NS FROM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER,

THE CHURCH HISTORIAN.

The writings of Fuller are usually designated by the title of quaint,
and with sufficient reason; for such was his natural bias to
conceits, that I doubt not upon most occasions it would have been
going out of his way to have expressed himself out of them. But his
wit is not always a _lumen siccum_, a dry faculty of surprising; on
the contrary, his conceits are oftentimes deeply steeped in human
feeling and passion. Above all, his way of telling a story, for its
eager liveliness, and the perpetual running commentary of the
narrator happily blended with the narration, is perhaps unequalled.

As his works are now scarcely perused but by antiquaries, I thought
it might not be unacceptable to my readers to present them with some
specimens of his manner, in single thoughts and phrases; and in some
few passages of greater length, chiefly of a narrative description. I
shall arrange them as I casually find them in my book of extracts,
without being solicitous to specify the particular work from which
they are taken.

_Pyramids_.--"The Pyramids themselves, doting with age, have
forgotten the names of their founders."

_Virtue in a Short Person_.--"His soul had but a short diocese to
visit, and therefore might the better attend the effectual informing
thereof."

_Intellect in a very Tall One_.--"Ofttimes such who are built four
stories high, are observed to have little in their cockloft."

_Naturals_.--"Their heads sometimes so little, that there is no room
for wit; sometimes so long, that there is no wit for so much room."

_Negroes_.--"The image of God cut in ebony."

_School-Divinity_.--"At the first it will be as welcome to thee as a
prison, and their very solutions will seem knots unto thee."

_Mr. Perkins the Divine_.--"He had a capacious head, with angles
winding and roomy enough to lodge all controversial intricacies."

_The same_.--"He would pronounce the word _Damn_ with such an
emphasis as left a doleful echo in his auditors' ears a good while
after."

_Judges in Capital Cases_.--"O let him take heed how he strikes that
hath a dead hand."

_Memory_.--"Philosophers place it in the rear of the head, and it
seems the mine of memory lies there, because there men naturally dig
for it, scratching it when they are at a loss."

_Fancy_.--"It is the most boundless and restless faculty of the soul;
for while the Understanding and the Will are kept, as it