Many of his most pithy lines are often quoted:—
“Men are but children of a larger growth.”
“Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He that would search for pearls must dive below.”
“The greatest argument for love is love.”
“The secret pleasure of the generous act,
Is the great mind’s great bribe.”
The great American critic and poet, Mr Lowell, compares him to “an ostrich, to be classed with flying things, and capable, what with leap and flap together, of leaving the earth for a longer or a shorter space, but loving the open plain, where wing and foot help each other to something that is both flight and run at once.”
[14.] Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), the greatest master of ornate and musical English prose in his own day, was born at Cambridge in the year 1613—just three years before Shakespeare died. His father was a barber. After attending the free grammar-school of Cambridge, he proceeded to the University. He took holy orders and removed to London. When he was lecturing one day at St Paul’s, Archbishop Laud was so taken by his “youthful beauty, pleasant air,” fresh eloquence, and exuberant style, that he had him created
a Fellow of All Souls’ College, Oxford. When the Civil War broke out, he was taken prisoner by the Parliamentary forces; and, indeed, suffered imprisonment more than once. After the Restoration, he was presented with a bishopric in Ireland, where he died in 1667.