wretched B. for and that base fellow, H. | book than the preceding quotations might ap for, in spite of the exposure," &c. Again, pear to promise. If given as specimens of the editors protest against our supposing that his power, they would do gross injustice to a this is a playful exercise in the art of exagge- good and able man, a ripe scholar, and a deration. "It should be observed," they say, vout Christian. But as illustrations of the "as in other parts of this volume, that the temper and opinions of those who now sit in author used these words on principle, not as Wycliffe's seat, they are neither unfair nor abuse, but as expressing matters of fact, as a unimportant. And they may also convince all way of bringing before his own mind things whom it concerns, that hitherto, at least, Oxas they are." ford has not given birth to a new race of giants, by whom the evangelical founders and missionaries of the Church of England will be expelled from their ancient dominion, or the Protestant world excluded from the light of day and the free breath of heaven.

Milton, however, is the especial object of Mr. Froude's virtuous abhorrence. He is "a detestable author." Mr. Froude rejoices to learn something of the puritans, because, as he says, "It gives me a better right to hate Milton, and accounts for many of the things Whenever the time shall be ripe for writing which most disgusted me in his (not in my the ecclesiastical history of the last and the sense of the word) poetry."-" A lady told me present age, a curious chapter may be devoted yesterday that you wrote the article of Sacred to the rise and progress of the Evangelical Poetry, &c. I thought it did not come up to body in England from the days of Whitfield to what I thought your standard of aversion to our own. It will convey many important lesMilton." Mr. Froude and his editors must be sons. It will manifest the irresistible power delivered over to the secular arm under the of the doctrines of the Reformation when prowrit De Heretico Comburando for their wilful claimed with honesty and zeal, even though obstinacy in rejecting the infallible sentence its teachers be unskilled in those studies which of the fathers and ecumenical counsels of the are essential to a complete and comprehenchurch poetical, on this article of faith. There sive theology. It will show that infirmities is no room for mercy. They did not belong which, not without some reason, offend the to the audience, meet but few, to whom the im- more cultivated, and disgust the more fasti mortal addressed himself-to that little com- dious members of the Catholic Church amongst pany to which alone it is reserved to estimate us, are but as the small dust in the balance, the powers of such a mind, and reverently to when weighed against the mighty energy. of notice its defects. They were of that multi-those cardinal truths in the defence of which tude who have to make their choice between Wycliffe and Luther, Knox and Calvin, Ridley repeating the established creed and holding their peace. Why are free-thinkers in literature to be endured more than in religion? The guilt of liberalism has clearly been contracted by this rash judgment; and Professor Tholuck being the witness, it exposes the criminals and the whole society of Oriel, nay, the entire University itself, to the diffusive indignation of all who cling to the Catholic faith in poetry.

There are much better things in Mr. Froude's

and Latimer, lived and laboured, and died. It may also prove that recondite learning, deep piety and the purest virtue may be all combined in bosoms which are yet contracted by narrow and unsuspected prejudices. But, above all, it may teach mutual charity; admonishing men to listen with kindness and selfdistrust even to each other's extravagant claims to an exclusive knowledge of the Divine will, and the exclusive possession of the Divine favour.

D'AUBIGNÉ'S HISTORY OF THE GREAT
REFORMATION.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1839.]

ENGLISH literature is singularly defective in | To fill this void in our libraries, is an enter whatever relates to the Reformation in Ger- prise which might stimulate the zeal, and many and Switzerland, and to the lives of the establish the reputation of the ripest student great men by whom it was accomplished. A native of this island who would know any thing to the purpose, of Reuchlin or Hutten, or Luther or Melancthon, of Zuingle, Bucer or Ecolampadius, of Calvin or Farel, must betake himself to other languages than his own.

Century, in Germany, Switzerland, &c. By J. H. MERLE
* History of the Great Reformation of the Sixteenth

D'AUBIGNE, President of the Theological School of
Geneva. 8vo. Vol. I. London, 1838.

of Ecclesiastical History amongst us. In no other field could he discover more ample resources for narratives of dramatic interest; for the delineation of characters contrasted in every thing except their common design; for exploring the influence of philosophy, arts, and manners, on the fortunes of mankind; and for vidence, moving among the ways and works reverently tracing the footsteps of Divine Proof men, imparting dignity to events otherwise

unimportant, and a deep significance to occurrences in any other view as trivial as a border raid, or the palaver of an African village.

