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other questions, how shorthand went on, and I said that more persons were desirous to learn. After dinner I sat to the table, and drank a few glasses of champagne. Mr. Law eat of the soup, beef, &c., and drank two glasses of red wine-one, Church and King; the other, All Friends. Mr. Gibbon fell asleep.. He (Mr. Law) read over Slater's catalogue, and not one book could he find that he wanted. His grace before meat the same as ours; and that after not much different, ending with God bless the Church and King. He asked me if I cared to walk out in the afternoon, and we did; and when we were out he said, Well, have you made any more Quakers? And we went up to the high walk, when we soon fell a-talking about Mr. Walker, and how it was all owing to Mrs. Bourignon,' who was all delusion, which he argued much about, as if it was the chief topic that he intended upon at that time, and mentioned a manuscript of Freyer's wherein it was said that he had sent her forty-five contradictions extracted from her works. He said that she was peevish, fretful, and plainly against the sacrifice of Christ, which Mr. Poiret vindicated, and mentioned the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (this was as we were going in again), and seemed to say that she was a Quaker, though she wrote against them; that she made nothing of it; that she could not tell what to do with the people that came to her, nor they with her; that she kept her money; that she was against priests; and then, when to write against the Quakers, she pretended to honour them; that if he had been of her admirers he would have burnt that book, that it should not have been known that she had writ such a book; and, upon my interjecting some little excuses for her, he seemed to be very warm. When I mentioned that the greatest things that could be said had been, in short, by the apostles, as, "Be ye followers of me as I am of

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Christ;" "The life which I live, not I, but Christ that liveth in me," he said, "Why, you are worse than he, I think," meaning Mr. Walker; and when I was for not condemning her, but taking the good only wherein she agreed with others, he said that it was not enough to do so; but, if she was a deluded person, to talk of her as such, or to that effect. I find much repugnancy in me to condemn her.'

'On Friday, 15th, Mr. Law said of Madam Guion' that, though she was much more prudent than Mrs. Bourignon, yet, carried away, that she played at cards with. Ramsay; and I said that it was as easy to suppose that Ramsay might tell a lie, being such a gay one as he said, as that she might play at cards with him, and he seemed to say so, that it might. He said, when I mentioned her commentaries upon the New Testament, that they would not do in English, nor Mrs. B.'s; but that they were flat and not bearable (that is, Mrs. Bourignon's).'

The suggestion of Byrom, in which Law also seems to have acquiesced, that, because a man played at cards and was a gay one,' he might probably be a liar-illogical and uncharitable as it may sound to us-was thoroughly characteristic of that tone of thought which made hardly any distinction between what it called 'worldly' and what was positively immoral. Soon after this interview, Byrom met the Mr. Walker referred to in it, and mentioned his going to see Mr. Law, whom he said he should be glad to meet, but not to go in the rain to Putney. I said that he that had gone beyond sea [he had just returned from a visit to Holland] to see three gentlemen, not to go such a little way to see one that had been friendly to him, and was a proper person!-till he broke out at last, that I knew not his reasons for acting, and— and so he went away, and I

1 For an account of Madame Guyon, see infra pp. 158-168.

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desired him to stay; but he went, and just came up again to say, "Pray, when you see Mr. Law, my service to him; and I said, "Stay, come up! hark ye!" but he went away.' And really, knowing as we do the warm reception which this disciple of Madame Bourignon would have met with from Law, we can hardly help feeling a sense of relief to hear that he did not beard the lion in his den. It looks at first sight as if Byrom wished to let him into a trap; but it was not so. Byrom was the kindliest and humblest of men living; he was only anxious for his friend's good, and he knew no more 'proper person' to effect this than Mr. Law; nor was he in the least ironical when he spoke of Law as 'friendly.' He knew, no doubt, that Law had a rod in pickle for Mr. Walker; but it was only to smite him friendly,' and he never dreamt of the possibility of anyone objecting to be scolded by the Putney sage any more than he did himself.

