extent of his imagination, has been styled "the Shakespeare of English
divines." His sermons abound with some of the most brilliant passages;
and embrace such a variety of matter, and such a mass of knowledge and
of learning, that even the acute Bishop Warburton said of him: "I can
fathom the understandings of most men, yet I am not certain that I can
fathom the understanding of Jeremy Taylor." His comparison between a
married and a single life, in his sermon on the Blessedness of
Marriage, is rich in tender sentiments and exquisitely elegant imagery.
"Marriage," says the Bishop, "is the mother of the world, and preserves
kingdoms, and fills cities, churches, and even heaven itself. Celibacy,
like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness;
yet sits alone, and is confined, and dies in singularity. But marriage,
like the useful bee, builds a house, and gathers sweetness from every
flower, and labours and unites into societies and republics, and sends
out colonies, and fills the world with delicacies, and obeys the king,
keeps order, and exercises many virtues, and promotes the interest of
mankind; and is that state of things to which God hath designed the
present constitution of the world. Marriage hath in it the labour of
love, and the delicacies of friendship; the blessings of society, and
the union of hands and hearts. It hath in it less of beauty, but more
of safety, than a single life; it is more merry and more sad; is fuller
of joy and fuller of sorrow; it lies under more burthens, but is
supported by the strength of love and charity; and these burthens are
delightful."
A TWO-EDGED ACCUSATION.
Dr. Freind, like too many of the physicians of his time--under Queen
Anne--was not very careful to keep his head clear and hand steady by
moderation in tavern potations; and more often than not he was tipsy
when he visited his patients. Once he entered the chamber of a lady of
high rank in such a state of intoxicated confusion, that he could do
nothing more than mutter to himself, "Drunk--drunk--drunk, by ----!"
Happily, or unhappily, the lady, from the same cause, was not in any
better case than the physician; and when she came to herself, she was
informed by her maid that the doctor had briefly and gruffly described
_her_ condition, and then abruptly taken his leave. Freind next day was
puzzling as to the apology he should offer to his patient for his
unfitness to deal with her ailment, when to his great joy there came a
note from the lady, enclosing a handsome fee, and entreating him to
keep his own counsel as to what he had seen.
RADCLIFFE AND KNELLER.
Sir Godfrey Kneller and Dr. Radcliffe lived next door to each other in
Bow Street, just after the latter had come up to town, and were
extremely intimate. Kneller had a very fine garden, and as the doctor
was fond of flowers, he permitted him to have a door into it.
Radcliffe's servants, however, gathering and destroying the flowers,
Kneller sent to inform him that he would nail up the door; to which
Radcliffe, in his rough manner, replied, "Tell him he may do anything
but paint it."--"Well," retorted Kneller, "he may say what he will; for
tell him, I will take anything from him, except physic."
SLAPS FOR SLEEPERS IN CHURCH.
A Methodist preacher once, observing that several of his congregation
had fallen asleep, exclaimed with a loud voice, "A fire! a fire!"
"Where? where?" cried his auditors, whom the alarm had thoroughly
aroused from their slumbers. "In the place of judgment," said the
preacher, "for those who sleep under the ministry of the holy gospel."
Another preacher, of a different persuasion, more remarkable for drowsy
hearers, finding himself in a like unpleasant situation with his
auditory, or rather _dormitory_, suddenly stopped in his discourse,
and, addressing himself in a whispering tone to a number of noisy
children in the gallery, said, "Silence! silence! children; if you keep
up such a noise, you will waken all the old folks below." Dr. South,
chaplain of Charles II., once when preaching before the Court--then
composed, as every one knows, of the most profligate and dissolute men
in the nation--saw, in the middle of his discourse, that sleep had
gradually made a conquest of his hearers. He immediately stopped short,
and, changing his tone, called out to Lord Lauderdale three times. His
Lordship standing up, Dr. South said, with great composure, "My Lord, I
am sorry to interrupt your repose; but I must beg of you that you will
not snore quite so loud, lest you awaken his Majesty."
Lassenius, chaplain to the Danish Court in the end of the seventeenth
century, for a long time, to his vexation, had seen that during his
sermon the greater part of the congregation fell asleep. One day he
suddenly stopped, and, pulling shuttlecock and battledore from his
pocket, began to play with them in the pulpit. This odd behaviour
naturally attracted the attention of the hearers who were still awake;
they jogged the sleepers, and in a very short time everybody was
lively, and looking to the pulpit with the greatest astonishment. Then
Lassenius began a very severe castigatory discourse, saying, "When I
announce to you sacred and important truths, you are not ashamed to go
to sleep; but when I play the fool, you are all eye and ear."
