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John Tillotson (1630–1694)

Autor de The works of the Most Reverend Dr. John Tillotson

29+ Obras 66 Miembros 1 Reseña 1 Preferidas

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Créditos de la imagen: public domain

Obras de John Tillotson

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Eighteenth-Century English Literature (1969) — Autor — 186 copias

Etiquetado

Conocimiento común

Fecha de nacimiento
1630-10
Fecha de fallecimiento
1694-11-22
Género
male
Nacionalidad
England
País (para mapa)
UK
Lugar de nacimiento
Sowerby, Yorkshire, England, UK
Lugares de residencia
London, England, UK
Educación
Clare Hall, Cambridge University
Ocupaciones
Archbishop of Canterbury (1691-1694)
tutor
preacher
lecturer
Dean of St Paul's, London
Premios y honores
Fellow of Clare Hall

Miembros

Reseñas

[From Points of View [1958], Vintage Classics, 2000, “Prose and Dr. Tillotson”, pp. 103, 106-7 & 136-41:]

[...]

The Life of John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury, was written by Thomas Birch and in it he states that “Mr. Dryden frequently owned with pleasure, that if he had any talent for English prose, which must be allowed to have been a great one, it was owing to his having often read his Grace’s writings. And Dr. Swift, whose judgment was not usually biased by excess of civility, vouches (in a letter to a young gentleman lately entered into Holy Orders) the Archbishop the title of excellent.” A little later, Thomas Birch adds, “Mr. Addison considered his writings as the chief standard of our language, and accordingly marked the particular phrases in the sermons published during his Grace’s life-time, as the ground-work for an English dictionary, projected by that elegant writer, when he was out of all public employment after the change of ministry in the reign of Queen Anne.” No one has written better English than these three distinguished authors, Dryden, Swift and Addison, and if it is true that they learnt and profited by the works of Tillotson, it gives him an importance that he would not otherwise have had. It may be that it is not too rash to suggest that if we write as we do now it is in part because the Archbishop wrote as he did.

[...]

If one wanted an instance of the truth of Buffon’s saying that le style est l'homme meme, it would be difficult to do better than to adduce Dr. Tillotson. I propose now to give, as briefly as I can, an account of his life. Though he lived through stirring times, the Civil War, the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, the Restoration, the wars with the Dutch, the Plague, the Fire of London, the Glorious Revolution, his life was strangely uneventful. He was a good man and, as everyone knows, it is harder to write interestingly about a good man than about a bad one. There is a portrait of him in the National Portrait Gallery. It is that of an elderly, good-natured man, somewhat full in the face, but comely and of a pleasing appearance. Except for the canonicals you might take it for the portrait of a prosperous innkeeper. Though with age he grew corpulent, he is said in youth to have been slender and good-looking with eyes full of expression. He seems to have had to a considerable degree a quality which, so far as I know, the seventeenth century did not make the to-do about that we do now – charm. It is a dubious quality, for it is often an attribute of worthless creatures, and then you have to be on your guard against it; but when it is combined with talent, uprightness and high moral character, it makes its happy possessor irresistible.

[...]

The sermons Tillotson had printed in his lifetime were translated into Dutch and French. On publication of the first volume, Monsieur Bernard in the course of a review in his Nouvelles de la République des Lettres remarked that the simplicity of the style “was no inconsiderable part of its merit among the English, so that many, who had no regard for religion, read these sermons merely for the beauty of the language”. “It is to be observed,” he added, “that the English do not love a pompous kind of eloquence, in which all the words are studied and placed with as much care as a statue of a saint in his niche. They are apprehensive of a design to surprise them, when they are approached with so much preparation; and they are zealous lest this elaborate dress should either conceal or disguise the truth. They prefer the simple beauty of nature to all this affected rhetoric, so oppressed, rather than adorned, by a thousand foreign ornaments.” It is a pretty compliment that Monsieur Bernard has paid us, and I should like to think it deserved.

This is the place where by rights I should quote a passage from one of Tillotson's sermons so that the reader might see for himself what manner of writing it was that was so much admired. To do that is not easy. If one were writing, say, about Sir Thomas Browne or Burke, nothing would be easier. The paragraph in Urn Burial that begins with the words, “What song the Syrens sang,” would give anyone a fair impression of Browne’s rich and lovely style; or, with Burke, one would not have to seek far in the Letter to a Noble Lord to find a passage of noble rhetoric which would show him at his peerless best. I would not claim that Tillotson was a great artist. He was no genius. As I have repeatedly said, he was an honest, good, unselfish, pious and modest man. Unless the biographers have greatly deceived us, these are not qualities that are commonly attributes of genius. Tillotson’s style was a workaday style; that of Sir Thomas Browne or of Jeremy Taylor in Holy Dying is not for daily use. It is like those crystal drinking cups, heavily engraved, with rich strands of gold or silver, that the craftsmen of Nuremberg made in the seventeenth century. They are so splendid, so elaborate, so rare, that they can only be put in a glass case. They are very good to look at, but if you are thirsty, a plain tumbler will serve your purpose better. Tillotson wrote his sermons to be delivered from the pulpit. He wrote simply and naturally, so that everyone should understand his meaning. He avoided rhetoric, high-sounding words, flowers of speech, the conceits that were fashionable at the time, similes and metaphors which might distract the listener from the purport of his address. It was like the conversation of a man of adequate learning, who knew what he wanted to say and was at pains to say it clearly and correctly. It is merely a matter of taste whether you like the conversational style or not; many distinguished writers, Flaubert for instance, have detested it: others have thought that it added to the dignity of letters to write in a formal manner, and have sought (often with success) by abundant use of balance, the triad and antithesis to give their productions a stately elegance. It is true that when you compare with these prose written in the conversational style, you may very well think that there is nothing much to it. It is not without hesitation, then, that I will quote some reflections which Tillotson wrote in shorthand in his commonplace book and which can never have been meant to be published. I will quote them not only for their manner, but for their matter. I do not think anyone can read them without sympathising with that maligned and amiable man.

