troversy; nay, he tells us that it is permitted to jeer, and play the droll, or in his own words, de boufonner, since the writings of the holy fathers afford so many instances. It is still more singular, when he not only brings forward as an example of this ribaldry, Elijah mocking at the false divinities, but God himself bantering the first man after his fall. He justifies the injurious epithets which he has so liberally bestowed on his adversaries by the example of Jesus Christ and the apostles! It was on these grounds also that the celebrated Paschal apologized for the invectives with which he has occasionally disfigured his Provincial Letters.

WARE, in his Irish writers, informs us of one Henry Fitzsermon, an Irish Jesuit, who was imprisoned for his papistical designs and seditious preaching. During his confinement he proved himself to have been a great amateur of controversy. He said " he was like a bear tied to a stake, and wanted somebody to bait him." This kind office was zealously undertaken by the learned Usher, then a young man. He engaged to dispute with him once a week on the subject of antichrist! They met several times. It appears that our bear was out worried, and declined any further dog-baiting. This spread an universal joy through the Protestants in Dublin. Such was the spirit of those times, which appears to have been very

different from our own. Dr. Disney gives an anecdote of a modern bishop who was just advanced to a mitre; his bookseller begged to republish a popular theological tract of his against another bishop, because he might now meet him on equal terms. My lord answered-" Mr. *** no more controversy now!" Our good Bishop resembled Baldwin, who, from a simple monk, arrived to the honour of the See of Canterbury.-The successive honours successively changed his manners. Urban

the Second inscribed his brief to him in this concise description-Balduino Monastio ferventissimo, abbate calido, Episcopo tepido, Archiepiscope

remisso!

On the subject of literary controversies one cannot pass over the various sects of the scholastics, and one might easily compile a volume of their ferocious wars (which in more than one instance were accompanied by stones and daggers) were it worth compiling; of these things a little is a good deal. The most memorable, on account of the extent, the violence and duration of their contests, are those of the NOMINALISTS and REA

LISTS.

It was a most subtle question assuredly, and the world thought for a long while that their happiness depended on deciding whether universals (that is genera) have a real essence, and exist independent of particulars (that is species)-Whe

ther for instance, we could form an idea of asses, prior to individual asses? Rosseline in the eleventh century adopted the opinion that universals have no real existence, either before, or in individuals, but are mere names and words by which the kind of individuals is expressed. A tenet propagated by Abelard, which produced the sect of the Nominalists. But the Realists asserted that universals existed independent of individuals, -though they were somewhat divided between the various opinions of Plato and Aristotle. Of the Realists the most famous were Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. The cause of the Nominalists was almost desperate, till Occam in the fourteenth century revived the dying embers. Louis XI. adopted the Nominalists, and the Nominalists flourished at large in France and Germany; but unfortunately Pope John XXIII. patronised the Realists, and throughout Italy it was dangerous for a Nominalist to open his mouth. The French king wavered, and the Pope triumphed; his majesty published an edict in 1474, in which he silenced for ever the Nominalists; and ordered their books to be fastened up in their libraries with iron chains, that they might not be read by students! The leaders of that sect fled into England and Germany, where they united their forces with Luther and the first Reformers.

Nothing could exceed the violence with which these disputes were conducted. Vives himself, quoted

by Brucker, saw the contests, and says that "when the contending parties had exhausted their stock of verbal abuse, they often came to blows; and it was not uncommon in these quarrels about universals, to see the combatants engaging not only with their fists, but with clubs and swords, so that many have been wounded, and some killed."

I add a curious extract from John of Salisbury, on this war of words, which Mosheim has given us in his Ecclesiastical History. He observes on all this terrifying nonsense, "that there had been more time consumed in it, than the Cæsars had employed in making themselves masters of the world; that the riches of Croesus were inferior to the treasures that had been exhausted in this controversy; and that the contending parties, after having spent their whole lives on this single point, had neither been so happy as to determine it to their satisfaction, nor to make in the labyrinths of science where they had been groping any discovery that was worth the pains they had taken." It may be added that Ramus having attacked Aristotle, for "teaching us chimeras" all his scholars revolted; the parliament put a stop to his lectures, and at length having brought the matter into a law court, he was declared to be "insolent and daring"-the king proscribed his works, he was ridiculed on the stage, and hissed at by his scholars. When at length during the plague,

he opened again his schools, he drew on himself a fresh storm by reforming the pronunciation of the letter Q, which they then pronounced like K-Kiskis for Quisquis, and Kamkam for Quamquam. This innovation was once more laid to his charge; A new rebellion! and a new ejection of the Anti-Aristotelian! The brother of that Gabriel Harvey who was the friend of Spenser, and with Gabriel had been the whetstone of the town wits of his time, distinguished himself by his wrath against the Stagyrite. After having with Gabriel predicted an earthquake, and alarmed the kingdom, which never took place, (that is the earthquake, not the alarm) the wits buffeted him. Nash says of him that " Tarlton at the theatre made jests of him, and Elderton consumed his ale-crammed nose to nothing, in bear-baiting him with whole bundles of ballads." Marlow declared him to be "an ass fit only to preach of the iron age." Stung to madness by this lively nest of hornets, he avenged himself in a very cowardly manner-he attacked Aristotle himself! for he set Aristotle with his heels upwards on the school gates at Cambridge, and with asses ears on his head!

But this controversy concerning Aristotle and the school divinity was even prolonged so late as in the last century. Father De Benedictis, a Je