ATTERBURY

[Francis Atterbury was born at Milton, in Bucks (where his father was rector), in 1672, and was educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford. He made his first appearance in controversy as the defender of Luther against Obadiah Walker, the Roman Catholic whom James II. had made Master of the University; and a few years later intervened in the Phalaris controversy, as the supporter of Boyle against Bentley. Although the controversy was fierce, and although the whole weight of scholarship was on Bentley's side, it did not prevent a subsequent friendship between Atterbury and Bentley. After taking orders Atterbury became preacher at Bridewell, and attained to great reputation as a pulpit orator. During the next few years he was a vigorous exponent of High Church doctrine, and fought for the rights of Convocation. He was appointed successively Archdeacon of Totnes, Dean of Carlisle, Dean of Christ Church, and eventually, in 1713, Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster. Becoming involved in a charge of Jacobite conspiracy, he was committed to the Tower, and by a bill of attainder was deprived of all his appointments, and banished from the kingdom in 1723. He died in France in 1732.]

THE character of Atterbury is one which presents seeming inconsistencies, but is nevertheless transparent enough. A warm and affectionate nature, keen sensibility, much gentleness and tenderness, were united to a passionate and often turbulent temper, to a readiness for disputation, to ambition, and, it must be added, to some vanity. It was a nature neither very rare nor very complicated; which might make enemies, but which was also eminently fitted to attract friends. Mrs. Pilkington, whose gossippy reminiscences of Swift contain a few passages of real value, tells us of "the character I have heard Bishop Berkeley give to Bishop Atterbury, namely, a most learned fine gentleman, who, under the softest and politest appearance, concealed the most turbulent ambition." The picture is in outline the same as that drawn by all his contemporaries, who vary only in the amount of light and shade which they impart to it; even Pope's wellknown line

"How pleasing Atterbury's softer hour,"

implies that there were hours which were less soft; hours when disappointed ambition, love of intrigue, and the thirst of combat turned the gentle homilist, the loving father, the acute literary critic, into the fiery ecclesiastical controversialist, the bitter combatant, and the political conspirator, who was not a stranger even to prevarication.

Atterbury's personality is attractive and interesting far beyond his literary importance: and even in the domain of literature the impression upon contemporaries was greater than that which he has left upon posterity, from the fact that his literary gifts were greatly enhanced by a fine voice, a dignified personal appearance, and consummate oratorical art. As a preacher he was reckoned the most eloquent of his day, and The Tatler has described the effect of his pulpit delivery when his popularity was at its height. But as contributions to theological literature, his sermons cannot be placed on the same level with those of Tillotson, Barrow, South, or others of the day even inferior to these. Their chief attraction for us is in the delicate and graceful simplicity of their diction; not in the strength, but rather in the quaint turn of the argument-so quaint indeed as sometimes to lead their author into positions which he did not himself anticipate and in the total absence of all the cumbrous apparatus of learned allusion to which his contemporaries were prone. Atterbury was not indeed without copiousness of theological reading, and was supplied with abundant store of weapons for ecclesiastical controversy. But he seems of set purpose to have refrained from resorting to such an armoury in his pulpit oratory.

In many respects, indeed, his tastes and studies led him rather into the field of polite literature than into that of divinity. "One of the truest friends I ever had," Pope writes of him, "and one of the greatest men in all polite learning, as well as the most agreeable companion, this nation ever had." Nursed in the traditions of Westminster and Christ Church, his earliest training was in the more graceful part of scholarship, and the readiness and ease of his Latin composition, of which many specimens remain, greatly influenced, not only his own phraseology, but the critical maxims which he applied with more care than almost any of his contemporaries to the niceties of style. In an age when Milton was neglected, Atterbury found in Milton the highest type of poetic utterance, ranking him higher even than Homer and Virgil. Almost alone amongst his friends, he adhered to Milton's preference

of blank verse to rhyme: and this was all the more remarkable as his love for Pope as a man was not greater than his intense admiration for him as a poet.

