The golden dream of life dissolves in gloom;
The silent grave brings on the bright joy's ending.
It is very hard, if not impossible, to render into any other language the true spirit of a German poem. But in the original this sonnet is far above mediocrity. It idealizes the opera of Don Juan very artistically, and displays a combination of force with harmony and grace which gives the impression, in connection with the other sonnets, that if Strauss had devoted his mental energy to poetry alone, he would not have taken a low rank among the poets of Germany.
W.W.C.
LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
The Life of Thomas Fuller, D.D., with Notices of his Books, his Kinsmen and his Friends. By John Eglinton Bailey. London: Pickering.
By no means to the credit of the nineteenth century, it is hardly prudent, as yet, to speak to the general public about Thomas Fuller without formally introducing him. Coleridge and Southey and Lamb were, to be sure, familiar with his writings, and prized them extremely. But they did the same by the writings of many another old worthy now undeservedly slighted; and, for all their eulogies on him, the great bulk of readers were still content to continue in ignorance of the treasures he has bequeathed to us. The neglect of him which at present prevails is, however, in large measure, a delinquency of long standing. His chief work is undoubtedly his Church History; and Heylin's elaborate impugnment of its accuracy appears to have had great weight, as with Fuller's contemporaries, so with the generation which immediately followed, and onward almost to our own time. To Heylin succeeded Bishop Nicolson in exerting himself to discredit that valuable work, and it is only within a few years that its character has been substantially rehabilitated. Together with the reputation of Fuller as an historian, his reputation in other respects for a long while underwent eclipse; for, as it is reviving again, we may not say that it passed away. His matter quite apart—and it is always interesting—and abstractedly from his pervasive pleasantry, which is always original, it is a wonder that he is not more esteemed than he is in an age which professes to set store by style. Mr. John Nichols, an editor of his Worthies, timidly hazarded the observation that, as against the strictures of Bishop Nicolson, there might be much said in "vindication of the language of Dr. Fuller"—a comment which excited Coleridge to a high pitch of exasperation. "Fuller's language!" he ejaculates. "Grant me patience, Heaven! A tithe of his beauties would be sold cheap for a whole library of our classical writers, from Addison to Johnson and Junius inclusive. And Bishop Nicolson!—a painstaking old charwoman of the Antiquarian and Rubbish Concern! The venerable rust and dust of the whole firm are not worth an ounce of Fuller's earth."
Of Fuller's ancestry nothing is known, on the paternal side, beyond his father, a college-bred clergyman, who died in 1632. His mother was a Davenant, of an ancient and respectable family. Fuller was born in June, 1608, at Aldwinkle, in Northamptonshire, at his father's rectory. When only about twelve years of age he was entered at Queen's College, Cambridge, his progress in his studies having been such as to authorize this unusually early transfer from school to the university. In 1628 he exchanged Queen's College for Sydney-Sussex College, and in the following year he was presented by the master and fellows of Corpus Christi College to the curacy of St. Benet's, Cambridge. Within a twelvemonth after—namely, in 1631—HE made his first appearance as an author. His Davia's Heinous Sin, Hearty Repentance, Heavy Punishment, which came out in that year, was his sole adventure of noteworthy compass as a versifier; and he certainly testified his discretion in choosing thenceforward to be satisfied with writing prose. A valuable prebend attached to the Salisbury Cathedral was bestowed on him at this time, near about which he is supposed to have delivered, in discourses, his so-called Comment on Ruth. Next we hear of him as rector of Broadwindsor, where, probably, he composed his History of the Holy War, published in 1639. His Holy State was given to the world in 1642. Having just before this removed to London under circumstances which are involved in some obscurity, he was there appointed lecturer to the Inns of Court and to the Savoy Chapel. But trouble awaited him, as it then awaited all other loyalists whom it had not overtaken already, and 1643 found him a refugee at Oxford. There he was warmly welcomed by the king and his adherents, but on his imprudently daring to urge lenient counsels, his moderation gave as much dissatisfaction to the court party as it had previously