nt to it, and the king was
not offended with his freedom."[4] He did not hesitate to endanger his
favour with the king--perhaps not with him, for Charles was not by
temper a persecutor, but with the party then in power. From the 'Church
of England in the Reigns of the Stuarts,' I quote another instance of
his moderation and clear-headedness in the fierce controversies of his
time. In a conversation with Cosin, Bishop of Devon, who had censured
him for his moderation, Wilkins frankly told him that he was a better
friend to the Church of England than his lordship--"for while you," says
he, "are for setting the top on the picqued end and downwards, you won't
be able to keep it up any longer than you keep whipping and scourging;
whereas I am for setting the broad end downwards, and so 'twill stand of
itself." The metaphor has obvious defects, but expresses the broadness
of the Broad party in the Church.

Of Wilkins' work in his diocese few particulars are recorded: it is
called by Wood the "kill Bishop see," a name which now happily it does
not deserve. His had been a laborious life, and the last years of it
must have been full of difficulties and anxieties to the friend of an
unpopular cause. After four years' tenure of his bishopric, he died in
the year 1672, at the age of fifty-eight, in Tillotson's house: he was
buried in the churchyard of St Lawrence Jewry, his old vicarage. His
College pupil, William Lloyd, preached the funeral sermon, in which he
defends him against the charge of having looked with too much favour on
the dissenters, urging as his excuse, "the vehemence of his desire to
bring the Dissenters off their prejudices, and reduce them to the Unity
of the Church"; no bad defence.

It is pleasant to turn from Wilkins' public to his private life. There
are many allusions to him in the Diaries of Pepys and Evelyn.

Pepys made his first acquaintance with Wilkins in 1665: he was now a man
widely known in London society, especially among learned men and natural
philosophers. Pepys describes his first visit to him, paid at his house,
then probably the Vicarage of St Lawrence Jewry. "And so to Dr Merritt"
(a Fellow of the Royal Society), "and fine discourse among them to my
great joy, so sober and ingenious: he is now upon finishing his
discourse of a Universal Character." At a dinner-party later he met
Wilkins, when "I choosing to sit next Dr Wilkins, Sir George Ent, and
others whome I value, there talked of sever