"she would still come forth, with a countenance of undesembled mortification." Other symptoms which he describes as proof of her indubitable piety, savour strongly of hypochondria; but gloomy as she must have made her surroundings, she undoubtedly retained a strong hold upon the reverence and affection of her son, and to her he doubtless owed that early puritanic leaning, which subsequent experience curbed, but did not altogether eradicate.

From a home where the chief impression was one of sincere but gloomy and melancholy piety, Hall passed to the University of Cambridge, where he evidently acquired a position such as would nowadays be gained by one who secured the highest honours of the Schools. He was one of the teaching staff of his college; and his literary reputation, as the author of the Satires, must have given him some position and notoriety, although in his own reminiscences we hear nothing of these early efforts. His later years were occupied with other fights, carried on with very different weapons; and as the Satires were cast up as a reproach to him by Milton in the Smectymnuus controversy, Hall found it neither convenient nor congenial to recall these youthful poems. Criticism of the Satires does not fall within the scope of the present notice; but they have much interest for any one who would appreciate Hall's later prose work. They are not only remarkable as the productions of a youth who was little past his majority (they were published in 1597), but they also link Hall with the literature of a previous generation. His compeers then were the last of the Elizabethan dramatists; the chief object of his admiration was Spenser. In language the Satires are artificially archaic : and the tone that pervades them has very little in common with the spirit of his later work. But they brought a freedom and a vigour to his prose style which it never lost, and the practice which they gave him in his early years not only added force and liveliness to his later controversial style, but also gave to his religious writings the quick movement, the variety and the lavish illustration, which are their chief characteristics.

Hall thus combined some elements which are rarely found in combination. Educated amongst puritanic influences and under the shadow of a religion that regarded each individual accident as brought about by the special intervention of providence ; passing from this to the classical influences of the University, and finding his models in antiquity; thrusting himself as a youth

He

into the literary struggles of the day-he brought to his later work as a divine some unique qualities. His earliest religious writings are devout and earnest, but they borrow their illustrations largely from secular sources; they have no strongly marked dogmatic features, and their language has a freedom and a force that are peculiar. Hating the Romanists he was nevertheless most conspicuously the opponent of the sects that accused the Church of England of Romanist inclination. During a great part of his life, Hall strove to maintain a position which had much to commend it, which was inspired by right-minded charity, which had entirely good objects, but which inevitably exposed him to misconstruction, involved him in disputes with his ecclesiastical superiors, and necessarily gave to his writing, in spite of its force and freedom, something of incompleteness in point of logic. He strove to maintain a middle course. talked much of the evils of uncharitable judgment. He deprecated division, except upon what he deemed to be fundamentals, forgetting that the most complete cleavage between man and man must necessarily arise from differences as to what is, and what is not, fundamental. Undoubtedly this gives to his religious writings something of platitude, which is not saved by the freedom and force of his literary touch. There is a want of conviction, which no earnestness can quite supply. Yet side by side with this, there is the self-satisfaction which comes from the puritanical tenet, that all his life is ordered for him by providence, and that the misfortunes which befall an opponent are the contrivance of divine power. He preaches on the one hand the duty of charity, and on the other the evils of laxity, from a standpoint which is none the less narrow because it is midway between two extremes. "If," he says, 66 men be allowed a latitude of opinions in some unnecessary verities, it may not be endured that in matter of religion every man should think what he lists, and utter what he thinks, and defend what he utters, and publish what he defends, and gather disciples to what he publisheth. This liberty, or rather licentiousness, would be the bane of any church." He forgets that men cannot he brought to agree as to what are "verities," but yet 66 unnecessary"; and that no utterance such as this brings us, for practical purposes, one whit nearer to agreement.

No wonder that he was suspected by such a man as Laud; no wonder that he writes as an outsider, and that his devotional

writings often reflect the pagan moralist. In the end, fate was too strong for him and when the flood-gates were opened, he speaks like a man, overwhelmed and confounded by the fierceness of controversies, the logical importance of which he never rightly appreciated. Yet at times, baffled as he is between authority and private judgment, he hits the mark with unerring accuracy, as a student of human nature. "The Romanists," he says "are all for blind obedience: the Romanists therefore go away with peace, without truth; ours, under pretence of striving for some truths, abandon peace."