Take, for example, the life of Ulric de Hutten, a noble, a warrior, and a rake; a theologian withal, and a reformer; and at the same time the author, or one of the authors, of a satire to be classed amongst the most effective which the world has ever seen. Had the recreative powers of Walter Scott been exercised on Hutten's story, how familiar would all Christendom have been with the stern Baron of Franconia, and Ulric, his petulant boy; with the fat Abbot of Foulde driving the fiery youth by penances and homilies to range a literary vagabond on the face of the earth; with the burgomaster of Frankfort, avenging by a still more formidable punishment the pasquinade which had insulted his civic dignity. How vivid would be the image of Hutten at the siege of Pavia, soothing despair itself by writing his own epitaph; giving com-versation; his theological writings, a mine of bat to five Frenchmen for the glory of Maximilian; and receiving from the delighted emperor the frugal reward of a poetic crown. Then would have succeeded the court and princely patronage of "the Pope of Mentz," and the camp and the castle of the Lord of Sickengen, until the chequered scene closed with Ulric's death-bed employment of producing a satire on his stupid physician. All things were welcome to Hutten; arms and love, theology and debauchery, a disputation with the Thomists, a controversy with Erasmus, or a war to the knife with the dunces of his age. His claim to have written the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum, has, indeed, been disputed, though with little apparent reason. It is at least clear that he asserted his own title, and that no other candidate for that equivocal honour united in himself the wit and learning, the audacity and licentiousness, which successively adorn and disfigure that extraordinary collection. Neither is it quite just to exclude the satirist from the list of those who lent a material aid to the Reformation. It is not, certainly, by the heartiest or the most contemptuous laugh that dynasties, whether civil or religious, are subverted; but it would be unfair to deny altogether to Hutten the praise of having contributed by his merciless banter to the successes of wiser and better men than himself. To set on edge the teeth of the Ciceronians by the Latinity of the correspondents of the profound Ortuinus, was but a pleasant jest; but it was something more to confer an immorality of ridicule on the erudite doctors who seriously apprehended, from the study of Greek and Hebrew, the revival at once of the worship of Minerva, and of the rite of circumcision. It was in strict satirical justice, that characters were assigned to these sages in a farce as broad as was ever drawn by Aristophanes or Moliere; and which was destitute neither of their riotous mirth, nor even of some of that deep wisdom which it was their pleasure to exhibit beneath that mask.

guage of reproach and insult, but, harder still,
described as a buffoon. It is, perhaps, well
for the dignity of the stern reformer that the
taunt was unknown to the object of it; for,
great as he was, Hutten would not have spared
him; and as the quiver of few satirists has
been stored with keener or more envenomed
shafts, so, few illustrious men have exposed
to such an assailant a greater number of vul-
nerable points. But of these, or of his other
private habits, little is generally recorded.
History having claimed Luther for her own,
biography has yielded to the pretensions of
her more stately sister; and the domestic and
interior life of the antagonist of Leo and of
Charles yet remains to be written. The mate-
rials are abundant, and of the highest interest;-
a collection of letters scarcely less voluminous
than those of Voltaire; the Colloquia Mensalia,
in some parts of more doubtful authenticity,
yet, on the whole, a genuine record of his con-
egotisms of the richest ore; and the works of
Melancthon, Seckendorf, Cochlous, Erasmus,
and many others, who flourished in an age
when, amongst learned men, to write and to
live were almost convertible terms.
The vo-
lume whose title-page we have.transcribed, is,
in fact, an unfinished life of Luther, closing
with his appeal from the pope to a general
council. We have selected it as the most ela-
borate, from a long catalogue of works on the
Reformation, recently published on the conti-
nent, by the present inheritors of the princi-
ples and passions which first agitated Europe
in the beginning of the sixteenth century. By
far the most amusing of the series is the col-
lection of Lutheriana by M. Michelet, which
we are bound to notice with especial gratitude,
as affording a greater number of valuable
references than all other books of the same
kind put together. It was drawn up as a
relaxation from those severer studies on which
M. Michelet's historical fame depends. But
the pastime of some men is worth far more
than the labours of the rest; and this compila-
tion has every merit but that of an appropriate
title; for an auto-biography it assuredly is not,
in any of the senses, accurate or popular, of
that much abused word. Insulated in our
habits and pursuits, not less than in our geo-
graphical position, it is but tardily that, within
the entrenchment of our four seas, we sympa-
thize with the intellectual movements of the
nations which dwell beyond them. Many,
however, are the motives, of at least equal
force in these islands as in the old and new
continents of the Christian world, for divert-
ing the eye from the present to the past, from
those who would now reform, to those who
first reformed, the churches of Europe. Or, if
graver reasons could not be found, it is beyond
all dispute that the professors of Wittemburg,
three hundred years ago, formed a group as
much more entertaining than those of Oxford
at present, as the contest with Dr. Eck ex-
ceeded in interest the squabble with Dr.
Hampden.

