(1608-1661)
[Illustration: THOMAS FULLER]
The fragrance which surrounds the writings of Thomas Fuller seems
blended of his wit, his quaint worldliness, his sweet and happy
spirit. The after-glow of the dazzling day of Shakespeare and his
brotherhood rests upon the pages of this divine. In Fuller the
world-spirit of the Elizabethan dramatists becomes urbanity, the
mellow humor of the dweller in the town. Too well satisfied with the
kindly comforts of life to agonize over humanity and the eternal
problems of existence, Fuller, although a Church of England clergyman,
was no less a cavalier at heart than the most jaunty follower of King
Charles. He had not the intensity of nature which characterizes the
theologian by the grace of God. His 'Holy and Profane State,' his
'Good Thoughts in Bad Times,' and 'Good Thoughts in Worse Times,'
evidence a comfortable and reasonable reliance on the Unseen; but they
will not be read for their spiritual insight so much as for their
well-seasoned and delightful English. That quaint and fragrant style
of his lends charm even to those passages in which his thought is
commonplace.
It is in Thomas Fuller the historian and biographer, that posterity
recognizes a man of marked intellectual power. His scholarship is
exhibited in such a work as the 'Church History of Britain'; his
peculiar faculty for happy description in the 'Worthies of England.'
Fuller was fitted by temperament and training to be a recorder of his
own country and countrymen. His life was spent upon his island; his
love was fastened upon its places and its people. Born the same year
as Milton, 1608, the son of a clergyman of the same name as his own,
he was from boyhood both a scholar and an observer of men and things.
His education at Cambridge fostered his love of books.
His subsequent incumbency of various comfortable livings afforded him
opportunities for close acquaintance with the English world of his
day, and especially with its "gentry." By birth, education, and
inclination, Fuller was an aristocrat. During the civil war he took
the side of King Charles, to whose stately life and mournful death he
has devoted the last volume of his great work, the 'History of the
Church of Britain.' Under the Protectorate, the genial priest and man
of the world found himself in an alien atmosphere. Like many others in
Anglican orders, he was "silenced" by the sour Puritan authorities,
but was permitted to preach again in London by the grace of Cromwell.
He was subsequently appointed chaplain to Charles II., but did not
live long after the Restoration, dying of a fever in 1661.
An early instance of modern scholarship is found in the histories
written by Thomas Fuller. Being by nature an antiquarian, he was not
inclined to find his material at second hand. He went back always to
the earliest sources for his historical data. It is this fact which
gives their permanent value to the 'History of the Church of Britain'
and to the 'History of the Holy War.' These works bear witness to wide
and patient research, to a thorough sifting of material. The
antiquarian spirit displayed in them loses some of its scholarly
dignity, and takes on the social humor of the gossip, in the 'Worthies
of England.' Fuller's other writings may be of more intrinsic value,
but it is through the 'Worthies' that he is remembered and loved. The
book is rich in charm. It is as quaint as an ancient flower garden,
where blooms of every sort grow in lavish tangle. He considers the
counties of England, one by one, telling of their physical
characteristics, of their legends, of their proverbs, of the princely
children born in them, of the other "Worthies"--scholars, soldiers,
and saints--who have shed lustre upon them. Fuller gathered his
material for this variegated record from every quarter of his beloved
little island. As a chaplain in the Cavalier army, he had many
opportunities of visiting places and studying their people. As an
incumbent of country parishes, he would listen to the ramblings of the
old women of the hamlets, for the sake of discovering in their talk
some tradition of the country-side, or some quaint bit of folk-lore.
He writes of the strange, gay, sad lives of princely families as
familiarly as he writes of the villagers and townsfolk. Sometimes an
exquisite tenderness lies like light upon his record, as in this, of
the little Princess Anne, daughter to Charles I.:--
She was a very pregnant lady above her years, and died in her
infancy, when not fully four years old. Being minded by those
about her to call upon God even when the pangs of death were
upon her, "I am not able," saith she, "to say my long prayer"
(meaning the Lord's Prayer), "but I will say my short one,
'Lighten mine eyes, O Lord, lest I sleep the sleep of
death.'" This done, the little lamb gave up the ghost.
Because of passages like these, Thomas Fuller will always be numbered
among those writers who, irrespective of their rank in the world of
letters, awaken a deep and lasting affection in the hearts of their
readers.