Medicina.” Th second, “‘An mulier morti condemnata, ruptis laqueis, tertio suspen debeat”! So great was the excitement produced, that on the combatant repairing to the schools the doors were broken open by the people. TE reader will not regret to hear that the challengers atoned for their temé rity, and retired completely worsted from the encounter. 2 Hist. of Cambridge, p. 164. 3 Dyer’s Privileges of the University of Cambridge, 11. Supp. p. 6. I a letier, dated by Baker 1540, Ascham (Hpist. 74) says of Cambridge . Bisa THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 17 the study of Greek had attained, is afforded by the fact that in the reign of Queen Mary we find bishop Gardiner arbi- Controversy respecting the ' trating in a controversy, the revival of which has more than Dronnnciation once seemed imminent in our own day, respecting the pro- nunciation of the language. ‘A contest,” says Fuller, “began between the introducers of the new and the de- fenders of the old pronunciation of Greek. The former endeavoured to give each letter (vowel and diphthong) its full sound; while Dr Caius, and others of the old stamp, cried out against this. project and the promoters thereof, taxing it for novelty and then for want of wit and experi- ence, Jolin Cheke, Thomas Smith, maintained that this was no innovation, but the ancient utterance of the Greeks, which gave every letter its due and native sound. Other- wise, by the fine speaking of his opposers, vowels were con- founded with diphthongs, no difference being made between Aypds and Aomuds. Nor mattereth it if foreigners dissent, seeing hereby we Englishmen shall understand one an- other. Here bishop Gardiner, Chancellor of the University, interposed his power; affirming Cheke’s pronunciation, “You would not know it to be the same place...... Aristotle and Plato are read by ‘boys’ in the original, and have been now for five years. Sophocles and Euripides are now more familiar here than Plautus was in your time. Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon, are more often on the lips and in the hands of all than Livy was then. What was then said of Cicero you may now hear said of Demosthenes. More copies of -Isoerates are now in the ‘boys’’ hands than of Terence then. Meanwhile we do not scorn the Latins, but most ardently embrace the best authors who flourished in that golden age. This flame of literary zeal has been lit and fed by the toil and example of our friend Cheke, who has publicly lectured gratuitously on the whole of Homer and Sophocles, and that twice; on the whole of Euripides, and nearly the whole of Herodotus. He would have done as much for all the Greek poets, historians, orators, and philosophers, unless a most unlucky fate had envied us such a happy progress.” or further illustrations of this period, see the valuable nutes which accompany Mr Mayor’s edition of Ascham’s Scholemaster. M. } Statutes of Klizabeth. Statutes of Edward the Sixth. Lecturers. 18 ~ CAMBRIDGE PRIOR TO. [cHAP. pretending to be ancient, to be antiquated. He imposed a penalty on all such who used this new pronunciation ; which, notwithstanding, since hath prevailed and whereby we Englishmen speak Greek, and are able to understand ene another, which nobody else can*.” : In the year 1561 were drawn up those famous statutes known as the statutes of Elizabeth, which still constitute the basis of our university code, and of which most of the provisions remain unannulled though many have practically become a dead letter. Prior to the provisions of these statutes there is little legislation that specially calls for remark. In the reign of Henry VIII. (1540), besides the professorship of Greek, four other royal professorships had been founded, those of Divinity, Hebrew, Law, and Physic. In the reign of Edward the Sixth it appears by the statutes — that “the elements of Euclid, the arithmetic of Tunstall and Cardan, together with astronomy, were enjoined as a. necessary part of academical education previously to the. degree of B.A.2” In the reign of Elizabeth we find that: four ordinary lecturers were also created, as follows’: . ““ One Rethoricke Lecturer, to read the precepts of Retho-. ricke in one of the common scholes, in such sorte as is fit for younge scholers at their first coming to the Universitie. “ One Logicke Reader, to teache the use of Logicke by public reading in the scholes unto such as are of the second and third year’s continuance. ‘One Philosophie Reader, to read a Philosophie lecture either of morale, politique, or natural philosophie, unto the 1 Hist. of Cambridge, p. 171. 2 Hughes’ Life of Jeremy Taylor, p. 7. 3 From a scarce work published at Cambridge in 1769, from a vellum MS. entitled, A projecte contayninge the state, order, and manner of Govern- ment of the Univ. of Cambridge as now it is to be seen in the three and for-. tieth yeare of the Raigne of our most gracious and soveraigne Lady Queen. Elizabeth, be ed Gra 1.] THE. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 19 Sophisters and Bacchelers of Arte, thereunto resorting by statute. | “* One Mathematical Reader, to read the arte of Arith- meticke, of Geometrie or Cosmographie or of Astronomy, in such sorte as is fit for his auditory, being also of Sophisters and Bacchelers of Arte.” In the statutes of Elizabeth, the lecturer in Philosophy is directed to give instruction in the Problemata, Ethics and Politics of Aristotle; in Pliny or in Plato, The lecturer on Dialectics is to teach the Elenchi of Aristotle or the Topica of Cicero. ‘The lecturer on Rhetoric is to explain Quintilian, Hermogenes, or some part of the Rhe- torical Treatises of Cicero. Originally, attendance at these lectures was strictly required, but towards the close of the century we find that they were already becoming superseded by the college course of instruction. About the middle of the seventeenth cen- tury the attendance became so unsatisfactory that the Pro- °. fessors, in some instances, discontinued their lectures, and their professorships became almost. sinecures, By the above statutes both the duration and the character of the curriculum of study were also definitely fixed, In appor- tioning out the time allotted to the different subjects, a seven years course of study was required before the degree of Master of Arts could be taken, ‘These seven years were divided into the Quadriennium: of Undergraduateship and the Triennium of Bachelorship, In the Quadriennium the first year was devoted to Rhetoric; the second and third to Logic; the fourth to Philosophy. : In the Trientiium the student was still required to attend the public lectures on Philosophy, and to these were added. public lectures on Astronomy, Perspective, and Greek. : On the above scheme certain modifications were iB: elie Tndleations of about in the seventeenth century, of which we:shall ee Hel 2—2 20 - CAMBRIDGE PRIOR TO ~ [cHAP. after have occasion to speak, but the subjects enumerated ~ will serve to shew to what an extent the studies of an earlier Closer relations between the University and. the Crown. The Puritans, period still occupied the foremost place. Already, how- ever, a far more unshackled spirit of enquiry was arising. Of this the great work of Hooker bears evidence on behalf of the sister University; and the Republic of Bodin (a work which furnished valuable suggestions to the author of the Esprit des Lois) is known to have formed the subject of lectures in our own, a treatise which could hardly have become known to our English youth without begetting a far more liberal conception of political science than had hitherto been attained’. There is yet another point which it seems desirable to notice before we close our preliminary remarks. One of the first results of the English Reformation had been that the highest authority in reference to ecclesiastical government was vested in the Crown; the recognition therefore of the royal prerogative in the Church was henceforth a part of political faith and jealously guarded from invasion by the reigning power. ‘lo this cause must, in fact, be attributed that watchfulness of the Crown over the Universities observ- able from this time, a solicitude which, while professing the encouragement of learning, aimed, in the words of © Huber, at ‘“ diffusing rather a moral influence than an intel-— lectual cultivation®.”’ Nor can it be denied that this vigi- lance was necessary. The Puritan party throughout the realm, and more particularly the Marian exiles, who had returned full of the teachings of Geneva, held widely dif- ferent views respecting Church government from those which distinguished what we may henceforth term the. Episcopalian party. ‘To this element of dissension was added the openly professed Calvinism of the Puritan 1 Hallam’s Literature of Europe, Wl. 570, 571, 2 Huber, I. 33. EH. ° THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 21 section, as opposed to those leanings towards Arminianism which, though not distinctly avowed by the Church, were visible in the teachings of more than three-fourths of her clergy and found favour with the supreme power. To discourage Puritanism, as a species of disloyalty, hence be- came a primary object with the Crown in the two great seminaries of the Church; the Puritans in turn lost no opportunity of inveighing against State interference and an episcopal form of government. Their dislike of a State- Church was surpassed, however, by their detestation of Rome. For a long time all the ability of Elizabeth and her ministers seemed no more than sufficient to cope with treason at home and invasion from abroad, and upon the stability of her reign depended not only the Puritans’ ~ hopes of preserving whatever toleration they had obtained, but also the acquirement of that further religious liberty on which they were intent. It was thus that they were in- duced to give their support to a government which dis- couraged them, and that a large section of the more moderate Puritan party remained for the present within the pale of a Church which they were bent on reforming, and submitted to a ritual which they disliked, and listened to doctrines which they disavowed, in the hope that the reforms which had been initiated in a former reign might be completed under more favourable auspices. But though Puritanism lay under the royal disfavour and bold offenders were often punished with summary severity, it must be admitted that the bearing of the Puritan party, in the Uni- versities at least, is hardly that of a down-trodden and persecuted sect. On the contrary, we believe that a careful study of the history of this period will tend considerably to modify the impressions which some historians, from a too picturesque treatment of their subject, have created respect- ing the general position of the Puritan party during the Their koldness in the University. T 22 “ “GAMBRIDGE PRIOR TO [cHAP. veign of Elizabeth. There was undoubtedly unjust legisla~ tion which bore hardly upon them, but of the positive exe- cution of the penalties thereby enforced we hear less than we should have reason to expect. Nearly all Elizabeth’s ministers, Cecil, Leicester, Knolles, Bedford and Walsing- ham had Puritanical sympathies, and lent their party sub- stantial aid’, Cecil, especially, than whom few men living probably better understood the state of parties in the Unit versity”, was throughout his life a steady supporter of the Calvinistic party in Cambridge. Thus encouraged, Puri- tanism shewed a bold front in the University, and through- out the reign of Elizabeth we find repeated instances of — some contumacious divine rising in the pulpit of St Mary’s® 1 Sir Walter Mildmay’s sympathies were notorious. When he founded ‘Emmanuel College he is said to have been openly taxed by Elizabeth in the following fashion: ‘‘ Well, Sir Walter, so you have been founding 4 a College for Puritans!” a reputation which the College long retained. 2 Burleigh, when at Cambridge, was a student of St John’s College, and — was, we are told, ‘‘no less distinguished by the regularity of his life, than by an uncommonly diligent application to his studies. He made an agree- ‘ment with the bell-ringer to call him up at four o’clock every morning, and this sedentary life brought on a humour in his legs. Dr Medealf, at this time Master of the College, was his principal patron, and frequently gave him money to encourage him; but the strong passion he had to excel his contemporaries, and to distinguish himself early in the University, was the chief spur to his endeavours. At sixteen he read a sophistry lecture, and at nineteen a.Greek lecture, not for any pay or salary, but as a gentle- man for his pleasure, and this at a time when there were but few who were masters of Greek either in that College or the University.” Peck’s Desiderata. a 3 As sufficient proof of this important feature I quote the following instances, as given in Cooper and elsewhere!, In 1565 one George Withers, M.A. of Corpus, preached a sermon wherein he urged the destruc- tion of all such painted windows in the University as were of a supersti- ‘tious character (especially those which contained inscriptions relating to _ ‘prayers for the-dead). “ Whereupon, struction of them and the danger of a greater by some zealots.” Withers 29 says Baker, ‘followed a great de- % Cooper's Annals of Cambridge, Vol. I. a¥8. MS. Baker, 31, 55., Been! THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 25 to denounce, in language remarkable neither for good taste nor moderation, Hpiscopalianism, ritualism, popish ceremo- was ultimately forbidden by the Archbishop to preach}.” In 1572 Wm. Chark, fellow of Peterhouse, preached a Latin sermon before the Univer- sity at St Mary’s, wherein he asserted that the states of bishops, arch- bishops, metropolitans, patriarchs and popes, were introduced into the Church by Satan.” On refusing to ‘‘revoke his errors some Sunday in St Mary’s Church,” Chark was expelled the University and his College®, In 1573 John Millen, M.A., fellow of Christ’s College, preached the morning sermon at St Mary’s, ‘‘wherein he condemned in strong terms the ordination of ministers as used in the Church of England, and espe- cially of such as could not preach. He also denounced as abominable idolatry the observance of saints’ days and fasting on the evens of such days.” He was cited before the Vice-chancellor, and, on his refusal to retract, expelled the University? In 1587 H. Gray preached a sermon at St Mary’s, wherein he asserted that the Church of England maintained Jewish music, and that to play at cards or dice was to crucify Christ; inveighed against dumb dogs in the Church, and mercenary. ministers ; in- sinuated that some in the University sent news to Rome and Rheims, and asserted that the people celebrated the nativity as ethnicks, atheists, and epicures‘.” In the same year we read that “ William Perkins, fellow of Christ’s, in a commonplace delivered in the chapel of that College, con- demned the practice of kneeling when the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was received, and of turning the face to the east.” On being summoned. before the Vice-chancellor, he made an explanation which was accepted®, In 1595 William Barrett, M.A., fellow of Gonville and Caius College, in a Latin sermon at St’ Mary’s, appears to have been induced to retort on the Puritan party; he ‘preached against the doctrines of Calvin with some sharp and unbecoming speeches of that reverend man and other foreign learned Puritans, exhorting the auditors not to read them.” He was compelled to make a public recantation®, In 1596 the Rector of ~Shepehall in Herts, preaching at St Mary’s, asserted (1) “That the use of humanity and humane arts and profane authors in sermons was altogether unprofitable and unlawful; (2) That not the tenth part of the ministers of the Church of England were able ministers or teachers, but dumb dogs; (3) That a curate being no preacher was no minister, nor did edify more than a boy of eight years old might do’. Strype, speaking of Cartwright, 1 Cooper’s Annals, II. 215, 4 Tbed, i. 31%. 3 Thid. Il. 319. 4 Ibid, 1. 429. 5 Jbid. 11. 430. 8 Thid. Il. 529. 7 Ibid, u. 566, 24 _. CAMBRIDGE PRIOR, &e. ~ [CHAP. I. nies and adornments, and to preach up the doctrines of predestination and election. At last, in the year 1603, a grace passed the Senate which declared that whoever should publicly contravene the teachings or discipline of the Church of England, or any part thereof, by speech or writing, should be debarred from proceeding to any degree, (ab omni gradu suscipiendo excludatur’). From this time a long interval succeeds during which we hear of no doc- trines essentially Puritan being proclaimed from the pulpit of St Mary’s. The instances, however, adduced in the preceding note, are sufficient proof of the vitality of Puri- — tanism in the University. ‘That spirit which the iron rule of Elizabeth could not quell rose again with fresh vigour under her successor. The stern morality of this school | derived new strength from the buffooneries and dissolute- ness of the court of James. ‘The prestige of a Church whose supreme power ordained that the Book of Sports — should receive the sanction of her pulpits was lowered in the eyes of all sincerely religious men; and it must be owned that it henceforth appears as the misfortune rather than any part of the strength of the Church of England that her reputation seemed necessarily, to some extent, involved in that of her temporal head. who was expelled from the University, says, ‘‘ whether it were out of some disgust for not being hitherto preferred, or out of an admiration of the discipline practised in the church of Geneva, or both, he set himself, : with some other young men in the University, to overthrow the government of this Church, and propounded a quite different model to be set up in the room of it.” 1 University Transactions duri ing the Puritan Period. By Heywood and Wright. Vol. 11. 202. CHAPTER II. CAMBRIDGE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Tn the preceding chapter we have briefly indicated some of the more important phases in the history of our University before the seventeenth century. We. have seen the lamp of learning burning with unsteady flame amid the rude blasts of a semi-barbarous age; we have marked the rise and the decline of the scholastic philosophy and the revival and extension of classical learning; we have seen the different foundations created and enriched by noble or royal muni- ficence; we have seen the University rising im political ‘importance, and the ties that bound her to the throne becoming closer and stronger; and, finally, we have shewn how her religious tenets gradually assumed that specific acter which was destined to impart so definite a bias ‘to her teachings and to the character of many of her sons. Imperfect as this retrospect has necessarily been it may. yet prove serviceable in enabling us better to realise her position at the commencement of the seventeenth century, by assisting us more clearly to discern the influences in | ther midst which were at that time either coming into operation or already on the wane. We must now proceed to the main object of our enquiry—the studies chiefly cultivated at the period, and the influences legitimately attributable to them. Let us then step back some. two, centuries, and endeavour to reproduce to our mental vision 26 CAMBRIDGE IN [CHAP. ¢ Twohundred the Cambridge of those days. We shall miss many a yearsago. noble structure as we move through her streets; we shall meet herd and there some familiar face, which the painter’s canvas has preserved to posterity; and we may mark not a few, in the humble garb of a studious undergraduateship, destined to leave to their countrymen a bright example and to win a deathless fame. We’see Milton, with his maiden face, hardly on the best terms with the authorities at Christ’s, but already gaining credit by his epigrams and exercises; Fuller, the future Church historian, the quaint humorist, to whom is reserved the task of chronicling witli filial affection the history of his own Alma Mater; Henry More, the Platonist, a “ tall thin youth, of clear olive com- plexion and a wrapt expression ;” Seth Ward, my future lord bishop, his flaxen hair and boyish stature winning, sadly to his own discomfiture, the attention of grave seniors whenever he ventures beyond the walls of Sidney ; Cleveland, the satirist, and Crashaw, the sweet lyric poet, both already giving promise of their future powers; Pear- son, the interpreter of the faith to many a succeeding generation; Cudworth, destined to a foremost place in philosophic thought ; Mede, now a senior fellow at Christ’s, deep in astrology and Apocalyptic studies; Jeremy Taylor, just elected to his fellowship at Caius; all these, two hun- dred and thirty-five years ago, ithe probably have been met on the same day in the streets of Cambridge. 4 College routine» ‘I'he routine of daily college life at that time differed in of instruction. gome important respects from that which now exists. The - bell for morning chapel: rang at five o’clock, and to the service was sometimes added a short homily by one of the fellows. Chapel was followed by an early breakfast, and then came the work of the day. In addition to private” study with the tutor, this consisted of attendance at - (1) The college lectures, | my, THE SEVENTEENTH: CENTURY. 27 (2) The lectures of the university professors, (3) The disputations of those students who were preparing for their degrees. | Of these different modes of instruction we shall have occasion to speak more fully hereafter. The morning’s work was followed by dinner in hall, this was at twelve o'clock. After “hall” it was customary to attend again at the declamations and disputations, which were held either in the college chapel or at the schools. After this, with the exception of evening chapel and supper in hall, which was at seven, the students employed their leisure as they chose. ‘ Originally,” says Mr Masson’, “the rules governing the daily conduct of the students at Cambridge had been excessively strict. Residence extended over the whole year; and absence was permitted only for very definite reasons. While in residence, the students were confined closely within the walls of their respective colleges, leaving them only to attend in the public schools.. At other times they could only go into the town by special permission; on which occasions no student below the standing of a B.A. in his second year was suffered to go unaccompanied by his tutor or by a Master of Arts. In their conversation with each other, except during the hours of relaxation in their chambers, the students were required to use either Latin, or Greek, or Hebrew. When permitted to walk into the town, they were forbidden to go into. taverns or into the sessions; or to ‘be present at boxing- matches, skittle-playings, dancings, bear-fights, cock-fights and the like; or to frequent Sturbridge fair; or even to loiter in the market or about the streets. In their rooms they were not to read irreligious books; nor to keep dogs 1 John Milton in Connescion with the History o ein Time, By David Masson, Vol. Ips 414, ans Age of admission. Characteristics ‘ of under- graduate life. 28 “CAMBRIDGE IN; > {cwar. or ‘fierce birds;’ nor to play at cards or dice, except for about twelve days at Christmas, and then openly and in moderation.” However undesirable so lengthened and un- interrupted a residence may now appear, as was then required, it must be admitted that the influence of the University upon her graduates must have been propor- tionably strengthened. During the seven years’ currict- lum necessary for the degree of Master of Arts, which were in most cases the seven years which precede the coming into man’s estate, we see them subjected to a series of consecutive influences of uniform tendency, the import- ance of which can hardly be overrated, Some of the pro- visions above enumerated will now only provoke a smile; but it must be recollected that the average age of the students at admission’ was then probably not over four- teen, and it is evident that a far more rigorous system of discipline was consequently not only justifiable but neces- sary.. Thus we find that corporal punishment was not unfrequently administered, and that too, publicly, before the college. Johnson, in his life of Milton, states that the poet was probably one of the last on whom this degrada- tion was inflicted*, From this discredit Milton’s latest biographer endeavours to clear him, but it may be doubted whether he has fully succeeded; of the poet’s rustication there is no manner of doubt. ‘Among students of so tender an age we are prepared for traits which otherwise, even though viewed at such a distance, would certainly clash somewhat forcibly with our notions of academic propriety. There is an amusing letter, _ 1 The statutes. of Hlizabeth do not appear to have tongue the enact- ment of the reign of Richard II. (see p. 9), but it had long been a dead letter. Milton was 16 on entering ; ; Seth Ward, 143 vauepenek Robinson, 17; Nicholas Ferrar only 13. 