Other friends, however, were quite willing to accompany Byrom in his visits to Putney. It is hoped that the reader will not be wearied with the account of one more such visit. In April 1737, Byrom tells us, 'W. Chaddock asked if I was for going to Putney; and we went thither; and I told him to go himself, and if Mr. Law was there, and gave opportunity, I would come to them, and he would let me know; and I walked in the lane thereby. So he went, and soon after they both came out, and I came to them, and Mr. Law said nobody but one that was vapoured with drinking tea would have not come in; and he talked about Madame Guyon and her forty books, though she talked of the power of quiet and silence, which he believed was a good thing-that, indeed, it was all, if one had it; but that a person that was to reform the world could not be a great writer; that the persons who were to reform the world had not appeared yet; that it would be reformed to

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be sure; that the writers against Quakerism were not proper persons, for they writ against the Spirit, in effect, and gave the Quakers an advantage; that the Quakers were a subtle, worldly-minded people; that they began with the contempt of learning, riches, &c., but now were a politic, worldly society, and strange people, which word he used for them after I had shown him Thos. Smith's letter to S. Haynes, and F. H.'s to Mary Sutton, to which last, Well, and what is there in all this? And when I said, a little while after, that they would be glad to know in what manner to answer Smith's letter, or whether to take any notice of it, he said there was nothing in it worth notice, or required answering, if they had no mind. I told him of Smith's leaving a copy of verses with her, and then it was that he said they were strange people. He commended Taulerus, Rusbrochius, T. à Kempis, and the old Roman Catholic writers, and disliked, or seemed to condemn, Mrs. Bourignon, Guion, for their volumes, and describing of states which ought not to be described. When I mentioned J. Behmen as a writer of many books, he said that it was by force that he had writ; that he desired that all his books had been in one; that, besides, he did not undertake to reform the world as these persons had done; that, if Mrs. Bou. had lived, why she would have writ twenty more books, and Poiret had published them! I mentioned the old people, Hermas, Dionysius, Macarius, whom he commended-especially, I think, Macarius. I just asked him which particular books were the best and safest, and, at our coming away, W. Chad. asked that question particularly; but he said, Another time, and gave no answer to it then, having asked us before if we lay in town all night, and me, if I was not afraid of being robbed; to which I said, No, no; and thought after that it was better to be robbed of money

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than instruction. We came away late, it being just near ten when we got to Richard's coffee-house, where we drank a dish of tea.'

.

Byrom little knew the deep interest which would attach to the following entry in his journal, which, though only indirectly connected with my subject, I cannot forbear quoting: 'Putney, Sund. May 15, 1737. They have had great doings here at the christening of Mr. Gibbon's son.. Our landlady says that his lady had no fortune, but was a young lady of good family and reputation, and that old Mr. Gibbon led her to church and back again.' It need scarcely be said that the child was afterwards England's greatest historian.

A few months later, 'old Mr. Gibbon' was himself 'led to church,' never to come back again ;' and his death broke up the establishment at Putney-not, however, immediately. Mr. Law appears still to have remained, off and on, at Putney for two or three years, but evidently in an unsettled state. Byrom never visited him there again; but the two friends continually met in Somerset Gardens, at the back of the Strand. Law, at this time, seems to have had lodgings in London; for we constantly find such entries as these in Byrom's journal: 'Went to Somerset Gardens; found Mr. Law there. Went home with him to his room.' One entry is quite plaintive: 'I have been walking in Somerset Gardens a long while, in expectation of meeting Mr. Law there, who is in town, and I am welly tired.' The entries at this period seem to me to indicate that Law was a good deal worried, as he might well be, since the comfort`able home in which he had lived for at least ten years was broken up, and the good man knew not what he was to do next. This may account for the increased asperity of his conversation, which Byrom faithfully records, though it often bears hardly upon himself. For instance, we read: