Section I.--Dryden's Début

#THE WORLD'S#

GREAT CLASSICS

LIBRARY

COMMITTEE

TIMOTHY DWIGHT, D.D. LLD.

RICHARD HENRY STODDARD

ARTHUR RICHMOND MARSH. A.B.

PAVL VAN DYKE, D.D.

ALBERT ELLERY BERGH

•ILLUSTRATED•WITH•NEARLY•TWO•

•HUNDRED•PHOTOGRAVURES•ETCHINGS•

•COLORED•PLATES•AND•FULL•

•PAGE•PORTRAITS•OF•GREAT•AUTHORS•

CLARENCE COOK--ART EDITOR

•THE•COLONIAL•PRESS•

•NEW•YORK•MDCCCXCIX•

[Illustration: LONDON BRIDGE.

_After an etching by Edwin Edwards._

The artist has chosen for his masterly work the moment when the sun,

long before toiling London is awake, rises amid vapors from the eastern

horizon. The river reflects the dawn,

"All bright and glittering in the smokeless air."

In the placid stream are mirrored the shadows of the bridge; to the west

of which appear the façades of Fishmonger's Hall, and Billingsgate

market, radiant with morning. To appreciate the full charm and fidelity

to nature of this etching one should read Wordsworth's sonnet written on

Westminster bridge, beginning "Earth has not anything to show more

fair," and ending with the words

"The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still."

HISTORY OF

ENGLISH LITERATURE

HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY

HENRY VAN LAUN

WITH A SPECIAL INTRODUCTION BY

J. SCOTT CLARK, A. M.

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AT NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

REVISED EDITION

VOLUME II

CONTENTS

BOOK II--THE RENAISSANCE

(_CONTINUED_)

CHAPTER FIFTH

The Christian Renaissance

SECTION I.--Decay of The Southern Civilizations

SECTION II.--Luther and the Reformation in Germany

SECTION III.--The Reformation in England

SECTION IV.--The Anglicans

SECTION V.--The Puritans

SECTION VI.--John Bunyan

CHAPTER SIXTH

Milton

SECTION I.--Milton's Family and Education

SECTION II.--Milton's Unhappy Domestic Life

SECTION III.--Milton's Combative Energy

SECTION IV.--Milton's Personal Appearance

SECTION V.--Milton as a Prose Writer

SECTION VI.--Milton as a Poet

BOOK III.--THE CLASSIC AGE

CHAPTER FIRST

The Restoration

_Part I.--The Roisterers_

SECTION I.--The Excesses of Puritanism

SECTION II.--A Frenchman's View of the Manners of the Time

SECTION III.--Butler's Hudibras

SECTION IV.--Morals of the Court

SECTION V.--Method and Style of Hobbes

SECTION VI.--The Theatre

SECTION VII.--Dryden and the Drama

SECTION VIII.--Wycherley

_PART II.--The Worldlings_

SECTION I.--Court Life in Europe

SECTION II.--Dawn of the Classic Spirit

SECTION III.--Sir William Temple

SECTION IV.--Writers à la Mode

SECTION V.--Sir John Denham

SECTION VI.--Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar

SECTION VII.--Superficiality of English Comedy

SECTION VIII.--Natural Characters

SECTION IX.--Artificial Characters

SECTION X.--Sheridan.--Decadence of the Theatre

CHAPTER SECOND

Dryden

SECTION I.--Dryden's Début

SECTION II.--Dryden's Family and Education

SECTION III.--Dramatic Theories of Dryden

SECTION IV.--The Style of Dryden's Plays

SECTION V.--His Merit as a Dramatist

SECTION VI.--His Prose Style

SECTION VII.--How Literature in England is Occupied with Politics and

Religion

SECTION VIII.--Development of the Art of Writing

SECTION IX.--Dryden's Translations and Adaptations.--His Occasional

Soul--Stirring Verses

SECTION X.--Misfortunes of Dryden's Old Age

CHAPTER THIRD

The Revolution

SECTION I.--The Moral Revolution

SECTION II.--Brutality of The People.--Private Morals.--Chesterfield

and Gay

SECTION III.--Principles of Civilization in France and England

SECTION IV.--Religion

SECTION V.--The Pulpit

SECTION VI.--Theology

SECTION VII.--The Constitution.--Locke's Theory of Government

SECTION VIII.--Parliamentary Orators

SECTION IX.--Doctrines of the French Revolution Contrasted with the

Conservative Tendencies of the English People

CHAPTER FOURTH

Addison

SECTION I.--The Significance of the Writings of Addison and Swift

SECTION II.--Addison's Character and Education

SECTION III.--Addison's Seriousness.--His Nobility of Character

SECTION IV.--The Morality of Addison's Essays

SECTION V.--How Addison made Morality Fashionable.--Characteristics

of his Style

SECTION VI.--Addison's Gallantry.--His Humor.--Sir Roger de Coverley.--The

Vision of Mirza

CHAPTER FIFTH

Swift

SECTION I.--Concerning Swift's Life and Character

SECTION II.--Swift's Prosaic and Positive Mind

SECTION III.--Swift as a Political Pamphleteer

SECTION IV.--Swift as a Humorist.--As a Poet

SECTION V.--Swift as a Narrator and Philosopher

CHAPTER SIXTH

The Novelists

SECTION I.--The Anti-Romantic Novel

SECTION II.--Daniel De Foe

SECTION III.--The Evolution of the Eighteenth Century Novel

SECTION IV.--Samuel Richardson

SECTION V.--Henry Fielding

SECTION VI.--Tobias Smollett

SECTION VII.--Laurence Sterne

SECTION VIII.--Oliver Goldsmith

SECTION IX.--Samuel Johnson

SECTION X.--William Hogarth

INDEX

ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON BRIDGE

Etching from an original by Edwin Edwards

JOHN MILTON

Photogravure from an etching

INITIAL LETTER FROM THE GIFFORD PSALTER

Fac-simile Book Illumination of the Thirteenth Century

PRINTER'S MARK OF PHILIPPE LE NOIR

Fac-simile example of Printing and Engraving in the Fifteenth Century

PAGE FROM THE CHRONICLES OF HUNGARY

Fac-simile example of Printing and Engraving in the Fifteenth Century

BOOK II.--THE RENAISSANCE

(_Continued_)

HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

CHAPTER FIFTH

The Christian Renaissance

Section I.--Decay of the Southern Civilizations

"I would have my reader fully understand," says Luther in the preface to

his complete works, "that I have been a monk and a bigoted Papist, so

intoxicated, or rather so swallowed up in papistical doctrines, that I

was quite ready, if I had been able, to kill or procure the death of

those who should have rejected obedience to the Pope by so much as a

syllable. I was not all cold or all ice in the Pope's defence, like

Eckius and his like, who veritably seemed to me to constitute themselves

his defenders rather for their belly's sake than because they looked at

the matter seriously. More, to this day they seem to mock at him, like

Epicureans. I for my part proceeded frankly, like a man who has horribly

feared the day of judgment, and who yet hoped to be saved with a shaking

of all his bones." Again, when he saw Rome for the first time, he

prostrated himself, saying, "I salute thee, holy Rome... bathed in the

blood of so many martyrs." Imagine, if you may, the effect which the

shameless paganism of the Italian Renaissance had upon such a mind, so

loyal, so Christian. The beauty of art, the charm of a refined and

sensuous, existence, had taken no hold upon him; he judged morals, and

he judged them with his conscience only. He regarded this southern

civilization with the eyes of a man of the north, and understood its

vices only, like Ascham, who said he had seen in Venice "more libertie

to sinne in IX dayes than ever I heard tell of in our noble Citie of

London in IX yeare."[1] Like Arnold and Channing in the present day,

like all the men of Germanic[2] race and education, he was horrified at

this voluptuous life, now reckless and now licentious, but always void

of moral principles, given up to passion, enlivened by irony, caring

only for the present, destitute of belief in the infinite, with no other

worship than that of visible beauty, no other object than the search

after pleasure, no other religion than the terrors of imagination and

the idolatry of the eyes.

"I would not," said Luther afterwards, "for a hundred thousand florins

have gone without seeing Rome; I should always have doubted whether I

was not doing injustice to the Pope. The crimes of Rome are incredible;

no one will credit so great a perversity who has not the witness of his

eyes, ears, personal knowledge.... There reigned all the villanies and

infamies, all the atrocious crimes, in particular blind greed, contempt

of God, perjuries, sodomy.... We Germans swill liquor enough to split

us, whilst the Italians are sober. But they are the most impious of men;

they make a mock of true religion, they scorn the rest of us Christians,

because we believe everything in Scripture.... There is a saying in

Italy which they make use of when they go to church: 'Come and let us

conform to the popular error. If we were obliged,' they say again, 'to

believe in every word of God, we should be the most wretched of men, and

we should never be able to have a moment's cheerfulness; we must put a

good face on it, and not believe everything.' This is what Leo X did,

who, hearing a discussion as to the immortality or mortality of the

soul, took the latter side. 'For,' said he, 'it would be terrible to

believe in a future state. Conscience is an evil beast, who arms man

against himself.'... The Italians are either epicureans or

superstitious. The people fear St. Anthony and St. Sebastian more than

Christ, because of the plagues they send. This is why, when they want to

prevent the Italians from committing a nuisance anywhere, they paint up

St. Anthony with his fiery lance. Thus do they live in extreme

superstition, ignorant of God's word, not believing the resurrection of

the flesh, nor life everlasting, and fearing only temporal evils. Their

blasphemy also is frightful,... and the cruelty of their revenge is

atrocious. When they cannot get rid of their enemies in any other way,

they lay ambush for them in the churches, so that one man cleft his

enemy's head before the altar.... There are often murders at funerals on

account of inheritances.... They celebrate the Carnival with extreme

impropriety and folly for several weeks, and they have made a custom of

various sins and extravagances at it, for they are men without

conscience, who live in open sin, and make light of the marriage tie....

We Germans, and other simple nations, are like a bare clout; but the

Italians are painted and speckled with all sorts of false opinions, and

disposed still to embrace many worse.... Their fasts are more splendid

than our most sumptuous feasts. They dress extravagantly; where we spend

a florin on our clothes, they put down ten florins to have a silk

coat.... When they (the Italians) are chaste, it is sodomy with them.

There is no society amongst them. No one trusts another; they do not

come together freely, like us Germans; they do not allow strangers to

speak publicly with their wives: compared with the Germans, they are

altogether men of the cloister." These hard words are weak compared with

the facts.[3] Treasons, assassinations, tortures, open debauchery, the

practice of poisoning, the worst and most shameless outrages, are

unblushingly and publicly tolerated in the open light of heaven. In

1490, the Pope's vicar having forbidden clerics and laics to keep

concubines, the Pope revoked the decree, "saying that that was not

forbidden, because the life of priests and ecclesiastics was such that

hardly one was to be found who did not keep a concubine, or at least who

had not a courtesan." Cæsar Borgia at the capture of Capua "chose forty

of the most beautiful women, whom he kept for himself; and a pretty

large number of captives were sold at a low price at Rome." Under

Alexander VI, "all ecclesiastics, from the greatest to the least, have

concubines in the place of wives, and that publicly. If God hinder it

not," adds the historian, "this corruption will pass to the monks and

religious orders, although, to confess the truth, almost all the

monasteries of the town have become bawd-houses, without any one to

speak against it." With respect to Alexander VI, who loved his daughter

Lucretia, the reader may find in Burchard the description of the

marvellous orgies in which he joined with Lucretia and Cæsar, and the

enumeration of the prizes which he distributed. Let the reader also read

for himself the story of the bestiality of Pietro Luigi Farnese, the

Pope's son, how the young and upright Bishop of Fano died from his

outrage, and how the Pope, speaking of this crime as "a youthful

levity," gave him in this secret bull "the fullest absolution from all

the penalties which he might have incurred by human incontinence, in

whatever shape or with whatever cause." As to civil security,

Bentivoglio caused all the Marescotti to be put to death; Hippolyto

d'Este had his brother's eyes put out in his presence; Cæsar Borgia

killed his brother; murder is consonant with their public manners, and

excites no wonder. A fisherman was asked why he had not informed the

governor of the town that he had seen a body thrown into the water; "he

replied that he had seen about a hundred bodies thrown into the water

during his lifetime in the same place, and that no one had ever troubled

himself about it. In our town," says an old historian, "much murder

and pillage was done by day and night, and hardly a day passed but some

one was killed." Cæsar Borgia one day killed Peroso, the Pope's

favorite, between his arms and under his cloak, so that the blood

spurted up to the Pope's face. He caused his sister's husband to be

stabbed and then strangled in open day, on the steps of the palace;

count, if you can, his assassinations. Certainly he and his father, by

their character, morals, complete, open and systematic wickedness, have

presented to Europe the two most successful images of the devil. To sum

up in a word, it was on the model of this society, and for this society,

that Machiavelli wrote his "Prince." The complete development of all the

faculties and all the lusts of man, the complete destruction of all the

restraints and all the shame of man, are the two distinguishing marks of

this grand and perverse culture. To make man a strong being, endowed

with genius, audacity, presence of mind, astute policy, dissimulation,

patience, and to turn all this power to the acquisition of every kind of

pleasure, pleasures of the body, of luxury, arts, literature, authority;

that is, to form and to set free an admirable and formidable animal,

very lustful and well armed--such was his object; and the effect, after

a hundred years, is visible. They tore one another to pieces like

beautiful lions and superb panthers. In this society, which was turned

into an arena, amid so many hatreds, and when exhaustion was setting in,

the foreigner appeared: all bent beneath his lash; they were caged, and

thus they pine away, in dull pleasures, with low vices, bowing their

backs.[4] Despotism, the Inquisition, the Cicisbei, dense, ignorance,

and open knavery, the shamelessness and the smartness of harlequins and

rascals, misery and vermin--such is the issue of the Italian

Renaissance. Like the old civilizations of Greece and Rome,[5] like the

modern civilizations of Provence and Spain, like all southern

civilizations, it bears in its bosom an irremediable vice, a bad and

false conception of man. The Germans of the sixteenth century, like the

Germans of the fourth century, have rightly judged it; with their simple

common-sense, with their fundamental honesty, they have, put their

fingers on the secret plague-spot. A society cannot be founded only on

the pursuit of pleasure and power; a society can only be founded on the

respect for liberty and justice. In order that the great human

renovation which in the sixteenth century raised the whole of Europe

might be perfected and endure, it was necessary that, meeting with

another race, it should develop another culture, and that from a more

wholesome conception of existence it might educe a better form of

civilization.

Section II.--Luther and the Reformation in Germany

Thus, side by side with the Renaissance, was born the Reformation. It

also was in fact a new birth, one in harmony with the genius of the

Germanic peoples. The distinction between this genius and others is its

moral principles. Grosser and heavier, more given to gluttony and

drunkenness,[6] these nations are at the same time more under the

influence of conscience, firmer in the observance of their word, more

disposed to self-denial and sacrifice. Such their climate has made them;

and such they have continued, from Tacitus to Luther, from Knox to

Gustavus Adolphus and Kant. In the course of time, and beneath the

incessant action of the ages, the phlegmatic body, fed on coarse food

and strong drink, had become rusty, the nerves less excitable, the

muscles less strung, the desires less seconded by action, the life more

dull and slow, the soul more hardened and indifferent to the shocks of

the body: mud, rain, snow, a profusion of unpleasing and gloomy sights,

the want of lively and delicate excitements of the senses, keep man in a

militant attitude. Heroes in the barbarous ages, workers to-day, they

endure weariness now as they courted wounds then; now, as then, nobility

of soul appeals to them; thrown back upon the enjoyments of the soul,

they find in these a world, the world of moral beauty. For them the

ideal is displaced; it is no longer amidst forms, made up of force and

joy, but it is transferred to sentiments, made up of truth, uprightness,

attachment to duty, observance of order. What matters it if the storm

rages and if it snows, if the wind blusters in the black pine-forests or

on the wan sea-surges where the sea-gulls scream, if a man, stiff and

blue with cold, shutting himself up in his cottage, have but a dish of

sourcrout or a piece of salt beef, under his smoky light and beside his

fire of turf; another kingdom opens to reward him, the kingdom of inward

contentment: his wife loves him and is faithful; his children round his

hearth spell out the old family Bible; he is the master in his home, the

protector, the benefactor, honored by others, honored by himself; and if

so be that he needs assistance, he knows that at the first appeal he

will see his neighbors stand faithfully and bravely by his side. The

reader need only compare the portraits of the time, those of Italy and

Germany; he will comprehend at a glance the two races and the two

civilizations, the Renaissance and the Reformation: on one side a

half-naked condottiere in Roman costume, a cardinal in his robes, amply

draped, in a rich arm-chair, carved and adorned with heads of lions,

foliage, dancing fauns, he himself full of irony, and voluptuous, with

the shrewd and dangerous look of a politician and man of the world,

craftily poised and on his guard; on the other side, some honest doctor,

a theologian, a simple man, with badly combed locks, stiff as a post, in

his simple gown of coarse black serge, with big books of dogma

ponderously clasped, a conscientious worker, an exemplary father of a

family. See now the great artist of the age, a laborious and

conscientious workman, a follower of Luther's, a true Northman--Albert

Dürer.[7] He also, like Raphael and Titian, has his ideal of man, an

inexhaustible ideal, whence spring by hundreds living figures and the

representations of manners, but how national and original! He cares not

for expansive and happy beauty: to him nude bodies are but bodies

undressed: narrow shoulders, prominent stomachs, thin legs, feet weighed

down by shoes, his neighbor the carpenter's, or his gossip the

sausage-seller's. The heads stand out in his etchings, remorselessly

scraped and scooped away, savage or commonplace, often wrinkled by the

fatigues of trade, generally sad, anxious, and patient, harshly and

wretchedly transformed by the necessities of realistic life. Where is

the vista out of this minute copy of ugly truth? To what land will the

lofty and melancholy imagination betake itself? The land of dreams,

strange dreams swarming with deep thoughts, sad contemplation of human

destiny, a vague notion of the great enigma, groping reflection, which

in the dimness of the rough woodcuts, amidst obscure emblems and

fantastic figures, tries to seize upon truth and justice. There was no

need to search so far; Dürer had grasped them at the first effort. If

there is any decency in the world, it is in the Madonnas which are

constantly springing to life under his pencil. He did not begin, like

Raphael, by making them nude; the most licentious hand would not venture

to disturb one stiff fold of their robes; with an infant in their arms,

they think but of him, and will never think of anybody else but him; not

only are they innocent, but they are virtuous. The good German

housewife, forever shut up, voluntarily and naturally, within her

domestic duties and contentment, breathes out in all the fundamental

sincerity, the seriousness, the unassailable loyalty of their attitudes

and looks. He has done more; with this peaceful virtue he has painted a

militant virtue. There at last is the genuine Christ, the man crucified,

lean and fleshless through his agony, whose blood trickles minute by

minute, in rarer drops, as the feebler and feebler pulsations give

warning of the last throe of a dying life. We do not find here, as in

the Italian masters, a sight to charm the eyes, a mere flow of drapery,

a disposition of groups. The heart, the very heart is wounded by this

sight: it is the just man oppressed, who is dying because the world

hates justice. The mighty, the men of the age, are there, indifferent,

full of irony: a plumed knight, a big-bellied burgomaster, who, with

hands folded behind his back, looks on, kills an hour. But the rest

weep; above the fainting women, angels full of anguish catch in their

vessels the holy blood as it trickles down, and the stars of heaven veil

their face not to behold so tremendous an outrage. Other outrages will

also be represented; tortures manifold, and the true martyrs beside the

true Christ, resigned, silent, with the sweet expression of the earliest

believers. They are bound to an old tree, and the executioner tears them

with his iron-pointed lash. A bishop with clasped hands is praying,

lying down, whilst an auger is being screwed into his eye. Above, amid

the interlacing trees and gnarled roots, a band of men and women climb

under the lash the breast of a hill, and they are hurled from the crest

at the lance's point into the abyss; here and there roll heads, lifeless

bodies; and by the side of those who are being decapitated, the swollen

corpses, impaled, await the croaking ravens. All these sufferings must

be undergone for the confession of faith and the establishment of

justice. But above there is a guardian, an avenger, an all-powerful

Judge, whose day shall come. This day has come, and the piercing rays of

the last sun already flash, like a handful of darts, across the darkness

of the age. High up in the heavens appears the angel in his shining

robe, leading the ungovernable horsemen, the flashing swords, the

inevitable arrows of the avengers, who are to trample upon and punish

the earth; mankind falls down beneath their charge, and already the jaw

of the infernal monster grinds the head of the wicked prelates. This is

the popular poem of conscience, and from the days of the apostles man

has not had a more sublime and complete conception.[8]

For conscience, like other things, has its poem; by a natural invasion

the all-powerful idea of justice overflows from the soul, covers heaven,

and enthrones there a new deity. A formidable deity, who is scarcely

like the calm intelligence which serves philosophers to explain the

order of things; nor to that tolerant deity, a kind of constitutional

king, whom Voltaire discovered at the end of a chain of argument, whom

Béranger sings of as of a comrade, and whom he salutes "_sans lui

demander rien._" It is the just Judge, sinless and stern, who demands of

man a strict account of his visible actions and of all his invisible

feelings, who tolerates no forgetfulness, no dejection, no failing,

before whom every approach to weakness or error is an outrage and a

treason. What is our justice before this strict justice? People lived in

peace in the times of ignorance; at most, when they felt themselves

guilty, they went for absolution to a priest; all was ended by their

buying a big indulgence; there was a tariff, as there still is; Tetzel

the Dominican declares that all sins are blotted out "as soon as the

money chinks in the box." Whatever be the crime, there is a quittance:

even "_si Dei matrem vi olavisset_," he might go home clean and sure of

heaven. Unfortunately the venders of pardons did not know that all was

changed, and that the intellect was become manly, no longer gabbling

words mechanically like a catechism, but probing them anxiously like a

truth. In the universal Renaissance, and in the mighty growth of all

human ideas, the German idea of duty blooms like the rest. Now, when we

speak of justice, it is no longer a lifeless phrase which we repeat, but

a living idea which we produce; man sees the object which it represents,

and feels the emotion which summons it up; he no longer receives, but he

creates it; it is his work and his tyrant; he makes it, and submits to

it. "These words _justus_ and _justitia Dei_," says Luther, "were a

thunder to my conscience. I shuddered to hear them; I told myself, if

God is just, He will punish me."[9] For as soon as the conscience

discovers again the idea of the perfect model,[10] the smallest failings

appeared to be crimes, and man, condemned by his own scruples, fell

prostrate, and, "as it were, swallowed up" with horror. "I, who lived

the life of a spotless monk" says Luther, "yet felt within me the

troubled conscience of a sinner, without managing to assure myself as to

the satisfaction which I owed to God.... Then I said to myself: Am I

then the only one who ought to be sad in my spirit?... Oh, what horrible

spectres and figures I used to see!" Thus alarmed, conscience believes

that the terrible day is at hand. "The end of the world is near.... Our

children will see it; perchance we ourselves." Once in this mood he had

terrible dreams for six months at a time. Like the Christians of the

Apocalypse, he fixes the moment when the world will be destroyed: it

will come at Easter, or at the conversion of Saint Paul. One theologian,

his friend, thought of giving all his goods to the poor; "but would they

receive it?" he said. "To-morrow night we shall be seated in heaven."

Under such anguish the body gives way. For fourteen days Luther was in

such a condition that he could neither drink, eat, nor sleep. "Day and

night," his eyes fixed on a text of Saint Paul, he saw the Judge, and

His inevitable hand. Such is the tragedy which is enacted in all

Protestant souls--the eternal tragedy of conscience; and its issue is a

new religion.

For nature alone and unassisted cannot rise from this abyss. "By itself

it is so corrupted, that it does not feel the desire for heavenly

things.... There is in it before God nothing but lust." Good intentions

cannot spring from it. "For, terrified by the vision of his sin, man

could not resolve to do good, troubled and anxious as he is; on the

contrary, dejected and crushed by the weight of his sin, he falls into

despair and hatred of God, as it was with Cain, Saul, Judas;" so that,

abandoned to himself, he can find nothing within him but the rage and

the dejection of a despairing wretch or a devil. In vain he might try to

redeem himself by good works: our good deeds are not pure; even though

pure, they do not wipe out the stain of previous sins, and moreover they

do not take away the original corruption of the heart; they are only

boughs and blossoms, the inherited poison is in the sap. Man must

descend to the heart, underneath literal obedience and legal rule; from

the kingdom of law he must penetrate into that of grace; from forced

righteousness to spontaneous generosity; beneath his original nature,

which led him to selfishness and earthly things, a second nature must be

developed, leading him to sacrifice and heavenly things. Neither my

works, nor my justice, nor the works or justice of any creature or of

all creatures, could work in me this wonderful change. One alone can do

it, the pure God, the Just Victim, the Saviour, the Redeemer, Jesus, my

Christ, by imputing to me His justice, by pouring upon me His merits, by

drowning my sin under His sacrifice. The world is a "mass of

perdition,"[11] predestined to hell. Lord Jesus, draw me back, select me

from this mass. I have no claim to it; there is nothing in me that is

not abominable; this very prayer is inspired and formed within me by

Thee. But I weep, and my breast heaves, and my heart is broken. Lord,

let me feel myself redeemed, pardoned, Thy elect one. Thy faithful one;

give me grace, and give me faith! "Then," says Luther, "I felt myself

born anew, and it seemed that I was entering the open gates of heaven."

What remains to be done after this renovation of the heart? Nothing: all

religion is in that: the rest must be reduced or suppressed; it is a

personal affair, an inward dialogue between God and man, where there are

only two things at work--the very word of God as it is transmitted by

Scripture, and the emotions of the heart of man, as the word of God

excites and maintains them.[12] Let us do away with the rites that

appeal to the senses, wherewith men wished to replace this intercourse

between the invisible soul and the visible judge--mortifications, fasts,

corporeal penance, Lent, vows of chastity and poverty, rosaries,

indulgences; rites serve only to smother living piety underneath

mechanical works. Away with the mediators by which men attempted to

impede the direct intercourse between God and man--namely, saints, the

Virgin, the Pope, the priests; whosoever adores or obeys them is an

idolater. Neither saints nor Virgin can convert or save us; God alone by

His Christ can convert and save. Neither Pope nor priest can fix our

faith or forgive our sins; God alone instructs us by His word, and

absolves us by His pardon. No more pilgrimages or relics; no more

traditions or auricular confessions. A new church appears, and therewith

a new worship; ministers of religion change their tone, the worship of

God its form; the authority of the clergy is diminished, and the pomp of

services is reduced: they are reduced and diminished the more, because

the primitive idea of the new theology is more absorbing; so much so,

that in certain sects they have disappeared altogether. The priest

descends from the lofty position in which the right of forgiving sins

and of regulating faith had raised him over the heads of the laity; he

returns to civil society, marries like the rest, aims to be once more an

equal, is merely a more learned and pious man than others, chosen by

themselves and their adviser. The church becomes a temple, void of

images, decorations, ceremonies, sometimes altogether bare; a simple

meeting-house, where, between whitewashed walls, from a plain pulpit, a

man in a black gown speaks without gesticulations, reads a passage from

the Bible, begins a hymn, which the congregation takes up. There is

another place of prayer, as little adorned and not less venerated, the

domestic hearth, where every night the father of the family, before his

servants and his children, prays aloud and reads the Scriptures. An

austere and free religion, purged from sensualism and obedience, inward

and personal, which, set on foot by the awakening of the conscience,

could only be established among races in which each man found within his

nature the conviction that he alone is responsible for his actions, and

always bound to the observance of his duty.

Section III.--The Reformation in England

It must be admitted that the Reformation entered England by a side door;

but it is enough that it came in, whatever the manner: for great

revolutions are not introduced by court intrigues and official

cleverness, but by social conditions and popular instincts. When five

millions of men are converted, it is because five millions of men wish

to be converted. Let us therefore leave on one side the intrigues in

high places, the scruples and passions of Henry VIII,[13] the pliability

and plausibility of Cranmer, the vacillations and basenesses of

Parliament, the oscillation and tardiness of the Reformation, begun,

then arrested, then pushed forward, then suddenly, violently pushed

back, then spread over the whole nation, and hedged in by a legal

establishment, built up from discordant materials, but yet solid and

durable. Every great change has its root in the soul, and we have only

to look close into this deep soil to discover the national inclinations

and the secular irritations from which Protestantism has issued.

