This month marks the four hundredth anniversary of the birth of 17th Century historian and churchman Thomas Fuller. While he was considered one of he great English writers in previous centuries, he’s nearly forgotten today. Fuller was a Doctor of Divinity at Cambridge and Chaplain Extraordinary to Charles II. His most long lasting contributions were his books, which include “The Holy State and the Prophane State,” “Church-History of Britain From the Birth of Jesus Christ Until the Year 1648,” “The History of the University of Cambridge Since the Conquest” and “The History of the Worthies of England.”
Fuller’s “History of the Worthies of England,” published posthumously in 1662, was the first comprehensive collection of English biographical sketches. It is considered the forerunner of “The Dictionary of National Biography.” Although Fuller was only eight years old when Shakespeare died, his ‘Worthies’ provides us with one of the first biographical insights into the bard. Commenting on the verbal jousts between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Fuller wrote “Many were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson; which two I behold like a Spanish great Galleon and an English Man of War! Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow in his performances. Shakespeare, the English Man of War, lesser in bulk but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention!”
During his lifetime, Fuller was an acquaintance of Samuel Pepys. In the centuries after he died, his work was admired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb. Coleridge wrote, “Wit was the stuff and substance of Fuller’s intellect. It was the element, the earthen base, the material which he worked in; and this very circumstance 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”
Fuller’s birthday was not recorded but he was baptized on June 19, 1608. In honor of his 400th birthday, The New York Times has assembled an online slide show of images from “The History of the Worthies of England” and some of his other works and invites readers to consider what relevancy they might have in the 21st Century.
