he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast.3 But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,

Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.

4

The consideration of this made Mr. Hales of Eaton say, that there was no subject of which any poet ever writ, but he would produce it much better done in Shakespeare; and however others are now generally preferred before him, yet the age wherein he lived, which had contemporaries with him, Fletcher and Jonson, never equalled them to him in their esteem: and in the last king's court, when Ben's reputation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him the greater part of the courtiers, set our Shakespeare far above him. As for Jonson, to whose character I am now arrived, if we look upon him while he was himself (for his last plays were but his dotages), I think him the most learned and judicious writer which any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge of himself, as well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he was frugal of it. In his works you find little to retrench or alter. Wit, and language, and humour also in some measure, we had before him; but something of art was wanting to the drama, till he came. He managed his strength to more advantage than any who preceded him. You seldom find him making love in any of his scenes, or endeavouring to move the passions; his genius was too sullen and saturnine to do it gracefully, especially when he knew he came after those who had performed both to such a height. Humour was his proper sphere; and in that he delighted most to represent mechanic people. He was deeply conversant in the ancients, both

2. Clench, a verbal quibble or pun, spelt also clinch.

3. Bombast: the cotton plant, Gk. Boußás, E. bombast, was formerly used as material for stuffing out clothes. Thus Falstaff is called by Prince Henry a " sweet creature of bombast;" and in

Love's Labour's Lost the Princess characterizes her suitor's letters "as bombast and as lining to the time." Hence by an easy metaphor it passed to the meaning of swollen, turgid, inflated language.

4. Am... arrived: see note 3, p. 35.

Greek and Latin, and he borrowed boldly from them; there is scarce a poet or historian among the Roman authors of those times, whom he has not translated in Sejanus and Catiline. But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets, is only victory in him. With the spoils of these writers he so represents old Rome to us, in his rites, ceremonies, and customs, that if one of their poets had written either of his tragedies, we had seen less of it than in him. If there was any fault in his language, 'twas that he weaved it too closely and laboriously, in his comedies especially: perhaps, too, he did a little too much Romanize our tongue, leaving the words which he translated almost as much Latin as he found them; wherein, though he learnedly followed their language, he did not enough comply with the idiom of ours. If I would compare him with Shakespeare, I must acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakespeare the greater wit. Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern 5 of elaborate writing: I admire him, but I love Shakespeare.

5. Pattern, merely another form of the first the inanimate model of one's patron, the second meaning the human, imitation.

117. John Bunyan. 1628-1688. (History, p. 131.)

From THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.'

THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION.

Now they began to go down the hill into the valley of Humiliation. It was a steep hill, and the way was slippery; but they were very careful; so they got down pretty well. When they were down in the valley, Piety said to Christiana, This is the place where Christian, your husband, met with that foul fiend Apollyon, and where they had that dreadful fight that they had; I know you cannot but have heard thereof. But be of good courage; as long as you have here Mr. Greatheart to be your guide and conductor, we hope you will fare the better. So when these two had committed the pilgrims unto the conduct of their guide, he went forward, and they went after. Then said Mr. Greatheart, we need not to be so afraid of this valley,

SPECS. ENG. LIT.

M

for here is nothing to hurt us, unless we procure it to ourselves. 'Tis true, Christian did here meet with Apollyon, with whom he also had a sore combat; but that fray was the fruit of those slips that he got in his going down the hill, for they that get slips there must look for combats here. And hence it is that this valley has got so hard a name; for the common people, when they hear that some frightful thing has befallen such a one in such a place, are of opinion that that place is haunted with some foul fiend or evil spirit, when, alas! it is for the fruit of their own doing that such things do befal them there.

This valley of Humiliation is of itself as fruitful a place as any the crow flies over; and I am persuaded, if we could hit upon it, we might find somewhere hereabouts something that might give us an account why Christian was so hardly beset in this place.

Then said James to his mother, Lo! yonder stands a pillar, and it looks as if something was written thereon: let us go and see what it is. So they went, and found there written, "Let Christian's slip, before he came hither, and the battles that he met with in this place, be a warning to those that come after." Lo! said their guide, did not I tell you there was something hereabouts that would give intimation of the reason why Christian was so hard beset in this place? Then turning himself to Christiana, he said, No disparagement1 to Christian more than to many others whose hap and lot it was; for it is easier going up than down this hill, and that can be said but of few hills in all these parts of the world. But we will leave the good man; he is at rest; he also had a brave victory over his enemy; let Him grant, that dwelleth above, that we fare no worse, when we come to be tried, than he !

