30 



FULLER 



FULLER'S EARTH 



where for once geography became a peg whereon to 

 hang alternate wit, wisdom, and edification. The 

 very rocks and deserts are fertilised by his fancy, and 

 not one of his 800 pages is dry or tedious. In 1651 

 appeared Abel Redivivus, a collection of religious 

 biographies, of which Fuller himself wrote seven. 

 His first wife had been already dead ten years when 

 in 1651 he married a sister of Roper, Viscount 

 Baltinglass. In 1655 he published in a folio volume* 

 his long-projected Church History of Britain, from 

 the birth of Christ till the year 1648, divided 

 into eleven books a twelfth being a History 

 of the University of Cambridge. The early books 

 are divided into centuries, the later into sec- 

 tions, and in both the paragraphs are duly labelled 

 and numbered with much ostentation of method, 

 despite the perpetual digressions into heraldry 

 and the like ' for variety and diversion ... to 

 divert the wearied reader.' Each book is dedicated 

 to some noble patron, and a dedication is prefixed 

 to every century or section. Altogether there, are 

 no fewer than 75 dedicatory epistles, addressed to 

 85 patrons or patronesses, of whom many, he tells 

 us, ' invited themselves on purpose to encourage 

 my endeavours.' The work was bitterly assailed 

 by Dr Peter Heylin with no less than 237 several 

 ' Animadversions ' in his Examen Historicum ( 1659 ), 

 as a rhapsody rather than a history, full of 

 ' impertinencies ' as well as errors, and still worse 

 marred by partiality to Puritanism. Fuller at 

 once replied in The Appeal of Injured Innocence, 

 in which he gives his animadvertor's own words 

 in their entirety followed by his own replies 

 seriatim. Nowhere is his strong sense sharpened 

 into bright and stinging wit more conspicuous 

 than here. Moreover, broad, open-minded can- 

 dour and large toleration to all honest opinion 

 and fair argument, wedded to intense personal 

 loyalty to his own church, are characteristic 

 notes throughout, while it would be difficult to 

 find a nobler example in our literature of mag- 

 nanimous Christian charity tremulous with pathos 

 than the concluding epistle to his antagonist. 

 Bishop Nicolson, in The English Historical Library 

 (2d ed. 1714), failing with one-eyed vision to see 

 that he had before him an English classic, and 

 one sui generis moreover, laments the lack of ' the 

 gravity of an historian,' and the weakness for 

 'a pretty story' and for 'pun and quibble,' yet in 

 his superior manner admits that, 'if it were pos- 

 sible to refine it well, the work would be of good 

 use, since there are in it some things of moment 

 hardly to be had elsewhere, which may often 

 illustrate dark passages in more serious writers.' 



Fuller had been presented by Lord Berkeley in 

 1658 to the rectory of Cranford in Middlesex, and 

 at the Restoration he was reinstated in his former 

 preferments. In that year he published his Mixt 

 Contemplations in Setter Times, was admitted U.D. 

 at Cambridge by royal mandate, and appointed 

 chaplain-in-extraordinary to the king. Apparently 

 also he would have been made a bishop had he 

 lived. He. died in London after a few days' illness 

 of the 'new disease' a kind of typhus fever, 16th 

 August 1661, and was buried in the chancel of 

 Cranford church. The Latin epitaph inscribed on 

 a mural tablet there is not so brief as his own 

 suggestion 'Here lies Fuller's earth,' but contains 

 a conceit worthy of his own pen, how that while 

 he was labouring to give others immortality he 

 obtained it himself. His great work, The Worthies 

 of England, left unfinished, was edited by the pious 

 care of his son, and published in 1662. Fuller tells 

 us elsewhere of his ' delight in writing of histories,' 

 and we know that the preparation of his greatest 

 work covered nearly twenty years of his troubled 

 life. At the outset he sets forth his five ends in 

 the book each one sufficient in itself : ' to gain 



some glory to God, to preserve the memories of 

 the dead, to present examples to the living, to 

 entertain the reader with delight, and to procure 

 some honest profit to myself.' The first four were 

 most to Fuller, and all these he gained. The 

 Worthies is a magnificent miscellany of facts about 

 the counties of England and their illustrious 

 natives, lightened up by unrivalled originality, 

 spontaneity, and felicity of illustration, and aglow 

 with the pure fervour of patriotism the very 

 apotheosis of the gazetteer. 



