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he therefore exchanged the narrowness of the university for the town: but coming out of the confinement of the square-cap and quadrangle, into the open air, the world began to turn round with him; which he imagined, though it were his own giddiness, to be nothing less than the quadrature of the circle. This accident concurring so happily to increase the good opinion he naturally had of himself, he thenceforward applied to gain a like reputation with others. He followed the town life, haunted the best companies; and to polish himself from any pedantic roughness, he read and saw the plays, with much care, and more proficiency than most of the auditory. But all this while, he forgot not the main chance, but hearing of a vacancy with a nobleman, he clapped in, and easily obtained to be his chaplain. From that day you may take the date of his preferments and his ruin. For having soon wrought himself dexterously into his patron's favour, by short graces and sermons, and a mimical way of drolling upon the puritans, which he knew would take both at chapel and table; he gained a great authority likewise among all the domestics. They all listened to him as an oracle; and they allowed him by common consent to have not only all the divinity, but more wit too than all the rest of the family put toge ther. This thing alone elevated him exceedingly in his own conceit, and raised his hypochondria into

the region of the brain and his head swelled like any bladder with wind and vapour. But after he was stretched to such an height in his own fancy, that he could not look down from top to toe, but his eyes dazzled at the precipice of his stature; there fell out, or in, another natural chance, which pushed him headlong. For being of an amorous complexion, and finding himself, as I told you, the cock-divine and the cock-wit of the family, he took the privilege to walk among the hens; and thought it was not impolitic to establish his new-acquired reputation upon the gentlewomen's side. And they that perceived he was a rising man, and of pleasant conversation, dividing his day among them into canonical hours, of reading now the common prayer, and now the romances, were very much taken with him. The sympathy of silk began to stir and attract the tippet to the petticoat and the petticoat toward the tippet. The innocent ladies found a strange unquietness in their minds, and could not distinguish whether it were love or devotion. Neither was he want ing on his part to carry on the work, but shifted himself every day with a clean surplice, and as oft as he had occasion to bow, he directed his reverence towards the gentlewomen's pew, till, having before had enough of the libertine, and undertaken his calling only for preferment, he was transported now with the sanctity of his office, even to extacy; and

like the bishop over Maudlin College altar, or like Maudlin de la Croix, he was seen in his prayers to be lifted up sometimes in the air, and once particularly so high that he cracked his scull against the chapel ceiling. I do not hear for all this that he had ever practised upon the honour of the ladies, but that he preserved always the civility of a Platonic knight-errant. For all this courtship had no other operation than to make him still more in love with himself; and if he frequented their company, it was only to speculate his own baby in their eyes. But being thus without competitor or rival, the darling of both sexes in the family, and his own minion, he grew beyond all measure elated, and that crack of his scull, as in broken looking-glasses, multiplied him in self-conceit and imagination, &c. &c.

The following is a very burlesque and lively description of the conduct of the orthodox divines, on king Charles the Second's publishing the declaration of indulgence to tender consciences. Still addressing the doctor under the name of Bayes, he proceeds:

I suppose you cannot be ignorant, that some of your superiors of your robe did, upon the publishing that declaration, give the word and deliver orders

through their ecclesiastical camp, to beat up the pulpit drums against popery. Nay, even so much that there was care taken too for arming the poor readers; that though they came short of preachers in point of efficacy, yet they might be enabled to do something in point of common security. So that, though for so many years, those your superiors had forgot there was any such thing in the nation as a popish recusant, though polemical and controversial divinity had for so long but hung up in the halls, like the rusty obsolete armour of our ancestors for monuments of antiquity, and for derision rather than service; all on a sudden (as if the 15th of March had been the 5th of November) happy was he that could climb up first, to get down one of the old cuirasses, or a habergeon that had been worn in the days of queen Elizabeth. Great variety there was, and an heavy doo. Some clapped it on all rusty as it was; others fell of oiling and furbishing their armour; some pissed in their barrels, others spit in their pans, to scour them. Here you might see one put on his helmet the wrong way; there one buckle on a back in place of a breast. Some by mistake catched up a Socinian or Arminian argument, and some a Papist to fight a Papist. Here a dwarf lost in the accoutrements of a giant: there a Don Quixote, in an equipage of differing pieces, and of several parishes. Never was there such incon

gruity and non-conformity in their furniture. One ran to borrow a sword of Calvin; this man for a musket from Beza; that for a bandeleers even from Kerkerman. But when they came to seek for match, and bullet, and powder, there was none to be had. The fanaticks had bought it all up, and made them pay for it most unconscionably, and through the nose. And no less sport was it to see the leaders. Few could tell how to give the word of command, nor understood to drill a company. They were as unexpert as their soldiers aukward; and the whole was as pleasant a spectacle, as the exercising of the trained bands in --shire.

The second part of this performance is said in the title page to have been occasioned by two letters: the first printed by a nameless author, intitled "A Reproof," &c. The second left for him at a friend's house dated Nov. 3. 1673, subscribed J. G. and concluding with these words: "If thou darest to print or publish any lie or libel against Dr. Parker, by the eternal God I will cut thy throat."

The following passage is valuable chiefly for

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