of English history covering the Protectorate and the Restoration.
Puritanism and liberty of conscience, whose exponents were Cromwell and
Milton, met licentiousness and corrupted loyalty, with Charles II. and
Wycherley for representatives. Cromwell was "Puritanism armed and in
power;" Milton was its apostle and poet. Charles II. was kingcraft
besotted; Wycherley its jester and pimp. Cromwell--farmer, preacher,
soldier, party leader, prince--radical, stern, hopeful;
Charles--debauchee, persecuting skeptic, faithless ruler; Milton--lofty
in his Paradise; Wycherley--nasty in his Love in a Wood, and Country
Wife. "A larger soul never dwelt in a house of clay," said one who had
been much about Cromwell, after his death, when flattery was mute. "Old
Goat" was the name given to Charles by one who knew him best. Cromwell,
"after all his battles and storms, and all the plots of assassins
against his life, died of grief at the loss of his favorite daughter,
and of watching at her side." Charles went out of life in a fit, the
result of his horrible excesses, if not of poison,--as said and believed
by many, administered by one of his own numerous mistresses.
First, "the Puritans," says Macaulay, "interdicted, under heavy
penalties, the use of the Book of Common Prayer, not only in churches,
but in private houses. It was a crime in a child to read by the bedside
of a sick parent one of those beautiful collects which had soothed the
griefs of forty generations of Christians. Severe punishments were
denounced against such as should presume to blame the Calvinistic mode
of worship. Clergymen of respectable character were not only ejected
from their benefices by thousands, but were frequently exposed to the
outrages of a fanatical rabble. Churches and sepulchres, fine works of
art and curious remains of antiquity, were brutally defaced. The
Parliament resolved that all pictures in the royal collection which
contained representations of Jesus or of the Virgin Mother should be
burned. Sculpture fared as ill as painting. Nymphs and graces, the work
of Ionian chisels, were delivered over to Puritan stone-masons to be
made decent. Against the lighter vices the ruling faction waged war with
a zeal little tempered by humanity or by common-sense. Public
amusements, from the masks which were exhibited at the mansions of the
great down to the wrestling matches and grinning matches on village
greens, were vigorously attacked. One ordinance directed that all the
May-poles in England should forthwith be hewn down. One of the first
resolutions adopted by Barebone's Parliament was that no person should
be admitted into the public service till the house should be satisfied
with his real godliness."
Suddenly the wheel turned. "The same people who, by a solemn
objurgation, had excluded even the posterity of their lawful sovereign,
exhausted themselves in festivals and rejoicings for his return."
Restored royalty "made it a crime to attend a dissenting place of
worship. A single justice of the peace might convict without a jury, and
might, for a third offense, pass sentence of transportation beyond the
sea, or for seven years. The whole soul of the restored church was in
the work of crushing the Puritans, and of teaching her disciples to give
unto Caesar the things which were Caesar's. She had been pillaged and
oppressed by the party which preached an austere morality. She had been
restored to opulence and honor by libertines. Little as the men of mirth
and fashion were disposed to shape their lives according to her
precepts, they were yet ready to fight knee-deep in blood for her
cathedrals and palaces, for every line of her rubric and every thread of
her vestments. If the debauched cavalier haunted brothels and
gambling-houses, he at least avoided conventicles. If he ever spoke
without uttering ribaldry and blasphemy, he made some amends by his
eagerness to send Baxter and Howe to jail for preaching and praying. The
ribaldry of Etherege and Wycherley was, in the presence and under the
special sanction of the head of the church, publicly recited by female
lips in female ears, while the author of the Pilgrim's Progress
languished in a dungeon for the crime of proclaiming the gospel to the
poor. Then came those days never to be recalled without a blush--the
days of servitude without loyalty, and sensuality without love, of
dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and
narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave.
The caresses of harlots and the jests of buffoons regulated the manners
of a government which had just ability enough to deceive, and just
religion enough to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff
of every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning
dean. Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race,
accursed of God and man, was a second time driven forth to wander on the
face of the earth, and be a by-word and a shaking of the head to the
nations."