A hundred and fifty years before, it had been on the point of bursting

forth; Wyclif had appeared, the Lollards had sprung up, the Bible had

been translated; the Commons had proposed the confiscation of all

ecclesiastical property; then under the pressure of the Church, royalty

and aristocracy combined, the growing Reformation being crushed,

disappeared underground, only to reappear at distant intervals by the

sufferings of its martyrs. The bishops had received the right of

imprisoning without trial laymen suspected of heresy; they had burned

Lord Cobham alive; the kings chose their ministers from the episcopal

bench; settled in authority and pomp, they had made the nobility and

people bend under the secular sword which had been intrusted to them,

and in their hands the stern network of law, which from the Conquest had

compressed the nation in its iron meshes, had become still more

stringent and more offensive. Venial acts had been construed into

crimes, and the judicial repression, extended to sins as well as to

crimes, had changed the police into an inquisition. "'Offences against'

chastity, 'heresy,' or 'matter sounding thereunto, witchcraft,

drunkenness, scandal, defamation, impatient words, broken

promises, untruth, absence from church, speaking evil of saints,

non-payment of offerings, complaints against the constitutions of the

courts themselves';"[14] all these transgressions, imputed or suspected,

brought folk before the ecclesiastical tribunals, at enormous expense,

with long delays, from great distances, under a captious procedure,

resulting in heavy fines, strict imprisonments, humiliating abjurations,

public penances, and the menace, often fulfilled, of torture and the

stake. Judge from a single fact: the Earl of Surrey, a relative of the

king, was accused before one of these tribunals of having neglected a

fast. Imagine, if you can, the minute and incessant oppressiveness of

such a code; how far the whole of human life, visible actions and

invisible thoughts, was surrounded and held down by it; how by enforced

accusations it penetrated to every hearth and into every conscience;

with what shamelessness it was transformed into a vehicle for

extortions; what secret anger it excited in these townsfolk, these

peasants, obliged sometimes to travel sixty miles and back to leave in

one or other of the numberless talons of the law[15] a part of their

savings, sometimes their whole substance and that of their children. A

man begins to think when he is thus down-trodden; he asks himself

quietly if it is really by divine dispensation that mitred thieves thus

practise tyranny and pillage; he looks more closely into their lives; he

wants to know if they themselves practise the regularity which they

impose on others; and on a sudden he learns strange things. Cardinal

Wolsey writes to the Pope, that "both the secular and regular priests

were in the habit of committing atrocious crimes, for which, if not in

orders, they would have been promptly executed;[16] and the laity were

scandalized to see such persons not only not degraded, but escaping with

complete impunity." A priest convicted of incest with the prioress of

Kilbourn was simply condemned to carry a cross in a procession, and to

pay three shillings and fourpence; at which rate, I fancy, he would

renew the practice. In the preceding reign (Henry VII) the gentlemen and

farmers of Carnarvonshire had laid a complaint accusing the clergy of

systematically seducing their wives and daughters. There were brothels

in London for the especial use of priests. As to the abuse of the

confessional, read in the original the familiarities to which it opened

the door.[17] The bishops gave livings to their children whilst they

were still young. The holy father prior of Maiden Bradley hath but six

children, and but one daughter married yet of the goods of the

monastery; trusting shortly to marry the rest. In the convents the monks

used to drink after supper till ten or twelve next morning, and came to

matins drunk. They played cards or dice. Some came to service in the

afternoons, and only then for fear of corporal punishments. The royal

"visitors" found concubines in the secret apartments of the abbots. At

the nunnery of Sion, the confessors seduced the nuns and absolved them

at the same time. There were convents, Burnet tells us, where all the

recluses were found pregnant. About "two-thirds" of the English monks

lived in such sort, that "when their enormities were first read in the

Parliament House, there was nothing but 'down with them'!"[18] What a

spectacle for a nation in whom reason and conscience were awakening!

Long before the great outburst, public wrath muttered ominously, and was

accumulating for a revolt; priests were yelled at in the streets or

"thrown into the kennel"; women would not "receive the sacrament from

hands which they thought polluted."[19] When the apparitor of the

ecclesiastical courts came to serve a process, he was driven away with

insults. "Go thy way, thou stynkyng knave, ye are but knaves and

brybours everych one of you." A mercer broke an apparitor's head with

his yard. "A waiter at the sign of the Cock" said "that the sight of a

priest did make him sick, and that he would go sixty miles to indict a

priest." Bishop Fitz-James wrote to Wolsey, that the juries in London

were "so maliciously set _in favorem hœreticæ pravitatis_, that they

will cast and condemn any clerk, though he were as innocent as

Abel."[20] Wolsey himself spoke to the Pope of the "dangerous spirit"

which was spread abroad among the people, and planned a reformation.

When Henry VIII laid the axe to the tree, and slowly, with mistrust,

struck a blow, then a second lopping off the branches, there were a

thousand, nay, a hundred thousand hearts which approved of it, and would

themselves have struck the trunk.

Consider the internal state of a diocese, that of Lincoln for

instance,[21] at this period, about 1521, and judge by this example of

the manner in which the ecclesiastical machinery works throughout the

whole of England, multiplying martyrs, hatreds, and conversions. Bishop

Longland summons the relatives of the accused, brothers, women and

children, and administers the oath; as they have already been prosecuted

and have abjured, they must make oath, or they are relapsed, and the

fagots await them. Then they denounce their kinsman and themselves. One

has taught the other in English the Epistle of Saint James. This man,

having forgotten several words of the Pater and Credo in Latin, can only

repeat them in English. A woman turned her face from the cross which was

carried about on Easter morning. Several at church, especially at the

moment of the elevation, would not say their prayers, and remained

seated "dumb as beasts." Three men, including a carpenter, passed a

night together reading a book of the Scriptures. A pregnant woman went

to mass not fasting. A brazier denied the Real Presence. A brickmaker

kept the Apocalypse in his possession. A thresher said, as he pointed to

his work, that he was going to make God come out of his straw. Others

spoke lightly of pilgrimage, or of the Pope, or of relics, or of

confession. And then fifty of them were condemned the same year to

abjure, to promise to denounce each other, and to do penance all their

lives, on pain of being burnt, as relapsed heretics. They were shut up

in different "monasteries"; there they were to be maintained by alms,

and to work for their support; they were to appear with a fagot on their

shoulders at market, and in the procession on Sunday. Then in a general

procession, then at the punishment of a heretic; "they were to fast on

bread and ale only every Friday during their life, and every even of

Corpus Christy on bread and water, and carry a visible mark on their

cheek." Beyond that, six were burnt alive, and the children of one, John

Scrivener, were obliged themselves to set fire to their father's

wood-pile. Do you think that a man, burnt or shut up, was altogether

done with? He is silenced, I admit, or he is hidden; but long memories

and bitter resentments endure under a forced silence. People saw[22]

their companion, relation, brother, bound by an iron chain, with clasped

hands, praying amid the smoke, whilst the flame blackened his skin and

destroyed his flesh. Such sights are not forgotten; the last words

uttered on the fagot, the last appeals to God and Christ, remain in

their hearts all-powerful and ineffaceable. They carry them about with

them, and silently ponder over them in the fields, at their labor, when

they think themselves alone; and then, darkly, passionately, their

brains work. For, beyond this universal sympathy which gathers mankind

about the oppressed, there is the working of the religious sentiment.

The crisis of conscience has begun which is natural to this race; they

meditate on their salvation, they are alarmed at their condition:

terrified at the judgments of God, they ask themselves whether, living

under imposed obedience and ceremonies, they do not become culpable, and

merit damnation. Can this terror be stifled by prisons and torture? Fear

against fear, the only question is, which is the strongest! They will

soon know it: for the peculiarity of these inward anxieties is that they

grow beneath constraint and oppression; as a welling spring which we

vainly try to stamp out under stones, they bubble and leap up and swell,

until their surplus overflows, disjointing or bursting asunder the

regular masonry under which men endeavored to bury them. In the solitude

of the fields, or during the long winter nights, men dream; soon they

fear, and become gloomy. On Sunday at church, obliged to cross

themselves, to kneel before the cross, to receive the host, they

shudder, and think it is a mortal sin. They cease to talk to their

friends, remain for hours with bowed heads, sorrowful; at night their

wives hear them sigh; unable to sleep they rise from their beds. Picture

such a wan face, full of anguish, nourishing under its sternness and

calmness a secret ardor: it is still to be found in England in the poor

shabby dissenter, who, Bible in hand, stands up suddenly to preach at a

street corner; in those long-faced men who, after the service, not

having had enough of prayers, sing a hymn in the street. The sombre

imagination has started like a woman in labor, and its conception swells

day by day, tearing him who contains it. Through the long muddy winter

the howling of the wind sighing among the ill-fitting rafters, the

melancholy of the sky, continually flooded with rain or covered with

clouds, add to the gloom of the lugubrious dream. Thenceforth man has

made up his mind; he will be saved at all costs. At the peril of his

life, he obtains one of the books which teach the way of salvation,

Wyclif's "Wicket Gate, The Obedience of a Christian," or sometimes

Luther's "Revelation of Antichrist," but above all some portion of the

word of God, which Tyndale had just translated. One man hid his books in

a hollow tree; another learned by heart an epistle or a gospel, so as to

be able to ponder it to himself even in the presence of his accusers.

When sure of his neighbor, he speaks with him in private; and peasant

talking to peasant, laborer to laborer--you know what the effect will

be. It was the yeomen's sons, as Latimer said, who more than all others

maintained the faith of Christ in England;[23] and it was with the

yeomen's sons that Cromwell afterwards reaped his Puritan victories.

When such words are whispered through a nation, all official voices

clamor in vain: the nation has found its poem, it stops its ears to the

troublesome would-be distractors, and presently sings it out with a full

voice and from a full heart.

But the contagion had even reached the men in office, and Henry VIII at

last permitted the English Bible to be published.[24] England had her

book. Everyone, says Strype, who could buy this book either read it

assiduously, or had it read to him by others, and many well advanced in

years learned to read with the same object. On Sunday the poor folk

gathered at the bottom of the churches to hear it read. Maldon, a young

man, afterwards related that he had clubbed his savings with an

apprentice to buy a New Testament, and that for fear of his father they

had hidden it in their straw mattress. In vain the king in his

proclamation had ordered people not to rest too much upon their own

sense, ideas, or opinions; not to reason publicly about it in the public

taverns and alehouses, but to have recourse to learned and authorized

men; the seed sprouted, and they chose rather to take God's word in the

matter than men's. Maldon declared to his mother that he would not kneel

to the crucifix any longer, and his father in a rage beat him severely,

and was ready to hang him. The preface itself invited men to independent

study, saying that "the Bishop of Rome has studied long to keep the

Bible from the people, and specially from princes, lest they should find

out his tricks and his falsehoods;... knowing well enough, that if the

clear sun of God's word came over the heat of the day, it would drive

away the foul mist of his devilish doctrines."[25] Even on the

admission, then, of official voices, they had there the pure and the

whole truth, not merely speculative but moral truth, without which we

cannot live worthily or be saved. Tyndale, the translator, says:

"The right waye (yea and the onely waye) to understand the Scripture

unto salvation, is that we ernestlye and above all thynge serche for the

profession of our baptisme or covenauntes made betwene God and us. As

for an example. Christe sayth, Mat. V., Happy are the mercyfull, for

they shall obtayne mercye. Lo, here God hath made a covenaunt wyth us,

to be mercyfull unto us, yf we wyll be mercyfull one to another."

What an expression! and with what ardor men pricked by the ceaseless

reproaches of a scrupulous conscience, and the presentiment of the dark

future, will devote on these pages the whole attention of eyes and

heart!

I have before me one of these great old folios,[26] in black letter, in

which the pages, worn by horny fingers, have been patched together, in

which an old engraving figures forth to the poor folk the deeds and

menaces of the God of Israel, in which the preface and table of contents

point out to simple people the moral which is to be drawn from each

tragic history, and the application which is to be made of each

venerable precept. Hence have sprung much of the English language, and

half of the English manners; to this day the country is biblical;[27] it

was these big books which had transformed Shakespeare's England. To

understand this great change, try to picture these yeomen, these

shopkeepers, who in the evening placed this Bible on their table, and

bareheaded, with veneration, heard or read one of its chapters. Think

that they have no other books, that theirs was a virgin mind, that every

impression would make a furrow, that the monotony of mechanical

existence rendered them entirely open to new emotions, that they opened

this book not for amusement, but to discover in it their doom of life

and death; in brief, that the sombre and impassioned imagination of the

race raised them to the level of the grandeurs and terrors which were to

pass before their eyes. Tyndale, the translator, wrote with such

sentiments, condemned, hunted, in concealment, his mind full of the idea

of a speedy death, and of the great God for whom at last he mounted the

funeral pyre; and the spectators who had seen the remorse of

Macbeth,[28] and the murders of Shakespeare can listen to the despair of

David, and the massacres accumulated in the books of Judges and Kings.

The short Hebrew verse-style took hold upon them by its uncultivated

austerity. They have no need, like the French, to have the ideas

developed, explained in fine clear language, to be modified or

connected.[29] The serious and pulsating tone shakes them at once; they

understand it with the imagination and the heart; they are not, like

Frenchmen, enslaved to logical regularity; and the old text, so free, so

lofty and terrible, can retain in their language its wildness and its

majesty. More than any people in Europe, by their inner concentration

and rigidity, they realize the Semitic conception of the solitary and

almighty God; a strange conception, which we, with all our critical

methods, have hardly reconstructed within ourselves at the present day.

For the Jew, for the powerful minds who wrote the Pentateuch,[30] for

the prophets and authors of the Psalms, life, as we conceive it, was

secluded from living things, plants, animals, firmament, sensible

objects, to be carried and concentrated entirely in the one Being of

whom they are the work and the puppets. Earth is the footstool of this

great God, heaven is His garment. He is in the world, amongst His

creatures, as an Oriental king in his tent, amidst his arms and his

carpets. If you enter this tent, all vanishes before the absorbing idea

of the master; you see but him; nothing has an individual and

independent existence: these arms are but made for his hands, these

carpets for his foot; you imagine them only as spread for him and

trodden by him. The awe-inspiring face and the menacing voice of the

irresistible lord appear behind his instruments. And in a similar

manner, for the Jew, nature and men are nothing of themselves; they are

for the service of God; they have no other reason for existence; no

other use; they vanish before the vast and solitary Being who, extended

and set high as a mountain before human thought, occupies and covers in

Himself the whole horizon. Vainly we attempt, we seed of the Aryan race,

to represent to ourselves this devouring God; we always leave some

beauty, some interest, some part of free existence to nature; we but

half attain to the Creator, with difficulty, after a chain of reasoning,

like Voltaire and Kant; more readily we make Him into an architect; we

naturally believe in natural laws; we know that the order of the world

is fixed; we do not crush things and their relations under the burden of

an arbitrary sovereignty; we do not grasp the sublime sentiment of Job,

who sees the world trembling and swallowed up at the touch of the strong

hand; we cannot endure the intense emotion or repeat the marvellous

accent of the Psalms, in which, amid the silence of beings reduced to

atoms, nothing remains but the heart of man speaking to the eternal

Lord. These Englishmen, in the anguish of a troubled conscience, and the

oblivion of sensible nature, renew it in part. If the strong and harsh

cheer of the Arab, which breaks forth like the blast of a trumpet at the

sight of the rising sun and of the bare solitudes,[31] if the mental

trances, the short visions of a luminous and grand landscape, if the

Semitic coloring are wanting, at least the seriousness and simplicity

have remained; and the Hebraic God brought into the modern conscience is

no less a sovereign in this narrow precinct than in the deserts and

mountains from which He sprang. His image is reduced, but His authority

is entire; if He is less poetical, He is more moral. Men read with awe

and trembling the history of His works, the tables of His law, the

archives of His vengeance, the proclamation of His promises and menaces;

they are filled with them. Never has a people been seen so deeply imbued

by a foreign book, has let it penetrate so far into its manners and

writings, its imagination and language. Thenceforth they have found

their King, and will follow Him; no word, lay or ecclesiastic, shall

prevail over His word; they have submitted their conduct to Him, they

will give body and life for Him; and if need be, a day will come when,

out of fidelity to Him, they will overthrow the State.

It is not enough to hear this King, they must answer Him; and religion

is not complete until the prayer of the people is added to the

revelation of God. In 1548, at last, England received her

prayer-book[32] from the hands of Cranmer, Peter Martyr, Bernard Ochin,

Melanchthon; the chief and most ardent reformers of Europe were invited

to compose a body of doctrines conformable to Scripture, and to express

a body of sentiments conformable to the true Christian faith. This

prayer-book is an admirable book, in which the full spirit of the

Reformation breathes out, where, beside the moving tenderness of the

gospel, and the manly accents of the Bible, throb the profound emotion,

the grave eloquence, the noble-mindedness, the restrained enthusiasm of

the heroic and poetic souls who had rediscovered Christianity, and had

passed near the fire of martyrdom.

"Almighty and most merciful Father; We have erred, and strayed from Thy

ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires

of our own hearts. We have offended against Thy holy laws. We have left

undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those

things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us.

But Thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare Thou

them, O God, which confess their faults. Restore Thou them that are

penitent; According to Thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesu

our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for His sake; That we may

hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life."

"Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that Thou hast made,

and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent; Create and make

in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and

acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of Thee, the God of all

mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness."

The same idea of sin, repentance, and moral renovation continually

recurs; the master-thought is always that of the heart humbled before

invisible justice, and only imploring His grace in order to obtain His

relief. Such a state of mind ennobles man, and introduces a sort of

impassioned gravity in all the important actions of his life. Listen to

the liturgy of the deathbed, of baptism, of marriage; the latter first:

"Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together after

God's ordinance, in the holy state of Matrimony? Wilt thou love her,

comfort her, honor, and keep her in sickness and in health; and,

forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall

live?"

These are genuine, honest, and conscientious words. No mystic languor

here or elsewhere. This religion is not made for women who dream, yearn,

and sigh, but for men who examine themselves, act and have confidence,

confidence in someone more just than themselves. When a man is sick, and

his flesh is weak, the priest comes to him, and says:

"Dearly beloved, know this, that Almighty God is the Lord of life and

death, and of all things to them pertaining, as youth, strength, health,

age, weakness, and sickness. Wherefore, whatsoever your sickness is,

know you certainly, that it is God's visitation. And for what cause

soever this sickness is sent unto you; whether it be to try your

patience for the example of others,... or else it be sent unto you to

correct and amend in you whatsoever doth offend the eyes of your

heavenly Father; know you certainly, that if you truly repent you of

your sins, and bear your sickness patiently, trusting in God's mercy,...

submitting yourself wholly unto His will, it shall turn to your profit,

and help you forward in the right way that leadeth unto everlasting

life."

A great mysterious sentiment, a sort of sublime epic, void of images,

shows darkly amid these probings of the conscience; I mean a glimpse of

the divine government and of the invisible world, the only existences,

the only realities, in spite of bodily appearances and of the brute

chance, which seems to jumble all things together. Man sees this beyond

at distant intervals, and raises himself out of his mire, as though he

had suddenly breathed a pure and strengthening atmosphere. Such are the

effects of public prayer restored to the people; for this had been taken

from the Latin and rendered into the vulgar tongue: there is a

revolution in this very word. Doubtless routine, here as with the

ancient missal, will gradually do its sad work; by repeating the same

words, man will often do nothing but repeat words; his lips will move

whilst his heart remains inert. But in great anguish, in the confused

agitation of a restless and hollow mind, at the funeral of his

relatives, the strong words of the book will find in him a mood to feel;

for they are living,[33] and do not stay in the ears like those of a

dead language; they enter the soul, and as soon as the soul is stirred

and worked upon, they take root there. If you go and hear these words in

England itself, and if you listen to the deep and pulsating accent with

which they are pronounced, you will see that they constitute there a

national poem, always understood and always efficacious. On Sunday, when

all business and pleasure is suspended, between the bare walls of the

village church, where no image, no _ex-voto_, no accessory worship

distracts the eyes, the seats are full; the powerful Hebraic verses

knock like the strokes of a battering-ram at the door of every soul;

then the liturgy unfolds its imposing supplications; and at intervals

the song of the congregation, combined with the organ, sustains the

people's devotion. There is nothing graver and more simple than this

singing by the people; no scales, no elaborate melody; it is not

calculated for the gratification of the ear, and yet it is free from the

sickly sadness, from the gloomy monotony which the Middle Ages has left

in the chanting in Roman Catholic churches; neither monkish nor pagan,

it rolls like a manly yet sweet melody, neither contrasting with nor

obscuring the words which accompany it; these words are Psalms

translated into verse, yet lofty; diluted, but not embellished.

Everything harmonizes--place, music, text, ceremony--to place every man,

personally and without a mediator, in presence of a just God, and to

form a moral poetry which shall sustain and develop the moral sense.[34]

One detail is still needed to complete this manly religion--human

reason. The minister ascends the pulpit and speaks: he speaks coldly, I

admit, with literary comments and over-long demonstrations; but solidly,

seriously, like a man who desires to convince, and that by honest means,

who addresses only the reason, and discourses only of justice. With

Latimer and his contemporaries, preaching, like religion, changes its

object and character; like religion, it becomes popular and moral, and

appropriate to those who hear it, to recall them to their duties. Few

men have deserved better of their fellows, in life and word, than he. He

was a genuine Englishman, conscientious, courageous, a man of

common-sense and practical, sprung from the laboring and independent

class, the very heart and sinews of the nation. His father, a brave

yeoman, had a farm of about four pounds a year, on which he employed

half a dozen men, with thirty cows which his wife milked, a good soldier

of the king, keeping equipment for himself and his horse so as to join

the army if need were, training his son to use the bow, making him

buckle on his breastplate, and finding a few nobles at the bottom of his

purse wherewith to send him to school, and thence to the university.

Little Latimer studied eagerly, took his degrees, and continued long a

good Catholic, or, as he says, "in darckense and in the shadow of

death." At about thirty, having often heard Bilney the martyr, and

having, moreover, studied the world and thought for himself, he, as he

tells us, "began from that time forward to smell the word of God, and to

forsooke the Schoole Doctours, and such fooleries"; presently to preach,

and forthwith to pass for a seditious man, very troublesome to those men

in authority who did not act with justice. For this was in the first

place the salient feature of his eloquence: he spoke to people of their

duties, in exact terms. One day, when he preached before the university,

the Bishop of Ely came, curious to hear him. Immediately he changed his

subject, and drew the portrait of a perfect prelate, a portrait which

did not tally well with the bishop's character; and he was denounced for

the act. When he was made chaplain of Henry VIII, awe-inspiring as the

king was, little as he was himself, he dared to write to him freely to

bid him stop the persecution which was set on foot, and to prevent the

interdiction of the Bible; verily he risked his life. He had done it

before, he did it again; like Tyndale, Knox, all the leaders of the

Reformation, he lived in almost ceaseless expectation of death, and in

contemplation of the stake. Sick, liable to racking headaches, stomach

aches, pleurisy, stone, he wrought a vast work, travelling, writing,

preaching, delivering at the age of sixty-seven two sermons every

Sunday, and generally rising at two in the morning, winter and summer,

to study. Nothing can be simpler or more effective than his eloquence;

and the reason is, that he never speaks for the sake of speaking, but of

doing work. His sermons, amongst others those which he preached before

the young king Edward VI, are not, like those of Massillon before the

youthful Louis XV, hung in the air, in the calm region of philosophical

amplifications: Latimer wishes to correct, and he attacks actual vices,

vices which he has seen, which everyone can point at with the finger; he

too points them out, calls things by their name, and people too, giving

facts and details, bravely; and sparing nobody, sets himself without

hesitation to denounce and reform iniquity. Universal as his morality

is, ancient as is his text, he applies it to his contemporaries, to his

audience, at times to the judges who are there "in velvet cotes," who

will not hear the poor, who give but a dog's hearing to such a woman in

a twelvemonth, and who leave another poor woman in the Fleet, refusing

to accept bail;[35] at times to the king's officer, whose thefts he

enumerates, whom he sets between hell and restitution, and of whom he

obtains, nay extorts, pound for pound, the stolen money.[36] From

abstract iniquity he proceeds always to special abuse; for it is abuse

which cries out and demands, not a discourser, but a champion. With him

theology holds but a secondary place; before all, practice: the true

offence against God in his eyes is a bad action, the true service, the

suppression of bad deeds. And see by what paths he reaches this. No

grand words, no show of style, no exhibition of dialectics. He relates

his life, the lives of others, giving dates, numbers, places; he abounds

in anecdotes, little obvious circumstances, fit to enter the imagination

and arouse the recollections of each hearer. He is familiar, at times

humorous, and always so precise, so impressed with real events and

particularities of English life, that we might glean from his sermons an

almost complete description of the manners of his age and country. To

reprove the great, who appropriate common lands by their enclosures, he

details the needs of the peasant, without the least care for

conventional proprieties; he is not working now for conventionalities,

but to produce convictions:

"A plough land must have sheep; yea, they must have sheep to dung their

ground for bearing of corn; for if they have no sheep to help to fat the

ground, they shall have but bare corn and thin. They must have swine for

their food, to make their veneries or bacon of: their bacon is their

venison, for they shall now have _hangum tuum_, if they get any other

venison; so that bacon is their necessary meat to feed on, which they

may not lack. They must have other cattle: as horses to draw their

plough, and for carriage of things to the markets; and kine for their

milk and cheese, which they must live upon and pay their rents. These

cattle must have pasture, which pasture if they lack, the rest must

needs fail them: and pasture they cannot have, if the land be taken in,

and enclosed from them."[37]

Another time, to put his hearers on their guard against hasty judgments,

he relates that, having entered the gaol at Cambridge to exhort the

prisoners, he found a woman accused of having killed her child, who

would make no confession:

"Which denying gave us occasion to search for the matter, and so we did.

And at length we found that her husband loved her not; and therefore he

sought means to make her out of the way. The matter was thus: 'A child

of hers had been sick by the space of a year, and so decayed as it were

in a consumption. At the length it died in harvest-time. She went to her

neighbors and other friends to desire their help, to prepare the child

to the burial: but there was nobody at home; every man was in the field.

The woman, in an heaviness and trouble of spirit, went, and being

herself alone, prepared the child to the burial. Her husband coming

home, not having great love towards her, accused her of the murder; and

so she was taken and brought to Cambridge. But as far forth as I could

learn through earnest inquisition, I thought in my conscience the woman

was not guilty, all the circumstances well considered. Immediately after

this I was called to preach before the king, which was my first sermon

that I made before his majesty, and it was done at Windsor; when his

majesty, after the sermon was done, did most familiarly talk with me in

the gallery. Now, when I saw my time, I kneeled down before his majesty,

opening the whole matter; and afterwards most humbly desired his majesty

to pardon that woman. For I thought in my conscience she was not guilty;

else I would not for all the world sue for a murderer. The king most

graciously heard my humble request, insomuch that I had a pardon ready

for her at my return homeward. In the mean season that same woman was

delivered of a child in the tower at Cambridge, whose godfather I was,

and Mistress Cheke was godmother. But all that time I hid my pardon, and

told her nothing of it, only exhorting her to confess the truth. At the

length the time came when she looked to suffer: I came, as I was wont to

do, to instruct her; she made great moan to me, and most earnestly

required me that I would find the means that she might be purified

before her suffering; for she thought she should have been damned, if

she should suffer without purification.... So we travailed with this

woman till we brought her to a good trade; and at the length shewed her

the king's pardon, and let her go.'

"This tale I told you by this occasion, that though some women be very

unnatural, and forget their children, yet when we hear anybody so

report, we should not be too hasty in believing the tale, but rather

suspend our judgments till we know the truth."[38]

When a man preaches thus, he is believed; we are sure that he is not

reciting a lesson; we feel that he has seen, that he draws his moral not

from books, but from facts; that his counsels come from the solid basis

whence everything ought to come--I mean from manifold and personal

experience. Many a time have I listened to popular orators, who address

the pocket, and prove their talent by the money they have collected; it

is thus that they hold forth, with circumstantial, recent, proximate

examples, with conversational turns of speech, setting aside great

arguments and fine language. Imagine the ascendancy of the Scriptures

enlarged upon in such words; to what strata of the people it could

descend, what a hold it had upon sailors, workmen, servants! Consider,

again, how the authority of these words is doubled by the courage,

independence, integrity, unassailable and recognized virtue of him who

utters them. He spoke the truth to the king, unmasked robbers, incurred

all kind of hate, resigned his see rather than sign anything against his

conscience; and at eighty years, under Mary, refusing to recant, after

two years of prison and waiting--and what waiting! he was led to the

stake. His companion, Ridley, slept the night before as calmly, we are

told, as ever he did in his life; and when ready to be chained to the

post, said aloud, "O heavenly Father, I give Thee most hearty thanks,

for that Thou hast called me to be a professor of Thee, even unto

death." Latimer in his turn, when they brought the lighted fagots,

cried, "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man: we shall

this day light such a candle by God's grace, in England, as I trust

shall never be put out." He then bathed his hands in the flames, and

resigning his soul to God, he expired.

He had judged rightly: it is by this supreme trial that a creed proves

its strength and gains its adherents; tortures are a sort of propaganda

as well as a testimony, and make converts whilst they make martyrs. All

the writings of the time, and all the commentaries which may be added to

them, are weak compared to the actions which, one after the other, shone

forth at that time from learned and unlearned, down to the most simple

and ignorant. In three years, under Mary, nearly three hundred persons,

men, women, old and young, some all but children, allowed themselves to

be burned alive rather than to abjure. The all-powerful idea of God, and

of the faith due to Him, made them resist all the protests of nature,

and all the trembling of the flesh. "No one will be crowned," said one

of them, "but they who fight like men; and he who endures to the end

shall be saved." Doctor Rogers was burned first, in presence of his wife

and ten children, one at the breast. He had not been told beforehand,

and was sleeping soundly. The wife of the keeper of Newgate woke him,

and told him that he must burn that day. "Then," said he, "I need not

truss my points." In the midst of the flames he did not seem to suffer.

"His children stood by consoling him, in such a way that he looked as if

they were conducting him to a merry marriage."[39] A young man of

nineteen, William Hunter, apprenticed to a silk-weaver, was exhorted by

his parents to persevere to the end:

"In the mean time William's father and mother came to him, and desired

heartily of God that he might continue to the end in that good way which

he had begun: and his mother said to him, that she was glad that ever

she was so happy to bear such a child, which could find in his heart to

lose his life for Christ's name's sake.

"Then William said to his mother, 'For my little pain which I shall

suffer, which is but a short braid, Christ hath promised me, mother

(said he), a crown of joy: may you not be glad of that, mother?' With

that his mother kneeled down on her knees, saying, 'I pray God

strengthen thee, my son, to the end; yea, I think thee as well-bestowed

as any child that ever I bare.'...

"Then William Hunter plucked up his gown, and stepped over the parlor

groundsel, and went forward cheerfully; the sheriff's servant taking him

by one arm, and I his brother by another. And thus going in the way, he

met with his father according to his dream, and he spake to his son

weeping, and saying, 'God be with thee, son William;' and William said,

'God be with you, good father, and be of good comfort; for I hope we

shall meet again, when we shall be merry.' His father said, 'I hope so,

William;' and so departed. So William went to the place where the stake

stood, even according to his dream, where all things were very unready.

