-matter, the
autobiography is a very interesting piece of English prose. The narrative
style, for all its coxcombry and its insistence on petty details, has a
singular vivacity; the constructions, though sometimes incorrect ("the
edict was so severe as they who transgressed were to lose their heads"),
are never merely slovenly; and the writer displays an art, very uncommon in
his time, in the alternation of short and long sentences and the general
adjustment of the paragraph. Here and there, too, there are passages of
more elevated style which give reason for regretting that the _De Veritate_
was not written in English. It is very much to be feared that the chief
reason for its being written in Latin was a desire on the author's part to
escape awkward consequences by an appearance of catering for philosophers
and the learned only. It must be admitted that neither of the two great
free-thinking Royalists, Hobbes and Herbert, is a wholly pleasant
character; but it may be at least said for the commoner (it cannot be said
for the peer) that he was constant to his principles, and that if somewhat
careful of his skin, he never seems to have been tempted to barter his
conscience for it as Herbert did.

Hardly any other writer among the minor Caroline prosaists is important
enough to justify a substantive notice in a work which has already reached
and almost exceeded the limits accorded to it. The excellent style of
Cowley's _Essays_, which is almost more modern than the work of Dryden and
Tillotson, falls in great part actually beyond the limits of our time; and
by character, if not by date, Cowley is left for special treatment in the
following volume. He sometimes relapses into what may be called the general
qualities with their accompanying defects of Elizabethan prose--a contempt
of proportion, clearness, and order; a reckless readiness to say everything
that is in the writer's mind, without considering whether it is appropriate
or not; a confusion of English and classical grammar, and occasionally a
very scant attention even to rules which the classical grammars indicate
yet more sternly than the vernacular. But as a rule he is distinguished for
exactly the opposite of all these things. Much less modern than Cowley, but
still of a chaster and less fanciful style than most of his contemporaries,
is the famous Protestant apologist, Chillingworth--a man whose orderly mind
and freedom from anything like enthusiasm reflected them