JOHN TILLOTSON ་་ [John Tillotson was born in 1630 at Sowerby in Yorkshire, his father being a clothier and a strong Puritan. however, to Emmanuel, the Puritan headquarters, but to Clare Hall. The son was sent to Cambridge; not, took his Master's degree in 1654, and seems to have been a good deal under He the influence of the overlapping schools of thought in that University, who earned themselves the titles of Latitudinarians." Cambridge Platonists and He took a tutorship on leaving Cambridge, and the place Cambridge and circumstances of his ordination are very uncertain. Conference he appeared on the Presbyterian side, but accepted the Act of At the Savoy Uniformity. Refusing to take a living of which Calamy had been deprived (a piece of politic chivalry which he would have done well to repeat later), he soon obtained another, and was also appointed preacher at Lincoln's Inn. Here his sermons at once attracted attention, not only for their merits of style, but because the preacher developed in them a kind of "moderate" theological and ecclesiastical position, which kept "Popery," Puritanism, and what was beginning to be called "philosophy" at equal distance. He became, notwithstanding decided Whig leanings, a prebendary and Dean of St. Paul's during Charles the Second's reign; and his attendance on Lord Russell during his imprisonment marked him out for favour after the Revolution. Sancroft refused to take the oaths, the primacy was offered to him; and When though he is said to have resisted the invidious honour, his resistance was overcome. That he would be violently attacked by the Nonjurors was, of course, certain; and he must have laid his account with it. He died not long afterwards, on 18th November 1694. Until his mistake in the Canterbury matter, Tillotson, though a Low Church latitudinarian, whose orthodoxy, even on the most liberal estimate, was open to considerable question, had been treated with much respect by all parties, and appears to have earned it, so far as a gentle temper and a complete freedom from ambition, greed, and intriguing could go; while even his great popularity as a preacher does not seem to have drawn on him the envy of his brethren. His Works have been more than once collected. The latest collection, I believe, which includes Birch's learned Life (1752) is in 10 vols. 8vo. London 1820.] TILLOTSON enjoys, and partly deserves, a very high traditional reputation among English prose writers. That reputation is in part due to two rather accidental circumstances. We have it on the authority of Congreve that Dryden told him that if he, VOL. III K A little Dryden, had any skill of English prose, it was at any rate in some measure due to the study of Tillotson; and this is naturally and necessarily regarded as a very high testimonial. examination will perhaps somewhat reduce its value. In the first place, Dryden, like most, though not all, distinguished men of letters, was very much wont to overestimate, or at least to overstate, the merits of others and his own debt to them. A man who is thoroughly conscious of his own superior, much more of his own supreme merits, seldom (though there are contrary instances in the cases of Milton, Corneille, Racine, Wordsworth, and others) attempts to enhance them by the depreciation of others. Indeed he very often, as Goethe, Scott, and Dryden himself notoriously did, exceeds the limits of strict criticism in his encomiums. In this particular case, too, we have dates and facts to guide us. Before the appearance of Dryden's first remarkable prose work, the Essay on Dramatic Poesy, Tillotson had published so little that he simply cannot have exercised much influence on his contemporary. They were both on the same way the way of simplifying and refining English prose style; and, no doubt, Dryden was encouraged by Tillotson at the time, and with characteristic generosity exaggerated his indebtedness long afterwards. But something else has to be considered in estimating both the just and the traditional reputation of the archbishop. For something like two centuries, in gradually decreasing, but till almost within living memory, still considerable degree, the reading of sermons was one of the chief literary occupations of all Englishmen and Englishwomen who were disposed to literary occupations of any kind. In the later years of the seventeenth century there were hardly any indigenous novels, essays, or periodicals which rose above mere news-letters. It was some time after Tillotson's death that Defoe, Addison, Steele, and the rest supplied the essays; and nearly half a century had passed after that event before the novels came in any noteworthy degree. The sermon, therefore, had a prerogative influence, and it lost that influence only step by step during the whole eighteenth century. Now, of sermon writers Tillotson was unquestionably the first who adjusted himself, with commanding ability, to the alterations of English style and English taste during the last quarter or the last two quarters of the seventeenth century—alterations which prevailed and progressed during the whole of the eighteenth. He could not vie in intellectual 131 eminence or in literary quality with Taylor or South or Barrow ; but he was far more distinctly "modern" for his day even than South, who was his junior, and outlived him for a good many years. His theology was the fashionable accommodation and latitudinarianism, which was the shoe-horn to draw on the deism of the next century; but he was not consciously or intentionally otherwise than orthodox. He was a Whig in politics, but though by no means given to temporising or cowardice, he never made any attacks on the other side, and might have gone