FROM "PARADISE LOST." Overhead up grew Insuperable height of loftiest shade, Cedar and pine, and fir, and branching palm, Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops On which the sun more glad impress'd his beams, Than in fair evening cloud, or humid bow, When God hath shower'd the earth; so lovely seem'd That landskip and of pure now purer air Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires Vernal delight and joy, able to drive All sadness but despair: now gentle gales Of Araby the Blest; with such delay Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles. So entertain'd those odorous sweets the fiend. FROM "PARADISE REGAINED." Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount, Or hospitable, in her sweet recess, City or suburban, studious walks and shades. See there the olive grove of Academe, Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long; There, flowery hill, Hymettus, with the sound Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls His whispering stream: within the walls then view Great Alexander to subdue the world, Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next : There shalt Thou hear and learn the secret power Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit By voice or hand, and various-measured verse, And his who gave them breath, but higher sung, Of moral prudence, with delight received Towards the end of the period we have been considering, prose was cultivated in England by a great many persons who have no place at all, or but a secondary place, in the history of the development of style. They must not, however, be entirely overlooked; and for practical purposes they may be divided into three classes. There were, firstly, those who had something to say about purely scientific speculation, and who followed WILKINS into the paths of what was called experimental philosophy. Secondly, there were those who gave in their adherence to the Cambridge school of divines, and who, in opposition to Hobbes, asserted the liberty of the will, encouraging a movement towards the spiritual and mystic side of things. Of these the leaders were HENRY MORE, and, in his True Intellectual System of the Universe, 1678, RALPH CUDWORTH (1617-1688). Thirdly, there were the body of miscellaneous writers, autobiographers, antiquaries, diarists and the like, who with infinite patience and self-satisfaction built up the secret history of the age or helped to preserve its muniments. Of these minor writers of the Commonwealth, it has to be confessed that their prose presents no features of great interest, apart from the facts or the ideas with which it deals. Each of them has a tendency to wordiness; all become tedious at last from their untiring sinuosity. They are didactic and scholastic in their attitude to literature; their ambition makes them often cumbrous, and they are delightful only when some gleam of human experience seduces them into forgetfulness of it. Everything points to the necessity of relieving English style by elements of lucidity, brevity and grace-those qualities, in fact, which the next chapter introduces to our notice in writers like Tillotson, Halifax and Temple. John Wilkins (1614-1672) was the son of an Oxford goldsmith, and was educated at Daventry under the charge of his grandfather, John Dod, "the famous Decalogist," and at a private school in Oxford. He passed rapidly and with credit through the university, entered into Holy Orders, and became chaplain to the Palatine of the Rhine. In 1638 he published the most remarkable of his speculative works, The Discovery of a New World, followed in 1640 by The Earth may be a Planet. His Mercury in 1641, and Mathematical Magic, 1648, complete the list of Wilkins's more important publications. He had a splendid inter-university career, being appointed Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, in 1648, and Master of Trinity, Cambridge, in 1659. But as he was a parliamentarian, he was ejected at the Restoration. After a period of very low fortunes, he was made Dean of Ripon in 1664, and Bishop of Chester in 1668. He died in London on the 19th of November 1672. The whole life of Wilkins was devoted to two aims, the extension of scientific investigation, or, as it was then called, "philosophical" experiment, and the reconciliation of the Dissenters with the Church of England. It is in him that we first observe certain intellectual foibles of the approaching eighteenth century, and in particular its dislike of enthusiasm. John Wilkins Elias Ashmole (1617-1692) was the greatest antiquary and archæologist of the second half of the seventeenth century. He was born at Lichfield on the 23rd of May 1617, and having a talent for music was trained to be a chorister in that cathedral. He afterwards came up to London, and adopted the law as a profession. After the Civil War, in which he took an active part on the King's side, Ashmole retired to Englefield in Berkshire, and "went a-simpling," that is to say, gave himself up to the study of botany. In 1649 he settled in London, and began his