Much as Luther, himself, asper, incolumi gravitate jocum tentavit, he received with, little relish these sallies of his facetious ally; whom he not only censured for employing the lan

The old Adam in Martin Luther (a favourite subject of his discourse) was a very formida ble personage; lodged in a bodily frame of

This indiscreet, if not criminal marriage, searcely admitted a more serious defence. Yet Luther was not a man to do any thing which he was not prepared to justify. He had inculcated on others the advantages of the conjugal state, and was bound to enforce his precepts by his example. The war of the peasants had brought reproach on the principles of the Reformation; and it was incumbent on him to sustain the minds of his followers, and to bear his testimony to evangelical truth by deeds as well as words. Therefore, it was fit that he should marry a nun. Such is the logic of inclination, and such the presumption of uninterrupted success. "Dr. Ortuinas" himself never lent his venerable sanction to a stranger sophistry, than that which could thus discover in one great scandal an apology for another far more justly offensive.

surpassing vigour, solicited by vehement appe- | bics, the learned Eccius himself chiming into tites, and alive to all the passions by which the loud chorus with an elaborate epithalaman is armed for offensive or defensive war- mium. The bridegroom met the tempest, with fare with his fellows. In accordance with a the spirit of another Benedict, by a countergeneral law, that temperament was sustained blast of invective and sarcasms, which, afterby nerves which shrunk neither from the wards collected under the head of "the Lion endurance nor the infliction of necessary pain; and the Ass," perpetuated the memory of this and by a courage which rose at the approach redoubtable controversy. "My enemies," he of difficulty, and exulted in the presence of exclaimed, "triumphed. They shouted, lo, lo! danger. A rarer prodigality of nature com-I was resolved to show that, old and feeble as bined with these endowments an inflexible I am, I am not going to sound a retreat. I reliance on the conclusions of his own under- trust I shall do still more to spoil their merristanding, and on the energy of his own will. ment." He came forth on the theatre of life another Samson Agonistes "with plain heroic magnitude of mind, and celestial vigour armed;" ready to wage an unequalled combat with the haughtiest of the giants of Gath; or to shake down, though it were on his own head, the columns of the proudest of her temples. Viewed in his belligerent aspect, he might have seemed a being cut off from the common brotherhood of mankind, and bearing from on high a commission to bring to pass the remote ends of Divine benevolence, by means appalling to human guilt and to human weakness. But he was reclaimed into the bosom of the great family of man, by bonds fashioned in strength and number proportioned to the vigour of the propensities they were intended to control. There brooded over him a constitutional melancholy, sometimes engendering sadness, but more often giving birth to dreams so wild, that, if vivified by the imagination of Dante, they might have passed into visions as awful and majestic as those of the Inferno. As these mists rolled away, bright gleams of sunshine took their place, and that robust mind yielded itself to social enjoyments, with the hearty relish, the broad humour, and the glorious profusion of sense and nonsense, which betoken the relaxations of those who are for the moment abdicating the mastery, to become the companions of ordinary man. Luther had other and yet more potent spells with which to exorcise the demons who haunted him. He had ascertained and taught that the spirit of darkness abhors sweet sounds not less than light itself; for music, while it chases away the evil suggestions, effectually baffles the wiles of the tempter. His lute, and hand, and voice, accompanying his own solemn melodies, were therefore raised to repel the more vehement aggressions of the enemy of mankind; whose feebler assaults he encountered by studying the politics of a rookery, by assigning to each beautiful creation of his flowerbeds an appropriate sylph or genius, by the company of his Catherine de Bora, and the sports of their saucy John and playful Magdalene.

