out of his Euclid, nor a pulpit out of his mathematical chair," he resigned the latter in 1669 in favour of his pupil, Isaac Newton, after publishing his Lectiones Optica, which Newton revised. For a while, Barrow was without definite employment, and a little out of temper with the world; but in 1672, Pearson being made Bishop of Chester, Barrow received the Mastership of Trinity. The king said that the post was given to Barrow as to "the best scholar in England." He held it only five years, for during a visit to London, where he was preaching the Passion sermon in the Guildhall, he died, after a very short illness, "in mean lodgings over a saddler's shop near

Charing Cross," on the 4th of May 1677. Barrow was buried in Westminster Abbey. He was mourned as certainly the most learned man of his day; and when the range of Barrow's erudition is considered, in mathematics, optics, classical research, theology, and philosophy, the equipment of his mind was quite extraordinary, especially as he had only reached the age of forty-seven. He was a very fine preacher, but he had the defect of excessive length. Once, when he was preaching at Westminster Abbey, he continued speaking so long, that the vergers were forced at length to set the organs playing "till they had blowed him down." Some of his sermons are said to have been prepared for a delivery of over four hours each. A great many entertaining anecdotes are preserved of Barrow's habits in a memorial letter which Abraham Hill wrote to Tillotson. He was considered intemperate in the use of fruit and of tobacco. His theological works, four massive folios, were posthumously published in 1683-89, under the editorial care of Tillotson, to whom the MSS. were given by Barrow's father, who survived him until 1687.

BARROW: TEMPLE

FROM BARROW'S "PLEASANTNESS OF RELIGION."

123

Wisdom acquaints us with ourselves, our own temper and constitution, our propensions and passions, our habitudes and capacities; a thing not only of mighty advantage, but of infinite pleasure and content to us. No man in the world less knows a fool than himself; nay, he is more than ignorant, for he constantly errs in the point, taking himself for, and demeaning himself as, toward another, a better, a wiser, and abler man than he is. He hath wonderful conceits of his own qualities and faculties; he affects commendations incompetent to him; he soars at employment surpassing his ability to manage. No comedy can represent a mistake more odd and ridiculous than his : for he wanders, and stares, and hunts after, but never can find nor discern himself: but always encounters with a false shadow instead thereof, which he passionately hugs and admires. But a wise man, by constant observation and impartial reflection upon himself, grows very familiar with himself; he perceives his own inclinations, which, if bad, he strives to alter and correct; if good, he cherishes and corroborates them he apprehends the matter he is fitting for, and capable to manage, neither too mean and unworthy of him, nor too high and difficult for him; and those applying his care to, he transacts easily, cheerfully, and successfully. So being neither puffed up with vain and over-weening opinion, nor dejected with heartless diffidence of himself, neither admiring nor despising; neither irksomely hating, nor fondly loving himself; he continues in good humour, maintains a sure friendship and fair correspondence with himself, and rejoices in the retirement and private conversation with his own thoughts: whence flows a pleasure and satisfaction inexpressible.

From the rapid and luminous compositions of the divines, it was but a Temple step to the masters of elegant mundane prose. Cruel commentators have conspired to prove that there was no subject on which Sir WILLIAM TEMPLE was so competent as to excuse the fluency with which he wrote about it. That the matter contained in the broad volumes of his Works is not of great extent or value must be conceded; but style does not live by matter only, and it is the bright modern note, the ease and grace, the rapidity and lucidity, that give to Temple his faint but perennial charm. He is the author, too, of one famous sentence, which may be quoted here, because it marks in a very clear way the movement of English prose. Let us listen to the cadence of these words :

"When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humoured a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over."

This is the modern manner of using English. It is divided by an abysm from the prose of the Commonwealth, and in writing such a sentence Temple showed himself nearer to the best authors of our living age than he was to such contemporaries of his own as Hobbes or Browne.