Atterbury's life was one too much engaged in ecclesiastical controversy, in political intrigue, and in schemes of personal ambition, to allow him much time for literature; and what he has left (beyond his correspondence) is small in bulk. But it may always be read with pleasure as the composition of one who studied minutely, and with an eye careful of effect, all the details of style, and the fundamental sincerity of whose nature, with its vivid contrasts of light and shadow, serves to give a certain picturesqueness and variety to his diction. But above all his letters are models of epistolary style. In the advice which he gives to his son at Oxford we have a picture of his own literary methods. "Let nothing, though of a trifling nature, pass through your pen negligently get but the way of writing correctly and justly, time and use will teach you to write readily." Speaking of the writing of letters, he remarks, "The turn of them should always be natural and easy, for they are an image of private and familiar conversation;" and the specimen which is given below, serves to show how fully he carried out his own precept.

H. CRAIK.

WALLER'S INFLUENCE ON STYLE

THE [English] tongue came into Waller's hands like a rough diamond he polished it first; and to that degree, that all artists since him have admired the workmanship without pretending to mend it. Suckling and Carew, I must confess, wrote some few things smoothly enough; but as all they did in this kind was not very considerable, so it was a little later than the earliest pieces of Mr. Waller. He undoubtedly stands first in the list of refiners; and, for aught I know, last too: for I question whether in Charles the Second's reign English did not come to its full perfection; and whether it has not had its Augustean age, as well as the Latin. It seems to be already mixed with foreign languages as far as its purity will bear, and, as chemists say of their menstruums, to be quite sated with the infusion. But posterity will best judge of this. In the meantime, it is a surprising reflection that between what Spencer wrote last, and Waller first, there should not be much above twenty years' distance: and yet the one's language, like the money of that time, is as current now as ever; whilst the other's words are like old coins, one must go to an antiquary to understand their true meaning and value. Such advances may a great genius make, when it undertakes anything in earnest !

Some painters will hit the chief lines and master-strokes of a face so truly that through all the differences of age the picture shall still bear a resemblance. This art was Mr. Waller's he sought out, in this flowing tongue of ours, what parts would last, and be of standing use and ornament; and this he did so successfully, that his language is now as fresh as it was at first setting out. Were we to judge barely by the wording we could not know what was wrote at twenty, and what at fourscore. He complains, indeed, of a tide of words that comes in upon the English poet, and overflows whatever he builds; but this was

less his case than any man's that ever wrote, and the mischief of it is, this very complaint will last long enough to confute itself; for, though English be mouldering stone, as he tells us there, yet he has certainly picked the best out of a bad quarry.

We are no less beholden to him for the new turn of verse which he brought in, and the improvement he made in our numbers. Before his time, men rhymed indeed, and that was all as for the harmony of measure, and that dance of words which good ears are so much pleased with, they knew nothing of it. Their poetry then was made up almost entirely of monosyllables; which, when they come together in any cluster, are certainly the most harsh untunable things in the world. If any man doubts of this, let him read ten lines in Donne, and he will be quickly convinced. Besides, their verses ran all into one another; and hung together, throughout a whole copy, like the hooked atoms that compose a body in Descartes. There was no distinction of parts, no regular stops, nothing for the ear to rest upon; but, as soon as the copy began, down it went, like a larum, incessantly, and the reader was sure to be out of breath before he got to the end of it. So that really verse in those days was but downright prose tagged with rhymes. Mr. Waller removed all these faults, brought in more polysyllables and smoother measures, bound up his thoughts better, and in a cadence more agreeable to the nature of the verse he wrote in; so that wherever the natural stops of that were, he contrived the little breakings of his sense so as to fall in with them. And for that reason, since the stress of our verse lies commonly upon the last syllable, you will hardly ever find him using a word of no force there. I would say, if I were not afraid the reader would think me too nice, that he commonly closes with verbs, in which we know the life of language consists.

Among other improvements, we may reckon that of his rhymes, which are always good, and very often the better for being new. He had a fine ear and knew how quickly that sense was cloyed by the same round of chiming words still returning upon it. It is a decided case by the great master of writing, Quæ sunt ampla et pulchra, diu placere possunt; quæ lepida, et concinna (amongst which rhyme must, whether it will or no, take its place), cito satietate afficiunt aurium sensum fastidiosissimum. This he understood very well; and therefore, to take off the danger of a surfeit that way, strove to please by variety