“One would be apt to wonder that Nehemiah should reckon a huge bill of fare and a vast number of promiscuous guests among his virtues and good deeds, for which he desires God to remember him. But, upon better consideration, besides the bounty and sometimes charity, of a great table (provided there be nothing of vanity or ostentation in it) there may be exercised two very considerable virtues; one is temperance, and the other is self-denial, in a man’s being contented, for the sake of the public, to deny himself so much as to sit down every day to a feast, and to eat continually in a crowd, and almost never alone, especially when, as it often happens, a great part of the company that a man may have is the company that a man would not have. I doubt it will prove but a melancholy business, when a man comes to die, to have made a great noise and bustle in the world and to have been known far and near, but all this while to have been hid and concealed from himself. It is a very odd and fantastical sort of life for a man to be continually from home and most of all a stranger in his own house.

“It is surely an uneasy thing to sit always in a frame and to be perpetually on a man’s guard; not to be able to speak a careless word or to use a negligent posture without observation and censure.

“Men are apt to think that they who are in the highest places and have the most power, have more liberty to say and do what they please. But it is quite otherwise; for they have the least liberty because they are most observed. It is not mine own observation; a much wiser man (I mean Tully) says, ‘In maxima quoque fortuna minimum licere.’ They that are in the highest and greatest condition have of all others the least liberty.

“In a moderate station it is sufficient for a man to be indifferently wise. Such a man has the privilege to commit little follies and mistakes without having any great notice taken of them. But he that lives in the light, i.e., in the view of all men, his actions are exposed to everybody's observation and censure.

“We ought to be glad when those that are fit for government, and called to it, are willing to take the burden of it upon them; yea, and to be very thankful to them too that they will be at the pains, and can have the patience, to govern and to live publicly. Therefore it is happy for the world that there are some who are born and bred up to it; and that custom has made it easy, or at least tolerable to them. Else who that is wise would undertake it, since it is certainly much easier of the two to obey a just and wise government (I had almost said any government) than to govern justly and wisely. Not that I find fault with those who apply themselves to public business and affairs. They do well and we are beholden to them. Some by their education, and being bred up to great things, and to be able to bear and manage great business with more ease than others, are peculiarly fitted to serve God and the public in this way; and they that do are worthy of double honour.

“The advantage which men have by a more devout and retired and contemplative life is that they are not distracted about many things; their minds and affections arc set upon one thing; and the whole stream and force of their affections run one way. All their thoughts and endeavours are united in one great end and design, which makes their life all of a piece, and to be consistent with itself throughout.

“Nothing but necessity or the hope of doing more good than a man is capable of doing in a private state (which a modest man will not easily presume concerning himself) can recompense the trouble and uneasiness of a more public and busy life.”

In order not to tire the reader I leave out three or four paragraphs. The end of this piece is as follows:

“The capacity and opportunity of doing greater good is the specious pretence under which ambition is wont to cover the eager desire of power and greatness. If it be said (which is the most spiteful thing that can be said) that some ambition is necessary to vindicate a man from being a fool: to this I think it may be fairly answered, and without offence, that there may perhaps be as much ambition in declining greatness as in courting it; only it is of a more unusual kind, and the example of it is less dangerous because it is not like to be contagious.”

This passage was evidently written au courant de la plume, and it is probable that if the harassed Archbishop had revised it, he would have altered a word and a construction here and there, and tightened it up; but for all that, I do not think it an inadequate sample of his simple and honest style. It is likely enough that on reading it you may say to yourself, “Well, there’s nothing extraordinary about it; anyone might write like that.” There is a picture in the Museum of Modem Art at New York by the Dutch painter, Mondrian, which consists of a few black lines and one red one which divide the white ground into oblongs and squares. For a reason that I have never discovered, when you have once seen it, you can never quite forget it. There is something about it that is strangely haunting. It means nothing, and why it so curiously disturbs, and at the same time satisfies you, you cannot tell. It looks as though you had only to take a ruler, a tube of black paint and a tube of red, and you could do the thing yourself. Try.
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WSMaugham | Jul 12, 2018 |

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