Sir William Temple (1628-1699), the son of Sir John Temple, was born in Blackfriars in 1628. He was educated at the rectory of Penshurst until 1638, and for the next five years at Bishop Stortford. After spending two years at home, “being hindered by the disorders of the time from going to the university," Temple entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1646. At college he gave his time chiefly to acquiring French and Spanish, and early in 1647 began to travel. On his way to France, he met Miss Dorothy Osborn in the Isle of Wight, and engaged himself to her. Seven years later

they married, on Temple's return from the Continent. At the Restoration he was given employment in Ireland, and entered Parliament in 1661 as one of the members for County Carlow. Temple did so well in Ireland that he was entrusted, on his return to England in 1665, with diplomatic business in the Low Countries. With the exception of a brief period, during which he sulked at home at Sheen, the next

twenty years of Temple's life were spent in active and capable diplomacy, mainly in Holland. His first published work of any importance was the Observations upon the Netherlands, of 1672. He was much annoyed at what he considered the king's ingratitude in striking his name out of the Privy Council in 1681, and he determined to retire from public life. He purchased a small estate, Moor Park, near Farnham, and to overtures from the king replied that he "would always live a good subject, but, whatever happened, would never enter again upon any public employment." He was much disturbed by the suicide of his son, who threw himself out of a boat in which he was shooting London Bridge in 1689, and in 1695, Lady Temple, a woman of extraordinary courage, wit, and charm, died also. In these last years Temple wrote much, and from 1689 to 1692, and again from 1696 to Temple's death, Jonathan Swift lived at Moor Park as his secretary and amanuensis. Swift edited Temple's Works (1700-1703), which were largely posthumous. The old diplomatist died on the 27th of January 1699, at Moor Park; his heart was buried in a silver box, under the sun-dial in his garden, and the rest of his body in Westminster Abbey. Swift wrote in his diary that there had died "with him all that was good and amiable among men."

Sir William Temple

After the Portrait by Sir Peter Lely

The perfectest figure of a garden I ever saw, either at home or abroad, was that of Moor Park, in Hertfordshire, when I knew it about thirty years ago. It was made by the Countess of Bedford, esteemed among the greatest wits of her time, and celebrated by Doctor Donne and with very great care, excellent contrivance, and much cost.

Because I take the garden I have named to have been in all kinds the most beautiful and perfect, at least in the figure and disposition, that I have ever seen, I will describe it for a model to those that meet with such a situation, and are above the regards of common expense. It lies on the side of a hill (upon which the house stands), but not very steep. The length of the house, where the best rooms and of most use or pleasure are, lies upon

the breadth of the garden, the great parlour opens into the middle of a terras gravel-walk that lies even with it, and which may be, as I remember, about three hundred paces long, and broad in proportion; the border set with standard laurels, and at large distances, which have the beauty of orange-trees out of flower and fruit from this walk are three descents by many stone steps, in the middle and at each end, into a very large parterre. This is divided into quarters by gravel walks, and adorned with two fountains and eight statues in the several quarters; at the end of the terras walk are two summer-houses, and the sides of the parterre are ranged with two large cloisters, open to the garden, upon arches of stone, and ending with two other summer-houses even with the cloisters, which are paved with stone, and designed for walks of shade, there being none other in the whole parterre. Over these two cloisters are two terrasses covered with lead, and fenced with balusters; and the passage into these airy walks is out of the two summer-houses, at the end of the first terras-walk. The cloister facing the south is covered with vines, and would have been proper for an orange-house, and the other for myrtles, or other more common greens; and had, I doubt not, been cast for that purpose, if this piece of gardening had been then in as much vogue as it is now.

Of all those, however, who contrived to clarify and civilise the prose of Halifax the Restoration, and to make it a vehicle for gentle irony and sparkling humour, the most notable was

"Jotham, of piercing wit and pregnant thought." There exists some tiresome doubt about the bibliography of the Marquis of HALIFAX, for his anonymous miscellanies were not collected until he had been five

years dead. But no one questions
the authenticity of Advice to a Daugh-
ter; and if internal evidence, proof
by style and temper, are worth any-
thing at all, they must confirm the
tradition that it is to the same pen
we owe the Character of a Trimmer
and the Anatomy of an Equivalent.
In these ironic tracts, so adroit, so
grave, so graceful, we find ourselves
far indeed from the storm and tur-
moil of the Commonwealth. In
Halifax we see the best and most sympathetic side of the Restoration, its
conservative scepticism, its reserve, its urbane and moderate virtue. In a
letter to Cotton, Halifax confesses that his favourite reading had always been
Montaigne, and he is a link between that delicious essayist and the Spectators
and Tatlers of a later age.