famous collection of the works of the English Chemists, issued in 1652. At the Restoration Ashmole was made Windsor Herald, and in 1661 Secretary of Surinam, which colony he administered from London. He became very wealthy and loaded with honours. In 1679 a fire destroyed a great portion of his vast collection of antiquities and curiosities; the remainder he presented in 1683 to the University of Oxford, which had erected a stately building to receive them and Ashmole's books and MSS. He died on the 18th of May 1692, and was buried in South Lambeth Church, under a monument of black marble, which, after describing his demise, added "but while the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford stands, he shall never die." His Diary, which was printed in 1717, is a garrulous and pleasing fragment of auto biography. In his more public manner, Ashmole writes very elaborately and politely, in rich brocaded English, of which the following extract from the preface to the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum may be taken as an example : "The mineral stone is wrought up to a degree only, and hath the power of transmuting any imperfect earthy matter into its utmost degree of perfection; that is, to convert the basest metals into perfect gold and silver, flints into all manner of precious stones (as rubies, saphirs, emeralds, and diamonds), and many more experiments of the like nature. But as this is but a part, so it is the least share of the blessing which may be acquired by the philosopher's materia if the full virtue thereof were known. Gold I confess, is a delicious object, a goodly light which we admire and gaze upon, ut pueri in Junonis avem, but as to make gold (saith an incomparable author) is the chiefest intent of the alchymist, so was it scarce any intent of the antient philosophers and the lowest use the adepts made of this materia. For they being lovers of wisdom more than worldly wealth, drove at higher and more excellent operations, and certainly he to whom the whole course of nature lies open, rejoiceth not that he can make gold and silver, or the devils to become subjected unto him, as he sees the heavens open, the angels of God ascending and descending, and that his own name is fairly written in the book of life." Elias Ashmole Another distinguished antiquary was John Aubrey (1626-1697), who was occupied, in company with Anthony à Wood (1632-1695), in collecting and preserving a vast quantity of miscellaneous information which might else have been lost. It was Aubrey who called attention to the historic value of Stonehenge, and who encouraged the great scheme of the Monasticon Anglicanum. It was Wood who drew together, in his Athena Oxonienses and elsewhere, inestimable records of public and private life in the University. Much of the work of both these industrious enthusiasts was posthumous. Among the minor writers of the middle of the century a place must be found for the Fanshawes, a distinguished and accomplished couple. Sir Richard Fanshawe THE MEMOIR-WRITERS 89 (1607--1666) was educated at Cambridge, and very early entered the diplomatic service. Charles I. sent him to Spain in 1635; his life was a busy and a romantic one throughout the Civil War. After the Restoration, Fanshawe was employed in embassies to Portugal and Spain, and died of a violent fever in Madrid, on the 16th of June 1666. He published a very popular version of Guarini's Pastor Fido in 1646, a translation of the Lusiads in 1655, other translations from Spanish and Portuguese, and in 1664 a few original poems. In 1644, while at Oxford, he married Anne Harrison (16251680), who left a volume of her Memoirs in MS. These were published first in 1829, and contain much that is interesting and vivid. Another memoir-writer was Lucy Apsley (Mrs. Hutchinson) (born in 1620), who married in 1638 a Puritan colonel, who was afterwards one of the regicide judges, and gover nor of Nottingham Castle for the Parliament. Sir Richard Fanshawe After the death of her husband, who was imprisoned. in Sandown Castle till he died in 1664, she wrote down, between 1664 and 1671, for the instruction of her children, a volume of Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, to which she prefixed an autobiography. These were not published until 1806. date of her death is not known. From Mrs. Hutchinson's account of her own childhood, we quote an entertaining passage: "My father would have me learn Latin, and I was so apt that I outstripped my brothers who were at school, although my father's chaplain that was my tutor was a pitiful dull fellow. My brothers, who had a great deal of wit, had some emulation at the progress I made in my learning, which very well pleased my father, though my mother would have been contented I had not so wholly addicted myself to that as to neglect my other qualities. As for music and dancing, I profited very little in them, and would never practise my lute or harpsichords but when my masters were with me; and for my needle, I absolutely hated it. Play among other children I despised, and |