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 th