When Fenelon, as almoner, attended Louis XIV. to a sermon preached by a
Capuchin, he fell asleep. The Capuchin perceived it, and breaking off
his discourse, cried out, "Awake that sleeping Abbé, who comes here
only to pay his court to the King;" a reproof which Fenelon himself
often related with pleasure after he became Archbishop of Cambray.
A PRESCRIPTION FOR LONG LIFE.
In the reign of Francis I. of France, the saying went--
"_Lever à cinq, diner à neuf, Souper à cinq, coucher à neuf, Fait vivre
d'ans nonante et neuf_;"
which we thus translate--
"Rising at five, and dining at nine, Supping at five, and bedding at
nine, Brings the years of a man to ninety and nine."
ABERNETHY AND THE DUKE OF YORK.
The Duke of York once consulted Abernethy. During the time his Highness
was in the room, the doctor stood before him with his hands in his
pockets, waiting to be addressed, and whistling with great coolness.
The Duke, naturally astonished at his conduct, said, "I suppose you
know who I am?"--"Suppose I do; what of that? If your Highness of York
wishes to be well, let me tell you," added the surgeon, "you must do as
the Duke of Wellington often did in his campaigns,--_cut off the
supplies_, and the enemy will quickly leave the citadel."
AN UNLUCKY COINCIDENCE.
Dean Ramsay "remembers in the parish church of Fettercairn, though it
must be sixty years ago, a custom, still lingering in some parts of the
country, of the precentor reading out each single line before it was
sung by the congregation. This practice gave rise to a somewhat unlucky
introduction of a line from the first Psalm. In most churches in
Scotland the communion tables are placed in the centre of the church.
After sermon and prayer, the seats round these tables are occupied by
the communicants while a psalm is being sung. One communion Sunday, the
precentor observed the noble family of Eglantine approaching the
tables, and likely to be kept out by those who pressed in before them.
Being very zealous for their accommodation, he called out to an
individual whom he considered to be the principal obstacle in clearing
the passage, 'Come back, Jock, and let in the noble family of
Eglantine;' and then, turning to his psalm-book, he took up his duty,
and went on to read the line, '_Nor stand in sinners' way_.'"
LICENSED LAY PREACHING.
In 1555, Mr. Tavernier, of Bresley, in Norfolk, had a special licence
signed by Edward VI., authorizing him to preach in any part of his
Majesty's dominions, though he was a layman; and he is said to have
preached before the King at court, wearing a velvet bonnet or round
cap, a damask gown, and a gold chain about his neck. In the reign of
Mary he appeared in the pulpit of St. Mary's at Oxford, with a sword by
his side and a gold chain about his neck, and preached to the scholars,
opening his discourse in this wise: "Arriving at the mount of St.
Mary's, in the stony stage where I now stand, I have brought you some
fine biscuits, baked in the oven of charity, carefully conserved for
the chickens of the church." This sort of style, especially the
alliteration, was much admired in those days, even by the most
accomplished scholars; and was long afterwards in high favour both with
speakers and hearers. At the time Mr. Tavernier first received
commission as a preacher, good preaching was so very scarce, that not
only the King's chaplains were obliged to make circuits round the
country to instruct the people, and to fortify them against Popery, but
even laymen, who were scholars, were, as we have seen, employed for
that purpose.
DR. BARROW'S RHYMES WITH REASON.
In the days of Charles II., candidates for holy orders were expected to
respond in Latin to the various interrogatories put to them by the
bishop or his examining chaplain. When the celebrated Barrow (who was
fellow of Trinity College, and tutor to the immortal Newton) had taken
his bachelor's degree, he presented himself before the bishop's
chaplain, who, with the stiff stern visage of the times, said to
Barrow--
"_Quid est fides?_" (What is faith?) "_Quod non vides_" (What thou dost
not see),
answered Barrow with the utmost promptitude. The chaplain, a little
annoyed at Barrow's laconic answer, continued--
"_Quid est spes?_" (What is hope?)
"_Magna res_" (A great thing),
replied the young candidate in the same breath.
"_Quid est caritas?_" (What is charity?)
was the next question.
"_Magna raritas_" (A great rarity),
was again the prompt reply of Barrow, blending truth and rhyme with a
precision that staggered the reverend examiner, who went direct to the
bishop and told him that a young Cantab had thought proper to give
rhyming answers to three several moral questions, and added that he
believed his name was Isaac Barrow, of Trinity College, Cambridge.
