class of illustrations perpetually occurring in his works. His boundless learning is constantly supplying some rare and striking analogy.

In almost every form of imaginative expression he seems to take equal delight; nor is there any, of which his principal works do not supply innumerable specimens. The compact metaphor, the formal simile, the ingenious apologue, are all to be found in every few pages; while not unfrequently his figures, extending to a vast number of points of resemblance, and consisting not so much of one analogy as of a series and complication of analogies, run out into brief allegories. This is very frequently the case when he introduces them with the phrase," so have I seen;" this is generally the signal for the reader to expect some very lengthened illustration. Thus, when speaking, in the beautiful sermon entitled, the "Return of Prayers," of certain causes which often mar the "good man's" supplications, he thus illustrates the effects of discomposure of spirit.

"For prayer is an action, and a state of intercourse and desire, exactly contrary to this character of anger. Prayer is an action of likeness to the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of gentleness and dove-like simplicity; an imitation of the holy Jesus, whose spirit is meek, up to the greatness of the biggest example, and a conformity to God; whose anger is always just, and marches slowly, and is without transportation, and often hindered, and never hasty, and is full of mercy; prayer is the peace of our spirit, the stillness of our thoughts, the evenness of recollection, the seat of meditation, the rest of our cares, and the calm of our tempest; prayer is the issue of a quiet mind, of untroubled thoughts, it is the daughter of charity, and the sister of meekness; and he that prays to God with an angry, that is, with a troubled and discomposed spirit, is like him that retires into a battle to meditate, and sets up his closet in the out-quarters of an army, and chooses a frontier-garrison to be wise in. Anger is a perfect alienation of the mind from prayer, and therefore is contrary to that attention, which presents our prayers in a right line to God. For so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest, than it could recover by the libration and frequent weighing of his wings; till the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm was over; and then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing, as if it had learned music and motion from an angel, as he passed sometimes through the air, about his ministries here below: so is the prayer of a good man; when his affairs have required business, and his business was matter of discipline, and his discipline was to pass upon a sinning person, or had a design of charity, his duty met with infirmities of a man, and anger was its instrument, and the instrument became stronger than the prime agent, and raised a tempest, and overruled the man; and then his prayer was broken, and his thoughts were troubled, and his words went up towards a cloud, and his thoughts pulled them back again, and made them without intention; and the good man sighs for his infirmity, but must be content to lose the prayer, and he must recover it when his anger is removed, and his spirit is becalmed, made even as the brow of Jesus, and smooth like the heart of God; and then it ascends to heaven upon the wings of the holy Dove, and dwells with God, till it returns, like the useful bee, loaden with a blessing and the dew of heaven."

Another instance of figure carried out into allegory occurs in the same sermon, when speaking of the elevated piety required in him who undertakes to intercede for others.

"For a man of an ordinary piety is like Gideon's fleece, wet in its own locks; but it could not water a poor man's garden but so does a thirsty land drink all the dew of heaven that wets its face, and a greater shower makes no torrent, nor digs so much as a little furrow, that the drills of the water might pass into rivers, or refresh their neighbour's weariness; but when the earth is full, and hath no strange consumptive needs, then at the next time, when God blesses it with a gracious shower, it divides into portions, and sends it abroad in free and equal communications, that all that stand round about may feel the shower. So is the good man's prayer; his own cup is full, it is crowned with health, and overflows with blessings, and all that drink of his cup and eat at his table, are refreshed with his joys, and divide with him in his holy portions. And indeed he hath need of a great stock of piety, who is first to provide for his own necessities, and then to give portions to a numerous relation. It is a great matter, that every man needs for himself,-the daily expenses of his own infirmities, the unthriving state of his omission of duties, and recessions from perfection, and sometimes the great losses and shipwrecks, the plunderings and burning of his house by a fall into a deadly sin; and most good men are in this condition, that they have enough to do to live, and keep themselves above water; but how few men are able to pay their own debts, and lend great portions to others! The number of those who can effectually intercede for others to great purposes of grace and pardon, are as soon told as the number of wise men, as the gates of a city, or the entries of the river Nilus."

