Born, at Heavitree, Exeter, March 1554 (?). Educated at Exeter Grammar School. To Corpus Christi Coll., Oxford, as Clerk, 1567; Scholar, 24 Dec. 1573; B.A., 14 Jan. 1574; M.A., 29 March, 1577; Fellow of C. C. C., 1577–81; Deputy to Prof. of Hebrew, July 1579. Rusticated, Oct. to Nov. 1579. Ordained, 1581 (?). Married Joan Churchman, 1581. Rector of Drayton-Beauchamp, Bucks, Dec. 1584 to March 1585. Master of the Temple, 17 March 1585 to 1591. Rector of Boscombe, Wilts, 1591–95. Sub-dean and Canon of Salisbury, 1591. Rector of Bishopsbourne, Canterbury, July 1595, till his death. Died, at Bishopsbourne, 2 Nov. 1600. Buried in Bishopsbourne church. Works: “Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie,” Bks. i.–iv. (1594?); Bk. v., 1597. Posthumous (the first six of the following edited by H. Jackson): “Answer to the Supplication that Mr. Travers made to the Council,” 1612; “A Learned Discourse of Justification,” 1612; “A Learned Sermon of the Nature of Pride,” 1612; “A Remedie against Sorrow and Fear,” 1612; “A Learned and Comfortable Sermon of the Certainty … of Faith,” 1612; “Two Sermons upon part of St. Jude’s Epistles,” 1614; “Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie,” Bks. vi., viii., 1648; Bk. vii. (previously reported lost), in 1662 edn. of Hooker’s “Works.” Collected Works: ed. by Gauden, 1662; ed. by Keble, 7th edn. ed. by Dean Church and Canon Paget, 1888.

Personal

  One of a solid judgment and great reading. Yea, such the depth of his learning, that his pen was a better bucket than his tongue to draw it out; a great defender both by preaching and writing of the discipline of the church of England, yet never got (nor cared to get) any eminent dignity therein; conscience, not covetousness, engaging him in the controversy. Spotless was his conversation; and, though some dirt was cast, none could stick on his reputation…. Mr. Hooker’s voice was low, stature little, gesture none at all, standing stone-still in the pulpit, as if the posture of his body were the emblem of his mind, immovable in his opinions. Where his eye was left fixed at the beginning, it was found fixed at the end of his sermon. In a word, the doctrine he delivered had nothing but itself to garnish it. His style was long and pithy, driving on a whole flock of several clauses before he came to the close of a sentence. So that when the copiousness of his style met not with proportionable capacity in his auditors, it was unjustly censured for perplexed, tedious, and obscure. His sermons followed the inclination of his studies, and were for the most part on controversies, and deep points of school-divinity.

  By this marriage the good man was drawn from the tranquility of his College; from that garden of piety, of pleasure, of peace, and a sweet conversation, into the thorny wilderness of a busy world; into those corroding cares that attend a married Priest, and a country Parsonage…. And in this condition he continued about a year; in which time his two pupils, Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer, took a journey to see their tutor; where they found him with a book in his hand,—it was the Odes of Horace,—he being then like humble and innocent Abel, tending his small allotment of sheep in a common field; which he told his pupils he was forced to do then, for that his servant was gone home to dine, and assist his wife to do some necessary household business. But when his servant returned and released him, then his two pupils attended him unto his house, where their best entertainment was his quiet company, which was presently denied them; for Richard was called to rock the cradle; and the rest of their welcome was so like this, that they staid but till next morning, which was time enough to discover and pity their tutor’s condition; and they having in that time rejoiced in the remembrance, and then paraphrased on many of the innocent recreations of their younger days, and other like diversions, and thereby given him as much present comfort as they were able, they were forced to leave him to the company of his wife Joan, and seek themselves a quieter lodging for next night. But at their parting from him, Mr. Cranmer said, “Good tutor, I am sorry your lot is fallen in no better ground, as to your parsonage; and more sorry that your wife proves not a more comfortable companion, after you have wearied yourself in your restless studies.” To whom the good man replied, “My dear George, if Saints have usually a double share in the miseries of this life, I, that am none, ought not to repine at what my wise Creator hath appointed for me: but labour—as indeed I do daily—to submit mine to his will, and possess my soul in patience and peace.”