The earliest and anonymous biographer of Fuller 

 tells us that his stature was somewhat tall, ' with 

 a proportionable bigness to become it,' his counten- 

 ance cheerful and ruddy, his hair light and curly, 

 his carriage such as could have been called ' majes- 

 tical ' but for his complete lack of pride, his deport- 

 ment 'much according to the old English guise.' 

 Such also is the Berkeley portrait, reproduced in 

 Bailey's Life. His genial disposition, the charm of 

 his company, and his marvellous feats of memory 

 are mentioned by Pepys and all who have since 

 written of him. 



Of the judgments passed upon his genius, best 

 known and hardly exaggerated is that of Coleridge : 

 ' Wit Avas the stuff and substance of Fuller's intel- 

 lect. It was the element, the earthen base, the 

 material which he worked in ; and this very circum- 

 stance has defrauded him of his due praise for the 

 practical wisdom of the thoughts, for the beauty 

 and variety of the truths, into which he shaped the 

 stuff. Fuller was incomparably the most sensible, 

 the least prejudiced, great man of an age that 

 boasted a galaxy of great men.' His wit is fast 

 wedded with wisdom and strong sense, and with all 

 its freedom is never unkindly or irreverent lie 

 ' never wit-wantoned it with the majesty of God.' 

 He lays a spell of quite a peculiar kind upon his 

 reader, who will either return to him often or 

 neglect him altogether. His style shows admirable 

 narrative faculty, with often a nervous brevity and 

 point almost new to English, and a homely direct- 

 ness ever shrewd and never vulgar; while ' his wit,' 

 says Charles Lamb, 'is not always a lumen siccum, 

 a dry faculty of surprising ; on the contrary, his 

 conceits are oftentimes deeply steeped in human 

 feeling and passion.' The pen that described 

 negroes as ' the images of God cut in ebony ' was 

 that of a good man as well as a great writer. 



See the fine 17th-century anonymous eulogy reprinted 

 in vol. i. of J. S. Brewer's edition of the Church History 

 (Clarendon Press, 6 vols. 1845) ; Rev. Arthur T. Kussell's 

 Memorials of Dr Fuller's Life and Works ( 1844 ) ; Henry 

 Kogers' Selections and Essay (1856); J. E. Bailey's Life 

 of Thomas Fuller (1874), his article in Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica, and his edition of the Collected Sermons 

 (1891); the Life by "Rev. Morris Fuller (2d ed. 1886); 

 and Jessopp's selections ( 1892 ). Bailey's unique collec- 

 tion of books relating to Fuller was acquired by the 

 Manchester Free Library in 1889. 



Fuller's Earth, a mineral consisting chiefly 

 of silica, alumina, and water, with a little mag- 

 nesia, lime, and peroxide of iron. The silica is 

 about 53, the alumina 10, and the -water 24 per 

 cent, of the whole. It is regarded as essentially a 

 hydrous bisilicate of alumina. It occurs in beds, 

 associated with chalk, oolite, &c. ; is usually of a 

 greenish-brown or a slate-blue colour, sometimes 

 white ; has an uneven earthy fracture and a dull 

 appearance ; its specific gravity is from 1'8 to 2'2 ; 

 it is soft enough to yield readily to the nail ; is 

 very greasy to the touch ; scarcely adheres to the 

 tongue ; falls to pieces in water with a hissing or 

 puffing sound, but does not become plastic. It has 

 a remarkable power of absorbing oil or grease ; and 

 was formerly very much used for fulling cloth ( see 

 WOOLLEN MANUFACTURE), for which purpose it 

 was considered so valuable that the exportation 



