Cheapside, he undertook to re-count in succession, the signs. on both sides of the street, first in the order in which they presented themselves, and afterwards reversing it. It will be recollected, that at that period, every shop had its sign.

Fuller's literary character is too well known to need any very particular analysis in this place. Judging from the extracts before us, and without recurring to imperfect recollections of his other works, he does not appear to have been remarkable either for vigour or depth. His observations lie completely on the surface of his subject; they never surprise the reader with their boldness, nor do they often call for the exercise of more than common attention. His style is occasionally disfigured by misplaced and tasteless ornament, by mere jingle, by awkward antithesis, and by figures unhappy in themselves or unhappily introduced. On the other hand, there is frequently great beauty in his language, and justness in his sentiment; his illustrations are often remarkable for felicity, and the very quaintness of his manner lends sometimes a real, though very frequently an imaginary charm to a thought trivial in itself. If the fertility of his imagination at times incumber his composition, on other occasions it decorates a barren subject, and enriches what would be otherwise poor and insipid. The extracts given in this interesting little volume, are chiefly from "The Prophane and Holy State," and principally consisting of characters placed in various lights and attitudes. The following passages are from the sketch of The 'faithful Minister.'

He endeavours to get the generall love and good will of his parish. This he doth, not so much to make a benefit of them, as a benefit for them, that his ministry may be more effectual; otherwise, he may preach his own heart out, before he preacheth any thing in theirs. The good conceit of the physician is half a cure, and his practice will scarce be happy, where his person is hated. Yet he humours them not in his doctrine, to get their love; for such a spaniel is worse than a dumbe dog. He shall sooner get their good will by walking uprightly, than by crouching and creeping. If pious living and painfull labouring in his calling, will not win their affections, he counts it gain to lose them. As for those which causelessely hate him, he pities and prayes for them and such there will be. I should suspect his preaching had no salt in it, if no gall'd horse did winse."

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He is strict in ordering his conversation. It was said of one who preached very well, and lived very ill," That when he was out of the pulpit, it was pity he should ever go into it; and when he was in the pulpit, it was pity he should ever come out of it." But our minister lives sermons.' pp. 26, 27.

He carefully catechiseth his people in the elements of religion. Even Luther did not scorn to professe himself discipulum catechismi, a VOL. 1X. N. S. L

scholar of the catechisme. By this catechising the gospel first got ground of Popery and let not our religion, now grown rich, be ashamed of that which first gave it credit and set it up, lest the Jesuites beat us at our own weapon. Through the want of this catechising, many which are well skilled in some dark out-corners of divinity, have lost themselves in the beaten road thereof.' pp. 28, 29.

Having brought his sermon into his head, he labours to bring it into his heart, before he preaches it to his people. Surely, that preaching which comes from the soul, most works on the soul. Some have questioned ventriloquie, when men strangely speak out of their bellies, whether it can be done lawfully or no: might I coin the word cordiloquie, when men draw the doctrines out of their hearts, sure all would count this lawfull and commendable.' pp. 29, 30.

In the description of The Good Parishoner, it is somewhat pithily remarked, that his tithes he pays willingly with cheerfulness.' We suspect that if this be a sine qua non in the character, to search for it now would be a hopeless quest. In his speculations on Memory,' Fuller informs us that Philosophers place it in the rere of the head; and it seems the mine of memory lies there, because there men naturally dig for it, scratching it when they are at a losse.' He bears, in a subsequent section, a very forcible protest against the common and offensive practice of converting the language of Scripture into the vehicle of a jest. Jest not,' he says, with the two-edged sword of God's word.-Will nothing please 'thee to wash thy hands in, but the font? or to drink healths in, but the church chalice? . dangerous it is, to witwanton it with the majestie of God.' We close our extracts from Fuller, with the following definition of Fancy.