2 Masson’s Life of Milton, Vol. I. pp. 113, 130.06 ee : “ ty: THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 29 quoted by Mr Cooper in his Annals, from the tutor of the Karl of Essex, written in 1577, to a “ Mr Robert Broughton of the Inner Temple, London,” (whom we infer to have been the supervisor of the young nobleman’s university expenses), representing the Harl’s “extreme necessitie of apparell.”” ‘‘ Men mervayle,” says the writer, “that his gret want is not supplied,” and adds that unless necessary steps be taken his pupil “shall not only be thrid bare but ragged.” ‘“ You may gather that I have small solace with being here,” writes Joseph Mede to Sir Martin Stuteville in 1632, when the plague had frightened nearly all the residents from Cambridge; and after detailing some of his privations he adds, ‘‘ We have but one M.A. in our col- lege; and this week he was punished 10d. for giving the. porter’s boy a box on the ear, because he would not let him out at the gates.’”’ Whatever amount of respect the statutes of Elizabeth may have originally commanded it is certain that a serious laxity of discipline is observable at the commencement of the next century. Smoking had become so general a habit that, on King James’ visit in 1615, orders were issued to forbid the practice, not simply ‘in the streets, but in St Mary's and the Hall of Trinity! ‘Many of the undergraduates in that day wore, we are told, “new fashioned gowns of any colour whatsoever, blue or green, or red or mixt, without any uniformity but in hanging sleeves; and their other garments light and gay, some with boots and spurs, others with stockings of divers colours-reversed one upon another, and round rusty caps.” ‘Occasional. extravagances and acts of petulance, or even open disregard of the ‘‘ Royal Counterblaste,” are, how- ever, matters of no great significance; but Sir Simonds testimony of Ae : Sir Simonds D’ Ewes, writing as a fellow-commoner at St John’s in the Dwes. 1 Cooper’s Annals, It. 353. 30 > CAMBRIDGE IN | 5. [CHAP, year 1620, draws a more serious picture of university life and manners as they appeared to him at that period’, ‘But the main thing which made me even weary of the College was, that swearing, drinking, rioting, and hatred of all piety and virtue under false and adulterate names, did abound there and generally in all the University. Nay, the very sin of lust began to be known and practised by very boys, so that I was fain to live almost a recluse’s life, conversing chiefly in our own College with some of the honester fellows thereof. But yet no Anabaptistical or Pelagian heresies against God’s grace and providence weré then stirring, but the truth was in all public sermons and 1 We say ‘“‘as they appeared to him,” for notwithstanding D’ Ewes’ unimpeachable respectability as a witness, it is evident that partly from the austerity of his principles, and partly from constitutional timidity, he mixed but little with the great mass of his fellow-undergraduates. The consequence was that his opinion of them was less favourable than it might otherwise have been ; he generalised perhaps too readily from what little he knew; every outbreak of youthful spirits appeared to the timid lad pregnant with mischief and insubordination, nor is it very likely that the knowledge of his decidedly Puritanical opinions at all tended to repress the exhibition of boisterous tendencies among his fellow-students when he was within hearing. Making due allowance for these considerations there are substantial reasons for accepting his evidence. His diary was pro- bably revised long after he left Cambridge, and may therefore be sup- posed to convey his deliberate impressions ; his social position and sources” of information were good, and incline us to look upon his views as those which an educated and intelligent English gentleman of the period, sen- sible of the evils of the time and desirous of moderate reform, would probably have taken. What such men as Hampden, Digby, Capel, Palmer, — Hyde and Falkland would have said of Cambridge is probably very much . what D’Ewes did say. Another fact which seems to place his testimony beyond suspicion is the certainty that his autobiography was not intended to meet the public eye; it was rather, as his eminent editor has remarked, © meant to be an heir-loom in his family, to preserve their illustrious ancestor in the memory of his descendants. The considerations we have urged will therefore tend but slightly to modify an impression which, it must be con- fessed, is far from a pleasing one, , a Ahi. LS Pye yt: THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 3k divinity acts asserted and maintained. None’ then dared to commit idolatry by bowing to, or towards, or adoring the altar, the communion table, or the bread and wine in the sacrament of the Lord’s supper. Only the power of godliness, in respect of the practice of it, was in a most atheistical and unchristian manner. contemned and scoffed at’.” If we are disposed to accept this as a correct repre- sentation of the standard of morality that prevailed at. Cambridge at the commencement of the seventeenth cen- tury, we can feel but little surprise that among men of sincerely religious views and thoughtful character such a state of ohne went far towards producing that re-action of feeling which a few years later was attended with such important results. How, amid so uncongenial an atmos- phere, Puritanism still grew and strengthened, until even the heads and seniors of different colleges made no scruple of openly avowing their sympathies, may be best learned from a paper submitted to Laud, in 1636, by Dr Cosin, the rviaence of Master of Peterhouse, and Dr Sterne, Master of Jesus steno” pllese, Instead of the use of the Thi gy, they complain, ‘we ee such private fancies and several prayers of every man’s own making (and sometimes suddenly conceiving too) vented upon us, that besides the absurdity of the lan- guage directed to God himself, our young scholars are thereby taught to prefer the private spirit before the public, and their own invented and unapproved prayers before the Liturgy of the Church.” In Trinity College, it is stated, ‘they lean or sit or kneel at prayers, every man in a several posture as he pleases; at the name of Jesus few will bow; and when the Creed is repeated, many of the 208, by some men’s directions, turn to the west door.” _ ‘There is an apparent incongruity in this language with _ 4 Halliwell’s Life of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, Vol... p. 141. State of Reli- gious Parties throughout England, from 1600—1623, 32 | CAMBRIDGE IN [cHAP. that of D’Ewes which calls for a brief explanation, nor will the lapse of sixteen years sufficiently account for the difference implied in the two accounts; D’Ewes speaking of extreme ritualism as being as yet unknown in the Uni- versity,—Cosin and Sterne using language which implies that at a later day, ritualism, so far from gaining ground, was falling into increased contempt. The solution of this apparent contradiction is to be found in the innovations which Laud had been endeavouring to introduce into the ceremonial of the Church of England, and a brief retrospect of the principal changes at work within the Church, before his accession to the primacy, will perhaps best explain the views and feelings of the two religious parties into which the country was at that time divided, and how it came to pass that differences, trivial, apparently, in comparison with many which we have witnessed in our own day, grew into a warfare at one time imperilling the very existenc of the Church herself. . It is remarkable that the religious dissensions which began again to distract the University, after the death of James, do not appear to have originally turned upon doctrinal differences. The millenary petition presented to” that monarch by the Puritan party, on his accession to the throne of England, is occupied rather with matters of ritual and internal reform than with matters of conscience. Only one clause, which petitions that in future no subscription be required from ministers, except to the Thirty-nine Articles and the king’s supremacy, appears to refer to doctrinal points of an essential character. The millenary petition failed entirely in its object, though it served to rouse the spirit of the Episcopalian party, and in the Con- vocation of 1603—4 were passed the famous 141 Canons” which settled, until the disturbances in the reign of Charles, the constitution of the Church. In 1604 Whitgift had EH. | THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 33 heen succeeded by Bancroft as primate of all England. Bancroft asserted with rigour the authority of the Church, and his severity towards Nonconformists soon became pro- ductive of deep-seated discontent. His death in 1610, and the accession of Abbot to the primacy, allayed the feeling. Abbot was distinguished chiefly by his hatred of popery ; for mere matters of discipline and ritual he manifested an indifference which he scarcely cared to disguise, while he openly professed his Calvinistic leanings, and the Puritan party again took heart. An accident which befell this primate became the cause of his retirement from publicity and the active duties of his office, and the Lord Keeper Lora Keeper Williams, bishop of Lincoln, now appears as the ruling spirit in the Church. The policy of this remarkable man, of whom we shall again have occasion to speak, was one of conciliation; his opinions were generally supposed to coincide with those of the archbishop, but he was, his biographer informs us, “the least distasted, so far as I have known men, among all his profession with a scholar that was divers from him in a theological debate.”’ In the year 1619, the decisions of the Synod of Dort synod of Dort. lent new strength to Calvinism in England. The king, himself, had openly evinced his favour towards those decisions, in the known views of the divines whom he had selected to represent the English Church at the Synod. ‘The Arminian or Episcopalian party began to take alarm ; it appeared probable that the influences of the crown nay henceforth run directly counter to those of the preceding reign; a new element was, however, soon discernible in the ye calculations, and the hopes of the Calvinists fell once more. ‘Whatever course James might have felt inclined to adopt upon an abstract view of so important a question of doctrine, the preservation of his prerogative in the Church was a matter of paramount importance, and it was M. 3 54 _ CAMBRIDGE IN (CHAR. Policy of precisely on this point that the Puritan party failed him. The king the head of both Church and State, was a doc- trine admitted in full force only by the Episcopalians, who upheld in all their completeness the hierarchical institutions of the English Church. Expediency, therefore, appears to have prevailed over mere theological considerations; the king forgot his theology, and turned his back on the party which he had recently seemed to favour, and divines of Arminian views, and in some instances of popish tendencies, were frequently admitted to his presence and honoured by preferments. Another element in his calculations tended to still further estrange him from the Puritan party. The negotiations for the Spanish match were at this time pending, and with a view to conciliating the Spanish government, the English monarch proceeded to mitigate the rigour with which popish recusants were, at that time, treated in England. He ordered their general discharge from prison; and it was soon apprehended that all the penal laws in force against them might be rescinded. The excitement throughout the country was intense. The Calvinistic clergy descanted from their pulpits to sym- pathising audiences on the errors of Rome, and especially on the necessity of the famous “five points,” to wit, Election, Redemption, Original Sin, Irresistible Grace, and the Perseverance of the Saints. The Episcopalian party replied—not indeed by arguments on points which had received such elaborate investigation, and in reference to. which the Head of the Church stood himself so ex- pressly committed, but by a method of attack which carried — the war into the enemy’s camp—by dissertations on the royal authority and the evils of Nonconformity. The ardour with which these recriminations were carried on attained at last a pitch which seemed to James to call for interference, and he directed Williams to draw up a paper — II. | THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 35 of “ Directions to Preachers,” copies of which the arch- bishop should cause to be forwarded to all the bishops for distribution throughout their dioceses. Though one of the deputies at Dort, Williams appears to have drawn up this document with no unwilling hand. His great desire The Directions was to reconcile parties and adjust their differences, and” et polemics of such a character could, he well knew, only widen the breach. The “ Directions” forbade that preachers under the degree of a bishop or a dean should handle such ‘deep points,” but ordered that they should confine them- selves to the Creed or the Commandments, and that the afternoon’s exercise on Sunday should be devoted to the examination of children in their catechism. They for- bade any discourse “which should not be comprehended -and- warranted in essence, substance, effect, or natural in- ference, within some one of the Articles of Religion set forth in 1562, or in some of the Homilies set forth by authority of the Church of England’;” and they forbade “bitter invectives and indecent railings, speeches or scoff- ings against the persons of either Papists or Puritans.” It is amid the excitement produced by the “ Direc- Archbishop tions,” that Laud first appears as assuming a prominent ~ ‘part on the stage of public affairs. Whatever may have been the private virtues of this prelate, they are lost to the eye of the historian in the blind obstinacy and over- bearing policy which marked his official career. Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the views which he held, there can be but one respecting the methods by which he sought their enforcement. To the intolerance of Wentworth in politics he presented the counterpart in matters ecclesiastical. Moderation, forbearance, charity, and mercy itself, were forgotten when once he conceived the 1 Hacket’s Life of Williams, p. 90. 3—2 Facts confirma- _ tory of D’Ewes’ evidence, 36 CAMBRIDGE IN , ~ (CHAR, interests of the Church to be at stake. From the day when he first gained the ear of Buckingham and grasped the reins of power, all hopes of conciliation and com- promise between the contending religious parties faded away’. ‘The earnest and thoughtful youth of the Puritan party, saw, like John Milton, the gates of the Church closed upon them; stout-hearted leaders of the moderate party, like John Williams, prepared for the contest which they felt to be inevitable. Such then, in brief, were the changes that marked the course of religious feeling in iingland during the first quarter of the seventeenth cen- tury; of the extent to which our own University parti- cipated in the agitation, of how these dissensions divided her colleges, influenced her studies, and moulded the cha- | racter of her youth, we shall find ample evidence as we proceed. To return to Cambridge: it must be admitted that sub- sequent facts tend strongly to confirm the statements of — Sir Simonds D’Ewes. One of the earliest steps taken by the first parliament of Charles, within ten years after D’Ewes left Cambridge, was to petition for University re- form. ‘That short-lived parliament was dissolved before 1 Though this is not the place to discuss the character of Laud, I may perhaps be allowed briefly to note the influence he exerted on his times and on the course of religious thought. Dispassionate students of this period will probably be inclined to view his character with feelings equally removed from praise and from contempt. No one acquainted with his life, will fail to recognize the discrimination with which he encouraged merit, his unswerving integrity of purpose, his energy, his munificence. On the other hand, he will feel that little can be said in defence of Laud’s odious eavesdropping, and his cruelty of disposition. Fuller, in his Church His- tory, states that Laud always seemed eager to give a keener edge to the severity of the Star Chamber. No one, again, familiar with the period, but must admit that the archbishop’s fondness for non-essentials in matters of ceremonial, his readiness to risk all rather than concede a single point, and his intolerance in matters of opinion, resulted in a policy equally disastrous" to himself and the Church he sought to serve. II. | THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 37 any measures could be carried, but in the University a decree was passed in the December of the same year, by the Vice-chancellor and Heads of colleges, the regulaticns of which could only be interpreted as implying the pre- vious existence of grave irregularities’. The next February a second parliament was to be convened, and, before again meeting the commons, the king, who was sorely in need of supplies, which he found it impossible-to raise on his own authority, deemed it expedient to take the initiative. The Earl of Suffolk, as Chancellor, was accordingly desired to communicate with the Vice-chancellor and Heads of houses, and direct them to meet and consider “what are or have been the true occasions of this general offence at their go- -vernment®.” The earl forwarded the letter to Dr Gostlin, the Vice-chancellor, imploring. him and the heads, gene- rally, to “put all their brains together and be all of one mind, as one entire man, to bring home that long-banished pilgrim Discipline.” The cause of so much demoralization may probably be Causes of de- traced to various sources, among which the licentious ex- : ample of the court was undoubtedly not the least. In the Courtin- present day, when a free press and the force of public opinion necessitate some outward observance of morality and decorum, we are apt to overlook the extended influence for good and for evil which royalty at that time possessed, an influence which is attested by half the literature of the period. At the Universities these effects of royal example were especially discernible. It was the fashion at that time, in the hyperbolical diction of the day, to typify the supreme power as the sun, and learning and the arts as tender plants, which could not flourish unaided by that luminary’s bright regards. Royalty itself was approached 1 Cf. Cooper’s Annals, 111. 182. 2 Masson’s Life of Milton, p. 132. 38 CAMBRIDGE IN [CHAP. as a great centre of learning, round which such minor lights as the University could show might be permitted reverentially to revolve. The adulation of philosophers and poets at the court of Augustus, of the Ptolemies, or even that of Dionysius, was left far behind. It was re- served for the seventeenth century to behold the genius of Racine withering beneath the royal frown, and the discus- sions of our gravest synods dying away, in a “quaver of consternation,’ at the rebuke of an English queen. On the occasion of a royal visit this adulation outdid itself. Those who wish to see an illustration of the oratory and — character of the proceedings on such occasions at that time, will find both amusement and instruction in Nichols’ Royal Progresses; from one of which we have given, in a sub- joined note, a few extracts’. 3 1 The visit of Elizabeth in 1564 affords a fair specimen. The following is the account of the address delivered by the Public Orator, and the manner . of its reception :—‘‘ Kneeling upon the first step of the west door,” which was all hung around with verses, he made his oration, which occupied nearly half an hour in delivery. ‘And first of all,” says the narrator, ‘he praised and commended many and singular virtues set and planted in her Majesty. Which her Highness not acknowledging of, she shaked her head, bit her lips and her fingers; and sometimes broke forth into passion and these words, Non est veritas, et utinam .” The orator passed on to the ‘‘ laudation of virginity,” whereupon the Queen observed, ‘‘God’s blessing of thyne heart: there continue.” At the conclusion, ‘‘she much commended him, and much marvelled that his memory did so well serve him, repeating such diverse and sundry matter ;” and finally excused herself from replying in Latin, ‘for fear she should speak false Latin, and then they would laugh at her.” The visit of James, in 1615, is marked by less servility of demeanour. On this occasion, Chappell, famous for his powers of disputation, was elected to oppose Roberts of Trinity (afterwards bishop of Bangor) in a Public Act be- fore the king. The subject was some moot point between popery and pro- testantism, and Chappell, we are told, pushed Roberts so hard “that he (Roberts) fainted.” Whereupon royalty itself assumed the functions of the mapedpos, but with no better success. James, however, so far from evincing displeasure, had the magnanimity to “openly profess his joy at finding a man of so great talents so good a subject.” 11. ] THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 39 An important feature in the university life of this period is presented in the dramatic performances then so prevalent, and the licence thus undoubtedly fostered will not unnaturally suggest itself as a combining cause in the production of that want of discipline which, we have seen, prevailed. The practice as still existing in the West- minster Plays of the present day, will give but a faint idea of the manner in which the youth of the University found diversion in the seventeenth century. From the specimens we possess we may infer that these performances frequently approached nearer to the treatment of Aristophanes than of Menander. The following, for instance, is Fuller’s ac- count of a performance which smacks strongly of the old Attic comedy :— “The young scholars (1597) conceiving themselves somewhat wronged by the townsmen, betook them for re- venge to their wits, wherein lay their best advantage. These having gotten a discovery of some town privacies from Miles Goldsborough, one of their own corporation, composed a merry but abusive comedy, which they called ‘Club-Law,’ én English, as calculated for the capacities of such whom they intended spectators thereof. Clare Hall was the place wherein it was acted; and the mayor, with his brethren and their wives, were invited to behold it, or rather themselves abused therein. A convenient place was assigned to the townsfolk (rivetted in with scholars on all sides) where they might see and be seen. Here they did behold themselves in their own best clothes (which the scholars had borrowed) so livelily personated their habits, gestures, language, leger-jests, and expressions, that it ‘He (Isaac Barrow) is said to have been a great enemy to those pieces that were written for theatrical representation in his days ; thinking, and not without reason, that they were a principal cause of the licentiousness then prevalent.” —Life by Hughes, p. 87. Dramatic performances. ‘Tenoramus.’ 