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GREEN.

different to letters. There is a great 170 abundance of theologians in England,' he says to a friend; 'all point their studies in that direction.' The study of the country gentleman pointed towards theology as much as that of the scholar. As soon as Colonel Hutchinson had improved his natural understanding with the acquisition of learning, the first studies he exercised himself in were the principles 180 of religion.' The whole nation became, in fact, a Church. The great problems of life and death, whose obstinate questionings' found no answer in the higher minds of Shak185 spere's day, pressed for an answer from the men who followed him. We must not, indeed, picture the early Puritan as a gloomy fanatic. It was long before the religious movement

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which affected the noble and the squire as much as the shopkeeper came into conflict or the farmer with general culture. With the close of the Elizabethan age, indeed, the intellectual freedom which had marked it faded insensibly away: the bold philosophical speculations which Sidney had caught from Bruno, and which had brought on Marlowe and 200 Raleigh the charge of atheism, died, like her own religious indifference, with the Queen. But the lighter and more elegant sides of the Elizabethan culture harmonized well enough 205 with the temper of the Puritan gentleThe figure of Colonel Hutchinson, one of the Regicides, stands out from his wife's canvas with the grace and tenderness of a portrait 210 by Vandyck. She dwells on the personal beauty which distinguished his youth, on his teeth even and white as the purest ivory,' 'his hair of brown, very thickset in his youth, 215 softer than the finest silk, curling with loose great rings at the ends.' Serious as was his temper in graver

man.

607

matters, the young squire was fond
His 220
of hawking, and piqued himself on
his skill in dancing and fence.
artistic taste showed itself in a critical
love of 'gravings, sculpture, and all
liberal arts,' as well as in the plea-
sure he took in his gardens, 'in the
improvement of his grounds, in plant- 225
ing groves and walks and fruit trees.'
If he was 'diligent in his examina-
tion of the Scriptures,' he had a
great love for music, and often diverted
himself with a viol, on which he 230
played masterly.' A taste for music,
indeed, seems to have been common
in the graver homes of the time. If
we pass from Owthorpe and Colonel
Hutchinson to the house of a Lon- 235
don scrivener in Bread Street, we
find Milton's father, precisian and
man of business as he was, compos-
ing madrigals to Oriana, and rival-
We miss, indeed,
ling Bird and Gibbons as a writer 240
of sacred song.
the passion of the Elizabethan time,
its caprice, its largeness of feeling
and sympathy, its quick pulse of
delight; but, on the other hand, life 245
gains in moral grandeur, in a sense
of the dignity of manhood, in order-
liness and equable force. The temper
of the Puritan gentleman was just,
noble, and self-controlled. The larger 250
geniality of the age that had passed
away shrank into an intense tender-
ness within the narrower circle of
the home. 'He was as kind a father,'
says Mrs. Hutchinson of her hus- 255
band, 'as dear a brother, as good a
master, as faithful a friend as the
world had.' Passion was replaced
by a manly purity. Neither in youth
nor riper years could the most fair 260
or enticing woman ever draw him so
much as into unnecessary familiarity
Wise and virtuous
or dalliance.
women he loved, and delighted in
all pure and holy and unblameable 265
conversation with them, but so as

never to excite scandal or temptation. | into one of many influences to which Scurrilous discourse even among men he abhorred; and though he some270 times took pleasure in wit and mirth, yet that which was mixed with impurity he never could endure.' The play and wilfulness of life, in which the Elizabethans found its chiefest 275 charm, the Puritan regarded as unworthy of its character and end. His aim was to attain self-command, to be master of himself, of his thought and speech and acts. A certain 280 gravity and reflectiveness gave its tone to the lightest details of his daily converse with the world about him. His temper, quick as it might naturally be, was kept under strict 285 control. In his discourse he was ever on his guard against talkativeness or frivolity, striving to be deliberate in speech and 'ranking the words. beforehand.' His life was orderly 290 and methodical, sparing of diet and of self-indulgence; he rose early, 'he never was at any time idle, and hated to see any one else so.' The new sobriety and self-restraint marked 295 itself even in his change of dress. The gorgeous colours and jewels of the Renascence disappeared.

...

The strength, however, of the Puritan cause lay as yet rather in 800 the middle and professional class, than among the small traders or the gentry; and it is in a Puritan of this class that we find the fullest and noblest expression of the new 805 influence which was leavening the temper of the time. Milton is not only the highest, but the completest type of Puritanism. His life is absolutely contemporary with that of 810 his cause. He was born when it began to exercise a direct power over English politics and English religion; he died when its effort to mould them into its own shape was 315 Over, and when it had again sunk