The morality of the court was exhibited in the character of the
sovereign, according to whose ethics "every person was to be bought; but
some people haggled more about their price than others; and when this
haggling was very obstinate and very skillful, it was called by some
fine name. The chief trick by which clever men kept up the price of
their abilities was called integrity. The chief trick by which handsome
women kept up the price of their beauty was called modesty. The love of
God, the love of country, the love of family, the love of friends, were
phrases of the same sort, delicate and convenient synonyms for the love
of self."
A great licentiousness, says Emerson, treads on the heels of a
reformation. How many times in the history of the world has the Luther
of the day had to lament the decay of piety in his own household!
"Doctor," said his wife to Martin Luther, one day, "how is it that,
whilst subject to papacy, we prayed so often and with such fervor,
whilst now we pray with the utmost coldness and very seldom?" "The
courtiers of Charles II. were very dissolute because the Puritans were
too strict; Addison and Steele were respectable because Congreve and
Wycherley were licentious; Wesley was zealous because the church had
become indifferent; the revolution of 1789 was a reaction against the
manners of the last century, and the revolution in running its course
set up a reaction against itself." "The drawing a certain positive line
in morals," says Hazlitt, "beyond which a single false step is
irretrievable, makes virtue formal, and vice desperate." "Puritanism,"
says Taine, "had brought on an orgie, and fanatics had talked down the
virtues."
"To what a place you come in search of knowledge!" exclaimed a bitter
republican to Castelar, in the streets of Rome, during the reign of the
pope, not long before Victor Emanuel. "Here everybody is interested
about lottery tickets; no one for an idea of the human brain. The
commemoration of the anniversary of Shakespeare has been prohibited in
this city of the arts. Her censorship is so wise that when a certain
writer wished to publish a book on the discoveries of Volta, she let
loose on him the thunders of the Index, thinking it treated of
Voltairianism--a philosophy which leaves neither repose nor digestion to
our cardinals. On the other hand, a cabalistic and astrological book,
professing to divine the caprices of the lottery, has been printed and
published under the pontifical seal, as containing nothing contrary to
religion, morals, or sovereign authority. Rabelais knew this
city--Rabelais. On arriving, in place of writing a dissertation on
dogmas, he penned one on lettuces, the only good and fresh articles in
this cursed dungeon. And priest though he was, a priest of the sixteenth
century, more religious than our generation, he had a long
correspondence with the pious Bishop of Maillezais on the children of
the pope; for the reverend prelate had especially charged him to
ascertain whether the Cavaliere Pietro Luis Farnese was the lawful or
illegitimate son of his holiness. Believe me, Rabelais knew Rome."
An old letter-writer, inditing from Paris, said, "Nakedness is so
innocent here! In a refined city, one gets back to the first chapter of
Genesis; the extremes meet, and Paradise and Paris get together."
What opposite characters were the leaders in the Reformation. The monks
said the egg was laid by Erasmus, hatched by Luther. "On the other
hand," says Motley, "he was reviled for not taking side manfully with
the reformer. The moderate man received much denunciation from zealots
on either side. He soon clears himself, however, from all suspicions of
Lutheranism. He is appalled by the fierce conflict which rages far and
wide. He becomes querulous as the mighty besom sweeps away sacred dust
and consecrated cobwebs. 'Men should not attempt everything at once,' he
writes, 'but rather step by step. That which men cannot approve they
must look at through the fingers. If the godlessness of mankind requires
such fierce physicians as Luther, if man cannot be healed with soothing
ointments and cooling drinks, let us hope that God will comfort, as
repentant, those whom he has punished as rebellious. If the dove of
Christ--not the owl of Minerva--would only fly to us, some measure might
be put to the madness of mankind.' Meantime, the man whose talk is not
of doves and owls, the fierce physician, who deals not with ointments
and cooling draughts, strides past the crowd of gentle quacks to smite
the foul disease. Devils, thicker than tiles on house-tops, scare him
not from his work. Bans and bulls, excommunications and decrees, are
rained upon his head. The paternal emperor sends down dire edicts,
thicker than hail upon the earth. The Holy Father blasts and raves from
Rome. Louvain doctors denounce, Louvain hangmen burn, the bitter,
blasphemous books. The immoderate man stands firm in the storm,
demanding argument instead of illogical thunder; shows the hangmen and
the people, too, outside the Elster gate at Wittenberg, that papal bulls
will blaze as merrily as heretic scrolls."