40 CAMBRIDGE IN - [cHar. was hard to decide which was the true townsmen, whether he that sat by or he that acted on the stage. Sit still they could not for chafing, go out they could not for crowding, but impatiently patient were fain to attend till dismissed at the end of the comedy.” | The plays, it appears, were generally written and acted by members of the University. Fellows of colleges con- tributed their pens, and undergraduates and bachelors their histrionic talent. They were sometimes, as we have just seen, in English, but more frequently in Latin, Latin too which would have puzzled Plautus quite as much as he ever. puzzled a fourth-form boy. No royal visit, nor, indeed, that of any distinguished personage, was considered com- plete without one or more of these performances, which generally succeeded the festivity of the banquet. Mede’s account of the bringing out of the Fraus Honesta, written by Philip Stubbe, a fellow of Trinity, on the visit of Lord Holland and the French ambassador in 1616, gives us some idea of the character of the proceedings at these aca- demic Saturnalia. The great hall of Trinity was the place of performance, and on such occasions could be arranged so as to accommodate two thousand persons. The under- graduates and bachelors were ‘‘the gods” of the theatre, and on their approval or disapprobation the fate of the play generally hung. They smoked, hissed, threw pellets, and set the proctors at defiance. Stubbe’s production ap- pears to have had only partial success; but sometimes there would be a decided hit, and the play was printed, and became known throughout the country. One play, for in- stance, entitled Ignoramus, written by Rugele, a fellow of Clare, so captivated King James, that he is said to have visited Cambridge a second time in order to see it again. Another, entitled The Return from Parnassus, or the Scourge of Simony, acted at St John’s College, in 1602, I1.] THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 41 appears really to possess considerable merit. Hawkins, in his Origin of the English Drama, gives the following out- line of the plot* :— “ Several students of various capacities and dispositions ‘Return from leave the University in hopes of advancing their fortunes nis in the metropolis. One of them attempts to recommend himself by his publications; another to procure a benefice by paying his court to a young spark named Amoretto, with whom he had been intimate at college; two others endeavour to gain a subsistence by successively appearing as physicians, actors and musicians; but the man of genius is disregarded, and at last prosecuted for his productions ; the benefice is sold to an illiterate clown; and, in the end, three of the scholars are compelled to submit to a voluntary exile’; another returns to Cambridge as poor as when he left it; and the other two, finding that neither their me- dicines nor their music would support them, resolve to turn shepherds, and to spend the rest of their days on the Kentish downs.” The play is chiefly remarkable for the criticisms it contains on contemporary authors, and some of these evince both discrimination and power. ‘The fol- lowing is on Spenser :— «A sweeter swan than ever sung in Po ; A shriller nightingale than ever blest The prouder groves of self-admiring Rome. Blithe was each valley, and each shepherd proud While he did chant his rural minstrelsy. Attentive was full many a dainty ear ; Nay hearers hung upon his melting tongue, While sweetly of the Faery Queen he sung ; While to the water’s fall he tuned her fame, And in each bark engraved Eliza’s name.” Marlowe, Jonson, and Shakspeare are shortly after brought in for criticism, and their merits compared with those of 1 Hawkins’ Origin of the English Drama, Vol. II. p. 14. General stand- ard of drama- tic literature. Heywood. Shirley. Charles Lamb’s estimate of the period. 42 3 CAMBRIDGE IN [ CHAP. the university dramatists. Sentence is given in the fol- lowing bluff language: ‘‘ Why, here’s our fellow Shak- speare puts them all down; ay, and Ben Jonson too.” A decision which posterity has not reversed. In extenuation of the generally low character of the performances it must be remembered that the standard of the dramatic literature of the day was far from high. The plays of Massinger and Ford, notwithstanding their merits, are now almost unreadable from their grossness and the nature of their subjects. Heywood, who was a fellow of Peterhouse, is said to have been the author, in whole or part, of no less than 220 plays. Of these only twenty- three have reached us, of which one, The English Tra- veller, is still sometimes quoted for the exquisite absurdity of some of its scenes. Shirley, who took his Master’s degree at Cambridge, was so singular in the general purity of his compositions, that the Master of the Revels, when licensing his “ Young Admiral” for performance, entered on his books an express commendation of the play on account of its freedom from “‘ oaths, profaneness, or obscene- ness.” Whatever superiority Shirley obtained in this re- spect, it was not maintained in the general merit of his” productions, which are deficient both in power and pathos. “No very good play,” says Hallam, “nor possibly any very good scene, could be found in Shirley: but he has” many lines of considerable beauty.” : An exquisite critic, the late Charles Lamb, has spoke of the dramatists of this period as “a great race, all of whom spoke nearly the same language, and had a set of moral feelings and notions in common.” With all defer- ence to the estimate of so eminent a judge, respecting a branch of literature with which his acquaintance was almost unrivalled, it may be doubted if his predilections have not biassed his judgment. But whatever may be our II. ] THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 43 opinion of the dramatic literature of that time, there can be but one respecting the concomitants that attended its production on the stage. Of the grossness, the vice, and the profanity that then disgraced the most fashionable London theatres, the theatres of the present day give, happily, no idea; and it may reasonably be asked whether the licence and folly characteristic of those academic per- formances, to which we have alluded, were not calculated to produce in the minds of the youth of our University a longing for scenes which nearly every moral writer of that time has stigmatised with unsparing severity? The opinion of Isaac Barrow we have already quoted. Milton has left his sentiments with respect to the matter on record in hot burning words, which, familiar though they may be, will bear a fresh perusal’:— But, since there is such Milton’s criti- necessity to the hearsay of a tire, a periwig, or a vizard, that plays must have been seen, what difficulty was there in that, when, in the colleges, so many of the young divines, and those of next aptitude to divinity, have been seen so oft upon the stage, writhing and unboning their clergy” limbs to all the antic and dishonest gestures of Trinculoes, buffoons, and bawds, prostituting the shame of that ministry which either they had or were nigh having to the eyes of courtiers and court-ladies, with their grooms and mademoiselles? There, while they acted and over- acted, among other young scholars, I was a spectator: they thought themselves gallant men, and I thought them fools; they made sport, and I laughed; they mispro- | : 1 Apology for Smectymnus, Works, III. 267. 2 Aniong the actors in the play of [gnoramus, previously mentioned, was John Towers, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough, who sustained the part of “Dullman.” Many years after, when King James first heard she Bishop preach at Castle Abbey, he recognised one of the actors in his favourite play. See Kennet’s Chronicle, p. 244. D’ Ewes’ opi- nion. Studies of the period. 44 CAMBRIDGE IN [CHAP, nounced, and I misliked; and, to make up the Atticism?, they wore out, and I hissed’?.” D’Ewes intimates his opinion in less forcible but sufficiently intelligible language :—“On Monday, March the 19th” (1632), he writes, “the King and Queen came from Newmarket to Trinity College. Whilst they were at an idle play there that gave much offence to most of thé hearers, I went into Trinity College library, and there viewed divers ancient manuscripts, which afforded me as much content as the sight of the extreme vanity of the court did sorrow’.” Something of the same feeling may be supposed to have roused Nicholas Ferrar, in his last moments, to give instructions that a large quantity of books, which he had kept under lock and key for many years, should be committed to the flames‘. “ They were,” says his biographer, ‘“ comedies, tragedies, love-hymns, he- roical poems, novels, and the like.” Prynne, in his Histri- omastix, will be found to extend his censures to Academt- cal Interludes, the “unlawfulness” of which is “ briefly discussed.” From the foregoing sketch of Cambridge discipline and general life at the commencement of the century, we shall pass to a somewhat more detailed enquiry into the studies of the time. Of the original division of the course of study into the Quadriennium and Triennium we have already spoken, and it will now be our object, as far as we are able, to ascertain the precise character of the instruc- tion which the University imparted. It is to be observed, 1 éxdpeves ey 8 éyxoptyyouv" eypauudreves, eyo 8 Akkdyolafov’ érpira- ywvriarers, éyd 3° ebedpouv é&émumres, éyd 8 éstpirrov. Demosthenes de Corona. Reiske, p. 315. * See also an interesting paper in Mr Kingsley’s Miscellanies, entitled ‘*Plays and Puritans,” 3 Life of D’ Ewes, 11. 67. 4 Life, by Dr Jebb, p. 256. 11.] THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 45 then, that considerable modifications on the Elizabethan statutes had already taken place. From the twelve terms of residence originally required during the Quadriennium, one term had been struck off; this alteration had been made in 1578, when it was decreed by the Vice-chancellor and Heads, that all students should be enrolled on the university register, and take the oath of matriculation’, within a stated period, from their first residence in their respective colleges; it was also ordered that all who had thus matriculated ‘before, at, or upon, the day when the ordinary sermon ad Clerum, is, or ought to be made, in the beginning of Easter term’,” and who should be proved by the Commons books of their colleges to have resided regularly, should be held to have discharged their Quad- riennium in the fourth Lent following the said sermon. Some time prior to 1681, another term of residence was dispensed with, but this was probably not before the latter half of the century. In the order of study alterations had also taken place. Innovations on Greek and geometry, which had formerly been reserved #izbeth. for the T'riennium, were now introduced into the under- graduate course. ‘Lhe lectures delivered within the college has become a much more important feature, while those delivered by the university professors had, as we have before seen, ceased to command much attention, and had probably in some instances died out altogether. The fol- tin lowing account of the arrangements for tuition in Trinity College will serve to show the extent to which the present system already prevailed. Under one head lecturer were eight other lecturers, each of whom taught and examined an hour or an hour and a half daily. These eight lecturers were as follows :— ‘1 Dyer’s Privileges of the Univ. of Cambridge, 1. 282. 2 Ibid. I. 330. Slight atten- tion paid to mathematics. Seth Ward’s account. Bacon’s esti- mate. Logic. | 46 CAMBRIDGE IN [CHAP. The lector Humanitatis, sive lingue Latins, who also gave weekly lectures on Rhetoric; the lector Grace gram- matice; the lector lingue Greece; the lector Mathema- ticus; and four sublectores, under whom the students advanced gradually from elementary logic to the higher | parts of logic and to metaphysics. It is remarkable that D’Ewes, who is at some pains to chronicle his course of study at John’s, makes no mention of lectures there, but it may fairly be presumed that a similar system was in force. The mathematics involved in the above course were pro- bably extremely slight. Arithmetic, a little geometry, and such astronomy as was then taught, being perhaps nearly all. Itis not, indeed, until the latter part of our enquiry that the study assumes any prominence as an academic influence. It was not until three years after the Restoration that Henry Lucas founded the professorship, which still bears his name; and it was not until half a century later that the science began to command the general attention of the University. In 1634, Seth Ward, having lighted on some old mathematical works in the library of Sidney, was unable to find any one in the college who could assist him to understand them. ‘The books,” says his bio- grapher, “were Greek, I mean unintelligible, to all the fellows*.” ‘The attention now bestowed on mathematics was then engrossed by logic—the logic of Aristotle, with the commentaries of the schoolmen. Nor were there, as yet, any signs of the approaching revolution. Bacon, half a century before, had left the University full of contempt, less for Aristotle than for the puerilities by which the study of that author was accompanied; he subsequently gave expression to his conviction that the “ gravest of sciences ” had “degenerated into childish sophistry and ridiculous 1 Life of Seth Ward, by Dr Walter Pope, p. 10. 1I.| THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 47 affectation,’ while he pleaded for the recognition of the sciences and a generally wider range of study*. Milton Milton's opi- had echoed his language in his college exercises’, doubt- less with the hearty concurrence of not a few of his asso- ciates ; but the hold of the study on Cambridge remained unshaken. The only modification as yet introduced was one which could scarcely be considered progressive in its character. We allude to the new school of Ramus. Of Ramus’s Logic. the character of this writer’s theories most students will probably be content to gain their information second-hand. ‘He endeavoured,’ we are told’, “to turn all physical science into the domain of logic ;”’ while raising the stand- ard against Aristotle, “he argued from words to things still more than his opponents.” Bacon, much as he de- spised the frivolities of the old school, disliked Ramus still more’. Untenable, however, as the theories of the Ramists were ultimately shown to be, they found great favour with the Lutheran communities, and the contests between the new school and the Aristotelians agitated the learned world for nearly a century; a proof of that impatience of the authority of Rome, which had begun to extend to the studies more especially under her patronage. Rhetoric and logic, pure and applied, accordingly appear as the leading studies of the period, accompanied by no 1 <¢Byen Aristotle himself, that idol of scholastic disputants, was studied only through the mist of his translators and commentators ; the number of whom became multiplied to such a degree that Patricius reckons up near 12,000 about the end of the 16th century.” Hughes’ Life of Barrow, p. 60. 2 Milton’s College Exercises, No. ITI. 3 Hallam, Literature of Europe, 1. 368. 4 He calls him, in his treatise De Interpretatione Nature, ‘¢ pernocissima literarum tinea,” “‘ignorantiz latibulum.” Milton appears to have com- piled a summary of this author after leaving college ; but we have evidence that Ramus’s Logic was sometimes studied in the earlier part of the Quadri- ennium. See Clarke’s Lives, 235. Theology. Functions of the tutor. Francis Gar- ainer, 48 | CAMBRIDGE IN [CHAP, inconsiderable attention to classics. When we naturally turn to ask what place theology occupied in the curricu- lum of an age which produced more eminent divines than any other period of our history, we are surprised to find that as a subject of college instruction there is no evidence of any provision existing for its cultivation’. It would appear not improbable that, at a time when such intensity of feeling prevailed in relation to certain religious tenets, it was deemed the more prudent course not to introduce what might prove an element of discord into the daily routine of instruction. Not a few of the colleges were distracted by party differences which it might have been impossible to restrain within bounds, if the teachings of Calvin or Arminius had once been allowed to become the subject of authoritative treatment in the lecture-room. At the same time we cannot reasonably doubt that theology frequently, if not systematically, found a place in those private studies, prosecuted by the tutor with his pupils, to which we have already had occasion to advert, as forming an important part in the college tuition of the time. It must be remembered that the connexion of tutor and pupil in those days implied what it no longer implies, the giving and receiving of instruction. The system continued up to a comparatively recent period. The younger Pitt, for ex- ample, his biographer tells us, was rarely out of his tutor’s company. ‘The influence which an able and energetic tutor might thus bring to bear upon the impressible youths by whom he was surrounded, can hardly be over-estimated. The biographies of the period frequently refer to it. “I know,” writes Francis Gardiner in 1646, to Sancroft, his son’s tutor, “I expect no impossibilities, though perhaps somewhat more than ordinary, as I confess (on your en- couragement) I do from you...... Above all my desire is, 1 See Huber, 11. 72.. mo THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 49 that Sundays, fast days, and the like, may have their par- ticular employment in divine studies, besides his constant reading the Scriptures each morning and evening, which how he follows and understands, if you please sometime to question him, will soon be discerned’.”’ “Lately,” says a writer, speaking of Chappell, who was fellow of Christ’s during Milton’s residence there, “there sprung up a new brood of such as did assist Arminianism, as Dutch Tomp- son of Clare Hall, and Mr William Chappell, fellow of chappen. Christ’s College; as the many pupils that were armint- anized under his tuition show.’ In the life of Nicholas Ferrar by his brother, we are told that when his tutor would sometimes express to his pupil his open admiration of his singular self-denial and temperance, the pupil would , pleasantly reply, “ Nay, tutor, you are to answer to God formset for this. Why did you srieientd unto me (being so young at college as I was) to read the lives of all the holy men of old time, and saints of God, the good fathers of the Church, and of those good men in our later times, even in the Church of England, the saints and holy martyrs °?”" Of Whichcot we read, that “he studied to raise those Whichcot, who conversed with him to a nobler set of thoughts, and to consider religion as a seed of a deiform nature, (to use one of his own phrases). In order to this, he set young students much on reading the ancient philosophers, chiefly Plato, Tully, and Plotin, and on considering the Christian religion as a doctrine sent from God, both to elevate and sweeten human nature, in which he was a great example, as well as a wise and kind instructor*.” Respecting Henry Henry More. More, his biographer gives the following account:—“ A 1 Cary’s Memorials, 1. 151, 152. 2 British Biography, Vol. 1v. 448. See also Fuller’s Worthies. 3 Life of N. Ferrar, by his Brother, p. 92, ‘ Burnet’s Own Time, Vol. 3. 311, 312. Ae 4 50 CAMBRIDGE IN [CHAP. very sober person, and quondam pupil of his, told me what pains he would take with those under him; and amongst other things, what excellent lectures he would deliver to them of piety and instruction from the chapter that was read on nights in his chamber’. Sufficient evidence has, however, been adduced to show that, if we fail to recognise the instruction communicated and the training imparted by intercourse of this kind, we shall omit from our consideration a very important phase of the discipline and studies of that time, wherein the influence exerted was certainly little likely to prove less effective because divested of much of that formality which usually marked the relations of the teacher and the taught. Bthics, Of Ethics, D’Ewes tells us that his tutor read to him “ Gelius and part of Pickolomineus.” He appears to have — also studied the Ethics of Aristotle; besides these authors, Ward names Daneus, Scultetus, Amesius, and Aquinas, as in use”. | Dieputations The crowning test of excellence consisted in the public disputations at the schools, and the less formidable ones in the college chapel. As there was at that time no Tripos, these disputations were the only occasions on which mem- bers of different colleges were pitted against each other. Very trying ordeals they must have been to shy, unready youths, such as D’Ewes, wherein everything depended on promptitude, assurance, and nerve. ‘‘ Mine own exer- cises,”” he says, “performed during my stay here,* were very few, replying only twice in two philosophical acts: Z the one upon Mr Richard Salstonstall in the public schools, it being his bachelor’s act; the other upon Mr Nevill, a fellow-commoner and prime student of St John’s College, in the chapel. My declamations also were very rarely Vv 1 Life, by Ward, p. Igt. ® Vindicie Academice, p. 21. _— co) ae THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 51 performed, being but two in number; the first in my tutor’s chamber, and the other in the college chapel.” The extent to which the exercises of this palestra were terest they carried appears to modern notions almost absurd. The most aa distinguished men of the University frequently engaged in them, and with an ardour which seems puerile, when we recollect that the exhibition was really worthless in respect to the results attained, and simply represented a passage of arms between two accomplished masters of ‘fence, wherein all the laws and bye-laws of a rigorous logic were merci- lessly enforced. The enthusiasm elicited by one of these encounters when taking place between antagonists of much reputation, almost equalled that which in modern times a contest for the champion’s belt excites in the admirers of the ring. Haddon, in a letter to Dr Cox, speaking of a public disputation held by Sir Thomas Smith at a Cam- bridge Commencement, uses the following language: “ Had he (Dr Cox) been there he would have heard another Socrates; that he caught the forward disputants as it were in a net with his questions; and that he concluded the most profound cases of philosophy with great gravity and deep knowledge.”’ ‘The subjoined account of one of these intellectual wrestling-matches will perhaps furnish as good a specimen as we could adduce. On the marriage of the princess Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine in 1611, the royal pair honoured Cambridge with a visit, it having been determined by James that his son-in-law should be “received for a conclusion with an Academical Entertain- ment.” ‘The Scholastical Dissertations,” says bishop Hacket’s de- Hacket, “‘ were the work of the wei the Church of St” Mary being scaffolded for that use.’’ A kind of Com- mencement extraordinary was decided upon in honour of the illustrious visitors. ‘‘ Dr Richardson, the King’s Pro- fessor in Divinity, to manage the chief place in the chair; 4-2 52 CAMBRIDGE IN | [CHAP Dr Davenant to moderate in the Theological Disputation ; and Mr Collins to answer upon three Questions.” Williams, afterwards archbishop, was selected as opponent; being chosen, in his absence, as ‘‘ a most select antagonist for this Conflict.” On the appointed day, “the place was filled with the most Judicious of this whole Island: and some of the Attendants of the Palgrave so Learned, that One might stand for many, Plato alone for T’en These ob oe Dr Pineda (Agmen agens lausus, magnique ipse Ree. nis instar) began first with his grave Nestorean Kloquence, and having saluted Prince Charles, the great expectation of our future Happiness, ris dvadoyns xdddos, as G. Nyssen calls Isaac, the Branch of Succession; and having blessed his Serenity the Prince Elector the Bridegroom with Solemn Votes and Wishes to be added to his Hymeneal Joys, then he called forth the Son of his right- hand, Mr Samuel Collins, (created Doctor at this Com- mencement) to stand in the gap, and to maintain the ‘Truth in three Theses against all assailants. He was a firm Bank of Earth, able to receive the Shot of the greatest Artillery. His works in print against Hudemon and Fitzherbert, Sons of Anak among the Jesuits, do noise him far and wide. But they that heard him speak, would most admire him. No Flood can be compared to the Spring-Tide of his Language and Elequence, but the milky River of Nilus, with his seven Mouths all at once disemboguing into the Sea. O how voluble! how quick! how facetious he was! What a Vertwmnus, when he pleas’d to Argue, on the right side, and on the contrary! These Things will be living in the memory of the longest Survivor that ever heard him. In this Trial, wherein he stood now to be judged by so many Attic and Exquisite 1 Hacket’s Life of Williams, Part 1, 26, ‘es THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 53 Wits, he striv’d to exceed himself, and shew’d his Cun- ning marvelously, that he could invalidate every Argu- ment brought against him with variety of Answers. It was well for all sides, that the best Divine in my Judg- ment, that ever was in that place, Dr Davenant held the Rains of the Disputation; he kept him within the even Boundals of the Cause; he charm’d him with the Cadu- cean Wand of Dialectical Prudence; he order’d him to give just Weight and no more. Horat. 