certain amount of eating and drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage.

76. No man can free himself from the habits of thought of his time. Little as Law resembles the contemporary essayists and schools, his portraits remind us that he was in fact a contemporary of Addison, Steele, and Swift. Miranda and Flavia and Lucius and Mundanus might, with a like expansion, have made admirable papers in the Spectator.' If he has not the delicate humour of Addison, he has a vigorous touch, which reminds us more closely of Pope's spirited sketches than of any other writer of the time. Like Pope, he delights in exhibiting the logical inconsistency embodied in the ordinary ideals of conduct; and coincidences in language suggest that Law was amongst the various authors from whom Pope borrowed. 'Meat, drink, and clothing are the only things necessary in life,' says Law, for example; and Pope wrote a few years later --

What riches give us let us then enquire :

Meat, fire, and clothes-what more? meat, clothes, and fire.

Law's satire, though more serious, is scarcely less pointed than the poet's. His special objects of attack are the Pharisee, who takes the form for the substance, and the worldling, who forgets the warning, 'Thou fool, this night shall thy soul be required of thee.' There is Calidus, who seems to have anticipated some modern complaints. Every hour is passed in business; his meals are hurried, though hearty, and he would say grace if he had time. He can't get to his tavern till nine, when he drinks a hearty glass to make him sleepy. His prayers are a short ejaculation or two, which he never misses in stormy weather, because he has always something at sea. He tells you that his business would have killed him if he had not made Sunday a day of quiet and refreshment in the country. He is afraid that he would grow melancholy if he gave up business, and says with great gravity that it is a dangerous thing for a man that has been used to get money ever to leave it off. His religious thoughts consist in the reflection that he was never a friend to heretics or infidels, that he has been civil to the clergyman, and has always given something to charity schools. Then we have Flavia, or

that the laughter was not quenched by Law's ons). him justice we must of course remember what wa the stage which had provoked Collier's attack; fess the truth, I must say that, in spite of all in fences, it seems to me that pruriency and cyni best qualifications for a thorough enjoyment of t. school of comedy. Law, at any rate, took for the one ultimate end and aim of all plays was lust and facilitate debauchery. He assumes that of fact, all actors and actresses were immoral by 'Perhaps you had rather see your son chained or your daughter driving a plough, than getting on the stage by administering in so scandalous. the vices and corrupt pleasures of the world.' rightly gauged the contemporary prejudice, he 1. denounce people who, by their own showing, pa women to debase themselves for the amuseme spectators.

I

75. Yet Law's logic would scarcely discrimina the vilest ribaldry of Wycherley and the purest Shakespeare's fancy. What is poetry or art or the divine essence of the soul? When we are of all human attainments we are at the bottom of misery, and have made no further advance to happiness than those whom we see in the want ‹ excellences. Whether a man die before he has v compiled histories, or raised an estate, signifies no whether he died an hundred or a thousand y If human learning be not bad, and even in hi period Law disclaimed an absolute antipathy is good only in so far as it may be the instrum religious emotions. To the outsider it often seemthe acceptance of such doctrines would fill the de hermits, and gradually depopulate the world. course, like other ascetics, stops just short of such sion. If virginity, retirement, and a life of mort the best, they are not the sole means of cult pure spirit. The world may be condemned, but must continue; and therefore room must be all 2 Ib. vii. 9..

1 Law, iv. 438.

Miss Gibbon, who is very orthodox, and often takes the sacrament. She has been known to praise a sermon against vanity in dress, and thought that it was very just upon Lucinda. If you ask her for charity, she may perhaps give you a crown, and add that, if you knew what a long milliner's bill she had just paid, you would think it very handsome. The next time she hears a sermon on charity, she congratulates herself on having given a crown when she could so ill spare it. She knows that the poor are cheats and liars, who will say anything to get relief. Her conscience is admirably tender in regard to the guilt of giving amiss. She buys all the books of the wits and poets, for she says that you cannot have a true taste of any without being conversant with all; and she will read a book of piety, if it is short and well written, and she knows where to borrow it. She would be a miracle of piety if she took as much care of her soul as of her body; and is as much disturbed as Pope's Celia by the rising of a pimple in her face. You will always find the best company and hear the latest gossip in her house on Sunday; she thinks that only atheists play at cards on that day, but after church she will tell you the details of all the games of the past week, mixed with the latest anecdotes about the bad behaviour of Lucius to his wife. She respects the day, however, so much that she turned a poor old widow out of her house for having once been found mending her clothes on a Sunday night. If she lives thirty years in this way, she will have spent fifteen in bed, and fourteen in eating, drinking, dressing, visiting, reading plays and romances, and going to the theatre. She will have spent 6,000l. on herself, and a few odd crowns upon charity. It cannot be said that she will not get to heaven, but she is hardly cultivating the temper which the Gospel declares to be necessary for salvation.

77. Then we have Fulvius, who is very proud of his conscientious refusal to undertake any duties, and even to be godfather to his nephew, because he is not holy enough in his temper; and Flavus, who tries every variety of amusement, from dress to architecture, and by the last account was going into training to try to rival the wind of a running-footman; and Lucius, who, when he is serious, studies a treatise upon ancient cookery, and is an enemy to all party politics, having

remarked that there is as good eating amongst Whigs as amongst Tories; he is always ready to drink the King's health, and will never be a rebel, unless there should be proclamation against eating pheasants' eggs; he denounces the town rakes, and his bitterest saying is that he believes some of them to be so abandoned as not to have a regular meal or a sound night's sleep in a week. Cognatus is a parson, universally respected by the farmers for his judgment in selling corn; and hopes that, in spite of the hard times, his good management will enable him to leave a fortune to his niece out of the riches of his two livings. Mundanus is a profound authority upon trade, who never took up a book without thinking how it could be improved; but is quite content with the prayers which his mother taught him at six years old. Classicus, an elegant scholar, who knows all the commentators upon Cæsar, Horace, and Ovid, but tells you with great complacency that he will have no other book of devotion but the Holy Scriptures; and Cæcus, a rich man, who can't bear contradiction, and insists upon having the best of everything; but specially plumes himself upon his humility, because he admires it so heartily in his companions.

78. The predominantly logical character of Law's mind may be noticed in these sketches; and it is perhaps rather too prominent in writing which appeals rather to the emotions than to the intellect. His exhortations run naturally into the form of a reductio ad absurdum. If you admit this or that duty, you must admit all; if you must pray to God in words, you must pray by actions; if any earthly pleasure is frivolous, the same rule is equally applicable to all earthly pleasures. There is no logical resting-place between a life devoted exclusively to sensual enjoyments and a life devoted exclusively to spiritual enjoyments. No action or habit is good which is not consciously determined by the desire to please God. The mode of forcing people to accept one of two horns of a dilemma has the practical disadvantage that it may change a qualified submission into unlimited revolt. To preach that Christianity condemns as equally worthless all intellectual and artistic and worldly and sensual pleasures is either to force the majority of mankind into a rejection of Christianity, or to force them to challenge the authority of its advocate. By what