Classic Preachers of the English Church. Second Series. (John Murray.)—It
will be sufficiently high praise to say that this series of lectures forms a worthy successor to a volume of the same title, which we noticed some time ago in these columns. The names selected this time are Bull, Horsley, Jeremy Taylor, Sanderson, Tollotson, and Andrewes. Jeremy Taylor is naturally the most interesting subject, and it has been put into the hands of a preacher who, if not more able than his compeers (and it would be both difficult and invidious to make a comparison), shows himself the master of the most eloquent style. And not only does Dr. Barry rise in the vigour and beauty of his language to the height of the occasion, but he is also, we think, singularly just and discriminating in his criticism. The following seems to us a true and needful correction of some popular estimates of Taylor's genius :—" What forcibly strikes any attentive reader in him, is his masterly employment of that method of treatment which appears to distinguish all popular oratory of the highest class,—the presentation of comparatively few and simple ideas, every one of them worked out with an absolute and exhaustive completeness, viewed under a variety of aspects, illustrated from every side by com-
parison, by example, by authority everywhere there is a broad, simple unity of conception, underlying all the infinite fullness and variety of detail. Under all his living and breathing eloquence, there may be traced a strong backbone of coherent thought." Among the other lectures we may mention that of Mr. Hampton, on Archbishop Tillotson ; and that of the Bishop of Ely, on a writer now far less known than he deserves to be,—Bishop Horsley.
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