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MORE, NORRIS, BEAUMONT, FLATMAN.

Of the fellow-collegian and friend of Milton, a notice will not be uninteresting.

HENRY MORE was born at Grantham, in Lincolnshire, on the 12th of October, 1614. His parents, who were rigid Calvinists, placed him under the care of a private tutor of their own persuasion, with whom he remained till his fourteenth year, when, by the advice of his uncle, he was removed to Eton, with strict injunctions to preserve his religious tenets. But More soon began to manifest an antipathy to the doctrines of Calvin. These symptoms of dissatisfaction did not escape the observation of his uncle, who expressed his displeasure in very angry terms. More was not an ordinary boy, and the threats of his relation only stimulated him to a deeper investigation of the belief in which he had been educated. Often, he tells us, while he took his solitary walk in the play-ground of the school, with his head on one side, and kicking the stones with his feet, as he was wont to do, the subject of religion occupied his thoughts; for even in my first childhood, he continues, an inward sense of the Divine Presence was so strong upon my mind, that I did then believe that there could no deed, word, or thought, be hidden from Him. From Eton, where he stayed three years, he was sent to Christ's College, Cambridge, and to his great delight was admitted under a tutor who was not a Calvinist. Here he immersed himself head over ears* in the study of philosophy, and devoted nearly four years to the • His own phrase.

perusal of Aristotle, Cardan, Scaliger, &c., but he reaped no harvest for his toil.

After he had taken his Bachelor's degree, he entered on a new course of study, replacing his former favourites with the platonic writers. He was also captivated by the Theologia Germanica of John Tauler, which he styled a golden little book. The writings of this individual were admired by Luther and Melancthon; and some of his sermons were approved by Bossuet, who considered him one of the most solid and correct of the mystics. More laboured with indefatigable perseverance, and the effects of his researches were quickly visible in a mind exalted to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, and a frame attenuated to skin and bone. He indulged in a belief that his soul had communicated some of its newlyacquired ethereality to his body, which, he assured his friends, at particular seasons exhaled the perfume of violets. His theory of the divine body is developed in his Dialogues. "The oracle of God," he said, "is not to be heard but in his Holy Temple, that is to say, in a good and holy man, thoroughly sanctified."

In 1640, he began to form his mystical speculations into the Psycho Zoia, a picture of platonic life in the soul, to the composition of which he thought himself impelled by some heavenly impulse. He was now in his twenty-sixth year, and appears to have been regarded as a melancholy student, for some opposition was at first offered to his election to a fellowship, on the score of his sad and uncheerful disposition. He was, however, by nature inclined to excessive mirth, which he accounted one of his greatest infirmities.

In the civil war, More was allowed to retain his fellowship; and the severe inquisitors who ejected

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Crashaw and Cowley, left the philosopher to dream with Plato in his academic bower*. But he was not without anxiety for the fate of his country; and once, on being informed of a great defeat sustained by the royal army, in the words of his biographer, his spirit sat itself down, and with tears bewailed the evils of his native land.

He occasionally passed a few days at Ragley, in Warwickshire, the residence of his enthusiastic friend, Lady Conway, where he wrote several of his treatises. In 1675 he was presented, by the brother of this lady, to a Prebend in the Church of Gloucester; but he quickly resigned it in favour of Dr. Fowler, for whose sake alone he is supposed to have accepted it. Preferment, indeed, was almost thrust upon him. Ward says, he had seen letters courting him to occupy some of the highest ecclesiastical offices in Ireland. The Deanery of Christ Church, and the Provostship of Trinity College, were among the number. He was, however, inexorable in declining them. One nobleman, after tempting him in vain with two Bishoprics, prayed him not to be so morose or humoursome as to refuse all things he had not known so long as Christ's College. And when an English Bishopric had been procured for him, and his friends had succeeded in bringing him to Whitehall to kiss the King's hand, on discovering their real object, he resolutely insisted on returning to Cambridge immediately. These anecdotes show the simple and contented nature of the man.

The evening of his life was as peaceful as the dawn. Having his mind enlightened with the noblest views in the morning of his years, he went on shiping more

and more unto the perfect day. In his last sickness, he declared, with the tears in his eyes, that he had given his writings to the world with great sincerity, and that all his days had been spent in seeking after the good and the true. The day before his death, he replied to the question of one who watched by his bed-side, in that affecting passage of Cicero, beginning O præclarum illum diem. He said, that he was going to be united to that company with whom he should be as well acquainted in a quarter of an hour, as if he had known them for years. This idea he has enlarged in a letter to a friend, who had requested from him some topics of consolation, to administer to a young lady in ill health*.

It may be desirabie to caution the reader that More did not employ the phrase of a pagan writer, in this closing scene of his existence, to the exclusion of the more delightful consolations of the Bible; he only borrowed the words to apply them to the expression of Christian faith and reliance in the atonement of a Redeemer. Thus he gave them a new spirit and a new signification.

He died on the 1st of September, 1687, in the seventythird year of his age, and was buried in the chapel of the College, where the ashes of Mede and Cudworth

• The friendship and society of amiable persons for feature and converse, the beauty of persons in the other world infinitely excelling that in this, as much as the purest star does the dirtiest clod of earth: and those whose persons and aspects are so lovely, it is the genuine eradiation of the life of their very souls or spirits, and they are as assured of the cordial kindness they have one for another, and this at the very first entrance, as if they had been acquainted many years together. Nor is the affection of any father or mother to their only child, more dear and sincere than that of the holy inhabitants of the other world, towards good and innocent souls, that pass out of this earthly body into the condition of those heavenly spirits, those Angelical Ministers of the Divine Providence, who are ready about the godly, when they die, to conduct their souls to the happy place provided for them.-Letters on several Subjects, ed. by Elys, 1694, p. 21.

rest by his side. In person he was tall and thin, and in early life, of an agreeable florid countenance, though the intensity of his application in after-times imparted a more pallid hue to his features; but his complexion was always clear and healthful, and his eye hazel and vivid as an eagle*. The nature of his occupations did not encourage the cultivation of the lighter accomplishments; but he had some skill in music, and played a little on the lute, till the painful ecstacy of the pleasure compelled him to relinquish it. His conversation was serious and pleasant, and Bishop Burnet, who visited him at Cambridge, spoke of him as an open-hearted Christian philosopher, who studied to establish men in the great principle of religion against Atheism.

It is, however, to be lamented that this excellent man submitted his religious feelings to the direction of his imagination, or suffered them to assume even the faintest hue of a romantic or poetical character. He built, indeed, upon the Rock of Ages, yet he unintentionally defaced the majestic simplicity of Sacred Truth by the unlicensed indulgence of his fancy. He never for a moment suspected that he might be injuring by his conduct the cause he laboured so zealously to promote. But the purity and tranquillity which he enjoyed are given to few. A spectator of the world only through his "loop-holes of retreat;" unseduced by its allurements, uncorrupted by its pleasures-he did not always consider that every heart was not like his own. The orthodoxy of his belief can alone be vindicated by a careful perusal of his writings. In them it will be seen how firmly he grasped the promises of the Gospel, and with what a sleepless eye of faith he waited for their • Ward.