The name of Catherine has long enjoyed a wide but doubtful celebrity. She was a lady of noble birth, and was still young when she renounced the ancient faith, her convent, and her vows, to become the wife of Martin Luther. From this portentous union of a monk and nun, the "obscure men" confidently predicted the birth of Antichrist; while the wits and scholars greeted their nuptials with a thick hail-storm of epigrams, hymns, and dithyram-]

Catherine was a very pretty women, if Holbein's portrait may be believed; although even her personal charms have been rudely impugned by her husband's enemies, in grave disquisitions devoted to that momentous question. Better still, she was a faithful and affec tionate wife. But there is a no less famous Catherine to whom she bore a strong family resemblance. She brought from her nunnery an anxious mind, a shrewish temper, and great volubility of speech. Luther's arts were not those of Petruchio. With him reverence for woman was at once a natural instinct and a point of doctrine. He observed, that when the first woman was brought to the first man to receive her name, he called her not wife, but mother-"Eve, the mother of all living”—a word, he says, "more eloquent than ever fell from the lips of Demosthenes." So, like a wise and kind-hearted man, when his Catherine prattled, he smiled; when she frowned, he playfully stole away her anger, and chided her anxieties with the gentlest soothing. A happier or a more peaceful home was not to be found in the land of domestic tenderness. Yet, the confession must be made, that, from the first to the last, this love-tale is nothing less than a case of læsa majestas against the sovereignty of romance. Luther and his bride did not meet on either side with the raptures of a first affection. He had long before sighed for the fair Ave Shonfelden, and she had not concealed her attachment for a certain Jerome Baungartner. Ave had bestowed herself in marriage on a physician of Prussia; and before Luther's irrevocable vows were pledged, Jerome received from his great rival an inti mation that he still possessed the heart, and, with common activity, might even yet secure

the hand of Catherine. But honest Jerome was the devils. Yet, dear little fellow, he troubles not a man to be hurried. He silently resigned himself not a whit for all these powerful enehis pretensions to his illustrious competitor, mies, he gayly sucks the breast, looks round who, even in the moment of success, had the him with a loud laugh, and lets them storm as discernment to perceive, and the frankness to they like." There were darker seasons, when avow, that his love was not of a flaming or even theology and polemics gave way to the ungovernable nature. more powerful voice of nature; nor, indeed, has the deepest wisdom any thing to add to his lamentation over the bier of his daughter Magdalene. "Such is the power of natural affection, that I cannot endure this without tears and groans, or rather an utter deadness of heart. At the bottom of my soul are engraved her looks, her words, her gestures, as I gazed at her in lifetime and on her death-bed. My dutiful, my gentle daughter! Even the death of Christ (and what are all deaths compared to his ?) cannot tear me from this thought as it should. She was playful, lovely, and full of love!"

Give my love to your Aunt Magdalene, and kiss her for me. From your papa who loves you,-Martin Luther."

If it is not a sufficient apology for the quotation of this fatherly epistle to say, that it is the talk of Martin Luther, a weightier defence may be drawn from the remark that it illustrates one of his most serious opinions. The views commonly received amongst Christians, of the nature of the happiness reserved in another state of being, for the obedient and faithful in this life, he regarded, if not as erroneous, yet as resting on no sufficient foundation, and as ill adapted to "allure to brighter worlds." He thought that the enjoyments of heaven had been refined away to such a point of evanescent spirituality as to deprive them of their necessary attraction; and the allegory invented for the delight of little John, was but the adaptation to the thoughts of a child of a doctrine which he was accustomed to inculcate on others, under imagery more elevated than that of drums, crossbows and golden bridles.

