out of it, that we may perceive he took no great pleasure in that kind of mirth. I have been drawn twice or thrice by company to go to Bedlam, and have seen others very much delighted with the fantastical extravagancy of so many various madnesses, which upon me wrought so contrary an effect, that I always returned, not only melancholy, but even sick with the sight. My compassion there was perhaps too tender, for I meet a thousand madmen abroad, without any perturbation; though to weigh the matter justly, the total loss of reason is less deplorable than the total depravation of it. An exact judge of human blessings, of riches, honours, beauty, even of wit itself, should pity the abuse of them more than the want.

(From the Essay, The Dangers of an Honest Man in much Company.)

POETRY AS A MISTRESS

I WAS even then acquainted with the poets (for the conclusion is taken out of Horace); and perhaps it was the immature and immoderate love of them which stamped first, or rather engraved, the characters in me; they were like letters cut in the bark of a young tree, which with the tree still grow proportionably. But, how this love came to be produced in me so early, is a hard question: I believe I can tell the particular' little chance which filled my head first with such chimes of verse, as have never since left ringing there: for I remember when I began to read, and take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother's parlour (I know not by what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion); but there was wont to lie Spenser's works; this I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave houses, which I found everywhere there (though my understanding had little to do with all this), and by degrees, with the tinkling of the rhyme, and dance of the numbers; so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years old, and was thus made a poet as immediately as a child is made an eunuch. With these affections of mind, and my heart wholly set upon letters, I went to the university; but was soon torn from thence by that public violent storm which would suffer nothing to stand where it did, but rooted up every plant, even from the princely cedars, to me, the hyssop. Yet I had as good fortune as could have befallen me in such a tempest; for I was cast by

it into the family of one of the best persons, and into the court of one of the best princesses in the world. Now though I was here engaged in ways most contrary to the original design of my life, that is, into much company, and no small business, and into a daily fight of greatness, both militant and triumphant (for that was the state then of the English and the French courts), yet all this was so far from altering my opinion, that it only added the confirmation of reason to that which was before but natural inclination. I saw plainly all the paint of that kind of life, the nearer I came to it; and that beauty which I did not fall in love with, when for aught I knew it was real, was not like to bewitch or entice me, when I saw it was adulterate. I met with several great persons, whom I liked very well, but could not perceive that any part of their greatness was to be liked or desired, no more than I would be glad, or content to be in a storm, though I saw many ships which rid safely and bravely in it. A storm would not agree with my stomach if it did with my courage; though I was in a crowd of as good company as could be found anywhere, though I was in business of great and honourable trust, though I ate at the best table, and enjoyed the best conveniencies for present subsistence that ought to be desired by a man of my condition in banishment and public distresses; yet I could not abstain from renewing my old school-boy's wish in a copy of verses to the same effect.

"Well then; I now do plainly see,

This busy world and shall ne'er agree," &c.

And I never then proposed to myself any other advantage from his Majesty's happy restoration, but the getting into some moderately convenient retreat in the country, which I thought in that case I might easily have compassed, as well as some others, who with no greater probabilities or pretences have arrived to extraordinary fortunes. But God laughs at a man who says to his soul, Take thy ease: I met presently not only with many little encumbrances and impediments, but with so much sickness, (a new misfortune to me), as would have spoiled the happiness of an Emperor as well as mine: yet I do neither repent nor alter my course. Non ego perfidum dixi sacramentum: nothing shall separate me from a mistress which I have loved so long, and have now at last married: though she neither has brought me a rich portion, nor lived yet so quietly with me as I hoped from her. (From the Essay Of Myself.)

RALPH CUDWORTH

In

[Ralph Cudworth was born at Aller in Somersetshire in 1617. His father, also a learned man, died in 1624, and his mother then married Dr. Stoughton, who took the greatest pains with his step-son's education. 1630 he went to Emmanuel College, Cambridge. In 1640, after a brilliant university career, he was presented to the Rectory of North Cadbury, Somersetshire. He was not long a parish priest, for in 1644 he was appointed Master of Clare and stopped at Cambridge, almost without break, for the remaining forty-four years of his life. He was, in 1645, appointed Regius Professor of Hebrew; in 1654, Master of Christ's; and in 1678 Prebendary of Gloucester Cathedral. He died in 1688.

