 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
Hereditary Genius
269
as I said before, there is an air as of the sick-room running through
the collection, but to a much less degree than in religious biographies
that I have elsewhere read. A gently complaining, and fatigued spirit,
is that in which Evangelical Divines are very apt to pass their days.
It is curious how large a part of religious biographies is commonly
given up to the occurrences of the sick-room. We can easily
understand why considerable space should be devoted to such
matters, because it is on the death-bed that the believer's sincerity is
most surely tested; but this is insufficient to account for all we find in
Middleton and elsewhere. There is, I think, an actual pleasure shown
by Evangelical writers in dwelling on occurrences that disgust most
people. Rivet, a French divine, has strangulation of the intestines,
which kills him after twelve days' suffering. The remedies attempted,
each successive pang, and each corresponding religious ejaculation is
recorded, and so the history of his bowel-attack is protracted through
forty-five pages, which is as much space as is allotted to the entire
biographies of four average divines. Mede's death, and its cause, is
described with equal minuteness, and with still more repulsive details,
but in a less diffused form.
I have thus far shown that 26 Divines out of the 196, or one-eighth
part of them, were certainly invalids, and I have laid much stress on
the hypothesis that silence about health does not mean healthiness;
however, I can add other reasons to corroborate my very strong
impression that the Divines are, on the whole, an ailing body of men. I
can show that the number of persons mentioned as robust are
disproportionately few, and I would claim a comparison between the
numbers of the notably weak and the notably strong, rather than one
between the notably weak and the rest of the 196. In professions
where men are obliged to speak much in public,
 |
|
 |
|