There is but one step from the nursery to the servant's hall; and they who have borne with the parental counsels to little John, may endure the following letter respecting an aged namesake of his, who was about to quit Luther's family:

leaving God to think for him." The following parable, in a letter to Spalatin, is in a more ambitious strain.

"You are going to Augsburg without having taken the auspices, and ignorant when you will be allowed to begin. I, on the other hand, am in the midst of the Comitia, in the presence of illustrious sovereigns, kings, dukes, grandees, and nobles, who are solemnly debating affairs of state, and making the air ring with their deliberations and decrees. Instead of imprisoning themselves in those royal caverns which you call palaces they hold their assemblies in the sunshine, with the arch of heaven for their tent, substituting for costly tapestries the foliage of trees, where they enjoy their liberty. Instead of confining themselves in parks and pleasure-grounds, they range over the earth to its utmost limits. They detest the stupid luxuries of silk and embroidery, but all dress in the same colour, and put on very much the same looks. To say the truth, they all wear black, and all sing one tune. It is a song formed of a single note, with no variation but what is produced by the pleasing contrast of young and old voices. I have seen and heard nothing of their emperor. They have a supreme contempt for the quadruped employed by our gentry, having a much better method for setting the heaviest artillery at defiance. As far as I have been able to understand their

"We must dismiss old John with honour. We know that he has always served us faith-resolutions by the aid of an interpreter, they fully and zealously, and as became a Christian servant. What have we not given to vagabonds and thankless students who have made a bad use of our money? So we will not be niggardly to so worthy a servant, on whom our money will be bestowed in a manner pleasing to God. You need not remind me that we are not rich. I would gladly give him ten florins, if I had them, but do not let it be less than five. He is not able to do much for himself. Pray help him in any other way you can. Think how this money can be raised. There is a silver cup that might be pawned. Sure I am that God will not desert us. Adieu."

have unanimously determined to wage war through the whole year against the wheat, oats and barley, and the best corn and fruits of every kind. There is reason to fear, that victory will attend them every where, for they are a skilful and crafty race of warriors, equally expert in collecting booty by violence and by surprise. It has afforded me great pleasure to attend their assemblies as an idle looker on. The hope I cherish of the triumphs of their valour over wheat and barley, and every other enemy, renders me the sincere and faithful friend of these patres patriæ, these saviours of the commonwealth. If I could serve them by a wish, I would implore their deliverance from their present ugly name of crows. This is nonsense, but there is some seriousnesss in it. It is a jest which helps me to drive away painful thoughts."

Luther's pleasures were as simple as his domestic affections were pure. He wrote metrical versions of the Psalms, well described by Mr. Hallam, as holding a middle place between the doggerel of Sternhold and Hopkins, and the meretricious ornaments of the later versifiers of the Songs of David. He wedded to them music of his own, to which the most obtuse ear cannot listen without emotion. The greatest of the sons of Germany was, in this respect, a true child of that vocal land; for such was his enthusiasm for the art that he assigned to it a place second only to that of theology itself. He was also an ardent lover of painting, and yielded to Albert Durer the homage which he denied to Cajetan and Erasmus. His are amongst the earliest works embellished by the aid of the engraver. With the birds of his native country he had established a strict intimacy, watching, smiling, and thus moralizing over their habits. "That little fellow," he said of a bird going to roost, "has chosen his shelter, and is quietly rocking him- Few really great men, indeed, have hazarded self to sleep without a care for to-morrow's a larger number of jokes in the midst of a cirlodging, calmly holding by his little twig, and|cle of note-taking associates. They have left

The love of fables, which Luther thus indulged at one of the most eventful eras of his life, was amongst his favourite amusements. Esop lay on the same table with the book of Psalms, and the two translations proceeded alternately. Except the Bible, he declared that he knew no better book; and pronounced it not to be the work of any single author, but the fruit of the labours of the greatest minds in all ages. It supplied him with endless jests and allusions; as for example,-"The dog in charge of the butcher's tray, unable to defend it from the avidity of other curs, said,—Well, then, I may as well have my share of the meat, and fell-to accordingly; which is precisely what the emperor is doing with the property of the church."