Erasmus was a philosophical thinker; Luther a bold actor. The former
would reform by the slow processes of education; the latter by
revolution. "Without Erasmus," says Froude, "Luther would have been
impossible; and Erasmus really succeeded--so much of him as deserved to
succeed--in Luther's victory." Erasmus said, "There is no hope for any
good. It is all over with quiet learning, thought, piety, and progress;
violence is on one side and folly on the other; and they accuse me of
having caused it all. If I joined Luther I could only perish with him,
and I do not mean to run my neck into the halter. Popes and emperors
must decide matters. I will accept what is good, and do as I can with
the rest. Peace on any terms is better than the justest war." Luther
said, "I take Erasmus to be the worst enemy that Christ has had for a
thousand years. Intellect does not understand religion, and when it
comes to the things of God it laughs at them." "Whenever I pray," he
said, "I pray for a curse upon Erasmus."
Melancthon was as different from Luther as Erasmus. He was the
theologian of the three,--so much so that the scholars were all jealous
of him. Sir Thomas More wrote to Erasmus that Tyndale had seen
Melancthon in Paris; that Tyndale was afraid "if France should receive
the word of God by him, it would be confirmed in the faith of the
Eucharist contrary to the sect of the Wickliffites." "I have been born,"
said Luther, "to war and fight with factions and devils, therefore my
books are stormy and warlike. I must root out the stumps and stocks, cut
away the thorns and hedges, fill up the ditches, and am the rough
forester, to break a path and make things ready. But master Philip walks
gently and silently, tills and plants, sows and waters with pleasure, as
God has gifted him richly." When Melancthon arose to preach on one
occasion, he took this for a text: "I am the good shepherd." In looking
round upon his numerous and respectable audience, his natural timidity
entirely overcame him, and he could only repeat the text over and over
again. Luther, who was in the pulpit with him, at length impatiently
exclaimed, "You are a very good sheep!" and telling him to sit down,
took the same text, and preached an excellent discourse from it.
Coming down to later times, and to characters more purely literary, what
could more beautifully illustrate the harmony of opposites, so often
observable in literature and life, than the intimacy which existed
between Professor Wilson and Dr. Blair? The course and habit of Dr.
Blair's life "were like the smooth, deep water; serene, undisturbed to
outer eye; and the very repose that was about him had a charm for the
restless, active energy of his friend, who turned to this gentle and
meek nature for mental rest. I have often seen them sitting together,"
says Mrs. Gordon, "in the quiet retirement of the study, perfectly
absorbed in each other's presence, like school-boys in the abandonment
of their love for each other, occupying one seat between them, my
father, with his arm lovingly embracing 'the dear doctor's' shoulders,
playfully pulling the somewhat silvered locks to draw his attention to
something in the tome spread out on their knees, from which they were
both reading. Such discussions as they had together hour upon hour!
Shakespeare, Milton--always the loftiest themes--never weary in doing
honor to the great souls from whom they had learnt so much. Their voices
were different, too: Dr. Blair's soft and sweet as that of a woman; the
professor's sonorous, sad, with a nervous tremor: each revealing the
peculiar character of the man."
Godwin and Rough (to whom some of Lamb's most amusing letters were
written) met at a dinner-party for the first time. The very next day, it
is stated, Godwin called on a friend (a fellow-guest) to say how much he
liked Rough, adding: "By the way, do you think he would lend me fifty
pounds just now, as I am in want of a little money?" He had not left his
friend an hour before Rough came with a like question. He wanted a bill
discounted, and asked whether his friend thought Godwin would do it for
him. The habit of both was so well known that some persons were afraid
to invite them, lest it should lead to an application for a loan from
some acquaintance who chanced to be present.
Northcote mentioned to Hazlitt an instance of some young country people
who had to sleep on the floor in the same room, and they parted the men
from the women by some sacks of corn, which served for a line of
demarcation and an inviolable partition between them. Hazlitt spoke of a
countrywoman, who, coming to an inn in the west of England, wanted a
bed; and being told they had none to spare, still persisted, till the
landlady said in a joke, "I tell you, good woman, I have none, unless
you can prevail with the ostler to give you half of his." "Well," said
she, "if he is a sober, prudent man, I shall not mind." The Princess
Borghese (Bonaparte's sister), who was no saint, sat to Canova for a
model, and being asked, "If she did not feel a little uncomfortable,"
answered, "No, there was a fire in the room."
