common there; it is a desart where desert lyes hoodwinked; it is a famous citie, wherein are all trades, for here lies the alchymist can make ex auro non aurum, then ex non auro, aurum. "It is as intricate a place as Rosamond's Labyrinth, and it is so full of blinde meanders and crooked turnings, that it is impossible to find the way out, except he be directed by a silver clue, and can never overcome the minotaure without a golden ball to work his owne safety. "It is as Innes of Court; for herein lawyers inhabit, that have crotchets to free other man, yet all their quirks and quiddities cannot enfranchise themselves. "It is the Doctors' Commons, where skilful physitians frequent; who, like Esculapius, can cure men's diseases, yet cannot quintessence out of all their vegetals and minerals, a balsamum or elixir to make a sovereign plaster to heal the surfeit the mace has given them. "It is the Chyrurgions' Hall, where many rare artists live, that can search other men's wounds, yet cannot treate the wound the serjeant hath give them. "It is your Bankrupt's banquetting-house, where he sits feasting with the sweetmeats borrowed from other men's tables, having a voluntary disposition never to repay them again. "It is your Prodigal's ultimum refugium, wherein he may see himself as in a glass, what his excess hath brought him to; and lest he should surfeit, comes hither to physicke himself with moderate diet, and least that his bed of downe should breed too many diseases, comes hither to change his bed, where he is scarce able to lye downe. "It is a purgatory which doth afflict a man with more miseries than ever he reaped pleasures. It is a pilgrim age to exterminate sins and absolve offences; for here be seminaries and masse priests, which doe take down the pride of their flesh more than a voyage to the Holy Land or a hair shirt in Lent. "It is an evil which doth banish a man from all contentments, whein his actions do so terrifie him, that it makes a man grow desperate. "To conclude, what is it not? In a word, it is the very idea of all misery and torment; it converts joy into sorrow, riches into poverty, and ease into discontentments." Minshull expends the whole force of his satire on inhuman creditors. His pen on this topic hits the true Juvenal strain, yet he willingly excuses the creditor, who employs constraint and the strong arm of the law, to obtain his due, which he needs to prevent his coming hither himself. A choice essay on 'Choice of Company in Prison,' commences thus: "Wouldst thou learn to dispute well? Be an excellent sophister. Wouldst thou dispute of foreign affairs, and be an excellent linguist? I counsel thee to travel. Wouldst thou be of a pleasing and affectionate behaviour? Frequent the court. Wouldst thou dive into the secret villanies of man? Lye in prison." He divides all the different varieties of prison companions into three sorts. 1. A parasite. 2. A John indifferente. 3. A true-hearted Titus: the masculine sweetheart.' On visitors to the prisoners he is pretty hard: ascribing their assumed condolence to mere curiosity. He is, perhaps, unjust in his almost universal censure; though all prisoners are not so fortunate as was Leigh Hunt, who had his wife and children, and books, and flowers, and music, and pure fancies, and sweet thoughts. This innocent prisoner and fine writer had a noble company of visitors: some of them daily companions, Mr. Shelley, Charles Lamb, Tom Moore, Horace Smith, Miss Lamb, William Hazlitt, Jeremy Bentham. A delightful subject for an article, for Hunt himself would be a paper on the great and good men, who have by any mischance become inmates of a prison: and of the admirable books written there. In one respect, Minshull bears some resemblance to Cobbett, i. e., in tacking awkward nick-names on the objects of his aversion. He speaks, by way of irony, of his entertainments and entertainers in prison: the guard at the gate is a Cerberus, of whom there is a terrific print on the title-page: his chamber-fellows' are Threadbare and Monilesse: the gardener, Potherb; the steward, Cutthroate; the cook, Mistress Mutton Chops; the keeper who accompanies the prisoners when they walk without the prison, Argus. Upon the jailors Minshull expends all the bitterness, of which the humanity of his nature was capable. He represents them as devils rather than men, which, indeed, it is the tendency of their functions to make them. The verses prefixed to the treatise, we think, comprise the sum of the matter. A prison is a house of care, A place where none can thrive, A touch-stone true to try a friend, Sometimes a place of right, Sometimes a place of wrong, Sometimes a place for rogues and thieves, And honest men among. XVI. ON PREACHING. WHEN We consider the frequency of the occasion, the nobleness of the topics, their supreme importance, the efficacy of the act well performed, the genius requisite, the variety of congregations, the number of preachers, we are at a complete stand to account for the deplorably low state of preaching. This confession, extorted from us by the facts of the case, may afford matter of astonishment to many who are very well satisfied with the present state of the pulpit-who ask for nothing better-who perhaps could not comprehend anything superior. We have always been well pleased at the recollection of that passage in the Spectator, where Sir Roger de Coverly's parish clergyman being asked who was to preach on the next Sunday for him, replied, Doctor South in the morning and Doctor Barrow in the evening-meaning that he intended reading a sermon from those great divines on both occasions. We heartily wish some of the divines of this day would have the courage, as well as the good sense, to adopt a similar practice at suitable opportunities. In point of essential merit, no critic, any way qualified, would hesitate to give the preference to one of South's best sermons over a majority of modern discourses even by divines of considerable the ex Taste, no eminence. What pithiness of sense and point of expres sion in the old divines! What weakness, flaccidity, baldness, in the present race!* If the excessive length of Barrow, or the local satire of South, or the extravagant erudition and overflowing fancy of Taylor, be excepted to, let Barrow be condensed, expurgate South, and prune crescences of the Bishop of Down and Connor. mean talents, judgment, are requisite for the selection and purgation, and only to the hands of a first rate man would we consign the task. Inferior intellects, if admitted, on the plea of piety, into the Church at all, should not pretend to this, but take the best sermons as they find them. It is not for them to abuse and dislocate the fine thoughts of genius, which learning may have overloaded, or temporary allusions rendered faint and obscure. It is almost presumption in a man of equal genius, to try his skill on the same subjects that have engaged the attention of those master intellects; for Cowley to attempt a flight with the Theban eagle. It is absolute profanation for a petty parson to endeavor to hurl the thunders of avenging justice, or to imitate the silver eloquence of an Angel of Mercy. From the practice of reading the best published sermons of standard and orthodox divines, two good results, if no more, would follow; the art of elocution would be much more attended to, and the sermons could be studied and carefully meditated, by which means the preacher might deliver them with greater effect. We suspect that many * To this general deprecation we must make some exceptions: the editor of the Churchman, the strongest controversialist in the country, who is equally admirable in the graver eloquence of the pulpit; the fine poet Hoyt, who is also a spirited and manly preacher; and the fervent declamation of Southard. |