we owe our English character. His earlier verse, the pamphlets of his riper years, the epics of his age, mark with a singular precision the 320 three great stages in its history. His youth shows us how much of the gaiety, the poetic ease, the intellectual culture of the Renascence lingered in a Puritan home. Scrivener and 325 'precisian' as his father was, he was a skilful musician; and the boy inherited his father's skill on lute and organ. One of the finest outbursts in the scheme of education which 830 he put forth at a later time is a passage, in which he vindicates the province of music as an agent in moral training. His home, his tutor, his school were all rigidly Puritan; 885 but there was nothing narrow or illiberal in his early training. 'My father,' he says, 'destined me while yet a little boy to the study of humane letters; which I seized with such 340 eagerness that from the twelfth year of my age I scarcely ever went from my lessons to bed before midnight.' But to the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew he learnt at school, the scrivener 345 advised him to add Italian and French. Nor were English letters neglected. Spenser gave the earliest turn to his poetic genius. In spite of the war between playwright and precisian, 350 a Puritan youth could still in Milton's days avow his love of the stage, 'if Jonson's learned sock be on, or sweetest Shakspere, Fancy's child, warble his native woodnotes wild,' 355 and gather from the 'masques and antique pageantry' of the court-revel hints for his own Comus and Arcades. Nor does any shadow of the coming struggle with the Church disturb the 380 young scholar's reverie, as he wanders beneath the high embowed roof, with antique pillars, massy proof, and storied windows richly dight, casting

365 a dim religious light,' or as he hears 'the pealing organ blow to the fullvoiced choir below, in service high and anthem clear.' His enjoyment of the gaiety of life stands in bright 370 contrast with the gloom and sternness of the later Puritanism. In spite of 'a certain reservedness of natural disposition,' which shrank from 'festivities and jests, in which I ac875 knowledge my faculty to be very slight,' the young singer could still enjoy the 'jest and youthful jollity' of the world around him, of its 'quips and cranks and wanton wiles;' 880 he could join the crew of Mirth, and look pleasantly on at the village fair, 'where the jolly rebecks sound to many a youth and many a maid, dancing in the chequered shade.' But 385 his pleasures were unreproved. There was nothing ascetic in his look, in his slender, vigorous frame, his face full of a delicate yet serious beauty, the rich brown hair which clustered 390 over his brow; and the words we have quoted show his sensitive enjoyment of all that was beautiful. But from coarse or sensual self-indulgence the young Puritan turned 395 with disgust: A certain reservedness

of nature, an honest haughtiness and self-esteem, kept me still above those low descents of mind.' He drank in an ideal chivalry from Spenser, but 400 his religion and purity disdained the outer pledge on which chivalry built up its fabric of honour. 'Every free and gentle spirit,' said Milton, 'without that oath, ought to be born a 405 knight.' It was with this temper that he passed from his London school, St. Paul's, to Christ's College at Cambridge, and it was this temper that he preserved throughout his 410 University career. He left Cambridge,

as he said afterwards, 'free from all reproach, and approved by all honest men,' with a purpose of self-dedica

Herrig-Förster, British Authors.

tion 'to that same lot, however mean or high, towards which time leads 416 me, and the will of Heaven.'

Even in the still calm beauty of a life such as this, we catch the sterner tones of the Puritan temper. The very height of its aim, the in- 420 tensity of its moral concentration, brought with them a loss of the genial delight in all that was human which distinguished the men of the Renascence. 'If ever God instilled 425 an intense love of moral beauty into the mind of any man,' said Milton, 'he has instilled it into mine.' 'Love Virtue,' closed his Comus, 'she alone is free!' But the love of virtue and 430 of moral beauty, if it gave strength to human conduct, narrowed human sympathy and human intelligence. Already in Milton we note 'a certain reservedness of temper,' a contempt 435 for 'the false estimates of the vulgar,' a proud retirement from the meaner and coarser life around him. Great as was his love for Shakspere, we can hardly fancy him delighting in 440 Falstaff. In minds of a less cultured order, this moral tension ended in a hard unsocial sternness of life. The ordinary Puritan, like the housewife of Eastcheap whom we have noticed 445 above, loved all that were godly, much disliking the wicked and profane.' His bond to other men was not the sense of a common manhood, but the recognition of a brotherhood 450 among the elect. Without the pale of the saints lay a world which was hateful to them, because it was the enemy of their God. It was this utter isolation from the ungodly' 455 that explains the contrast which startles us between the inner tenderness of the Puritans and the ruthlessness of so many of their actions. Cromwell, whose son's death (in his own 460 words) went to his heart like a dagger, indeed it did!' and who rode

39

away sad and wearied from the triumph of Marston Moor, burst into 465 horse-play as he signed the deathwarrant of the King. A temper which had thus lost sympathy with the life of half the world around it could hardly sympathise with the whole 470 of its own life. Humour, the faculty which above all corrects exaggeration and extravagance, died away before the new stress and strain of existence. The absolute devotion of the 475 Puritan to a Supreme Will tended more and more to rob him of all sense of measure and proportion in common matters. Little things became great things in the glare of 480 religious zeal; and the godly man learnt to shrink from a surplice, or a mince-pie at Christmas, as he shrank from impurity or a lie. Life became hard, rigid, colourless, as it 485 became intense. The play, the geniality, the delight of the Elizabethan age were exchanged for a measured sobriety, seriousness, and self-restraint. But it was a self-restraint and sobriety 490 which limited itself wholly to the outer life. In the inner soul of the Puritan, sense, reason, judgment were overborne by the terrible reality of 'invisible things.' Our first glimpse 495 of Oliver Cromwell is as a young country squire and farmer in the marsh levels around Huntingdon and St. Ives, buried from time to time in a deep melancholy, and haunted 500 by fancies of coming death. 'I live

in Meshac,' he writes to a friend, 'which they say signifies Prolonging; in Kedar, which signifies Darkness; yet the Lord forsaketh me not.' The 505 vivid sense of a Divine Purity close

to such men made the life of common men seem sin. 'You know what my manner of life has been,' Cromwell adds. 'Oh, I lived in and loved 510 darkness, and hated light. I hated godliness. Yet his worst sin was