1.1, Od. 3. Quo non Arbiter Adriz major tollere, seu ponere vult. freta. Such an Arbiter as he was now, such he was, and no less, year by year, in all Comitial Disputations; wherein who- soever did well, yet constantly he had the greatest Accla- mation. To the close of all this Exercise I come. The grave elder Opponents having had their courses, Mr Williams, a new admitted Bachelor of Divinity, came to his Turn last of all. Presently there was a smile on the face of every one that knew them both, and a prejudging that between these two there would be a Fray indeed. Both jealous of their Credit, both great Masters of Wit, and as much was expected from the one as from the other, So they fell to it with all quickness and pertinency, yet (thank the Moderator) with all candour; like Fabius and Marcellus, the one was the Buckler the other the Sword of that learned Exercise. No Greyhound did ever give a Hare more turns upon Newmarket Heath, than the Replier with his Subtleties gave to the Respondent. A fit subject for the Verse of Mr Abraham Hartwel in his Regina Literata, as he extols Dr Pern’s Arguments made before — Queen Elizabeth: Quis fulmine tanto tela jacet? tanto ful- mine nemo jacet. But when they had both done their best with equal Prowess, the Marshall of the Field, Dr Dave- nant, cast down his Warder between them and parted them.” Classical stu- dies. D’ Ewes’ ac- count. Downes. Barrow. 54 ‘ CAMBRIDGE IN ; [CHAP. The researches of young classical students appear to have extended to authors which a private tutor of the pre- sent day would probably look somewhat coldly upon, when viewed in connection with the Tripos. “I afterwards finished Florus,” writes D’Ewes’, “transcribing historical abbreviations out of it in mine own private study ; in which also I perused most of the other authors, and read over Gellius’ Attic Nights, and part of Macrobius’ Saturnals.” “JT was, during the latter part of my stay at Cambridge, for most part a diligent frequenter of Mr Downes’ Greek Lec- tures, he reading upon one of Demosthenes’ Greek Orations, De Coroné; of whom I think it fit to take occasion in this place to transmit somewhat to posterity....He had been Greek professor in the University about thirty years, and was at this time accounted the ablest Grecian of Christendom, being no native of Greece, which Joseph Scaliger himself confessed of him long before, as I was informed, having received an elaborate letter from him, © upon some discontent taken by him against him*” ‘The following is D’Ewes’s account of a private visit to the Greek professor :—‘ He entertained me more familiarly and lovingly than before, and offered me that kindness again which he had done at my late being with him, to read to me and some other gentlemen a private lecture in his house; but my small stipend my father allowed me, affording no sufficient remuneration to bestow upon him, I excused myself in it, telling him that I was shortly to de- part from the University, and therefore it would be in vain for me to enter upon any further course for the attaining of the Greek tongue, in which I could not attain any exact knowledge without many years’ study’®.” It is only too probable that Downes’s allurements to 1 Life of Sir Simonds D’ Ewes, 1. 121. 2 Ibid. 139. 3 Ibid, 141. a THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 55 learning met generally with but poor success. Some forty years later we find that the lectures of the Greek professor failed to attract even an audience. “I sit,” says Barrow, “like an Attic owl driven out from the society of all other birds’.” An attempt which he made to introduce the Greek tragedians to the attention of his scanty auditory met with so little encouragement that he was compelled to fall back on Aristotle?: “‘ Egimus ego et Sophocles meus in vacua Orchestra; defuit illi etiam tpstaywvworys, chorus affuit nullus,, ne quidem puerorum; qui canentibus accinerit nemo erat, nec qui saltantibus applauderet, nec qui obstre- _peret loquentibus...... Superest ut in unum Aristotelem spes nostre velut in sacram anchoram reclinent: ut ad Lyceum - ceu ad arcem Sophia munitissimam, portum studii certissi- mum, aram discipline, confugiamus.’”’ Extent of reading would seem to have excluded or left but small leisure for authors which now engross so much of the student’s attention. No mention appears to be made of Thucydides as a college subject during this period, while Theophrastus was discussed from the professorial chair: Adschylus is rarely quoted, and Pindar, though we find an edition by Erasmus Schmidt appearing in 1619, still less. I find no instance of the employment of Lucre- tius as a class-book®; and, had there existed the scholar- 1 Oratio Sarcasmica in Schola Greca. Opuse. IV. 111. 2 Ibid. 115. 3 “T have sent,” writes Sir Thomas Browne to his son Edward, in 1676, ‘*by Mr Bickerdik, Lucretius his six bookes, De Rerum Natura, because you lately sent me a quotation out of that author, that you might have one by you to find out quotations which shall considerably offer themselves at any time. Otherwise I do not much recommend the reading or studying of it, there being divers impieties in it, and ’tis no credit to be punctually versed in it; it containeth the Epicurean naturall philo- sophie.” Sir T. Browne’s Works, Vol. I. 209. The edition of Lambinus, published in 1564, does not appear to have done much for the study of Lucretius until Creech popularised his labours Thomas May. “ 56 f CAMBRIDGE IN. > [cHAP. ship and taste necessary to the appreciation of his mastery over the Latin tongue at the period of its greatest vigour, 1t may be doubted whether his philosophy would not have outbalanced the claims of his splendid genius. Of the inimitable beauties of the Latin poets of the pre-Augustan school there is not a glimpse of anything like adequate recognition: the rhetorical strains of Lucan, on the other hand, were so generally admired, that Thomas May, in 1633, published a supplement to the Pharsalia, carrying the history down to the death of Cesar. It is certainly no injustice to this continuation to say that, though not with- out some happy passages, it hardly reaches even the level of the original. Indeed, if we except the names of Meric Casaubon, Milton, Herbert, Barrow, and Duport, it is in 1695*. Spenser, indeed, who was a sizar at Pembroke, and who evinces throughout his great poem an intimate acquaintance with both the Aristo- telian and the Platonic philosophy, has sufficiently proved his familiarity with the Roman poet by an almost literal translation of the fine passage ~ at the commencement of the first book (see Faerie Queen, IV. 10, 44); while Bacon, in his Essays, shows a like acquaintance with an author whom he doubtless found a more congenial spirit than Aristotle. Among the sermons of John Smith of Queens’ also (see p. go) are two, marked by considerable learning and argumentative power, expressly directed against the philosophy of Lucretius; and in Evelyn’s Diary, May 12, 1656, we have the following entry: ‘‘ Was published my essay on Lu- cretius, with innumerable errata, by the negligence of Mr Triplet, who undertook the correction of the press in my absence.” [Editor’s note :— «A translation into'English Verse of the first book only.”] There is also to be met with a very amusing translation by the celebrated Mrs Lucy Hutchinson. Scholarship, as opposed to mere learning, certainly declined in England as in France during the century which followed the reign of the Scaligers. (See Munro’s Lucretius, Introd. pp. 11—13.) Textual criticism, the great arena of modern scholarship, was, at this period, held in something like contempt. * “Note here, Lucretius dares to teach As all our youth may learn from Creech”— Prior’s Alma, Canto 1. TI.] THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Hye doubtful whether we could point to any scholar in England during the earlier part of the century, who possessed that refined form of scholarship represented in the present day by so nice a sense of the beauties and delicacies of Greek and Latin verse. With regard to Casaubon, ov Te Tocos ye dcos TeXapwros Aias, aAAG oN pelwy, though his scholarship appears unquestionable, it was de- voted to another field of labour. Milton, indeed, stands in almost painful contrast to his University from his superi- ority in this as in more important traits. ‘His Latin poems,” says Mr Hallam, “are in themselves full of class- ical elegance, of thoughts natural and pleasing, of a diction culled with taste from the gardens of ancient poetfy, of a versification remarkably well-cadenced and grateful to the ear.’ Herbert, though deficient in neatness, shows a facility and smoothness in this department of composi- tion which could only have been attained by long famili- arity with the best models and considerable practice. The same remarks will apply to Barrow’s verse’, of which Hallam says, it is “forcible and full of mind, but not suf- ficiently redolent of antiquity.” Of his Latin prose we shall hereafter have occasion to give a specimen; though full of vigour and evincing a complete mastery over the 1 We meet however with such inaccuracies as “‘pollicé spiritum,”’ &c. His Greek verses it seems almost ungenerous to criticise when we recollect that they appeared at a time when the canons of the Iambic metre were so imperfectly understood ; but the following stanzas will sufficiently show that his acquaintance with the laws of Greek prosody was not much su- perior to that of Le Clerc himself : Mfjrep, yuvaxGv alydy, avOpwHruv epis, ‘Odvpua Aaipdvwv, Oeod yewpryior, Ids viv ddimraca:, ydou xal Kwddvou “Huds Nurodoa KuKNdbev peTaryptous. . K.T.r. Versification. Meric Casau- bon Milton. George Her- bert. Barrow. 58 CAMBRIDGE IN [CHAPS language, it certainly cannot be denominated as Cicero- nian’, The enthusiasm of the period, for such it really was, was directed rather to the subject matter than the style; and that, again, was estimated quite as much from a theo- logical as a classical point of view. Barrow’s admiration of Chrysostom, for instance, probably outweighed his attach- ment for the whole range of Latin poetry, and his unpub- lished manuscripts, still preserved in the library of Trinity College, abound with quotations from the whole range of patristic theology. An amusing instance of the average © 1 We meet, for instance, with the frequent use of such words as ‘‘sultis,” ‘‘effulminans,” ‘‘cordicitus,” ‘‘jugiter,” ‘‘ proficuus.” Mr Hallam (Hist. of Lit. of Europe, 1. 516) gives a list of all the books © instrumental to the study of Greek at the close of the preceding century. It is with some reluctance that I have arrived at the conclusion that the account given by Lord Macaulay of the general proficiency of Cambridge students in classical learning during the reign of Charles the Second, . though exaggerated in detail, is just as a whole. No evidence, it is certain, can be adduced of more authority than Barrow’s; and his language can only be taken as implying that during the first half of the century there had been a manifest decline in the attention bestowed on classics. No stress can be laid on isolated instances, nor even on the attainments of the translators of our Authorized Version. To one indeed of these we are indebted for evidence of a directly opposite character. Boyce, who was admitted to St John’s in 1575, tells us that ‘his father had educated him in the Greek tongue before his coming, which caused him to be taken notice of in the college. For besides himself there was but one there that could write Greek. Three lectures in that language were read in the col- lege. In the first, grammar was taught as is now commonly done in school. In the second, an easy author was explained in the grammatical way. In the third was read somewhat which might seem fit for their capacities who had passed over the other two. A year was usually spent in the first, and two in the second.” (Peck’s Desiderata, p. 327.) Patristic literature seems to have commanded a greater attention than that of classic Greece or Rome. By far the most splendid edition of a Greek author during this period was that of Chrysostom, published in 1612, by Sir Henry Savile, the provost of Eton. It was in eight volumes, each volume costing, it is said, upwards of a £1000., (Beloe’s Anecdotes, V. 103.) 11. ] THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 59 amount of critical capacity possessed at this period is to be found in Dr Walter Pope’s Life of Barrow, appended. to Dr Pope. the Life of Seth Ward. Pope was originally a student at Trinity, but afterwards migrated to Oxford. He was so fortunate as to be honoured by the friendship of both Ward and Barrow, to whom he appears to have played much the part that Boswell did to Johnson, and he vindicates his claim to the acquaintance of two such eminent men by the analogy of Horace and Mecenas. As far as Horace is con- cerned some readers may possibly be disposed to question the justice of the comparison. Barrow, it appears, pos- sessed, like Milton, the discrimination and taste (itself no mean mark of scholarship) to set a high value on Ovid. “The greater part of his poems,” says Dr Pope, ‘“ were written in Hexameter and Pentameter verses, after the manner of Ovid, whom he had in great esteem, preferrmg him even before the Divine Virgil; I have heard him say, that he believed Virgil could not have made the Metamor- fosis so well as Ovid has, concerning which there have often been betwixt us several sharp but not bitter disputes.” Stimulated by the example of his illustrious friend, Dr Fope appears to have made one or two private attempts himself in elegiac verse composition, but, judging from his tone, we should fear with only indifferent success. He felt very probably the want of “Bland” and the Gradus ad Parnassum, and still more of that facility which rarely comes in after life. “It is next to an impossibility,” he exclaims somewhat sulkily, “to write either good sense or Latin in that sort of metre, wherein so many hobbling dactyls knock against one another.” Unsuccessful in his efforts at rivalling Ovid, Dr Pope next betakes himself to undermining the poet’s reputation. Barrow, being by this time in his grave, was not likely to take up the cudgels or to feel offence. We are accordingly favoured with a speci~ 60 CAMBRIDGE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. [CHAP. Ir. men of Mr Pope's critical ‘sagacity. Some dozen feeble lines are selected from different parts, and the careless elegancies of the Latin poet are subjected to an ordeal of a solemn and ponderous nature; a very butterfly is broken on the wheel; we seem to see some clodhopper inspecting Vitania’s veil. The following example will probably suffice — our readers :— Ovid, introducing a description of the Milky Way, cha- racterises it in the following very passable couplet ;— . ‘Est via sublimis, ccoelo manifesta sereno Lactea nomen habet, splendore notabilis ipso.” “Tis evident,” says Dr Pope, “that ‘lactea’ ought to be in the same case with ‘nomen.’ Whereas had he made the verse thus he might have mended it ;— ‘Nomen habens a lacte et lactis nota colore,’” with which exquisitely Ovidian hexameter we take our leave of the ingenious critic. We come, then, to the conclusion that the classical cul ture of this period was characterised rather by learning than by scholarship. The colloquial jargon that, under the name of Latin, was spoken on every public and formal occasion, and the extent to which authors very remote from a pure style of either Greek or Latin were studied, may sufficiently explain the fact. With the commencement of the century the standard of classical elegance and purity seems rather to have declined when compared with that attained by Erasmus and Buchanan. What, however, the scholarship of the time lacked in exactness and refinement it gained in erudition. Many a competent classical scholar of the present day has rarely inspected authors just known to him by name, which were then perused and re-perused with ardour. Of the very marked effects of these studies, and their influence on the religious and philosophic thousiie of the time, we shall speak more fully in another place. . CHAPTER III. INFLUENCE OF CAMBRIDGE STUDIES DISCERNIBLE IN THE CHARACTER AND WRITINGS OF DISTINGUISHED GRA- DUATES DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE SEVEN- ‘TEENTH CENTURY. | Part I. Influence on Manner. Tue preceding chapters, though necessarily limited in their treatment of the subject, will have enabled us to form some estimate of the general. character of the studies of our University at the commencement of the seventeenth century ; we have now to enquire what fruit those studies bore, and to endeavour to trace their influence, as far as it may be legitimately inferred, in the character and writings of the most distinguished graduates of the time. Among the most noticeable, though not the most important, of these effects, is one which will readily occur to every student, however superficially versed in the literature of that day—the mannerism to which these studies gave rise. Mannerism of A wide rather than an accurate range of reading being “i _ then the first ambition of the classical student, it was his next object to impress upon his readers or hearers the extent of his researches. Nor were his auditory generally so far on terms of equality with himself that his learning might safely rely for its recognition on the spirit which it infused into his discourse, and the halo of classic wisdom which it threw around his thoughts, A century later, the 62 INFLUENCE OF [ CHAP. poet Gray, whose attainments were probably little inferior to those of Selden or Barrow, could pen stanzas wherein breathes in almost every line the influence of the richest stores of the lyric and dramatic genius of Greece, and letters which irresistibly recall to us the grace of Cicero, the epigrammatic diction of Pliny, and the philosophic tones of Seneca, with scarce a direct quotation or allusion throughout, in the tranquil assurance that the classic air, unseen but felt, which pervaded every page, would not fail to meet with the recognition of that chosen circle whose appreciation was all he cared to gain. Such was not the — privilege of the learned writers who adorn the first half of the seventeenth century. The enthusiasm, indeed, which at that time actuated the study of the learned tongues, was — widely different from, though we may doubt whether it exceeded, that of the English scholar of the present day. The reasons are obvious. In that literature the writers of the period found—not simply the links which bind the pre- sent to the past, the records which still preserve, often, it is true, with a beauty that time has dimmed, but still with inimitable grace of form and outline, creations of human thought destined to immortality, and the fashions of a civilization which can never return—but they found also their credentials of belief, their authorities for opinion, and the standards to which they had been taught habitually to refer for models of taste and expression. Nor was this all. It has been urged of late, by some of those who condemn the large amount of attention still bestowed on classical studies, that the value of classical learning must inevitably diminish as the results of modern discovery and thought continue to progress: its value may remain positively the same, but relatively it must decrease. With- out stopping to examine how far this theory will hold good, we may safely assume that its converse is undeniable. a. CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. 63 In proportion as we find our literature dwindle in im- portance and extent, as we retrace its growth during the last three centuries, so do the languages of Greece and Rome assume a correspondingly higher value. It was not merely that they embodied, at the period we are now considering, nearly all that was accepted as authoritative in opinion and excellent for example, that Latin was more- over the recognised medium of communication among the learned throughout Europe; but the literature of our own tongue.could not then, as now, afford in many respects a compensating store of instruction and delight to those who were debarred from a direct acquaintance with the trea- sures of antiquity. It is impossible, perhaps, in the _ present day to adequately realise a time, when not simply the constant stimulus of newspapers and magazines was wanting, but the greater part of that literature of which we as a nation are so justly proud was still unborn; when Chaucer and Spenser were as yet the only really national poets; when Shakspeare and Ben Jonson were slowly rising into notice; when the Inductive Philosophy, although attracting attention, was far from commanding deference or assent; when, throughout the long list of divines who adorn our Church and still live in their in- fluence on posterity, Hooker is almost the only name that had as yet appeared. The only modern literature indeed of any recognised value at that time was the Italian, and it is needless to point out of how little avail that litera- ture would then be to the majority of our forefathers. Such considerations as these will serve to explain how it was that so great a value, often indeed a fictitious and mistaken one in its conception, became gradually associated with the study of Greek and Latin. ‘Those languages were then the outward and visible sign of a mystic com- munity, the Urim and Thummim of a sacred priesthood, a Fondness for quotation. Jeremy Taylor. 64 | INFLUENCE OF [CHAP. shibboleth studiously imitated by all who claimed fraternity with the order. Under such circumstances, the tempta- tions to what would now appear mere pedantry and osten- tation, were, it must be admitted, considerable. Hence we find the euphuism of an earlier period supplanted by the innumerable quotations and allusions which mark the learned productions of this age. In the school of Cam- bridge divines which then began to flourish, and whose real learning often thus found felicitous expression and scope for illustration, this feature is singularly prominent, The writings of Jeremy Taylor, Fuller, and bishop Hacket, may be named as fair specimens of a style in which the passion for quotation had at last grown into a positive vice’. Butler, with his usual power, has characterised it as A Babylonish dialect Which learned pedants much affect ; It was a party-colored dress Of patch’d and piebald languages ; "Twas English cut on Greek and Latin, Like fustian heretofore on satin. The sermons which Taylor delivered at Golden Grove, must indeed, we imagine, have filled the more homely portion of his audience with feelings not unlike those to which the simple Athenian citizen, in the Clouds of Aristo- phanes, gives vent, when he hears the big-sounding diction which the satirist puts into the mouth of the great phi- losopher, & 19 rod POéypatos, ws lepiv kal cepvdv Kal reparwoes, In the sermon on the “ House of Feasting,” for instance, one of his finest efforts, we have, besides allusions in- 1 This excess of quotation was far from being peculiar to the pulpit. Lord Coke boasts with no little complacency that he has illustrated the knotty points and subtle distinctions of the law, with 300 extracts from the Mantuan bard! ILI. | CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. 65 numerable, no less than ninety-five quotations in Greek and Latin, gleaned from the whole range of classical and patristic literature. The following quotation, in itself sufficiently noteworthy, may be taken as no unfair speci- men of some of the loftier flights of the pulpit oratory of that time. After descanting on the effects of intemperance His pupit on the man who becomes its victim, the orator thus pro- ceeds’ :— | “So have I seen the eye of the world looking on a fenny bottom, and drinking up too free draughts of moisture, gathered them into cloud, and that cloud crept about his face, and made him first look red, and then covered him with darkness and an artificial light; so is our reason at a feast, Putrem resudans crapulam .Obstrangulate mentis ingenium premit. The clouds gather about the head, and according to the method and period of the children, and productions of darkness, it first grows red, and that redness turns into an obscurity and a thick mist, and reason is lost to all use and profitableness of wise and sober discourses ; ava@upia- cis Oorwdéotepa ovca erickotel TH Wuxi, ‘a cloud of folly and distraction darkens the soul,’ and makes it crass and material, polluted and heavy, clogged and laden like the body: yux7) Kabvdpos tats é« Tod olvov dvabupiacect Kab vedérais dixny cduatos trovovpévn. And there cannot be anything said worse, ‘reason turns into folly, wine and flesh into a knot of clouds, the soul itself into a body,’ and the spirit into corrupted meat; there is nothing left but the rewards and portions of a fool to be reaped and enjoyed there, where flesh and corruption shall dwell to eternal ages; and therefore in Scripture such men are called Bapuxapdiot. Hesternis vitiis animum quoque pre- 1 Taylor’s Works, edited by Hughes, Vol. 1. 