"Barrow! Barrow!" said the bishop, who well knew the literary and moral
worth of the young bachelor; "if that's the case, ask him no more
questions, for he is much better qualified to examine us than we are to
examine him." Barrow received his letters of orders forthwith.
HOW TO BE KEPT IN HEALTH.
Sir G. Staunton related a curious anecdote of old Kien Long, Emperor of
China. He was inquiring of Sir George the manner in which physicians
were paid in England. When, after some difficulty, his Majesty was made
to comprehend the system, he exclaimed, "Is any man well in England,
that can afford to be ill? Now, I will inform you," said he, "how I
manage my physicians. I have four, to whom the care of my health is
committed: a certain weekly salary is allowed them, but the moment I am
ill, the salary stops till I am well again. I need not inform you that
my illnesses are usually short."
JOHN HUNTER ROUTING THE ROUT.
Mr. Jeaffreson, in his amusing _Book about Doctors_, tells a good story
about the great anatomist, John Hunter. "His wife, though devoted in
her attachment to him, and in every respect a lady worthy of esteem,
caused her husband at times no little vexation by her fondness for
society. She was in the habit of giving enormous routs, at which
authors and artists, of all shades of merit and demerit, used to
assemble to render homage to her literary powers, which were very far
from commonplace. Hunter had no sympathy with his wife's poetical
aspirations, still less with the society which those aspirations led
her to cultivate. Grudging the time which the labours of practice
prevented him from devoting to the pursuits of his museum and
laboratory, he could not restrain his too irritable temper when Mrs.
Hunter's frivolous amusements deprived him of the quiet requisite for
study.... Imagine the wrath of such a man, finding, on his return from
a long day's work, his house full of musical professors, connoisseurs,
and fashionable idlers--in fact, all the confusion and hubbub and heat
of a grand party, which his lady had forgotten to inform him was that
evening to come off! Walking straight into the middle of the principal
reception-room, he faced round and surveyed his unwelcome guests, who
were not a little surprised to see him--dusty, toil-worn, and grim--so
unlike what 'the man of the house' ought to be on such an occasion. 'I
knew nothing,' was his brief address to the astounded crowd--'I knew
nothing of this kick-up, and I ought to have been informed of it
beforehand; but, as I have now returned home to study, I hope the
present company will retire.' Mrs. Hunter's drawing-rooms were speedily
empty."
ANTICS OF THE FANATICS.
In concord, yet in contrast, with Dr. South's censure on the fanatics
of the Commonwealth, noticed on a former page, we take this from the
_Loyal Satirist, or Hudibras in Prose_, published among _Somers'
Tracts_:--"Well, who's for Aldermanbury? You would think a phoenix
preached there; but the birds will flock after an owl as fast; and a
foot-ball in cold weather is as much followed as Calama (Calamy) by all
his rampant dog-day zealots. But 'tis worth the crouding to hear the
baboon expound like the ape taught to play on the cittern. You would
think the church, as well as religion, were inversed, and the anticks
which were used to be without were removed into the pulpit. Yet these
apish tricks must be the motions of the spirit, his whimsie-meagrim
must be an ecstatie, and Dr. G----, his palsy make him the father of
the sanctified shakers. Thus, among Turks, dizziness is a divine
trance, changlings and idiots are the chiefest saints, and 'tis the
greatest sign of revelation to be out of one's wits.
"Instead of a dumb-shew, enter the sermon dawbers. O what a gracious
sight is a silver inkhorn! How blessed a gift is it to write shorthand!
What necessary implements for a saint are cotton wool and
blotting-paper! These dablers turn the church into a scrivener's shop.
A country fellow last term mistook it for the Six Clerks' Office. The
parson looks like an offender upon the scaffold, and they penning his
confession; or a spirit conjured up by their uncouth characters. By his
cloak you would take him for the prologue to a play; but his sermon, by
the length of it, should be a taylor's bill; and what treats it of but
such buckram, fustian stuff? What a desperate green-sickness is the
land fallen into, thus to doat on coals and dirt, and such rubbish
divinity! Must the French cook our sermons too! and are frogs, fungos,
and toadstools the chiefest dish in a spiritual collation? Strange
Israelites! that cannot distinguish betwixt mildew and manna. Certainly
in the brightest sunshine of the gospel clouds are the best guides; and
woodcocks are the only birds of paradise. I wonder how the ignorant
rabbies should differ so much, since most of their libraries consist
only of a concordance. The wise men's star doubtless was an _ignis
fatuus_ in a churchyard; and it was some such Will-o'-th'-Whisp steered
prophetical Saltmarsh, when, riding post to heaven, he lost his way in
so much of revelation as not to be understood; like the musick of the
spheres, which never was heard."