In the same character opposite faculties and qualities are sometimes so
blended as to give very mysterious results. Every reader knows how
difficult it often is to separate the irony and seriousness of Swift and
De Foe, so very nicely they run together. Pure imagination is so
realistic as to appear indubitable truth. The History of the Plague is
an example; and Robinson Crusoe: what boy ever doubted the truth of the
narrative? or, while he was reading them, the adventures of Lemuel
Gulliver, incredible as they are? There is a story of a peasant and The
Vicar of Wakefield. The dull rustic was a slow reader, and could get
through but a few pages in a long evening; yet he was absorbed by the
story, and read it as if it were a veritable history. A wag in the
family, discerning the situation, thought to amuse himself by putting
back the book-mark each morning nearly to the point the man had read
from the previous evening, so that it turned out he was all winter
getting through the little volume. When he had finished it, the wag
asked him his opinion of it. He answered that it was good,--that he had
no doubt every word of it was true,--but it did seem to him there was
some repetition in it!
A clergyman's widow of eighty, the mother of the first Sir David
Dundas--at one time commander-in-chief of the British army--is thus
described by Cockburn: "We used to go to her house in Bunker's Hill,
[Edinburgh] when boys, on Sundays, between the morning and afternoon
sermons, where we were cherished with Scotch broth and cakes, and many a
joke from the old lady. Age had made her incapable of walking, even
across the room; so, clad in a plain black-silk gown, and a pure muslin
cap, she sat half-encircled by a high-backed, black leather chair,
reading, with silver spectacles stuck on her thin nose, and
interspersing her studies and her days with much laughter, and not a
little sarcasm. What a spirit! There was more fun and sense round that
chair than in the theatre or the church. I remember one of her
grand-daughters stumbling, in the course of reading the newspapers to
her, on a paragraph which stated that a lady's reputation had suffered
from some indiscreet talk on the part of the Prince of Wales. Up she of
fourscore sat, and said with an indignant shake of her shriveled fist
and a keen voice,--'The dawmed villain! does he kiss and tell!'"
In the Barberini palace is the celebrated portrait of Beatrice Cenci, by
Guido. The melancholy and strange history of this beautiful girl has
been told in a variety of ways, and is probably familiar to every
reader. Guido saw her on her way to execution, and has painted her as
she was dressed, in the gray habit and head-dress, made by her own
hands, and finished but an hour before she put it on. "There are
engravings and copies of the picture all over the world, but none that I
have seen," said Willis, "give any idea of the excessive gentleness, and
serenity of the countenance. The eyes retain traces of weeping, the
child-like mouth, the soft, girlish lines of features that look as if
they had never worn more than the one expression of youthfulness and
affection, are all in repose, and the head is turned over the shoulder
with as simple a sweetness as if she had but looked back to say a
good-night before going to her chamber to sleep. She little looks like
what she was--one of the firmest and boldest spirits whose history is
recorded. After murdering her father for his fiendish attempts upon her
virtue, she endured every torture rather than disgrace her family by
confession, and was only moved from her constancy, at last, by the
agonies of her younger brother on the rack. Who would read capabilities
like these, in those heavenly and child-like features?"
There is related an incident of the American civil war which illustrates
how ignorance and superstition sometimes give birth to eloquence. An
army officer had been speaking of the ideas of power entertained by the
poor negro slaves. He said they had an idea of God, as the Almighty,
and they had realized in their former condition the power of their
masters. Up to the time of the arrival among them of the Union forces,
they had no knowledge of any other power. Their masters fled upon the
approach of the federal soldiers, and this gave the negroes a conception
of a power greater than that exercised by them. This power they called
"Massa Linkum." Their place of worship was a large building which they
called "the praise house;" and the leader of the meeting, a venerable
black man, was known as "the praise man." On a certain day, when there
was quite a large gathering of the people, considerable confusion was
created by different persons attempting to tell who and what "Massa
Linkum" was. In the midst of the excitement the white-headed leader
commanded silence. "Brederin," said he, "you don't know nosein' what
you're talkin' 'bout. Now, you just listen to me. Massa Linkum, he
eberywhar. He know eberyting." Then, solemnly looking up, he added, "He
walk de earf like de Lord!"