Then William took a wet broom-faggot, and kneeled down thereon, and read

the fifty-first Psalm, till he came to these words, 'The sacrifice of

God is a contrite spirit; a contrite and a broken heart, O God, thou

wilt not despise.'...

"Then said the sheriff, 'Here is a letter from the queen. If thou wilt

recant thou shalt live; if not, thou shalt be burned. No,' quoth

William, 'I will not recant, God willing.' Then William rose and went to

the stake, and stood upright to it. Then came one Richard Ponde, a

bailiff, and made fast the chain about William.

"Then said master Brown, 'Here is not wood enough to burn a leg of him.'

Then said William, 'Good people! pray for me; and make speed and

despatch quickly: and pray for me while you see me alive, good people!

and I will pray for you likewise. Now?' quoth master Brown, 'pray for

thee! I will pray no more for thee, than I will pray for a dog.'...

"Then was there a gentleman which said, 'I pray God have mercy upon his

soul.' The people said 'Amen, Amen.'

"Immediately fire was made. When William cast his psalter right into his

brother's hand, who said, 'William! think on the holy passion of Christ,

and be not afraid of death.' And William answered, 'I am not afraid.'

Then lift he up his hands to heaven, and said, 'Lord, Lord, Lord,

receive my spirit;' and, casting down his head again into the

smothering smoke, he yielded up his life for the truth, sealing it with

his blood to the praise of God."[40]

When a passion is able thus to subdue the natural affections, it is able

also to subdue bodily pain; all the ferocity of the time labored in vain

against inward convictions. Thomas Tomkins, a weaver of Shoreditch,

being asked by Bonner is he could stand the fire well, bade him try it.

"Bonner took Tomkins by the fingers and held his hand directly over the

flame," to terrify him. But "he never shrank, till the veins shrank and

the sinews burst, and the water (blood) did spirt in Mr. Harpsfield's

face."[41] "In the Isle of Guernsey, a woman with child being ordered to

the fire, was delivered in the flames, and the infant being taken from

her, was ordered by the magistrates to be thrown back into the

fire."[42] Bishop Hooper was burned three times over in a small fire of

green wood. There was too little wood, and the wind turned aside the

smoke. He cried out, "For God's love, good people, let me have more

fire." His legs and thighs were roasted; one of his hands fell off

before he expired; he endured thus three-quarters of an hour; before him

in a box was his pardon, on condition that he would retract. Against

long sufferings in mephitic prisons, against everything which might

unnerve or seduce, these men were invincible: five died of hunger at

Canterbury; they were in irons night and day, with no covering but their

clothes, on rotten straw; yet there was an understanding amongst them,

that the "cross of persecution" was a blessing from God, "an inestimable

jewel, a sovereign antidote, well-approved, to cure love of self and

earthly affection." Before such examples the people were shaken. A woman

wrote to Bishop Bonner that there was not a child but called him Bonner

the hangman, and knew on his fingers, as well as he knew his Pater, the

exact number of those he had burned at the stake, or suffered to die of

hunger in prison these nine months. "You have lost the hearts of twenty

thousand persons who were inveterate Papists a year ago." The spectators

encouraged the martyrs, and cried out to them that their cause was just.

The Catholic envoy Renard wrote to Charles V that it was said that

several had desired to take their place at the stake, by the side of

those who were being burned. In vain the queen had forbidden, on pain of

death, all marks of approbation. "We know that they are men of God,"

cried one of the spectators; "that is why we cannot help saying, God

strengthen them." And all the people answered, "Amen, Amen." What wonder

if, at the coming of Elizabeth, England cast in her lot with

Protestantism? The threats of the Armada urged her on still further; and

the Reformation became national under the pressure of foreign hostility,

at it had become popular through the triumph of its martyrs.

Section IV.--The Anglicans

Two distinct branches receive the common sap--one above, the other

beneath: one respected, flourishing, shooting forth in the open air; the

other despised, half buried in the ground, trodden under foot by those

who would crush it: both living, the Anglican as well as the Puritan,

the one in spite of the effort made to destroy it, the other in spite of

the care taken to develop it.

The court has its religion, like the country--a sincere and winning

religion. Amid the pagan poetry which up to the Revolution always had

the ear of the world, we find gradually piercing through and rising

higher a grave and grand idea which sent its roots to the depth of the

public mind. Many poets, Drayton, Davies, Cowley, Giles Fletcher,

Quarles, Crashaw, wrote sacred histories, pious or moral verses, noble

stanzas on death and the immortality of the soul, on the frailty of

things human, and on the supreme providence in which alone man finds the

support of his weakness and the consolation of his sufferings. In the

greatest prose writers, Bacon, Burton, Sir Thomas Browne, Raleigh, we

see spring up the fruits of veneration, thoughts about the obscure

beyond; in short, faith and prayer. Several prayers written by Bacon are

amongst the finest known; and the courtier Raleigh, whilst writing of

the fall of empires, and how the barbarous nations had destroyed this

grand and magnificent Roman Empire, ended his book with the ideas and

tone of a Bossuet.[43] Picture Saint Paul's in London, and the

fashionable people who used to meet there; the gentlemen who noisily

made the rowels of their spurs resound on entering, looked around and

carried on conversation during service, who swore by God's eyes, God's

eyelids, who amongst the vaults and chapels showed off their beribboned

shoes, their chains, scarfs, satin doublets, velvet cloaks, their

braggadocio manners and stage attitudes. All this was very free, very

loose, very far from our modern decency. But pass over youthful bluster;

take man in his great moments, in prison, in danger, or indeed when old

age arrives, when he has come to judge of life; take him, above all, in

the country, on his estate, far from any town, in the church of the

village where he is lord; or again, when he is alone in the evening, at

his table, listening to the prayer offered up by his chaplain, having no

books but some big folio of dramas, well dog's-eared; and his

prayer-book and Bible; you may then understand how the new religion

tightens its hold on these imaginative and serious minds. It does not

shock them by a narrow rigor; it does not fetter the flight of their

mind; it does not attempt to extinguish the buoyant flame of their mind;

it does not proscribe the beautiful: it preserves more than any reformed

church the noble pomp of the ancient worship, and rolls under the domes

of its cathedrals the rich modulations, the majestic harmonies of its

grave, organ-led music. It is its characteristic not to be in opposition

to the world, but, on the contrary, to draw it nearer to itself, by

bringing itself nearer to it. By its secular condition as well as by its

external worship, it is embraced by and it embraces it: its head is the

Queen, it is a part of the Constitution, its sends its dignitaries to

the House of Lords; it suffers its priests to marry; its benefices are

in the nomination of the great families; its chief members are the

younger sons of these same families: by all these channels it imbibes

the spirit of the age. In its hands, therefore, reformation cannot

become hostile to science, to poetry, to the liberal ideas of the

Renaissance. Nay, in the nobles of Elizabeth and James I, as in the

cavaliers of Charles I, it tolerates artistic tastes, philosophical

curiosity, the ways of the world, and the sentiment of the beautiful.

The alliance is so strong, that, under Cromwell, the ecclesiastics in a

mass were dismissed for their king's sake, and the cavaliers died

wholesale for the Church. The two societies mutually touch and are

confounded together. If several poets are pious, several ecclesiastics

are poetical--Bishop Hall, Bishop Corbet, Wither a rector, and the

preacher Donne. If several laymen rise to religious contemplations,

several theologians, Hooker, John Hales, Taylor, Chillingworth, set

philosophy and reason by the side of dogma. Accordingly we find a new

literature arising lofty and original, eloquent and moderate, armed at

the same time against the Puritans, who sacrifice freedom of intellect

to the tyranny of the text, and against the Catholics, who sacrifice

independence of criticism to the tyranny of tradition; opposed equally

to the servility of literal interpretation, and the servility of a

prescribed interpretation. Opposed to the first appears the learned and

excellent Hooker, one of the gentlest and most conciliatory of men, the

most solid and persuasive of logicians, a comprehensive mind, who in

every question ascends to the principles,[44] introduces into

controversy general conceptions, and the knowledge of human nature;[45]

beyond this, a methodical writer, correct and always ample, worthy of

being regarded not only as one of the fathers of the English Church, but

as one of the founders of English prose. With a sustained gravity and

simplicity, he shows the Puritans that the laws of nature, reason, and

society, like the law of Scripture, are of divine institution, that all

are equally worthy of respect and obedience, that we must not sacrifice

the inner word, by which God reaches our intellect, to the outer word,

by which God reaches our senses; that thus the civil constitution of the

church, and the visible ordinance of ceremonies, may be conformable to

the will of God, even when they are not justified by a clear text of

Scripture; and that the authority of the magistrates, as well as the

reason of man, does not exceed its rights in establishing certain

uniformities and disciplines on which Scripture is silent, in order that

reason may decide:

"For if the natural strength of man's wit may by experience and study

attain unto such ripeness in the knowledge of things human, that men in

this respect may presume to build somewhat upon their judgment; what

reason have we to think but that even in matters divine, the like wits

furnished with necessary helps, exercised in Scripture with like

diligence, and assisted with the grace of Almighty God, may grow unto so

much perfection of knowledge, that men shall have just cause, when

anything pertinent unto faith and religion is doubted of, the more

willingly to incline their minds towards that which the sentence of so

grave, wise, and learned in that faculty shall judge most sound."[46]

This "natural light" therefore must not be despised, but rather used so

as to augment the other, as we put torch to torch; above all, employed

that we may live in harmony with each other.[47]

"Far more comfort it were for us (so small is the joy we take in these

strifes) to labor under the same yoke, as men that look for the same

eternal reward of their labors, to be conjoined with you in bands of

indissoluble love and amity, to live as if our persons being many, our

souls were but one, rather than in such dismembered sort to spend our

few and wretched days in a tedious prosecuting of wearisome

contentions."

In fact, the conclusions of the greatest theologians are for such

harmony: abandoning an oppressive practice they grasp a liberal spirit.

If by its political structure the English Church is persecuting, by its

doctrinal structure it is tolerant; it needs the reason of the laity too

much to refuse it liberty; it lives in a world too cultivated and

thoughtful to proscribe thought and culture. John Hales, its most

eminent doctor, declared several times that he would renounce the Church

of England to-morrow if she insisted on the doctrine that other

Christians would be damned; and that men believe other people to be

damned only when they desire them to be so.[48] It was he again, a

theologian, a prebendary, who advises men to trust to themselves alone

in religious matters; to leave nothing to authority, or antiquity, or

the majority; to use their own reason in believing, as they use "their

own legs in walking"; to act and be men in mind as well as in the rest;

and to regard as cowardly and impious the borrowing of doctrine and

sloth of thought. So Chillingworth, a notably militant and loyal mind,

the most exact, the most penetrating, and the most convincing of

controversialists, first Protestant, then Catholic, then Protestant

again and forever, has the courage to say that these great changes,

wrought in himself and by himself, through study and research, are, of

all his actions, those which satisfy him most. He maintains that reason

alone applied to Scripture ought to persuade men; that authority has no

claim in it; that nothing is more against religion than to force

religion; that the great principle of the Reformation is liberty of

conscience; and that if the doctrines of the different Protestant sects

are not absolutely true, at least they are free from all impiety and

from all error damnable in itself, or destructive of salvation. Thus is

developed a new school of polemics, a theology, a solid and rational

apologetics, rigorous in its arguments, capable of expansion, confirmed

by science, and which authorizing independence of personal judgment at

the same time with the intervention of the natural reason, leaves

religion within reach of the world and the establishments of the past

struggling with the future.

A writer of genius appears amongst these, a prose-poet, gifted with an

imagination like Spenser and Shakespeare--Jeremy Taylor, who, from the

bent of his mind as well as from circumstances, was destined to present

the alliance of the Renaissance with the Reformation, and to carry into

the pulpit the ornate style of the court. A preacher at St. Paul's,

appreciated and admired by men of fashion for his youthful and fresh

beauty and his graceful bearing, as also for his splendid diction;

patronized and promoted by Archbishop Laud, he wrote for the king a

defence of episcopacy; became chaplain to the king's army; was taken,

ruined, twice imprisoned by the Parliamentarians; married a natural

daughter of Charles I; then, after the Restoration, was loaded with

honors; became a bishop, member of the Privy Council, and

vice-chancellor of the university of Dublin. In every passage of his

life, fortunate or otherwise, private or public, we see that he is an

Anglican, a royalist, imbued with the spirit of the cavaliers and

courtiers, not with their vices. On the contrary, there was never a

better or more upright man, more zealous in his duties, more tolerant by

principle; so that, preserving a Christian gravity and purity, he

received from the Renaissance only its rich imagination, its classical

erudition, and its liberal spirit. But he had these gifts entire, as

they existed in the most brilliant and original of the men of the world,

in Sir Philip Sidney, Lord Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, with the graces,

splendors, refinements which are characteristic of these sensitive and

creative geniuses, and yet with the redundancies, singularities,

incongruities inevitable in an age when excess of spirit prevented the

soundness of taste. Like all these writers, like Montaigne, he was

imbued with classic antiquity; in the pulpit he quotes Greek and Latin

anecdotes, passages from Seneca, verses of Lucretius and Euripides, and

this side by side with texts from the Bible, from the Gospels, and the

Fathers. Cant was not yet in vogue; the two great sources of teaching,

Christian and pagan, ran side by side; they were collected in the same

vessel, without imagining that the wisdom of reason and nature could mar

the wisdom of faith and revelation. Fancy these strange sermons in which

the two eruditions, Hellenic and evangelic, flow together with their

texts, and each text in its own language; in which, to prove that

fathers are often unfortunate in their children, the author brings

forward one after the other, Chabrias, Germanicus, Marcus Aurelius,

Hortensius, Quintus Fabius Maximus, Scipio Africanus, Moses, and Samuel;

where in the form of comparisons and illustrations it heaped up the

spoil of histories, and authorities on botany, astronomy, zoology, which

the cyclopædias and scientific fancies at that time poured into the

brain. Taylor will relate to you the history of the bears of Pannonia,

which, when wounded, will press the iron deeper home; or of the apples

of Sodom, which are beautiful to the gaze, but full within of rottenness

and worms; and many others of the same kind. For it was a characteristic

of men of this age and school, not to possess a mind swept, levelled,

regulated, laid out in straight paths, like the seventeenth-century

writers in France, and like the gardens at Versailles, but full, and

crowded with circumstantial facts, complete dramatic scenes, little

colored pictures, pell-mell and badly dusted; so that, lost in confusion

and dust, the modern spectator cries out at their pedantry and

coarseness. Metaphors swarm one above the other, jumbled, blocking each

other's path, as in Shakespeare. We think to follow one, and a second

begins, then a third cutting into the second, and so on, flower after

flower, firework after firework, so that the brightness becomes misty

with sparks, and the sight ends in a haze. On the other hand, and just

by virtue of this same turn of mind, Taylor imagines objects, not

vaguely and feebly, by some indistinct general conception, but

precisely, entire, as they are, with their visible color, their proper

form, the multitude of true and particular details which distinguish

them in their species. He is not acquainted with them by hearsay; he has

seen them. Better, he sees them now and makes them so be seen. Read the

following extract, and say if it does not seem to have been copied from

a hospital, or from a field of battle:

"And what can we complain of the weakness of our strengths, or the

pressures of diseases, when we see a poor soldier stand in a breach

almost starved with cold and hunger, and his cold apt to be relieved

only by the heats of anger, a fever, or a fired musket, and his hunger

slacked by a greater pain and a huge fear? This man shall stand in his

arms and wounds, _patiens luminis atque solis_, pale and faint, weary

and watchful; and at night shall have a bullet pulled out of his flesh,

and shivers from his bones, and endure his mouth to be sewed up from a

violent rent to its own dimensions; and all this for a man whom he never

saw, or, if he did, was not noted by him; but one that shall condemn him

to the gallows if he runs away from all this misery."[49]

This is the advantage of a full imagination over ordinary reason. It

produces in a lump twenty or thirty ideas, and as many images,

exhausting the subject which the other only outlines and sketches. There

are a thousand circumstances and shades in every event, and they are all

grasped in living words like these:

"For so have I seen the little purls of a spring sweat through the

bottom of a bank, and intenerate the stubborn pavement, till it hath

made it fit for the impression of a child's foot; and it was despised,

like the descending pearls of a misty morning, till it had opened its

way and made a stream large enough to carry away the ruins of the

undermined strand, and to invade the neighboring gardens; but then the

despised drops were grown into an artificial river, and an intolerable

mischief. So are the first entrances of sin, stopped with the antidotes

of a hearty prayer, and checked into sobriety by the eye of a reverend

man, or the counsels of a single sermon; but when such beginnings are

neglected, and our religion hath not in it so much philosophy as to

think anything evil as long as we can endure it, they grow up to ulcers

and pestilential evils; they destroy the soul by their abode, who at

their first entry might have been killed with the pressure of a little

finger."[50]

All extremes meet in that imagination. The cavaliers who heard him,

found, as in Ford, Beaumont and Fletcher, the crude copy of the most

coarse and unclean truth, and the light music of the most graceful and

airy fancies; the smell and horrors of a dissecting-room,[51] and all on

a sudden the freshness and cheerfulness of smiling dawn; the hateful

detail of leprosy, its white spots, its inner rottenness; and then this

lovely picture of a lark, rising amid the early perfumes of the fields:

"For so have I seen a lark arising from his bed of grass, and soaring

upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb

above the clouds; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud

sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and

inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest, than it

could recover by the vibration and frequent weighing of his wings, till

the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the

storm was over; and then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise and

sing, as if it had learned music and motion from an angel, as he passed

sometimes through the air, about his ministries here below. So is the

prayer of a good man."[52]

And he continues with the charm, sometimes with the very words, of

Shakespeare. In the preacher, as well as in the poet, as well as in all

the cavaliers and all the artists of the time, the imagination is so

full, that it reaches the real, even to its filth, and the ideal as far

as its heaven.

How could true religious sentiment thus accommodate itself to such a

frank and worldly gait? This, however, is what is has done; and

more--the latter has generated the former. With Taylor, as well as with

the others, bold poetry leads to profound faith. If this alliance

astonishes us to-day, it is because in this respect people have grown

pedantic. We take a formal man for a religious man. We are content to

see him stiff in his black coat, choked in a white neckerchief, with a

prayer-book in his hand. We confound piety with decency, propriety,

permanent and perfect regularity. We proscribe to a man of faith all

candid speech, all bold gesture, all fire and dash in word or act; we

are shocked by Luther's rude words, the bursts of laughter which shook

his mighty paunch, his rages like a working-man, his plain free

speaking, the audacious familiarity with which he treats Christ and the

Deity.[53] We do not perceive that these freedoms and this recklessness

are precisely signs of entire belief, that warm and immoderate

conviction is too sure of itself to be tied down to an irreproachable

style, that impulsive religion consists not of punctilios but of

emotions. It is a poem, the greatest of all, a poem believed in; this is

why these men found it at the end of their poesy: the way of looking at

the world, adopted by Shakespeare and all the tragic poets, led to it;

another step, and Jacques, Hamlet, would be there. That vast obscurity,

that black unexplored ocean, "the unknown country," which they saw on

the verge of our sad life, who knows whether it is not bounded by

another shore? The troubled notion of the shadowy beyond is national,

and this is why the national renaissance at this time became Christian.

When Taylor speaks of death he only takes up and works out a thought

which Shakespeare had already sketched:

"All the succession of time, all the changes in nature, all the

varieties of light and darkness, the thousand thousands of accidents in

the world, and every contingency to every man, and to every creature,

doth preach our funeral sermon, and calls us to look and see how the old

sexton Time throws up the earth, and digs a grave where we must lay our

sins or our sorrows, and sow our bodies, till they rise again in a fair

or in an intolerable eternity."

For beside this final death, which swallows us whole, there are partial

deaths which devour us piecemeal:

"Every revolution which the sun makes about the world, divides between

life and death; and death possesses both those portions by the next

morrow; and we are dead to all those months which we have already lived,

and we shall never live them over again: and still God makes little

periods of our age. First we change our world, when we come from the

womb to feel the warmth of the sun. Then we sleep and enter into the

image of death, in which state we are unconcerned in all the changes of

the world: and if our mothers or our nurses die, or a wild boar destroy

our vineyards, or our king be sick, we regard it not, but during that

state are as disinterest as if our eyes were closed with the clay that

weeps in the bowels of the earth. At the end of seven years our teeth

fall and die before us, representing a formal prologue to the tragedy;

and still every seven years it is odds but we shall finish the last

scene: and when nature, or chance, or vice, takes our body in pieces,

weakening some parts and loosing others, we taste the grave and the

solemnities of our own funerals, first in those parts that ministered to

vice, and next in them that served for ornament, and in a short time

even they that served for necessity become useless, and entangled like

the wheels of a broken clock. Baldness is but a dressing to our

funerals, the proper ornament of mourning, and of a person entered very

far into the regions and possession of death: and we have many more of

the same signification; gray hairs, rotten teeth, dim eyes, trembling

joints, short breath, stiff limbs, wrinkled skin, short memory, decayed

appetite. Every day's necessity calls for a reparation of that portion

which death fed on all night, when we lay in his lap and slept in his

outer chambers. The very spirits of a man prey upon the daily portion of

bread and flesh, and every meal is a rescue from one death, and lays up

for another; and while we think a thought, we die; and the clock

strikes, and reckons on our portion of eternity: we form our words with

the breath of our nostrils, we have the less to live upon for every word

we speak."[54]

Beyond all these destructions other destructions are at work; chance

mows us down as well as nature, and we are the prey of accident as well

as of necessity:

"Thus nature calls us to meditate of death by those things which are the

instruments of acting it: and God by all the variety of His providence

makes us see death everywhere, in all variety of circumstances, and

dressed up for all the fancies, and the expectation of every single

person.[55]... And how many teeming mothers have rejoiced over their

swelling wombs, and pleased themselves in becoming the channels of

blessing to a family, and the midwife hath quickly bound their heads and

feet and carried them forth to burial?[56]... You can go no whither but

you tread upon a dead man's bones."[57]

Thus these powerful words roll on, sublime as an organ motet; this

universal crushing out of human vanities has the funeral grandeur of a

tragedy; piety in this instance proceeds from eloquence, and genius

leads to faith. All the powers and all the tenderness of the soul are

moved. It is not a cold rigorist who speaks; it is a man, a moved man,

with senses and a heart, who has become a Christian not by

mortification, but by the development of his whole being:

"Reckon but from the sprightfulness of youth, and the fair cheeks and

full eyes of childhood, from the vigorousness and strong flexture of the

joints of five and twenty, to the hollowness and dead paleness, to the

loathsomeness and horror of a three days' burial, and we shall perceive

the distance to be very great and very strange. But so have I seen a

rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood, and at first it was

fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven as a lamb's fleece;

but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and

dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on

darkness, and to decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age;

it bowed the head, and broke its stalk, and at night having lost some of

its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and

outworn faces. The same is the portion of every man and every woman, the

heritage of worms and serpents, rottenness and cold dishonor, and our

beauty so changed, that our acquaintance quickly knew us not; and that

change mingled with so much horror, or else meets so with our fears and

weak discoursings, that they who six hours ago tended upon us either

with charitable or ambitious services, cannot without some regret stay

in the room alone where the body lies stripped of its life and honor. I

have read of a fair young German gentleman who living often refused to

be pictured, but put off the importunity of his friends' desire by

giving way that after a few days' burial they might send a painter to

his vault, and if they saw cause for it draw the image of his death unto

the life: they did so, and found his face half eaten, and his midriff

and backbone full of serpents; and so he stands pictured among his armed

ancestors. So does the fairest beauty change, and it will be as bad with

you as me; and then what servants shall we have to wait upon us in the

grave? what friends to visit us? what officious people to cleanse away

the moist and unwholesome cloud reflected upon our faces from the sides

of the weeping vaults, which are the longest weepers for our

funeral?"[58]

Brought hither, like Hamlet to the burying-ground, amid the skulls which

he recognizes, and under the oppression of the death which he touches,

man needs but a slight effort to see a new world arise in his heart. He

seeks the remedy of his sadness in the idea of eternal justice, and

implores it with a breadth of words which makes the prayer a hymn in

prose, as beautiful as a work of art:

"Eternal God, Almighty Father of men and angels, by whose care and

providence I am preserved and blessed, comforted and assisted, I humbly

beg of Thee to pardon the sins and follies of this day, the weakness of

my services, and the strengths of my passions, the rashness of my words,

and the vanity and evil of my actions. O just and dear God, how long

shall I confess my sins, and pray against them, and yet fall under them?

O let it be so no more; let me never return to the follies of which I am

ashamed, which bring sorrow and death, and Thy displeasure, worse than

death. Give me a command over my inclinations and a perfect hatred of

sin, and a love to Thee above all the desires of this world. Be pleased

to bless and preserve me this night from all sin and all violence of

chance, and the malice of the spirits of darkness: watch over me in my

sleep; and whether I sleep or wake, let me be Thy servant. Be Thou first

and last in all my thoughts, and the guide and continual assistance of

all my actions. Preserve my body, pardon the sin of my soul, and

sanctify my spirit. Let me always live holily and soberly; and when I

die receive my soul into Thy hands."[59]

Section V.--The Puritans

This was, however, but an imperfect Reformation, and the official

religion was too closely bound up with the world to undertake to cleanse

it thoroughly; if it repressed the excesses of vice, it did not attack

its source; and the paganism of the Renaissance, following its bent,

already under James I issued in the corruption, orgies, disgusting, and

drunken habits, provoking and gross sensuality,[60] which subsequently

under the Restoration stank like a sewer in the sun. But underneath the

established Protestantism was propagated the forbidden Protestantism:

the yeomen were settling their faith like the gentlemen, and already the

Puritans made headway under the Anglicans.

No culture here, no philosophy, no sentiment of harmonious and pagan

beauty. Conscience alone spoke, and its restlessness had become a

terror. The sons of the shopkeeper, of the farmer, who read the Bible in

the barn or the counting-house, amid the barrels or the wool-bags, did

not take matters as a handsome cavalier bred up in the old mythology,

and refined by an elegant Italian education. They took them tragically,

sternly examined themselves, pricked their hearts with their scruples,

filled their imaginations with the vengeance of God and the terrors of

the Bible. A gloomy epic, terrible and grand as the Edda, was fermenting

in their melancholy imaginations. They steeped themselves in texts of

St. Paul, in the thundering menaces of the prophets; they burdened their

minds with the pitiless doctrines of Calvin; they admitted that the

majority of men were predestined to eternal damnation:[61] many believed

that this multitude were criminal before their birth; that God willed,

foresaw, provided for their ruin; that He designed their punishment from

all eternity; that He created them simply to give them up to it.[62]

Nothing but grace can save the wretched creature, free grace, God's

sheer favor, which He only grants to a few, and which He distributes not

according to the struggles and works of men, but according to the

arbitrary choice of His single and absolute will. We are "children of

wrath," plague-stricken, and condemned from our birth; and wherever we

look in all the expanse of heaven, we find but thunderbolts flashing to

destroy us. Fancy, if you can, the effects of such an idea on solitary

and morose minds, such as this race and climate generate. Several

persons thought themselves damned, and went groaning about the streets;

others hardly ever slept. They were beside themselves, always imagining

that they felt the hand of God or the claw of the devil upon them. An

extraordinary power, immense means of action, were suddenly opened up in

the soul, and there was no barrier in the moral life, and no

establishment in civil society which their efforts could not upset.

Forthwith private life was transformed. How could ordinary sentiments,

natural and everyday notions of happiness and pleasure, subsist before

such a conception? Suppose men condemned to death, not ordinary death,

but the rack, torture, an infinitely horrible and infinitely extended

torment, waiting for their sentence, and yet knowing that they had one

chance in a thousand, in a hundred thousand, of pardon; could they still

go on amusing themselves, taking an interest in the business or pleasure

of the time? The azure heaven shines not for them, the sun warms them

not, the beauty and sweetness of things have no attraction for them;

they have lost the wont of laughter; they fasten inwardly, pale and

silent, on their anguish and their expectation; they have but one

thought: "Will the Judge pardon me?" They anxiously probe the

involuntary motions of their heart, which alone can reply, and the inner

revelation, which alone can render them certain of pardon or ruin. They

think that any other condition of mind is unholy, that recklessness and

joy are monstrous, that every worldly recreation or preoccupation is an

act of paganism, and that the true mark of a Christian is trepidation at

the very idea of salvation. Thenceforth rigor and rigidity mark their

manners. The Puritan condemns the stage, the assemblies, the world's

pomps and gatherings, the court's gallantry and elegance, the poetical

and symbolical festivals of the country, the May-pole days, the merry

feasts, bell-ringings, all the outlets by which sensuous or instinctive

nature endeavored to relieve itself. He gives them up, abandons

recreations and ornaments, crops his hair closely, wears a simple

sombre-hued coat, speaks through his nose, walks stiffly, with his eyes

turned upwards, absorbed, indifferent to visible things. The external

and natural man is abolished; only the inner and spiritual man survives;

there remains of the soul only the ideas of God and conscience--a

conscience alarmed and diseased, but strict in every duty, attentive to

the least requirements, disdaining the caution of worldly morality,

inexhaustible in patience, courage, sacrifice, enthroning chastity on

the domestic hearth, truth before the tribunals, honesty in the

counting-house, labor in the workshop, everywhere a fixed determination

to bear all and do all rather than fail in the least injunction of moral

justice and Bible-law. The stoical energy, the fundamental honesty of

the race, were aroused at the appeal of an enthusiastic imagination; and

these unbending characteristics were displayed in their entirety in

conjunction with abnegation and virtue.