POPE'S LAST EPIGRAM.
During Pope's last illness, it is said, a squabble happened in his
chamber between his two physicians, Dr. Burton and Dr. Thomson, who
mutually charged each other with hastening the death of the patient by
improper treatment. Pope at length silenced them by saying, "Gentlemen,
I only learn by your discourse that I am in a dangerous way; therefore,
all I now ask is, that the following epigram may be added after my
death to the next edition of the Dunciad, by way of postscript:--
'Dunces rejoice, forgive all censures past, The greatest dunce has
kill'd your foe at last.'"
TRANSFUSION OF BLOOD.
The experiment of transferring the blood of one animal into the
vascular system of another, by means of a tube connected with a vein of
the receiving animal and an artery of the other--which had been
unsuccessfully attempted in 1492 in the hope of saving the life of Pope
Innocent VIII.--was first tried in England in the year 1657 by Clarke,
who failed in his attempts. Lower, of Oxford, succeeded in 1665, and
communicated his success to the Royal Society. This was on dogs. Coxe
did it on pigeons; and Coxe and King afterwards exhibited the
experiment on dogs before the Society, transfusing the blood from vein
to vein. It was again performed from a sheep to a dog, and the
experiment was frequently repeated. The first attempts at transfusion
appear to have been instigated merely by curiosity, or by a disposition
to inquire into the powers of animal economy. But higher views soon
opened themselves; it was conceived that inveterate diseases, such as
epilepsy, gout, and others, supposed to reside in the blood, might be
expelled with that fluid; while with the blood of a sheep or calf the
health and strength of the animal might be transferred to the patient.
The most sanguine anticipations were indulged, and the new process was
almost expected to realize the alchemical reveries of an elixir of life
and immortality. The experiment was first tried in France, where the
blood of a sheep, the most stupid of all animals, according to Buffon,
was transfused into the veins of an idiotic youth, with the effect, as
was asserted, of sharpening his wits; and a similar experiment was made
without injury on a healthy man. Lower and King transferred blood from
a sheep into the system of a literary man, who had offered himself for
the experiment, at first without inconvenience, but afterwards with a
less favourable result; the Royal Society still recommending
perseverance in the trials. These events were not calculated to
maintain the expectation of brilliant results that had been raised; and
other occurrences produced still more severe disappointment. The French
youth first mentioned died lethargic soon after the second transfusion;
the physicians incurred great disgrace, and were judicially prosecuted
by the relations. Not, however, discouraged by this unlucky event, they
soon after transfused the blood of a calf into a youth related to the
royal family, who died soon after of a local inflammation. The
Parliament of Paris now interfered, and proscribed the practice; and
two persons having died after transfusion at Rome, the Pope also issued
a prohibitory edict. Since the publication in 1824, however, of Dr.
Blundell's _Physiological and Pathological Researches_, transfusion has
been recognised as a legitimate operation in obstetric surgery--the
object being to obviate the effects of exhaustion from extreme loss of
blood by hæmorrhage.
FATHER ANDRE BOULANGER.
France has produced several entertaining preachers, among whom was
André Boulanger, better known as "little Father André," who died about
the middle of the seventeenth century. His character has been variously
drawn. He is by some represented as a buffoon in the pulpit; but others
more judiciously observe, that he only indulged his natural genius, and
uttered humorous and lively things to keep the attention of his
audience awake. "He told many a bold truth," says the author of _Guerre
des Auteurs, Anciens et Modernes_, "that sent bishops to their
dioceses, and made many a coquette blush. He possessed the art of
biting while he smiled; and more ably combated vice by his ingenious
satire, than by those vague apostrophes which no one takes to himself.
While others were straining their minds to catch at sublime thoughts
which no one understood, he lowered his talents to the most humble
situations, and to the minutest things." In fact, Father André seems to
have been a sort of seventeenth century Spurgeon, as two samples may
serve to show. In one of his sermons he compared the four doctors of
the Latin Church to the four kings of cards. "St. Augustine," said he,
"is the King of Hearts, for his great charity; St. Ambrose is the King
of Clubs (_treflé_), by the flowers of his eloquence; St. Gregory is
the King of Diamonds, for his strict regularity; and St. Jerome is the
King of Spades (_pique_), for his piquant style." The Duke of Orleans
once dared Father André to employ any ridiculous expression about him.
