wanted a horse. The Prince, seeing in what humour he was, caused him to be taken into a house and put to sleep. In the morning he sent for him, and asked him what he would give for his horse. "Sir," said the recovered soldier, "the merchant that would have bought him last night of your Highness went away betimes in the morning." . . . I have heard of a company of Low Dutchmen that had drunk so deep, that beginning to stagger, and their heads turning round, they thought verily that they were at sea, and that the upper chamber where they were was a ship, insomuch that, it being foul windy weather, they fell to throw the stools and other things out of the window, to lighten the vessel, for fear of suffering shipwreck.

Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) was the son of the Rev. Thomas Fuller, of Fuller Aldwinckle St. Peter's, in Northamptonshire, where he was baptized, June 19, 1608. He was taught at home, by his father, until June 1621, when he was sent up to Queen's College, Cambridge. He was disappointed of a fellowship at Queen's, and at Sidney Sussex, to which he migrated; and in 1630 he had to content himself with the perpetual curacy of St. Benet's, Cambridge. He presently secured other pieces of preferment, and from 1634 to 1641 he was rector of Broadwindsor in Dorset ; but during all this time he did not wholly break off his connection with Cambridge. He married in 1638, and in 1639 published his first important book, The History of the Holy War. He was elected proctor to Convocation in the next year, and presently removed to London, where his wit in the pulpit became widely celebrated; he was elected lecturer to the Savoy Chapel. He was prominent in his loyalty, however, and with other royalist divines. he was driven out of London in 1643; he took refuge in Oxford. He had recently published The Holy State and

Thomas Fuller

the Profane State, a treatise on the conduct of the Christian life, in five books; this is perhaps more densely crowded with the peculiar beauties of Fuller's style than any other work of his. Fuller was not very happy at Oxford, and early in 1644 he was glad

D

VOL. III.

Browne

to proceed to Exeter as chaplain to the Princess Henrietta, and when the queen fled, Fuller placed himself under the protection of Lord Montague at Boughton. During these uneasy years, he chiefly supported himself by the activity of his pen. In 1650 he brought out his picturesque geography of Palestine, called A Fisgah-sight, a folio richly illustrated; and in 1656 his most celebrated work, the huge Church History of Britain. This was greatly praised and widely read, but its accuracy was impugned by the historian, Dr. Peter Heylin (1600-1662). Fuller retorted in a very lively Appeal of Injured Innocence, in 1659. This was his last publication of importance. In 1660 Fuller went Over to The Hague with Lord Berkeley to present himself to Charles II. At the king's return, he recovered his various ecclesiastical offices, and was looking forward to a bishopric, when he was attacked by typhoid fever. He insisted upon preaching on the 13th of August 1661, although he was so weak that he had to be lifted out of the pulpit, and three days later he died in his lodgings in Covent Garden. He was buried in the church of Cranford, of which he had been rector since 1658. His famous History of the Worthies of England appeared posthumously in 1662. He described this as an inventory of the rooms-that is to say shires-into which the not very great house" of England is divided, with the portraits of great men hung on the walls of those rooms. Fuller was never held pre-eminent as a divine, and as an historian he was too rapid and careless to inspire confidence, but his wit and skill as a manipulator of language were unsurpassed. Nor should his extraordinary acquaintance with the face and form of England be neglected. "England was to him. as an open book, whose leaves he was always turning over," and he was for ever riding hither and thither, in his geographical curiosity, till hardly a corner of the country was unknown to him.

FULLER ON HIS OWN VOICE.

Lord, my voice by nature is harsh and untunable, and it is vain to lavish any art to better it. Can my singing of psalms be pleasing to Thy ears, which is unpleasant to my own? Yet though I cannot chant with the nightingale, or chirp with the blackbird, I had rather chatter with the swallow, yea, rather croak with the raven, than be altogether silent. Hadst Thou given me a better voice, I would have praised Thee with a better voice. Now what my music wants in sweetness let it have in sense, singing praises with understanding. Yea, Lord, create in me a new heart (therein to make melody), and I will be contented with my old voice until in Thy due time, being admitted into the choir of heaven, I have another, more harmonious, bestowed upon me.

FEMALE EDUCATION.

Nunneries were good she-schools, wherein the girls and maids of the neighbourhood were taught to read and work; and sometimes a little Latin was taught them therein. Yea, give me leave to say, if such feminine foundations had still continued, provided no vow were obtruded upon them (virginity is least kept where it is most constrained), haply the weaker sex (beside the avoiding modern inconveniences) might be heightened to a higher perfection than hitherto hath been attained. The sharpness of their wits, and suddenness of their conceits, which their enemies must allow unto them, might by education be improved into a judicious solidity, and that adorned with arts, which now they want, not because they cannot learn, but are not taught them. I say, if such feminine foundations were extant now-of-days, haply some virgins of highest birth would be glad of such places; and, I am sure, their fathers and elder brothers would not be sorry for the same.

We have been speaking of prose-writers who were eager to liberate themselves from the shackles of the Renaissance. But in Sir THOMAS BROWNE

we meet with a man who hugged those fetters closer to himself, and turned them into chased and fretted ornaments of gold. He was one of those rare prose-writers whom we meet at intervals in the history of literature who leave nothing to improvisation, but balance and burnish their sentences until they reach a perfection analogous to that of very fine verse. Supported by his exquisite ear, Browne permits himself audacities, neologisms, abrupt transitions, which positively take away our breath. But while we watch him thus dancing on the tight-rope of style, we never see him fall; if he lets go his footing in one place, it is but to amaze us by his agility in leaping to another. His scheme has been supposed to be founded on that of Burton, and certainly Browne is no less captivated by the humours of melancholy. But if Burton is the greater favourite among students, Browne is the better artist and the more imaginative writer. There is, moreover, much more that is his own, in relation to parts adapted from the ancients, than in Burton. We find nothing of progress to chronicle in Browne, but so much of high, positive beauty that we do not class him in the procession of the writers of his time, but award him a place apart, as an author of solitary and intrinsic charm.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), the philosophical physician of Norwich, was born in London on the 19th of October 1605. He was the son of a mercer of the same name, settled in the parish of St. Michael, Cheapside. He was admitted to a scholarship at Winchester on the 20th of August 1616, and was transferred to Broadgate Hall (Pembroke College), Oxford, in 1623. The incidents of Browne's early life are obscure, but it is believed that after taking his M.A. degree in June 1629, he immediately began the study of medicine. We hear of him in Ireland, at Montpellier, making the tour of Italy, and residing some time at Padua. He took his degree of M.D. at Leyden, about 1633. His life was "a restless pilgrimage' till 1634, when, tired of travel, he came back and settled in England, probably in London. In 1635 he wrote the first sketch of the Religio Medici. He was persuaded by Sir Nicholas Bacon and other influential people in Norfolk, to practise as a

Sir Thomas Browne
From an Engraving after the original in the
Royal College of Physicians

physician in Norwich, which he did in 1636, marrying in 1641 into one of the

best county families, and remaining there for the rest of his life.

In 1642, as a