to his grave with the esteem of both sides if it had not been for his fatal (and yet perhaps in a way generous) acceptance of Sancroft's bishopric. And he undoubtedly had, if not as a master and originator, at any rate by early adoption and by sympathy of literary feeling, the new style-the style of slightly Gallicised English, which discarded flights and conceits on the one hand, classicisms and long-winded constructions on the other, and was concise, clear, succinct, reasonable, prosaic. He will rank, in short, with Dryden, Halifax, and Temple among the chief introducers of this style in English, and as perhaps the most influential (in virtue of the potency of his special form on the literary habits of the nation) of the four. But he will, I think, rank as the least of them in original literary quality and in literary accomplishment within his own limits. Not the least good example of his style, and one of the most touching examples of his curiously amiable temper that I know, will be found in the first of the following extracts, given by Dr. Birch from his commonplace book, and dated just after his troublesome elevation to the archbishopric; and in a larger space it might be supplemented from many of his letters, especially those to Rachel, Lady Russell. Indeed it is impossible for the most ferocious of Tories not to have a certain affection for Tillotson after reading him. SCATTERED THOUGHTS UPON SEVERAL SUBJECTS AND OCCASIONS ONE would be apt to wonder, that Nehemiah (chap. v. verses 16, 17, 18) should reckon a huge bill of fare, and a vast number of promiscuous guests amongst his virtues and good deeds, for which he desires God to remember him. But, upon better consideration, besides the bounty, and sometimes charity, of a great table (provided there be nothing of vanity or ostentation in it) there may be exercised two very considerable virtues; one is temperance, and the other self-denial, in a man's being contented, for the sake of the public, to deny himself so much, as to sit down every day to a feast, and to eat continually in a crowd, and almost never to be alone, especially when, as it often happens, a great part of the company that a man must have is the company that a man would not have. I doubt it will prove but a melancholy business, when a man comes to die, to have made a great noise and bustle in the world, and to have been known far and near, but all this while to have been hid and concealed from himself. It is a very odd and fantastical sort of life for a man to be continually from home, and most of all a stranger at his own house. It is surely an uneasy thing, to sit always in a frame, and to be perpetually upon a man's guard; not to be able to speak a careless word, or to use a negligent posture, without observation and censure. Men are apt to think, that they, who are in highest places, and have the most power, have most liberty to say and do what they please. But it is quite otherwise; for they have the least liberty, because they are most observed. It is not mine own observation; a much wiser man (I mean Tully) says, In maxima quaque fortuna minimum licere. They, that are in the highest and greatest condition, have of all others the least liberty. In a moderate station it is sufficient for a man to be indifferently wise. Such a man has the privilege to commit little follies and mistakes without having any great notice taken of them. But he that lives in the light, i.e. in the view of all men, his actions are exposed to every body's observation and censure. We ought to be glad, when those, that are fit for government, and called to it, are willing to take the burden of it upon them: yea, and to be very thankful to them too, that they will be at the pains, and can have the patience, to govern, and to live publicly. Therefore it is happy for the world, that there are some, who are born and bred up to it; and that custom hath made it easy, or at least tolerable to them. Else who, that is wise, would undertake it, since it is certainly much easier of the two to obey a just and wise government (I had almost said any government) than to govern justly and wisely. Not that I find fault with those, who apply themselves to public business and affairs. They do well, and we are beholden to them. Some by their education, and being bred up to great things, and to be able to bear and manage great business with more ease than others, are peculiarly fitted to serve God and the public in this way and they that do are worthy of double honour. The advantage which men have by a more devout and retired and contemplative life is, that they are not distracted about many things; their minds and affections are set upon one thing, and the whole stream and force of their affections run one way. All their thoughts and endeavours are united in one great end and design, which makes their life all of a piece, and to be consistent with itself throughout. Nothing but necessity, or the hope of doing more good than a man is capable of doing in a private station (which a modest man will not easily presume concerning himself) can recompense the trouble and uneasiness of a more public and busy life. Besides that many men, if they understand themselves right, are at the best in a lower and more private condition, and make a much more awkward figure in a higher and more public station; when, perhaps, if they had not been advanced, every one would have thought them fit and worthy to have been so. And thus I have considered and compared impartially both these conditions, and, upon the whole matter, without any thing either of disparagement or discouragement to the wise and great. And, in my poor judgment, the more retired and private condition |