This, however, the good father did, very adroitly. He addressed the
Duke thus: "_Foin de vous, Monseigneur; foin de moi; foin de tous les
auditeurs_." He saved himself from the consequences of his jest, by
taking for his text the seventh verse of the tenth chapter of Isaiah,
where it is said, "All the people are grass"--_Foin_ in French
signifying hay, and being also an interjection, "Fie upon!"
AN INTERCESSOR FOR HIMSELF.
A Protestant renting a little farm under the second Duke of Gordon, a
Catholic, fell behind in his payments; and the steward, in his master's
absence, seized the farmer's stock and advertised it to be rouped on a
certain day. In the interval, the Duke returned home, and the tenant
went to him to entreat indulgence. "What is the matter, Donald?" said
the Duke, seeing him enter with sad and downcast looks. Donald told his
sorrowful tale concisely and naturally: it touched the Duke's heart,
and produced a formal quittance of the debt. Donald, as he cheerily
withdrew, was seen staring at the pictures and images he saw in the
Duke's hall, and expressed to his Grace, in a homely way, a wish to
know who they were. "These," said the Duke, "are the saints who
intercede with God for me." "My Lord Duke," said the tenant, "would it
not be better to apply yourself directly to God? I went to mickle Sandy
Gordon, and to little Sandy Gordon; but if I had not come to your good
Grace's self, I could not have got my discharge, and baith I and my
bairns had been harried out of house and hame."
WHITFIELD'S INFLUENCE ON THE CHURCH.
Toplady speaks thus, in a sermon, of the Establishment to which he
belonged, and the effect on its ministers of the work of Whitfield
beyond its pale:--"I believe no denomination of professing Christians
(the Church of Rome excepted) were so generally void of the light and
life of godliness, so generally destitute of the doctrine and of the
grace of the gospel, as was the Church of England, considered as a
body, about fifty years ago. At that period, a _converted_ minister in
the Establishment was as great a wonder as a comet; but now, blessed be
God, since that precious, that great apostle of the English empire, the
late dear Mr. Whitfield, was raised up in the spirit and power of
Elias, the word of God has run and been glorified; many have believed
and been added to the Lord all over the three kingdoms; and still,
blessed be His name, the great Shepherd and Bishop of souls continues
to issue His word; and great is the company of preachers, greater and
greater every year." This was indeed a liberality far in advance of
Toplady's time.
GENEROSITY OF DR. GREGORY.
It was the custom of the Professors of Edinburgh University, in the
time of this amiable and learned man--as it is partly still--to receive
at their own residences the fees from students intending to attend
their lectures; some old students yet remembering that, when other
material for the class-tickets failed, and sometimes even when it did
not, the necessary formula was written on the back of a playing-card.
While Dr. Gregory was one day at the receipt of fees, he left his room,
in which was a single student, and went into an adjoining apartment for
more admission cards. In this room there was a mirror, in which the
doctor saw the student lift and pocket a portion of a pile of guineas
that lay on the table. Dr. Gregory took no notice of what he had seen
till he was showing the student out; but on the threshold he said, with
a voice marked with deep emotion, "Young man, I saw what you did just
now. Keep the money; I know what distress you must be in. But for God's
sake never do it again; it can never succeed." The remorseful student
sought in vain to persuade the Professor to take back the money: "No,
this must be your punishment, that you must keep it now that you have
taken it." The kind warning was not lost; the student, we are assured,
turned out a good and honest man. At another time Gregory attended a
poor medical student, ill of typhus fever, who offered him the
customary fee of a guinea. The doctor refused it in silence, and with
signs of annoyance and anger at the offer; whereupon the student
hastily said, "I beg your pardon, Dr. Gregory; I did not know your
rule. Dr. A. has always taken a fee." "Oh, he has, has he?" said
Gregory; "then, my young friend, ask him to meet me here in
consultation--and offer me the fee first." The consultation took place,
and the student offered the fee; whereupon the good Gregory broke out:
"Sir, do you mean to insult me? Is there a Professor in this University
who would so far degrade himself, as to take payment from one of his
brotherhood, and a junior?" Dr. A. did not enjoy the little scene that
had been prepared for him; and that very day he returned the fees he
had taken of the sick student.
RUDE TRUTH FOR A QUEEN.