292, 293. M. oy) 66 INFLUENCE OF [CHAP. _gravant: thei heads are gross, their souls are emerged in matter and drowned in the moistures of an unwholesome cloud; they are dull of hearing, slow in apprehension, and to action they are as unable as the hands of a child, who too hastily hath broken the inclosures of his first dwelling. But temperance is reason’s girdle and passion’s bridle; coa dpovnots, So Homer in Stobeus; that is cwppoctvn: ‘prudence is safe,’ while the man is temperate ;-and there- fore cwdpov is opposed 76 yaripove, ‘a temperate man is no fool;’ for temperance is the cwdpowertnpiov, such as Plato appointed to night-walkers, a prison to restrain their inordinations; it is pwn Wwuyns, as Pythagoras calls it: KpnTis apetns, So Socrates; xdcpos ayabdv ravtey, so Plato; acgarea tav Kadrrlotov E£ewv, so Lamblichus; it is ‘the strength of the soul, the foundation of virtue, the ornament of all good things, and the corroborative of all excellent habits.’ ”’ | The rhetorical power of this passage and the force and aptness of the quotations, will, to no small extent, justify a diction and a style resembling some piece of antique em- broidery, stiffening with jewels and with gold; but it must be owned that but few possessed the genius that could bear up under such massive and over-wrought magnificence, — The quotations of not a few of the inferior writers of the time are almost ludicrous from their irrelevancy ; serving but little to illustrate the author’s meaning or enforce the weight of the sentiment, “‘ they le,” to use the fine simile of Sheridan, ‘like lumps of marl on a barren moor, en- cumbering what it is not in their power to fertilize*.” It would be erroneous, however, to infer that many of the 1 Milton, himself no slight mannerist, characterised these productions as. ‘‘a paroxysm of citations, pampered metaphors, and aphorisming pe- dantry.” Il. | CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. 67 writers of this period ventured on flights equally bold, or the cultivation of so marked a mannerism as this “ Shak- speare of divines.”” He was perhaps the greatest mannerist among the theologians of his day ; no slight assertion when we consider the character of his age; and it must be con- fessed that his extravagances have done much to discourage with ordinary readers the modern study of his works. He is now best known to fame by his Holy Living and Dying ; a work which, however admirable, cannot be con- sidered an adequate specimen of his claims to rank asa great British classic; his reputation in this respect must always rest mainly on his sermons; and the following criticism on these, by his most recent editor, will commend itself by its justice and discernment to all familiar with his works :— ‘Their tone and style and matter arose, in a consider- Hughes's able degree, out of the wants and desires of the age, press- ing on a genius peculiarly calculated to satisfy them. Long political harangues had been so mixed up with re- ligious topics, in those disastrous times; the ‘drum éccle- siastic’ had been made so powerful an instrument to inflame popular enthusiasm, that men still demanded the prolixity of discourse, the fervour of zeal, and the energy of expression to which they had been long accustomed. Moreover, a show of learning was then so much in vogue, -on the old principle of ‘ignotum pro horrifico,’ that if a preacher was not a Latiner, the most brilliant talents could hardly save him from contempt. Hence we find, in Taylor’s discourses, that superabundance of quotation, which not only illustrates his subject at times with extraordinary felicity, but oftener disfigures it with impertinent allusion. Hence, in some degree, arises that immeasurable, indis- criminating copiousness, which piles image on image, ex- ample on example, illustration on illustration, till the mind, 5—2 South’s criti- cism. 68 INFLUENCE OF [CHAP. after having been delighted, becomes bewildered by the interminable succession of ideas. Hence, that aggravated zeal and impetuosity, which sometimes stimulates him to such daring heights, to such violent and portentous creations of fancy, as startle us by their absurdity, and occasion us to withhold our sympathies, even when he appears most passionately to demand them.” So marked, indeed, were his peculiarities, that they occasionally elicited severe criticism even from contempo- rary writers. We are indebted to a writer in the Melectic Review for the suggestion that the following passage, from one of the sermons of Dr South, seems in all probability aimed at Jeremy Taylor. ‘‘‘I speak the words of sober- ness,’ said St Paul. And I preach the Gospel not with — the ‘inticing words of man’s wisdom.’ This was the way of the Apostle’s discoursing of things sacred. Nothing here of the ‘ fringes of the north star ;’ nothing of ‘ Nature’s becoming unnatural;’ nothing of ‘the down of angels’ wings,’ or ‘the beautiful looks of cherubim;’ no starched similitudes, introduced with a ‘Thus have I seen a cloud rolling in its airy mansion,’ and the like. No, these were sublimities above the rise of the apostolie spirit; for the Apostles, poor mortals! were content to take lower steps, and to tell the world, in plain terms, that ‘he who believed should be saved, and that he who believed not should be damned.’ And this was the dialect which pierced the conscience and made the hearers cry out, ‘Men and bre- thren, what'shall we do?’ It tickled not the ear, but sunk into the heart; and when men came from such sermons, they never commended the preacher for his talking voice and gesture, for the fineness of such a simile, or for the quaintness of such a sentence: but they spoke like men conquered with the overpowering force and evidence of the most concerning truths; much in the words of the two III. | CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. 69 disciples going to Emmaus; ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he opened to us the Scriptures ?’”’ The mannerism induced by classical studies extended Latin structure beyond mere quotation. We can scarcely peruse a page of some of the greatest writers subsequent to the Elizabethan period, of Hooker, of Milton, or of Cudworth, without per- ceiving how deeply their style is infected with Latin con- structions and Latin idioms. The simple process of render- ing a tew sentences of these writers into Latin prose will be satisfactory evidence of the source from whence their style is so deeply tinged*, The order of the sentences will remain almost unaltered without impairing the elegance of the Latin version’. If, however, we proceed to apply the same process to a page of Dryden, of Barrow, or especially to. one of Addison’s or Steele’s papers in the Tatler, ‘we are at once conscious that if the Latin is to wear to any extent the garb of Livy or of Cicero, the sentences must be recast, pronouns demonstrative must become relative, adjectives must be turned into adverbs, and, in ‘short, a complete process of transfusion must take place’. 1 Mackintosh, Ethical Philosophy, p. 94. 2 Drake’s Papers on the Tatler, Vol. 1. 38. 3 Every reader must have noticed the thoroughly Latin usage of the relative in the learned writings of this time. To Latinised constructions we must also add Anglicised forms of Latin words. In the writings of Bp. Hall, his editor, Pratt, has found it necessary to append a glossary of the unusual words they contain, amounting to more than eleven hundred, the greater part being of Latin and Greek origin. The following are ex- amples :—“funest” for “sad”; “effigiate” for “conform”; “respersed” for “scattered”; ‘‘deturpated” for ‘‘deformed”; ‘‘deordination” for ‘“‘eonfusion”; “‘clancularly” for “secretly”; ‘“ferity” for ‘‘fierceness”’; ‘‘immorigerous” for “disobedient,” &c. &c. And, lastly, we may notice a tendency to use, in their derivative sense, words which had already become applied to express other meanings in English. Thus Taylor uses ‘‘immured” for “encompassed”; “extant” in the sense of ‘standing out,’’ as applied to bas-reliefs; “ insolent” for “ unusual”; for “bruising the serpent’s head,” Sir Thomas Browne. Rhetorical : form of writ- ing. Cowley. Purity of his prose. 70 INFLUENCE OF [CHAP. T’o such an extent had this mannerism pervaded the style of some of the learned writers of his day, that Sir Thomas Browne is found to declare that “if elegancy still pro- ceedeth, and English pens maintain that stream we have of late observed to flow from many, we shall, within few years, be fain to learn Latin, to understand English, and a work will prove of equal facility in either.” Besides these characteristics there are other traits which lie less on the surface, but equally recall the training of the student and the atmosphere of the schools. We allude especially to the rhetorical structure of the sentences. Nor does it admit of much doubt that to the scholastic training of the University this mannerism is mainly attributable. The few instances which might seem to disprove the rule are too exceptional to invalidate it. Of these the most noteworthy is perhaps afforded in the prose writings of Cowley. The grace and simplicity of the few short essays which we owe to his genius, must ever render it a matter ~ of regret that his labours were not more frequently be- stowed in this direction. Singularly free from pedantry and all appearance of effort, they contain beauties which even so great a master of English prose as Hume did not disdain to copy, and Hallam’ has affirmed that they take place among the earliest specimens of good writing in the language*. And yet we know that Cowley was a fellow of Trinity, and deeply attached to the study of ancient litera- he says, ‘‘ contrition of the serpent’s head!” The spirit of our earlier scho- lars was widely different; and Sir John Cheke actually projected a plan for reforming our language by eradicating all words which were not formed from English, i.e. Saxon, roots. See Latham’s Hnglish Language and Rogers’s Essays thereon. 1 Interature of Europe, 1. 853. . 2 The character of Cromwell in Hume’s History is, with but few alter- | ations, an adaptation of that by Cowley. The historian acknowledges the source to which he is indebted. Il. | CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. 71 ture; the touching lines, moreover, in which he laments the loss of his friend Harvey, would seem to imply that they had both been hard students :— *‘Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights, How oft unwearied have we spent the nights! Till the Ledzean stars, so famed for love, Wondered at us from above! We spent them not in toys, or lusts, or wine, But search of deep philosophy, Wit, eloquence, and poetry, Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine.” But though as a prose writer he escaped the general infection of his time, his poetry is far less free from man- nerism. Many of his lines depend almost entirely for their Artiftcial cha- force on a play upon words and their employment in a double verse. sense, the very defect so frequent in Fuller and other writers of this period. It would seem, indeed, as though he to some extent inaugurated a style in this respect, which came gradually to be admired and copied in the college exer- cises of succeeding generations of students. Dr Monk’, in his biography of Bentley, has noted in one of the early English exercises of that eminent scholar, ‘‘ the prevalence of the taste for forced conceits and far-fetched quibbles which mark the poetical school ‘of Cowley*.” Much importance, therefore, can hardly be attached to the exceptional character of Cowley’s prose writings as tending to disprove the general truth of our remarks. On the other hand, the negative evidence is strong; and we believe that a careful perusal of some of those authors who were removed by education from the influences to which we 1 Monk’s Life of Bentley, p. 8. 2 The first two lines of the exercise, the theme of which is the “Gun- powder Plot,” will suggest its character : ‘‘Such devilish deeds to Angli done! Such black designs on Albion!” 72 INFLUENCE OF [CHAP. have adverted, will shew a comparative freedom both from Latinised constructions and from a rhetorical style. An additional confirmation of our criticism is to be found in the fact, that the absence or presence of these peculiarities has been applied as a recognised test in questions of dis- puted authorship. An interesting controversy, which was maintained with considerable acumen on both sides, in the early part of Eikon Basilike, the present century, respecting the authorship of Evkon Basitiké, and which terminated with a strong preponder- ance of argument in favour of Dr Gauden as the author, received no little elucidation from the generally rhetorical and artificial strain in which the work is written. It abounds with passages which a careful student of the dif- ferent styles of this period would at once pronounce could scarcely have been penned but by a writer who had been trained in the intellectual palestra of the Universities of that day. “ The personated sovereign,” says Mr Hallam, “is rather too theatrical for real nature, the language is too rhetorical and amplified, the periods too artificially elabo- rated. None but scholars and practised writers employ such a style as this'.” On the other hand, the very con- verse of this argument has been made use of, by the same Karl of Essex's writer, to prove that the Apology for the Earl of Hssex, which is usually printed among Bacon’s works, was the composition of the earl himself, “We have nowhere in our early writers a flow of words so easy and graceful, a structure so harmonious, a series of antitheses so spirited without affectation, an absence of quaintness, pedantry and vulgarity, so truly gentleman-like, a paragraph so worthy of the most brilliant man of his sa see It is the language of a soldier’s heart, with the unstudied grace of a noble courtier,” 1 Literature of Europe, m1. 153. III. | CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. 73 Besides the mannerism induced by classical studies, a very cursory perusal of some of the literature of this time, especially that of a controversial character, will suffice to bring under the reader’s notice another and equally marked mannerism, which we can scarcely err in attributing to the influence of the schools. Much in the same way as Lucre- tius oftentimes enforces a home thrust in argument with an expression or metaphor borrowed from the gladiatorial con- tests of the Roman circus, not a few of the writers of this period delight to import into the productions of the closet, the smartness, bluster, and quibblings of a regular disputa- tion. ‘The very Vices inseparable from the encounters at the schools, and which, probably more than anything else, gra- dually led to their discontinuance, we find reproduced in grave treatises on matters of antiquarian research and of religious controversy. Of this feature a better instance is perhaps scarcely to be found than is afforded by the writings of the celebrated Richard Mountague, afterwards bishop of Chichester, whose citation before the House of Commons in 1625, on the charge of Arminianism, created no small ex- citement in his day. His best production is perhaps his Diatribee on Selden’s History of Tithes, a work in which he was held to have so effectually overthrown the great scholar on divers points, that King James ordered Selden to desist from the controversy. It would involve a some- what lengthened comparison of the Diatribe with the original work, to point out in what respects the Cambridge athlete is supposed to have gained the advantage over his formidable antagonist. Selden, who would seem to have taken no very exalted but an eminently practical view of the question of tithes, had proposed to discuss the mode of levying the same rather as a matter of expediency than on a traditional basis. It was this renunciation of antiquity, as a court of appeal, that roused the ire of the more conserva- Disputatious mode of expres- sion. Richard Mountague, His © Diatribes.” 74 INFLUENCE OF [ CHAP. tive party", and brought Mountague, whose reputation as a logomachist and a scholar stood equally high’, an ardent combatant into the arena. The pedantry and controversial character of the writings of the time will both be found to, receive some illustration in the following brief extracts :— “These are your flourishes and preludia. Hitherto. your Rorarii have played to entertain the Reader with some slight skirmishes a little before the bickering; now, at the last, res deducta est ad Triarios, the signall is given them in the reere to arise and doe their devoyre*.” Again, with reference to the supposed sanctity of the number ten, he says*:— _ “It may be questioned why David, being to combat with Goliah, chose five smooth stones out of the river. Why a letter was added to Abraham’s name? and where- fore another was taken from Sara’s? Why Abraham, at his interview with God, beginneth with fiftie and goeth down unto, but no further then, Ten? Many such curiosi- ties may be questioned and enquired after; but you phillip off Antiquitie with disdaine ; not alone by underhand injurie (as if that Sinke of Sinne, the Gnosticks, or their accursed branches, xaxod xopaxos Kaxdv Gov, an accursed Egge of an accursed Bird, the Marcosian and Colarbasian Blas- phemers, had bin no other in your opinion than the ap- proved doctors of the primitive times) but with open mouth and disvizored face, you in expresse terms have, as Eusebius writeth of Marcellus of Ancyra, without cause and very ' This feeling was not uncommon at the period, and was shared by many eminent men of a far from controversial spirit. Jebb, in his Life of Nicholas Ferrar, speaks of commutation as ‘one of those wicked com- positions that are now so frequent.” p. 270. * “Very sharp the nib of his pen and much gall in his ink, against those who opposed him,” was Fuller’s dictum respecting our author, ‘ * Mountague’s Diatribe (edit. of 162 I), p. 284. 4 Ibid. p. 261. III. | CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. 75 idly (out of, not fierie Zeale, but puffed Vanitie) vented despight against the servants of God, and those none of the ordinary ones neyther, but such as were of chief renowne in the church, and well reputed of by all, for goodly life and conversation.” | | Possibly the reader will feel less concern at Selden’s levity in “phillipping”’ off antiquity, when he hears how antiquity was sometimes dragged into the argument. “Thirdly it was Hercules who first of all taught the people of that country so to honour God, and first of all established that Religious Dutie, both by practice and pre- cept in Evander’s time. For, Amphitryoniades qua tempestate Juvencos Egerat e stabulis, O Erythrea, tuis, returning with the conquered spoil of Geryon, out of Spaine into Italy, unto Evander his ancient Oast, @ves rots Peots Tav Nadpwr tiv Oexatynyv, offered the Tenth part (accord- ing to the ancient custom of Greece) of the spoyles unto the gods, sayth Halicarnassus. Which being Addupa, spoyles, in regard of Geryon, from whom he had taken them in Spaine, were in his owne intent yaptaTnpia, offerings of thanksgiving, for the restoring of his goods and cattell, diminished by the theft of Cacus, who had taken away part of his Oxen. Then, at that time, Inventori Patri Aram dedicavit. And upon that Ara called Maxima, sacrificed the Tenth of his cattell, by way of thanksgiving, Hidem Inventori Patri’.” 1 Mountague’s Diatribe (edit. of 1621), p. 433- Influences on character. Milton. a NN I 0 A TA | CHAPTER III (continued). | | INFLUENCE OF CAMBRIDGE STUDIES DISCERNIBLE IN THE CHARACTER AND WRITINGS OF DISTINGUISHED GRADU- ATES DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. } Part II. Influence on Character and Thought. From those more superficial traits which we have noted, let us proceed to those deeper influences to be recognized i character and in thought. And here it is necessary at the outset to bear in mind, that arguments founded on any inferences thus drawn require to be very clearly and deci- sively substantiated. With reference to minds of a pecu- liarly subjective character, it is, indeed, often impossible to assert the effects of circumstances, which it would be only reasonable to suppose would materially influence those of a less self-sustained order. In the case of Milton, for in- stance, beyond the culture of his classical taste, there is little reason for supposing that Cambridge did much to- wards moulding his character, or, if so, it would appear to be quite as much by the development of antagonistic as of sympathetic feelings. Facts would seem to indicate that his differences with the college authorities, his native inde- pendence of spirit, his Puritan sympathies, and his noble scorn of the frivolities and vice which prevailed around him, combined to produce rather a spirit of antagonism 4 ¥ § CHAP. IIL] INFLUENCE OF CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. 77 towards than of acquiescence in the training he underwent’, “ His soul was like a star and dwelt apart,’ not only in the time of his old age and his blindness, but also in the purity and self-reliance of his youth. Hear, for instance, how in his twenty-third year, he could discourse of temperance and study, amid those who had known his life and habits as their associate and fellow-student for some seven years; the lady in Comus speaks not in words more wise or more chaste :— “Tf, by living modestly and temperately, we choose rather to tame the first impulses of fierce youth by reason and persevering constancy in study, preserving the hea- venly vigour of the mind, pure and untouched from all contagion and stain, it would be incredible, my hearers, to us looking back after a few years, what a space we should seem to have traversed, what a huge sea of learning to have over-navigated with placid voyage....If from boy- hood we allow no day to pass without its lessons and dili- gent study, if in art we wisely omit what is foreign, super- fluous, useless, certainly, within the age of Alexander the Great, we shall have made a greater and more glorious conquest than that of the globe; and so far shall we be from accusing the brevity of life, or the fatigue of know- ledge, that I believe we should be readier, like him of old, 1 His lines to his friend Diodati, written from London during the second year of his Cambridge course, are familiar to most readers : “Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum, Nec dudum vetiti me laris angit amor.” In the same letter he speaks of the “hoarse murmur of the schools.” He can no longer endure ‘“‘duri minas perferre magistri Ceteraque ingenio non subeunda meo,” : 78 INFLUENCE OF — [CHAP. to weep and sob de there remained no more worlds for us to triumph over’. There is, again, not the slightest evidence, that his in- tercourse with his tutor ever assumed that confidential and intimate character observable in the case of students like Nicholas Ferrar, D’Ewes, and Matthew Robinson; on the contrary, there is reason to suppose that the religious influ- ences to which they were, in this relation, subjected, were no part of the experience of John Milton, and consequently that we miss the effects of certain associations, to the import- ance of which we have already adverted. ‘Throughout the whole range of his writings, we have sought in vain for a single passage which would seem to imply that his lofty nature ever condescended to acknowledge that it owed any great debt of gratitude to the nurture which it had received amid the routine of college discipline and the influences of academic life. However reluctantly, it would seem, there- fore, that we must forego that thrill of pride with which we should delight to trace, in the productions of the genius — of John Milton, the fostering and guiding influence of his university career. Let it suffice us that we can yet point — to his name upon the roll, that he walked our streets, wore our garb, and pursued our studies, and bequeathed to these, the scenes of his pure early manhood and his most ardent aspirations, a reputation greater than they could confer’. 