and by the care of his uncle and the kindness of Bishop Jewel, he was sent at the age of fourteen to Corpus Christi College in Oxford.

On one of his journeys on foot home from college he called at Salisbury and dined with the good bishop, who at parting said:

Richard, I will lend you a horse which hath carried me many a mile, and, I thank God, with much ease.' And presently delivered into his hand a walking staff, with which he professed he had walked through many parts of Germany.

At Oxford Hooker gained many friends by the gentleness of his nature and his singular power as a tutor, and at the age of twenty-four he was elected Fellow of his college. In course of time it was his duty to preach at St. Paul's Cross in London, and he lodged at the Shunamite's House' in Watling Street, which was kept by a Mrs. Churchman, and she persuaded Hooker that he was a man of a tender constitution, and that it would be best for him to have a wife.

And he, like a true Nathanael fearing no guile because he meant none, did give her such a power as Eleazar was trusted with, when he was sent to choose a wife for Isaac. Now the wife provided for him was her daughter Joan, who brought him neither beauty nor portion; and for her conditions they were too like that wife's, which is by Solomon compared to a dripping house; so that he had no reason to rejoice in the wife of his youth, but rather to say, Woe is me that I am constrained to dwell in the tents of Kedar.' And by this means the good man was drawn from the tranquillity of his colledge, from that garden of piety, of pleasure, of peace and a sweet conversation, into the thorny wilderness of a busie world; into those corroding cares that attend a married priest and a countrey parsonage.

Hooker's first living was at Drayton-Beauchamp, in Buckinghamshire, and from thence in 1585, through the

interest of his old pupils, of whom one was the son of the Archbishop of York, he was promoted to the Mastership of the Temple.

The time was a critical one in the history of the Church of England. The Martin Marprelate controversy was soon to burst forth with its floods of scurrility. Brownists and Barrowists were giving endless trouble to the bishops, and both in the Church and in Parliament there was a strong and energetic Puritan party, who were striving to remodel the Church of England after the pattern of Calvin's at Geneva.

A Mr. Walter Travers, who had been ordained not by the bishops but by the Presbytery of Antwerp, was at this time afternoon lecturer at the Temple, and many desired that he should receive the Mastership. With this Mr. Travers, Hooker now most unwillingly found himself forced into controversy, and we are told that 'the pulpit spake pure Canterbury in the morning, and Geneva in the afternoon.'

In these sermons there was little of bitterness, but each party brought all the reasons he was able to prove his adversary's opinions erroneous.' At last the Archbishop was bound to interfere, and Travers was silenced.

Hooker thereupon determined to write a work which should be a sober exposition and defence of the position occupied by the Church of England, and of the powers claimed by her. The foundation of these books was laid in the Temple, but he found it no fit place to finish what he had there designed,' and he therefore begged the Archbishop that he might be removed into some quiet parsonage, where I may see God's blessings spring out

of my mother earth, and eat mine own bread in peace and privacy.'

He was thereupon presented in 1591 to the living of Boscum, near Sarum, and there he wrote the first four books of the Ecclesiastical Polity,' and they were published in 1594. In the next year he was presented to the living of Bishopsborne, near Canterbury, and there he finished his great work and died in 1600.

Many men (scholars especially) went to see the man whose life and learning were so much admired; and what went they out for to see? a man cloathed in purple and fine linnen? No indeed, but an obscure harmless man, a man in poor cloathes, his loyns usually girt in a course gown or canonical coat; of a mean stature and stooping, and yet more lowly in the thoughts of his soul; his body worn out not with age but study and holy mortifications; his face full of heat pimples begat by his unactivity and sedentary life.

The fifth book, which is very long, appeared in 1597, but the last three were not printed till 1662, and it is doubted if they are in the state in which Hooker left them. The first book is concerning laws in general,' and it is this book which has the most enduring interest for general readers, and our illustrative extracts will be taken from it.

In the opening he shows how easy it is to find fault with any established order of things, but how difficult to arrive at a true judgment of its nature and worth.

He that goeth about to persuade a multitude that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favourable hearers; because they know the manifold defects whereunto every kind of regiment is subject, but the secret lets and difficulties which in publike proceedings are innumerable and inevitable, they have not ordinarily the judgement to consider.

The statelinesse of houses, the goodlines of trees when we behold them delighteth the eye; but that foundation which beareth up the one,

that root which ministreth unto the other nourishment and life, is in the bosome of the earth concealed; and if there be at any time occasion to search into it, such labour is then more necessary then pleasant both to them which undertake it and for the lookers on. In like maner the use and benefite of good lawes all that live under them may enjoy with delight and comfort, albeit the grounds and first originall causes from whence they have sprong be unknown, as to the greatest part of men they are. But when they who withdraw their obedience pretend that the lawes which they should obey are corrupt and vitious, for better examination of their qualitie, it behooveth the very foundation and root, the highest wellspring and fountaine of them to be discovered.

The friends and defenders of the Church of England are challenged, and he accepts the challenge:

"The lawes of the Church whereby for so many ages together we have beene guided in the exercise of Christian religion and the service of the true God, our rites, customes, and orders of ecclesiasticall governement are called in question. We are accused as men that will not have Christ Jesus to rule over them; but have wilfully cast his statutes behinde their backs, hating to be reformed and made subject to the scepter of his discipline. Behold therefore we offer the lawes whereby we live unto the generall tryal and judgement of the whole world; hartely beseeching Almightie God, whom wee desire to serve according to his owne will, that both we and others (all kinde of partiall affection being cleane laid aside) may have eyes to see and harts to embrace the things that in his sight are most acceptable.

He treats first, with the deepest reverence, the eternal law which rules the operations of God:

Dangerous it were for the feeble braine of man to wade farre into the doings of the most High; whome although to knowe be life, and joy to make mention of his name; yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know him not as indeed he is, neither can know him; and our safest eloquence concerning him is our silence, when we confesse without confession that his glory is inexplicable, his greatnes above our capacitie and reach. He is above and we upon earth; therefore it behoveth our wordes to be wary and fewe.

In the last section of the book he sums up the kinds of law of which he has treated:

Thus farre therefore we have endevoured in part to open, of what

nature and force lawes are, according unto their severall kindes; the lawe which God with himselfe hath eternally set downe to follow in his owne workes; the law which he hath made for his creatures to keepe; the law of naturall and necessarie agents; the law which angels in heaven obey; the lawe whereunto by the light of reason, men finde themselves bound, in that they are men; the lawe which they make by composition for multitudes and politique societies of men to be guided by; the lawe which belongeth unto each nation; the lawe that concerneth the fellowship of all; and lastly the lawe which God himself hath supernaturally revealed.

He closes the first book with this magnificent

sentence:

Wherefore that here we may briefely end of lawe there can be no lesse acknowledged then that her seate is the bosome of God, her voyce the harmony of the world; all thinges in heaven and earth doe her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels, and men, and creatures of what condition soever though each in different sort and maner, yet all with uniforme consent admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.

SPENSER.

EDMUND SPENSER, the poet whom all succeeding poets have loved and learned from, was, like his great predecessor Chaucer, a Londoner. In one of his latest poems he speaks of

Merry London, my most kindly nurse
That to me gave this life's first native source

Though from another place I take my name,
A house of ancient fame.

Of his family little or nothing is known, but he was in some way related to the noble family of the Spencers. The nobility of the Spencers,' says Gibbon, has been illustrated and enriched by the trophies of Marlborough, but I exhort them to consider the "Fairy Queen" as the most precious jewell of their coronet.'