Curran, who was so merry and charming in conversation, was also very
melancholy. He said he never went to bed in Ireland without wishing not
to rise again. It seems to be a law of our nature that "as high as we
have mounted in delight, in our dejection do we sink as low." Burns
expresses it, "Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure, thrill the deepest
notes of woe;" and Hood, "There's not a string attuned to mirth, but has
its chord in melancholy;" and Burton, "Naught so sweet as melancholy,"
naught "so damned as melancholy;" and King Solomon, "I said of laughter,
It is mad."
It is narrated that one day Philip III., King of Spain, was standing in
one of the balconies of his palace observing a young Spanish student,
who was sitting in the sun and reading a book, while he was bursting out
into fits of laughter. The farther the student read, the more his gayety
increased, until at last he was so violently excited that he let the
book fall from his hands, and rolled on the ground in a state of intense
hilarity. The king turned to his courtiers and said, "That young man is
either mad, or he is reading Don Quixote." One of the guards of the
palace went to pick up the book and found that his majesty had guessed
rightly. Yet Miguel Cervantes, the author of this book which is so
amusing, had dragged on the most wretched and melancholy existence. He
was groaning and weeping while all Spain was laughing at the numerous
adventures of the Knight of La Mancha and the wise sayings of Sancho
Panza.
The biographer of Grimaldi speaks of the devouring melancholy which
pursued the celebrated clown whenever he was off the stage, or left to
his own resources; and it is well known that Liston, whose face was
sufficient to set an audience in a good humor, was a confirmed
hypochondriac. It is said he used to sit up after midnight to read
Young's Night Thoughts, delighting in its monotonous solemnity.
"The gravest nations," says Landor, "have been the wittiest; and in
those nations some of the gravest men. In England, Swift and Addison; in
Spain, Cervantes. Rabelais and La Fontaine are recorded by their
countrymen to have been reveurs. Few men have been graver than Pascal;
few have been wittier." Robert Chambers tells in one of his essays of a
person residing near London, who could make one's sides ache at any time
with his comic songs, yet had so rueful, woe-begone a face that his
friends addressed him by the name of Mr. Dismal. Nothing remains of
Butler's private history but the record of his miseries; and Swift, we
are told, was never known to smile. Burns confessed in one of his
letters that his design in seeking society was to fly from
constitutional melancholy. "Even in the hour of social mirth," he tells
us, "my gayety is the madness of an intoxicated criminal under the hands
of the executioner." The most facetious of all Lamb's letters was
written to Barton in a fit of the deepest melancholy.
"The elaboration of humor," said Irving, "is often a very serious task;
and we have never witnessed a more perfect picture of mental misery than
was once presented to us by a popular dramatic writer whom we found in
the agonies of producing a farce which subsequently set the theatre in a
roar."
Moliere was a grave and silent man. There is a story told of a lady of
distinction who invited him to meet a party, thinking that he would
entertain them with his wit; he came, but throughout the evening
scarcely opened his lips. At Pezenas they used to show a chair in a
barber's shop, where he would sit for hours without speaking a word.
Jerrold was a little ashamed of the immense success of the Caudle
Lectures, many of which were written to dictation on a bed of sickness,
racked by rheumatism. As social drolleries they set nations laughing. He
took their celebrity rather sulkily. He did not like to be talked of as
a funny man. His mixture of satire and kindliness reminded one of his
friends of those lanes near Beyrout, in which you ride with the
prickly-pear bristling alongside of you, and yet can pluck the grapes
which force themselves among it from the fields.
There is an account of a singer and his wife who were to sing a number
of humorous couplets at a restaurant in Leipsic. The wife made her
appearance there at the appointed hour, but, owing to the unexplained
absence of her husband, she was compelled to amuse the visitors by
singing couplets alone. While her droll performance was eliciting shouts
of laughter, her husband hung himself in the court-yard of the
restaurant.