ART. V. The Light of Nature Pursued. By ABRAHAM TUCKER, Esq. From the Second London Edition, revised and corrected. Together with some Account Henry Pestalozzi, and his Plan of Education; being an Account of his Life and Writings, with copi- ous Extracts from his Works, and extensive Details illustrative of the Practical Parts of his Method. By ART. VIII.-Inaugural Discourse, delivered before the University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, September 3, 1831. By CHARLES FOLLEN, Professor of the German Language and Literature. ART. IX. The Life of John Locke, with Extracts from his Correspondence, Journals, and Common-Place 1 THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER. No. XLVI. NEW SERIES · No. XVI. ART. I. The Library of the Old English Prose Writers. Vol. I. Containing The Holy and Profane States, by THOMAS FULLER; with some Account of the Author and his Writings. 16mo. Cambridge. Hilliard & Brown. 1831. IT has been the fate of old books, like most other old things, to be the subjects of unreasonable extremes of opinion. The judgments passed on times long since gone by appear, for the most part, to have leaned strongly either to indiscriminate and weak admiration, or to flippant contempt without examination. On the one hand, antiquity has been exalted at the expense of truth and justice. Many will allow nothing to be good, unless it be old; no modes of thinking to be sound, but such as have the sanction of more than one century at least; and no virtues to be of very high desert, but those which have been practised by the men of other days. Even truth, it has been thought, is to be decided by the authority of dates; and those, who cannot plead for their opinions the defence of times grown grey with age, have been told that their cause is not worthy to be heard. On the other hand, partly from disgust at these absurdities, partly from habits of hasty and superficial thinking, some have resorted to the opposite extreme. Considering antiquity as synonymous with error and weakness, they are disposed utterly to disparage the characters and the doings of the fathers. They look back upon their records VOL. XI. N. S. VOL. VI. NO. I. 1 as the memorials of a generation, which we have left far behind in the career of excellence. Something like the condescension of pity is mingled with every view of their moral and intellectual qualities; their faults are exaggerated, or placed in strong lights; their virtues are depreciated, or overlooked; their views on all great subjects are described in the mass as encumbered with the narrowness and imperfection of their age; and their customs are mentioned only to excite the smile of self-complacent superiority, as if all that differs from present habits must of course be irrational or ludicrous. Thus, by ever running wide of the mark of impartiality, we neutralize or render useless whatever degree of justness our opinions may chance to possess. To find a similar want of fairness and sobriety in estimating the literature of different periods, we need not take up the comparison between the times of classic antiquity and the present day. It may be seen in the treatment, which the productions of the fathers of English literature have received at the hands of their successors. If their station be computed according to the large scale of the world's ages, they are moderns. But they are in some sense ancients to us; for so rapidly do the generations of men pass away, and with them their tastes and forms of mental developement, that even two or three hundred years constitute what may be called antiquity, and give us occasion to speak of modes of writing and of thought extremely diverse from our own. That excessive admiration of the old writers, as such, which is sometimes carried to a degree of superstition scarcely inferior to the respect paid by the pagans to their deified heroes, is almost wholly confined to England. The black-letter mania is a passion, which, in its highest and most amusing forms at least, may be said to be quite unknown in this country. Even if we had the means of stimulating and gratifying it, as we have not, — yet such are the character and circumstances of our community, that it would be long before such men as Ritson, Sir Egerton Brydges, and Dibdin would be produced among us, long before we should have that class of fantastic devotees to time-hallowed paper and print, who will talk with all the fondness of true lovers of the good old books descended to us, whose backs and sides our careful grandsires buffed, and bossed, and boarded against the teeth of time, or more devouring ignorance, and whose leaves they guarded with brass, nay silver clasps, against the assaults of worm and weather.'* The bibliomaniac is a character, for whom our young and bustling nation scarcely affords a place; and the shafts of satire, which have so often been aimed at his pursuits in the mother country, would here be wasted on the empty air. The joy of possessing the only known copy of a volume, in pursuit of which the anxious diligence of all other antiquarians has been at fault, and which would lose its value if its fellow could be found, is a pleasure we have not learned to taste or reverence. Engrossed, as we are, in the topics of the day or the year, and devoted to the useful and the practical, we read with a smile of contempt, or with a look of wonder, the accounts of book sales in the English metropolis, at which noblemen and scholars, in the eager competition of the auction-room, add guineas to guineas and pounds to pounds for some antique poem of a few leaves, or some thin duodecimo extremely rare, as the catalogues say; nor is it for us to understand the heartach of unsuccessful rivals, when the fall of the fate-deciding hammer shuts out hope, and appropriates irrecoverably the coveted treasure. With trifling such as this we may well be content to dispense; though it would not be difficult to show, that this literary extravagance, like some other forms of extravagance, has its uses, and that while the waste labors of such enthusiasm are harmless, and soon forgotten, there may be circumstances under which its services are not unimportant to the interests of letters. But we would protest against the follies of the literary antiquarian being permitted to bring discredit on a good cause. There is a manly, healthful, and invigorating taste for the old masters of English literature and theology, which we deem valuable as a source of mental discipline and power, and which we think has not been sufficiently cultivated among us. They should be loved and studied, not merely because they belong to past generations, but on account of real excellencies, not because time has cast a reverend appearance over their large volumes, but because these volumes contain a great deal to enrich, strengthen, and kindle the mind. In England this venerable class of writers seem to have grown into much favor within a few years, if we may judge from the new editions of their works, or the reprints of * Nichols's Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, Vol. IV. p. 108. separate portions of them, which have frequently appeared, and from the comments, illustrations, and critical notices, to which they have given occasion. This, we are aware, is no unerring index of the public taste; for it doubtless happens to these authors, as it has to many others, to be more praised than read. The commendation bestowed on the illustrious dead is not always a proof, that their spirit has been sought or imbibed. Probably the cases are not few in literature like that of Reynolds in his art, who, we are told, exhorted his pupils with unceasing earnestness, as his first and last charge to them, to study and imitate the works of the old masters of painting continually, while he himself devoted his great powers to a more gainful and an easier department of the art, in which, it is thought, few traces are to be found of any important influence derived from his admiration of the antique school. But whether the love of ancient English literature has become, or will become, a popular taste or not, it is nevertheless true, that some of the best British writers of modern times have drunk deeply from these fountains. It has been common to ascribe some of the vices of Johnson's style to his partiality for the works of Sir Thomas Browne; but, if the charge be not without foundation, may we not also trace to the same source some of the better qualities in his manner of writing, his energy and completeness of expression, his forceful words, and strong though stately sentences? Malone affirms that the works of Burke bear testimony to the good influence derived from the very high admiration, which he always avowed for the prose writings of Dryden, who, though he does not, strictly speaking, belong to the class of old English authors, may be regarded as nearly the last, who caught their spirit and power, before the altered tone which literature received from the wits of Anne's reign. If it were only for the assistance rendered by the old writers in enabling us to fill up the outline of the picture of their times, we should regard them as amply worthy of a familiar acquaintance on the part of the curious inquirer. It is surely no small help to the diligent observer of man, to have the features of any period preserved, not in set descriptions, for these may be liable to suspicion, but in the undesigned developements, which occur in the lines traced by the busy and strong minds of the time. The narrative of the historian, even in its most interesting and faithful form, affords but |