Another step, and this great movement passed from within to without,

from individual manners to public institutions. Observe these people in

their reading of the Bible: they apply to themselves the commands

imposed on the Jews, and the prologues urge them to it. At the beginning

of their Bibles the translator[63] places a table of the principal words

in the Scripture, each with its definition and text to support it. They

read and weigh these words: "_Abomination_ before God are Idoles,

Images. Before whom the people do bow them selfes." Is this precept

observed? No doubt the images are taken away, but the queen has still a

crucifix in her chapel, and is it not a remnant of idolatry to kneel

down when taking the sacrament? "_Abrogacion_, that is to abolyshe, or

to make of none effecte: And so the lawe of the commandementes whiche

was in the decrees and ceremonies, is abolished. The sacrifices, festes,

meates, and al outwarde ceremonies are abrogated, and all the order of

priesthode is abrogated." Is this so, and how does it happen that the

bishops still take upon themselves the right of prescribing faith,

worship, and of tyrannizing over Christian consciences? And have they

not preserved in the organ-music, in the surplice of the priests, in the

sign of the cross, in a hundred other practices, all these visible rites

which God has declared profane? "_Abuses._ The abuses that be in the

church ought to be corrected by the prynces. The ministers ought to

preache against abuses. Any maner of mere tradicions of man are abuses."

What, meanwhile, is their prince doing, and why does he leave abuses in

the church? The Christian must rise and protest; we must purge the

church from the pagan crust with which tradition has covered it.[64]

Such are the ideas conceived by these uncultivated minds. Fancy the

simple folk, more capable by their simplicity of a sturdy faith, these

freeholders, these big traders, who have sat on juries, voted at

elections, deliberated, discussed in common private and public business,

used to examine the law, the comparing of precedents, all the details of

juridical and legal procedure; bringing their lawyer's and pleader's

training to bear upon the interpretation of Scripture, who, having once

formed a conviction, employ for it the cold passion, the intractable

obstinacy, the heroic sternness of the English character. Their precise

and combative minds take the business in hand. Everyone holds himself

bound to be ready, strong, and well prepared to answer all such as shall

demand a reason of his faith. Each one has his difficulty and

conscientious scruple[65] about some portion of the liturgy or the

official hierarchy; about the dignities of canons and archdeacons, or

certain passages of the funeral service; about the sacramental bread or

the reading of the apocryphal books in church; about plurality of

benefices or the ecclesiastical square cap. They each oppose some point,

all together the episcopacy and the retention of Romish ceremonies.[66]

Then they are imprisoned, fined, put in the pillory; they have their

ears cut off; their ministers are dismissed, hunted out, prosecuted.[67]

The law declares that anyone above the age of sixteen who for the space

of a month shall refuse to attend the established worship, shall be

imprisoned until such time as he shall submit; and if he does not submit

at the end of three months, he shall be banished the kingdom; and if he

returns, put to death. They allow this to go on, and show as much

firmness in suffering as scruple in belief; for a tittle about receiving

of the communion, sitting rather than kneeling, or standing rather than

sitting, they give up their livings, their property, their liberty,

their country. One Dr. Leighton was imprisoned fifteen weeks in a dog's

kennel, without fire, roof, bed, and in irons: his hair and skin fell

off; he was set in the pillory during the November frosts, then whipped,

and branded on the forehead; his ears were cut off, his nose slit; he

was shut up eight years in the Fleet, and thence cast into the common

prison. Many went cheerfully to the stake. Religion with them was a

covenant, that is, a treaty made with God, which must be kept in spite

of everything, as a written engagement, to the letter, to the last

syllable. An admirable and deplorable stiffness of an over-scrupulous

conscience, which made cavillers at the same time with believers, which

was to make tyrants after it had made martyrs.

Between the two, it made fighting men. These men had become wonderfully

wealthy and had increased in numbers in the course of eighty years, as

is always the case with men who labor, live honestly, and pass their

lives uprightly, sustained by a powerful source of action from within.

Thenceforth they are able to resist, and they do resist when driven to

extremities; they choose to have recourse to arms rather than be driven

back to idolatry and sin. The Long Parliament assembles, defeats the

king, purges religion; the dam is broken, the Independents are hurled

above the Presbyterians, the fanatics above the mere zealots;

irresistible and overwhelming faith, enthusiasm, grow into a torrent,

swallow up, or at least disturb the strongest minds, politicians,

lawyers, captains. The Commons occupy a day in every week in

deliberating on the progress of religion. As soon as they touch upon

doctrines they became furious. A poor man, Paul Best, being accused of

denying the Trinity, they demand the passing of a decree to punish him

with death; James Nayler having imagined that he was God, the Commons

devote themselves to a trial of eleven days, with a Hebraic animosity

and ferocity: "I think him worse than possessed with the devil. Our God

is here supplanted. My ears trembled, my heart shuddered, on hearing the

report. I will speak no more. Let us all stop our ears and stone

him."[68] Before the House of Commons, publicly, the men in authority

had ecstasies. After the expulsion of the Presbyterians, the preacher

Hugh Peters started up in the middle of a sermon, and cried out: "Now I

have it by Revelation, now I shall tell you. This army must root up

Monarchy, not only here, but in France and other kingdoms round about;

this is to bring you out of Egypt: this Army is that corner-stone cut

out of the Mountaine, which must dash the powers of the earth to pieces.

But it is objected, the way we walk in is without president (_sic_);

what think you of the Virgin Mary? was there ever any president before,

that a Woman should conceive a Child without the company of a Man? This

is an Age to make examples and presidents in."[69] Cromwell found

prophecies, counsels in the Bible for the present time, positive

justifications of his policy. "He looked upon the Design of the Lord in

this day to be the freeing of His People from every Burden, and that was

now accomplishing what was prophesied in the 110th Psalm; from the

Consideration of which he was often encouraged to attend the effecting

those ends, spending at least an hour in the Exposition of that

psalm."[70] Granted that he was a schemer, above all ambitious, yet he

was truly fanatical and sincere. His doctor related that he had been

very melancholy for years at a time, with strange hallucinations, and

the frequent fancy that he was at death's door. Two years before the

Revolution he wrote to his cousin: "Truly no poor creature hath more

cause to put himself forth in the cause of his God than I.... The Lord

accept me in His Son, and give me to walk in the light--and give us to

walk in the light, as He is the light!... blessed be His Name for

shining upon so dark a heart as mine!"[71] Certainly he must have

dreamed of becoming a saint as well as a king, and aspired to salvation

as well as to a throne. At the moment when he was proceeding to Ireland,

and was about to massacre the Catholics there, he wrote to his

daughter-in-law a letter of advice which Baxter or Taylor might

willingly have subscribed. In the midst of pressing affairs, in 1651, he

thus exhorted his wife: "My dearest, I could not satisfy myself to omit

this post, although I have not much to write.... It joys me to hear thy

soul prospereth: the Lord increase His favors to thee more and more. The

great good thy soul can wish is, That the Lord lift upon thee the light

of His countenance, which is better than life. The Lord bless all thy

good counsel and example to all those about thee, and hear all thy

prayers, and accept thee always."[72] Dying, he asked whether grace once

received could be lost, and was reassured to learn that it could not,

being, as he said, certain that he had once been in a state of grace. He

died with this prayer: "Lord, though I am a miserable and wretched

creature, I am in Covenant with Thee through grace. And I may, I will,

come to Thee, for Thy People. Thou hast made me, though very unworthy, a

mean instrument to do them some good, and Thee service.... Lord, however

Thou do dispose of me, continue and go on to do good for them... and go

on... with the work of reformation; and make the Name of Christ glorious

in the world."[73] Underneath this practical, prudent, worldly spirit,

there was an English element of anxious and powerful imagination,

capable of engendering an impassioned Calvinism and mystic fears.[74]

The same contrasts were jumbled together and reconciled in the other

Independents. In 1648, after unsuccessful tactics, they were in danger

between the king and the Parliament; then they assembled for several

days together at Windsor to confess themselves to God, and seek His

assistance; and they discovered that all their evils came from the

conferences they had had the weakness to propose to the king. "And in

this path the Lord led us," said Adjutant Allen, "not only to see our

sin, but also our duty; and this so unanimously set with weight upon

each heart that none was able hardly to speak a word to each other for

bitter weeping, partly in the sense and shame of our iniquities; of our

unbelief, base fear of men, and carnal consultations (as the fruit

thereof) with our own wisdoms, and not with the Word of the Lord."[75]

Thereupon they resolved to bring the king to judgment and death, and did

as they had resolved.

Around them, fanaticism and folly gained ground. Independents,

Millenarians, Antinomians, Anabaptists, Libertines, Familists, Quakers,

Enthusiasts, Seekers, Perfectionists, Socinians, Arians,

anti-Trinitarians, anti-Scripturalists, Sceptics; the list of sects is

interminable. Women, soldiers, suddenly got up into the pulpit and

preached. The strangest ceremonies took place in public. In 1644, says

Dr. Featly, the Anabaptists rebaptized a hundred men and women together

at twilight, in streams, in branches of the Thames, and elsewhere,

plunging them in the water over head and ears. One Oates, in the county

of Essex, was brought before a jury for the murder of Anne Martin, who

died a few days after her baptism of a cold which had seized her. George

Fox the Quaker spoke with God, and witnessed with a loud voice, in the

streets and market-places, against the sins of the age. William Simpson,

one of his disciples, "was moved of the Lord to go, at several times,

for three years, naked and barefooted before them, as a sign unto them,

in the markets, courts, towns, cities, to priests' houses, and to great

men's houses, telling them, so shall they all be stripped naked, as he

was stripped naked. And sometimes he was moved to put on hair sackcloth

and to besmear his face, and to tell them, so would the Lord besmear all

their religion as he was besmeared.[76]

"A female came into Whitehall Chapel stark naked, in the midst of public

worship, the Lord Protector himself being present. A Quaker came to the

door of the Parliament House with a drawn sword, and wounded several who

were present, saying that he was inspired by the Holy Spirit to kill

every man that sat in the house." The Fifth Monarchy men believed that

Christ was about to descend to reign in person upon earth for a thousand

years, with the saints for His ministers. The Ranters looked upon

furious vociferations and contortions as the principal signs of faith.

The Seekers thought that religious truth could only be seized in a sort

of mystical fog, with doubt and fear. The Muggletonians decided that

"John Reeve and Ludovick Muggleton were the two last prophets and

messengers of God"; they declared the Quakers possessed of the devil,

exorcised him, and prophesied that William Penn would be damned. I have

before mentioned James Nayler, an old quartermaster of General Lambert,

adored as a god by his followers. Several women led his horse, others

cast before him their kerchiefs and scarfs, singing, Holy, holy, Lord

God. They called him "lovely among ten thousand, the only Son of God,

the prophet of the Most High, King of Israel, the eternal Son of

Justice, the Prince of Peace, Jesus, him in whom the hope of Israel

rests." One of them, Dorcas Erbury, declared that she had lain dead for

two whole days in her prison in Exeter Gaol, and that Nayler had

restored her to life by laying his hands upon her. Sarah Blackbury

finding him a prisoner, took him by the hand and said, "Rise up, my

love, my dove, my fairest one: why stayest thou among the pots?" Then

she kissed his hand and fell down before him. When he was put in the

pillory, some of his disciples began to sing, weep, smite their breasts;

others kissed his hands, rested on his bosom, and kissed his wounds.[77]

Bedlam broken loose could not have surpassed them.

Underneath the surface and these disorderly bubbles the wise and deep

strata of the nation had settled, and the new faith was doing its work

with them--a practical and positive, a political and moral work. Whilst

the German Reformation, after the German wont, resulted in great volumes

and a scholastic system, the English Reformation, after the English

wont, resulted in action and establishment. "How the Church of Christ

shall be governed"; that was the great question which was discussed

among the sects. The House of Commons asked the Assembly of Divines: If

the classical, provincial, and local assemblies were _jure divino_, and

instituted by the will and appointment of Jesus Christ? If they were all

so? If only some were so, and which? If appeals carried by the elders of

a congregation to provincial, departmental, and national assemblies were

_jure divino_, and according to the will and appointment of Jesus

Christ? If some only were _jure divino?_ And which? If the power of the

assemblies in such appeals was _jure divino_, and by the will and

appointment of Jesus Christ? and a hundred other questions of the same

kind. Parliament declared that, according to Scripture, the dignities of

priest and bishop were equal; it regulated ordinations, convocations,

excommunications, jurisdictions, elections; spent half its time and

exerted all its power in establishing the Presbyterian Church.[78] So,

with the Independents, fervor engendered courage and discipline.

"Cromwell's regiment of horse were most of them freeholders' sons, who

engaged in the war upon principles of conscience; and that being well

armed within, by the satisfaction of their consciences, and without with

good iron arms, they would as one man stand firmly and charge

desperately."[79] This army, in which inspired corporals preached to

lukewarm colonels, acted with the solidity and precision of a Russian

regiment: it was a duty, a duty towards God, to fire straight and march

in good order; and a perfect Christian made a perfect soldier. There was

no separation here between theory and practice, between private and

public life, between the spiritual and the temporal. They wished to

apply Scripture to "establish the kingdom of heaven upon earth," to

institute not only a Christian Church, but a Christian society, to

change the law into a guardian of morals, to compel men to piety and

virtue; and, for a while they succeeded in it. "Though the discipline of

the church was at an end, there was nevertheless an uncommon spirit of

devotion among people in the parliament quarters; the Lord's day was

observed with remarkable strictness, the churches being crowded with

numerous and attentive hearers three or four times in the day; the

officers of the peace patrolled the streets, and shut up all public

houses; there was no travelling on the road, or walking in the fields,

except in cases of absolute necessity. Religious exercises were set up

in private families, as reading the Scriptures, family prayer, repeating

sermons, and singing of psalms, which was so universal, that you might

walk through the city of London on the evening of the Lord's day,

without seeing an idle person, or hearing anything but the voice of

prayer or praise from churches and private houses."[80] People would

rise before daybreak, and walk a great distance to be able to hear the

word of God. "There were no gaming houses, or houses of pleasure; no

profane swearing, drunkenness, or any kind of debauchery."[81] The

Parliamentary soldiers came in great numbers to listen to sermons, spoke

of religion, prayed and sang psalms together, when on duty. In 1644

Parliament forbade the sale of commodities on Sunday, and ordained "that

no person shall travel, or carry a burden, or do any worldly labour,

upon penalty of 10s. for the traveller, and 5s. for every burden. That

no person shall on the Lord's day use, or be present at, any wrestling,

shooting, fowling, ringing of bells for pleasure, markets, wakes,

church-ales, dancing, games or sports whatsoever, upon penalty of 5s. to

everyone above fourteen years of age. And if children are found

offending in the premises, their parents or guardians to forfeit 12d.

for every offence. If the several fines above mentioned cannot be

levied, the offending party shall be set in the stocks for the space of

three hours." When the Independents were in power, severity became still

greater. The officers in the army, having convicted one of their

quartermasters of blasphemy, condemned him to have his tongue bored with

a red-hot iron, his sword broken over his head, and himself to be

dismissed from the army. During Cromwell's expedition in Ireland, we

read that no blasphemy was heard in the camp; the soldiers spent their

leisure hours in reading the Bible, singing psalms, and holding

religious controversies. In 1650 the punishments inflicted on

Sabbath-breakers were doubled. Stern laws were passed against betting,

gallantry was reckoned a crime; the theatres were destroyed, the

spectators fined, the actors whipped at the cart's tail; adultery

punished with death: in order to reach crime more surely, they

persecuted pleasure. But if they were austere against others, they were

so against themselves, and practised the virtues they exacted. After the

Restoration, two thousand ministers, rather than conform to the new

liturgy, resigned their cures, though they and their families had to die

of hunger. Many of them, says Baxter, thinking that they were not

justified in quitting their ministry after being set apart for it by

ordination, preached to such as would hear them in the fields and in

certain houses, until they were seized and thrown into prisons, where a

great number of them perished. Cromwell's fifty thousand veterans,

suddenly disbanded and without resources, did not bring a single recruit

to the vagabonds and bandits. "The Royalists themselves confessed that,

in every department of honest industry, the discarded warriors prospered

beyond other men, that none was charged with any theft or robbery, that

none was heard to ask an alms, and that, if a baker, a mason, or a

waggoner, attracted notice by his diligence and sobriety, he was in all

probability one of Oliver's old soldiers."[82] Purified by persecution

and ennobled by patience, they ended by winning the tolerance of the law

and the respect of the public, and raised national morality, as they had

saved national liberty. But others, exiles in America, pushed to the

extreme this great religious and stoical spirit, with its weaknesses and

its power, with its vices and its virtues. Their determination,

intensified by a fervent faith, employed in political and practical

pursuits, invented the science of emigration, made exile tolerable,

drove back the Indians, fertilized the desert, raised a rigid morality

into a civil law, founded and armed a church, and on the Bible as a

basis built up a new state.[83]

That was not a conception of life from which a genuine literature might

be expected to issue. The idea of the beautiful is wanting, and what is

a literature without that? The natural expression of the heart's

emotions is proscribed, and what is a literature without that? They

abolished as impious the free stage and the rich poesy which the

Renaissance had brought them. They rejected as profane the ornate style

and copious eloquence which had been established around them by the

imitation of antiquity and of Italy. They, mistrusted reason, and were

incapable of philosophy. They ignored the divine languor of the

"Imitatio Christi" and the touching tenderness of the Gospel. Their

character exhibits only manliness, their conduct austerity, their mind

preciseness. We find amongst them only excited theologians, minute

controversialists, energetic men of action, narrow and patient minds,

engrossed in positive proofs and practical labors, void of general ideas

and refined tastes, dulled by texts, dry and obstinate reasoners, who

twisted the Scripture in order to extract from it a form of government

or a table of dogma. What could be narrower or more repulsive than these

pursuits and wrangles? A pamphlet of the time petitions for liberty of

conscience, and draws its arguments (1) from the parable of the wheat

and the tares which grow together till the harvest; (2) from this maxim

of the Apostles, Let every man be thoroughly persuaded in his own mind;

(3) from this text, Whatsoever is not of faith is sin; (4) from this

divine rule of our Saviour, Do to others what you would they should do

unto you. Later, when the angry Commons desired to pass judgment on

James Nayler, the trial became entangled in an endless juridical and

theological discussion, some declaring that the crime committed was

idolatry, others seduction, all emptying out before the House their

armory of commentaries and texts.[84] Seldom has a generation been found

more mutilated in all the faculties which produce contemplation and

ornament, more reduced to the faculties which nourish discussion and

morality. Like a beautiful insect which has become transformed and has

lost its wings, so we see the poetic generation of Elizabeth disappear,

leaving in its place but a sluggish caterpillar, a stubborn and useful

spinner, armed with industrious feet and formidable jaws, spending its

existence in eating into old leaves and devouring its enemies. They are

without style; they speak like business men; at most, here and there, a

pamphlet of Prynne possesses a little vigor. Their histories, like May's

for instance, are flat and heavy. Their memoirs, even those of Ludlow

and Mrs. Hutchinson, are long, wearisome, mere statements, destitute of

personal feelings, void of enthusiasm or entertaining matter; "they seem

to ignore themselves, and are engrossed by the general prospects of

their cause."[85] Good works of piety, solid and convincing sermons;

sincere, edifying, exact, methodical books, like those of Baxter,

Barclay, Calamy, John Owen; personal narratives, like that of Baxter,

like Fox's journal, Bunyan's life, a large collection of documents and

arguments, conscientiously arranged--this is all they offer; the Puritan

destroys the artist, stiffens the man, fetters the writer; and leaves of

artist, man, writer, only a sort of abstract being, the slave of a

watchword. If a Milton springs up amongst them, it is because by his

great curiosity, his travels, his comprehensive education, above all by

his youth saturated in the grand poetry of the preceding age, and by his

independence of spirit, haughtily defended even against the sectarians,

Milton passes beyond sectarianism. Strictly speaking, the Puritans could

but have one poet, an involuntary poet, a madman, a martyr, a hero, and

a victim of grace; a genuine preacher, who attains the beautiful by

chance, whilst pursuing the useful on principle; a poor tinker, who,

employing images so as to be understood by mechanics, sailors,

servant-girls, attained, without pretending to it, eloquence and high

art.

Section VI.--John Bunyan

Next to the Bible, the book most widely read in England is the

"Pilgrim's Progress," by John Bunyan. The reason is, that the basis of

Protestantism is the doctrine of salvation by grace, and that no writer

has equalled Bunyan in making this doctrine understood.

To treat well of supernatural impressions, a man must have been subject

to them. Bunyan had that kind of imagination which produces them.

Powerful as that of an artist, but more vehement, this imagination

worked in the man without his cooperation, and besieged him with visions

which he had neither willed nor foreseen. From that moment there was in

him as it were a second self, ruling the first, grand and terrible,

whose apparitions were sudden, its motions unknown, which redoubled or

crushed his faculties, prostrated or transported him, bathed him in the

sweat of agony, ravished him with trances of joy, and which by its

force, strangeness, independence, impressed upon him the presence and

the action of a foreign and superior master. Bunyan, like Saint Theresa,

was from infancy "greatly troubled with the thoughts of the fearful

torments of hell-fire," sad in the midst of pleasures, believing himself

damned, and so despairing, that he wished he was a devil, "supposing

they were only tormentors; that if it must needs be that I went thither,

I might be rather a tormentor, than be tormented myself."[86] There

already was the assault of exact and bodily images. Under their

influence reflection ceased, and the man was suddenly spurred into

action. The first movement carried him with closed eyes, as down a steep

slope, into mad resolutions. One day, "being in the field, with my

companions, it chanced that an adder passed over the highway; so I,

having a stick, struck her over the back; and having stunned her, I

forced open her mouth with my stick, and plucked her sting out with my

fingers, by which act, had not God been merciful to me, I might, by my

desperateness, have brought myself to my end."[87] In his first

approaches to conversion he was extreme in his emotions, and penetrated

to the heart by the sight of physical objects, "adoring" priests,

service, altar, vestment. "This conceit grew so strong upon my spirit,

that had I but seen a priest (though never so sordid and debauched in

his life), I should find my spirit fall under him, reverence him, and

knit unto him; yea, I thought, for the love I did bear unto them

(supposing they were the ministers of God), I could have laid down at

their feet, and have been trampled upon by them; their name, their garb,

and work did so intoxicate and bewitch me."[88] Already his ideas clung

to him with that irresistible hold which constitutes monomania; no

matter how absurd they were, they ruled him, not by their truth, but by

their presence. The thought of an impossible danger terrified him just

as much as the sight of an imminent peril. As a man hung over an abyss

by a sound rope, he forgot that the rope was sound, and he became giddy.

After the fashion of English villagers, he loved bell-ringing; when he

became a Puritan, he considered the amusement profane, and gave it up;

yet, impelled by his desire, he would go into the belfry and watch the

ringers. "But quickly after, I began to think, 'How if one of the bells

should fall?' Then I chose to stand under a main beam, that lay

overthwart the steeple, from side to side, thinking here I might stand

sure; but then I thought again, should the bell fall with a swing, it

might first hit the wall, and then rebounding upon me, might kill me for

all this beam. This made me stand in the steeple-door; and now, thought

I, I am safe enough, for if a bell should then fall, I can slip out

behind these thick walls, and so be preserved notwithstanding. So after

this I would yet go to see them ring, but would not go any farther than

the steeple-door; but then it came into my head, 'How if the steeple

itself should fall? And this thought (it may, for aught I know, when I

stood and looked on) did continually so shake my mind, that I durst not

stand at the steeple-door any longer, but was forced to flee, for fear

the steeple should fall upon my head.'"[89] Frequently the mere

conception of a sin became for him a temptation so involuntary and so

strong, that he felt upon him the sharp claw of the devil. The fixed

idea swelled in his head like a painful abscess, full of all

sensitiveness and of all his life's blood. "Now no sin would serve but

that; if it were to be committed by speaking of such a word, then I have

been as if my mouth would have spoken that word whether I would or no;

and in so strong a measure was the temptation upon me, that often I have

been ready to clap my hands under my chin, to hold my mouth from

opening; at other times, to leap with my head downward into some

muckhill hole, to keep my mouth from speaking."[90] Later, in the middle

of a sermon which he was preaching, he was assailed by blasphemous

thoughts; the word came to his lips, and all his power of resistance was

barely able to restrain the muscle excited by the tyrannous brain.

Once the minister of the parish was preaching against the sin of

dancing, oaths, and games, when he was struck with the idea that the

sermon was for him, and returned home full of trouble. But he ate; his

stomach being charged, discharged his brain, and his remorse was

dispersed. Like a true child, entirely absorbed by the emotion of the

moment, he was transported, jumped out, and ran to the sports. He had

thrown his ball, and was about to begin again, when a voice from heaven

suddenly pierced his soul. "'Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven,

or have thy sins and go to hell?' At this I was put to an exceeding

maze; wherefore, leaving my cat upon the ground, I looked up to heaven,

and was as if I had with the eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord

Jesus look down upon me, as being very hotly displeased with me, and as

if He did severely threaten me with some grievous punishment for these

and other ungodly practices."[91] Suddenly reflecting that his sins were

very great, and that he would certainly be damned whatever he did, he

resolved to enjoy himself in the mean time, and to sin as much as he

could in this life. He took up his ball again, recommenced the game with

ardor, and swore louder and oftener than ever. A month afterwards, being

reproved by a woman, "I was silenced, and put to secret shame, and that

too, as I thought, before the God of heaven: wherefore, while I stood

there, hanging down my head, I wished that I might be a little child

again, and that my father might learn me to speak without this wicked

way of swearing; for, thought I, I am so accustomed to it, that it is in

vain to think of a reformation, for that could never be. But how it came

to pass I know not, I did from this time forward so leave my swearing,

that it was a great wonder to myself to observe it; and whereas before I

knew not how to speak unless I put an oath before, and another behind,

to make my words have authority, now I could without it speak better,

and with more pleasantness, than ever I could before."[92] These sudden

alternations, these vehement resolutions, this unlooked-for renewal of

heart, are the products of an involuntary and impassioned imagination,

which by its hallucinations, its mastery, its fixed ideas, its mad

ideas, prepares the way for a poet, and announces an inspired man.

In him circumstances develop character; his kind of life develops his

kind of mind. He was born in the lowest and most despised rank, a

tinker's son, himself a wandering tinker, with a wife as poor as

himself, so that they had not a spoon or a dish between them. He had

been taught in childhood to read and write, but he had since "almost

wholly lost what he had learned." Education diverts and disciplines a

man; fills him with varied and rational ideas; prevents him from sinking

into monomania or being excited by transport; gives him determinate

thoughts instead of eccentric fancies, pliable opinions for fixed

convictions; replaces impetuous images by calm reasonings, sudden

resolves by carefully weighed decisions; furnishes us with the wisdom

and ideas of others; gives us conscience and self-command. Suppress this

reason and this discipline, and consider the poor ignorant working-man

at his toil; his head works while his hands work, not ably, with methods

acquired from any logic he might have mustered, but with dark emotions,

beneath a disorderly flow of confused images. Morning and evening, the

hammer which he uses in his trade, drives in with its deafening sounds

the same thought perpetually returning and self-communing. A troubled,

obstinate vision floats before him in the brightness of the hammered and

quivering metal. In the red furnace where the iron is glowing, in the

clang of the hammered brass, in the black corners where the damp shadow

creeps, he sees the flame and darkness of hell, and the rattling of

eternal chains. Next day he sees the same image, the day after, the

whole week, month, year. His brow wrinkles, his eyes grow sad, and his

wife hears him groan in the night-time. She remembers that she has two

volumes in an old bag. "The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven" and "The

Practice of Piety"; he spells them out to console himself; and the

printed thoughts, already sublime in themselves, made more so by the

slowness with which they are read, sink like an oracle into his subdued

faith. The braziers of the devils--the golden harps of heaven--the

bleeding Christ on the cross--each of these deep-rooted ideas sprouts

poisonously or wholesomely in his diseased brain, spreads, pushes out

and springs higher with a ramification of fresh visions, so crowded,

that in his encumbered mind he has no further place nor air for more

conceptions. Will he rest when he sets forth in the winter on his tramp?

During his long solitary wanderings, over wild heaths, in cursed and

haunted bogs, always abandoned to his own thoughts, the inevitable idea

pursues him. These neglected roads where he sticks in the mud, these

sluggish dirty rivers which he crosses on the cranky ferry-boat, these

threatening whispers of the woods at night, when in perilous places the

livid moon shadows out ambushed forms--all that he sees and hears falls

into an involuntary poem around the one absorbing idea; thus it changes

into a vast body of visible legends, and multiplies its power as it

multiplies its details. Having become a dissenter, Bunyan is shut up for

twelve years, having no other amusement but the "Book of Martyrs" and

the Bible, in one of those pestiferous prisons where the Puritans rotted

under the Restoration. There he is, still alone, thrown back upon

himself by the monotony of his dungeon, besieged by the terrors of the

Old Testament, by the vengeful out-pourings of the prophets, by the

thunder-striking words of Paul, by the spectacle of trances and of

martyrs, face to face with God, now in despair, now consoled, troubled

with involuntary images and unlooked-for emotions, seeing alternately

devil and angels, the actor and the witness of an internal drama whose

vicissitudes he is able to relate. He writes them: it is his book. You

see now the condition of this inflamed brain. Poor in ideas, full of

images, given up to a fixed and single thought, plunged into this

thought by his mechanical pursuit, by his prison and his readings, by

his knowledge and his ignorance, circumstances, like nature, make him a

visionary and an artist, furnish him with supernatural impressions and

visible images, teaching him the history of grace and the means of

expressing it.

The "Pilgrim's Progress" is a manual of devotion for the use of simple

folk, whilst it is an allegorical poem of grace. In it we hear a man of

the people speaking to the people, who would render intelligible to all

the terrible doctrine of damnation and salvation.[93] According to

Bunyan, we are "children of wrath," condemned from our birth, guilty by

nature, justly predestined to destruction. Beneath this formidable

thought the heart gives way. The unhappy man relates how he trembled in

all his limbs, and in his fits it seemed to him as though the bones of

his chest would break. "One day," he tells us, "I walked to a

neighboring town, and sat down upon a settle in the street, and fell

into a very deep pause about the most fearful state my sin had brought

me to; and after long musing, I lifted up my head, but methought I saw,

as if the sun that shineth in the heavens did grudge to give light; and

as if the very stones in the street, and tiles upon the houses, did band

themselves against me. O how happy now was every creature over I was!

For they stood fast, and kept their station, but I was gone and

lost."[94] The devils gathered together against the repentant sinner;

they choked his sight, besieged him with phantoms, yelled at his side to

drag him down their precipices; and the black valley into which the

pilgrim plunges, almost matches by the horror of its symbols the agony

of the terrors by which he is assailed:

"I saw then in my Dream, so far as this Valley reached, there was on the

right hand a very deep Ditch; that Ditch is it into which the blind have

led the blind in all ages, and have both there miserably perished.

Again, behold on the left hand, there was a very dangerous Quag, into

which, if even a good man falls, he can find no bottom for his foot to

stand on....

"The path-way was here also exceeding narrow, and therefore good

Christian was the more put to it; for when he sought in the dark to shun

the ditch on the one hand, he was ready to tip over into the mire on the

other; also when he sought to escape the mire, without great carefulness

he would be ready to fall into the ditch. Thus he went on, and I heard

him here sigh bitterly; for, besides the dangers mentioned above, the

pathway was here so dark, that ofttimes, when he lift up his foot to set

forward he knew not where, or upon what he should set it next.

"About the midst of this Valley, I perceived the mouth of Hell to be,

and it stood also hard by the wayside. Now, thought Christian, what

shall I do? And ever and anon the flame and smoke would come out in such

abundance, with sparks and hideous noises,... that he was forced to put

up his Sword, and betake himself to another weapon, called All-prayer.

So he cried in my hearing: 'O Lord, I beseech thee deliver my soul.'

Thus he went on a great while, yet still the flames would be reaching

toward him: Also he heard doleful voices, and rushings to and fro, so

that sometimes he thought he should be torn in pieces, or trodden down

like mire in the Streets."[95]

Against this agony, neither his good deeds, nor his prayers, nor his

justice, nor all the justice and all the prayers of all other men, could

defend him. Grace alone justifies. God must impute to him the purity of

Christ, and save him by a free choice. What can be more full of passion

than the scene in which, under the name of his poor pilgrim, he relates

his own doubts, his conversion, his joy, and the sudden change of his

heart?

"Then the water stood in mine eyes, and I asked further, But, Lord, may

such a great sinner as I am be indeed accepted of thee, and be saved by

thee? And I heard him say, And him that cometh to me I will in no wise

cast out.... And now was my heart full of joy, mine eyes full of tears,

and mine affections running over with love to the Name, People, and Ways

of Jesus Christ....

"It made me see that all the World, notwithstanding all the

righteousness thereof, is in a state of condemnation. It made me see

that God the Father, though he be just, can justly justify the coming

sinner. It made me greatly ashamed of the vileness of my former life,

and confounded me with the sense of mine own ignorance; for there never

came thought into my heart before now, that shewed me so the beauty of

Jesus Christ. It made me love a holy life, and long to do something for

the Honour and Glory of the Name of the Lord Jesus; yea, I thought that

had I now a thousand gallons of blood in my body, I could spill it all

for the sake of the Lord Jesus."[96]

Such an emotion does not weigh literary calculations. Allegory, the most

artificial kind, is natural to Bunyan. If he employs it here, it is

because he does so throughout; if he employs it throughout, it is from

necessity, not choice. As children, countrymen, and all uncultivated

minds, he transforms arguments into parables; he only grasps truth when

it is clothed in images; abstract terms elude him; he must touch forms

and contemplate colors. Dry general truths are a sort of algebra,

acquired by the mind slowly and after much trouble, against our

primitive inclination, which is to observe detailed events and visible

objects; man being incapable of contemplating pure formulas until he is

transformed by ten years' reading and reflection. We understand at once

the term purification of heart; Bunyan understands it fully only, after

translating it by this fable:

"Then the Interpreter took Christian by the hand, and led him into a

very large Parlour that was full of dust, because never swept; the which

after he had reviewed a little while, the Interpreter called for a man

to sweep. Now when he began to sweep, the dust began so abundantly to

fly about, that Christian had almost therewith been choaked. Then said

the Interpreter to a Damsel that stood by, Bring hither the Water, and

sprinkle the Room; the which when she had done, it was swept and

cleansed with pleasure.

"Then said Christian, What means this?

"The Interpreter answered, This Parlour is the heart of a man that was

never sanctified by the sweet Grace of the Gospel: the dust is his

Original Sin, and inward Corruptions, that have defiled the whole man.

He that began to sweep at first, is the Law; but she that brought water,

and did sprinkle it, is the Gospel. Now, whereas thou sawest that so

soon as the first began to sweep, the dust did so fly about that the

Room by him could not be cleansed, but that thou wast almost choaked

there with; this to shew thee, that the Law, instead of cleansing the

heart (by its working) from sin, doth revive, put strength into and

increase it in the soul, even as it doth discover and forbid it for it

doth not give power to subdue.

"Again, as thou sawest the Damsel sprinkle the room with Water, upon

which it was cleansed with pleasure; this is to shew thee that when the

Gospel comes in the sweet and precious influences thereof to the heart,

then I say, even as thou sawest the Damsel lay the dust by sprinkling

the floor with Water, so is sin vanquished and subdued, and the soul

made clean, through the faith of it, and consequently fit for the King

of Glory to inhabit."[97]

These repetitions, embarrassed phrases, familiar comparisons, this

artless style, whose awkwardness recalls the childish periods of

Herodotus, and whose simplicity recalls tales for children, prove that

if his work is allegorical, it is so in order that it may be

intelligible, and that Bunyan is a poet because he is a child.[98]

If you study him well, however, you will find power under his

simplicity, and in his puerility the vision. These allegories are

hallucinations as clear, complete, and sound as ordinary perceptions. No

one but Spenser is so lucid. Imaginary objects rise of themselves before

him. He has no trouble in calling them up or forming them. They agree in

all their details with all the details of the precept which they

represent, as a pliant veil fits the body which it covers. He

distinguishes and arranges all the parts of the landscape--here the

river, on the right the castle, a flag on its left turret, the setting

sun three feet lower, an oval cloud in the front part of the sky--with

the preciseness of a land-surveyor. We fancy in reading him that we are

looking at the old maps of the time, in which the striking features of

the angular cities are marked on a copperplate by a tool as certain as a

pair of compasses.[99] Dialogues flow from his pen as in a dream. He

does not seem to be thinking; we should even say that he was not himself

there. Events and speeches seem to grow and dispose themselves with him,

independently of his will. Nothing, as a rule, is colder than the

characters in an allegory; his are living. Looking upon these details,

so small and familiar, illusion gains upon us. Giant Despair, a simple

abstraction, becomes as real in his hands as an English jailer or

farmer. He is heard talking by night in bed with his wife Diffidence,

who gives him good advice, because here, as in other households, the

strong and brutal animal is the least cunning of the two:

"Then she counselled him that when he arose in the morning he should

(take the two prisoners and) beat them without mercy. So when he arose,

he getteth him a grievous Crab-tree Cudgel, and goes down into the

Dungeon to them, and there first falls to rating of them as if they were

dogs, although they gave him never a word of distaste. Then he falls

upon them, and beats them fearfully, in such sort, that they were not

able to help themselves, or to turn them upon the floor." [100]

This stick, chosen with a forester's experience, this instinct of rating

first and storming to get one's self into trim for knocking down, are

traits which attest the sincerity of the narrator, and succeed in

persuading the reader. Bunyan has the copiousness, the tone, the ease,

and the clearness of Homer; he is as close to Homer as an Anabaptist

tinker could be to a heroic singer, a creator of gods.

I err; he is nearer. Before the sentiment of the sublime, inequalities

are levelled. The depth of emotion raises peasant and poet to the same

eminence; and here, also, allegory stands the peasant in stead. It

alone, in the absence of ecstasy, can paint heaven; for it does not

pretend to paint it: expressing it by a figure, it declares it

invisible, as a glowing sun at which we cannot look straight, and whose

image we observe in a mirror or a stream. The ineffable world thus

retains all its mystery; warned by the allegory, we imagine splendors

beyond all which it presents to us; we feel behind the beauties which

are opened to us, the infinite which is concealed; and the ideal city,

vanishing as soon as it appears, ceases to resemble the material

Whitehall imagined for Jehovah by Milton. Read the arrival of the

pilgrims in the celestial land. Saint Theresa has nothing more

beautiful:

"Yea, here they heard continually the singing of Birds, and saw every

day the Flowers appear in the earth, and heard the voice of the Turtle

in the land. In this Country the Sun shineth night and day. ... Here

they were within sight of the City they were going to, also here met

them some of the inhabitants thereof; for in this land the Shining Ones

commonly walked, because it was upon the borders of Heaven.... Here they

heard voices from out of the City, loud voices, saying, 'Say ye to the

daughter of Zion, Behold thy salvation cometh, behold his reward is with

him!' Here all the inhabitants of the Country called them 'The holy

People, The redeemed of the Lord, Sought out, etc.'

"Now as they walked in this land, they had more rejoicing than in parts

more remote from the Kingdom to which they were bound; and drawing near

to the City, they had yet a more perfect view thereof. It was builded of

Pearls and Precious Stones, also the Street, thereof was paved with

gold; so that by reason of the natural glory of the City, and the

reflection of the Sun-beams upon it, Christian with desire fell sick;

Hopeful also had a fit or two of the same disease. Wherefore here they

lay by it awhile, crying out because of their pangs, 'If you see my

Beloved, tell him that I am sick of love.'[101]...

"They therefore went up here with much agility and speed, though the

foundation upon which the City was framed was higher than the Clouds.

They therefore went up through the Regions of the Air, sweetly talking

as they went, being comforted, because they safely got over the River,

and had such glorious companions to attend them.

"The talk that they had with the Shining Ones was about the glory of the

place, who told them that the beauty and glory of it was inexpressible.

There, said they, is the Mount Sion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the

innumerable company of Angels, and the Spirits of just men made perfect.

You are going now, said they, to the Paradise of God, wherein you shall

see the Tree of Life, and eat of the never-fading fruits thereof; and

when you come there, you shall have white Robes given you, and your walk

and talk shall be every day with the King, even all the days of

Eternity."[102]

"There came out also at this time to meet them, several of the King's

Trumpeters, cloathed in white and shining Raiment, who with melodious

noises and loud, made even the Heavens to echo with their sound. These

Trumpeters saluted Christian and his fellow with ten thousand welcomes

from the World, and this they did with shouting and sound of Trumpet.

"This done, they compassed them round on every side; some went before,

some behind, and some on the right hand, some on the left (as 't were to

guard them through the upper Regions), continually sounding as they went

with melodious noise, in notes on high; so that the very sight was to

them that could behold it, as if Heaven itself was come down to meet

them....

"And now were these two men as 't were in Heaven before they came at it,

being swallowed up with the sight of Angels, and with hearing of their

melodious notes. Here also they had the City itself in view, and they

thought they heard all the Bells therein ring to welcome them thereto.

But above all the warm and joyful thoughts that they had about their own

dwelling there, with such company, and that for ever and ever. Oh, by

what tongue or pen can their glorious joy be expressed!..."[103]

"Now I saw in my Dream that these two men went in at the Gate; and lo,

as they entered, they were transfigured, and they had Raiment put on

that shone like Gold. There was also that met them with Harps and

Crowns, and gave them to them, the Harps to praise withal, and the

Crowns in token of honour. Then I heard in my Dream that all the Bells

in the City rang again for joy, and that it was said unto them, 'Enter

ye into the joy of your Lord.' I also heard the men themselves, that

they sang with a loud voice, saying, 'Blessing, Honour, Glory, and

Power, be to him that sitteth upon the Throne, and to the Lamb for ever

and ever.'

"Now, just as the Gates were opened to let in the men, I looked in after

them, and behold, the City shone like the Sun; the Streets also were

paved with Gold, and in them walked many men, with Crowns on their

heads, Palms in their hands, and golden Harps to sing praises withal.

"There were also of them that had wings, and they answered one another

without intermission, saying, 'Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord.' And after

that they shut up the Gates. Which when I had seen, I wished myself

among them."[104]

He was imprisoned for twelve years and a half; in his dungeon he made

wire-snares to support himself and his family; he died at the age of

sixty in 1688. At the same time Milton lingered obscure and blind. The

last two poets of the Reformation thus survived, amid the classical

coldness which then dried up English literature, and the social excess

which then corrupted English morals. "Shorn hypocrites, psalm-singers,

gloomy bigots," such were the names by which men who reformed the

manners and renewed the constitution of England were insulted. But

oppressed and insulted as they were, their work continued of itself and

without noise underground; for the ideal which they had raised was,

after all, that which the clime suggested and the race demanded.

Gradually Puritanism began to approach the world, and the world to

approach Puritanism. The Restoration was to fall into evil odor, the

Revolution was to come, and beneath the gradual progress of national

sympathy, as well as under the incessant effort of public reflection,

parties and doctrines were to rally around a free and moral

Protestantism.

[Footnote 1: Roger Ascham, "The Scholemaster" (1570), ed. Arber, 1870,

book I., p. 83.]

[Footnote 2: See, in "Corinne," Lord Nevil's judgment on the Italians.]

[Footnote 3: See "Corpus historicorum medii ævi," G. Eccard, vol. II;

Joh. Burchardi, high chamberlain to Alexander VI, "Diarium," p. 2134.

Guicciardini, "Dell'istoria d'Italia," p. 211, ed. Panthéon Littéraire.]

[Footnote 4: See, in Casanova's "Mémoires," the picture of this

degradation. See also the "Mémoires" of Scipione Rossi, on the convents of

Tuscany at the close of the eighteenth century.]

[Footnote 5: From Homer to Constantine, the ancient city was an association

of freemen, whose aim was the conquest and destruction of other freemen.]

[Footnote 6: "Mémoires de la Margrave de Baireuth." See also Misson,

"Voyage en Italie," 1700. Compare the manners of the students at the

present day. "The Germans are, as you know, wonderful drinkers: no people

in the world are more flattering, more civil, more officious; but yet they

have terrible customs in the matter of drinking. With them everything is

done drinking; they drink in doing everything. There was not time during

a visit to say three words before you were astonished to see the collation

arrive, or at least a few jugs of wine, accompanied by a plate of crusts

of bread, dished up with pepper and salt, a fatal preparation for bad

drinkers. Then you must become acquainted with the laws which are

afterwards observed, sacred and inviolable laws. You must never drink

without drinking to some one's health; also, after drinking, you must

offer the wine to him whose health you have drunk. You must never refuse

the glass which is offered to you, and you must naturally drain it to its

last drop. Reflect a little, I beseech you, on these customs, and see

how it is possible to cease drinking; accordingly, they never cease. In

Germany it is a perpetual drinking-bout; to drink in Germany is to drink

forever."]

[Footnote 7: See his letters, and the sympathy expressed for Luther.]

[Footnote 8: See a collection of Albert Durer's wood-carvings. Remark

the resemblance of his "Apocalypse" to Luther's "Table Talk."]

[Footnote 9: Calvin, the logician of the Reformation, well explains the

dependence of all the Protestant ideas in his "Institutes of the Christian

Religion," I. (1) The idea of the perfect God, the stern Judge. (2) The

alarm of conscience (3) The impotence and corruption of nature. (4) The

advent of free grace. (5) The rejection of rites and ceremonies.]

[Footnote 10: "In the measure in which pride is rooted within us, it

always appears to us as though we were just and whole, good and holy,

unless we are convinced by manifest arguments of out injustice,

uncleanness, folly, and impurity. For we are not convinced of it if we

turn our eyes to our own persons merely, and if we do not think also of

God, who is the only rule by which we must shape and regulate this

judgment.... And then that which had a fair appearance of virtue will be

found to be nothing but weakness.

"This is the source of that horror and wonder by which the Scriptures

tell us the saints were afflicted and cast down, when and as often as they

felt the presence of God. For we see those who were as it might be far

from God, and who were confident and went about with head erect, as soon

as He displayed His glory to them, they were shaken and terrified, so much

so that they were overwhelmed, nay swallowed up in the horror of death,

and that they fainted away."--Calvin's "Institutes," I.]

[Footnote 11: Saint Augustine.]

[Footnote 12: Melanchthon, preface to Luther's works: "It is clear that

the works of Thomas, Scotus, and the like, are utterly silent about the

element of justification by faith, and contain many errors concerning the

most important questions relating to the church. It is clear that, the

discourses of the monks in their churches almost throughout the world were

either fables about purgatory and the saints or else some kind of dogma of

law or discipline, without a word of the gospel concerning Christ, or else

were vain trifles about distinctions in the matter of food, about feasts,

and other human traditions.... The gospel is pure, incorruptible, and not

diluted with Gentile opinions." See also Fox, "Acts and Monuments," 8 vols.

ed. Townsend, 1843, II. 42.]

[Footnote 13: See Froude, "History of England," I. VI. The conduct of

Henry VIII is there presented in a new light.]

[Footnote 14: Froude, I. 191. "Petition of Commons." This public and

authentic protest shows up all the details of clerical organization and

oppression.]

[Footnote 15: Froude, I. 26; II. 192.]

[Footnote 16: In May, 1528. Froude, I. 194.]

[Footnote 17: Hale, "Criminal Causes. Suppression of the Monasteries,"

Camden Society Publications. Froude, I. 194-201.]

[Footnote 18: Latimer's Sermons.]

[Footnote 19: They called them "horsyn prestes, horson," or "whorson

knaves." Hale, p. 99, quoted by Froude, I. 199.]

[Footnote 20: Froude, I. 101 (1514).]

[Footnote 21: Fox, "Acts and Monuments," IV. 221.]

[Footnote 22: See, passim, the prints of Fox. All the details which

follow are from biographies. See those of Cromwell, by Carlyle, of Fox

the Quaker, of Bunyan, and the trials reported at length by Fox.]

[Footnote 23: Froude, II. 33: "The bishops said in 1529, 'In the crime of

heresy, thanked be God there hath no notable person fallen in our time.'"]

[Footnote 24: In 1536. Strype's "Memorials," appendix. Froude, III. ch.

12.]

[Footnote 25: Coverdale. Froude, III. 81.]

[Footnote 26: 1549. Tyndale's translation.]

[Footnote 27: An expression of Stendhal's; it was his general impression.]

[Footnote 28: The time of which M. Taine speaks and the translation of

Tyndale precede by at least fifty years the appearance of "Macbeth" (1606).

Shakespeare's audience read the present authorized translation.--Tr.]

[Footnote 29: See Lemaistre de Sacy's French translation of the Bible, so

slightly biblical.]

[Footnote 30: See Ewald, "Geschichte des Volks Israel," his apostrophe to

the third writer of the Pentateuch, "Erhabener Geist," etc.]

[Footnote 31: See Psalm CIV. in Luther's admirable translation and in the

English translation.]

[Footnote 32: The first Primer of note was in 1545; Froude, V. 141. The

Prayer-book underwent several changes in 1552, others under Elizabeth,

and a few, lastly, at the Restoration.]

[Footnote 33: "To make use of words in a foreign language, merely with a

sentiment of devotion, the mind taking no fruit, could be neither pleasing

to God, nor beneficial to man. The party that understood not the pith or

effectualness of the talk that he made with God, might be as a harp or

pipe, having a sound, but not understanding the noise that itself had

made; a Christian man was more than an instrument; and he had therefore

provided a determinate form of supplication in the English tongue, that

his subjects might be able to pray like reasonable beings in their own

language."--"Letter of Henry VIII to Cranmer," Froude, IV. 486.]

[Footnote 34: Bishop John Fisher's "Funeral Oration of the Countess of

Richmond" (ed. 1711) shows to what practices this religion succeeded.

The Countess was the mother of Henry VII, and translated the "Myrroure of

Golde," and "The Forthe Boke of the Followinge Jesus Chryst":

"As for fastynge, for age, and feebleness, albeit she were not bound yet

those days that by the Church were appointed, she kept them diligently and

seriously, and in especial the holy Lent, throughout that she restrained

her appetite till one meal of fish on the day; besides her other peculiar

fasts of devotion, as St. Anthony, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Catherine, with

other; and throughout all the year the Friday and Saturday she full truly

observed. As to hard clothes wearing, she had her shirts and girdles of

hair, which, when she was in health, every week she failed not certain

days to wear, sometime the one, sometime the other, that full often her

skin, as I heard say, was pierced therewith.

"In prayer, every day at her uprising, which commonly was not long after

five of the clock, she began certain devotions, and so after them, with

one of her gentlewomen, the matins of our Lady; which kept her to then,

she came into her closet, where then with her chaplain she said also

matins of the day; and after that, daily heard four or five masses upon

her knees; so continuing in her prayers and devotions unto the hour of

dinner which of the eating day was ten of the clocks, and upon the fasting

day eleven. After dinner full truly she would go her stations to three

altars daily; daily her dirges and commendations she would say, and her

even songs before supper, both of the day and of our Lady, beside many

other prayers and psalters of David throughout the year; and at night

before she went to bed, she failed not to resort unto her chapel, and

there a large quarter of an hour to occupy her devotions. No marvel,

though all this long time her kneeling was to her painful, and so painful

that many times it caused in her back pain and disease. And yet,

nevertheless, daily, when she was in health, she failed not to say the

crown of our lady, which, after the manner of Rome, containeth sixty and

three aves, and at every ave, to make a kneeling. As for meditation, she

had divers books in French, wherewith she would occupy herself when she

was weary of prayer. Wherefore divers she did translate out of the French

into English. Her marvellous weeping they can bear witness of, which here

before have heard her confession, which be divers and many, and at many

seasons in the year, lightly every third day. Can also record the same

those that were present at any time when she was houshylde, which was

full nigh a dozen times every year, what floods of tears there issued

forth of her eyes!"]

[Footnote 35: Latimer's "Seven Sermons before Edward VI," ed. Edward

Arber, 1869. Second sermon, pp. 73 and 74.]

[Footnote 36: Latimer's Sermons. Fifth sermon, ed. Arber, p. 147.]

[Footnote 37: Latimer's Sermons, ed. Corrie, 1844, 2 vols., "Last Sermon

preached before Edward VI," I. 249.]

[Footnote 38: Latimer's Sermons, ed. Corrie, "First Sermon on the Lord's

Prayer."]

[Footnote 39: Noailles, the French (and Catholic) Ambassador. Piet. Hist.

II. 523. John Fox, "History of the Acts and Monuments of the Church," ed.

Townsend, 1843, 8 vols. VI. 612, says: "His wife and children, being

eleven in number, and ten able to go, and one sucking on her breast, met

him by the way, as he went towards Smithfield."--Tr.]

[Footnote 40: Fox, "History of the Acts," etc., VI. 727.]

[Footnote 41: Fox, "History of the Acts," etc., VI. 719.]

[Footnote 42: Neal, "History of the Puritans," ed. Toulmin, 5 vols.

1793, I. 96.]

[Footnote 43: "O eloquent, just and mightie Death! whom none could

advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done;

and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out

of the world and despised; thou hast drawne together all the farre

stretched greatnesse, all the pride, crueltie, and ambition of man,

and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet."]

[Footnote 44: Hooker's Works, ed. Keble, 1836, 3

vols., "The Ecclesiastical Polity."]

[Footnote 45: Ibid. I. book I. 249, 258, 312:

"That which doth assign unto each thing the kind, that which doth moderate

the force and power, that which doth appoint the form and measure of

working, the same we term a Law....

"Now if nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether, though it

were but for a while, the observation of her own laws; if those principal

and mother elements of the world, whereof all things in this lower world

are made, should lose the qualities which now they have; if the frame of

that heavenly arch erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve

itself; if celestial spheres should forget their wonted motions,... if

the prince of the lights of heaven, which now as a giant doth run his

unwearied course, should as it were through a languishing faintness,

begin to stand and to rest himself:... what would become of man himself,

whom these things now do all serve? See we not plainly that obedience of

creatures unto the law of nature is the stay of the whole world?...

"Between men and beasts there is no possibility of sociable communion

because the well-spring of that communion is a natural delight which man

hath to transfuse from himself into others, and to receive from others

into himself, especially those things wherein the excellency of his kind

doth most consist. The chiefest instrument of human communion therefore

is speech, because thereby we impart mutually one to another the conceits

of our reasonable understanding. And for that cause, seeing beasts are not

hereof capable, forasmuch as with them we can use no such conference, they

being in degree, although above other creatures on earth to whom nature

hath denied sense, yet lower than to be sociable companions of man to

whom nature hath given reason; it is of Adam said, that amongst the beasts

'he found not for himself any meet companion.' Civil society doth more

content the nature of man than any private kind of solitary living,

because in society this good of mutual participation is so much larger

than otherwise. Herewith notwithstanding we are not satisfied, but we

covet (if it might be) to have a kind of society and fellowship even

with all mankind."]

[Footnote 46: "Ecclesiastical Polity," I. book II. ch. VII. 4, p. 405.]

[Footnote 47: See the "Dialogues of Galileo." The same idea which is

persecuted by the church at Rome is at the same time defended by the

church in England. See also "Ecclesiastical Polity," I. book III.

461-481.]

[Footnote 48: Clarendon. See the same doctrines in Jeremy Taylor, "Liberty

of Prophesying," 1647.]

[Footnote 49: Jeremy Taylor's Works, ed. Eden, 1840, 10 vols., "Holy

Dying," ch. III. sec. 4, § 3, p. 315.]

[Footnote 50: "Sermon XVI, Of Growth in Sin."]

[Footnote 51: "We have already opened up this dunghill covered with snow,

which was indeed on the outside white as the spots of leprosy."]

[Footnote 52: "Golden Grove Sermons:" V. "The Return of Prayers."]

[Footnote 53: Luther's "Table Talk," ed. Hazlitt, No. 187, p. 30: "When

Jesus Christ was born, he doubtless cried and wept like other children,

and his mother tended him as other mothers tend their children. As he grew

up he was submissive to his parents, and waited on them, and carried his

supposed father's dinner to him; and when he came back, Mary no doubt often

said, 'My dear little Jesus, where hast thou been?'"]

[Footnote 54: "Holy Dying," ed. Eden, ch. I. sec. 1. p. 267.]

[Footnote 55: Ibid. 267.]

[Footnote 56: Ibid. 268.]

[Footnote 57: Ibid. 269.]

[Footnote 58: "Holy Dying," ch. I. sec. II. p. 270.]

[Footnote 59: "The Golden Grove."]

[Footnote 60: See in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Thierry and Theodoret" the

characters of Bawder, Protalyce, and Brunhalt. In "The Custom of the

Country," by the same authors, several scenes represent the inside of an

infamous house--a frequent thing, by the way, in the dramas of that time;

but here the boarders in the house are men. See also their "Rule a Wife

and Have a Wife."]

[Footnote 61: Calvin, quoted by Haag, II. 216, "Histoire des Dogmes

Chrétiens."]

[Footnote 62: These were the Supralapsarians.]

[Footnote 63: "The Byble, nowe lately with greate industry and Diligece

recognised" (by Edm. Becke), London, by John Daye and William Seres, 1549,

with Tyndale's "Prologues."]

[Footnote 64: Examination of Mr. Axton: "I can't consent to wear the

surplice, it is against my conscience; I trust, by the help of God, I shall

never put on that sleeve, which is a mark of the beast."--Examination of

Mr. White, "a substantial citizen of London" (1572), accused of not going

to the parish church: "The whole Scriptures are for destroying idolatry,

and everything that belongs to it."--"Where is the place where these are

forbidden?--In Deuteronomy and other places;... and God by Isaiah

commandeth not to pollute ourselves with the garments of the image."]

[Footnote 65: These expressions continually occur: "Tenderness of

conscience"--"a squeamish stomach"--"our weaker brethren."]

[Footnote 66: The separation of the Anglicans and dissenters may be

dated from 1564.]

[Footnote 67: 1592.]

[Footnote 68: Burton's "Parliamentary Diary," ed. by Rutt, 1828, 4 vols.

I. 54.]

[Footnote 69: Walker's "History of Independency," 1648, part II. p. 49.]

[Footnote 70: This passage may serve as an example of the difficulties

and perplexities to which a translator of a history of literature must

always be exposed, and this without any fault of the original author. Ab

uno disce omnes. M. taine says that cromwell found justification for his

policy in Psalm CXIII., which, on looking out, I found to be "an

exhortation to praise god for his excellency and for his mercy"--a psalm

by which Cromwell's conduct could nowise be justified. I opened then

Carlyle's "Cromwell's letters," etc., and saw, in vol. II. part VI. p.

157, the same fact stated, but Psalm CX. mentioned and given--a far more

likely psalm to have influenced Cromwell. Carlyle refers to "Ludlow," I.

319, Taine to Guizot, "Portraits Politiques," p. 63, and to Carlyle. In

looking in Guizot's volume, 5th ed., 1862, I find that this writer also

mentions Psalm CXIII; but on referring finally to the "Memoirs of

Edmund Ludlow," printed at Vivay (_sic_) in the canton of Bern, 1698, I

read, in Vol. I. p. 319, the sentence, as given above; therefore Carlyle

was right.--Tr.]

[Footnote 71: "Cromwell's Letters and Speeches," ed. Carlyle, 1866,

3 vols. I. 79.]

[Footnote 72: Idem. II. 273.]

[Footnote 73: Ibid. III. 373.]

[Footnote 74: See his speeches. The style is disjointed, obscure,

impassioned, out of the common, like that of a man who is not master of

his wits, and who yet sees straight by a sort of intuition.]

[Footnote 75: "Cromwell's Letters," I. 265.]

[Footnote 76: "A Journal of the Life, etc., of that Ancient, Eminent, and

Faithful Servant of Jesus Christ, George Fox," 6th edition, 1836.]

[Footnote 77: Burton's "Parliamentary Diary," I. 46-173. Neal, "History of

the Puritans," III.]

[Footnote 78: See Neal, "History of the Puritans," II. 418-450.]

[Footnote 79: Whitelock's "Memorials," I. 68.]

[Footnote 80: Neal, II. 553. Compare with the French Revolution. When

the Bastille was demolished, they wrote on the ruins these words: "Ici

l'on danse." From this contrast we see the difference between the two

systems and the two nations.]

[Footnote 81: Neal, "History of the Puritans," II, 555.]

[Footnote 82: Macaulay, "History of England," ed. Lady Trevelyan, I. 121.]

[Footnote 83: A certain John Denis was publicly whipped for having sung

a profane song. Mathias, a little girl, having given some roasted

chestnuts to Jeremiah Boosy, and told him ironically that he might give

them back to her in Paradise, was ordered to ask pardon three times in

church, and to be three days on bread and water in prison. 1660-1670;

records of Massachusetts.]

[Footnote 84: "Upon the common sense of Scripture," said Major-General

Disbrowe, "there are few but do commit blasphemy, as our Saviour puts it

in Mark: 'sins, blasphemies; it so, then none without blasphemy.' It was

charged upon David and Eli's son, 'thou hast blasphemed, or caused others

to blaspheme.'"--Burton's Diary, I. 54.]

[Footnote 85: Guizot, "Portraits Politiques," 5th ed. 1862.]

[Footnote 86: "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners."]

[Footnote 87: Ibid. sec. 12.]

[Footnote 88: Ibid. sec. 17.]

[Footnote 89: "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners," secs. 33, 34.]

[Footnote 90: Ibid. sec. 103.]

[Footnote 91: "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners," sec. 22.]

[Footnote 92: Ibid. secs. 27 and 28.]

[Footnote 93: This is an abstract of the events: from highest heaven a

voice has proclaimed vengeance against the city of destruction, where

lives a sinner of the name of christian. Terrified, he rises up amid the

jeers of his neighbors, and departs, for fear of being devoured by the

fire which is to consume the criminals. A helpful man, evangelist, shows

him the right road. A treacherous man, worldlywise, tries to turn him

aside. His companion, pliable, who had followed him at first, gets stuck

in the slough of despond, and leaves him. He advances bravely across the

dirty water and the slippery mud, and reaches the strait gate, where a

wise interpreter instructs him by visible shows, and points out the way

to the heavenly city. He passes before a cross, and the heavy burden of

sins, which he carried on his back, is loosened and falls off. He

painfully climbs the steep hill of difficulty, and reaches a great

castle, where watchful, the guardian, gives him in charge to his good

daughters piety and prudence, who warn him and arm him against the

monsters of hell. He finds his road barred by one of these demons,

apollyon, who bids him abjure obedience to the heavenly king. After a

long fight he conquers him. Yet the way grows narrow, the shades fall

thicker, sulphurous flames rise along the road: it is the valley of the

shadow of death. He passes it and arrives at the town of vanity, a vast

fair of business, deceits, and shows, which he walks by with lowered

eyes, not wishing to take part in its festivities or falsehoods. The

people of the place beat him, throw him into prison, condemn him as a

traitor and rebel, burn his companion, faithful. Escaped from their

hands, he falls into those of giant despair, who beats him, leaves him

in a poisonous dungeon without food, and giving him daggers and cords,

advises him to rid himself from so many misfortunes. At last he reaches

the delectable mountains, whence he sees the holy city. To enter it he

has only to cross a deep river, where there is no foothold, where the

water dims the sight, and which is called the river of death.]

[Footnote 94: Bunyan's "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners," sec.

187.]

[Footnote 95: "Pilgrim's Progress," Cambridge, 1862, First Part, p. 64.]

[Footnote 96: "Pilgrim's Progress," First Part, p. 160.]

[Footnote 97: "Pilgrim's Progress," First Part, p. 26.]

[Footnote 98: Here is another of his allegories, almost witty, so just

and simple it is. See "Pilgrim's Progress," first part, p. 68: "now I

saw in my dream, that at the end of this valley lay blood, bones, ashes,

and mangled bodies of men, even of pilgrims that had gone this way

formerly; and while I was musing what should be the reason, I espied a

little before me a cave, where two giants, pope and pagan, dwelt in old

time; by whose power and tyranny the men whose bones, blood, ashes,

etc., lay there, were cruelly put to death. But by this place christian

went without much danger, whereat I somewhat wondered; but I have learnt

since, that pagan has been dead many a day; and as for the other, though

he be yet alive, he is by reason of age, and also of the many shrewd

brushes that he met with in his younger days, grown so crazy, and stiff

in his joints, that he can now do little more than sit in his cave's

mouth, grinning at pilgrims as they go by, and biting his nails, because

he cannot come at them."]

[Footnote 99: For instance, Hollar's work, "Cities of Germany."]

[Footnote 100: "Pilgrim's Progress," First Part, p. 126.]

[Footnote 101: "Pilgrim's Progress," First Part, p. 174.]

[Footnote 102: "Pilgrim's Progress," First Part, p. 179.]

[Footnote 103: Ibid. p. 182.]

[Footnote 104: Ibid. p. 183, etc.]

CHAPTER SIXTH

Milton

On the borders of the licentious Renaissance which was drawing to a

close, and of the exact school of poetry which was springing up, between

the monotonous conceits of Cowley and the correct gallantries of Waller,

appeared a mighty and superb mind, prepared by logic and enthusiasm for

eloquence and the epic style; liberal, Protestant, a moralist and a

poet, adorning the cause of Algernon Sidney and Locke with the

inspiration of Spenser and Shakespeare; the heir of a poetical age, the

precursor of an austere age, holding his place between the epoch of

unselfish dreaming and the epoch of practical action; like his own Adam,

who, taking his way to an unfriendly land, heard behind him, in the

closed Eden, the dying strains of heaven.

John Milton was not one of those fevered souls void of self-command,

whose rapture takes them by fits, whom a sickly sensibility drives

forever to the extreme of sorrow or joy, whose pliability prepares them

to produce a variety of characters, whose inquietude condemns them to

paint the madness and contradictions of passion. Vast knowledge, close

logic, and grand passion; these were his marks. His mind was lucid, his

imagination limited. He was incapable of "bating one jot of heart or

hope," or of being transformed. He conceived the loftiest of ideal

beauties, but he conceived only one. He was not born for the drama, but

for the ode. He does not create souls, but constructs arguments, and

experiences emotions. Emotions and arguments, all the forces and actions

of his soul, assemble and are arranged beneath a unique sentiment, that

of the sublime; and the broad river of lyric poetry streams from him

impetuous, with even flow, splendid as a cloth of gold.

Section I.--Milton's Family and Education

This dominant sense constituted the greatness and the firmness of his

character. Against external fluctuations he found a refuge in himself;

and the ideal city which he had built in his soul, endured impregnable

to all assaults. It is too beautiful, this inner city, for him to wish

to leave it; it was too solid to be destroyed. He believed in the

sublime with the whole force of his nature, and the whole authority of

his logic; and with him, cultivated reason strengthened by its tests the

suggestions of primitive instinct. With this double armor, man can

advance firmly through life. He who is always feeding himself with

demonstrations is capable of believing, willing, persevering in belief

and will; he does not change with every event and every passion, as that

fickle and pliable being whom we call a poet; he remains at rest in

fixed principles. He is capable of embracing a cause, and of continuing

attached to it, whatever may happen, spite of all, to the end. No

seduction, no emotion, no accident, no change alters the stability of

his conviction or the lucidity of his knowledge. On the first day, on

the last day, during the whole time, he preserves intact the entire

system of his clear ideas, and the logical vigor of his brain sustains

the manly vigor of his heart. When at length, as here, this close logic

is employed in the service of noble ideas, enthusiasm is added to

constancy. The man holds his opinions not only as true, but as sacred.

He fights for them, not only as a soldier, but as a priest. He is

impassioned, devoted, religious, heroic. Rarely is such a mixture seen;

but it was fully seen in Milton.

He was of a family in which courage, moral nobility, the love of art,

were present to whisper the most beautiful and eloquent words around his

cradle. His mother was a most exemplary woman, well known through all

the neighborhood for her benevolence.[105] His father, a student of

Christ Church, and disinherited as a Protestant, had made his fortune by

his own energies, and, amidst his occupations as a scrivener or writer,

had preserved the taste for letters, being unwilling to give up "his

liberal and intelligent tastes to the extent of becoming altogether a

slave to the world"; he wrote verses, was an excellent musician, one of

the best composers of his time; he chose Cornelius Jansen to paint his

son's portrait when in his tenth year, and gave his child the widest and

fullest literary education.[106] Let the reader try to picture this

child, in the street (Bread Street) inhabited by merchants, in this

citizen-like and scholarly, religious and poetical family, whose manners

were regular and their aspirations lofty, where they set the Psalms to

music, and wrote madrigals in honor of Oriana the queen,[107] where

vocal music, letters, painting, all the adornments of the beautiful

Renaissance, decked the sustained gravity, the hardworking honesty, the

deep Christianity of the Reformation. All Milton's genius springs from

this; he carried the splendor of the Renaissance into the earnestness of

the Reformation, the magnificence of Spenser into the severity of

Calvin, and, with his family, found himself at the confluence of the two

civilizations which he combined. Before he was ten years old he had a

learned tutor, "a Puritan, who cut his hair short"; after that he went

to Saint Paul's school, then to the University of Cambridge, that he

might be instructed in "polite literature"; and at the age of twelve he

worked, in spite of his weak eyes and headaches, until midnight and even

later. His John the Baptist, a character resembling himself, says:

"When I was yet a child, no childish play

To me was pleasing; all my mind was set

Serious to learn and know, and thence to do,

What might be public good; myself I thought

Born to that end, born to promote all truth,

All righteous things."[108]

At school, afterwards at Cambridge, then with his father, he was

strengthening and preparing himself with all his power, free from all

blame, and loved by all good men; traversing the vast fields of Greek

and Latin literature, not only the great writers, but all the writers,

down to the half of the Middle Ages; and studying simultaneously ancient

Hebrew, Syriac, and rabbinical Hebrew, French and Spanish, old English

literature, all the Italian literature, with such zeal and profit that

he wrote Italian and Latin verse and prose like an Italian or a Roman;

in addition to this, music, mathematics, theology, and much besides. A

serious thought regulated this great toil. "The church, to whose

service, by the intentions of my parents and friends, I was destined of

a child, and in mine own resolutions: till coming to some maturity of

years, and perceiving what tyranny had invaded the church, that he who

would take orders must subscribe slave and take an oath withal, which

unless he took with a conscience that would retch, he must either

straight perjure, or split his faith; I thought it better to prefer a

blameless silence before the sacred office of speaking bought, and begun

with servitude and forswearing."[109]

He refused to be a clergyman from the same feelings that he had wished

it; the desire and the renunciation all sprang from the same source--a

fixed resolve to act nobly. Falling back into the life of a layman, he

continued to cultivate and perfect himself, studying passionately and

with method, but without pedantry or rigor: nay, rather, after his

master Spenser, in "L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Cornus," he set forth in

sparkling and variegated dress the wealth of mythology, nature, and

fancy; then, sailing for the land of science and beauty, he visited

Italy, made the acquaintance of Grotius and Galileo, sought the society

of the learned, the men of letters, the men of the world, listened to

the musicians, steeped himself in all the beauties stored up by the

Renaissance at Florence and Rome. Everywhere his learning, his fine

Italian and Latin style, secured him the friendship and attentions of

scholars, so that, on his return to Florence, he "was as well received

as if he had returned to his native country." He collected books and

music, which he sent to England, and thought of traversing Sicily and

Greece, those two Hornes of ancient letters and arts. Of all the flowers

that opened to the Southern sun under the influence of the two great

paganisms, he gathered freely the balmiest and the most exquisite, but

without staining himself with the mud which surrounded them. "I call the

Deity to witness," he wrote later, "that in all those places in which

vice meets with so little discouragement, and is practised with so

little shame, I never once deviated from the paths of integrity and

virtue, and perpetually reflected that, though my conduct might escape

the notice of men, it could not elude the inspection of God."[110]

Amid the licentious gallantries and inane sonnets like those which the

Cicisbei and Academicians lavished forth, he retained his sublime idea

of poetry: he thought to choose a heroic subject from ancient English

history; and as he says, "I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who

would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable

things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a composition and

pattern of the best and honorablest things; not presuming to sing high

praises of heroic men, or famous cities, unless he have in himself the

experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy."[111]

Above all, he loved Dante and Petrarch for their purity, telling himself

that "if unchastity in a woman, whom St. Paul terms the glory of man, be

such a scandal and dishonor, then certainly in a man, who is both the

image and glory of God, it must, though commonly not so thought, be much

more deflouring and dishonorable."[112] He thought "that every free and

gentle spirit, without that oath, ought to be born a knight," for the

practice and defence of chastity, and he kept himself virgin till his

marriage. Whatever the temptation might be, whatever the attraction or

fear, it found him equally opposed and equally firm. From a sense of

gravity and propriety he avoided all religious disputes; but if his own

creed were attacked, he defended it "without any reserve or fear," even

in Rome, before the Jesuits who plotted against him, within a few paces

of the Inquisition and the Vatican. Perilous duty, instead of driving

him away, attracted him. When the Revolution began to threaten, he

returned, drawn by conscience, as a soldier who hastens to danger when

he hears the clash of arms, convinced, as he himself tells us, that it

was a shame to him leisurely to spend his life abroad, and for his own

pleasure, whilst his fellow-countrymen were striving for their liberty.

In battle he appeared in the front ranks as a volunteer, courting danger

everywhere. Throughout his education and throughout his youth, in his

profane readings and his sacred studies, in his acts and his maxims,

already a ruling and permanent thought grew manifest--the resolution to

develop and unfold within him the ideal man.

Section II.--Milton's Unhappy Domestic Life

Two powers chiefly lead mankind--impulse and idea: the one influencing

sensitive, unfettered, poetical souls, capable of transformations, like

Shakespeare; the other governing active, combative, heroic souls,

capable of immutability, like Milton. The first are sympathetic and

effusive; the second are concentrative and reserved.[113] The first give

themselves up, the others withhold themselves. These, by reliance and

sociability, with an artistic instinct and a sudden imitative

comprehension, involuntarily take the tone and disposition of the men

and things which surround them, and an immediate counterpoise is

effected between the inner and the outer man. Those, by mistrust and

rigidity, with a combative instinct and a quick reference to rule,

become naturally thrown back upon themselves, and in their narrow limits

no longer feel the solicitations and contradictions of their

surroundings. They have formed a model, and thenceforth this model like

a watchword restrains or urges them on. Like all powers destined to have

sway, the inner idea grows and absorbs to its use the rest of their

being. They bury it in themselves by meditation, they nourish it with

reasoning, they put it in communication with the chain of all their

doctrines and all their experiences; so that when a temptation assails

them, it is not an isolated principle which it attacks, but it

encounters the whole combination of their belief, an infinitely ramified

combination, too strong for a sensuous seduction to tear asunder. At the

same time a man by habit is upon his guard; the combative attitude is

natural to him, and he stands erect, firm in the pride of his courage

and the inveteracy of his determination.

A soul thus fortified is like a diver in his bell;[114] it passes

through life as he passes through the sea, unstained but isolated. On

his return to England, Milton fell back among his books, and received a

few pupils, upon whom he imposed, as upon himself, continuous toil,

serious reading, a frugal diet, a strict behavior; the life of a

recluse, almost of a monk. Suddenly in a month, after a country visit,

he married.[115] A few weeks afterwards, his wife returned to her

father's house, would not come back to him, took no notice of his

letters, and sent back his messenger with scorn. The two characters had

come into collision. Nothing displeases women more than an austere and

self-contained character. They see that they have no hold upon it; its

dignity awes them, its pride repels, its preoccupations keep them aloof;

they feel themselves of less value, neglected for general interests or

speculative curiosities; judged, moreover, and that after an inflexible

rule; at most regarded with condescension, as a sort of less reasonable

and inferior beings, debarred from the equality which they demand, and

the love which alone can reward them for the loss of equality. The

"priest" character is made for solitude; the tact, ease, charm,

pleasantness, and gentleness necessary to all companionship, are wanting

to it; we admire him, but we go no further, especially if, like Milton's

wife, we are somewhat dull and common-place,[116] adding mediocrity of

intellect to the repugnance of our hearts. He had, so his biographers

say, a certain gravity of nature, or severity of mind which would not

condescend to petty things, but kept him in the clouds, in a region

which is not that of the household. He was accused of being harsh,

choleric; and certainly he stood upon his manly dignity, his authority

as a husband, and was not so greatly esteemed, respected, studied, as he

thought he deserved to be. In short, he passed the day amongst his

books, and the rest of the time his heart lived in an abstracted and

sublime world of which few wives catch a glimpse, his wife least of all.

He had, in fact, chosen like a student, so much the more at random

because his former life had been of "a well-governed and wise appetite."

Equally like a man of the closet, he resented her flight, being the more

irritated because the world's ways were unknown to him. Without dread of

ridicule, and with the sternness of a speculative man suddenly brought

into collision with actual life, he wrote treatises on divorce, signed

them with his name, dedicated them to Parliament, held himself divorced

_de facto_ because his wife refused to return, _de jure_ because he had

four texts of Scripture for it; whereupon he paid court to another young

lady, and suddenly, seeing his wife on her knees and weeping, forgave

her, took her back, renewed the dry and sad marriage-tie, not profiting

by experience, but on the other hand fated to contract two other unions,

the last with a wife thirty years younger than himself. Other parts of

his domestic life were neither better managed nor happier. He had taken

his daughters for secretaries, and made them read languages which they

did not understand--a repelling task, of which they bitterly complained.

In return, he accused them of being "undutiful and unkind," of

neglecting him, not caring whether they left him alone, of conspiring

with the servants to rob him in their purchases, of stealing his books,

so that they would have disposed of the whole of them. Mary, the second,

hearing one day that he was going to be married, said that his marriage

was no news; the best news would be his death. An incredible speech, and

one which throws a strange light on the miseries of this family. Neither

circumstances nor nature had created him for happiness.

Section III.--Milton's Combative Energy

They had created him for strife, and after his return to England he had

thrown himself heartily into it, armed with logic, anger, and learning,

protected by conviction and conscience. When "the liberty of speech was

no longer subject to control, all mouths began to be opened against the

bishops.... I saw that a way was opening for the establishment of real

liberty; that the foundation was laying for the deliverance of man from

the yoke of slavery and superstition;... and as I had from my youth

studied the distinction between religious and civil rights,... I

determined to relinquish the other pursuits in which I was engaged, and

to transfer the whole force of my talents and my industry to this one

important object."[117] And thereupon he wrote his "Reformation in

England," jeering at and attacking with haughtiness and scorn the

prelacy of its defenders. Refuted and attacked in turn, he became still

more bitter, and crushed those whom he had beaten.[118] Transported to

the limits of his creed, and like a knight making a rush, and who

pierces with a dash the whole line of battle, he hurled himself upon the

prince, wrote that the abolition of royalty as well as the overthrow of

Episcopacy were necessary; and one month after the death of Charles I,

justified his execution, replied to the "Eikon Basilike," then to

Salmasius's "Defence of the King," with incomparable breadth of style

and scorn, like a soldier, like an apostle, like a man who everywhere

feels the superiority of his science and logic, who wishes to make it

felt, who proudly tramples upon and crushes his adversaries as

ignoramuses, inferior minds, base hearts.[119] "Kings most commonly," he

says, at the beginning of the "Eikonoklastes, though strong in

legions, are but weak at arguments; as they who ever have accustomed

from their cradle to use their will only as their right hand, their

reason always as their left. Whence unexpectedly constrained to that

kind of combat, they prove but weak and puny adversaries."[120] Yet, for

love of those who suffer themselves to be overcome by this dazzling name

of royalty, he consents to "take up King Charles's gauntlet"; and bangs

him with it in a style calculated to make the imprudent men who had

thrown it down repent. Far from recoiling at the accusation of murder,

he accepts and boasts of it. He vaunts the regicide, sets it on a

triumphal car, decks it in all the light of heaven. He relates with the

tone of a judge, "how a most potent king, after he had trampled upon the

laws of the nation, and given a shock to its religion, and began to rule

at his own will and pleasure, was at last subdued in the field by his

own subjects, who had undergone a long slavery under him; how afterwards

he was cast into prison, and when he gave no ground, either by words or

actions, to hope better things of him, was finally by the supreme

council of the kingdom condemned to die, and beheaded before the very

gates of the royal palace.... For what king's majesty sitting upon an

exalted throne, ever shone so brightly, as that of the people of England

then did, when, shaking off that old superstition, which had prevailed a

long time, they gave judgment upon the king himself, or rather upon an

enemy who had been their king, caught as it were in a net by his own

laws (who alone of all mortals challenged to himself impunity by a

divine right), and scrupled not to inflict the same punishment upon him,

being guilty, which he would have inflicted upon any other?"[121] After

having justified the execution, he sanctified it; consecrated it by

decrees of heaven after he had authorized it by the laws of the world;

from the support of Law he transferred it to the support of God. This is

the God who "uses to throw down proud and unruly kings,... and utterly

to extirpate them and all their family. By his manifest impulse being

set on work to recover our almost lost liberty, following him as our

guide, and adoring the impresses of his divine power manifested upon all

occasions, we went on in no obscure but an illustrious passage, pointed

out and made plain to us by God himself."[122] Here the reasoning ends

with a song of triumph, and enthusiasm breaks out through the mail of

the warrior. Such he displayed himself in all his actions and in all his

doctrines. The solid files of bristling and well-ordered arguments which

he disposed in battle-array were changed in his heart in the moment of

triumph into glorious processions of crowned and resplendent hymns. He

was transported by them, he deluded himself, and lived thus alone with

the sublime, like a warrior-pontiff, who in his stiff armor, or his

glittering stole, stands face to face with truth. Thus absorbed in

strife and in his priesthood, he lived out of the world, as blind to

palpable facts as he was protected against the seductions of the senses,

placed above the stains and the lessons of experience, as incapable of

leading men as of yielding to them. There was nothing in him akin to the

devices and delays of the statesman, the crafty schemer, who pauses on

his way, experimentalizes, with eyes fixed on what may turn up, who

gauges what is possible, and employs logic for practical purposes.

Milton was speculative and chimerical. Locked up in his own ideas, he

sees but them, is attracted but by them. Is he pleading against the

bishops? He would extirpate them at once, without hesitation; he demands

that the Presbyterian worship shall be at once established, without

forethought, contrivance, hesitation. It is the command of God, it is

the duty of the faithful; beware how you trifle with God or temporize

with faith. Concord, gentleness, liberty, piety, he sees a whole swarm

of virtues issue from this new worship. Let the king fear nothing from

it, his power will be all the stronger. Twenty thousand democratic

assemblies will take care that his rights be not infringed. These ideas

make us smile. We recognize the party-man, who, on the verge of the

Restoration, when "the whole multitude was mad with desire for a king,"

published "A Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth," and

described his method at length. We recognize the theorist who, to obtain

a law of divorce, only appealed to Scripture, and aimed at transforming

the civil constitution of a people by changing the accepted sense of a

verse. With closed eyes, sacred text in hand, he advances from

consequence to consequence, trampling upon the prejudices inclinations,

habits, wants of men, as if a reasoning or religious spirit were the

whole man, as if evidence always created belief, as if belief always

resulted in practice, as if, in the struggle of doctrines, truth or

justice gave doctrines the victory and sovereignty. To cap all, he

sketched out a treatise on education, in which he proposed to teach each

pupil every science, every art, and, what is more, every virtue. "He who

had the art and proper eloquence... might in a short space gain them to

an incredible diligence and courage,... infusing into their young

breasts such an ingenuous and noble ardour as would not fail to make

many of them renowned and matchless men."[123] Milton had taught for

many years and at various times. A man must be insensible to experience

or doomed to illusions who retains such deceptions after such

experiences.

But his obstinacy constituted his power, and the inner constitution,

which closed his mind to instruction, armed his heart against

weaknesses. With men generally, the source of devotion dries up when in

contact with life. Gradually, by dint of frequenting the world, we

acquire its tone. We do not choose to be dupes, and to abstain from the

license which others allow themselves; we relax our youthful strictness;

we even smile, attributing it to our heated blood; we know our own

motives, and cease to find ourselves sublime. We end by taking it

calmly, and we see the world wag, only trying to avoid shocks, picking

up here and there a few little comfortable pleasures. Not so Milton. He

lived complete and pure to the end, without loss of heart or weakness;

experience could not instruct nor misfortune depress him; he endured

all, and repented of nothing. He lost his sight, by his own fault, by

writing, though ill, and against the prohibition of his doctors, to

justify the English people against the invectives of Salmasius. He saw

the funeral of the Republic, the proscription of his doctrines, the

defamation of his honor. Around him ran riot, a distaste for liberty, an

enthusiasm for slavery. A whole people threw itself at the feet of a

young, incapable, and treacherous libertine. The glorious leaders of the

Puritan faith were condemned, executed, cut down alive from the gallows,

quartered amidst insults; others, whom death had saved from the hangman,

were dug up and exposed on the gibbet; others, exiles in foreign lands,

lived, threatened and attacked by royalist bullies; others again, more

unfortunate, had sold their cause for money and titles, and sat amid the

executioners of their former friends. The most pious and austere

citizens of England filled the prisons, or wandered about in poverty and

shame; and gross vice, impudently seated on the throne, rallied around

it a herd of unbridled lusts and sensualities. Milton himself had been

constrained to hide; his books had been burned by the hand of the

hangman; even after the general act of indemnity he was imprisoned; when

set at liberty, he lived in the expectation of being assassinated, for

private fanaticism might seize the weapon relinquished by public

revenge. Other smaller misfortunes came to aggravate by their stings the

great wounds which afflicted him. Confiscations, a bankruptcy, finally,

the great fire of London, had robbed him of three-fourths of his

fortune;[124] his daughters neither esteemed nor respected him; he sold

his books, knowing that his family could not profit by them after his

death; and amidst so many private and public miseries, he continued

calm. Instead of repudiating what he had done, he gloried in it: instead

of being cast down, he increased in firmness. He says, in his

twenty-second sonnet:

"Cyriack, this three years day these eyes, though clear,

To outward view, of blemish or of spot,

Bereft of sight, their seeing have forgot;

Nor to their idle orbs doth day appear

Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,

Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not

Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate one jot

Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer

Right onward. What supports me, doth thou ask?

The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied

In liberty's defence, my noble task;

Of which all Europe rings from side to side.

This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask

Content though blind, had I no other guide."[125]

That thought was indeed his guide; he was "armed in himself," and that

"breastplate of diamond"[126] which had protected him in his prime

against the wounds in battle, protected him in his old age against the

temptations and doubts of defeat and adversity.

Section IV.--Milton's Personal Appearance

Milton lived in a small house in London, or in the country, at Horton,

in Buckinghamshire, published his "History of Britain," his "Logic," a

"Treatise on True Religion and Heresy," meditated his great "Treatise on

Christian Doctrine." Of all consolations, work is the most fortifying

and the most healthy, because it solaces a man not by bringing him ease,

but by requiring him to exert himself. Every morning he had a chapter of

the Bible read to him in Hebrew, and remained for some time in silence,

grave, in order to meditate on what he had heard. He never went to a

place of worship. Independent in religion as in all else, he was

sufficient to himself; finding in no sect the marks of the true church,

he prayed to God alone, without needing others' help. He studied till

mid-day; then, after an hour's exercise, he played the organ or the

bass-violin. Then he resumed his studies till six, and in the evening

enjoyed the society of his friends. When anyone came to visit him, he

was usually found in a room hung with old green hangings, seated in an

arm-chair, and dressed neatly in black; his complexion was pale, says

one of his visitors, but not sallow; his hands and feet were gouty; his

hair, of a light brown, was parted in the midst and fell in long curls;

his eyes, gray and clear, showed no sign of blindness. He had been very

beautiful in his youth, and his English cheeks, once delicate as a young

girl's, retained their color almost to the end. His face, we are told,

was pleasing; his straight and manly gait bore witness to intrepidity

and courage. Something great and proud breathes out yet from all his

portraits; and certainly few men have done so much honor to their kind.

Thus went out this noble life, like a setting sun, bright and calm. Amid

so many trials, a pure and lofty joy, altogether worthy of him, had been

granted to him: the poet, buried under the Puritan, had reappeared, more

sublime than ever, to give to Christianity its second Homer. The

dazzling dreams of his youth and the reminiscences of his ripe age were

found in him, side by side with Calvinistic dogmas and the visions of

St. John, to create the Protestant epic of damnation and grace; and the

vastness of primitive horizons, the flames of the infernal dungeon, the

splendors of the celestial court, opened to the inner eye of the soul

unknown regions beyond the sights which the eyes of the flesh had lost.

Section V.--Milton as a Prose Writer

[Illustration: _JOHN MILTON._

_Photogravure from an etching._

This picture of Milton, representing the great poet in the prime of his

intellect, is one of the finest of him extant. Traces are still visible

of that earlier beauty which at Oxford had caused him to be nicknamed

the "Maiden," but the impress of serious thought has given to his face a

dignity which is greater than the mere physical charm of youth. The

contour of the head is noble, and the expressive, finely shaped eyes

show poetic sensibility and imagination. His flowing chestnut curls are

the only reminder of the gay cavalier period in which he lived, for his

dress, in conformity with his sympathies, is strictly Puritan.]

