MR. DAVIES'S LIFE OF BAXTER.* Ma. Danes has made a

great mistake. To write a copious biography such as this, and to publish it without an index or table of contents, will excite at the outset the irritation of his readers. Baxter lived during one of the most important periods of English history ; he was brought into close relations with many of the leading men of the age; in public work and in his labours as an author, his activity was incessant; few men in his position have had stranger experiences, few have been so maligned and so respected; no man probably in a sphere like his belongs more conspiouonaly to the history of the times; and the life of each a man, dealing as it necessarily does with national as well as private affairs, requires all the aids a biographer can give it. Mr. Davies is too much given to comments, and to the utterance of pious reflections as unobjectionable as they are unnecessary. Conciseness is not one of his virtues, or this narrative would have been considerably shorter. The reader asks for a vivid representation of Baxter, not for a sermon about him ; and this the writer is often apt to forget.

We have mentioned the faults of the volume, but its good qualities outweigh them. Mr. Davies loves his subject, he is liberal in opinion, accurate, so far as we can judge, in statement, and has a sufficient knowledge of English history in the seven- teenth century to place the different actors on the stage in their jest positions. This, at least, is our opinion ; but we do not forget that the fire lighted in that age of controversy is not yet extinguished, and that some of the burning questions in Church and State discussed under the rule of Cromwell are living ques- tions still.

Baxter, as most readers are aware, was in favour of compre- hension, and he believed that Episcopalians and Presbyterians might be brought to coaleke with every form of orthodox Dissent. Nothing in the world, he said, was nearer to his heart, and many were the proposals with this end in view that he laid before Cromwell's chaplains. His sanguine disposition and great charity led him to indulge in hopes which his friend Howe, lose ardent, and in this respect more clear-sighted, saw that it was impossible to realise. It is difficult in our calmer, and possibly less earnest times, to understand the polemical ardour that pre- vailed under the government of Cromwell. Innumerable sects contended with each other, and agreed only in their detestation of Prelacy and Popery. The Book of Common Prayer was anathematised by the Puritans. Even Banyan, a man of great natural charity, regarded it as profane, and Baxter's friend, Cotton Mather, among the stories he collected and implicitly believed of demoniacal possession, relates that a woman, when thus afflicted, "would be cast into hideous convulsions, and be tossed about the house like a foot-ball" on reading good books, but that she could read the Prayer-Book or any Popish books without difficulty. Baxter's belief in witchcraft and kindred superstitions was equally strong; but while wishing to reform the Church of England, he was free from the fanatical contempt for Prelacy exhibited by some of his associates, and Mr. Davies considers it doubtful if in heart he ever seceded from the English Church. Sir James Stephen takes a different view, and observes that ten volumes, many of them full-grown quarto?, vindicated his secession from the Church of England. Not one of the sects can claim him as a disciple. "He can be properly described," says Sir Tames, "only as a Baxterian,—at once the founder and the single member of an eclectic school within the portals of which he invited all men, but persuaded none to take refuge from their mutual animosities."

Thoroughly to understand Baxter, it is not necessary, let ne hope, to read the vast number of volumes which testify to hie intellectual activity. Boswell asked Johnson what works of Richard Baxter's he should read. "Read any of them," was the reply ; "they are all good." Voracious reader though he

• The Lift of Richard Basher, of Kidderminster. Preacher and Prisoner. By John Hamilton ravies, B.A. London Kent and Clo.

was, the Doctor could scarcely have said this from personal know- ledge. Baxter's practical works were republished more than fifty years ago, in twenty-three volumes ; but the bulk of his writings remain in their original folios, and it is calculated that if printed in a uniform edition, his writings would fill sixty octavo volumes, making nearly forty thousand closely printed pages 7.—

" There are few things," says the biographer, "more remarkable in the literary history of our country than the fact that a man who suffered so frequently from disease and excruciating pains, and from afflicting nervous irritation, should have been able to produce so large a number of works, written clearly and forcibly, and with much close and effective reasoning upon the most diffionit subjects of inquiry, especially on polemical, doctrinal, and practical theology, some of them now neglected or forgotten, but others still largely read."

Barter's stupendous industry as a man of letters is indeed marvellous. The quality of many of his writings—notably of the Saint's Best and the Dying Thoughts—is in the highest degree excellent ; but the mere quantity of work achieved would seem to demand the whole labour of a long life. Here, however, was a man of affairs, constantly occupied as a preacher and engaged in practical work. Nor was this all, for he wrote on abstruse subjects under difficulties that might have seemed in- surmountable. His body, frail and diseased, was an increasing burden; he was attacked on all sides by virulent controversialists ; he suffered from the penal laws sanctioned by that eminent and consistent Churchman, Charles II., he was once and again deprived of his books, and so often pestered by informers that for years he was daily expecting to be sent to prison. And thither he was twice sent, the second time by the brutal jeffreye, who wished him to be publicly whipped through the city. That was in 1685. His first experience of a prisoner's life was under the odious Conventicle Act which filled the gaols of the country, when he found it "no great suffering," having a good gaoler, who showed him much kindness :— "I had a large room," he writes, "and the liberty of walking in a fair garden. My wife was never so cheerful a companion to me as in prison, and was very mach against my seeking to be released. She had brought so many necessaries that we kept house as contentedly and as comfortably as at home, though in a narrower room, and had the sight of more of my friends in a day than I had at home in half a year."

He adds, however, that it was the heat of summer, when London generally suffered from epidemics ; that his enemies hoped he would die in prison ; that owing to the noise of prisoners at night, he had small chance of sleeping ; and that his strength was so little that he "did but live."

