multitude of devotional discourses with which the country was at this period infested". Those who are at all acquainted with the ecclesiastical oratory of James's reign, will be at no loss to comprehend "honest Antony's" description; but to those who are not, it may be sufficient to observe, that, of its peculiar excellencies and demerits, the sermons of bishop King, his contemporary, (which have been republished) are a complete "picture in little." 3. The forwardness of the clergy to publish their labours is thus ludicrously satyrized by Robert Burton: "Had I written divinitie positively, there be so many bookes in that kinde, so many commentators, treatises, pamphlets, sermons, expositions, that whole teams of oxen cannot draw them and had I beene as forward and ambitious as some others, I might haply have printed a sermon at Paules Crosse, a sermon in Saint Maries Oxon, a sermon in Christ-Church, or a sermon before the Right Honourable, Right Reverend, a sermon before the Right Worshipful, a sermon in Latin, in English, a sermon with a name, without, a sermon, a sermon, &c.” Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 15. fol. 1632. About this time he appears, from the following characteristic letter, to have solicited promotion at the hands of Villiers duke of Buckingham: May it please your Grace "To consider my two great losses this weeke: one in respect of his Majesty to whom I was to preach; the other in respect of my patron whom I was to visit. Yf this bee not the way to repare the later of my losses, I feare I am in danger to bee utterly undon. To press too neere a greate man is a meanness; to be put by, and to stand too far off, is the way to be forgotten: so Ecclesiasticus. In which mediocrity, could I hitt it, would I live and dy, my lord. I would neather press neere, nor stand far off; choosing ra 4 Harl. MSS. No. 7000. Cabala, p. 220. fol. 1663. ther the name of an ill courtier than a sawsy scholer. "I am your Grace's most humble servant, Christ's Church, this 26 Feb. "RICHARD CORBET." "Heer are newes, my noble lord, about us, that, in the point of alledgeance now in hand, all the Papists are exceeding orthodox; the only recusants are the Puritans." Of the nature of the object thus supplicated, my inquiries have not informed me he was. now dean of Christ-Church, vicar of Cassington near Woodstock in Oxfordshire, and prebendary of Bedminster secunda in the church of Sarum: it was, perhaps, the appointment of chaplain to the King, which he received about this time; and if to this period may be assigned the gratulatory poem at page 83, it should seem that Buckingham was not solicited in vain. + In 1619 he sustained a great loss in the decease of his amiable father, at a very advanced age; whose praise he has celebrated in the most honourable terms, and whose death he has lamented in the language of rational and tender regret. When James paid a second visit to Oxford in 1621, Corbet, in his office of chaplain, preached before the monarch3, who had presented him (as it seems) with a token of his favour, such as flattered in no small degree the vanity of the dean. The progress of the court and its followers is thus ludicrously described in an anonymous poem transcribed from Antony Wood's papers in Ashmole's Museum: 5 On the 26th of August. 6 6 It occurs, with some variations, in a scarce poetical miscellany called Wit Restored, 8vo. 1658, the use of which, in common with many other volumes of still greater rarity and value, I owe to the liberality of Thomas Hill, esq. The king and the court, Six days at Woodstock did lie; And sattin-sleev'd proctors, Whose faces did shine. With beere and with wine, So fat, that it may be thought University cheere, With college strong beere, Made them far better fed than taught. A number beside, With their wenches did ride, (For scholars are always kind) And still evermore, While they rode before, They were kissing their wenches behind. A number on foot, Without cloak or boot, And yet with the court go they would; Desirous to show How far they could go To do his high mightiness good. 7 |