  Hooker’s nature was essentially an intellectual one; and the wonder of his mental biography is the celerity and certainty with which he transmuted knowledge and experience into intelligence. It may be a fancy, but we think it can be detected in an occasional uncharacteristic tartness of expression, that he had carried up even Mrs. Hooker into the region of his intellect, and dissolved her termagant tongue into a fine spiritual essence of gentle sarcasm. Not only did his vast learning pass, as successively acquired, from memory into faculty, but the daily beauty of his life left its finest and last result in his brain. His patience, humility, disinterestedness, self-denial, his pious and humane sentiments, every resistance to temptation, every benevolent act, every holy prayer, were by some subtle chemistry turned into thought, and gave his intellect an upward lift,—increasing the range of its vision, and bringing it into closer proximity with great ideas. We cannot read a page of his writings, without feeling the presence of this spiritual power in conception, statement, and argument. And this moral excellence, which has thus become moral intelligence, this holiness which is in perfect union with reason, this spirit of love which can not only feel but see, gives a softness, richness, sweetness, and warmth to his thinking, quite as peculiar to it as its dignity, amplitude, and elevation.

  Go back yet a few years further, to the beginning of that century, carry back your thoughts to the month of November in the year 1600, when in this very church of Bishopsbourne, from the simple mansion close by, was borne to his last resting-place, beside the altar and the pulpit where he had ministered during his later years, Richard Hooker. For him, too, was raised a living likeness, yet more living than either of the other two, the only likeness of him that exists, as he appeared in his college-cap, small and frail in stature and form, with his quick, deep-set eyes, his broad, high forehead, his freckled face, and his closed lips. The grave in Bishopsbourne Church is, I grant, far from equal in fame to the other two. It has but a British, and not a world-wide glory. The genius of the “Ecclesiastical Polity” is not the genius of the “Novum Organum,” or of “Hamlet” and “Othello.” But still it may be said, without fear of contradiction, that if Bacon is the first of English philosophers, and Shakespeare the greatest of English poets, Hooker is the first and greatest of English theologians; and farther, that, even in that fruitful age, there is no other English writer to be placed on a level with these three.

  Hooker was then nineteen, and his pupil—afterwards Sir Edwin Sandys, author of the “Speculum Europæ”—not very much younger; but the bishop wisely sought for his boy a tutor and friend who, as he said, “shall teach him learning by instruction and virtue by example: and my greatest care shall be of the last.” George Cranmer (nephew’s son to the archbishop) and other pupils soon joined Sandys, and found in Hooker a tutor with a rare power of communicating what he knew, and a life unostentatiously devout that stirred their affections. His health was not vigorous, and weakened by a sedentary life of study. He was short, stooping, very short-sighted, and subject to pimples: so shy and gentle that any pupil could look him out of countenance. He could look no man hard in the face, but had the habitual down look that Chaucer’s host in the “Canterbury Tales” is made to ascribe to the poet. When Hooker was a rector, he and his clerk never talked but with both their hats off together. He was never known to be angry, never heard to repine, could be witty without the use of an ill word, and by his presence restrained what was unfit, without abating what was innocent, in the mirth of others.

General

  All things written in this booke I humbly and meekly submit to the censure of the grave and reverend Prelates within this land, to the judgment of learned men, and the sober consideration of all others. Wherein I may happely erre as others before me have done, but an heretike by the help of Almighty God I will never be.

  His Book of “Ecclesiastical Politie” is prized by all generally, save such who out of ignorance cannot, or envy will not understand it. But there is a kind of people who have a pike at him, and therefore read his Book with a prejudice; that, as Jephtha vowed to sacrifice the first living thing which met him, these are resolved to quarrel with the first word which occureth therein. Hereupon it is, that they take exception at the very Title thereof, “Ecclesiastical Politie,” as if unequally yoked: Church with some mixture of Citynesse; that the Discipline, jure divino, may bowe to Humane Inventions. But be it reported to the judicious, whether, when all is done, a reserve must not be left for prudential supplies in Church Government. True it is, his Book in our late Times was beheld as an Old-Almanack grown out of date; but, blessed be God, there is now a Revolution, which may bring his Works again into reputation.

  The English language hath been much cultivated during the last two hundred years.—But whatever other improvements it may have received, it hath made no advances in grammatical accuracy. Hooker is one of the earliest writers of considerable note within the period above-mentioned: let his writings be compared with the best of those of more modern date; and, I believe, it will be found, that in correctness, propriety, and purity of English style, he hath hardly been surpassed, or even equaled, by any of his successors.

  Such a sentence now sounds harsh in our ears. Yet some advantages certainly attended this sort of style; and whether we have gained or lost, upon the whole, by departing from it, may bear a question. By the freedom of arrangement which it permitted, it rendered the language susceptible of more strength, of more variety of collocation, and more harmony of period. But however this be, such a style is now obsolete; and no modern writer could adopt it without the censure of harshness and affectation. The present form which the language has assumed, has, in some measure, sacrificed the study of strength to that of perspicuity and ease. Our arrangement of words has become less forcible, perhaps, but more plain and natural: and this is now understood to be the genius of our language.

  Hooker was undoubtedly a writer of superior merit. Whoever shall bestow upon him a diligent perusal, will find himself well rewarded by the venerable simplicity of his character, the profoundness of his thoughts, and the manliness of his eloquence. Those persons however have been, to say the least, very indiscreet friends to the fame of Hooker, who have held him up as a model of English style.

  Far superior to Sir Philip Sidney in every requisite for good composition, the venerable HOOKER claims the highest station among the writers of Elizabeth’s reign. If his language abound too much in inversions, it yet possesses a dignity and force, and in general an attention to grammatical accuracy, hitherto unknown to our literature. Even in the present day it may be read and admired…. The style of Hooker, however, is not without some striking defects; though the words for the most part are well chosen and pure, the arrangement of them into sentences is intricate and harsh, and formed almost exclusively on the idiom and construction of the Latin. Much strength and vigour are derived from this adoption; but perspicuity, sweetness, and ease are too generally sacrificed.

  Of the illustrious Hooker—whose memory is embalmed in the beautiful biography of him by Isaac Walton—it is sufficient to say, that his “Ecclesiastical Polity” is, of all works of that description, one of the most masterly and convincing. Never was logic more successfully employed to combat error and establish truth; and the vein of common sense, as well as of spiritual comfort, which pervades the pages of that Work, will render it, to the latest posterity, a popular as well as instructive performance.

  Doubtless, Hooker was a theological Talus, with a club of iron against opponents with pasteboard helmets, and armed only with crab-sticks! But yet, I too, too often find occasion to complain of him as abusing his superior strength…. I begin to fear that Hooker is not suited to my nature. I can not bear roundabouts for the purpose of evading the short cut straight before my eyes.

  The finest, as well as the most philosophical, writer of the Elizabethan period is Hooker. The first book of the “Ecclesiastical Polity” is at this day one of the masterpieces of English eloquence. His periods, indeed, are generally much too long and too intricate, but portions of them are often beautifully rhythmical; his language is rich in English idiom without vulgarity, and in words of a Latin source without pedantry; he is more uniformly solemn than the usage of later times permits, or even than writers of that time, such as Bacon, conversant with mankind as well as books, would have reckoned necessary: but the example of ancient orators and philosophers upon themes so grave as those which he discusses may justify the serious dignity from which he does not depart. Hooker is perhaps the first of such, in England, who adorned his prose with the images of poetry: but this he has done more judiciously and with more moderation than others of great name; and we must be bigots in Attic severity before we can object to some of his grand figures of speech.

  He was an able champion for the ecclesiastical hierarchy. His work displays immense learning, reflection, and eloquence, and is still referred to as a great authority upon the whole range of moral and political principles…. The “Ecclesiastical Polity” has furnished, for nearly 200 years, an invaluable defence of the clergy to studious men…. Hooker is universally distinguished for long-drawn melody and mellifluence of language, and his works must find a place in every well-chosen clerical library. His eloquence has been deservedly praised; but the justice of the epithet “Judicious,” which his admirers have attached to his name, is rather more questionable. Certainly there never was a more thoroughgoing advocate of things established than he has shown himself in the whole Fifth Book, forming more than a third part of the entire “Ecclesiastical Polity.”

  The results of his publications were great and presently perceptible; a school of writers immediately sprung up, who by express reference, or style, or tone of thought, betray their admiration of Hooker; Covel, Edwin Sandys, Field, Raleigh, and others; and what was infinitely more important, Hooker had his full share in training up for the next generation, Laud, Hammond, Sanderson, and a multitude more such divines; to which succession and series, humanely speaking, we owe it, that the Anglican church continues at such a distance from that of Geneva, and so near to primitive truth and apostolical order. There have been and are those, who resort, or would be thought to resort, to the Books of “Ecclesiastical Polity,” for conclusions and maxims very different from these. King James II., it is well known, ascribed to Hooker, more than to any other writer, his own ill-starred conversion to Romanism: against which, nevertheless, if he had thought a little more impartially, he might have perceived that Hooker’s works every where inculcate that which is the only sufficient antidote, respect for the true Church of the Fathers, as subsidiary to Scripture and a witness of its true meaning. And the rationalists on the contrary side, and the liberals of the school of Locke and Hoadly, are never weary of claiming Hooker as the first distinct enunciator of their principles. Whereas, even in respect of civil government, though he might allow their theory of its origin, he pointedly deprecates their conclusion in favour of resistance. And in respect of sacramental grace, and the consequent nature and importance of Church communion, themselves have never dared to claim sanction from him.

  What was transitory or what was partial in this great work may be subtracted without injury to its excellence or its value. Hooker has written what posterity reads. The spirit of a later age, progressive in ameliorating the imperfect condition of all human institutions, must often return to pause over the first book of “Ecclesiastical Polity,” where the master-genius has laid the foundations and searched into the nature of all laws whatever. Hooker is the first vernacular writer whose classical pen harmonized a numerous prose. While his earnest eloquence, freed from all scholastic pedantry, assumed a style stately in its structure, his gentle spirit sometimes flows into natural humor, lovely in the freshness of its simplicity.

  His works manifest great vigour of thought, eloquence of expression, soundness of judgment, and decidedly evangelical sentiment; his “Ecclesiastical Polity” is one of the bulwarks of the Established Church of England.

  However favourable the quiet of Corpus may have been to the meditation of such a work, the sheep, the cradle, and the wife Joan, may have had greater influence in the formation of its author’s character, may have imparted to it less of a scholastic, more of an English, conservatism. For assuredly it is the work which, more perhaps than any in our language, embodies that conservatism, and distinguishes it from that other form of it which was conspicuous in “Nundinio” and the Ptolemaists whom Bruno ridicules. Hooker’s sympathies would, no doubt, have been with them. If he and Bruno had met, they would not have had the slightest appreciation of each other’s gifts or purposes. Now that he has become one of our classics, the reasons of our admiration are probably as little intelligible to accomplished foreigners—Frenchmen, Italians, Germans—as he himself would have been to a traveller of his own age. They would smile and shrug their shoulders if we presumed to call him a philosopher; they would find a ready, and by no means a wholly unfair solution of the influence he has acquired over us, in our preference of the actual to the ideal. Yet we are fully persuaded that the English judgment of two centuries and a-half, however affected by considerations specially belonging to ourselves, is a right one; that Hooker’s principles have influenced the countries which care least for him, and that any sketch of moral or metaphysical inquiries would be grossly defective in which he was omitted.

  Hooker’s style is almost without a rival for its sustained dignity of march; but that which makes it most remarkable is its union of all this learned gravity and correctness with a flow of genuine, racy English, almost as little tinctured with pedantry as the most familiar popular writing. The effect, also, of its evenness of movement is the very reverse of tameness or languor; the full river of the argument dashes over no precipices, but yet rolls along without pause, and with great force and buoyancy.

