[In the following excerpt, Walker concedes that although the themes of the Resolves were seldom profound, the literary style of the work occasionally does achieve the mastery of Francis Bacon's essays.]

While, in the early part of the seventeenth century, the delineation of characters was the most popular exercise of the essayists, it was not the only one. The instrument which Bacon had introduced could be put to many uses, and among the writers of miscellaneous prose there were a few, apart from Jonson, who trod more closely in his footsteps than the artists of charactery. One such was Owen Felltham (1602-1668), author of Resolves: Divine, Moral, Political; a man about the events of whose life little is known, while his opinions are patent to every reader of his works. He was a Royalist of the most extreme type; and to understand what a political extreme is, we must go back to the writers of that age. Many have been surprised and pained by Fuller's adulation of Charles I. in the last essay of his Holy State: “His royal virtues are too great to be told, and too great to be concealed. All cannot, some must break forth from the full hearts of such as be his faithful subjects. But I must either stay or fall. My sight fails me,—dazzled with the light of majesty. All I can do is pray,”—which accordingly he does. It seems hardly possible to surpass this, but Felltham contrives to do so. “Here Charles the First and Christ the Second lies” is the last line of his epitaph on the royal martyr. He intended no irreverence; he as well as Fuller was habitually reverent; and the fact that he was so makes these staggering words all the more instructive. Clearly such a man could not love the Puritans, and the essay upon them, under the guise of moderation, betrays a strong dislike. He says there are few who will own the name; and the reason is that it is for the most part a name of infamy. He himself is ready to love a Puritan—with a difference:—

A man that submits to reverent order, that sometimes unbends himself in a moderate relaxation; and in all, labours to approve himself, in the sereneness of a healthful conscience: such a Puritan I will love immutably. But when a man, in things but ceremonial, shall spurn at the grave authority of the Church, and out of a needless nicety be a thief to himself, of those benefits which God hath allowed him: or out of a blind and uncharitable pride, censure, and scorn others, as reprobates: or out of obstinacy, fill the world with brawls, about undeterminable tenents: I shall think him one of those, whose opinion hath fevered his zeal to madness and distraction.

The Resolves are divided into two ‘centuries.’ Of these the first in order of time, which afterwards became second in order of arrangement, was published when Felltham was only eighteen. The second edition, to which a new ‘century’ was added, is dated 1628. The earlier essays are very short, the later ones are much fuller and altogether more mature. Ultimately the original ‘century’ was thoroughly revised and much enlarged, while some of the papers were wholly omitted and others substituted for them. The book was extremely popular, going through twelve editions between its first publication and the year 1709. In the eighteenth century both Felltham and his writings were almost completely forgotten, but a partial revival of interest in him took place early in the nineteenth century.

In his preface to the reader the author is careful to explain that these essays were written not so much to please others as to gratify and profit himself. But this may safely be taken as an attempt to deprecate criticism, and to suggest that the author could have done better had he chosen to take pains. The Resolves are written, not without ease, but certainly with care. It is the ease which comes from study, not from indifference. Felltham's discipleship to Bacon is clear; but so is the greatness of the distance at which he follows his exemplar. “Too great a spirit in a man born to poor means, is like a high-heeled shoe to one of mean stature: it advanceth his proportion, but is ready to fit him with falls,” is a simile with a Baconian smack. Felltham's essay on death is obviously founded upon and indebted to Bacon's essay on the same subject; but “Of Man's Unwillingness to Die” shows how much more rhetorical and how much less massive in thought the minor writer is. He loves ornate phrases—e.g., “the wise man learns to know himself as well by night's black mantle, as the scorching beams of day,” to which there is no parallel in Bacon. Occasionally he paraphrases Bacon: “It was the fool that said, There is no God; for certainly no wise man ever thought it, and, yet, the fool had so much wit as not to prate on't: It was but in his heart he said it. Impudence was not so great, nor inward conviction so strong, as that he could with confidence declare it with his tongue. Nor did he seriously think it in his heart: so that it proceeded no farther than a bare and lazy wish, because he would be glad it were so. But, doubtless, he could no more believe there was no soul in this vast world than that there was no spirit to actuate his body.” Obviously this is no more than an expanded and weakened version of a sentence or two in Bacon's Of Atheism.

There are well-marked differences, both of endowment and of purpose, between Felltham and the character-writers. The author of the Resolves had plenty of wit, though, apparently, not much humour. But in the Resolves, as a rule, his aim was not to display either. By far the most witty of his writings is that bright and lively performance, A Brief Character of the Low-Countries under the States, where, far more than in the Resolves, we are reminded that he was a contemporary of Earle.

There are other differences between the scholar Felltham and the master Bacon besides the enormous difference in force and genius. Bacon's subjects are, as we have seen, generally political or ethical. Felltham's are more distinctively religious, or moral with a religious tinge. Among his themes are: “That Man ought to be extensively Good”; “Of the Horror Sin leaves behind”; “Of Man's Imperfection”; “Of the Uncertainty of Life”; “Of Prayer”; “Wherein a Christian excels other Men.” The list might be greatly enlarged. The very subjects are suggestive of the pulpit, and the treatment is in accordance with the subjects. Now the vice of the pulpit has commonly been a tendency to truisms, a fatal proneness to take “glimpses into the obvious.” And it is Felltham's vice too. A good example is to be found in the essay “Of Time's continual Speed.” It is written with more than usual care, and, so far as mere harmony of sound is concerned, the result is more than usually pleasing. Unfortunately the thought is trite and ordinary:—

In all the actions that a man performs, some part of his life passeth. We die with doing that for which only our sliding life was granted. Nay, though we do nothing, Time keeps his constant pace, and flies as fast in idleness as in employment. Whether we play, or labour, or sleep, or dance, or study, the Sun posteth, and the sand runs. An hour of vice is as long as an hour of virtue. But the difference which follows upon good actions is infinite from that of ill ones. The good, though it diminish our time here, yet it lays up a pleasure for eternity; and will recompense what it taketh away, with a plentiful return at last. When we trade with virtue, we do but buy pleasure with expense of time. So it is not so much a consuming of time, as an exchange. Or as a man sows his corn, he is content to want it a while, that he may, at the harvest, receive it with advantage.

As a piece of writing, this is undeniably fine; and there is something in the cadence of the sentences¹ which suggests that Felltham may have read the work of a man who deserves a place among the essayists for the sake of a single performance only, because in that he attained an excellence of style which makes him, for once, the rival of the greatest masters.

Note

1. The essay Of Time's continual Speed is in the second ‘century’ (in the order of arrangement); but it is not one of those which appeared in the first edition.