1 College Exercises, No, VII. delivered in College Chapel, 1631. (Eno Masson’s Life, p. 272.) * For a very just criticism on the rare type of Milton’s genius, we may refer the reader to Mr Masson’s work, p. 281. It will, of course, be under- stood that we in no way wish to undervalue the undoubted effects of his classical studies on his writings. But as a classical student he a again to have been superior even to his University. ‘‘He was,” says Mr Hallam, ‘perhaps the first writer who eminently possessed a genuine discernment and feeling of antiquity.” Milton’s estimate of the system of classical education in his time was 11. | CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. () But while in the long line of Cambridge eraduates Gp areas the seventeenth century, there was but one Milton, there “vines. were not a few who, though they possessed not his genius and force of character, might compare with him without disadvantage in singleness of purpose and a holy life. Of a particular class among these we would now speak, recog- nising them as a distinct school of religious thought, and a legitimate growth of the Cambridge training of that day; a class of thinkers inured to habits of close reasoning and subtle distinctions by the study of Aristotle and the logi- cians; to lofty and glowing philosophic speculation by the oft perusal of Plato and Cicero, of Plotinus and Porphyry; and taught to cultivate a deeply reverential spirit, in mat- ters of religious belief, by the example of such writers as Augustine and Chrysostom. Of the general charac- teristics of this school we will endeavour now to give a ‘an echo of the complaints of -Ascham. ‘‘We do amiss to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much Latin and Greek as might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one year.” With respect to the general tendencies of the whole system of university training, he has also expressed himself in language equally uncomplimen- tary: ‘And for the usual method of teaching arts, I deem it to be an’ old error of universities, not yet well recovered from the scholastic gross- ness of barbarous ages, that instead of beginning with arts most easy— and those be such as are most obvious to the sense—they present their young unmatriculated novices at first coming with the most intellective abstractions of logic and metaphysics, so that they, having but newly left those grammatic flats and shallows where they stuck unreasonably to learn a few words with lamentable construction, and now on the sudden trans- ported under another climate, to be tossed and turmoiled with their unbal- lasted wits in fathomless arid unquiet deeps of controversy, do for the most part grow into hatred and contempt of learning, mocked and deluded all this while with ragged notions and babblements, while they expected worthy and delightful knowledge...... And these,” he adds (after enume- rating the divers miscarriages of students in after life) “are the fruits of misspending our prime youth at schools and universities as we do, either in learning mere words, or such things chiefly as were better unlearned.” Tractate on Education. Puritan sym- vathies of late iistorians. 80 INFLUENCE OF [ CHAP. brief sketch, reserving for subsequent notice that especi- ally philosophic section which was destined to become so famous’. ‘he historians of this period, who have during the last twenty years principally obtained the public ear, have so uniformly and strenuously espoused the Puritan cause, that it becomes necessary at the outset to endeavour to recall our- selves to a somewhat more impartial view of the motives and feelings by which each party was actuated. It has been the fashion with these writers to treat the religious peculiarities of the one party with particular tenderness, and those of the other with particular contempt. The man- nerism of the Puritan, his sombre garb, closely cut hair, un- starched linen, nasal twang, and ludicrous nomenclature, have been touched with light and lenient hand; while the minor traits of the Anglican party, of which Laud is selected as the representative, have been treated with un- sparing ridicule. An unprejudiced student of this portion of our history will probably decline to adopt, in either case, an exclusively panegyristic tone. ‘The satirist’s de- scription of the Puritans, as ‘*A sect whose chief devotion lies In odd perverse antipathies,” will appear to him a very imperfect portraiture. He will recognise the elements of moral grandeur discernible in the Puritan character, its persistent energy, heroic endu-. rance, hatred of oppression, and deeply religious feeling. Nor, on the other hand, will he allow to pass unobserved — i the equally heroic sense of duty which actuated many of the Anglican party, or fail to pay a fitting meed of respect to that fervour of devotion which, in matters of religious 1 In tracing to the effects of their Cambridge training the growth of the Anglican school in the University during this period, I am well aware : that nothing can more tend to bring into ridicule all theorizing in questions III. ] CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. 81 ceremonial and observance, led them to guard from profa- nation, as dearer than life itself, each sacred rite, however apparently unimportant, that bound them, by the holiest associations, to that which they esteemed to be the crown- ing service of their spiritual life. Of the school of writers to which we have above ad- verted, a recent illustration is supplied in Mr Masson’s Mz Masson's volume*; and the following passage, though written in a tone of studied impartiality, sufficiently indicates the point of view from which the writer has surveyed the question:— “¢ All that I laboured for in this particular,’ he (Laud) said afterwards, when charged on his trial with introducing Popish and superstitious ceremonies into the worship of the Church of England, ‘was that the external worship of God in this Church might be kept up in uniformity and decency, and in some beauty of holiness.’ This phrase, ‘beauty of holiness,’ was a favourite one with Laud...... Picking the phrase out for himself, or finding it already selected for him, he seems to have delighted in using it | to describe his ideal of the Church. If there is ever a touch of poetry in Laud’s language, it is when he uses this phrase or one of its equivalents. One seems to see a peculiar relish of his lips in the act of pronouncing it. of this kind than the attempt to claim as the result of a system a reputation which may be very far from owing its formation to the circumstances of any stage of its development. Mr Buckle, for instance, derides, and we think with some justice, the ‘‘ exquisite simplicity”? which leads the bio- grapher of Ken to imply that Chillingworth derived his tolerant principles from Oxford. (See History of Civilization, Vol.1. 319, note.) But in reference to the school of which we are now speaking we may note (1) frequent inter- course of its members with each other ; (2) direct acknowledgment in their writings of the influence of their College career ; (3) a similarity in thought and feeling too marked to admit the theory that it was in any way fortui- tous or owing to impressions external to the University. 1 Life of Milton, pp. 344—5. - ; M. 6 82 INFLUENCE OF [CHAP. What it meant in his application is generally known. It meant that, as in all ages it had been deemed advantageous for the maintaining of religion among men to represent it as far as possible in tangible object and institution, in daily custom, and in periodical fast and festival, so there should be an effort to increase and perfect at that time in England the sensuous and ceremonious aids to worship.. It meant that there should be greater uniformity in times and seasons, in fish during Lent, and in the observance of saints’ days. It meant that there should be a survey of the decayed cathedrals and churches throughout the land, with a view to their repair and comely maintenance. It meant that, more than hitherto, these edifices and all appertaining to them should be treated as holy objects, not to be seen or touched without obeisance, and worthy of all the seemliness that religious art could bestow upon them. Thus, in the ‘beauty of holiness’ there were included not only the walls and external fabrics of the sacred edifices, but also their internal decorations and furniture— the paintings, the carved images, the great organ, the crucifixes, the candlesticks; the crimson and blue and yellow of the stained glass windows; consecrated vessels for the holy communion, with consecrated knives and napkins; and, even in the humblest parish churches, the sweetest cleanliness, at least, the well-kept desks of oak, the stone baptismal font, the few conspicuous squares of white and black marble, and, above all, the decent rail separating the communion-table from the rest of the in- terior. Moreover, and very specially, the priests as being men holy in their office by derivation from the Apostles, were to see to the expression of this in their vestments, and — chiefly in the pure white surplices enjoined to be worn — on the more solemn occasions of sacred service. Then, there was symbolical holiness also in the appointed ges- HEY] CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. 83 tures both of the minister and the people—the standing up at the Creed, the kneeling at the Communion, the bowing at the name of Jesus. All this and much more was included in that ‘beauty of holiness’ which Laud de- sired to uphold and restore in England.” Such is the representation which a writer, whose sym- pathies are very far from being enlisted on the side of the Anglican party, puts forward of their views and feel- ings in reference to those questions of religious ritual which precipitated the open warfare of the time. But though proceeding from no friendly hand, we believe it may yet, for argument’s sake, be accepted without in any way in- volving the imputation which the writer intended to con- vey. It is evident that such observances could have in themselves but little merit; they must be estimated by the more important traits of character with which they _ were associated, and the actuating spirit in which they were made. What then, we would ask, were really the leading motives of the Anglican party at this period? Was it the case, as some writers would wish us to believe, _ that the importance which they attached to matters of ritual was only one mode of testifying their desire to return within the pale of the Church of Rome, and to undo all that the Reformation had done? Is it true that, engrossed in ceremonial observances, they forgot the spirit of their great Exemplar, and that while they paid tithe of mint and of cummin, they neglected the weightier matters of the law? Is it true of them asa party, that charity was lost in bigotry, forbearance towards those who differed from them in an uncompromising policy, and that all toleration, moderation, and generosity, took refuge among the sterner spirits of the party to which they were opposed ? If we can adduce strong reasons for believing the con- trary, from our observations in the limited but important 6—2 Anglican school at Cam- bridge. Jeremy Taylor. “84 _- INFLUENCE OF [CHAP. field to which our task confines us, the injustice of select- ing such aman as Laud as a type of his party will be manifest. Let us endeavour then for a time to divest ourselves of all previous bias, and to take a dispassionate view of the great Anglican party as represented by those eminent men who adorned our University at this period. Let us try to put ourselves in their position, and enter into the prin- ciples by which it would seem they were actuated; let us mark the fruit of those principles as it appears in their characters, their writings, and their lives; and we shall then be able more adequately to estimate the merits of a class of men whose retiring virtues and unostentatious lives have failed to offer a sufficiently tempting theme for eulogium to the picturesque historian. “The annals of the English Church,” says a writer whose labours in this field entitle him to speak with no small authority’, “do not, throughout all its period, present a galaxy more resplendent than the admirable band of men united by close sympathies and common views in matters of fa th and practice, who adorned the university of Cam- bridge at that period. Indeed, were a synod of the wise and good to be imagined by the glowing fancy of an ardent visionary, which should unite the widest range of learning with the richest eloquence, and the most com- prehensive Christian philanthropy with every holier grace of personal character, could it be better bodied forth than in Taylor, Mede, More, Whichcote, Rust, Worthington and Smith?’ Of these the first 1s the best known to fame. Born at Cambridge, and among the earliest of those who received their education at the Perse Grammar School, Jeremy Taylor, was entered as a sizar at Caius — 1 Crossley’s edition of Worthington’s Diary, published by the Chetham Society. . . : un]: : CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. 85. in his fourteenth year’. Respecting his university life and academic successes We possess very scanty informa- tion, but his works exhibit abundant proof of that intimate acquaintance with the Aristotelian logic which one of his biographers informs us he possessed’. His progress in theology was such that he was admitted into holy orders before he had completed his twenty-first year. The fame of his pulpit oratory in London, soon after, attracted the attention of Laud, who sent for him to preach in his own hearing at Lambeth. The archbishop was so well pleased with what he saw and heard of the young divine, that he did not rest until he had obtained for him a fellowship in All Souls’, Oxford; to obtain this, Laud appears to have had recourse to somewhat arbitrary measures, but: whatever unpopularity might have resulted from thence to the newly-elected fellow, was obviated by the charm of his personal demeanour and high character; Sheldon, the warden of the College, who had opposed his election, be- came afterwards one of his firmest friends. It was during his residence at Oxford that Taylor’s friendship with a Franciscan friar, known by the name of Francis & Sancta Clara, led to the report that he had secretly embraced the tenets of the Church of Rome; an accusation which will scarcely now be deemed worthy of serious refutation. It is foreign to our purpose to follow the career of this eminent man through the vicissitudes of his eventful life. We find him now among those who gathered round the king at Oxford, and it was there that by the royal com- mand his defence of Episcopalianism was given to the world ; we find him next a prisoner, his living sequestrated, his funds exhausted, penning his Liberty of Prophesying, perhaps the finest of his productions, unaided save by the 1 Aug. 18, 1626. 2 Lloyd’s Memowrs, p. 702. His “ Apology for the Litur- gy.” 86 _ INFLUENCE OF [CHAP. stores of learning which he had made inalienably his own; again we trace him, for a few years, to the sylvan solitudes- of Golden Grove, officiating as the private chaplain of Lord Carbery, one of the most estimable of those noblemen who adhered to the royalist party; again he appears as the correspondent and bosom friend of that pattern of the English gentleman, John Evelyn; then once more in con- finement at Chepstow; and now as a missionary to the wild natives who dwelt amid the solemn grandeur of the scenery of Lough Neagh; and finally, on the restoration of monarchy, ending his days in the exile of an Irish bishop-— ric, winning alike the laity and the hostile clergy of his diocese by his exemplary virtues and faithful discharge of the duties of his office. : It was while resident at Golden Grove’ that Taylor published his Apology for the Liturgy. “In such a state of things,”’ says one of his biographers’, “it is no slight proof of Taylor’s loyalty and courage that he produced this work, which openly tends to degrade the Directory by a com- parison of it with the noble liturgy of the Church of Eng- land; and that he prefixed his name to it, with a reprint of his dedication to the King.” Few, we imagine, could peruse the following passage, written in a time of danger and distress, when the pulpits of the Church of England were filled by a motley herd, unanimous in little but hatred of her ancient ritual and comprehensive teachings, when the trooper’s iron heel clanked rudely in her sacred aisles, when Presbyterianism itself was persecuted in turn as too moderate and tolerant a belief,—without a feeling of some- thing like respect, if not of sympathy, for that “beauty of — holiness” which Laud had striven to uphold. “TI shall only crave leave that I may remember Jeru- 1 1649. 2 Hughes’ Life of Jeremy Taylor, p. 36. 111. ] CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. «87 salem, and call to mind the pleasures of the temple, the order of her services, the beauty of her buildings, the sweetness of her songs, the decency of her ministrations, the assiduity of her priests and Levites, the daily sacrifice, and that eternal fire of devotion, that went not out by day nor by night. These were the pleasures of our peace; and there is a remanent felicity in the very memory of those spiritual delights, which we then enjoyed as ante- pasts of heaven and consignations to an immortality of joys. And it may be so again, when it shall please God, who hath the heart of all princes in his hands, and turneth them as the rivers of water; and when men will consider the invaluable loss that is consequent, and the danger of sin that is appendant, upon the destroying of such forms of discipline and devotion, in which God was purely worshiped and the church was edified, and the people instructed to great degrees of piety, knowledge and de- votion.”’ If such were the sentiments of the party with which The sentiments chool. Taylor was identified, it can be no great matter for surprise that they regarded with deeply wounded feelings those open indecencies (for they deserve no better name), in which, as we have already seen, the Puritan party thought fit to indulge; that, as they found their devotions broken by the irreverence of those around, their ceremonial stig- matised by contempt, as they heard the coarse invectives uttered from the pulpit, and their own exquisite liturgy supplanted by impromptu and often painfully ludicrous effu- sions in prayer’, their affection, for ritual and liturgy alike, was but confirmed, and that, being driven to energetic action to guard them from contempt, they came at last to transfer to these a value which men will never fail to 1 See The Phenix, Vol. 11. 503. Joseph Mede. 88 INFLUENCE OF | [CHAP, attach to what, however unimportant in itself, they have once seriously devoted themselves to defend. ‘There are those to whom such feeling respecting matters of cere- monial and ritual appears misplaced, because they fail to take into account the great law of association. To the Anglican none of those things were indifferent which he associated with religious worship. Viewed in their abstract merits there would seem little to choose between the closely cut hair of Laud and that of the Puritan soldier; between four surplices at All-Hallow’s eve and the absence of starch in every-day attire; between a solemn observance of ap- pointed fasts and a solemn antipathy to plum-pudding and Christmas festivity. While if, on the one hand, to the imprudence of Laud must be attributed that open hostility to which the Puritan party were driven, it is equally certain that to the violence and excesses of the Puritans must be referred much of the uncompromising tenacity evinced by the Anglican party in matters which we cannot regard as essential. Next to Taylor comes Mede, one of the same school of religious thought, but possessing abilities of a far less brilliant order, and whose life, spent and ended within the quiet retreat of Christ’s College, presents a striking con- trast to that of his divin aripatied contemporary. Like Taylor he obtained the patronage of Laud, to whom he was chaplain, though the appointment involved neither duty nor stipend. His name acquires some additional in- terest from the fact that he was fellow and tutor of his college during Milton’s residence there, and the two must have been known to each other, though there is no evi- dence that they came much into contact. All the accounts of Mede agree in representing him as a man of singularly benevolent and gentle spirit. As a tutor he appears to have won the confidence of his pupils to an unusual extent, IIT. | CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. 89 and the following account by his biographer of his method of tuition, is an interesting illustration of the period :— “After he had by daily lectures well grounded his pupils Mis system of in Humanity, Logic and Philosophy, and by frequent con- versation understood to what particular studies their parts might be most profitably applied, he gave them his advice accordingly ; and when they were able to go alone, he chose rather to set every one his daily task than constantly to confine himself and them to precise hours for lectures. In the evening they all came to his chamber, to satisfy him that they had performed the task he had set them. The first question which he used then to propound to every one in his order, was ‘ Quid dubitas?’ (for he supposed that to doubt nothing and to understand nothing were verifiable alike). Their doubts being propounded, he resolved their queries, and so set them upon clear ground to proceed more distinctly; and then, having by prayer commended them and their studies to God’s protection and _ bless- ing, he dismissed them to their lodgings.” Like many His studies in of his contemporaries, Mede was given to a somewhat wp mystic interpretation of Scripture, and his great work, the Clavis Apocalyptica’, is still a book of some authority with 1 In common with many other writers on the subject, Mede was tempted to carry his efforts at interpretation to an undue extent. Thus he was wont to predict the troublous times which were approaching, but which he did not live to behold (he died in 1638), from the text in Judges iii. 20, ** And the land had rest fourscore years,” dating his calculation from the accession of Elizabeth. He considered also that the outpouring of the fourth vial had a direct. reference to the King of Sweden. It was similarly a point of Mountague’s attack upon Selden that the latter had presumed to censure men ‘‘ who take upon them confidently to dare tell us the mystery of the number of the beast, 666, and to finde oute that Antichrist the Sonne of Perdition, by the letters Numerall that must be found in his name.” (Diatribe, p.284.) Compare also the treatment in a sermon by John Smith of Queens’, entitled The Discourse of Prophesie. Worthington. John Smith of Queens’. 90 INFLUENCE OF [CHAP. writers on prophecy. His life, by Worthington, at the commencement of the folio edition of his works, is a grace- ful tribute from an admiring and sympathising friend, and the works themselves, which were left in what appeared to be a hopeless labyrinth of manuscript, are a monument of editorial skill. Worthington, who was educated at Emmanuel, and afterwards elected to the mastership of Jesus, was a man of similar views and of kindred spirit. His diary, published by the Chetham Society, is valuable as a record of the period, though generally too meagre to be of great interest. As a moving spirit in the University, his influence was perhaps little inferior to that of any of his contemporaries ; he was personally known and beloved by nearly all the eminent men of his school, and his generous nature de- lighted in the recognition of their virtues and talents while they lived, and in rescuing their writings from oblivion when they themselves were no more. “In him,” says his editor, “ Henry More delighted to recognise aspirations as pure, a spirit as unworldly, and benevolence as expansive as his own.”’ John Smith, another of this illustrious band, was also originally a student at Emmanuel, but afterwards a fellow of Queens’. He died at the early age of thirty-five. His sermons, published after his death, are accompanied by some account of the author from the pen of Worthington, which, though more succinct than his sketch of Mede, gives us the impression of a man of far higher powers than the amiable tutor of Christ’s'. The sermons themselves, originally ad- dressed to the audience of a college chapel, are of a very high order; the learning they display is that of no mere 1 “‘T know nothing but that Quarto extant. He was a very good man and a good scholar.” Henry More, Letter XIII. p. 359. III. ] CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. 91 pedant; the reasoning is admirably sustained, and the lan- guage singularly clear and vigorous’. The volume also con- tains the funeral sermon? preached on the occasion of the author's death, by Patrick, one of the junior fellows of the college. The intrinsic evidence of these sermons, combined with the testimony of Worthington and Patrick, would lead us to infer that in their author’s premature decease the University sustained no ordinary loss. ‘He was,” says Worthington, “one whom I knew for many years, not only when he was fellow of Queens’ College, but when a student in Emmanuel, where his early piety and his remembering his Creator in those days of his youth, as also his excellent improvement in the choicest parts of learning, endeared him to many, particularly to his careful tutor, then fellow of Emmanuel, afterwards provost of King’s, Dr Whichcote.” ......‘‘ He was a follower and imitator of God in purity and holiness, in benignity, goodness and love, a love enlarged as God’s love is, whose goodness overflows and spreads itself to all.......Religious he was, but without any vain- gloriousness and ostentation; not so much a talking or a disputing, as a living, a doing and an obeying Christian ; one inwardly acquainted with the simplicity and power of’ godliness, but no admirer of the Pharisaic forms and sanc- 1 “ He addressed himself,” says Professor Maurice, ‘‘ more directly to the assertion of an actual and real righteousness both in God and man, op- posing the tendency which he traced in the Calvinistic divines of his day to set up an artificial righteousness which could never satisfy the Divine Truth or man’s need of truth.” Moral and Met. Phil. p. 349. 2 In all the literature of this period with which I am acquainted I have not met with a more pathetic production than this funeral sermon. ‘The artistic skill is not great, but there is an expression of genuine feeling throughout, with an occasional outbreak of honest grief which produces an effect above all art. Patrick felt he had lost a kind friend, and the college a wise counsellor, and he was not ashamed to show how he felt the loss, 92 _ INFLUENCE OF [CHAP. timonious shows (though never so goodly and precious), which cannot and do not affect the adult and strong Chris- tians, though they may and do those that are unskilful and weak.” ‘He loved an ingenuous and sober freedom of spirit, the generous Benesatitiee temper and practice (agreeable to the Apostle’s prudent and faithful advice), of proving all things and holding fast that which is good.” “Tn a word,” says Patrick, (the mannerism of the time showing with singular effect amid the simple earnestness of his discourse) “he was BuBdtoOnKn tus euryuyos Kat wepiratoiv pouceioy, as Kusebius speaks of Longinus, a living library, better than that which he hath given to our College, and a walking study that carried his learning about with him. I never got so much good among all my books by a whole day’s plodding in a study, as by an hour’s discourse I have got with him.” And then, after a passage of deep emotion, which seems to have found a response throughout his whole auditory, he adds :— ‘“‘Tt grieved me in my thoughts that there should be so many orphans left without a father, a society left naked without one of her best guardians and chieftains, her very chariots and horsemen: unto whose instruction and brave. conduct not a few of us will acknowledge that they owe much of their skill and ability.” The following sentiments from one of Smith’s sermons, will speak for themselves :— “To seek our Divinity merely in Books and Writings is to seek the living among the dead; we doe but in vain seek God many times in these where is Truth too often not so much enshrined as entombed: no, intra te quere Deum ; seek for God within thine own soul; he is best discerned voepa& érrapy, as Plotinus phraseth it, by an intellectual touch of him,” yi} CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. 93 And again, “But yet this knowledge being a true heavenly fire kindled from God’s own altar, begets an undaunted courage in the souls of good men, and enables them to cast an holy scorn upon the poor petty trash of this life in comparison with divine things, and to pitty those poor brutish Epicu- reans that have nothing but the meer husks of fleshly pleasure to feed themselves with. This sight of God makes pious souls breathe after that blessed time when Mortality shall be swallowed up of life, when they shall no more behold the Divinity through those dark mediums that eclipse the blessed sight of it*.” It is easy to discern, even in these brief extracts, the influence of the Platonic philosophy of his friend Cudworth, ‘for whom,” says Worthington, “he had always a great affection and respect.” Inferior to none of his school in purity of character and disinterestedness of purpose was George Rust, after- wards bishop of Dromore. The story of his life is at once so simple and yet interesting that its introduction here will scarcely require an apology. That life, until within. nine years of its termination, had been passed within the walls of his college, and would, it seemed in all probability, there find its close. But this was not to be. After the Restoration, Taylor had, as we have seen, been nominated to an Irish bishopric, and foreseeing that a vacancy was likely to occur in the deanery of Connor, of which he was patron, he intimated to his friends at Cambridge his wish that they would offer the appointment, on his behalf, to some suitable person. The offer was made to Rust. Rust does not appear to have been personally acquainted with 1 Sermon on The true Way or Method of attaining to Divine Know- ledge. . Rust. 94 INFLUENCE OF [CHAP. Taylor, but the prospect of co-operation with one for whom he had already conceived an enthusiastic admiration, in- duced him readily to accede to the proposal. Forsaking his retired life at Christ’s College, he proceeded without delay to the distant wilds of Connor. In Taylor he soon discovered a kindred spirit, and an appreciative friend; the cordial intercourse which was thus. commenced, was only terminated by the Bishop’s death in 1667, six years after Rust first landed at Dublin. It fell to the survivor's lot to offer, in a touching and eloquent discourse, the last sad tribute of sorrow and esteem over his friend’s grave. The bishopric which Taylor had held was divided at his death, and Rust succeeded to the part which now constituted the bishopric of Dromore. He survived his friend but little more than three years, when he was carried off by a fever, “to the unspeakable grief,” says Glanvil, “of all that knew his worth, and especially of such of them as had been blest by his friendship, and most sweet and endear- ing conversation. He was buried in the quire of his own cathedral church of Dromore, in a vault made for his pre- decessor, bishop Taylor, whose sacred dust is deposited also there; and what dormitory hath two such tenants?” To the same writer we are indebted for this further sketch: “‘He was a person with whom I had the honour and hap- piness of a very particular acquaintance; a man he was of a clear mind, a deep judgment and searching wit; greatly learned in all the best sorts of knowledge, old and new, a thoughtful and diligent enquirer, of a free understanding and vast capacity, joined with singular modesty and un- usual sweetness of temper, which made him the darling of all who knew him. He was a person of great piety and generosity; a hearty lover of God and men; an excellent preacher, a wise governor, a profound philosopher, a quick, forcible and close reasoner, and above all, a true and ex- 111. | CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. 95 emplary Christian.” Such praise from such a source needs no comment. There is something sad and yet heroic in the closing scene of the lives of these two great men, whose ashes now rest side by side in the cathedral church of Dromore. Severed from the England which they loved, far away from those stores of learning and that intercourse with kindred spirits which they had so dearly prized, sur- rounded by a half barbarous race, a laity indifferent to their efforts, and a Calvinistic clergy who held moodily and suspiciously aloof, they cheered each other by the in- terchange of Christian sympathy and ennobling thought, and, in the meek but faithful discharge of the high duties of their office, thus lived and thus died. The Discourse of Truth, from the preface to which (by Glanvil) the foregoing extracts have been taken, is now scarcely known to us by name, nor does it seem quite to bear out Rust’s reputation; but as an indication of the new spirit which was beginning to be infused into philoso- phical enquiry it is not unworthy of perusal. It contains a vigorous protest against the Calvinistic doctrine of pre- destination, and the student, we think, will scarcely fail to perceive in it a kind of foreshadowing of Dr Clarke’s celebrated theory respecting the eternal relations of things as constituting the great laws of right and wrong”. As the founder of the Cambridge school of philosophy with which he stands identified, the name of Henry More is sufficiently known to posterity, but his life and character, apart from his writings, seem to afford additional evidence for our present purpose. Like Mede he passed his life in 1 Tt seems not improbable that in this short essay Rust is endeavouring to combat the language of Descartes. The philosophy of the latter was far from Amrminian in its character, and the language of Rust would seem to have reference to certain passages in his works, Cf. Hallam, 11. | PB» 459. Rust’s “ Dis- course of Truth.” Henry More. 96 | INFLUENCE OF » [omar the seclusion of his college, and like him was distinguished for his blameless character and kindliness of spirit. ‘ In 1642,” says Dr Whewell, “he resigned the rectory of Ingoldsby, in Lincolnshire, soon after he had been pre-— sented to it by his father, who had bought the advowson of it for his son. This living, at a later period, he con- ferred upon his friend Worthington; and at his death eave the advowson to the college. In 1675, he accepted a prebend in the church of Gloucester, being collated to it by one of his admirers, but soon after resigned it to Dr Fowler, on whom it was conferred at his request; this being, it was supposed, the view with which he had ac- Cepted. Ib,"s),- er. During the civil wars and the common- wealth he was not interrupted in his studious retirement, although he had made himself obnoxious by constantly refusing to take the covenant’,” Philosophy and a con- templative existence appear to have been the aim and end of his desires; he even declined the mastership of his college, and on one occasion, his biographer tells us, when a bishopric had been obtained for him without his know- ledge by his friends, and they had brought him to White- hall to kiss the king’s hand, as an act of homage on his preferment to the new dignity, ‘‘when he understood the business, he was not on any account to be persuaded to it*.” THis life, by Ward, has preserved to us many traits of his noble and ingenuous character. ‘His very chamber-door was a hospital to the needy.’ Of his humility, we are told, “never did any man carry that important point higher than he did.” ‘He was profoundly pious, and yet without all sourness, superstition or melancholy*.” “Ido verily believe,” says his biographer’, “that never any man 1 Whewell, History of Moral Philosophy, p. 67. 2 More’s Life, by Dr Richard Ward, p. 59. 3 Ibid. p. 119. 4 Ibid. p. 235, ILI. | CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. 97 that was not more than human, had truer and more ex- alted apprehensions of the Divine Nature than he had; deeper and more sincere passions of love and of honour towards it; or, what is consequent upon this, a more triumphant joy and satisfaction in it.” Of the catholicity of spirit which pervaded this school, a better proof can scarcely be given than the intimate friendship which subsisted between the celebrated Dr Whichcot, for some time Provost of King’s’, and several whichcot. of its most distinguished members. Smith and Worthing- ton were his pupils; Mede, More, and Cudworth, his per- sonal friends. It is certain, however, that though he in- clined to the Platonic school in philosophy, Whichcot must have been at direct variance with these eminent men ‘with respect to some of the leading questions of religious controversy in his day. He was himself distinguished as one of the founders of that new school which began to flourish with the latter part of the century, and which, under the name of “ Latitudinarianism,”’ was strongly op- _ posed to many of the views and teachings of the Anglican party. The modern distinction of “ High” and “Low” Church, will, in fact, represent pretty accurately the main differences that must have existed between Whichcot and his Anglican friends. Richard Baxter, to whom he was well known, numbers him among “the best and wisest - of the nonconformists’;” and it was even asserted that he had taken the covenant’, but to this statement Tillotson gave a public and direct denial* 1 Whichcot was deprived of his Provostship at the Restoration. He died while on a visit at the house of his friend Cudworth (then master of Christ’s College) in 1683, aged 74. 2 Dyer’s Hist. of the Univ. of Cambridge, I. 355. 3 Rose’s Biograph. Dict. 4 Tillotson’s Funeral Sermon for Dr Whichcot. M. 7 98 INFLUENCE OF [CHAP. It would be a matter of little difficulty to considerably extend our list of the distinguished men of the Anglican school who adorned our University during the seventeenth century, but the extent of our subject requires that with two more instances we should bring our account to a close; instances of men, who, unlike those whom we have already named, passed but a small portion of their life within the range of Cambridge influences, and went forth into the world to submit the principles which they had formed to the severer tests afforded by a more varied and exciting experience. We are indebted to the researches of a dis- tinguished member of our University for the publication of two memoirs, those of Nicholas Ferrar and Matthew Robinson, which, both from their own merits and the edi- torial skill with which they have been given to the world, are valuable illustrations of the period under our consider- ation. Of the lives of these two remarkable men we must content ourselves with presenting only a brief outline, and refer the reader to the original sources for the admirable portraitures which they contain. Nicholas Nicholas Ferrar, the son of a wealthy India merchant, was born in London in the year 1592. He early evinced considerable intelligence, and at school his remarkable powers of memory rendered his progress unusually rapid. In his thirteenth year he was entered at Clare Hall, where his acquirements and unassuming piety so attracted the attention and admiration of the whole college that, though entered as a pensioner, the fellows, Dr Jebb informs us, “would soon after needs have him Fellow-Commoner,”’ that he might be their companion. ‘Too severe application to his studies brought on a state of health which, combined with frequent attacks of ague, for which malady Cam- bridge had at that time an unenviable notoriety, induced his medical adviser to recommend that he should leave the III] CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. 99 University for a while to travel on the Continent. If we add to these characteristics that, in his younger days, he kept “a small pack of beagles, with which he usually hunted once per week ;’”? that he “never wanted a choice gelding of great value for his pleasure in galloping, 111. CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. 105 and a beautiful, curiously going pad for his saddle ;” that he had “a small stud of brood mares, the finest and largest that he could find out.in the whole north ;” that he appears to have considerably augmented his income by horse-deal- ing, and compiled a work on the rearing and management of horses, which nothing but professional considerations prevented him from giving to the world; and, finally, that the charger which carried the Duke of Monmouth at the memorable battle of Bothwell Bridge was bred from the stock of the Rev. Matthew Robinson, Vicar of Burneston,— we have perhaps said enough to show that the Puritan lament over the “contemplative idle life” of Ferrar and his household, would, in the present instance, have been totally uncalled for’. Nor do his theological studies appear to have suffered His attention from the attention thus bestowed on more secular pursuits. ‘His annotations on the whole Bible, in two large folios of manuscript, still remain to testify to his labours in this direction; he was a warm supporter in the matter of the publication of Poole’s Synopsis; and a volume, entitled Cassander Reformatus, written with a view to satisfying the scruples of conscientious dissenters, proved the thoughtful earnestness with which he entered into the controversial questions of his day. Matthew Robinson died in the sixty-sixth year of his age. The latter part of his life was a period of almost un- interrupted suffering from an excruciating complaint; his exemplary patience under this affliction, and the tone of unfeigned piety which pervaded those writings wherein he sometimes found a brief oblivion of his pain, sufficiently attested the reality of the religion he professed. 1 Tt is almost unnecessary to observe how unjust it would be to judge these traits by the present standard of opinion. Such recreations involved nothing unbecoming to the clerical profession in the eyes of ordinary ob- servers at that time. See Mr Mayor’s note. Tolerant spirit of the Anglican party. 106 INFLUENCE OF [CHAP. It is obvious that, as a representative of the party to which he was theoretically allied, but little stress can be laid on the character and life of Matthew Robinson. His virtues were of a different order from those which generally distinguished the Anglican and the Platonic schools; he disliked Aristotle, nor is there any evidence that he set much value on Plato. His character, however, is worthy of note, if regarded simply as a contrast. Whatever im- portance we may be disposed to attach to his opinions as a theorist, it is evident that they were mainly formed under the influences of his college life. There are those who regard with small admiration the virtues of a More or a Mede; to whom a life of seclusion and philosophic study appears little better than a timorous repudiation of those duties of active life which it is intended all should share. Without entering upon this question, we may yet oppose to such objectors the character of Matthew Robinson, in evidence that the religious earnestness of Cambridge in those days could find expression in a simple unaffected zeal in the discharge of the duties of a parish priest, as well as in the retirement of academic life and the specula- tions of a philosophic enthusiasm. It is gratifying, in conclusion, to point to one noble trait of character, as common to one and all of those great men whom we have named. While possessing strongly defined convictions of their own, it is not a little to the honour of the great Anglican party, that, in times when controversy.and an appeal to arms had called up all the passions most prejudicial to candour and forbearance, they retained, with but few exceptions, a respect for religious freedom not inferior to that of their opponents; and that they sought to compose the religious differences of their day by a spirit of compromise and forbearance which we may often seek in vain among the polemics of the Puritan 111. | CAMBRIDGE STUDIES. 147 school. We cannot then but enter an emphatic protest against such a method of treatment as that which, after depicting the character of Laud in its most unfavourable light,—exaggerating his public vices and ignoring his private virtues,—deliberately brings forward the darkened portrait thus drawn, as a fitting representation of the moral and intellectual qualities of most of those with whom that prelate was associated. New schools of thought. Descartes. CHAPTER IV. THE CARTESIAN PHILOSOPHY. From those more general characteristics which have formed the subject of the preceding chapter, we must now turn to devote a few pages to a special consideration of that new philosophy which, though of external growth, exerted so marked an effect on the thought of our University towards the latter part of the century, and aided so materially in that revolution in her studies which the close of the century beheld. It is somewhat after the middle of the seventeenth century that we are first able to discern the influence ol two widely dissimilar but not unfriendly schools of thought upon the mental tendencies of the time. The one, the pro- duct of a single intellect, and antagonistic or indifferent to nearly all pre-existing schools; the other, almost equally at variance with the traditional teachings of the day, but a natural development from those classical studies which we have already described. It was in the winter of the year 1619 that a young French officer, pacing the snows of Neuberg on the Danube, the solitary scene of his winter-quarters, fell into a vein o! philosophic speculation, favoured alike by his own genius and the circumstances of his situation. Though a soldier, he was not ignorant of letters. He had studied as a youth at the Jesuit College of La Fléche, and during his stay CHAP. IV.] THE CARTESIAN PHILOSOPHY. 109 had gone through their entire course of literature and phi- losophy. What he had thus learnt had, however, been far from satisfying the requirements of an intellect singularly clear and penetrating, and it was now that he began to ponder on the futility of all the existing systems with which he was acquainted, and the singular disagreements prevalent among mankind respecting alike the methods and the results of scientific investigation. His musings took shape. The true road to knowledge he felt certain had yet to be discovered, and he resolved to lay aside all the notions he had imbibed and commence anew for him- self; to admit nothing as true that he did not clearly per- ceive; and, having satisfied himself of the correctness of a few simple axioms, to proceed much after the manner of the géometers of his day, and submit all his conclusions to the test of a rigid induction. He acted up to his resolu- tion,—devoting his first efforts to a few experiments in mathematics. The ‘discovery of an important mathematical truth, at an early stage in his researches and in an almost accidental manner, convinced him of the correctness of his method, and encouraged by this success he pursued his studies with renewed zeal. He retired from the military profession, and the next nine years of his life were given to travel and observation in different European countries : having arrived at the conclusion that retirement and solitude were indispensable to the realization of his designs, he then betook himself to a secluded village in Holland, where he devoted his whole time and energies to a still more ardent prosecution of his labours, It was here that, in total isolation from his friends (to whom even his place of residence was unknown, though he appears to have maintained some correspondence with them), he submitted to a rigorous analysis those investigations into first prin- ciples which he afterwards embodied in his philosophy, Rapid spread of the Cartesian philosophy. 