  The diction of theology, perhaps I should say of English prose, reached its highest point of excellence in the works of Hooker…. The style of Hooker is sometimes unnecessarily involved and obscure, and he is fond of Latinisms, both in words and in the arrangements of his periods…. Hooker’s periods are sometimes cumbrous and involved, partly from the influence of his devotion to Latin theological literature, and partly from his desire to accompany his general propositions with the conditions, qualifications, and limitations belonging to them; but he has many passages of the most admirable rhetorical beauty, and of a musical flow not less melodious than that of the periods of Milton.

  Hooker—not indeed the greatest but perhaps the most majestic of English writers—was not more distinguished for his splendid eloquence than for his tendency to elevate the principles of natural right, and for his desire to make the Church independent of the State.

  The learned and excellent Hooker, one of the sweetest and most conciliatory men, the most solid and persuasive of logicians, a comprehensive mind, who in every question remote from the principles introduces into controversy general conceptions, and the knowledge of human nature; beyond this, a methodical writer, correct and always ample, worthy of being regarded not only as one of the fathers of the English Church, but as one of the founders of English prose.

  Hooker’s diction is not so modern as Sidney’s. A glossary to Hooker would be at least ten times as large as a glossary to an equal amount of writing by Sidney. In great measure, of course, this is due to the difference of subject. By Swift he is coupled with Parsons the Jesuit as writing a purer style than other theologians of his time. He did not coin words like Jeremy Taylor, nor employ them in meanings warranted by derivation but not by usage—very common errors among his more pedantic contemporaries.

  If the Church of England had never produced any other writer of the same stamp, it might have boasted in Hooker one of the noblest and most rational intellects which ever enriched Christian literature, or adorned a great cause. In combination of speculative, literary, imaginative, and spiritual qualities the “Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity” stands as a polemical treatise unrivalled…. Nowhere in the Literature of philosophy has ethical and political speculation essayed a profounder and more comprehensive task, or sought to take a broader sweep; and never has the harmony of the moral universe, and the interdependence and unity of man’s spiritual and civil life, in their multiplied relations, been more finely conceived or more impressively expounded.

  The philosophical system of Hooker may be fairly accepted as akin to that of Lord Bacon; only it was far more explicit and comprehensive in its statements and more systematic in its form and completeness. It could not fail to exert a powerful influence on all subsequent discussions in metaphysical, ethical and political philosophy, anticipating as it does many of these discussions by providing the principles for their adjudication.

  Hooker, the first great prose writer of the Elizabethan age, shows the best results of the theological habit of mind. Sound, searching and liberal in thought, he presents a style massive, semi-fluent, pushing and formidable; yet from time to time breaking into a more easy and animated flow. By universal consent, he takes rank among great English writers. A tendency which could thus early ripen an author of so much power and skill, could get to itself such a head, vindicates easily and at once its claims to large literary influence.

  It is a defence of the Church of England against dissenters. The author shows himself a bitter enemy of Catholics, whose doctrines he perverts, is full of inconsistencies and contradictions, and cannot disguise the Puritanical views which it was the purpose of this book to combat. His style is rich, dignified, elaborate, but marred by the length and intricacy of the sentences.

  To accede without explanation to the claim put forth for the “Ecclesiastical Polity” of Hooker, that it marks an epoch in English prose literature and English thought, would both be to do some injustice to writers previous to him, and, if not to overestimate his influence, to misinterpret its character. By no means can his excursions in English prose be regarded as chiefly those of a pioneer; and not only is his intellectual position inferior to that of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Bacon, who alone can be properly reckoned as the master spirits of the age, but in reality what effect he may have had upon the thought of his contemporaries was soon disregarded and swept out of sight in the hand-to-hand struggle with Puritanism, and his influence, so far from being immediate and confined to one particular era, has since the reaction against Puritanism been slowly and imperceptibly permeating and colouring English thought down to the present time. His work is, however, the earliest in English prose with enough of the preserving salt of excellence to adapt it to the mental palate of modern readers.

