Already we have seen that some of our earliest humorists were ecclesiastics, and it would be unfitting that we should here overlook three eminent men, Donne, Hall, and Fuller. Pleasantry was with them little more than a vehicle of instruction; the object was not to entertain, but to enforce and illustrate their moral sentiments. Hence their sober quaintness never raises a laugh, much less does it border upon the profane or indelicate.

Donne was born in 1573, in London, and was educated, as was not then uncommon, first at Oxford, and then at Cambridge. His ability in church controversy attracted the attention of James, and he was made chaplain to the King. He became preacher at Lincoln's Inn, and afterwards was made Dean of St. Paul's. He lived to be fifty-eight.

His sermons are full of antitheses and epigrammatic diction. There is an airy lightness in his letters and poems, but he scarcely ever actually reaches humour. The following poem, an epistle to Sir Edmund Herbert at Juliers, will give an idea of his style.

"Man is a lump, where all beasts kneaded be,
Wisdom makes him an ark where all agree;
The fool in whom these beasts do live at jar,
Is sport to others, and a theatre.
Nor scapes he so, but is himself their prey,
All which was man in him is eat away,
And now his beasts on one another feed,
Yet couple in anger, and new monsters breed.
How happy's he, which hath due place assigned
To his beasts, and disaforested his mind!
Empaled himself to keep them out, not in,
Can sow, and dares trust corn where they've been;
Can use his horse, goat, wolf, and every beast,
And is not ass himself to all the rest."

Bishop Hall was born in 1574, and commenced his extensive literary labours by writing when twenty-three years of age, at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, three books of satires called VirgidemiÆ. These books he calls "Toothless Satyres, poetical, academical, and moral," and he attacks bad writers, astrologers, drunkards, gallants, and others. Alluding to the superabundance of indifferent poetry in his days, he says:—

"Let them, that mean by bookish business
To earn their bread, or holpen to profess
Their hard-got skill, let them alone for me
Busy their brains with deeper bookery.
Great gains shall bide you sure, when ye have spent
A thousand lamps, and thousand reams have rent
Of needless papers; and a thousand nights
Have burned out with costly candle-lights."

In the following year, he produced three books of "Byting Satyres." In these he laughs at the effeminacy of the times—the strange dresses and high heels.

"When comely striplings wish it were their chance
For CÆnis' distaff to exchange their lance,
And wear curled periwigs, and chalk their face
And still are poring on their pocket-glass;
Tired with pinned ruffs and fans and partlet strips
And busks and verdingales about their hips;
And tread on corked stilts, a prisoner's pace,
And make their napkin for a spitting place,
And gripe their waist within a narrow span,
Fond CÆnis that wouldst wish to be a man!"

The most severe is against the Pope:—

"To see an old shorn lozel perched high
Crossing beneath a golden canopy;
The whiles a thousand hairless crowns crouch low
To kiss the precious case of his proud toe;
And for the lordly fasces borne of old
To see two quiet crossed keys of gold;
But that he most would gaze and wonder at
To the horned mitre and the bloody hat,
The crooked staff, the cowl's strange form and store
Save that he saw the same in hell before;
To see the broken nuns, with new shorn heads
In a blind cloister toss their idle heads."

Although Bishop Hall wrote learnedly and voluminously on theological subjects, this light medley is now more esteemed than his graver works. He claimed upon the strength of it to be the earliest English satirist, and perhaps none of our writings of this kind had as yet been of equal importance. The work was one of those condemned to the flames by Whitgift and Bancroft.

Fuller was born in Northamptonshire, in 1608. He became a distinguished man at Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship at Sidney Sussex College. He was also an eminent preacher in London, and a prebendary of Salisbury. In the Civil War, being a stanch Royalist, he was driven from place to place, and held at one time the interesting post of "Infant Lady's Chaplain" to the Princess Henrietta. In his "Worthies of England," Fuller not only enumerates the eminent men for which each country is distinguished, but gives an account of its products and proverbs. "A Proverb is much matter decocted into few words. Six essentials are wanting to it—that it be short, plain, common, figurative, ancient, true." The most ordinary subject is enlivened by his learned and humorous mind. Thus, in Bedfordshire, under the head of "Larks," he tells us, "The most and best of these are caught and well-dressed about Dunstable in this shire. A harmless bird while living, not trespassing on grain, and wholesome when dead, then filling the stomach with meat, as formerly the ear with music. In winter they fly in flocks, probably the reason why Alauda signifieth in Latin both a lark and a legion of soldiers; except any will say a legion is so called because helmeted on their heads and crested like a lark, therefore also called in Latin Galerita. If men would imitate the early rising of this bird, it would conduce much unto their healthfulness."

Fuller abounds with figures and illustrations in which learning and humour are excellently intermingled. "They that marry where they do not love, will love where they do not marry." "He knows little, who will tell his wife all he knows." Speaking of children, he says that a man complained that never father had so undutiful a child as he. "Yes," said the son, "my grandfather had." Alluding to servants, and saying that the Emperor Charles the Fifth being caught in a tempest had many horses thrown overboard to save the lives of the slaves—which were not of so great market-value—he asks, "Are there not many that in such a case had rather save Jack the horse than Jockey the keeper?" Of widows' evil speaking he observes, "Foolish is their project who, by raking up bad savours against their former husbands, think thereby to perfume their bed for a second marriage." Of celibacy he says, "If Christians be forced to run races for their lives, the unmarried have the advantage of being lighter by many ounces!"

Speaking of the "Controversial Divine," he says, "What? make the Muses, yea the Graces scolds? Such purulent spittle argues exulcerated lungs. Why should there be so much railing about the body of Christ, when there was none about the body of Moses in the act kept betwixt the devil and Michael, the Archangel?" On schoolmasters he wrote, "That schoolmaster deserves to be beaten himself, who beats Nature in a boy for a fault. And I question whether all the whipping in the world can make their parts, that are naturally sluggish, rise one minute before the hour Nature hath appointed."

The following are some good sayings that have been selected from his works by an eminent humorist:—

To this we may add something from his "Holy State,"—a pleasant and profitable work, in which Fuller is happy in making his humour subserve the best ends:—Of "The Good Wife," he says, "She never crosseth her husband in the spring-tide of his anger, but stays till it be ebbing-water. And then mildly she argues the matter, not so much to condemn him as to acquit herself. Surely men, contrary to iron, are worst to be wrought upon when they are hot, and are far more tractable in cold blood. It is an observation of seamen, 'That if a single meteor or fire-ball falls on their mast, it portends ill-luck; but if two come together (which they count Castor and Pollux) they presage good success.' But sure in a family it bodeth most bad when two fire balls (husband's and wife's anger) both come together." In speaking of good parents, he says, "A father that whipt his son for swearing, and swore at him while he whipt him, did more harm by his example than good by his correction."