Part 11

LICENSED LAY PREACHING.

In 1555, Mr. Tavernier, of Bresley, in Norfolk, had a special licence signed by Edward VI., authorizing him to preach in any part of his Majesty's dominions, though he was a layman; and he is said to have preached before the King at court, wearing a velvet bonnet or round cap, a damask gown, and a gold chain about his neck. In the reign of Mary he appeared in the pulpit of St. Mary's at Oxford, with a sword by his side and a gold chain about his neck, and preached to the scholars, opening his discourse in this wise: "Arriving at the mount of St. Mary's, in the stony stage where I now stand, I have brought you some fine biscuits, baked in the oven of charity, carefully conserved for the chickens of the church." This sort of style, especially the alliteration, was much admired in those days, even by the most accomplished scholars; and was long afterwards in high favour both with speakers and hearers. At the time Mr. Tavernier first received commission as a preacher, good preaching was so very scarce, that not only the King's chaplains were obliged to make circuits round the country to instruct the people, and to fortify them against Popery, but even laymen, who were scholars, were, as we have seen, employed for that purpose.

DR. BARROW'S RHYMES WITH REASON.

In the days of Charles II., candidates for holy orders were expected to respond in Latin to the various interrogatories put to them by the bishop or his examining chaplain. When the celebrated Barrow (who was fellow of Trinity College, and tutor to the immortal Newton) had taken his bachelor's degree, he presented himself before the bishop's chaplain, who, with the stiff stern visage of the times, said to Barrow--

"Quid est fides?" (What is faith?) "Quod non vides" (What thou dost not see),

answered Barrow with the utmost promptitude. The chaplain, a little annoyed at Barrow's laconic answer, continued--

"Quid est spes?" (What is hope?)

"Magna res" (A great thing),

replied the young candidate in the same breath.

"Quid est caritas?" (What is charity?)

was the next question.

"Magna raritas" (A great rarity),

was again the prompt reply of Barrow, blending truth and rhyme with a precision that staggered the reverend examiner, who went direct to the bishop and told him that a young Cantab had thought proper to give rhyming answers to three several moral questions, and added that he believed his name was Isaac Barrow, of Trinity College, Cambridge. "Barrow! Barrow!" said the bishop, who well knew the literary and moral worth of the young bachelor; "if that's the case, ask him no more questions, for he is much better qualified to examine us than we are to examine him." Barrow received his letters of orders forthwith.

HOW TO BE KEPT IN HEALTH.

Sir G. Staunton related a curious anecdote of old Kien Long, Emperor of China. He was inquiring of Sir George the manner in which physicians were paid in England. When, after some difficulty, his Majesty was made to comprehend the system, he exclaimed, "Is any man well in England, that can afford to be ill? Now, I will inform you," said he, "how I manage my physicians. I have four, to whom the care of my health is committed: a certain weekly salary is allowed them, but the moment I am ill, the salary stops till I am well again. I need not inform you that my illnesses are usually short."

JOHN HUNTER ROUTING THE ROUT.

Mr. Jeaffreson, in his amusing Book about Doctors, tells a good story about the great anatomist, John Hunter. "His wife, though devoted in her attachment to him, and in every respect a lady worthy of esteem, caused her husband at times no little vexation by her fondness for society. She was in the habit of giving enormous routs, at which authors and artists, of all shades of merit and demerit, used to assemble to render homage to her literary powers, which were very far from commonplace. Hunter had no sympathy with his wife's poetical aspirations, still less with the society which those aspirations led her to cultivate. Grudging the time which the labours of practice prevented him from devoting to the pursuits of his museum and laboratory, he could not restrain his too irritable temper when Mrs. Hunter's frivolous amusements deprived him of the quiet requisite for study.... Imagine the wrath of such a man, finding, on his return from a long day's work, his house full of musical professors, connoisseurs, and fashionable idlers--in fact, all the confusion and hubbub and heat of a grand party, which his lady had forgotten to inform him was that evening to come off! Walking straight into the middle of the principal reception-room, he faced round and surveyed his unwelcome guests, who were not a little surprised to see him--dusty, toil-worn, and grim--so unlike what 'the man of the house' ought to be on such an occasion. 'I knew nothing,' was his brief address to the astounded crowd--'I knew nothing of this kick-up, and I ought to have been informed of it beforehand; but, as I have now returned home to study, I hope the present company will retire.' Mrs. Hunter's drawing-rooms were speedily empty."

ANTICS OF THE FANATICS.

In concord, yet in contrast, with Dr. South's censure on the fanatics of the Commonwealth, noticed on a former page, we take this from the Loyal Satirist, or Hudibras in Prose, published among Somers' Tracts:--"Well, who's for Aldermanbury? You would think a phoenix preached there; but the birds will flock after an owl as fast; and a foot-ball in cold weather is as much followed as Calama (Calamy) by all his rampant dog-day zealots. But 'tis worth the crouding to hear the baboon expound like the ape taught to play on the cittern. You would think the church, as well as religion, were inversed, and the anticks which were used to be without were removed into the pulpit. Yet these apish tricks must be the motions of the spirit, his whimsie-meagrim must be an ecstatie, and Dr. G----, his palsy make him the father of the sanctified shakers. Thus, among Turks, dizziness is a divine trance, changlings and idiots are the chiefest saints, and 'tis the greatest sign of revelation to be out of one's wits.