  The contents are rather more philosophical than theological, and the work more valuable for its broad and fundamental principles than for the exactness of definition, or clearness of argument. It is in effect an answer to Puritanism, which had been bitterly attacking the episcopal system through a generation. Conceived in an admirable temper, and free from the heat and vituperation which characterized the controversial writings of the period, it makes no attempt to discredit the Presbyterian system. Its object is to assert the right of a broad liberty on the basis of Scripture and reason…. Hooker has been claimed as a champion of the High-Anglican doctrine of episcopacy, and, hardly less confidently, by the other side as the advocate of the view that church government is a matter of expediency. Isolated expressions can be found in favor of both, as even Keble qualifiedly admits. But neither view is true. Hooker holds a position intermediate between the school of the English Reformers, Archbishop Grindal and most of Elizabeth’s bishops, and the school which grew up in the contest with Puritanism, and had its extreme representative in Archbishop Laud. Had he been more exact in his definitions, it might be possible to place him more confidently on the one side or on the other. As it is, he stands as the representative of toleration in the sphere of ecclesiastical polity and the advocate of the claims of reason against that narrow scripturalism which assumes to tolerate nothing which the Scriptures do not expressly command.

  The great type of the English Church…. He represents that stately, massive, harmonious mind which upbuilded it. The work of “Ecclesiastical Polity” remains to this day like the Pyramids, alone amidst the barren sands of church polemics.

  These, as we judge, are Hooker’s two great characteristic merits as a prose writer—the philosophic and the logical cast. They carry a great deal with them which cannot be fully stated. They embody more than they express, and on the negative side prevent the presence and power of minor errors. They promise the reader something worth the reading, and are so presented as to be intelligible and impressive. There is an utter absence of the puerile and the frivolous. Everything is solid and germane to the subject, while through it all there is a moral sobriety of tone that is most healthful and uplifting. These are qualities somewhat Elizabethan and English, and for which there is yet room in modern prose. The later periods have improved on the earlier in vocabulary, diction, sentence and artistic finish, but not in mental and moral undertone. Each class of qualities is right in its place and time. Had their order been reversed, English Prose would not have been as stable and substantial as it is.

  I don’t know if any of our parish will care to read the “Ecclesiastical Polity;” but if you have courage thereto, you will find in this old master of sound and cumbrous English prose, passages of rare eloquence, and many turns of expression, which for their winning grace, their aptitude, their quality of fastening themselves upon the mind, are not overmatched by those of any Elizabethan writer.

  If ever there was a writer who might challenge universal recognition, it was Hooker.

  It may at once be said of Hooker’s work that his quality, his accomplishment (though of a high order in rhetoric, in composition governed by certain stately and scholastic laws), cannot rank him among the great creative writers of the world. As a man of thought, and as a man who set serious value by his thought: as a man who perpended every paragraph, and who carefully elaborated every parenthesis: as a man whose conscientious labour must ever be among the influences that drive the frivolous to despair, his superior or even his rival would not be easy to find. His workmanship, too, is very cunningly equipoised. He had an ear for the balance of parts, and for sonorousness of diction. He is never irresponsible, never gay, never passionate, never free from his own personal control. But for the artificial quality of his art he takes an exceptional eminence. There is something peculiarly satisfactory about all his writing; it is thorough.

  The learning and research, the pure, rich style, the close reasoning, the admirable tone and spirit, displayed in this treatise, make it one of the masterpieces of all English literature.

  The greatest master of English prose whom the great age of Elizabeth produced…. He is the first master of English prose whose style is not only characteristic of his own age, but expressive of the purest genius of the English tongue. The rich and dignified vocabulary, the stately and majestic periods, which mark his best passages, are instinct with the power and the enthusiasm which made the greatness of Elizabeth’s England. He does not scorn any of the arts of the rhetorician: he does not even avoid an intentional quaintness of expression which might seem at times out of keeping with the solemnity of his theme. As in thought so in utterance, he aims at comprehensiveness rather than clarity. There are passages of his which, it is not bold to say, will live as models so long as the English language is written or read. Hooker was the greatest of his school: but he had many imitators.