But we will come again to this valley of Humiliation. It is the best and most fruitful piece of ground in all these parts. It is fat ground, and, as you see, consisteth much in meadows; and if a man was to come here in summer-time, as we do now, if he knew not anything before thereof, and if he also delighted himself in the sight of his eyes, he might see that which would be delightful to him. Behold how green this valley is! also how beautified with

1. Disparagement: we owe this word to the feudal system, in the language of which disparagare signified to unite a person to an inferior in rank (dispar),

and so to reduce to a lower social standing. Hence the modern meaning of the word, to depreciate, to represent as unworthy.

6:

lilies! I have known many labouring men that have got good estates in this valley of humiliation. For God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble;" for indeed it is a very fruitful soil, and doth bring forth by handfuls. Some also have wished that the next way to their Father's house were here, that they might be troubled no more with either hills or mountains to go over; but the way is the way, and there's an end.

Now, as they were going along and talking, they espied a boy feeding his father's sheep. The boy was in very mean clothes, but of a fresh and well-favoured countenance,2 and as he sat by himself he sung. "Hark," said Mr. Greatheart, "to what the shepherd's boy saith;" so they hearkened, and he said,

He that is down needs fear no fall;

He that is low no pride;

He that is humble ever shall

Have God to be his guide.

I am content with what I have,
Little be it or much;

And, Lord! contentment still I crave,

Because thou savest such.

Fullness to such a burden is,

That go on pilgrimage:

Here little, and hereafter bliss,

Is best from age to age.

Then said their guide, do you hear him? I will dare to say this boy lives a merrier life and wears more of that herb called heartsease in his bosom than he that is clad in silk and velvet! but we will proceed in our discourse.

2. Well-favoured countenance: the adJective here still retains the old meaning of favour, i. e. face, appearance, but the face as indicative of internal feeling;

and countenance denotes properly the features under restraint or due control, Lat. continentia.

Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon.

1608-1674. (History, p. 133.)

From 'THE HISTORY OF THE GREAT REBELLION.'

118. EXECUTION OF MONTROSE.

As soon as he had ended his discourse, he was ordered to withdraw; and after a short space, was again brought in, and told by

the chancellor,1 "that he was, on the morrow, being the one-andtwentieth of May, 1650, to be carried to Edinburgh cross, and there to be hanged on a gallows thirty foot high, for the space of three hours, and then to be taken down, and his head to be cut off upon a scaffold, and hanged on Edinburgh tollbooth; and his legs and arms to be hanged up in other public towns of the kingdom, and his body to be buried at the place where he was to be executed, except the kirk should take off his excommunication; and then his body might be buried in the common place of burial." He desired "that he might say somewhat to them," but was not suffered, and so was carried back to the prison.

That he might not enjoy any ease or quiet during the short remainder of his life, their ministers came presently to insult over him with all the reproaches imaginable; pronounced his damnation, and assured him "that the judgment he was the next day to suffer was but an easy prologue to that which he was to undergo afterwards." After many such barbarities, they offered to intercede for him to the kirk upon his repentance, and to pray with him; but he too well understood the form of their common prayers, in those cases, to be only the most virulent and insolent imprecations upon the persons of those they prayed against ("Lord, vouchsafe yet to touch the obdurate heart of this proud incorrigible sinner, this wicked, perjured, traitorous, and profane person, who refuses to hearken to the voice of thy kirk," and the like charitable expressions), and therefore he desired them "to spare their pains, and to leave him to his own devotions." He told them that "they were a miserable, deluded, and deluding people, and would shortly bring that poor nation under the most insupportable servitude ever people had submitted to." He told them "he was prouder to have his head set upon the place it was appointed to be than he could have been to have his picture hang in the king's bedchamber; that he was so far from being troubled that his four limbs were to be hanged in four cities of the kingdom, that he heartily wished he had flesh enough to be sent to every city in Christendom, as a testimony of the cause for which he suffered."

1. Chancellor: the L. L. cancellarius was so called, because, when the king was conducting the business of the state in the chancels of the churches-no unusual place in old times-this official

stood "ad cancellos," at the iron railings which separated them from the rest of the building, and acted as an intermediary between sovereign and subject.