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I ready to my wishes, it were a folly to commit any thing elaborately composed to the careless and interrupted listening of these tumultous times. Next, if I were wise only to mine own ends, I would certainly take such a subject, as of itself might catch applause; whereas this has all the disadvantages on the contrary; and such a subject, as the publishing whereof might be delayed at pleasure, and time enough to pencil it over with all the curious touches of art, even to the perfection of a faultless picture; when, as in this argument, the not deferring is of great moment to the good speeding, that if solidity have leisure to do her office, art cannot have much. Lastly, I should not chuse this manner of writing, wherein, knowing myself inferior to myself, led by the genial power of nature to another task, I have the use, as I may account, but of my left hand." Prose Works, vol. 1. page 62.

Such is the delineation that our author has given us of his own mind and motives in his treatise on Church Government, which

the mention of his early design to take orders has led me to anticipate.

Having passed seven years in Cambridge, and taken his two degrees, that of batchelor, in 1628, and that of master, in 1632, he was admitted to the same degree at Oxford, in 1635. On quitting an academical life, he was, according to his own tes timony, regretted by the fellows of his College; but he regarded the house of his father as a retreat favorable to his literary pursuits, and, at the age of twenty-four, he gladly shared the rural retirement, in which his parents had recently settled, at Horton, in Buckinghamshire: here he devoted himself, for five years, to study,with that ardour and perseverance, to which, as he says himself, in a letter to his friend, Charles Diodati, his nature forcibly inclined him. The letter I am speaking of, was written in the last year of his residence under the roof of his father, and exhibits a lively picture of his progress in learning, his passion for virtue, and his hope of renown.

"To give you an account of my studies,"

he says, "I have brought down the affairs of the Greeks, in a continued course of reading, to the period in which they ceased to be Greeks. I have long been engaged in the obscurer parts of Italian history, under the Lombards, the Franks and the Germans, to the time in which liberty was granted them by the emperor Rodolphus; from this point I think it best to pursue in separate histories, the exploits of each particular city*."

He shews himself, in this letter, most passionately attached to the Platonic philosophy: "As to other points, what God may have determined for me, I know not; but this I know, that if he ever instilled an intense love of moral beauty into the breast of any man, he has instilled it into mine:

* De studiis etiam nostris fies certior, Græcorum res continuatâ lectione deduximus usquequo illi Græci esse sunt desiti: Italorum in, obscurâ re diu versati sumus sub Longobardis et Francis et Germanis ad illud tempus, quo illis ab Rodolpho Germaniæ rege concessa libertas est; exinde quid quæque civitas suo marte gesserit, separatim legere præstabit.

Ceres, in the fable, pursued not her daughter with a greater keenness of enquiry, than I, day and night, the idea of perfection. Hence, wherever I find a man despising the false estimates of the vulgar, and daring to aspire in sentiment, language, and conduct, to what the highest wisdom, through every age, has taught us as most excellent, to him I unite myself by a sort of necessary attachment; and if I am so influenced by nature or destiny, that by no exertion or labours of my own, I may exalt myself to this summit of worth and honor, yet no powers of heaven or earth will hinder me from looking with reverence and affection upon those, who have thoroughly attained this glory, or appear engaged in the successful pursuit of it.

"You enquire with a kind of solicitude even into my thoughts.-Hear then, Diodati, but let me whisper in your ear, that I may not blush at my reply-I think (so help me Heaven) of immortality. You enquire also what I am about? I nurse my wings, and

meditate a flight; but my Pegasus rises as yet on very tender pinions. Let us be humbly wise !*››

* De cætero quidem quid de me statuerit Deus nescio; illud certe, δεινόν μοι ερωτα, ειπες τω αλλως τε καλά ενεςαξε : nec tanto Ceres labore, ut in fabulis est, liberam fertur quæsivisse filiam, quanto ego hanc re nake idea veluti pulcherrimam quandam imaginem, per omnes rerum formas et facies; (πολλαι γαρ μορφαί των Δαιμονιων dies noctesque indagare soleo, et quasi certis quibusdam vestigiis ducentem sector. Unde fit, ut qui, spretis, quæ vulgus pravâ rerum æstimatione opinatur, id sentire, et loqui et esse audet, quod summa per omne ævum sapientia optimum esse docuit, illi me protinus, sicubi reperiam, necessitate quadam adjungam. Quod si ego sive naturâ, sive meo fato ita sum comparatus, ut nullâ contentione, et laboribus meis ad tale decus et fastigium laudis ipse valeam emergere, tamen quo minus qui eam gloriam assecuti sunt, aut eo feliciter aspirant, illos sem_ per colam et suspiciam, nec dii puto nec homines prohibuerint. Multa solicite quæris, etiam quid cogitem. Audi, Theodate, verum in aurem ut ne rubeam, et sinito paulisper apud te grandia loquar: quid cogitem quæris? Ita me bonus deus, immortalitatem quid agam vero? legopow, et volare meditor: sed tenellis admodum adhuc pennis evchit se noster Pegasus: humile sapia

mus.

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