231 



SACHEVERELL, HENRY, D.D. 



SACHS, HANS. 



2"2 



At college Sacheverell was chamber-fellow with Addison, and they 

 remained intimate friends till politics separated them thirty years 

 after. To Sacheverell Addison inscribed in a very affectionate dedica- 

 tion his ' Farewell to the Muses,' written in 1694, when he intended to 

 enter into holy orders. Sacheverell himself also cultivated both 

 English and Latin poetry ; several of his pieces in Latin verse (some 

 ascribed to his pupils, but others with hia own name affixed to them) 

 are contained in the ' Musse Anglican'* and he is the author of a 

 translation into rhyme of part of Virgil's ' First Georgic,' dedicated 

 to Dryden, which is printed in the third volume of Nichols's ' Collec- 

 tion of Poems.' 



Sacheverell became a Fellow of his college, and appears to have been 

 rather celebrated and successful as a college tutor. The Whig accounts 

 of him indeed are full of stories to his disadvantage in this as in every 

 other part of his career, but they have all the air of the inventions or 

 exaggerations of party malice. Among other things it is asserted that 

 he was refused ordination by Dr. Lloyd, bishop of Lichfield and Co- 

 ventry (afterwards of Worcester), on the ground of his deficiency both 

 in divinity and classical knowledge; but afterwards, it is added, he 

 was, on the recommendation of the bishop of Oxford, admitted into 

 holy orders by this same Lloyd, " with particular marks of favour." 

 He took his degree of M.A. in 1696, of B.D. in 1707, and of D.D. in 

 1708. The first living he held was Cannock in Staffordshire, but in 

 1705 he was appointed preacher of St. Saviour's, Southwark ; and it 

 was while in this situation that he delivered his two famous sermons, 

 the first at the assizes at Derby, on the 15th of August, 1709, the 

 second before the lord-mayor at St. Paul's, on the 5th of November 

 in the same year. These discourses, having been printed, were both 

 in December following brought under the notice of the House of 

 Commons, which passed a resolution denouncing them as " malicious, 

 scandalous, and seditious libels, highly reflecting upon her majesty and 

 government, the late happy revolution and the Protestant succession as 

 by law established, and both houses of parliament, tending to alienate 

 the affections of her majesty's good subjects, and to create jealousies 

 and divisions among them." The author and printer were at the same 

 time ordered to attend at the bar of the House, which they did accord- 

 ingly on the next day (14th December) ; and then, after he had 

 admitted the authorship of the sermons, it was moved and carried 

 that Sacheverell should be impeached of high crimes and misde- 

 meanours. It is asserted by Swift and other authorities that Sacheve- 

 rell's real offence, in the eye of the Whig ministry of the day, was his 

 having in one of his two discourses pointed, as was conceived, at the 

 lord-treasurer Godolphin, in a passage about " the crafty insidiousness 

 of such wiley Volpones." Volpone seems to have been before this a 

 popular nickname of Godolphin. 



After various preliminary proceedings, the trial commenced before 

 the House of Lords in Westminster Hall on the 27th of February 

 1710, and lasted till the 20th of March, on which day a majority of 

 their lordships (69 to 52) pronounced Sacheverell guilty ; and three 

 days after, sentence was passed, adjudging him not to preach for three 

 years ensuing, and ordering his two sermons to be burnt by the 

 common hangman. The populace, who had espoused the cause of the 

 accused, considering him, with the great majority of the clergy, as the 

 champion of the Church, celebrated this impotent conclusion of the 

 affair with bonfires and other rejoicings both in London and all over 

 the kingdom ; and when, in May following, he set out to take posses- 

 sion of the living of Salatin in Shropshire, to which he had been pre- 

 sented, his journey to Oxford, and thence by Banbury, Warwick, and 

 Wrexham to his preferment, was a continued triumph ; which was 

 prolonged as he returned to London through Shrewsbury, Bridgenorth, 

 Ludlow, Worcester, and other towns. It is admitted on all hands 

 that nothing had so much effect as this affair of Sacheverell's in influ- 

 encing the general election which took place this same autumn, and 

 the immediate consequence of which was the overthrow of Godolphin 

 and his colleagues. 



