l6o BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES of the Rabelaisian revelry, testify to a certain vigour of constitution (conspicuous in the bill of fare of Epigram loi, already mentioned), and make us envy the generations who scarcely knew that they had nerves. As Wilkinson says again : "The hospitalities of other times enabled the guests to digest hard things, for which their successors have no stomachs : courage and clanship and bold ambition haunted the boars' heads and smoking beeves, and horns of mead and of wine. The revellers were firmer in friendship, brighter in honour, softer in love, and stronger in battle, for the spirits which descended upon the hall." The other charges need not be discussed at length, being partly disposed of in what has been said already. We admit that Ben was passionately kind and angry ; but know that such a character is rarely, if ever, vindictive, and find no trace of vindictiveness in his life or works. Although by no means strait- laced, he seems to have been sincerely religious, and warmly attached to the Church of England, to which he was re-converted by patient study and reflection. His few devotional pieces are very earnest and solemn, and darkened with hypochondria such as lowered on his namesake of the next century. I know nothing to make us doubt that right through his life he was governed by the principles announced in the passage cited from the dedication to "Volpone" (p. loo): " For my particular, I can, and from a most clear conscience, affirm that I have ever trembled to think toward the least profaneness ; have loathed the use of such foul and unwashed bawdry as is now made the food of the scene." Abhorrence of the