Another instance of that extension and complication of figure of which we have been speaking, may be quoted from the sermon entitled, "The Mercy of the Divine Judgments; or, God's Method in curing Sinners." He is speaking of the mercy which often lies concealed under the severest judgments.

“What wisdom, and philosophy, and perpetual experience, and revelation, and promises, and blessings, cannot do, a mighty fear can; it can allay the confidences of bold lust and imperious sin, and soften our spirit into the lowliness of a child, our revenge into the charity of prayers, our impudence into the blushings of a chidden girl; and therefore, God hath taken a course proportionable: for he is not so unmercifully merciful, as to give milk to an infirm lust, and hatch the egg to the bigness of a cockatrice. And, therefore, observe how it is that God's mercy prevails over all his works; it is even then when nothing can be discerned but his judgments: for as when a famine had been in Israel in the days of Ahab for three years and a half, when the angry prophet Elijah met the king, and presently a great wind arose, and the dust blew into the eyes of them that walked abroad, and the face of the heavens was black and all tempest, yet then the prophet was

most gentle, and God began to forgive, and the heavens were more beautiful than when the sun puts on the brightest ornaments of a bridegroom, going from his chambers of the east: so it is in the economy of the Divine mercy; when God makes our faces black, and the winds blow so loud till the cordage cracks, and our gay fortunes split, and our houses are dressed with cypress and yew, and the mourners go about the streets,' this is nothing but the 'pompa misericordiæ,' this is the funeral of our sins, dressed indeed with emblems of mourning, and proclaimed with sad accents of death; but the sight is refreshing as the beauties of the field which God had blessed, and the sounds are healthful as the voice of a physician."

But we might multiply instances of this kind without end. They will be found in almost all his sermons," and in most of his practical works.

It cannot be denied, however, that though numberless instances of every species of figure are to be found in his writings, yet, that from peculiarities of mind which have been already noticed, and which will hereafter come more specifically under consideration, he is in general best pleased with the less compressed and energetic forms of illustration. His genius was abundantly more poetical and descriptive than oratorical; a fact which accounts not only for the general diffuseness and copiousness of diction, and the accumulation of epithets, but (the point we are now considering) for the fulness and amplitude of illustration in which he loves to indulge.

His tastes, in this respect, were any thing but severe. His ornaments are not plain and simple, but massive and costly, richly carved and enchased. His pictures are not mere outlines; a few hasty strokes, which leave much to the reader's imagination to fill up; they are all painted in the most finished manner, and coloured with the utmost splendour. It is curious to see how he very often adds what is, as respects the sense, a superfluous epithet or needless circumstance; not to render the analogy more complete, or the illustration more impressive; for in many of the instances now referred to, these purposes would be best answered by greater severity; but merely from his passion for description; to render it the more picturesque. To point out instances would be needless; they are to be met with in almost

every page.

But though the imagination of Jeremy Taylor loves, it is true, to indulge in the utmost luxuriance of description, it is not meant that frequent instances may not be found, in which he has employed the most energetic metaphors with the most felicitous effect. Such are some of the brief and sparkling illustrations in which he will, now and then, convey important moral sentiments. Such impressive apothegms, thus set, as it were, in gold, at once strike the attention, and, from their compactness, are easily retained in the memory. They are, if one may so speak, the jewels of philosophy, which she may always carry with her, possessing untold treasures of wisdom in the compass of a few sentences. Such is that beautiful expression, in which Taylor calls "chastity the enamel of the soul;" or that in which he describes "truth as the daughter of time;" or that in which, after condemning an excessive attention to curious but unprofitable speculation, he says, "not these matters, but practical are the hinges of immortality;" or that in which, when speaking of the all-pervading influence which religion should exercise over all the secular concerns of life, he tells us that such " a religion will reconcile Martha's employment with Mary's devotion."

It need not be said that an imagination, like that of Jeremy Taylor, was easily betrayed into extravagances. He is indeed almost proverbial for them; nor need we select specimens of faults, which are of but too frequent occurrence. Broken metaphors, and every form of exaggerated expression, (in numberless instances sinking into downright fustian and bombast,) are to be met with in most of his works. The same wondrous inequality which distinguishes the movements of every other faculty of his mind, eminently distinguished those of his imagination also.

