mon, probably, in most persons' dreams, in which the
dreamer, without any trouble to himself or any apparent surprise in those
about him, lifts himself from the ground and skims or soars as he pleases,
sure that he can return to earth also when he pleases, and without any
shock. The speculators on the causes of beauty, admiration, and the like
have sometimes sought them in contrast first of all, and it has been
frequently noticed that the poets who charm us most are those who know how
to alternate pity and terror. There is something of the same sort in these
variations of the equable procession of Hooker's syllogisms, these
flower-gardens scattered, if not in the wilderness, yet in the humdrum
arable ground of his collections from fathers and philosophers, his
marshallings of facts and theories against the counter-theories of
Cartwright and Travers. Neither before him nor in his time, nor for
generations after him--scarcely, indeed, till Berkeley--did any one arise
who had this profound and unpretentious art of mixing the useful with the
agreeable. Taylor--already mentioned as inferior to Hooker in one respect,
however superior he may be in the splendour of his rhetoric--is again and
still more inferior to him in the parts that are not ornamental, in the
pedestrian body of his controversy and exposition. As a mere
controversialist, Hooker, if not exactly a Hobbes or a Bentley, if not even
a Chillingworth, is not likely to be spoken of without respect by those who
understand what evidence means. If he sometimes seems to modern readers to
assume his premisses, the conclusions follow much more rigidly than is
customary with a good many of our later philosophers, who protest against
the assumption of premisses; but having so protested neglect the ambiguity
of terms, and leave their middles undistributed, and perpetrate illicit
process with a gaiety of heart which is extremely edifying, or who fancy
that they are building systems of philosophy when they are in reality
constructing dictionaries of terms. But his argument is of less concern to
us here than the style in which he clothes it, and the merit of that is
indisputable, as a brief extract will show.

"As therefore man doth consist of different and distinct parts,
every part endued with manifold abilities which all have their
several ends and actions thereunto referred; so there is in this
great variety of duties which belong to men that dependency and