620

probably nothing more than an enjoyment of the natural buoyancy of youth, and a want of the deeper earnestness which comes with riper 615 years. In imaginative tempers, like that of Bunyan, the struggle took a more picturesque form. John Bunyan was the son of a poor tinker at Elstow in Bedfordshire, and even in childhood his fancy revelled in terrible visions of Heaven and Hell. 'When I was but a child of nine or ten years old,' he tells us, 'these things did so distress my soul, that 52 then in the midst of my merry sports and childish vanities, amidst my vain companions, I was often much cast down and afflicted in my mind therewith; yet could I not let go my sins.' 530 The sins he could not let go were a love of hockey and of dancing on the village green; for the only real fault which his bitter self-accusation discloses, that of a habit of swearing, 536 was put an end to at once and for ever by a rebuke from an old woman. His passion for bell-ringing clung to him even after he had broken from it as a 'vain practice;' and he would 540 go to the steeple house and look on, till the thought that a bell might fall and crush him in his sins drove him panic-stricken from the door. A sermon against dancing and games 545 drew him for a time from these indulgences; but the temptation again overmastered his resolve. 'I shook the sermon out of my mind, and to my old custom of sports and gaming 550 I returned with great delight. But the same day, as I was in the midst of a game of cat, and having struck it one blow from the hole, just as I was about to strike it the second 556 time, a voice did suddenly dart from heaven into my soul, which said, "Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to Heaven, or have thy sins and go to Hell?" At this I was put in an 560

exceeding maze; wherefore, leaving my cat upon the ground, I looked up to heaven; and was as if I had with the eyes of my understanding 565 seen the Lord Jesus looking down

upon me, as being very hotly displeased with me, and as if He did severely threaten me with some grievous punishment for those and other ungodly practices.'

CARDINAL NEWMAN.

JOH
OHN HENRY NEWMAN (1801-1890),
the son of a London banker, studied at
Trinity College, Oxford, and was elected
fellow and tutor of Oriel College. At Ox-
ford he became intimate with John Keble,
Dr. Pusey, and other theologians, who,
in accordance with the medieval and
emotional spirit of Romanticism and in
reaction to the current religious and polit-
ical Liberalism, hungered for a more
emotional religion. Their dogmatic lean-
ing towards Rome inaugurated a Rome-
ward movement in the English Church,
which is generally known as the 'Oxford
Movement' or 'Tractarianism'. In 1833
Newman and his friends began to pro-
mulgate their religious ideas in public ser-
mons and in the famous ninety Tracts
for the Times (1834-41), which raised
such a storm of opposition, that Newman
resigned (1843) his vicarage of St. Mary's,
Oxford, which he had held since 1828,
and retired to the neighbouring village of
Littlemore. In 1845 he took the decisive
step of publicly seceding from the Church
of England, and was formally received
into the Roman Catholic communion. The
last thirty years of his life he mainly

spent at Edgbaston, a suburb of Birmingham, where he had founded (1859) a Catholic College. In 1879, Pope Leo XIII. created him a Cardinal.

Newman holds a place in English literature for the delicacy, purity, and simplicity of his prose-style. Of his theological works we mention his famous Oxford sermons (e. g. Parochial Sermons 1834-42, Plain Sermons 1839, Sermons before the University 1843), his immensely popular Apologia pro Vita Sua, being a History of his Religious Opinions (1864), which was called forth by a boisterous attack of Kingsley, and his philosophical Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870). His discourses held in favour of the Catholic University in Dublin, where he was Rector from 1854-58, were collected under the title of The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated (1852-58). Loss and Gain (1848) and Callista (1856) are novels of a religious character, the former giving the story of an Oxford convert, the latter that of a Greek girl sculptor who died a martyr in Africa. His long religious poem The Dream of Gerontius (1866) discovered no mean poetical gift.

570

WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY?
[From The Idea of a University (1852)]

If I were asked to describe as briefly and popularly as I could, what a University was, I should draw my answer from its ancient 5 designation of a Studium Generale, or 'School of Universal Learning.' This description implies the assemblage of strangers from all parts in one spot; - from all parts; else, how 10 will you find professors and students for every department of knowledge?

and in one spot; else, how can
there be any school at all? Accord-
ingly, in its simple and rudimental
form, it is a school of knowledge 15
of every kind, consisting of teachers
and learners from every quarter.
Many things are requisite to com-
plete and satisfy the idea embodied
in this description; but such a Uni- 20
versity seems to be in its essence a
place for the communication and cir-

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