Hooker
Excerpts from
Development of English Literature and Language
by
Alfred H. Welsh
 
Style Methodical, correct, ample, massive, and grand; idiomatic without vulgarity, and learned without pedantry ... Some of his periods are cumbrous and intricate, but in general they roll melodiously on, with the serene 
Rank By universal consent one of the great in English letters. A learned divine without fanaticism. A persuasive logician, from the chain of whose reasoning it is hard to detach a link, without a fracture. A philosopher whose breadth and power of mind are shown not only in the conception and application of one majestic principle, but in the exhibition of many principles harmoniously related. None before him had his grasp and largeness; few after him have been so comprehensive. As he was one of the loftiest of thinkers, so he was one of the most practical. The idea that shone in the heaven of contemplation, radiated in a thousand directions on the earth. Worthy to be regarded not only as one of the fathers of the English Church, but as one of the chief founders of English prose.
Character Grave, mild, modest, devout; in youth ardently studious. and in manhood conspicuous equally for learning and for eloquence ... His body was feeble, his soul capacious. He suffered much, yet was without fretful or morbid quality, resolved, like Socrates, to make a noble use of racking pains and sordid annoyances ... His intelligence was essentially moral; and, by the alchemy of his rare spirit, all knowledge and experience were transmuted into celestialized reason.
Influence To Hooker belongs the merit of first fully developing the English language as a vehicle of refined and philosophic thought. His work is monumental ... A man of noble piety is in a community like a flower that fills the whole house with its fragrance; and the children born there a hundred years later are better born than elsewhere, because the man spread the sweetness of his character there, and uplifted the vulgar when they knew it not. Above all, Hooker introduced into polemics a new spirit and method - philosophical rather than theological. Against the dogmatism of creed he set the authority of reason, to which he gave so large a place that never, even to this day, has it made a similar advance.

 
 

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