given to the Parliamentarians, and he fell into temporary disgrace. Nevertheless, he suffered, at the hands of the anti-royalists, the same spoliation which would have been visited on a malignant of the extremest stamp. To fill up the measure of his misfortune—as if it were not enough that he should be deprived of his stated means of livelihood—he was despoiled of his library. For a while, also, his loyalty was held, though without the slightest grounds, in considerable suspicion. On coming to be better known, however, he was restored to favor, and was enrolled among the royal chaplains. If the doubts as to the sincerity of his adhesion to Charles were ever actually thought to have good foundation, they must have been dissipated by his voluntarily exposing himself to danger, as he did at one of the sieges of Basing House. Like Isaac Barrow, he would at need have done duty militant just as effectually with carnal weapons as with spiritual. No longer required at Basing House, he repaired to Oxford again, and then to Exeter, where he was nominated chaplain to the princess Henrietta Anne. But he held his new post for only a short period. Leaving Exeter, he once more sought Oxford, and thence went to London. Forbidden to preach there, he retired to Northamptonshire, and then reappeared at the metropolis, where he was sojourning in the memorable year 1649. Becoming in that year curate of Waltham Abbey, he enjoyed an interval of quietude while all around him was turbulence. Yet he was soon in London afresh, lecturer at various churches from 1651 till near the end of his life. In 1658 he was appointed rector of St. Dunstan's, Cranford, but we read of him as subsequently journeying to The Hague and to Salisbury, and as preaching at the Savoy Chapel. It must have solaced his latter days to reflect that he had survived to welcome the Restoration. He died, from what is reasonably surmised to have been typhus fever, on the 16th of August, 1661, and lies buried in the chancel of the church to which he last ministered, at Cranford, Surrey.
Considering the unsettled and wandering life which Fuller led for many years, it may seem almost a marvel that in those very years he should have accomplished such laborious—nay, all but gigantic—enterprises as are to be referred to them; for it was then that he composed his voluminous Pisgah-sight of Palestine, Church History and Worthies, not to speak of many minor writings. But the secret of his prolificness amidst surroundings which would have paralyzed most men into stark sterility admits of ready elucidation. Besides being endowed with great physical vigor and enjoying uninterrupted health. Fuller never wasted a moment, was an unweariable student at odd hours, and moreover supplemented the advantage of a matchless memory by the strictest observance of method. Taken for all in all, he was without question one of the most remarkable of Englishmen—not of his own age merely, but of all bygone ages. "Next to Shakespeare," says Coleridge, "I am not certain whether Thomas Fuller, beyond all other writers, does not excite in me the sense and emotion of the marvelous.... Fuller was incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced, great man of an age that boasted a galaxy of great men." Others among his countrymen have been more learned, and others have surpassed him in this or that special faculty, but the whole that we have in him it would be hard to find a parallel to. Culeridge emphasizes the equity of his judgment; and this point is one regarding which there can be no diversity of opinion. As to his wit, granting that its quality may here and there be somewhat inferior, still, it has probably never been surpassed in quantity by any one man. It has the laudable character, too, of being nearly always impersonal, and while it amuses it almost in equal measure instructs. Had Fuller, with his mental agility and his mastery of incisive diction, been poisoned with the bile of Swift, it is terrible to think what a repertory of biting sarcasms and envenomed repartees he might have transmitted for the study and imitation of cynics and sneerers. Bitterer enemies no man ever had to contend against; and unenviable indeed must have been their disappointment at finding themselves wholly impotent to discompose his sage and large-hearted serenity. So impressive, withal, is his spirit of toleration and benevolence that a diligent reader of his pages is, as it were, perforce imbued by it. Indeed, we know of few writers whom we can point to with more confidence as calculated, in antidote to the fret and chafe inseparable from existence in our day, to induce a tone of repose and resignation in ourselves, and a disposition to take charity as our watchword in our dealings with others.