  The book has remained ever since a standard work. It is as much moral and political as theological. Its style is grave, clear, and often musical. He adorned it with the figures of poetry, but he used them with temperance, and the grand and rolling rhetoric with which he often concludes an argument is kept for its right place. On the whole, it is the first monument of splendid literary prose that we possess.

  Hooker is the first important philosophical and religious English writer. He is the earliest to perceive the importance of evolution, the propriety of preparing and conducting to a conclusion a great, consistent scheme. He sees things clearly and cooly in an age when controversial passion and political turmoil turned all other men’s blood to fever…. The style of Hooker is distinguished by a sober and sustained eloquence. Certain of his contemporaries might equal him in purple passages, but not one of them approached his even flight. He was Latinised, not as his lumbering predecessors had been, but in the true humanistic spirit; and he had studied Aristotle and Plato with constant advantage to his expression. Hooker is, indeed, one of the earliest of our authors, in prose or verse, to show the influence of pure Hellenic culture. The limpidity and elegance of his periods are extraordinary. When all England was in bondage, Hooker alone freed himself from the clogged concatenation of phrases which makes early English prose so unwieldy; yet he gained his liberty at no such cost of grace and fulness as Bacon did in the snip-snap of his “Essays.” Hooker discovered, by the help of the ancients and the Bible, a middle way between long-drawn lusciousness and curt formality. He does not strive after effect; but when he is moved, his style is instinct with music. He never abuses quotations; he never forgets that he has an argument to conduct, and that life is short. In other words, he is the first great writer of practical English prose, and for a long time there is none other like unto him.

  He is known beyond the circle of students of theology. His English style has given him a high place in general literature. The stately dignity of its movement, the depth and richness of its musical diapason, its variety and flexibility, its rhythmical grace, and its occasional flights of lofty eloquence have secured him a place of permanent honour among the greatest masters of the English tongue. And style, let us remember, is the outcome of the man. It is no artificial bedizenment of thought. It is thought making for itself a body fitted to its needs. It is a vital and intimate union of the immaterial and the material. And apart from the apt conveyance of thought and emotion, it is precious because it reveals to us the thinker himself. Who can rise from the study of Hooker without a sense of a greatness that lies beyond and above such qualities as acuteness of perception, or intellectual force, or imaginative fertility, or learning, or argumentative power? All these are there; but there is something more. We are conscious of a moral majesty that humbles us. We feel the quickened beat of the writer’s heart as he treats of the revelation of the wisdom and goodness of the Eternal Giver of life and law. We are sensible of the wide, capacious, all-encircling atmosphere of awe and wonder in which the great thinker lives and moves; and our admiration passes into reverence.

  Richard Hooker was dead; he had published in 1597 his fifth book of the immortal “Ecclesiastical Polity,” and dedicated it to the Primate. What did Whitgift care for such as he? Hooker had been hunted out of the Mastership of the Temple, and sent to rock the cradle and watch his sheep at Bishopbourne, a short walk from Canterbury. There Saravia seems to have been his only friend. Some few bewailed him, and in their hearts cried “Shame;” but they held their peace when it was the time for silence. Donne read and absorbed Hooker’s great work, especially the first book,—utilised it, made it his own, and reproduced it in his “Biathanatos,”—but he never so much as mentioned Hooker’s name.

  Hooker’s style has the faults of its class—a classicism now timid, now unduly audacious; an unnecessary fear of vivid and vernacular expressions. But its author handles the methods and means which he has received with original genius, attaining to a really exquisite balance of sentence, to a harmony sometimes quite ineffable, adjusting his longer and shorter constructions with almost infallible art, and affording a specimen never surpassed, and hardly ever equalled since, of argument maintained on abstract and scholastic points without the slightest dulness, of ornament which is never daubed or stuck on, but arises from the proportion of the phrase, and the careful selection of the vocabulary. Had it been possible to have all prose written by Hookers, nobody need have wished to seek much further experiment.