mere illustration; his logic into
mere rhetoric.

But when all these things are admitted, the _Ecclesiastical Polity_ remains
a book in which matter and manner are wedded as in few other books of the
same kind. The one characteristic which has been admitted by Hooker's
faintest praisers as well as by his warmest--the golden moderation and
judiciousness of his argument--is perhaps rather calculated to extort
esteem than to arouse admiration. Moderation, like other kinds of probity,
_laudatur et alget_: the adversary is not extremely grateful for not being
pushed to extremity, and those on the same side would at least excuse a
little more vehemence in driving advantages home. But Hooker has other
qualities which are equally estimable and more shining. What especially
distinguishes him from the literary point of view is his almost unique
faculty of diversifying dry and technical argument with outbursts of
rhetoric. These last are not mere purple patches; they do not come in with
the somewhat ostentatious usherment and harbingery which, for instance,
laid the even more splendid bursts of Jeremy Taylor open to the sharp
sarcasm of South. There is nothing theatrical about them; they rise quite
naturally out of the level of discussion and sink into it again, with no
sudden stumble or drop. Nor are they ever (like some of Sidney's poetical
excrescences) tags and hemistichs of unwritten sonnets or songs stuck in
anyhow upon the prose. For instance, Sidney writes: "About the time when
the candles had begun to inherit the sun's office." Now this in a somewhat
quaint and conceited fashion of verse would be excellent. It would also be
excellent in burlesque, and in such prose as Browne's it might conquer its
place victoriously. But except in such a context (which Sidney cannot
weave) it is a _rococo_ ornament, a tawdry beautification. Compare with it
any of the celebrated passages of Hooker, which may be found in the extract
books--the encomium on law, the admirable passage, not so admirable indeed
in the context as it might be but still admirable, about angels, the
vindication of music in the church service. Here the expression, even at
its warmest, is in no sense poetical, and the flight, as it is called,
connects itself with and continues and drops into the ordinary march of
argument in the most natural and imperceptible manner. The elevated
passages of Hooker's style resemble more than anything else those
convenient exploits com