"Instead of a dumb-shew, enter the sermon dawbers. O what a gracious sight is a silver inkhorn! How blessed a gift is it to write shorthand! What necessary implements for a saint are cotton wool and blotting-paper! These dablers turn the church into a scrivener's shop. A country fellow last term mistook it for the Six Clerks' Office. The parson looks like an offender upon the scaffold, and they penning his confession; or a spirit conjured up by their uncouth characters. By his cloak you would take him for the prologue to a play; but his sermon, by the length of it, should be a taylor's bill; and what treats it of but such buckram, fustian stuff? What a desperate green-sickness is the land fallen into, thus to doat on coals and dirt, and such rubbish divinity! Must the French cook our sermons too! and are frogs, fungos, and toadstools the chiefest dish in a spiritual collation? Strange Israelites! that cannot distinguish betwixt mildew and manna. Certainly in the brightest sunshine of the gospel clouds are the best guides; and woodcocks are the only birds of paradise. I wonder how the ignorant rabbies should differ so much, since most of their libraries consist only of a concordance. The wise men's star doubtless was an ignis fatuus in a churchyard; and it was some such Will-o'-th'-Whisp steered prophetical Saltmarsh, when, riding post to heaven, he lost his way in so much of revelation as not to be understood; like the musick of the spheres, which never was heard."

POPE'S LAST EPIGRAM.

During Pope's last illness, it is said, a squabble happened in his chamber between his two physicians, Dr. Burton and Dr. Thomson, who mutually charged each other with hastening the death of the patient by improper treatment. Pope at length silenced them by saying, "Gentlemen, I only learn by your discourse that I am in a dangerous way; therefore, all I now ask is, that the following epigram may be added after my death to the next edition of the Dunciad, by way of postscript:--

'Dunces rejoice, forgive all censures past, The greatest dunce has kill'd your foe at last.'"

TRANSFUSION OF BLOOD.

The experiment of transferring the blood of one animal into the vascular system of another, by means of a tube connected with a vein of the receiving animal and an artery of the other--which had been unsuccessfully attempted in 1492 in the hope of saving the life of Pope Innocent VIII.--was first tried in England in the year 1657 by Clarke, who failed in his attempts. Lower, of Oxford, succeeded in 1665, and communicated his success to the Royal Society. This was on dogs. Coxe did it on pigeons; and Coxe and King afterwards exhibited the experiment on dogs before the Society, transfusing the blood from vein to vein. It was again performed from a sheep to a dog, and the experiment was frequently repeated. The first attempts at transfusion appear to have been instigated merely by curiosity, or by a disposition to inquire into the powers of animal economy. But higher views soon opened themselves; it was conceived that inveterate diseases, such as epilepsy, gout, and others, supposed to reside in the blood, might be expelled with that fluid; while with the blood of a sheep or calf the health and strength of the animal might be transferred to the patient. The most sanguine anticipations were indulged, and the new process was almost expected to realize the alchemical reveries of an elixir of life and immortality. The experiment was first tried in France, where the blood of a sheep, the most stupid of all animals, according to Buffon, was transfused into the veins of an idiotic youth, with the effect, as was asserted, of sharpening his wits; and a similar experiment was made without injury on a healthy man. Lower and King transferred blood from a sheep into the system of a literary man, who had offered himself for the experiment, at first without inconvenience, but afterwards with a less favourable result; the Royal Society still recommending perseverance in the trials. These events were not calculated to maintain the expectation of brilliant results that had been raised; and other occurrences produced still more severe disappointment. The French youth first mentioned died lethargic soon after the second transfusion; the physicians incurred great disgrace, and were judicially prosecuted by the relations. Not, however, discouraged by this unlucky event, they soon after transfused the blood of a calf into a youth related to the royal family, who died soon after of a local inflammation. The Parliament of Paris now interfered, and proscribed the practice; and two persons having died after transfusion at Rome, the Pope also issued a prohibitory edict. Since the publication in 1824, however, of Dr. Blundell's Physiological and Pathological Researches, transfusion has been recognised as a legitimate operation in obstetric surgery--the object being to obviate the effects of exhaustion from extreme loss of blood by hæmorrhage.

FATHER ANDRE BOULANGER.

France has produced several entertaining preachers, among whom was André Boulanger, better known as "little Father André," who died about the middle of the seventeenth century. His character has been variously drawn. He is by some represented as a buffoon in the pulpit; but others more judiciously observe, that he only indulged his natural genius, and uttered humorous and lively things to keep the attention of his audience awake. "He told many a bold truth," says the author of Guerre des Auteurs, Anciens et Modernes, "that sent bishops to their dioceses, and made many a coquette blush. He possessed the art of biting while he smiled; and more ably combated vice by his ingenious satire, than by those vague apostrophes which no one takes to himself. While others were straining their minds to catch at sublime thoughts which no one understood, he lowered his talents to the most humble situations, and to the minutest things." In fact, Father André seems to have been a sort of seventeenth century Spurgeon, as two samples may serve to show. In one of his sermons he compared the four doctors of the Latin Church to the four kings of cards. "St. Augustine," said he, "is the King of Hearts, for his great charity; St. Ambrose is the King of Clubs (treflé), by the flowers of his eloquence; St. Gregory is the King of Diamonds, for his strict regularity; and St. Jerome is the King of Spades (pique), for his piquant style." The Duke of Orleans once dared Father André to employ any ridiculous expression about him. This, however, the good father did, very adroitly. He addressed the Duke thus: "Foin de vous, Monseigneur; foin de moi; foin de tous les auditeurs." He saved himself from the consequences of his jest, by taking for his text the seventh verse of the tenth chapter of Isaiah, where it is said, "All the people are grass"--Foin in French signifying hay, and being also an interjection, "Fie upon!"

AN INTERCESSOR FOR HIMSELF.