Though there are few passages,-even those of the greatest beauty,-which are not alloyed by some faults of this kind, yet there are some; nor is it necessary to say, that these, which display all the riches of an imagination so transcendent without offending taste, breathe a spirit of almost superhuman eloquence. Such is the following brief passage, on "Prayer," from his beautiful little piece, entitled "Christian Consolations."

But all that have a care to walk with God, fill their vessels more largely as soon as they rise, before they begin the work of the day, and before they lie down again at night; which is to observe what the Lord appointed in the Levitical ministry, a morning and an evening lamb to be laid upon the altar. So with them that are not stark irreligious, prayer is the key to open the day, and the bolt to shut in the night. But as the skies drop the early dew and the evening dew upon the grass, -yet it would not spring and grow green by that constant and double falling of the dew, unless some great showers, at certain seasons, did supply the rest; so the customary devotion of prayer, twice a day, is the falling of the early and the latter dew; but if you will increase and flourish in the works of grace, empty the great clouds sometimes, and let them fall

into a full shower of prayer; choose out the seasons in your own discretion, when prayer shall overflow, like Jordan in the time of harvest.

Of wit Jeremy Taylor appears to have possessed far more than he thought fit to employ. Whether this moderation resulted from the severity of his character, or from the gravity of the topics which, for the most part, employed his pen, or from both, we shall not determine. Even in his practical works we now and then meet with brief specimens of no ordinary wit; as when speaking of the besotting effects of habitual drunkenness, he observes, "that never since Joseph's cup was put into Benjamin's sack, was there a divining goblet." It is in his controversial pieces, however, and in his "Ductor Dubitantium," that his wit, as might be expected, most freely displays itself. The enormous errors of popery more especially he often exposes in a vein of very powerful irony. Take the following instance from his treatise on "Transubstantiation."

"By this doctrine of transubstantiation, the same thing is bigger and less than itself: for it is bigger in one host than in another; for the wafer is Christ's body, and yet one wafer is bigger than another: therefore Christ's body is bigger than itself. The same thing is above itself, and below itself, within itself, and without itself: it stands wholly upon his own right side, and wholly, at the same time, upon his own left side; it is as very a body, as that which is most divisible, and yet it is as indivisible as a spirit; and it is not a spirit but a body; and yet a body is no way separated from a spirit, but by being divisible. It is a perfect body, in which the feet are further from the head, than the head from the breast; and yet there is no space between head and feet at all: so that the parts are further off and nearer, without any distance at all; being further and not further, distant, and yet in every point. By this also here is magnitude without extension of parts; for if it be essential to magnitude to have 'partem extra partem,' that is, 'parts distinguished, and severally sited,' then where one part is, there another is not; and, therefore, the whole body of Christ is not in every part of the consecrated wafer; and yet if it be not, then it must be broken into parts, when the wafer is broken, and then it must fill his place by parts. But then it will not be possible, that a bigger body, with the conditions of a body, should be contained in a thing less than itself; that a man may throw the house out at the windows: and if it be possible, that a magnitude should be in a point, and yet Christ's body be a magnitude, and yet in a point, then the same thing is in a point, and not in a point; extended, and not extended; great and not divisible; a quantity without dimension; something and nothing. By this doctrine, the same thing lies still and yet moves; it stays in a place and goes away from it; it removes from itself, and yet abides close by, itself, and in itself, and out of itself; it is removed, and yet cannot be moved; broken, and cannot be divided; passes from east to west through a middle place, and yet stirs not; it is brought from heaven to earth, and yet is no where in the way, nor ever stirs out of heaven; it ceases to be where it was, and yet does not stir from thence, nor yet cease to be at all; it is removed at the motion of the accidents, and yet does not fall when the host falls; it changes his place, but falls not, and yet the changing of place was by falling. It supposes a body of Christ, which was made of bread, that is, Not born of the Virgin Mary;' it says, that Christ's body is there, without power of moving, or seeing, or hearing, or understanding; he can neither remember nor foresee, save himself from robbers or vermin, corruption or rottenness; it makes that which was raised in power, to be again sown in weakness; it gives to it the attribute of an idol, to have 'eyes and see not, ears and hear not, a nose and not to smell, feet and yet cannot walk.' It makes a thing contained bigger than the continent, and all Christ's body to go into a part of his body; his whole head into his own mouth, if he did eat the eucharist, as it is probable he did, and certain that he might have done. These are the certain consequents of this most unreasonable doctrine, in relation to motion and quantity."

