[Illustration: From the Picture in the National Gallery of British Art.
DOCTOR JOHNSON IN THE ANTE-ROOM OF LORD CHESTERFIELD, WAITING FOR AN AUDIENCE, 1748.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE JERUSALEM CHAMBER, WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]
We may satisfy ourselves as to William's appreciation of poetry by the fact that Shadwell was his first poet-laureate and Nahum Tate the next. Dr. Nicholas Brady and Nahum Tate made the version of the Psalms which long disgraced the Church Service. Sir William Temple, Baxter, Sir George Mackenzie, Stillingfleet, and Evelyn, as well as some others flourishing at the end of the last period, still remained.
Amongst the earliest of the prose writers may be mentioned the theological authors. Cumberland was the author of a Latin treatise, "De Legibus Naturæ," in which he successfully combated the infidelity of Hobbes. Bull, who, as well as Cumberland, became a bishop, distinguished himself before the Revolution by his "Harmonia Apostolica," an anti-Calvinistic work, and by his "Defensio Fidei Nicenæ." In 1694 he published his "Judicium Ecclesiæ Catholicæ." John Norris, of the school of Cudworth and Henry More, and nearly the last of that school called the English Platonists, published, besides many other works, his "Essay on the Ideal World" in 1701 and 1702. He also wrote some religious poetry of no particular mark.
Tillotson and South were the great authors of sermons of this period. Tillotson was one of the most popular preachers of the time, but may be said to have done more good by his liberal and amiable influence at the head of the Church than by his preaching. There is a solid and genuinely pious character about the sermons of Tillotson which suited the better-trained class of mind of his age, but which would now be deemed rather heavy. South has more life and a more popular style; he was therefore more attractive to the courtiers of his day than to the sober citizens, and he has larded his text with what were then deemed sprightly sallies and dashing phrases, but which are now felt as vulgarisms. Both divines, however, furnished succeeding preachers with much gleaning.
Dr. Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury (_b._ 1643) who figures so prominently in the reign of William and Mary, and who rendered such essential service to the establishment of religious liberty, is the great historian of his time. Without his narratives of his own period, we should have a very imperfect idea of it. With all his activity at Court and in Parliament, he was a most voluminous writer. His publications amount to no less than a hundred and forty-five, though many of these are mere tracts, and some of them even only single sermons. His earliest productions date from 1669, and they continued, with little intermission, to the time of his death in 1715--a space of forty-six years. His great works are "The Reformation of the Church," in three volumes, folio, 1679, 1681, and 1715; and his "History of His Own Times," in two volumes, published after his death in 1724. Burnet lays no claim to eloquence or to much genius, and he has been accused of a fondness for gossip, and for his self-importance; but the qualities which sink all these things into mere secondary considerations are his honesty and heartiness in the support of sound and liberal principles far beyond the majority of his fellow prelates and churchmen. Whilst many of these were spending their energies in opposing reform and toleration, Burnet was incessantly, by word and pen, engaged in assisting to build up and establish those broad and Christian principles under which we now live. Besides the great works named, he wrote also "Memoirs of James and William, Dukes of Hamilton;" "Passages in the Life and Death of Wilmot, Earl of Rochester;" a "Life of Bishop Bedell;" "Travels on the Continent;" "An Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles," etc. etc.