Besides his devotional writings we have from Hall some treatises on casuistry. Such treatises have never thriven in England. They do not appeal to a wide audience, and are therefore scarcely literature in the proper sense. Hall's casuistical writings lack the subtlety of the Romanist casuists, and they have none of his own special characteristics. They have none of the free and almost reckless vigour of his controversial writing; little of the variety of illustration of his devotional treatises; and only now and then, as when he covertly attacks Milton, in dealing with the question of divorce, do they show any of the vigour which we associate with his pen.

His most striking prose works are those of devotion and of Scriptural exegesis, which are often wordy, but always free and flowing in point of composition. They bear the impress of pulpit oratory, in which, as he tells us himself, he followed the practice of composing the whole sermon beforehand, but delivering it from memory and not from a manuscript. "Never,” he says, "durst

I climb into the pulpit to preach any sermon, whereof I had not before, in my poor and plain fashion, penned every word in the same order, wherein I hoped to deliver it; although in the expression I listed not to be a slave to syllables."

H. CRAIK.

TO THE HIGH AND MIGHTY MONARCH

Our dear and dread Sovereign Lord

JAMES,

By the good Providence of God, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, the most worthy and most able Defender

of the Faith, and most Gracious Patron of the

Church all peace and happiness.

MOST GRACIOUS SOVEREIGN-I cannot so over-love this issue of my own brain, as to hold it worthy of your Majesty's judicious eyes: much less of the highest patronage under heaven: yet now, my very duty hath bidden me look so high, and tells me it would be no less than injurious, if I should not lay down my work, where I owe my service; and that I should offend, if I presume not. Besides; whither should the rivers run, but into the sea? It is to your Majesty (under the Highest) that we owe both these sweet opportunities of good, and all the good fruits of these happy opportunities: if we should not, therefore, freely offer to your Majesty some præmetial handfuls of that crop, whereof you may challenge the whole harvest, how could we be but shamelessly unthankful ? I cannot praise my present, otherwise than by the truth of that heart from which it proceedeth : only this I may say, that seldom any man hath offered to your royal hands a greater bundle of his own thoughts (some whereof, as it must needs fall out amongst so many, have been confessed profitable), nor perhaps more variety of discourse. For here shall your Majesty find morality, like a good handmaid, waiting on divinity; and divinity, like some great lady, every day in several dresses; speculation interchanged with experience; positive theology with polemical; textual with discursory; popular with scholastical.

I cannot dissemble my joy to have done this little good; and if it be the comfort and honour of your unworthy servant, that the God of heaven hath vouchsafed to use his hand in the least service of His Church; how can it be but your crown and rejoicing, that the same God hath set apart your Majesty, as a glorious instrument of such an universal 'good to the whole Christian world? It was a mad conceit of that old Heresiarch, which might justly take his name from madness, than an huge giant bears up the earth with his shoulder; which he changes every thirtieth year for ease; and, with the removal, causes an earthquake. If by the device he had meant only an emblem of kings (as our ancient mythologists, under their Saint George, and Christopher, have described the Christian soldier and good pastor), he had not done amiss: for surely, the burden of the whole world lies on the shoulders of sovereign authority; and it is no marvel if the earth quake in the change. As kings are to the world, so are good kings to the Church. None can be so blind, or curious, as not to grant, that the whole Church of God upon earth rests herself principally (next to her stay above) upon your Majesty's royal supportation: you may truly say with David, Ego sustineo columnas ejus. What wonder is it, then, if our tongues and pens bless you; if we be ambitious of all occasions, that may testify our cheerful gratulations of this happiness to your Highness, and ours in you? Which, our humble prayers unto Him, by whom kings reign, shall labour to continue, till both the earth and heavens be truly changed.— The unworthiest of your Majesty's servants,

JOSEPH HALL.

(Prefatory Letter to Contemplations.)

MEDIATION IN CHURCH CONTROVERSIES

IT was not long after, that his Majesty, finding the exigence of the affairs of the Netherlandish churches to require it, both advised them to a synodical decision; and, by his incomparable wisdom, promoted the work. My unworthiness was named for one of the assistants of that honourable, grave, and reverend meeting, where I failed not of my best service to that woefully