Again.

"By this doctrine, Christ's body is there where it was not before, and yet not by change of place, for it descends not;nor by production, for it was produced before ;---not by natural mutation, for Christ himself is wholly immutable, and though the bread be mutable, it can never become Christ. That which is now, and was always, begins to be; and yet it cannot begin, which was so long before. And by this doctrine is affirmed that, which even themselves judge to be simply and absolutely impossible. For if, after a thing hath his being, and during the first being, it shall have every day many new beginnings, without multiplying the beings, then the same thing is under two times at the same time; it is hut a day old, and yet was six days ago, and six ages, and sixteen. The body of Christ obtains to be what it was not before, and yet it is wholly the same, without becoming what it was not. It obtains to be under the form of bread; and that which it is now and was not before, is neither perfective of his being, nor destructive, nor alterative, nor augmentative, nor diminutive, nor conservative. It is, as it were, a production, as it were a creation, as a conservation, as an adduction; that is, it is, as it were, just nothing; for it is not a creation, not a generation, not an adduction, not a conservation. It is not a conversion productive; for no new individual is produced. It is not a conversion conservative; that is a child of Bellarmine's but it is perfect nonsense; for it is, as he says, a conversion, in which both the terms remain in the same place; that is, in which there are two things not converted, but not one that is; but it is a thing, of which there never was any example. But then if we ask what conversion it is? after a great many fancies and devices, contradicting each other, at last it is found to be adductive,'-and yet that 'adductive' does not change the place, but signifies a substantial change; and yet adduction is no substantial change, but accidental; and yet this change is not accidental, but adductive and substantial. O rem ridiculam, Cato, et jocosam!'”

The reader shall be presented with two other brief specimens from the "Ductor Dubitantium;" they are given rather because they are of convenient length, than because they are the most striking that might be selected. The following is the humorous manner in which he exposes the contradictions and absur

dities into which the Roman canon lawyers have fallen, in their absurd extensions of the prohibited degrees in marriage.

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"These laws were made by time and accidents, and were extended or contracted as it pleased the popes of Rome, who (as one observes) were, for a long time, iniquiores et invidi in maritos,' apt and easy to make all restraints upon marriages. If it were seasonable and fit, it were not useless to observe many instances out of the canon law to this purpose. But I forbear; that which I now observe, is, that the prohibition amongst them began with cousins-german; then it went to the third and fourth degrees; then to seven; then to four again; sometimes to six, as in the synod at Cabaillon; sometimes usque dum generatio agnoscitur, aut memoria retinetur,'' as long as any memory of kindred remains ;'-and that will be very far in Wales, where they reckon eight degrees and special names of kindred after cousins-german, and then kin for ever: and truly these canonists proceed as reasonably as their principles would admit. For if cognation or consanguinity was the hinderance of marriage, wherever they could reckon that, they had some pretence to forbid marriage: but if they only forbade it upon the accounts of nature, or by the precedent of the Divine law given to Moses, they were to stop there where nature stopped, or the Divine law. But that they would not, as knowing it to be an easy thing to make laws at the charge of other men's trouble.

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The reasons why the projectors of the canon law did forbid to the fourth or to the seventh degree, were as fit a cover for this dish as could be imagined. They that were for four, gave this grave reason for it: There are four humours in the body of a man, to which, because the four degrees of consanguinity do answer, it is proportionable to nature to forbid the marriage of cousins to the fourth degree.' Nay more; there are four elements;' ergo, to which it may be addel, that there are upon a man's hand four fingers and a thumb. The thumb is the 'stirps' or common parent; and to the end of the four fingers, that is, the four generations of kindred, we ought not to marry, because the life of a man is but a span long.'-There are also four quarters of the world; and indeed so there are of every thing in it, if we please, and therefore abstain at least till the fourth degree be past. Others who are graver and wiser (particularly Bonaventure) observe cunningly, that besides the four humours of the body, there are three faculties of the soul, which being joined together, make seven, and they point out to us that men are to abstain till the seventh generation.' These reasons, such as they are, they therefore were content withal, because they had no better: yet upon the strength of these they were bold, even against the sense of almost all mankind, to forbid these degrees to marry.