Cudworth is best known by his True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678), and his Treatise on Eternal and Immutable Morality (not published till 1731). He also wrote a Discourse concerning the true Notion of the Lord's Supper, a Treatise of Free Will, a couple of sermons, and a work on Daniel's prophecy of the LXX weeks.]

CUDWORTH belonged to the group of scholars and theologians known as the Cambridge Platonists. Henry More, John Smith, Benjamin Which cote, besides other more or less well known men being of this group. Their chief aim was to defend the freedom

of the will against Hobbes and Descartes.

Our author's True Intellectual System of the Universe, “wherein all the reason and philosophy of atheism is confuted, and its impossibility demonstrated," is a careful presentment of the various ancient hypotheses as to the nature of the universe, read in the light of the materialistic philosophies of his day. Ueberweg speaks of it as being "at once the most learned and for the time the most critical work, on the history of ancient philosophy which had ever been produced by any English writer." The style is strong and nervous, generally clear and forceful, sometimes even eloquent and graphic. There is every evidence of clearness of head and coolness of judgment about the work. The writer is perhaps open to the charge of making too great a display of learning, but this is a better fault than ignoring all quotation and despising all accuracy of reference.

In the Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality Cudworth purported to defend the freedom of the will against Atheists, Deists, and Christian Theists; he only completed the first part, however, namely, that against Atheists. The subject

is carefully and exhaustively argued, temperately but unflinchingly. The language is occasionally antiquated, and the general style heavier than that of the Intellectual System.

The Treatise of Free Will is perhaps the most highly finished and generally attractive of Cudworth's philosophical writings. It was suggested by Hobbes' letter to the Marquis of Newcastle. His criticisms are clear and pertinent, the flow of his remarks is not interrupted, as in the Intellectual System, by over much quotation from other writers. He is severe in controversy, but

never discourteous nor irrelevant.

All Cudworth's writings may be called theological, seeing that the being and nature of God, and the moral responsibility of man, form the chief themes of his philosophical works. Of more specially theological writing we have from him two sermons, and a work on the Lord's Supper.

His sermons are characterised by great breadth of view, which won for him the epithet Latitudinarian in his day, and which would now-a-days cause him to be described as a Broad Church man. Their style is fine; their diction pure and for the most part simple; their principal fault, and that a serious one, is their great length.

His discourse on the Notion of the Lord's Supper is extremely erudite, garnished with countless quotations from Latin and Greek authors, and with disquisitions upon the Hebrew text of Scripture.

Cudworth's works deserve to be studied by the modern student of English literature, not only for the excellence of their style but for the value of their contents. Many of his strictures upon the materialistic philosophies of his own and of a bygone day still bear on latter-day controversies, while his exhortations to live the Christ-like life rather than wrangle over doctrinal niceties would not come amiss in these times of party shibboleths.

A. I. FITZROY.

ON THE INCORPOREALITY OF THE DEITY

THE Democritics and Epicureans, though consenting with all the other atheists, in this, that whatsoever was unextended, and devoid of magnitude, and therefore nothing (so that there could neither be any substance, nor accident, or mode of any substance, unextended), did notwithstanding distinguish concerning a double nature. First, that which is so extended as to be impenetrable and tangible, or resist the touch; which is body. And secondly, that which is extended also, but penetrably and intangibly; which is space or vacuum: a nature, according to them, really distinct from body, and the only incorporeal thing that is. Now since this space, which is the only incorporeal, can neither do nor suffer anything, but only give place or room to bodies to subsist in, or pass through; therefore can there not be any active, understanding, incorporeal Deity. This is the argumentation of the Democritic atheists.

To which we reply, that if space be indeed a nature distinct from body, and a thing really incorporeal, as they pretend, then will it undeniably follow from this very principle of theirs, that there must be an incorporeal substance; and (this space being supposed by them also to be infinite) an infinite, incorporeal Deity. Because, if space be not the extension of body, nor an affection thereof, then must it of necessity be, either an accident existing alone by itself without a substance, which is impossible; or else the extension, or affection, of some other incorporeal substance, that is infinite. But here will Gassendus step in, to help out his good friends the Democritics and Epicureans at a dead lift, and undertake to maintain, that though space be indeed an incorporeal thing, yet it would neither follow of necessity from thence, that it is an incorporeal substance or affection thereof; nor yet that it is an accident existing alone by itself, without a substance; because this space is really neither accident, nor sub