the hundred minuter ones that may follow
it. Voluminously feeble, they imagine expansion is stronger than
compression; and know not to generalise, while they only can deal in
particulars. Prynne's speeches were just as voluminous as his
writings; always deficient in judgment, and abounding in knowledge--he
was always wearying others, but never could himself. He once made a
speech to the House, to persuade them the king's concessions were
sufficient ground for a treaty; it contains a complete narrative of
all the transactions between the king, the Houses, and the army, from
the beginning of the parliament; it takes up 140 octavo pages, and kept
the house so long together, that the debates lasted from Monday
morning till Tuesday morning!

Prynne's literary character may be illustrated by his singular book,
"Histriomastix,"--where we observe how an author's exuberant learning,
like corn heaped in a granary, grows rank and musty, by a want of
power to ventilate and stir about the heavy mass.

This paper-worm may first be viewed in his study, as painted by the
picturesque Anthony Wood; an artist in the Flemish school:--

"His custom, when he studied, was to put on a long quilted cap, which
came an inch over his eyes, serving as an umbrella to defend them from
too much light, and _seldom eating any dinner_, would be every three
hours maunching a roll of bread, and now and then refresh his
exhausted spirits with ale brought to him by his servant;" a custom to
which Butler alludes,

Thou that with ale, or viler liquors,
Didst inspire Withers, Prynne, and Vicars,
And force them, though it were in spite
Of nature, and their stars, to write.

The "HISTRIOMASTIX, the Player's Scourge, or Actor's Tragedie," is a
ponderous quarto, ascending to about 1100 pages; a Puritan's invective
against plays and players, accusing them of every kind of crime,
including libels against Church and State;[107] but it is more
remarkable for the incalculable quotations and references foaming over
the margins. Prynne scarcely ventures on the most trivial opinion,
without calling to his aid whatever had been said in all nations and
in all ages; and Cicero, and Master Stubbs, Petrarch and Minutius
Felix, Isaiah and Froissart's Chronicle, oddly associate in the
ravings of erudition. Who, indeed, but the author "who seldom dined,"
could have quoted perhaps a thousand writers in one volume?[108] A wit
of the times remarked of this _Helluo libr