figures have brought on our knowledge? How many rewards, which are due to more profitable and difficult arts, have been still snatched away by the easy vanity of fine speaking? For, now I am warmed with this just anger, I cannot withhold myself from betraying the shallowness of all these seeming mysteries, upon which we writers, and speakers, look so big. And, in few words, I dare say that of all the studies of men, nothing may be sooner obtained than this vicious abundance of phrase, this trick of metaphors, this volubility of tongue, which makes so great a noise in the world. But I spend words in vain; for the evil is now so inveterate, that it is hard to know whom to blame, or where to begin to reform. We all value one another so much upon this beautiful deceit, and labour so long after it in the years of our education, that we cannot but ever after think kinder of it than it deserves. And indeed, in most other parts of learning, I look upon it as a thing almost utterly desperate in its cure and I think it may be placed among those general mischiefs, such as the dissension of Christian princes, the want of practice in religion, and the like, which have been so long spoken against that men are become insensible about them; every one shifting off the fault from himself to others; and so they are only made bare common-places of complaint. It will suffice my present purpose to point out what has been done by the Royal Society towards the correcting of its excesses in natural philosophy; to which it is, of all others, a most professed enemy.

They have therefore been most rigorous in putting in execution the only remedy that can be found for this extravagance, and that has been, a constant resolution to reject all the amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style; to return back to the primitive purity, and shortness, when men delivered so many things, almost in an equal number of words. They have exacted from all their members a close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive expressions; clear senses; a native easiness: bringing all things as near the mathematical plainness as they can; and preferring the language of artizans, countrymen, and merchants, before that of wits or scholars.

(From the History of the Royal Society.)

THE ERROR OF EXTEMPORE PRAYER

AND PREACHING

WE have lived in an age, when the two gifts, as they were wont to be called, of extempore praying and extempore preaching, have been more pretended to and magnified than, I believe, they ever were before, or, I hope, ever will be again, in the Church and nation. Yet, for all I could ever learn or observe, the most sudden readiness and most profuse exuberancy in either of these ways has been only extempore in show and appearance, and very frequently but a cunningly dissembled change of the very same matter and words often repeated, though not in the same order.

As to that of extempore praying, which therefore too many mistake for praying by the spirit, it is manifest that the most exercised and most redundant faculty in that kind, is, in reality, only praying by the fancy or the memory, not the spirit. They do but vary and remove the Scripture style and language, or their own, into as many places and shapes and figures as they can. And though they have acquired never so plentiful a stock of them, yet still the same phrases and expressions do so often come about again, that the disguise may quickly be seen through by any attentive and intelligent hearer. So that, in plain terms, they who think themselves most skilful in that art do really, all the while, only pray in set forms disorderly set and never ranged into a certain method. For which cause, though they may not seem to be forms to their deluded auditors, yet they are so in themselves; and the very persons who use them most variously, and most artificially, cannot but know them to be so.

This, my brethren, seems to be all the great mystery of the so much boasted power of extempore praying. And why may not the like be affirmed, in great measure, of extempore preaching, which has so near an affinity with the other? Is not this also, at the bottom, only a more crafty management of the same phrases and observations, the same doctrines and applications, which they had ever before provided and composed, and reserved in their memories?

Do but hear the most voluble masters in this way once or twice, or perhaps oftener, as far as their changes shall reach,

VOL. III

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and at first, no doubt, you will be inclined to wonder at the strange agility of their imaginations and compass of their inventions and nimbleness of their utterance. But if you shall attend them calmly and constantly the vizor will be quickly pulled off, though they manage it never so dexterously; you will at last find that they only walk forward and backward and round about: : one, it may be, in a larger labyrinth than another, but in a labyrinth still; through the same turnings and windings again and again, and, for the most part, guided by the same clue.

The explanations, perhaps, of their texts, the connections and transitions of the parts, and some sudden glosses and descants and flights of fancy may seem new to you. But the material points of doctrine and the commonplaces to which upon any loss or necessity they have recourse, these they frequently repeat, and apply to several subjects with very little alteration in the substance, oftentimes not in the words. These are the constant paths which they scruple not to walk over and over again, 'till, if you follow them very close, you may perceive, amidst all their extempore pretensions, they often tread in the same rounds, till they have trodden them bare enough.

But, God be thanked, the Church of England neither requires, nor stands in need of any such raptural (if I may so call it) or enthusiastic spirit of preaching. Here the more advised and modest, the more deliberate and prepared the preacher is, the better he is furnished, by God's grace, to deliver effectually our Church's solid sense, its fixed precepts, its unalterable doctrines. Our Church pretends not to enter into men's judgments merely by the affections; much less by the passions to overthrow their judgments. The door, which that strives first to open, is of the understanding and conscience: it is content, if by them a passage shall be made into the affections.

(From a Visitation Discourse.)

THE DEFENCE OF ENGLISH ELOQUENCE AND LETTERS

CONCERNING the English eloquence, he bravely declares, that all their sermons in the pulpit, and pleadings at the bar, consist of nothing but mean pedantry. The censure is bold, especially

from a man that was so far from understanding our language, that he scarce knew whether we move our lips when we speak. But to show him, that we can better judge of Monsieur de Sorbière's eloquence, I must tell him that the Muses and Parnassus are almost whipped out of our very schools; that there are many hundreds of lawyers and preachers in England, who have long known how to contemn such delicacies of his style. I will give only one instance for all. I believe he could scarce have bribed any scrivener's clerk, to describe Hatfield as he has done, and so to conclude "that the fishes in the ponds did often leap out of the water into the air, to behold, and to delight themselves with, the beauties of the place."

I will not attempt to defend the ornaments, or the copiousness of our language, against one that is utterly ignorant of it. But to show how plentiful it is, I will only repeat an observation which the Earl of Clarendon has made: "that there is scarce any language in the world, which can properly signify one English expression, and that is good nature." Though Monsieur de Sorbière will not allow the noble author of this note to have any skill in grammar learning, yet he must pardon me if I still believe the observation to be true; at least, I assure you, sir, that after all my search, I cannot find any word in his book, which might incline me to think otherwise.

But I will be content to lay the whole authority of his judgment in matters of wit and elegance upon what he says concerning the English books. He affirms "that they are only impudent thefts out of others, without citing their authors, and that they contain nothing but ill rhapsodies of matter, worse put together." And here, Sir, I will for once do him a courtesy. I will suppose him not to have taken this one character of us, from the soldier, the Zealander, the Puritans, or the rabble of the streets I will grant he might have an ill conceit of our writings, before he came over, from the usual judgment, which the southern wits of the world, are wont to pass on the wit of all northern countries. 'Tis true indeed, I think the French and the Italians would scarce be so unneighbourly as to assert that all our authors are thievish pedants. That is Monsieur de Sorbière's own addition, but yet they generally agree, that there is scarce anything of late written, that is worth looking upon, but in their own language. The Italians did at first endeavour to have it thought that all matters of elegance had never yet

passed over the Alps; but being soon overwhelmed by number, they were content to admit the French, and the Spaniards, into some share of the honour. But they all three still maintain this united opinion, that all wit is to be sought for nowhere but amongst themselves; it is their established rule that good sense has always kept near the warm sun, and scarce ever yet dared to come farther than the forty-ninth degree northward. This, sir, is a pretty imagination of theirs, to think they have confined all art to a geographical circle, and to fancy that it is there so charmed as not to be able to go out of the bounds which they have set it. It were certainly an easy and a pleasant work to confute this arrogant conception by particular examples; it might quickly be shown that England, Germany, Holland, nay, even Denmark and Scotland, have produced very many men who may justly come into competition with the best of these Southern wits, in the advancement of the true arts of life, in all the works of solid reason, nay, even in the lighter studies of ornament and humanity. And, to speak particularly of England, there might be a whole volume composed in comparing the chastity, the newness, the vigour of many of our English fancies, with the corrupt and the swelling metaphors wherewith some of our neighbours, who most admire themselves, do still adorn their books. But, this, sir, will require a larger discourse than I intend to bestow on Monsieur de Sorbière. I am able to dispatch him in fewer words. For I wonder how, of all men living, it could enter into his thoughts to condemn in gross the English writings, when the best course that he has taken to make himself considered as a writer, was the translation of an English author.

(From Observations on Monsieur de Sorbière's Voyage into England.)