• Phancie is an inward sense of the soul, for a while retaining and examining things brought in thither by the common sense. It is the most boundlesse and restlesse faculty of the soul. It digs without spade, sails without ship, flies without wings, builds without charge, fights without bloodshed, in a moment striding from the centre to the circumference of the world, by a kind of omnipotence, creating and annihilating things in an instant; and things divorced in nature are married in phancie, as in a lawfull place. It is also most restlesse: 'whilest the senses are bound, and reason in a manner asleep, phancie like a sentinell walks the round, ever working, never wearied.' pp. 124-125.

South was a genius of a far higher order than Fuller, but it should seem he was much below him in the more weighty essentials of character. His life and his works betray unequivocal indications of a time-serving spirit; and some of his ablest sermons are marred both in their moral and intellectual

impression by the effusions of a savage and malignant temper, vented in language at once vulgar and ferocious. In strict consistency with this, in his youth he addressed a Latin ode to Cromwell; and when loyalty led the way to preferment, dedicated sermons to the illustrious, blessed, and never-dying 'memory of Charles I. At the same time it should be noticed that he is said to have declined high dignity in the Church, forfeited by the refusal of the possessor to take the oaths of allegiance to William and Mary, though he had himself taken them without scruple. His conduct in his rectory of Islip was eminently disinterested; he allowed his curate a most liberal stipend, and expended the remainder of the profits of the living, in charitable and useful objects. As a preacher we do not hesitate to express our opinion, that with the obvious deductions arising from the defects already adverted to, South is second to none who have adorned the English pulpit. He has neither the intellectual fertility of Barrow, nor the richness of Taylor; but he has more feeling than the first, and more discretion and compactness than the latter. Excepting in his propensity to jesting and abuse, his taste was exquisite; and in his happier compositions the structure and cadence of his periods is equal to any thing of which the English language can boast. South is a fatal instance of the folly of cherishing party feelings. With an oratorical genius of the very noblest kind, with powers which, rightly directed, might have made him the favourite of all ages and all sects, he sunk himself so low as to become the organ of one faction in his incessant declamations against another, and those compositions which would otherwise have charmed every head and every heart, are now too often rendered irksome in the perusal by their harshness and illiberality. One of the purest of his productions occurs in the first volume of his sermons; it was preached at St. Paul's, from Genesis i. 27. In this admirable discourse he traces the character of man in his first estate-in his understanding-will-affections-with so admirable a skill, with discrimination so exquisite, and in language so rich, yet so beautifully simple, as to 'excite the strongest admiration of the Author's powers, and the deepest regret at their frequent misapplication. In the preface to this sermon, he accuses some worthy hand' of having * stolen it from him in the King's Chapel.' From this discourse we shall select two or three passages.

It is as difficult for us, who date our ignorance from our first being, and were still bred up with the same infirmities about us with which we were born, to raise our thoughts and imaginations to those intellectual perfections that attended our nature in the time of innocence, as it is for a peasant, bred up in the obscurities of a cottage, to fansy in his mind the unseen splendors of a court.-But by rating

positives by their privatives, and other acts of reason, by which discourse supplies the want of the reports of sense, we may collect the excellency of the understanding, then, by the glorious remains of it now, and guess at the stateliness of the building by the magnificence of its ruins. All those arts, rarities and inventions which vulgar minds gaze at, the ingenious pursue, and all admire, are but the relicts of an intellect defaced with sin and time.-We admire it now, only as antiquaries do a piece of old coin, for the stamp it once bore, and not for those vanishing lineaments and disappearing draughts that remain upon it at present-And certainly that must needs have been very glorious, the decays of which are so admirable. He that is comely when old and decriped, surely was very beautiful when he was young. -An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise.' pp. 213–214.

It was not then, as it is now, where the conscience has only power to disapprove, and to protest against the exorbitances of the passions, and rather to wish, than make them otherwise.-The voice of conscience now is low and weak, chastising the passions as old Eli did his sons, "Not so, my sons, not so."-But the voice of conscience then was not, This should or this ought to be done; but This must, this shall be done. It spoke like a legislator; the thing spoke was a law, and the manner of speaking it a new obligation.' pp. 216.