110 THE CARTESIAN PHILOSOPHY. [CHAP. and in 1637 the Discours de la Methode was given to the world. The defects and merits of this work are now so gene- rally understood that it is unnecessary that we should enter upon any discussion of them here, we shall therefore confine our attention to those points where, in conjunction with the scarcely less celebrated Meditations, we find it operating with most potency as a new element in Cambridge thought. In its immediate effects on men’s minds, the Cartesian philosophy, the great subjective philosophy of the century, far outshone its rival, the objective philosophy of Bacon. At first it would appear to have carried almost by storm the leading intellects of Europe. Arnauld, the eminent Jansenist, after a few objections raised in matters of detail, gave in his hearty adhesion to the doctrines which it incul- cated; he was followed by Pascal, and in the course of the century we find, among fresh adherents, the names of Fenelon, Bossuet, and Descartes’ own pupils Geulinex and Malebranche ; in Holland, the Jew Spinoza proved an able defender of a system from which he afterwards derived still more startling conclusions’; in England, Henry More hastened’ to make common cause with a philosopher who so boldly threw down the gauntlet to the Aristotelian dogma- tists, and whose principles so directly contravened the Epi- curean notions of Hobbes and Gassendi; his antagonism to Hobbes alone sufficed to gain for the new comer the sym- pathies of many who recoiled from those Utilitarian views which that philosopher had so lucidly and unflinchingly put forth; his mathematical discoveries recommended him. to the admiration and gratitude of that scanty but increas-. ing band by whom such studies were cultivated; his doc- trine of the immateriality of the soul was readily embraced 1 Cousin, Hist. Gen. p. 409. IV. | THE CARTESIAN PHILOSOPHY. 111 by many who fancied they recognised therein a confirma- tion ot their faith; while in the Universities, that growing class who were beginning to weary of the ceaseless cavil- ings and endless definitions of the schools, hailed, as a deliverer from a cruel bondage, the leader who pointed the road to certainty by another path than that of verbal nicety, and who refused to fetter his immortal “Cogito ergo sum ’’ with the conditions of Aristotelian acceptance. Nor was his influence confined to philosophers and theologians ; it penetrated every department of literature. In his own country it reached even the ears of humble and illiterate peasants. “The most celebrated French poets of his age, Moliére alone excepted, delighted to quench their thirst at his spiritual fountain, and expounded the mysteries of his system on the notes of their tuneful lyres. When the writ- ings of the illustrious philosopher had wellnigh incurred the displeasure of the Parisian senate, the hostile demon- stration was averted by the burlesque pen of Boileau; and the genius of La Fontaine has left on record the delight with which it was wont to essay the rugged path of the Cartesian philosophy.” So generally was his influence felt that Cousin has affirmed that, from the publication of his Medvtations in 1642 to the end of the century, no philosophical work of any mark appeared which was not either for Descartes or about him. eid, followed by Dugald Stewart, dated the origin of the true philosophy of the mind from the Principia of Descartes rather than from the Organum of Bacon or the Lissay of Locke’; and Condorcet maintained that his illus- 1 * Descartes est parvenu & la psychologie par un chemin qui lui est propre, et, comme nous venons de le voir, il l’a fondée sur des raisons par- faitement nouvelles qui l’autorisent & jamais. Il en est donc l’inventeur parmi nous, et c’est a ce titre qu'il est le veritable pere de la philospphie moderne. Jia philosophie moderne, en effet, date du jour ow la réflexion & Claims of Bacon’s and Descartes’ phi- osophy com- pared. Condorcet’s comparison, Neglect of the Baconian me- thod. 112 THE CARTESIAN PHILOSOPHY. [CHAP. trious countryman, rather than Bacon, was the father of unfettered philosophical enquiry in Europe. “ Bacon,” says this distinguished writer, “though he possessed in a most eminent degree the genius of philosophy, did not unite with it the genius of the sciences; the methods pro- posed by him for the investigation of truth, consisting entirely of precepts he was unable to verify, had little or no effect in accelerating the rate of discovery. ‘That honour was reserved for Descartes, who combined in himself the characteristic endowments of both his predecessors. If, in the physical sciences, his march be less sure than that of Galileo; if his logic be less cautious than that of Bacon ; yet the very temerity of his errors was instrumental in the progress of the human race. He gave activity to minds which the circumspection of his rivals could not awaken from their lethargy. He called upon men to throw off the yoke of authority, acknowledging no influence but what reason should avow. And his call was obeyed by a mul- titude of followers, encouraged by the boldness and fasci- nated by the enthusiasm of their leader.” It is not difficult to understand how the somewhat homely and plodding philosophy of Bacon became obscured by the meteor-like brilliancy of his great rival. The Ba- conian method was, for a long time, as undeservedly neg- lected as it was afterwards undeservedly praised. liven Hobbes, who had lived on terms of intimacy with the Chancellor, had nothing better to say of the Royal Society on its foundation, than that “if the name of a philosopher was to be obtained by relating a multifarious farrago of experiments, we might expect to see apothecaries, gardeners, and perfumers rank among philosophers.” ‘The two lead- été son instrument reconnu, et la psychologie son fondement,” Cousin, Hist. Gen. 385. 1 Whewell, Hist. Moral Philosophy, p. 53: iv.] ” THE CARTESIAN: PHILOSOPHY: 113 ing features of that method,—the reduction of all intellects to one level, and the certainty which it promised in its results, seem hardly to have exercised a sufficient fascina- tion over the thinkers of that age. They desired, for themselves, somewhat more liberty to indulge in the anticr- patio mentis, and rather less drudgery in the. anterpretatio nature; the tedious researches and endless experiments of the Baconian method looked sadly unattractive when con- trasted with a system which proposed to evolve by: logical concatenation, from the internal consciousness, an entire sys-- tem of the universe; and if to extend the regnum hominis was indeed the aim of philosophy, they would have pre- ferred that the human intellect should more frequently be conceived as: ; ¢*Sailing with supreme dominion Through the azure deep of air,”” than as confined to earth by the ‘leaden feet’? which. Bacon suggested as desirable. _ *T have,” says Descartes, ‘remarked certain laws which God has so established in nature, and of which He has impressed such notions on our souls, that, after having sufficiently reflected on them, we shall no longer doubt that they have been exactly observed tn all which earsts or has been created in the world.’ ‘‘Sciant homines,” wrote Bacon, “quantum intersit, inter humane mentis idola et divine: mentis ideas.’ _ If, however, the philosophy of the one resorted too daringly to hypothesis, that of the other was certainly in- cumbered by serious impracticability of method. The theory of Descartes, of the evolution of the heavenly bodies by mechanical laws, has received confirmation from the theory of Laplace and still later investigations of science ; while the Baconian method, so loudly bepraised, some thirty years ago, as the exemplification of practical English M, 8 Cousin’s esti- mate of the two philosophies. 114 THE CARTESIAN PHILOSOPHY. [cHAP. sense, has met, at the hands of our most competent living authorities, either with direct censure or very qualified commendation’. The following criticism from the pen of M. Cousin is valuable as representing to no small extent the estimate of the metaphysicians of our day. ‘ Quiconque entre dans l'étude de lesprit humain par la voie de la réflexion, marche droit au but. Quiconque ne suit d’autre méthode que la méthode expérimentale de Bacon et de Newton, ne court pas le risque, il est vrai, de tomber dans les hypothéses extravagantes, mais se condamne & des circuits immenses qui aboutissent 4 des résultats médiocres. La méthode expérimentale est comme une grande route qui a deux sentiers différents, l’un quiconduit & la connaissance de la nature, l’autre & celle de l’esprit humain. Toute méthode générale se modifie nécessairement suivant le sujet parti- culier auquel elle s’applique. La méthode réflexive est une application spéciale de la méthode générale de lobservation et de induction, et, & ce titre, elle a ses régles A part; et 1 Cf. Ellis and Spedding’s edition of Bacon’s Works, ‘That his [Ba- con’s] method is impracticable,” says Mr Spedding, “cannot, I think, be denied, if we reflect not only that it never has produced any result, but also that the process by which scientific truths have been established can- not be so represented as even to appear to be in accordance with it.” Mr Spedding’s criticism is generally admitted to have done much towards placing the Baconian philosophy in its true light. Mr Mill (Logie, Vol. 1. 454—456) has shewn that the real merit of Bacon’s method, and that wherein its superiority to previous methods consisted, was the employment of Veri- fication. ‘‘Bacon has judiciously observed that the axiomata media of every science principally constitute its value...... But I conceive him to have been radically wrong in his doctrine respecting the mode in which these axtomata media should be arrived at ; though there is no proposition laid down in his works for which he has been more extravagantly eulogised. He enunciates as a universal rule that induction should proceed from the lowest to the middle principles, and from those to the highest, never re- versing that order, and consequently leaving no room for the discovery of new principles by way of deduction at all.” Iv.] THE CARTESIAN PHILOSOPHY. 115 celui qui l’a comme le premier parmi les modernes, ce n’est pas Bacon, c’est Descartes’.” Another eminent countryman of Descartes has thus Degerando’s. contrasted the services rendered by these two great men to the cause of science :—‘ Les exemples que Bacon avait demandé aux sciences naturelles, Descartes les demande aux sciences mathematiques. Le premier saisit le flambeau de Vexpérience ; le second s’attache a la chaine des deductions rationelles. Le premier invoque l’autorité des faits, assemble, compare, co-ordonne les observations; le second invoque levidence intuitive des principes, et d’une seule proposition fait sortir la suite enti¢re des demonstrations dont il compose la science. Ce que le génie de Bacon avait en étendue, celui de Descartes l’a en perséverance. Le premier, avide des connaissances positives, se plagait toujours en présence des realités; le second, avide de combinaisons, s’isole de _Vunivers entier, et se replie en lui-méme, se confiant aux seules forces de la méditation. Le premier suppose convenu, précisément, ce méme témoignage des sens auquel la phi- sophie du second se termine comme aun corollaire.” It would be unjust to the genius of the French philoso- Descartes not pher, not to recognise the fact that his belief in experiment neglect expe- was only subordinate to his belief in the reflective faculty. His whole life was devoted, with an ardour far greater than that of Bacon, to observation and the collection of scientific data. It would be difficult, indeed, to name any philosopher, ancient or modern, who has combined in so marked a degree a system essentially subjective in its con- ception, with such ardent investigations into the pheno- mena of nature. M. Cousin has ably repelled the notion that Descartes was a mere “‘réveur de génie.” ‘‘ Descartes Cousin’s vindi- est un des observateurs les plus assidus et les plus attentifs qwil'y ait jamais eu. On ne pourrait citer de son temps une 1 Philosophie Ecossaise, p. 307+ 8—2 116 THE CARTESIAN PHILOSOPHY. [CHAP science d’observation dont il ne se soit occupé avec passion, Il a dépensé sa modeste fortune en expériences de toute sorte. Dans ses voyages, il se portait avec empressement partout ot il espérait rencontrer quelque phénomene un peu curieux. fPartout il faisait des observations de mé- téorologie, et recueillait des faits intéressants. Ayant entendu dire que les rose-croix possédaient des connaissances natu- relles dont ils faisaient. mystére, il tenta de pénétrer dans leur société pour apprendre leurs secrets. Jin Hollande, a Egmont et & Endegeest, il avait fait deux parties de sa maison, l’une ot il couchait, prenait ses repas et recevait de rares visiteurs ; l’autre réservée & ses travaux, et qui con- tenait un laboratoire de physique, un atelier, et une sorte d’amphithéatre ot, avec ses domestiques et quelques amis, il se livrait, sur des animaux morts ou vivants, a des expé- riences de physiologie et 4 des dissections anatomiques. Que.de peines ne s’est il pas données pour vérifier et con- firmer la circulation du sang! que de travaux délicats n’a-t-il pas entrepris en optique! Dans sa correspondance, on le voit pendant quelques années tout occupé & tailler des verres, 4 construire des lunettes et des pendules. Crest le besoin passionné d’expériences météorologiques sur une XQ grande échelle qui le porta & quitter la Hollande et a braver le climat du Nord, qui le tua & 54 ans’.” Realdifferences ‘I'he real difference between the two philosophers was _ two methods, Jess in their main method than in the order of that method. Both started with scepticism as the fundamental condition of all true enquiry. Both insisted, with equal distinctness, on the observance of system in all research. And each seems to have anticipated that the rules which he laid down would render the human intellect, when employed in scientific discoveries, much the same service that mechani- cal inventions have afforded to manual labour, in placing * Cousin, Hist. Gen. pp. 3'77, 378 Iv.] ‘THE CARTESIAN PHILOSOPHY. 117 on the same footing individuals of very different powers’. If Bacon condemns an undue anticipation of nature, he yet readily admitted the value and importance of a provisional anticipation, as the only rational guide of observation and experiment; while Descartes as readily allows the value and necessity of experiments as an indispensable condition of the verification of scientific induction. ‘They trod what was in many respects a similar road, but started from opposite direc- tions; Descartes, with an @ priori hypothesis afterwards to be verified by facts; Bacon, with facts which should afterwards serve to test his hypothesis, if one there were. The differences between Descartes and the Aristotelian Differences between the philosophy of his time were of another order. “ He bore,” Aristotelians Mr Buckle has happily said, “precisely the same rela- tion to the old systems of philosophy that Luther bore to the old systems of religion®.”’ In this respect, the ser- vices rendered by our illustrious countryman cannot ‘com- pare with -those of his great rival. Descartes aimed at » destroying root and branch the Aristotelian philosophy of his day, and he succeeded in his aim. He seems to have discerned, more clearly than Bacon, the distinction between the doctrines of Aristotle and the abuses of the schools. To him, with far greater justice, may be applied the well known lines, | | “‘The great deliverer he! who, from the gloom Of cloister’d monks and jargon-teaching schools, Led forth the true Philosophy, there long Held in the magic chains of words and forms And definitions void—.” 1 “Or dans tout ce traité nous tacherons de suivre avec exactitude et d’aplanir les voies qui peuvent conduire homme x la découverte de la yérité, en sorte que V’esprit le plus médiocre, pourvu quil soit pénétré pro- fondément de cette méthode, verra que la vérité ne lui est pas plus inter- dite qu’s tout autre, et que, s'il ignore quelque chose, ce n’est faute nl d’esprit ni de capacité.” Discowrs de la Méthode. 2 Hist. of Civilization, Vol. 11. p. 82. 118 THE CARTESIAN PHILOSOPHY. [CHAP. In his hands the aversion to the Aristotelian philo- sophy which Bacon, when a boy of fifteen, carried with him from Cambridge, assumed the form of direct and specific censure. How far he was at variance with the tavarter er. Atistotelians of his day on the vewata questio of “ideas” ent. is a point we may well decline to discuss, when even Sir William Hamilton has affirmed that “to determine with certainty what Descartes’ theory of perception is, is perhaps impossible.’ That, one would think, must be a hopeless labyrinth of controversy to. which the question opens up, when we find not merely the theories, but the meaning of some of the greatest thinkers, still affording material for such warm discussion. Later metaphysicians have been almost equally divided not merely upon the question whether Descartes were right or wrong, but as to what he really intended to convey. Were we to attempt the question it would be necessary to follow the history of the whole controversy :—Arnauld, maintaining that Descartes held the simpler theory of representation, and Malebranche ridiculing the idea that his master had deserted the Aristotelian theory; Reid, following Male- branche, accused of blundering seriously by Brown; Sir James Mackintosh commending Brown’s theory and en- dorsing his censures; Brown, in his turn, succumbing to the resistless logic of Sir William Hamilton, and his “ cor- rections’”’ of Reid proved to be mostly misapprehensions, accompanied by flagrant misconception of the whole question; and finally, on the broad question of “ ideas,” we have recently seen Sir W. Hamilton himself sustaining what has been regarded by many as a signal defeat at the hands of Mr Mill, who has again reared the standard of Idealism in a field where he is, however, far from remain- ing in undisputed possession. It would seem not less a matter of modesty than discretion to steer clear of a IV. | THE CARTESIAN PHILOSOPHY. 119 maelstrom where so many philosophical reputations have gone down. If, however, the language of Descartes might be held ambiguous with respect to one particular doctrine, the tend- ency of his whole philosophy was sufficiently intelligible. In our own University a heavy blow was inflicted upon the endless and word-splitting definitions of the schools. The barren employment on which for twenty centuries the human intellect had expended its highest powers, could no longer maintain its ground under the brief but luminous exposure of the logical error which it involved. The ab- surdity of seeking to define words expressive of notions too simple for analysis, when placed in so clear a light, struck dismay into skilful logomachists, who “could distinguish and divide A hair ’twixt south and south-west side.” Othello’s occupation, if not gone, seemed likely to lose a large amount of both profit and prestige. In the posthu- mous dialogue, entitled, A Search after Truth, the author has distinctly shown how clearly he recognised both the bearings of the principle he had laid down, and the objec- tions that his opponents would seek to raise against it’. “Tt is objected by one of the interlocutors, as it had actually been by Gassendi, that to prove his existence by the act of thinking, he should first know what existence and what thought is. ‘I agree with you,’ the representative of Descartes replies, ‘that it is necessary to know what doubt is, and what thought is, before we can be fully per- suaded of this reasoning—I doubt, therefore I am—or, what is the same—I think, therefore I am. But do not imagine that for this purpose you must torture your mind. 1 Hallam’s Literatwre of Hwrope, 1. 453 Alarm of the Schools. 120 THE CARTESIAN PHILOSOPHY. [CHAP. to find out the next genus, or the essential differences, as the logicians talk, and so compose a regular. definition. Leave this to such as teach or dispute in the schools. But whoever will examine things by himself, and judge of them according to his understanding, cannot be so sense- less as not to see clearly, when he pays attention, what doubting, thinking, being, are, or to have any need to learn their distinctions.’” ‘Myr Locke,” says Stewart, “claims this improvement as entirely his own; but the merit of if unquestionably belongs to Descartes, although it must be owned that he has not always vena attended to it in his researches’.” To enumerate the many services rendered by Destarigs to metaphysical science is beyond our present purpose. Of these none was more valuable than the resuscitation of the distinction between the primary and secondary qualities of matter, a distinction which he was the first of modern phi- losophers to recall to notice, and which Locke, whose obli- gations to the Cartesian philosophy were more numerous than he cared to acknowledge, afterwards reproduced. The reader familiar with the leading points at issue between the metaphysicians of modern times, will not fail to re- cognise the important aid thus afforded to the prosecution of philosophical analysis. The vagaries of the philosopher have often done more to win the attention of his contemporaries than his real merits. It was one of Descartes’ most singular notions, contradictory too, as it would seem, of his main theory respecting the intercourse of mind and matter, that he asserted the seat of the soul to be the pineal gland. This notion, along with his theory of the immateriality of the soul, excited considerable discussion in the Universities, ‘-1 Dugald Stewart’s Dissertation, iv. ]. _ 4 i . / Fi , . : \ 1 | = ' ~~ / ie ' ; f 4 ' . + * 7 ta ‘ nai 3 t { i s af " « r ¥ bs * . t ‘ 3 n 4) ' : - f s ‘ rn iné Cambridge Graduates of the Siateenth and Seventeenth Centuries referred to in the foregoing pages. BORN DIED Gardiner, Stephen, Bishop of Winchester 5.07) c.e0s ek wsaees 1483 2.2 -18KS Cheke, Sir John, Professor of Greek ..............:seeeeeeee ees I5%4 ... 1557 ADO EN live c cc ces sos cp scree neo dnceeroergeseronineoroancces 1515 ... 1568 Haddon, Walter, Master of Trinity Hall ..................... 1516 ... 1572 Smith, Sir Thomas, Professor of Greek and Public Orator 1514 ... 1577 Cecil, William, Lord Burleigh ..............-.:-sseseeeeeee eee ees 1520 ... 1598 Spenser, Hdmund. ..........2-.0:eeeseeceeeeeeeeeeereteeeeeeeeeees as-, 1533 <... £598 Downes, Andrew, Professor of Greek ...........:2:eeceeeeeeeees 1650 ... 1627 BACON y LOLI... ..--. ee ese l eee cect omen eseseceneecetousnnscreeet aes 1561 ... 1626 PEROT ZO coe eeeccccneee nc ense cee ccennnveterdtedteseonanee ees 1593 ... 1632 Ferrar, Nicholas ............-:02:eseeceeceeeeeteeeeeecesesseeecere ens £502 ,.21087 DROSS po... acess ccc ee enon nes conrer rec csccentecscsne sacs seees 15860 2.51625 Chappell, William, Bishop of Cork ............4. eeessseeeeee ees 1582 ... 1649 May, Thomas, Poet and Historian ...........6eeeereererereees 1594 ... 1650 Williams, Lord Keeper, Bishop of Lincoln .................. 1582 ... 1650 Crashaw, te AEE ORE acc iss fo jock au ees n cen cNe neta cae ree esses me tye 1650 D’ Ewes, Sir Simonds ............:-ceeeseecee sense nee ceeee eee eeees 1602 ... 1650 Smith, John, of Queens’............-:cseeeee eee eeece sees eeeee eee ees 1618 .) 1652 Hall, Joseph, Bishop of Norwich ....-..-----++.+:ss22---rreeeee 1574 ... 1656 Cleveland, John, Poet .......--..:ssseeeeeeeee eee eeeeee tee neeece ees 1019 G. 01659 : Fuller, Dr Thomas ..........:::::seeeeeeeeeeseeeceneneeeseen eee seeens 1608 ... 1661 Heywood, Thomas, Dramatist .........--+-sseeeseeser ess eeeereees 2c RIGOS Shirley, James, Dramatist BUG ee i foe ce cine seats soe 1894 ... 2666 Cowley, Abraham ........-.::ssseeeesseeeereene teense ceecee see eneees 1618 ..., 1667 Taylor, Jeremy, Bishop of Dromore ........--+-++++s0eeerreees 1613 ... 1667 - Hacket, John, Bishop of NSECH CHL Py irae ee csc sed feed es tkeaet 1892. 1670 Rust, George, Bishop of Dromore ..........:s00-seeeereeeereees EO Worthington, Dr John, Master of Jesus..........-.---s00s-+++5 1618... 1697 Milton, John .........cceccceesecereeeseceesseeesere cee ecesaseee esses 1608 ... 1674 Barrow, Dr Isaac, Master of Trimity .......-----++s:eeeeeeeees 1620- ( G77 Duport, Dr James, Professor of Greek ............--.-+-++0++ 1606 ... 1679 Whichcot, Dr, Provost of King’s ............:-ssseeensereesee ees 1610 ... 1683 More, Dr Henry........ RT Ti, Ee NUE REY PRI 1614 ... 1687 Cudworth, Dr Ralph, Master of Christ’s.........s00..-+--+22++ 1617 ... 1688 Ward, Seth, Bishop of Salisbury ............-+2:2+ssssereeeeeeees 1617 ... 1689 Sancroft, William, Archbishop of Canterbury .........-.-... 1616 ... 1693 Robinson, Matthew ........ceeecssseeeeecceeeeceeeeeneeeenteceenes 1628 ... 1694 Gale, Dr Thomas.............s0:csesecessesceeseceeeeer esses eeesenees 1636 ... 1702 . Pope, Dr Walter.................-cesevrecrereeeeerserensesearnesnenes ——..-- L7T4 South, Dr Robert ........cccceeeeeseeceeeeeseneeeeeeeceeeereeeeeces 1633. 1 7fo Newton, Sir [saa .........:.cceecenceeseeeeeeeeseeecnsenresec nesses $6490.20 17927 , | ae Cambridge: — | . E. PRINTED BY C. J. 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