On the expiration of his sentence in March 1713, Sacheverell preached 

 at St. Saviour's church, on the Christian triumph, or the duty of 

 praying for our enemies, and again published his discourse. " I have 

 been reading Sacheverell's long dull sermon, which he sent me," says 

 his friend Swift, in his Journal to Stella, under date of April 4th ; " it 

 is the first sermon since his suspension has expired, but not a word 

 in it upon the occasion, except two or three remote hints." In a pre- 

 ceding entry he mentions that Sacheverell himself had told him the 

 bookseller had given him 1001. for the sermon, and intended to print 

 30,000. "I believe," adds Swift, "he will be confoundedly bit, and 

 will hardly sell one-half." Of his St. Paul's sermon, Bttrnet states 

 that about 40,000 copies were supposed to have been printed and 

 dispersed over the nation. The new House of Commons, by way of 

 marking their disapprobation of the former proceedings against him, 

 appointed him to preach the sermon before them on the anniversary 

 of the Restoration ; and the court followed in the same course. Within 

 a month after the removal of his suspension the queen presented him 

 to the valuable rectory of St. Andrew, Holborn ; and it appears that 

 he had interest enough with the new ministers to procure also a 

 handsome provision for one of his brothers. He had besides the good 

 fortune to have a considerable estate at Callow in Derbyshire left to him 

 by his kinsman, George Sacheverell, Esq. He never appeared again as an 

 author, except in a dedication prefixed to n volume of posthumous ser- 



mons by the Rev. W. Adams, published in 1716; but he is stated to 

 have made some noise in the world by his quarrels and law-suits with his 

 parishioners a sort of stimulus which hia system possibly required after 

 his having played so remarkable a part in the greater field of national 

 affairs ; but he was evidently a weak and excessively vain and selfish 

 man. He was also suspected of being concerned in the alleged plot of 

 his friend Atterbury, who is believed to have written the defence which 

 he delivered on his impeachment, and to whom, then in exile, he left 

 a legacy of 500?. at his death, which took place on the 5th of June, 

 1724. From the Stuart papers it would seem that he was certainly 

 concerned in the plot for restoring the Stuarts, as in the ' Minute of 

 what was resolved on by his Majesty (the Pretender) and Earl Boling- 

 brokc, October 14, 1715,' quoted by Lord Mahon, 'Hist, of Eng.,' i., 

 chap. 2, is this entry : "Sacheverell to make his way to the king (on 

 his landing), unless he can be more useful in London." 



(State Trials, vol. xv., pp. 1-522 ; Parliamentary History, vol. vi., 

 pp. 805-887 ; Burnet, History of his Own Time, ii., 537, &c. ; Boyer, 

 History of the Reign of Queen Anne, pp. 406, &c. ; Tindal, Continuation 

 of Rapin, vol. iv., pp. 149, &c. ; Swift, Journal : Four Last Years of 

 the Queen, and other works; Duchess of Marlborough, Account of her 

 Conduct. A note in Howell's 'State Trials,' vol. xv., p. 14, informs 

 us that "there is a curious passage about Sacheverell in Harris's 

 'James II.,' p. 184;" but Harris wrote no life of James II., nor can 

 we find Sacheverell mentioned in any of his other lives.) 



SACHS, HANS, whose real name is said to have been LOUTZDORFFER, 

 was the most eminent poetical genius that Germany produced at the 

 period of the Reformation, to the doctrines of which he became a 

 convert, and assisted the cause of Protestantism by his pen. This 

 most prolific as well as original and highly-gifted writer, was born on 

 the 5th of November 1494 at Niirnberg, where his father was a tailor ; 

 and after studying at the Latin schools, he was put to be instructed 

 in the business of a shoemaker. 



About two years after he entered his apprenticeship, that is, about 

 the age of seventeen, Hans became the disciple of Leonard Nunneubeck, 

 a weaver by trade, but also a meistersinger, who initiated him into the 

 mystery of weaving verses. As soon as his apprenticeship expired he 

 set forth on his wanderings through Germany in his double capacity, 

 making it a point to visit those cities which were most renowned for 

 their poetical societies and corporations of singers. Having finished 

 his pilgrimage, he returned and settled at Niirnberg, where in 1519 he 

 married Kunegunda Kreutzer, who proved an excellent wife, and bore 

 him five sons and two daughters. She died in 1560 (after surviving 

 all her sons) ; and in the following year, when he was sixty-six, Sachs 

 married Barbara Harscher, which union proved no less happy than 

 the former one. His eyesight becoming impaired, and his hearing 

 still more so, he withdrew from society, and shut himself up with his 

 books ; his natural serenity and cheerfulness of temper however were 

 not disturbed by these misfortunes. Thus tranquilly he reached his 

 eighty-seventh year, dying January 25, 1578. 



If his literary character be estimated by the number of his produc- 

 tions, Hans Sachs was literally one of the greatest writers Germany 

 has ever produced, for they amounted altogether to upwards of six 

 thousand different compositions, of which only a portion are contained 

 in the five folio volumes of his pieces printed at Niirnberg, 1576-79. 

 He may therefore very well be paralleled to Lope; de Vega ; and con- 

 sidering that he had another business, the fertility of his pen is even 

 more surprising than that of the Spaniard's. Such extraordinary writers 

 however pay a double penalty : their productions are of necessity only 

 extemporaneous effusions upon paper, and by far the greater bulk of 

 them must be consigned to oblivion. By posterity they are known 

 only as recorded literary phenomena : they preserve a name in the 

 annals of poetry, and as much as that has been accomplished by a 

 single composition, such as the ' Elegy in a Country Churchyard,' and 

 ' Julius von Tarent ' productions that immortalise the names of a 

 Gray and a Leisewitz. For the student who is desirous of tracing the 

 formation of the language and literature of Germany, the works of 

 Sachs possess considerable interest independent of their intrinsic 

 merits, which however, to be fairly appreciated, must be considered 

 with reference to his own times and country. They display great 

 shrewdness, liveliness, and keenness of satire, together with a steady 

 manliness of tone. But they also frequently offend both modern taste 

 and modern ideas of decorum. Their failing in that respect is the 

 very reverse of refined immorality. Nor is that by any means their 

 sole defect ; for, as might indeed bo expected, they are overlaid with 

 a great deal of mere garrulous prosing, unrelieved by any charm of 

 versification. Another great fault is, that all the subjects are too 

 much in the same strain, stamped by the same manner ; wherefore it 

 has been remarked, that two or three of his pieces serve to render us 

 acquainted with the whole. Yet it is easier to point out faults and 

 imperfections of the kind above mentioned, than to estimate such a 

 writer critically. Gothe to a certain extent imitated Hans Sachs in 

 his ' Faust.' Sachs has been eulogised for " the fidelity of colouring 

 with which he exhibits the characters and times which he paints." 

 But this remark must be taken with great limitation, and with reference 

 only to the manners of his own age, for his anachronisms against history, 

 costume, and probability are frequently quite startling Semiramis 

 and Cleopatra, Agrippina and Clytemnestra, appear together in the 

 same piece. In fact, according to his own confession, he was acquainted 