Baxter had a noble wife, and the heart of the man is seen in everything he writes about her. For nineteen years of his troubled life she was at his side, the wisest of counsellors, the tenderest of women. Margaret Charlton, a lady of good birth and fortune, of "strangely vivid wit," to quote the words of Hume, and of many womanly charms, was married to the learned scholar and "painful preacher" when he was in his fiftieth year and she in her twentieth. He had written in favour of clerical celibacy when there was to temptation to become a Benedict, and as it is intimated that Margaret was the first to betray her affection, we need not wonder that it was welcome to the lonely and suffering man. Only, with his wonted magnanimity, Baxter, satisfied with the possession of such a woman, bargained that he should have nothing to do with her fortune. He does, however, seem to have interfered with it in a way not likely to be followed. "I know not," he says, "that ever we had any breach in point of love or point of interest, save only that she somewhat grudged that I had persuaded her for my quietness to surrender so much of her estate, to the disabling her from helping others so much as she earnestly desired."

After her death, fresh troubles fell upon the old man, and these he had to suffer alone. Poverty, solitude, and slander

were hard to bear, and a body almost constantly in pain was worse. Between the period of his wife's death and the second imprisonment, already mentioned, he relates bow, upon a day when he had "newly risen from extremity of pain," he was-

" Suddenly surprised by a poor, violent informer, and many constables and officers, who rushed in, apprehended me, and served on me one warrant to seize my person for comingwithin five miles of a corporation, and five more warrants to distrain for a hundred and ninety pounds for five sermons. They cast my servants into fears, and were about to take all my books and goods when I contentedly went with them towards the Justice to be sent to jail, and left my house to their will. But Dr. Thomas Cox meeting me, forced me in again to my conch and bed, and went to five Justices', and took lie oath, without my knowledge, that I could not go to prison without danger of death. On that, the Justices delayed a day or two till they could speak with the King and told him what the doctor bad sworn, so the King consented that for the present imprisonment should be forborne that I might die at home. Bat they executed all their warrants on my books and goods, even the bed that I lay sick on, and sold them all But when they had taken and sold all, and I had borrowed some bedding and necessaries of the buyer, I was never the quieter, for they threatened to come upon me again and take all as mine, whoseseever it was, which they found in my possession. So that I had no remedy, but utterly to forsake my house and goods and all, and take secret lodgings at a distance in a stranger's house. The separation from my books would have been a greater part of my small affliction, but that I found I was near the end both of that work and that life which needeth books, and so I easily let go all."

This passage from his incomparable autobiography, the volume which was a constant solace and delight to Coleridge in hours of weakness, expresses in brief words the sufferings to which not Baxter only, but all good men were then liable who dared to act upon the dictates of conscience. The intolerance of the Church of England in its day of power, and under Bishops whose loyalty to bad Kings was as conspicuous as their contempt for spiritual freedom, is too often described by writers who forget, or do not choose to remember, the provocation under which they acted. No doubt Charles II., who said he valued himself upon keeping his word, was utterly regardless of his Royal promises, and as cruel as he was licentious. If he was one of the worst of Kings, it must be admitted that his brother James amply sustained the family character. But the cruel and illegal conduct of these Kings was not wholly out of harmony with the spirit of an age essentially bloodthirsty and un- forbearing. Among the loyalist clergy, the divine right of Kings was an article of faith, and it needed more Christian charity than many of them possessed to forget the indignities and the privations they had so recently suffered. This may account for, if it does not excuse, the policy of Arch- bishop Sheldon, and of Parker, who said, and probably believed, that tender consciences required to be restrained " with more unyielding rigour than naked villainy

"Nothing," Mr. Davies writes, "could justify the tyrannical de- privation of any clergymen by the Protector, only on the ground that they were loyalists; and many of them whom he placed in their cares were not in a true Heine Ministers of the English Church. Upon their restoration to power, the Bishops, therefore, were legally right in recovering the benefices for those surviving Anglican clergy- men who had been unlawfully and violently thrust out ; but they were morally wrong in doing it vindictively, and with a deter- mination to have no compromise with those who, in numerous in- stances, had done good service in the parishes to which they had

been appointed, either by the Parliament or by the Protector The ejection and oppression of the Anglican clergy by the Govern- ment of Cromwell can in no sense justify the persecution and frequent imprisonment of the deprived Puritans and Presbyterians by the Government of Charles II. Both Administrations, in this respect, acted cruelly and unwisely, and the adherents of each of them suffered in turn from that justice which avenges oppression, and which helps them to right who suffer wrong. Ills unquestion- able that the Anglican Church has been far more injured by the Act of Uniformity than were the Parasite and Presbyterians against whom it was framed."

Baxter had many gifts, but he did not possess the poetical inspiration with which he is credited by James Montgomery. Two or three of his sacred lyrics have the merit of profound sincerity, and there is one hymn of his, abridged in many selections, bat given entire by Lord Selborne in The Book of Praise, every line of which bears this mark. Indeed, Baxter was the last man to say anything for the sake of saying it. For beauty of expression he seems to have cared little, and he was never at leisure enough to find delight in literature, apart from the truth it was his object to convey. Even his letters have no lightness of touch, but deal chiefly with controversial subjects, many of them being as long and as elaborate as a pamphlet. His controversial works are forgotten ; but his Saint's Ever- lasting Rest, of which on its publication nine editions were sold in little more than twelve years, has still, we believe, a large circulation, and deserves it. Readers Who would know the man and the period in which he lived should make themselves acquainted with the autobiography. Coleridge "used to say that there was no substitute for it in a course of study for a clergyman or public man." He called it an inestimable work, and observed,—"I may not nnfrequently doubt Baxter's memory, or even his competence, in consequence of his particular modes of thinking ; but I could almost as soon doubt the Gospel verity as his veracity."