George Savile, first Marquis of Halifax (1633-1695) was the son of Sir William Savile, of Thornhill, in Yorkshire, and his wife, Anne Coventry. He was born on the 11th of November 1633. Sir William Savile fought in the Civil Wars, and when he died in 1644, he left his children to the care of his young wife, who had a genius for political intrigue. In consequence of his long minority and his mother's care, Sir George found himself a wealthy man. In 1656 he married

Lady Dorothy Spencer, the daughter of Waller's Sacharissa. In 1660 he represented Pontefract in the Convention Parliament which arranged for the Restoration, but his career in the House was brief. About this time his great interest in naval matters began, and was greatly encouraged by the Dutch War. On New Year's Day, 1668, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Savile and Viscount Halifax, and made Commissioner of Trade in 1669. His first wife died in 1670, and in 1672 he married again, Gertrude Pierrepoint, a famous beauty. For many years. Halifax continued to exercise a preponderating influence in the House of Lords, where, according to Burnet, he was one of the four strong politicians of the age. In 1679 he became paramount in the Privy Council, and rose rapidly in the royal favour. "He studied," we are told, "to manage the king's spirit by his lively and libertine conversation." In 1680 he retired from politics for some months to his seat at Rufford. In 1681 he returned to London, and strongly supported the Government, becoming Lord Privy Seal in 1682; this was the first office Halifax had held, and about the same time he was created a Marquis. His influence in political life continued to be solid until the death of Charles II., but James II. excluded him from the Privy Council, of which Halifax was now President. He continued to be in disgrace at court until 1688. He turned his thoughts to literature, and to this period of retreat belong, in their final form, his most celebrated treatises, The Character of a Trimmer (which had been circulated in MS. at the end of 1684 or at the beginning of 1685), The Anatomy of an Equivalent, and Advice to a Daughter, all of them anonymously printed in 1688. After the flight of James II., Halifax consented to invite the Prince of Orange to take the throne, and he was the prime mover in the proclamation of William and Mary as king and queen. He was in office, as Lord Privy Seal, for a year, but retired in 1690, and remained in opposition until his death. He died very suddenly, after eating rather heavily of a roasted pullet, not without some suspicion of poison, on the 5th of April 1695, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The miscellaneous writings of Halifax were first collected and published under his own name in 1700.

FROM "ADVICE TO A DAUGHTER."

Avoid being the first in fixing a hard censure, let it be confirmed by the general voice, before you give into it; neither are you then to give sentence like a magistrate, or as if you had a special authority to bestow a good or ill name at your discretion. Do not dwell too long upon a weak side, touch and go away; take pleasure to stay longer when you can commend, like bees that fix only upon those herbs out of which they may extract the juice of which their honey is composed. A virtue stuck with bristles is too rough for this age; it must be adorned with some flowers, or else it will be unwillingly entertained; so that even where it may be fit to strike, do it like a lady, gently; and assure yourself, that where you care to do it, you will wound others more, and hurt yourself less, by soft strokes, than by being harsh or violent.

The triumph of wit is to make your good nature subdue your censure; to be quick in seeing faults, and slow in exposing them. You are to consider, that the invisible thing called a good name, is made up of the breath of good numbers that speak well of you; so that if by a disobliging word you silence the meanest, the gale will be less strong which is to bear up your esteem. And though nothing is so vain as the eager pursuit of empty applause, yet to be well thought of and to be kindly used by the world, is like a glory about a woman's head; 'tis a perfume she carrieth about with her, and leaveth wherever she goeth; 'tis a charm against ill-will. Malice may empty her quiver, but cannot wound; the dirt will not stick, the jests will not take; without the consent of the world

a scandal doth not go deep; it is only a slight stroke upon the injured party, and returneth with greater force upon those that gave it.