The following is a striking and humorous mode of representing the impossibility, that the common people should ever understand the frivolous subtleties by which the Romish doctors vainly attempt to defend the abomination of image worship.

"And here for the common people to discern the niceties, and the intricate nothings, that their learned men have devised, to put a vizor upon this folly, is so impossible, that it will not be easy to make them understand the terms, though a learned man were by them at every cringe they make. They cannot tell whether the worship be to the image or the exemplar; which is prime and which is secondary; they cannot distinguish of 'latria,' and ' dulia,' and 'hyperdulia;' nor can they skill in proper or improper worship, mediate and immediate, univocal, equivocal, and analogical, nor say how much is for this, and how much for that, or which is simple and which is allayed, which is absolute and which is reductive. And although men in the schools, and when they have nothing to do but to make distinctions which nobody can understand, can separate word from word, form from matter, real from notional, the shadow from the body, a dream from a vision, the skin from the flesh, and the flesh from the bone,-yet when they come to action, and clothe their theorems with a body of circumstances, he that attends the present business of devotion and desire, will not find himself able or at leisure then to distinguish curiously; and therefore it was well said of Hesselius of Louvain ;—' Images were brought into use for the sake of the laity, and now for their sakes they are to be removed again, lest they give Divine worship to the image, or fall into the heresy of the Anthropomorphites:' (he might have added,) ́or lest by worshipping God by an image, they commit the sin of superstition and idolatry, breaking the second commandment.' For the same folly, which in the heathens, was reproved by the primitive christians, the same is done now-a-days, by christians to their images. I shall conclude this with a story out of an Italian, who wrote commentaries of the affairs of India :---When the poor barbarians of Nova Hispania, in the kingdom of Mexico, had, one day, of a sudden found their idols taken down and broken, they sent four principal persons of their country to Alphonso Zuasus, the licentiate, who had commanded it; they complaining of the injury, supposed also, and told him they believed it to be done without his consent and knowledge, as knowing that christians had idols and images of their own, whom they valued, and adored, and worshipped; and looking up, and espying the image of St. Sebastian, whom Alfonsus had in great veneration, hanging by his bed-side, they pointed at him with their finger, saying, the same regard which he had to the image of St. Sebastian, the same they had to theirs. The governor being troubled with this quick and not barbarous discourse, turned him about a little, and at last told them, that the christians did not worship images for their own sakes, but as they represented holy persons dwelling in heavenly places; and, to demonstrate that, took down the image of St. Sebastian, and broke it in pieces. They replied that it was just so with them; and that they were not so stupid to worship the images for their own regards, but as they represented the sun and moon, and all the lights of heaven. Alfonsus being yet more troubled, was forced to change the state of the question, by saying that the object was differing, though the manner was not; that the christians did, by their images, pass honour to the great Creator of the world; but they did it to creatures, to evil spirits, and false gods: which was indeed very true, but it was a removing the question from the second commandment to the first. For, although, in relation to the first, the heathens have the worst of it; yet as to the second, these christians and the poor Indians were equal: and the wit of man cannot tell how they differ."

It is observable, however, that the wit of Jeremy Taylor is almost always tempered by good-nature, and an all-pervading spirit of charity. Biting sarcasm or severe satire is rarely found in his writings. His wit is like the harmless lightning which often plays in the summer-evening sky; not that which blasts and scathes as well as shines.

