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Gentleman's Magazine 1851 part 1 p.15
works, in my judgment the most valuable of all our English
divines."
Mr. Southey has in another place mentioned Jackson "among
the very best of our divines." See Life of Blanco White,
vol.i. p.452. See also Atterbury's Works, vol.i. p.27; and
Bichol's Illustrations of Literature, vol. ult. p.244, in a
letter from Sir John Hawkins to Dr. Percy, stating Mr.
Merrick's high approbation of these works, and that in
consequence he had raised the price a third! "They are a
treasure of curious and valuable learning and sound
theology, and, for strength of argument and the style of
writing, which is nervous and eloquent in a high degree,
are, in my judgment, admirable." In Jones's Life of Bishop
Horne he speaks of Jackson's Works as a magazine of
theological knowledge, everywhere penned with great
eloquence and dignity, and that his style is a pattern of
perfection. Bishop Horne was much attached tio this
admirable writer. Above all, George Herbert in his "Remains"
this alludes to him:- "I speak it in the presence of God, I
have not read so hearty, vigorous a champion against Rome,
as convincing and demonstrative, as Dr. Jacksonis. I
bless God for the confirmation he has given me in the
Christian religion against the Atheist, Jew, and Socinian,
and in the Protestant against Rome." We add that he who
reads the works of this writer will willingly agree in the
praise thus bestowed upon him.
P.332. "You may get the whole of Sir T. Brown's works more
easily perhaps than the Hydrotaphia in a single form. The
folio is neither scarce nor dear, and you will find it
throughout a book to your heart's content. If I were
confined to a score of English books, this I think
would be one of them - very probably, indeed, be one of them
if the selection were cut down to twelve. My library,
if reduced to these bounds, would consist of Shakspere,
Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton, Lord Clarendon, Jackson,
Jeremy Taylor, Smith, Isaak Walton, Sidney's Arcadia,
Fuller's Church History, and Sir Thomas Browne; and what a
wealthy and well-stored mind would that man have, what an
inexhaustible reservoir, what a Bank of England to draw upon
for profitable thoughts and delightful associations, who
should have fed upon them!"
Among this delectus we lament to find absent the
names of Bacon, and Hooker, and Donne, and Ben Jonson; and
perhaps, with this addition, the select circle is complete.
- "Exactis completur mensibus orbis."
P.342. Mr. Southey here recommends the sermons of South, a
divine whose name never comes from his pen without the high
praise justly due to him. See his Colloquies, vol.i. p.250.
"South, who had the strongest arm that ever wielded a
sledge-hammer in this kind of warfare," &c. We could
fill our pages with similar commendations of this writer
from men whose praise was worth receiving; but space is
wanting, and his writings are the best monument of his fame.
We will therefore make only two remarks on the subject: one
is, that South, in his sermon on Worldly Wisdom, adduces
Cromwell as an instance of habitual dissimulation and
imposture, and South was an acute observer of mankind;
the other is, that Mr. Todd, in his most judicious and able
Essay on the Apocalypse, p.4, observes that, "No writer has
expressed himself more objectionably on the Apocalypse than
South; his language is scarcley reconcilable with a
belief in its inspiration. See South's Sermons, Oxf. 1823,
ii. p.184. If we recollect rightly, the opinion of Dr. S.
Parr on this the Omega of scripture was not very different;
but we do not mean to shackle the doctor's orthodoxy with
the fetters of our fallible memory.
P.351. "With regard to others whom his Lordship
accuses me of calumniating, I suppose he alludes to a party
of his friends whose names I found written in the Album de
Montanvert, with an avowal of atheism annexed in Greek, and
an indignant comment in the same language underneath it.
These names, with that avowal and the comment, I transcribed
in my note-book, and spoke of the circumstance at my return.
If I had published it, the gentleman in question would not
have thought himself slandered by having that recorded of
him which he has so often recorded of himself."
This extract from the Album at Montanvert, or Chamouny (we
do not exactly know which), is, we believe, now in England.
The following is an exact copy of it as it stands in the
book:-
"1806. 23 Juillet. Percy B. Shelley,
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