First, for the grand leading affection of all, which is love.-This is the great instrument and engine of nature, the bond and cement of society, the spring and spirit of the universe.-Love is such an affection, as cannot so properly be said to be in the soul, as the soul to be in that. It is the whole man, wrapt up into one desire ; all the powers, vigour, and faculties of the soul abridged into one inclidation And it is of that active, restless nature, that it must of necessity exert itself; and like the fire to which it is so often compared, it is not a free agent, to chuse whether it will heat or no, but it streems forth by natural results and unavoidable emanations: So that it will fasten upon an inferior, unsuitable object, rather than none at all-The soul may sooner leave off to subsist, than to love; and like the vine, it withers and decays if it has nothing to embrace. Now this affection, in the state of innocence, was happily pitched upon its right object; it flamed up in direct fervors of devotion to God, and in collateral emissions of charity to its neighbour. It had no impure heats in it.—It was a vestal and a virgin fire.' pp. 218-219.

In a sermon, (not we believe referred to in the Selection before us,) preached at Oxford, from Luke xxi. 15. there is a very singular passage, which we shall quote from South's fifth volume. The whole discourse is fraught with important instruction, and as it is especially applicable to the depraved appetite for tricksey phrases' and overcharged ornament, so prevalent in the present day, we shall be somewhat large in our ex

tract.

A second property of the ability of speech, conferred by "Christ upon his Apostles, was its unaffected plainness and sim

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plicity; it was to be easy, obvious, and familiar; with nothing in it strained or far-fetched; no affected scheme or airy fancies, above the reach or relish of an ordinary apprehension; no, nothing of all this; but their grand subject was Truth, and consequently above all these petit arts, and poor additions; as not being capable of any greater lustre or advantage, than to appear just as it is. For there is a certain majesty in plainness, as the proclamation of a prince never frisks it in tropes, or 'fine conceits, in numerous and well turned periods, but commands in sober, natural expressions. A substantial beauty, as it comes out of the hands of nature, needs neither paint nor patch; things never made to adorn, but to cover something that would be hid. It is with expression, and the clothing of a man's conceptions, as with the clothing of a man's body. All dress and ornament supposes imperfection, as designed only to supply the body with something from without which it wanted, but had not of its own. Gaudery is a pitiful and a mean thing, not extending farther than the surface of the body.

. . . . And thus also it is with the most necessary and important truths; to adorn and clothe them is to cover them, and that to obscure them. The eternal salvation and damnation of 'souls, are not things to be treated of with jests and witticisms. And he who thinks to furnish himself out of plays and ro'mances with language for the pulpit, shews himself much fitter to act a part in the Revels than for a cure of souls.

"I speak the words of soberness, said St. Paul, Acts xxvi. 25. And I preach the gospel not with the enticing words of man's wisdom, 1 Cor. ii. 4. This was the way of the Apostles' discoursing of things sacred. Nothing here of the fringes of the North-star; nothing of nature's becoming un"natural; nothing of the down of angels' wings, or the beau, tiful locks of cherubims; no starched similitudes introduced with a thus have I seen a cloud rolling in its airy mansion, ' and the like. No, these were sublimities above the rise of the 'apostolic spirit. For the Apostles, poor mortals, were content 'to take lower steps, and to tell the world in plain terms, that 'he who believed should be saved, and that he who believed 6 not should be damned.'

The eritieism of this passage is perfectly sound, and very forcibly expressed; but we strongly suspect that the last paragraph, though undeniably correct in principle, was dictated by a feeling less laudable than anxiety for the observance of decorun and simplicity in pulpit exercises. The sarcasm is plainly levelled at Jeremy Taylor, and is a just exposure of his defects; but it is neither a fair nor an honourable representation of his general manner. It is not character, but caricature; the expressions themselves are singled out in malice, without