From the Academy

FROM THE ACADEMY There is a Type, friends, who keeps Book-of-the-Month-Club selections on his coffee table; and when such a one inquires of me what good books I’ve read lately, I reply without hesitation, The Holy State and The Profane State. It’s perfectly true: I’ve been reading those books these three decades, for I never tire of Thomas Fuller.

Thomas Fuller, born in Northamp-tonshire in 1608, was the wittiest of English divines, with the possible exceptions of Sidney Smith and Lawrence Sterne; and, unlike Sterne and Smith, he took his religion earnestly. The States (one book, really), with Fuller’s Worthies of England and Church History (still in print, though fairly costly) remain wise and witty.

RK

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Russell Kirk

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FROM THE ACADEMY There is a Type, friends, who keeps Book-of-the-Month-Club selections on his coffee table; and when such a one inquires of me what good books I’ve read lately, I reply without hesitation, The Holy State and The Profane State. It’s perfectly true: I’ve been reading those books these three decades, for I never tire of Thomas Fuller.

Thomas Fuller, born in Northamp-tonshire in 1608, was the wittiest of English divines, with the possible exceptions of Sidney Smith and Lawrence Sterne; and, unlike Sterne and Smith, he took his religion earnestly. The States (one book, really), with Fuller’s Worthies of England and Church History (still in print, though fairly costly) remain wise and witty.