Of the immeasurable learning of Jeremy Taylor, incidental mention has been already made when estimating the influence which, in conjunction with other causes, it exerted on his powers of reasoning and imagination. And the wonder is that that influence should not have been far greater; that his mind should have retained so large a measure of its native elasticity as it did, under such enormous masses of erudition. Half the same quantity of learning would have suffocated the intellect of most men. Nay, the mere time expended in its acquisition would have left little leisure to the generality of mankind for the independent exercise of their own faculties. It is no small proof of the astonishing energy and power of Taylor's mind, that he should have been able to breathe and move at all under such corpulence of learning. The feats he performs under such circumstances reminds one of the achievements of the knights of chivalry, whose enormous weapons and massive armour would seem, at first sight, altogether unmanageable to men of merely mortal mould.

But while we may justly wonder that he had strength to wield such a mass of learning with any degree of facility, we can be as little surprised that even he should often be overborne by it. In the education and discipline of intellect, nothing is of more importance than to take care that the quantity of aliment shall be duly proportioned to the powers of digestion, and that the latter shall be strengthened as the former is increased. In this way, and in this only, can intellectual repletion be guarded against; and the mind, not merely provided with proper materials to operate upon, but rendered capable of using them. To digest, to arrange, to consolidate our knowledge, to render it fit for use, and to fit the mind for using it, demand as much time as the accumulation of knowledge; and more labour.

The ill effects which Jeremy Taylor's erudition often produced, have been already necessarily adverted to in a previous part of this Essay. In the first place, the mere accumulation of it left not sufficient time for the full development of his powers of reasoning, or for the adequate cultivation of his taste, or for systematically digesting his vast acquisitions. In addition to all this, it induced, in many instances, an excessive reverence for antiquity and precedent. It led him to acquiesce in many arguments supplied by his learning, which the independent and sober exercise of his own judgment would have rejected. It very frequently led to a childishly credulous assent to the merest fables, as grave matter of fact; and what was worse than all, it led to an excessive copiousness of diction, and the introduction of an immensity of extraneous matter in most of his trains of reasoning. In a word, as already stated, there was but one faculty of his mind, that completely defied its influence;—his imagination. This existed in such plenitude and vigour, that even erudition like his could not bury it; it merely gathered fresh nourishment from the soil, struck its roots the wider and the deeper, and shot out branches in more luxuriant vigour.

Almost every kind of learning appears to have been cultivated by Jeremy Taylor, with nearly equal assiduity, if we may judge by the utterly worthless kind of books he often quotes. The strange want of taste and discrimination, which has so frequently been stated as the distinguishing peculiarity of his character, seems to have marked him here also. (His appetite for knowledge was voracious; and like other voracious appetites, it was far from fastidious. It was a sort of intellectual bulimia; nothing came amiss to it; luxuries and carrion, sumptuous food and broken victuals, classical delicacies and the coarsest fare of the cloister and the schools, were all devoured with nearly equal eagerness, and digested apparently with nearly equal ease. He was not only familiarly acquainted with the whole range of classical literature-poets, orators, historians, and philosophers; with the civil and ecclesiastical history of all ages and nations; with all the principal fathers both of the Eastern and Western churches, and with the voluminous writings of the schoolmen, but he appears to have read a vast number of books, and fragments of books, on all sorts of subjects, and more especially of martyrology, and monkish legends; while he had devoured an immensity of books of Romish casuistry and devotion. In addition to all this, he was very extensively versed in the philosophers

This remark may be illustrated by the following observations of Bishop Heber. "Taylor's appetite for the marvellous may seem to have been sufficiently indiscriminate, when, in the same sentence, he refers, without the least apparent hesitation, to two such monstrous stories as those of the Egyptian Thebes, with its houses of alabaster, spotted with gold, and the city of Quinsay, with fourscore millions of inhabitants. It seems, however, to have been the common practice of writers in his time to assume as facts, for the purposes of argument, any thing which suited their turn, and for which a single authority could be given. I know scarcely any instance in which they have appeared to distinguish between the weight of different testimonies, or to make any difference in their manner of citing circumstances alleged by writers of different ages. If a fact were found recorded in any ancient historian, they received it without question, how small soever the means of acquiring information which that historian may have possessed, or however great the internal evidence of his credulity or mendacity." These observations are in the main correct, yet it can hardly be denied that Taylor possessed a more easy faith than most of his contemporaries.