first card_, and how ye ought to
_play_. I purpose again to _deal_ unto you another _card of the same
suit_; for they be so nigh affinity, that one cannot be well played
without the other."[75] It is curious to observe about a century
afterwards, as Fuller informs us, that when a country clergyman imitated
these familiar allusions, the taste of the congregation had so changed
that he was interrupted by peals of laughter!

Even in more modern times have Menot and Maillard found an imitator in
little Father Andre, as well as others. His character has been variously
drawn. He is by some represented as a kind of buffoon in the pulpit; but
others more judiciously observe, that he only indulged his natural
genius, and uttered humorous and lively things, as the good Father
observes himself, to keep the attention of his audience awake. He was
not always laughing. "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
when 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. From them he drew his examples and his comparisons;
and the one and the other never failed of success." Marville says, that
"his expressions were full of shrewd simplicity. He made very free use
of the most popular proverbs. His comparisons and figures were always
borrowed from the most familiar and lowest things." To ridicule
effectually the reigning vices, he would prefer quirks or puns to
sublime thoughts; and he was little solicitous of his choice of
expression, so the things came home. Gozzi, in Italy, had the same power
in drawing unexpected inferences from vulgar and familiar occurrences.
It was by this art Whitfield obtained so many followers. In Piozzi's
British Synonymes, vol. ii. p. 205, we have an instance of Gozzi's
manner. In the time of Charles II. it became fashionable to introduce
humour into sermons. Sterne seems to have revived it in his: South's
sparkle perpetually with wit and pun.

Far different, however, are the characters of the sublime preachers, of
whom the French have preserved the following descriptions.

We have not any more Bourdaloue, La Rue, and M