om the subject and from the context in which they occur without any
damage to their own felicity. To a thoroughly serious person, to a person
like Lord Chesterfield (who was indeed very serious in his own way, and
abhorred proverbial philosophy), or to one who cannot away with the
introduction of a quip in connection with a solemn subject, and who thinks
that indulgence in a gibe is a clear proof that the writer has no solid
argument to produce, Fuller must be nothing but a puzzle or a disgust. That
a pious and earnest divine should, even in that day of quaintness, compare
the gradual familiarisation of Christians with the sacraments of the Church
to the habit of children first taking care of, and then neglecting a pair
of new boots, or should describe a brother clerk as "pronouncing the word
_damn_ with such an emphasis as left a dismal echo in his auditors' ears a
good while longer," seems, no doubt, to some excellent people,
unpardonable, and almost incomprehensible. Yet no one has ever impeached
the sincerity of Fuller's convictions, and the blamelessness of his life.
That a grave historian should intersperse the innumerable trivialities of
the _Worthies_ may be only less shocking. But he was an eminent proof of
his own axiom, "That an ounce of mirth, with the same degree of grace, will
serve God farther than a pound of sadness." Fuller is perhaps the only
writer who, voluminous as he is, will not disappoint the most superficial
inquirer for proofs of the accuracy of the character usually given to him.
Nobody perhaps but himself, in trying to make the best of the Egyptian
bondage of the Commonwealth, would have discovered that the Church, being
unrepresented by any of the four hundred and odd members of Cromwell's
Parliament, was better off than when she had Archbishops, Bishops, and a
convocation all to herself, urging, "what civil Christian would not plead
for a dumb man," and so enlisting all the four hundred and odd enemies as
friends and representatives. But it is impossible to enter fully on the
subject of Fuller's quips. What may fairly be said of them is, that while
constantly fantastic, and sometimes almost childish, they are never really
silly; that they are never, or hardly ever in bad taste; and that, quaint
and far fetched as they are, there is almost always some application or
suggestion which saves them from being mere intellectual somersaults. The
famous one of the "Images of God cut in ebony," is suffic