I have before me the formidable volume in which, some time after

Milton's death, his prose works were collected.[127] What a book! The

chairs creak when you place it upon them, and a man who had turned its

leaves over for an hour, would have less pain in his head than in his

arm. As the book, so were the men; from the mere outsides we might

gather some notion of the controversialists and theologians whose

doctrines they contain. Yet we must conclude that the author was

eminently learned, elegant, travelled, philosophic, and a man of the

world for his age. We think involuntarily of the portraits of the

theologians of those days, severe faces engraved on metal by the hard

artist's tool, whose square brows and steady eyes stand out in startling

prominence against a dark, oak panel. We compare them to modern

countenances, in which the delicate and complex features seem to quiver

at the varied contact of hardly begun sensations and innumerable ideas.

We try to imagine the heavy classical education, the physical exercises,

the rude treatment, the rare ideas, the imposed dogmas, which formerly

occupied, oppressed, fortified, and hardened the young; and we might

fancy ourselves looking at an anatomy of megatheria and mastodons,

reconstructed by Cuvier.

The race of living men is changed. Our mind fails us nowadays at the

idea of this greatness and this barbarism; but we discover that the

barbarism was then the cause of the greatness. As in other times we

might have seen, in the primitive slime and among the colossal ferns,

ponderous monsters slowly wind their scaly backs, and tear the flesh

from one another's sides with their misshapen talons; so now, at a

distance, from the height of our calm civilization, we see the battles

of the theologians, who, armed with syllogisms, bristling with text,

covered one another with filth, and labored to devour each others.

Milton fought in the front rank, preordained to barbarism and greatness

by his individual nature and the manners of the time, capable of

displaying in high prominence the logic, style, and spirit of his age.

It is drawing-room life which trims men into shape: the society of

ladies, the lack of serious interests, idleness, vanity, security, are

needed to bring men to elegance, urbanity, fine and light humor, to

teach the desire to please, the fear to become wearisome, a perfect

clearness, a finished precision, the art of gradual transitions and

delicate tact, a taste for suitable images, continual ease, and choice

diversity. Seek nothing like this in Milton. The old scholastic system

was not far off; it still weighed on those who were destroying it. Under

this secular armor discussion proceeded pedantically, with measured

steps. The first thing was to propound a thesis; and Milton writes, in

large characters, at the head of his "Treatise on Divorce, that

indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause

in nature unchangeable, hindering, and ever likely to hinder the main

benefits of conjugal society, which are solace and peace, is a greater

reason of divorce than natural frigidity, especially if there be no

children, and that there be mutual consent." And then follow, legion

after legion, the disciplined army of the arguments. Battalion after

battalion they pass by, numbered very distinctly. There is a dozen of

them together, each with its title in clear characters, and the little

brigade of subdivisions which it commands. Sacred texts hold the post of

honor. Every word of them is discussed, the substantive after the

adjective, the verb after the substantive, the preposition after the

verb; interpretations, authorities, illustrations, are summoned up, and

ranged between palisades of new divisions. And yet there is a lack of

order, the question is not reduced to a single idea; we cannot see our

way; proofs succeed proofs without logical sequence; we are rather tired

out than convinced. We remember that the author speaks to Oxford men,

lay or cleric, trained in pretended discussions, capable of obstinate

attention, accustomed to digest indigestible books. They are at home in

this thorny thicket of scholastic brambles; they beat a path through,

somewhat at hazard, hardened against the hurts which repulse us, and not

having the smallest idea of the daylight which we require everywhere

now.

With such ponderous reasoners, you must not look for wit. Wit is the

nimbleness of victorious reason; here, because everything it powerful,

all is heavy. When Milton wishes to joke, he looks like one of

Cromwell's pikemen, who, entering a room to dance, should fall upon the

floor, and that with the extra weight of his armor. Few things could be

more stupid than his "Animadversions upon the Remonstrants' Defence." At

the end of an argument his adversary concludes with this specimen of

theological wit: "In the meanwhile see, brethren, how you have with

Simon fished all night, and caught nothing." And Milton boastfully

replies: "If, we, fishing with Simon the apostle, can catch nothing; see

what you can catch with Simon Magus; for all his hooks and fishing

implements he bequeathed among you." Here a great savage laugh would

break out. The spectators saw a charm in this way of insinuating that

his adversary was simoniacal. A little before, the latter says: "Tell

me, is this liturgy good or evil?" Answer: "It is evil: repair the

acheloian horn of your dilemma, how you can, against the next push." The

doctors wondered at the fine mythological simile and rejoiced to see the

adversary so neatly compared to an ox, a beaten ox, a pagan ox. On the

next page the Remonstrant said, by way of a spiritual and mocking

reproach: "Truly, brethren, you have not well taken the height of the

pole." Answer: "No marvel; there be many more that do not take well the

height of your pole, but will take better the declination of your

altitude." Three quips of the same savor follow one upon the other; all

this looked pretty. Elsewhere, Salmasius exclaiming "that the sun itself

never beheld a more outrageous action" than the murder of the king,

Milton cleverly answers, "The sun has beheld many things that blind

Bernard never saw. But we are content you should mention the sun over

and over. And it will be a piece of prudence in you so to do. For though

our wickedness does not require it, the coldness of the defence that you

are making does."[128] The marvellous heaviness of these conceits

betrays minds yet entangled in the swaddling-clothes of learning. The

Reformation was the inauguration of free thought, but only the

inauguration. Criticism was yet unborn; authority still presses with a

full half of its weight upon the freest and boldest minds. Milton, to

prove that it was lawful to put a king to death, quotes Orestes, the

laws of Publicola, and the death of Nero. His "History of Britain" is a

farrago of all the traditions and fables. Under every circumstance he

adduces a text of Scripture for proof; his boldness consists in showing

himself a bold grammarian, a valorous commentator. He is blindly

Protestant as others were blindly Catholic. He leaves in its bondage the

higher reason, the mother of principles; he has but emancipated a

subordinate reason, an interpreter of texts. Like the vast half

shapeless creatures, the birth of early times, he is yet but half man

and half mud.

Can we expect urbanity here? Urbanity is the elegant dignity which

answers insult by calm irony, and respects man whilst piercing a dogma.

Milton coarsely knocks his adversary down. A bristling pedant, born from

a Greek lexicon and a Syriac grammar, Salmasius had disgorged upon the

English people a vocabulary of insults and a folio of quotations. Milton

replies to him in the same style; calling him a buffoon, a mountebank

"_professor triobolaris_," a hired pedant, a nobody, a rogue, a

heartless being, a wretch, an idiot, sacrilegious, a slave worthy of

rods and a pitchfork. A dictionary of big Latin words passed between

them. "You, who know so many tongues, who read so many books, who write

so much about them, you are yet but an ass." Finding the epithet good,

he repeats and sanctifies it. "Oh, most drivelling of asses, you come

ridden by a woman, with the cured heads of bishops whom you had wounded,

a little image of the great beast of the Apocalypse!" He ends by calling

him savage beast, apostate, and devil. "Doubt not that you are reserved

for the same end as Judas, and that, driven by despair rather than

repentance, self-disgusted, you must one day hang yourself, and like

your rival, burst asunder in your belly."[129] We fancy we are listening

to the bellowing of two bulls.

They had all a bull's ferocity. Milton was a good hater. He fought with

his pen, as the Ironsides with the sword, inch by inch, with a

concentrated rancor and a fierce obstinacy. The bishops and the king

then suffered for eleven years of despotism. Each man recalled the

banishments, confiscations, punishments, the law violated systematically

and relentlessly, the liberty of the subject attacked by a well-laid

plot, Episcopal idolatry imposed on Christian consciences, the faithful

preachers driven into the wilds of America, or given up to the

executioner and the stocks.[130] Such reminiscences arising in powerful

minds, stamped them with inexpiable hatred, and the writings of Milton

bear witness to a rancor which is now unknown. The impression left by

his "Eikonoklastes"[131] is oppressive. Phrase by phrase, harshly,

bitterly, the king is refuted and accused to the last, without a

minute's respite of accusation, the accused being credited with not the

slightest good intention, the slightest excuse, the least show of

justice, the accuser never for an instant digressing to or resting upon

a general idea. It is a hand-to-hand fight, where every word takes

effect, prolonged, obstinate, without dash and without weakness, full of

a harsh and fixed hostility, where the only thought is how to wound most

severely and to kill surely. Against the bishops, who were alive and

powerful, his hatred flowed more violently still, and the fierceness of

his envenomed metaphors hardly suffices to express it. Milton points to

them "basking in the sunny warmth of wealth and promotion," like a brood

of foul reptiles. "The sour leaven of human traditions, mixed in one

putrified mass with the poisonous dregs of hypocrisie in the hearts of

Prelates,... is the serpent's egg that will hatch an Anti-christ

wheresoever, and ingender the same monster as big or little as the lump

is which breeds him."[132]

So much coarseness and dulness was an outer breastplate, the mark and

the protection of the superabundant force and life which coursed in

those athletic limbs and chests. Nowadays, the mind, being more refined,

has become feebler; convictions, being less stern, have become less

strong. Attention, freed from the heavy scholastic logic and scriptural

tyranny, has become more inert. Belief and the will, dissolved by

universal tolerance and by the thousand opposing shocks of multiplied

ideas, have engendered an exact and refined style, an instrument of

conversation and pleasure, and have expelled the poetic and rude style,

a weapon of war and enthusiasm. If we have effaced ferocity and dulness,

we have diminished force and greatness.

Force and greatness are manifested in Milton, displayed in his opinions

and his style, the sources of his belief and his talent. This proud

reason aspired to unfold itself without shackles; it demanded that

reason might unfold itself without shackles. It claimed for humanity

what is coveted for itself, and championed every liberty in his every

word. From the first he attacked the corpulent bishops, scholastic

upstarts, persecutors of free discussion, pensioned tyrants of Christian

conscience.[133] Above the clamor of the Protestant Revolution, his

voice was heard thundering against tradition and obedience. He sourly

railed at the pedantic theologians, devoted worshippers of old texts,

who mistook a mouldy martyrology for a solid argument, and answered a

demonstration with a quotation. He declared that most of the fathers

were turbulent and babbling intriguers, that they were not worth more

collectively than individually, that their councils were but a pack of

underhand intrigues and vain disputes; he rejected their authority and

their example, and set up logic as the only interpreter of

Scripture.[134] A Puritan as against bishops, an Independent as against

Presbyterians, he was always master of his thought and the inventor of

his own faith. No one better loved, practised, and praised the free and

bold use of reason. He exercised it even rashly and scandalously. He

revolted against custom, the illegitimate queen of human belief, the

born and relentless enemy of truth, raised his hand against marriage,

and demanded divorce in the case of incompatibility of temper. He

declared that "error supports custom, custom countenances error; and

these two between them,... with the numerous and vulgar train of their

followers,... envy and cry down the industry of free reasoning, under

the terms of humour and innovation."[135] He showed that truth "never

comes into the world, but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that

brought her forth; till Time, the mid-wife rather than the mother of

truth, have washed and salted the infant, declared her legitimate."[136]

He stood out in three or four writings against the flood of insults and

anathemas, and dared even more; he attacked the censorship before

Parliament, though its own work; he spoke as a man who is wounded and

oppressed, for whom a public prohibition is a personal outrage, who is

himself fettered by the fetters of the nation. He does not want the pen

of a paid "licenser" to insult by its approval the first page of his

book. He hates this ignorant and imperious hand, and claims liberty of

writing on the same grounds as he claims liberty of thought:

"What advantage is it to be a man, over it is to be a boy at school, if

we have only escaped the ferula, to come under the fescue of an

imprimatur? If serious and elaborate writings, as if they were no more

than the theme of a grammar-lad under his pedagogue, must not be uttered

without the cursory eyes of a temporizing and extemporizing licenser? He

who is not trusted with his own actions, his drift not being known to be

evil, and standing to the hazard of law and penalty, has no great

argument to think himself reputed in the commonwealth wherein he was

born for other than a fool or a foreigner. When a man writes to the

world, he summons up all his reason and deliberation to assist him; he

searches, meditates, is industrious, and likely consults and confers

with his judicious friends; after all which done, he takes himself to be

informed in what he writes, as well as any that wrote before him; if in

this, the most consummate act of his fidelity and ripeness, no years, no

industry, no former proof of his abilities, can bring him to that state

of maturity, as not to be still mistrusted and suspected, unless he

carry all his considerate diligence, all his midnight watchings, and

expense of Palladian oil, to the hasty view of an unleisured licenser,

perhaps much his younger, perhaps far his inferior in judgment, perhaps

one who never knew the labour of book writing; and if he be not

repulsed, or slighted, must appear in print like a puny with his

guardian, and his censor's hand on the back of his title to be his bail

and surety, that he is no idiot or seducer; it cannot be but a dishonour

and derogation to the author, to the book, to the privilege and dignity

of learning."[137]

Throw open, then, all the doors; let there be light; let every man

think, and bring his thoughts to the light. Dread not any diversities of

opinion, rejoice in this great work; why insult the laborers by the name

of schismatics and sectaries?

"Yet these are the men cried out against for schismatics and sectaries,

as if, while the temple of the Lord was building, some cutting, some

squaring the marble, others hewing the cedars, there should be a sort of

irrational men, who could not consider there must be many schisms and

many dissections made in the quarry and in the timber ere the house of

God can be built. And when every stone is laid artfully together, it

cannot be united into a continuity, it cannot but be contiguous in this

world: neither can every piece of the building be of one form; nay,

rather the perfection consists in this, that out of many moderate

varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not vastly

disproportional, arises the goodly and the graceful symmetry that

commends the whole pile and structure."[138]

Milton triumphs here through sympathy; he breaks forth into magnificent

images, he displays in his style the force which he perceives around him

and in himself. He lauds the revolution, and his praises seem like the

blast of a trumpet, to come from a brazen throat:

"Behold now this vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion-house of

liberty, encompassed and surrounded with his protection; the shop of war

has not there more anvils and hammers working, to fashion out the plates

and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleagured truth, than

there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing,

searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with

their homage and their feality, the approaching reformation.... What

could a man require more from a nation so pliant, and so prone to seek

after knowledge? What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil,

but wise and faithful labourers, to make a knowing people, a nation of

prophets, of sages, and of worthies?[139]... Methinks I see in my mind a

noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep,

and shaking her invincible locks: methinks I see her as an eagle mewing

her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday

beam; purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself

of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking

birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at

what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year

of sects and schisms."[140]

It is Milton who speaks, and it is Milton whom he unwittingly describes.

With a sincere writer, doctrines foretell the style. The sentiments and

needs which form and govern his beliefs, construct and color his

phrases. The same genius leaves once and again the same impress, in the

thought and in the form. The power of logic and enthusiasm which

explains the opinions of Milton, explains his genius. The sectary and

the writer are one man, and we shall find the faculties of the sectary

in the talent of the writer.

When an idea is planted in a logical mind, it grows and fructifies there

in a multitude of accessory and explanatory ideas which surround it,

entangled among themselves, and form a thicket and a forest. The

sentences in Milton are immense; page-long periods are necessary to

enclose the train of so many linked arguments, and so many metaphors

accumulated around the governing thought. In this great travail, heart

and imagination are shaken; Milton exults while he reasons, and the

words come as from a catapult, doubling the force of their flight by

their heavy weight. I dare not place before a modern reader the gigantic

periods which commence the treatise "Of Reformation in England." We no

longer possess the power of breath; we only understand little short

phrases; we cannot fix our attention on the same point for a page at a

time. We require manageable ideas; we have given up the big two-handed

sword of our fathers, and we only carry a light foil. I doubt, however,

if the piercing phraseology of Voltaire be more mortal than the cleaving

of this iron mace:

"If in less noble and almost mechanick arts he is not esteemed to

deserve the name of a compleat architect, an excellent painter, or the

like, that bears not a generous mind above the peasantly regard of wages

and hire; much more must we think him a most imperfect and incompleat

Divine, who is so far from being a contemner of filthy lucre; that his

whole divinity is moulded and bred up in the beggarly and brutish hopes

of a fat prebendary, deanery, or bishoprick."[141]

If Michael Angelo's prophets could speak, it would be in this style; and

twenty times while reading it, we may discern the sculptor.

The powerful logic which lengthens the periods sustains the images. If

Shakespeare and the nervous poets embrace a picture in the compass of a

fleeting expression, break upon their metaphors with new ones, and

exhibit successively in the same phrase the same idea in five or six

different forms, the abrupt motion of their winged imagination

authorizes or explains these varied colors and these mingling flashes.

More connected and more master of himself, Milton develops to the end

the threads which these poets break. All his images display themselves

in little poems, a sort of solid allegory, of which all the

interdependent parts concentrate their light on the single idea which

they are intended to embellish or demonstrate:

"In this manner the prelates,... coming from a mean and plebeian life on

a sudden to be lords of stately palaces, rich furniture, delicious fare,

and princely attendance, thought the plain and homespun verity of

Christ's gospel unfit any longer to hold their lordships' acquaintance,

unless the poor threadbare matron were put into better clothes: her

chaste and modest veil surrounded with celestial beams, they overlaid

with wanton tresses, and in a flaring tire bespeckled her with all the

gaudy allurements of a whore."[142]

Politicians reply that this gaudy church supports royalty.

"What greater debasement can there be to royal dignity, whose towering

and steadfast height rests upon the unmovable foundations of justice,

and heroic virtue, than to chain it in a dependence of subsisting, or

ruining, to the painted battlements and gaudy rottenness of prelatry,

which want but one puff of the king's to blow them down like a pasteboard

house built of court-cards?"[143]

Metaphors thus sustained receive a singular breadth, pomp, and majesty.

They are spread forth without clashing together, like the wide folds of

a scarlet cloak, bathed in light and fringed with gold.

Do not take these metaphors for an accident. Milton lavishes them, like

a priest who in his worship exhibits splendors and wins the eye, to gain

the heart. He has been nourished by the reading of Spenser, Drayton,

Shakespeare, Beaumont, all the most sparkling poets and the golden flow

of the preceding age, though impoverished all around him and slackened

within himself, has become enlarged like a lake through being dammed up

in his heart. Like Shakespeare, he imagines at every turn, and even out

of turn, and scandalizes the classical and French taste.

"... As if they could make God earthly and fleshly, because they could

not make themselves heavenly and spiritual; they began to draw down all

the divine intercourse betwixt God and the soul, yea, the very shape of

God himself, into an exterior and bodily form;.... they hallowed it,

they fumed up, they sprinkled it, they bedecked it, not in robes of pure

innocency, but of pure linen, with other deformed and fantastic dresses,

in palls and mitres, and gewgaws fetched from Aaron's old wardrobe, or

the flaming vestry: then was the priest set to con his motions and his

postures, his liturgies and his lurries, till the soul by this means, of

overbodying herself, given up justly to fleshly delights, bated her wing

apace downward; and finding the ease she had from her visible and

sensuous colleague the body, in performance of religious duties, her

pinions now broken, and flagging, shifted off from herself the labour of

high soaring any more, forgot her heavenly flight, and left the dull and

droiling carcase to plod on in the old road, and drudging trade of

outward conformity."[144]

If we did not discern here the traces of theological coarseness, we

might fancy we were reading an imitator of the "Phædo" and under the

fanatical anger recognize the images of Plato. There is one phrase which

for manly beauty and enthusiasm recalls the tone of the "Republic": "I

cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and

unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks

out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not

without dust and heat."[145] But Milton is only Platonic by his richness

and exaltation. For the rest, he is a man of the Renaissance, pedantic

and harsh; he insults the Pope, who, after the gift of Pepin le Bref,

"never ceased baiting and goring the successors of his best Lord

Constantine, what by his barking curses and excommunications";[146] he

is mythological in his defence of the press, showing that formerly "no

envious Juno sat cross-legged over the nativity of any man's

intellectual offspring."[147] It matters little: these learned,

familiar, grand images, whatever they be, are powerful and natural.

Superabundance, like crudity, here only manifests the vigor and lyric

dash which Milton's character had foretold.

Passion follows naturally; exaltation brings it with the images. Bold

expressions, exaggeration of style, cause us to hear the vibrating voice

of the suffering man, indignant and determined.

"For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of

life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are;

nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of

that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as

vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth: and being sown

up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other

hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good

book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he

who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God,

as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a

good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and

treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true, no age can

restore a life, whereof, perhaps, there is no great loss; and

revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for

the want of which whole nations fare the worse. We should be wary,

therefore, what persecution we raise against the living labours of

public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored

up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed,

sometimes a martyrdom; and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind

of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an

elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal and fifth essence, the

breath of reason itself; slays an immortality rather than a life."[148]

This energy is sublime; the man is equal to the cause, and never did a

loftier eloquence match a loftier truth. Terrible expressions overwhelm

the book-tyrants, the profaners of thought, the assassins of liberty.

"The council of Trent and the Spanish inquisition, engendering together,

brought forth or perfected those catalogues and expurging indexes, that

rake through the entrails of many an old good author, with a violation

worse than any that could be offered to his tomb."[149] Similar

expressions lash the carnal minds which believe without thinking, and

make their servility into a religion. There is a passage which, by its

bitter familiarity recalls Swift, and surpasses him in all loftiness of

imagination and genius:

"A man may be an heretic in the truth, and if he believes things only

because his pastor says so,... the very truth he holds becomes his

heresy.... A wealthy man, addicted to his pleasure and to his profits,

finds religion to be a traffic so entangled, and of so many piddling

accounts, that of all mysteries he cannot skill to keep a stock going

upon that trade.... What does he therefore, but resolves to give over

toiling, and to find himself out some factor, to whose care and credit

he may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs; some divine

of note and estimation that must be. To him he adheres, resigns the

whole warehouse of his religion, with all the locks and keys, into his

custody; and indeed makes the very person of that man his religion....

So that a man may say his religion is now no more within himself, but is

become a dividual movable, and goes and comes near him, according as

that good man frequents the house. He entertains him, gives him gifts,

feasts him, lodges him; his religion comes home at night, prays, is

liberally supped, and sumptuously laid to sleep; rises, is saluted, and

after the malmsey, or some well-spiced bruage,... his religion walks

abroad at eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the shop trading all

day without his religion."[150]

He condescended to mock for an instant, with what piercing irony we have

seen. But irony, piercing as it may be, seems to him weak.[151] Hear him

when he comes to himself, when he returns to open and serious invective,

when after the carnal believer he overwhelms the carnal prelate:

"The table of communion, now become a table of separation, stands like

an exalted platform upon the brow of the quire, fortified with bulwark

and barricado, to keep off the profane touch of the laics, whilst the

obscene and surfeited priest scruples not to paw and mammoc the

sacramental bread, as familiarly as his tavern biscuit."[152]

He triumphs in believing that all these profanations are to be avenged.

The horrible doctrine of Calvin has once more fixed men's gaze on the

dogma of reprobation and everlasting damnation. Hell in hand, Milton

menaces; he is drunk with justice and vengeance amid the abysses which

he opens, and the brands which he wields:

"They shall be thrown downe eternally into the _darkest_ and _deepest

Gulfe_ of Hell, where, under the _despightfull controule_, the trample

and spurne of all the other _Damned_, that in the anguish of their

_Torture_ shall have no other ease than to exercise a _Raving_ and

_Bestiall Tyranny_ over them as their Slaves and Negro's, they shall

remaine in that plight for ever, the _basest_, the _lowermost_, the

_most dejected_, most _underfoot_, and _downetrodden Vassals of

Perdition._"[153]

Fury here mounts to the sublime, and Michael Angelo's Christ is not more

inexorable and vengeful.

Let us fill the measure; let us add, as he does, the prospects of heaven

to the visions of darkness; the pamphlet becomes a hymn:

"When I recall to mind at last, after so many dark ages, wherein the

huge overshadowing train of error had almost swept all the stars out of

the firmament of the church; how the bright and blissful Reformation (by

divine power) struck through the black and settled night of ignorance

and anti-christian tyranny, methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must

needs rush into the bosom of him that reads or hears; and the sweet

odour of the returning gospel imbathe his soul with the fragrancy of

heaven."[154]

Overloaded with ornaments, infinitely prolonged, these periods are

triumphant choruses of angelic alleluias sung by deep voices to the

accompaniment of ten thousand harps of gold. In the midst of his

syllogisms, Milton prays, sustained by the accent of the prophets,

surrounded by memories of the Bible, ravished with the splendors of the

Apocalypse, but checked on the brink of hallucination by science and

logic, on the summit of the calm clear atmosphere, without rising to the

burning tracts where ecstasy dissolves reason, with a majesty of

eloquence and a solemn grandeur never surpassed, whose perfection proves

that he has entered his domain, and gives promise of the poet beyond the

prose-writer:

"Thou, therefore, that sittest in light and glory unapproachable, parent

of angels and men! next, thee I implore, omnipotent King, Redeemer of

that lost remnant whose nature thou didst assume, ineffable and

everlasting Love! and thou, the third subsistence of divine infinitude,

illumining Spirit, the joy and solace of created things! one

Tri-personal Godhead! look upon this thy poor and almost spent and

expiring church.... O let them not bring about their damned designs,...

to reinvolve us in that pitchy cloud of infernal darkness, where we

shall never more see the sun of thy truth again, never hope for the

cheerful dawn, never more hear the bird of morning sing."[155]

"O Thou the ever-begotten Light and perfect Image of the Father. ... Who

is there that cannot trace thee now in thy beamy walk through the midst

of thy sanctuary, amidst those golden candlesticks, which have long

suffered a dimness amongst us through the violence of those that had

seized them, and were more taken with the mention of their gold than of

their starry light?... Come therefore, O thou that hast the seven stars

in thy right hand, appoint thy chosen priests according to their orders

and courses of old, to minister before thee, and duly to press and pour

out the consecrated oil into thy holy and ever-burning lamps. Thou hast

sent out the spirit of prayer upon thy servants over all the land to

this effect, and stirred up their vows as the sound of many waters about

thy throne.... O perfect and accomplish thy glorious acts!... Come forth

out of thy royal chambers, O Prince of all kings of the earth! put on

the visible robes of thy imperial majesty, take up that unlimited

sceptre which thy Almighty Father hath bequeathed thee; for now the

voice of thy bride calls thee, and all creatures sigh to be

renewed."[156]

This song of supplication and joy is an outpouring of splendors; and if

we search all literature, we will hardly find a poet equal to this

writer of prose.

Is he truly a prose-writer? Entangled dialectics, a heavy and awkward

mind, fanatical and ferocious rusticity, an epic grandeur of sustained

and superabundant images, the blast and the recklessness of implacable

and all-powerful passion, the sublimity of religious and lyric

exaltation; we do not recognize in these features a man born to explain,

persuade, and prove. The scholasticism and coarseness of the time have

blunted or rusted his logic. Imagination and enthusiasm carried him away

and enchained him in metaphor. Thus dazzled or marred, he could not

produce a perfect work; he did but write useful tracts, called forth by

practical interests and actual hate, and fine isolated morsels, inspired

by collision with a grand idea, and by the sudden burst of genius. Yet,

in all these abandoned fragments, the man shows in his entirety. The

systematic and lyric spirit is manifested in the pamphlet as well as in

the poem; the faculty of embracing general effects, and of being shaken

by them, remains the same in Milton's two careers, and we will see in

the "Paradise" and "Cornus" what we have met with in the treatise "Of

Reformation," and in the "Animadversions on the Remonstrant."

Section VI.--Milton as a Poet

"Milton has acknowledged to me," writes Dryden, "that Spenser was his

original." In fact, by the purity and elevation of their morals, by the

fulness and connection of their style, by the noble chivalric

sentiments, and their fine classical arrangement, they are brothers. But

Milton had yet other masters--Beaumont, Fletcher, Burton, Drummond, Ben

Jonson, Shakespeare, the whole splendid English Renaissance, and behind

it the Italian poesy, Latin antiquity, the fine Greek literature, and

all the sources whence the English Renaissance sprang. He continued the

great current, but in a manner of his own. He took their mythology,

their allegories, sometimes their conceits,[157] and discovered anew

their rich coloring, their magnificent sentiment of living nature, their

inexhaustible admiration of forms and colors. But, at the same time, he

transformed their diction, and employed poetry in a new service. He

wrote, not by impulse, and at the mere contact with things, but like a

man of letters, a classic, in a scholarlike manner, with the assistance

of books, seeing objects as much through previous writings as in

themselves, adding to his images the images of others, borrowing and

recasting their inventions, as an artist who unites and multiplies the

bosses and driven gold, already entwined on a diadem by twenty workmen.

He made thus for himself a composite and brilliant style, less natural

than that of his precursors, less fit for effusions, less akin to the

lively first glow of sensation, but more solid, more regular, more

capable of concentrating in one large patch of light all their sparkle

and splendor. He brings together like Æschylus, words of "six cubits,"

plumed and decked in purple, and makes them pass like a royal train

before his idea to exalt and announce it. He introduces to us

"The breathing roses of the wood,

Fair silver-buskin'd nymphs;"[158]

And tells how

"The gray-hooded Even,

Like a sad votarist in palmer's weed.

Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain;"[159]

And speaks of

"All the sea-girt isles,

That, like to rich and various gems, inlay

The unadorned bosom of the deep;"[160]

And

"That undisturbed song of pure concent,

Aye sung before the sapphire-colour'd throne,

To Him that sits thereon,

With saintly shout, and solemn jubilee;

Where the bright Seraphim, in burning row,

Their loud-uplifted angel-trumpets blow."[161]

He gathered into full nosegays the flowers scattered through the other

poets:

"Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use

Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,

On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks;

Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes,

That on the green turf suck the honied showers,

And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.

Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,

The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,

The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet,

The glowing violet,

The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,

With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,

And every flower that sad embroidery wears;

Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,

And daffadillies fill their cups with tears,

To strew the laureat herse where Lycid lies."[162]

When still quite young, on his quitting Cambridge, he inclined to the

magnificent and grand; he wanted a great flowing verse, an ample and

sounding strophe, vast periods of fourteen and four-and-twenty lines. He

did not face objects on a level, as a mortal, but from on high, like

those archangels of Goethe,[163] who embrace at a glance the whole ocean

lashing its coasts and the earth rolling on, wrapped in the harmony of

the fraternal stars. It was not life that he felt, like the masters of

the Renaissance, but grandeur, like Æschylus, and the Hebrew

seers,[164] manly and lyric spirits like his own, who, nourished like

him in religious emotions and continuous enthusiasm, like him displayed

sacerdotal pomp and majesty. To express such a sentiment, images, and

poetry addressed only to the eyes, were not enough; sounds also were

requisite, and that more introspective poetry which, purged from

corporeal shows, could reach the soul. Milton was a musician; his hymns

rolled with the slowness of a measured song and the gravity of a

declamation; and he seems himself to be describing his art in these

incomparable verses, which are evolved like the solemn harmony of an

anthem:

"But else, in deep of night, when drowsiness

Hath lock'd up mortal sense, then listen I

To the celestial sirens' harmony,

That sit upon the nine infolded spheres,

And sing to those that hold the vital shears,

And turn the adamantine spindle round,

On which the fate of Gods and men is wound.

Such sweet compulsion doth in musick lie,

To lull the daughters of Necessity,

And keep unsteady Nature to her law,

And the low world in measured motion draw

After the heavenly tune, which none can hear

Of human mould, with gross unpurged ear."[165]

With his style, his subjects differed; he compacted and ennobled the

poet's domain as well as his language, and consecrated his thoughts as

well as his words. He who knows the true nature of poetry soon finds, as

Milton said a little later, what despicable creatures "libidinous and

ignorant poetasters" are, and to what religious, glorious, splendid use

poetry can be put in things divine and human. "These abilities,

wheresoever they be found, are the inspired gift of God, rarely

bestowed, but yet to some (though most abuse) in every nation; and are

of power, beside the office of a pulpit, to imbreed and cherish in a

great people the seeds of virtue and public civility, to allay the

perturbations of the mind, and set the affections in right tune; to

celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God's

almightiness, and what he works, and what he suffers to be wrought with

high providence in his church; to sing the victorious agonies of martyrs

and saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations, doing

valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ."[166]

In fact, from the first, at St. Paul's School and at Cambridge, he had

written paraphrases of the Psalms, then composed odes on the Nativity,

Circumcision, and the Passion. Presently appeared sad poems on the

"Death of a Fair Infant, An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester";

then grave and noble verses "On Time, At a solemn Musick"; a sonnet "On

his being arrived to the Age of Twenty-three, his late spring which no

bud or blossom shew'th." At last we have him in the country with his

father, and the hopes, dreams, first enchantments of youth, rise from

his heart like the morning breath of a summer's day. But what a distance

between these calm and bright contemplations and the warm youth, the

voluptuous "Adonis" of Shakespeare! He walked, used his eyes, listened;

there his joys ended; they are but the poetic joys of the soul:

"To hear the lark begin his flight,

And singing, startle the dull night,

From his watch-tower in the skies,

Till the dapple dawn doth rise;...

While the plowman, near at hand,

Whistles o'er the furrow'd land,

And the milk-maid singeth blithe,

And the mower whets his sithe,

And every shepherd tells his tale

Under the hawthorn in the dale."[167]

To see the village dances and gayety; to look upon the "high triumphs"

and the "busy hum of men" in the "tower'd cities" above all, to abandon

himself to melody, to the divine roll of sweet verse, and the charming

dreams which they spread before us in a golden light; this is all; and

presently, as if he had gone too far, to counterbalance this eulogy of

visible joys, he summons Melancholy:

"Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure,

Sober, stedfast, and demure,

All in a robe of darkest grain,

Flowing with majestick train,

And sable stole of Cypress lawn

Over thy decent shoulders drawn.

Come, but keep thy wonted state,

With even step, and musing gait;

And looks commercing with the skies,

Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes."[168]

With her he wanders amidst grave thoughts and grave sights, which recall

a man to his condition, and prepare him for his duties, now amongst the

lofty colonnades of primeval trees, whose "high-embowed roof" retains

the silence and the twilight under their shade; now in

"The studious cloysters pale,...

With antick pillars massy proof,

And storied windows richly dight,

Casting a dim religious light;"[169]

Now again in the retirement of the study, where the cricket chirps,

where the lamp of labor shines, where the mind, alone with the noble

minds of the past, may

"Unsphere

The spirit of Plato, to unfold

What worlds or what vast regions hold

The immortal mind, that hath forsook

Her mansion in this fleshly nook."[170]

He was filled with this lofty philosophy. Whatever the language he used,

English, Italian, or Latin, whatever the kind of verse, sonnets, hymns,

stanzas, tragedy or epic, he always returned to it. He praised

everywhere chaste love, piety, generosity, heroic force. It was not from

scruple, but it was innate in him; his chief need and faculty led him to

noble conceptions. He took a delight in admiring, as Shakespeare in

creating, as Swift in destroying, as Byron in combating, as Spenser in

dreaming. Even on ornamental poems, which were only employed to exhibit

costumes and introduce fairy-tales, in Masques, like those of Ben

Jonson, he impressed his own character. They were amusements for the

castle; he made out of them lectures on magnanimity and constancy: one

of them, "Cornus," well worked out, with a complete originality and

extraordinary elevation of style, is perhaps his masterpiece, and is

simply the eulogy of virtue.

Here at the beginning we are in the heavens. A spirit, descended in the

midst of wild woods, repeats this ode:

"Before the starry threshold of Jove's court

My mansion is, where those immortal shapes

Of bright aerial spirits live insphered

In regions mild of calm and serene air,

Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot,

Which men call earth; and, with low-thoughted care

Confined, and pester'd in this pinfold here,

Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being,

Unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives,

After this mortal change, to her true servants,

Amongst the enthron'd Gods on sainted seats."[171]

Such characters cannot speak: they sing. The drama is an antique opera,

composed like the "Prometheus," of solemn hymns. The spectator is

transported beyond the real world. He does not listen to men, but to

sentiments. He hears a concert, as in Shakespeare; the "Cornus"

continues the "Midsummer Night's Dream," as a choir of deep men's voices

continues the glowing and sad symphony of the instruments:

"Through the perplex'd paths of this drear wood,

The nodding horror of whose shady brows

Threats the forlorn and wandering passenger,"[172]

strays a noble lady, separated from her two brothers, troubled by the

"sound of riot and ill-managed merriment" which she hears from afar. The

son of Circe the enchantress, sensual Cornus enters with a charming rod

in one hand, his glass in the other, amid the clamor of men and women,

with torches in their hands, "headed like sundry sorts of wild beasts";

it is the hour when

"The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove,

Now to the moon in wavering morrice move;

And, on the tawny sands and shelves

Trip the pert faeries and the dapper elves."[173]

The lady is terrified, and sinks on her knees; and in the misty forms

which float above in the pale light, perceives the mysterious and

heavenly guardians who watch over her life and honor:

"O, welcome, pure-eyed Faith; white-handed Hope,

Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings;

And thou, unblemish'd form of Chastity,

I see ye visibly, and now believe

That He, the Supreme good, t' whom all things ill

Are but as slavish officers of vengeance,

Would send a glistering guardian, if need were,

To keep my life and honour unassail'd.

Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud

Turn forth her silver lining on the night?

I did not err; there does a sable cloud

Turn forth her silver lining on the night,

And casts a gleam over this tufted grove."[174]

She calls her brothers in "a soft and solemn-breathing sound," which

"rose like a stream of rich distill'd perfumes, and stole upon the

air,"[175] across the "violet-embroider'd vale," to the dissolute god

whom she enchants. He comes disguised as a "gentle shepherd," and says:

"Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould

Breathe such divine, enchanting ravishment?

Sure something holy lodges in that breast,

And with these raptures moves the vocal air

To testify his hidden residence.

How sweetly did they float upon the wings

Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night,

At every fall smoothing the raven down

Of darkness, till it smiled! I have oft heard

My mother Circe with the syrens three,

Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades,

Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs;

Who, as they sung, would take the prison'd soul,

And lap it in Elysium: Scylla wept,

And chid her barking waves into attention....

But such a sacred and home-felt delight,

Such sober certainty of waking bliss,

I never heard till now."[176]

They were heavenly songs which Cornus heard; Milton describes, and at

the same time imitates them; he makes us understand the saying of his

master Plato, that virtuous melodies teach virtue.

Circe's son has by deceit carried off the noble lady, and seats her,

with "nerves all chained up," in a sumptuous palace before a table

spread with all dainties. She accuses him, resists, insults him, and the

style assumes an air of heroical indignation, to scorn the offer of the

tempter.

"When lust,

By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,

But most by lewd and lavish act of sin,

Lets in defilement to the inward parts;

The soul grows clotted by contagion,

Imbodies and imbrutes, till she quite lose

The divine property of her first being.

Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp,

Oft seen in charnel vaults and sepulchres

Lingering, and sitting by a new-made grave,

As loth to leave the body that it loved."[177]

"A cold shuddering dew dips all o'er" Cornus; he presents a cup of wine;

at the same instant the brothers, led by the attendant Spirit, rush upon

him with swords drawn. He flees, carrying off his magic wand. To free

the exchanted lady, they summon Sabrina, the benevolent naiad, who sits

"Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,

In twisted braids of lilies knitting

The loose train of thy (her) amber-dropping hair."[178]

The "goddess of the silver lake" rises lightly from her "coral-paven

bed," and her chariot "of turkis blue and emerald-green" sets her down

"By the rushy-fringed bank,

Where grows the willow, and the osier dank."[179]

Sprinkled by this cool and chaste hand, the lady leaves the "venom'd

seat" which held her spell-bound; the brothers, with their sister, reign

peacefully in their father's palace; and the Spirit, who has conducted

all, pronounces this ode, in which poetry leads up to philosophy; the

voluptuous light of an Oriental legend beams on the Elysium of the good,

and all the splendors of nature assemble to render virtue more

seductive.

"To the ocean now I fly,

And those happy climes that lie

Where day never shuts his eye

Up in the broad fields of the sky:

There I suck the liquid air

All amidst the gardens fair

Of Hesperus, and his daughters three

That sing about the golden tree:

Along the crisped shades and bowers

Revels the spruce and jocund spring;

The Graces, and the rosy-bosom'd Hours,

Thither all their bounties bring;

There eternal Summer dwells,

And west winds, with musky wing,

About the cedar'n alleys fling

Nard and cassia's balmy smells.

Iris there with humid bow

Waters the odorous banks, that blow

Flowers of more mingled hew

Than her purfled scarf can shew;

And drenches with Elysian dew

(List, mortals, if your ears be true)

Beds of hyacinth and roses,

Where young Adonis oft reposes,

Waxing well of his deep wound

In slumber soft; and on the ground

Sadly sits the Assyrian queen:

But far above in spangled sheen

Celestial Cupid, her famed son, advanced

Holds his dear Psyche sweet entranced

After her wandering labours long,

Till free consent the gods among

Make her his eternal bride.

And from her fair unspotted side

Two blissful twins are to be born,

Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn.

But now my task is smoothly done,

I can fly, or I can run

Quickly to the green earth's end,

Where the bow'd welkin slow doth bend:

And from thence can soar as soon

To the corners of the moon.

Mortals, that would follow me,

Love Virtue, she alone is free:

She can teach ye how to climb

Higher than the sphery chime;

Or, if Virtue feeble were,

Heaven itself would stoop to her."[180]

Ought I to have pointed Out the awkwardnesses, strangenesses,

exaggerated expressions, the inheritance of the Renaissance, a

philosophical quarrel, the work of a reasoner and a Platonist? I did not

perceive these faults. All was effaced before the spectacle of the

bright Renaissance, transformed by austere philosophy, and of sublimity

worshipped upon an altar of flowers.

That, I think, was his last profane poem. Already, in the one which

followed, "Lycidas," celebrating in the style of Vergil the death of a

beloved friend,[181] he suffers Puritan wrath and pre-possessions to

shine through, inveighs against the bad teaching and tyranny of the

bishops, and speaks of "that two-handed engine at the door, ready to

smite (but) once, and smite no more." On his return from Italy,

controversy and action carried him away; prose begins, poetry is

arrested. From time to time a patriotic or religious sonnet breaks the

long silence; now to praise the chief Puritans, Cromwell, Vane, Fairfax;

now to celebrate the death of a pious lady, or the life of a "virtuous

young lady"; once to pray God "to avenge his slaughter'd saints," the

unhappy Protestants of Piedmont, "whose bones lie scatter'd on the

Alpine mountains cold"; again, on his second wife, dead a year after

their marriage, his well-beloved "saint"--"brought to me like Alcestis,

from the grave,... came, vested all in white, pure as her mind"; loyal

friendships, sorrows bowed to or subdued, aspirations generous or

stoical, which reverses did but purify. Old age came; cut off from

power, action, even hope, he returned to the grand dreams of his youth.

As of old, he went out of this lower world in search of the sublime; for

the actual is petty, and the familiar seems dull. He selects his new

characters on the verge of sacred antiquity, as he selected his old ones

on the verge of fabulous antiquity, because distance adds to their

stature; and habit, ceasing to measure, ceases also to depreciate them.

Just now we had creatures of fancy: Joy, daughter of Zephyr and Aurora;

Melancholy, daughter of Vesta and Saturn; Cornus, son of Circe,

ivy-crowned, god of echoing woods and turbulent excess. Now we have

Samson, the despiser of giants, the elect of Israel's God, the destroyer

of idolaters, Satan and his peers, Christ and his angels; they come and

rise before our eyes like superhuman statues; and their far removal,

rendering vain our curious hands, preserves our admiration and their

majesty. We rise further and higher, to the origin of things, amongst

eternal beings, to the commencement of thought and life, to the battles

of God, in this unknown world where sentiments and existences, raised

above the ken of man, elude his judgment and criticism to command his

veneration and awe; the sustained song of solemn verse unfolds the

actions of these shadowy figures; and then we experience the same

emotion as in a cathedral, while the music of the organ rolls along

among the arches, and amidst the brilliant light of the taper clouds of

incense hide from our view the colossal columns.

But if the heart remains unchanged, the genius has become transformed.

Manliness has supplanted youth. The richness has decreased, the severity

has increased. Seventeen years of fighting and misfortune have steeped

his soul in religious ideas. Mythology has yielded to theology; the

habit of discussion has ended by subduing the lyric flight; accumulated

learning by choking the original genius. The poet no more sings sublime

verse, he relates or harangues, in grave verse. He no longer invents a

personal style; he imitates antique tragedy or epic. In "Samson

Agonistes" he hits upon a cold and lofty tragedy, in "Paradise Regained"

on a cold and noble epic; he composes an imperfect and sublime poem in

"Paradise Lost."

Would to Heaven he could have written it as he tried, in the shape of a

drama, or better, as the "Prometheus" of Æschylus, as a lyric opera! A

peculiar kind of subject demands a peculiar kind of style; if you

resist, you destroy your work, too happy if, in the deformed medley,

chance produces and preserves a few beautiful fragments. To bring the

supernatural upon the scene, you must not continue in your every-day

mood; if you do, you look as if you did not believe in it. Vision

reveals it, and the style of vision must express it. When Spenser

writes, he dreams. We listen to the happy concerts of his aërial music,

and the varying train of his fanciful apparitions unfolds like a vapor

before our accommodating and dazzled gaze. When Dante writes, he is

rapt; and his cries of anguish, his transports, the incoherent

succession of his infernal or mystical phantoms, carry us with him into

the invisible world which he describes. Ecstasy alone renders visible

and credible the objects of ecstasy. If you tell us of the exploits of

the Deity as you tell us of Cromwell's, in a grave and lofty tone, we do

not see God; and as He constitutes the whole of your poem, we do not see

anything. We conclude that you have accepted a tradition, that you adorn

it with the fictions of your mind, that you are a preacher, not a

prophet, a decorator, not a poet. We find that you sing of God as the

vulgar pray to him, after a formula learnt, not from spontaneous

emotion. Change your style, or, rather if you can, change your emotion.

Try and discover in yourself the ancient fervor of psalmists and

apostles, to recreate the divine legend, to experience the sublime

agitations by which the inspired and disturbed mind perceives God; then

the grand lyric verse will roll on, laden with splendors. Thus roused,

we shall not have to examine whether it be Adam or Messiah who speaks;

we shall not have to demand that they shall be real, and constructed by

the hand of a psychologist; we shall not trouble ourselves with their

puerile or unlooked-for actions; we shall be carried away, we shall

share in your creative madness; we shall be drawn onward by the flow of

bold images, or raised by the combination of gigantic metaphors; we

shall be moved like Æschylus, when his thunder-stricken Prometheus

hears the universal concert of rivers, seas, forests, and created

beings, lament with him,[182] as David before Jehovah, for whom a

thousand years are but as yesterday, who "carriest them away as with a

flood; in the morning they are like grass which groweth up."[183]

But the age of metaphysical inspiration, long gone by, had not yet

reappeared. Far in the past Dante was fading away; far in the future

Goethe lay unrevealed. People saw not yet the pantheistic Faust, and

that incomprehensible nature which absorbs all varying existence in her

deep bosom; they saw no longer the mystic paradise and immortal Love,

whose ideal light envelops souls redeemed. Protestantism had neither

altered nor renewed the divine nature; the guardian of an accepted creed

and ancient tradition, it had only transformed ecclesiastical discipline

and the doctrine of grace. It had only called the Christian to personal

salvation and freedom from priestly rule. It had only remodelled man, it

had not recreated the Deity. It could not produce a divine epic, but a

human epic. It could not sing the battles and works of God, but the

temptations and salvation of the soul. At the time of Christ came the

poems of cosmogony; at the time of Milton, the confessions of

psychology. At the time of Christ each imagination produced a hierarchy

of supernatural beings, and a history of the world; at the time of

Milton, every heart recorded the series of its upliftings, and the

history of grace. Learning and reflection led Milton to a metaphysical

poem which was not the natural offspring of the age, whilst inspiration

and ignorance revealed to Bunyan the psychological narrative which

suited the age, and the great man's genius was feebler than the tinker's

simplicity.

And why? Because Milton's poem, whilst it suppresses lyrical illusion,

admits critical inquiry. Free from enthusiasm we judge his characters;

we demand that they shall be living, real, complete, harmonious, like

those of a novel or a drama. No longer hearing odes, we would see

objects and souls: we ask that Adam and Eve should act in conformity

with their primitive nature; that God, Satan, and Messiah should act and

feel in conformity with their superhuman nature. Shakespeare would

scarcely have been equal to the task; Milton, the logician and reasoner,

failed in it. He gives us correct solemn discourse, and gives us nothing

more; his characters are speeches, and in their sentiments we find only

heaps of puerilities and contradictions.

Adam and Eve, the first pair! I approach, and it seems as though!

discovered the Adam and Eve of Raphael Sanzio, imitated by Milton, so

his biographers tell us, glorious, strong, voluptuous children, naked in

the light of heaven, motionless and absorbed before grand landscapes,

with bright vacant eyes, with no more thought than the bull or the horse

on the grass beside them. I listen, and I hear an English household, two

reasoners of the period--Colonel Hutchinson and his wife. Good

Heavens! dress them at once. People with so much culture should have

invented before all a pair of trousers and modesty. What dialogues!

Dissertations capped by politeness, mutual sermons concluded by bows.

What bows! Philosophical compliments and moral smiles. I yielded, says

Eve,

"And from that time see

How beauty is excell'd by manly grace

And wisdom, which alone is truly fair."[184]

Dear learned poet, you would have been better pleased if one of your

three wives, as an apt pupil, had uttered to you by way of conclusion

the above solid theoretical maxim. They did utter it to you; this is a

scene from your own household:

"So spake our general mother; and, with eyes

Of conjugal attraction unreproved

And meek surrender, half-embracing lean'd

On our first father; half her swelling breast

Naked met his, under the flowing gold

Of her loose tresses hid; he, in delight

Both of her beauty and submissive charms,

Smiled with superiour love,... and press'd her matron lip

With kisses pure."[185]

This Adam entered Paradise _via_ England. In that country he learned

respectability, and studied moral speechifying. Let us hear this man

before he has tasted of the tree of knowledge. A bachelor of arts, in

his inaugural address, could not utter more fitly and nobly a greater

number of pithless sentences:

"Fair consort, the hour

Of night, and all things now retired to rest,

Mind us like repose; since God hath set

Labour and rest, as day and night, to men

Successive; and the timely dew of sleep,

Now falling with soft slumbrous weight, inclines

Our eyelids; other creatures all day long

Rove idle, unemploy'd, and less need rest:

Man hath his daily work of body or mind

Appointed, which declares his dignity,

And the regard of Heaven on all his ways;

While other animals unactive range,

And of their doings God takes no account."[186]

A very useful and excellent Puritanical exhortation! This is English

virtue and morality; and at evening, in every family, it can be read to

the children like the Bible. Adam is your true paterfamilias, with a

vote, an M.P., an old Oxford man, consulted at need by his wife, dealing

out to her with prudent measure the scientific explanations which she

requires. This night, for instance, the poor lady had a bad dream, and

Adam, in his trencher-cap, administers this learned psychological

draught:[187]

"Know, that in the soul

Are many lesser faculties that serve

Reason as chief; among these Fancy next

Her office holds; of all external things,

Which the five watchful senses represent,

She forms imaginations, aery shapes

Which Reason, joining or disjoining, frames

All what we affirm or what deny, and call

Our knowledge on opinion....

Oft in her absence mimic fancy wakes

To imitate her; but, misjoining shapes,

Wild work produces oft, and most in dreams;

Ill matching words and deeds long past or late."[188]

Here was something to send Eve off to sleep again. Her husband noting

the effect, adds like an accredited casuist:

"Yet be not sad:

Evil into the mind of God or man

May come and go, so unapproved; and leave

No spot or blame behind."[189]

We recognize the Protestant husband, his wife's confessor. Next day

comes an angel on a visit. Adam tells Eve:

"Go with speed,

And, what thy stores contain, bring forth, and pour

Abundance, fit to honour and receive

Our heavenly stranger."[190]

She, like a good housewife, talks about the _menu_, and rather proud of

her kitchen garden, says:

"He

Beholding shall confess, that here on earth

God hath dispensed his bounties as in heaven."[191]

Mark this becoming zeal of a hospitable lady. She goes "with dispatchful

looks, in haste":

"What choice to choose for delicacy best;

What order, so contrived as not to mix

Tastes, not well join'd, inelegant; but bring

Taste after taste upheld with kindliest change."[192]

She makes sweet wine, perry, creams; scatters flowers and leaves under

the table. What an excellent housewife! What a great many votes she will

gain among the country squires, when Adam stands for Parliament. Adam

belongs to the Opposition, is a Whig, a Puritan.

He "walks forth; without more train

Accompanied than with his own complete

Perfections: in himself was all his state,

More solemn than the tedious pomp that waits

On princes, when their rich retinue long

Of horses led, and grooms besmeared with gold,

Dazzles the crowd."[193]

The epic is changed into a political poem, and we have just heard an

epigram against power. The preliminary ceremonies are somewhat long;

fortunately, the dishes being uncooked, "no fear lest dinner cool." The

angel, though ethereal, eats like a Lincolnshire farmer:

"Nor seemingly

The angel, nor in mist, the common gloss

Of theologians; but with keen dispatch

Of real hunger, and concoctive heat

To transubstantiate: what redounds, transpires

Through spirits with ease."[194]

At table. Eve listens to the angel's stories, then discreetly rises at

dessert, when they are getting into politics. English ladies may learn

by her example to perceive from their lord's faces when they are

"entering on studious thoughts abstruse." The sex does not mount so

high. A wise lady prefers her husband's talk to that of strangers. "Her

husband the relater she prefered." Now Adam hears a little treatise on

astronomy. He concludes, like a practical Englishman:

"But to know

That which before us lies in daily life,

Is the prime wisdom: what is more, is fume,

Or emptiness, or fond impertinence;

And renders us, in things that most concern,

Unpracticed, unprepared, and still to seek."[195]

The angel gone, Eve, dissatisfied with her garden, wishes to have it

improved, and proposes to her husband to work in it, she on one side, he

on the other. He says, with an approving smile:

"Nothing lovelier can be found

In woman, than to study household good,

And good works in her husband to promote."[196]

But he fears for her, and would keep her at his side. She rebels with a

little prick of proud vanity, like a young lady who mayn't go out by

herself. She has her way, goes alone and eats the apple. Here

interminable speeches come down on the reader, as numerous and cold as

winter showers. The speeches of Parliament after Pride's Purge were

hardly heavier. The serpent seduces Eve by a collection of arguments

worthy of the punctilious Chillingworth, and then the syllogistic mist

enters her poor brain:

"His forbidding

Commends thee more, while it infers the good

By thee communicated, and our want:

For good unknown sure is not had; or, had

And yet unknown, is as not had at all....

Such prohibitions bind not."[197]

Eve is from Oxford too, has also learned law in the inns about the

Temple, and wears, like her husband, the doctor's trencher-cap.

The flow of dissertations never ceases, from Paradise it gets into

heaven: neither heaven nor earth, nor hell itself, would swamp it.

Of all characters which man could bring upon the scene, God is the

finest. The cosmogonies of peoples are sublime poems, and the artist's

genius does not attain perfection until it is sustained by such

conceptions. The Hindoo sacred poems, the Biblical prophecies, the Edda,

the Olympus of Hesiod and Homer, the visions of Dante, are glowing

flowers from which a whole civilization blooms, and every emotion

vanishes before the terrible feeling through which they have leaped from

the bottom of our heart. Nothing then can be more depressing than the

degradation of these noble ideas, settling into the regularity of

formulas, and under the discipline of a popular worship. What is smaller

than a god sunk to the level of a king and a man, what more repulsive

than the Hebrew Jehovah, defined by theological pedantry, governed in

his actions by the last manual of doctrine, petrified by literal

interpretation?

Milton's Jehovah is a grave king, who maintains a suitable state,

something like Charles I. When we meet him for the first time, in Book

III., he is holding council, and setting forth a matter of business.

From the style we see his grand furred cloak, his pointed Vandyke beard,

his velvet-covered throne and golden dais. The business concerns a law

which does not act well, and respecting which he desires to justify his

rule. Adam is about to eat the apple: why have exposed Adam to the

temptation? The royal orator discusses the question, and shows the

reason:

"I made him just and right,

Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.

Such I created all the ethereal powers

And spirits, both them who stood and them who fail'd....

Not free, what proof could they have given sincere

Of true allegiance, constant faith, or love?

Where only, what they needs must do, appear'd,

Not what they would: what praise could they receive?

What pleasure I from such obedience paid?

When will and reason (reason also is choice),

Useless and vain, of freedom both despoil'd,

Made passive both, had served necessity,

Not me. They therefore, as to right belong'd,

So were created, nor can justly accuse

Their Maker, or their making, or their fate;

As if predestination over-ruled

Their will, disposed by absolute decree

Or high foreknowledge: they themselves decreed

Their own revolt, not I: if I foreknew,

Foreknowledge had ho influence on their fault,

Which had no less proved certain unforeknown.

So without least impulse or shadow of fate,

Or aught by me immutably foreseen,

They trespass, authors to themselves in all,

Both what they judge and what they choose."[198]

The modern reader is not so patient as the Thrones, Seraphim, and

Dominations; this is why I stop half-way in the royal speech. We

perceive that Milton's Jehovah is connected with the theologian James I,

versed in the arguments of Arminians and Gomarists, very clever at the

_distinguo_, and, before all, incomparably tedious. He must pay his

councillors of state very well if he wishes them to listen to such

tirades. His son answers him respectfully in the same style. Goethe's

God, half abstraction, half legend, source of calm oracles, a vision

just beheld after a pyramid of ecstatic strophes,[199] greatly excels

this Miltonic God, a business man, a schoolmaster, an ostentatious man!

I honor him too much in giving him these titles. He deserves a worse

name, when he sends Raphael to warn Adam that Satan intends him some

mischief:

"This let him know,

Lest, wilfully transgressing, he pretend

Surprisal, unadmonish'd, unforewarn'd."[200]

This Miltonic Deity is only a schoolmaster, who, foreseeing the fault of

his pupil, tells him beforehand the grammar rule, so as to have the

pleasure of scolding him without discussion. Moreover, like a good

politician, he had a second motive, just as with his angels, "For state,

as Sovran King; and to inure our prompt obedience." The word is out; we

see what Milton's heaven is: a Whitehall filled with bedizened footmen.

The angels are the choristers, whose business is to sing cantatas about

the king and before the king, keeping their places as long as they obey,

alternating all night long to sing "melodious hymns about the sovran

throne." What a life for this poor king! and what a cruel condition, to

hear eternally his own praises![201] To amuse himself, Milton's Deity

decides to crown his son king--partner-king, if you prefer it. Read the

passage, and say if it be not a ceremony of his time that the poet

describes:

"Ten thousand thousand ensigns high advanced,

Standards and gonfalons 'twixt van and rear

Stream in the air, and for distinction serve

Of hierarchies, of orders, and degrees:

Or in their glittering tissues bear imblazed

Holy memorials, acts of zeal and love

Recorded eminent;"[202]

doubtless the capture of a Dutch vessel, the defeat of the Spaniards in

the Downs. The king brings forward his son, "anoints" him, declares him

"his great vicegerent":

"To him shall bow

All knees in heaven.... Him who disobeys,

Me disobeys;"[203]

and such were, in fact, expelled from heaven the same day. "All seem'd

well pleased; all seem'd, but were not all." Yet

"That day, as other solemn days, they spent

In song and dance about the sacred hill....

Forthwith from dance to sweet repast they turn

Desirous."[204]

Milton describes the tables, the dishes, the wine, the vessels. It is a

popular festival; I miss the fireworks, the bell-ringing, as in London,

and I can fancy that all would drink to the health of the new king. Then

Satan revolts; he takes his troops to the other end of the country, like

Lambert or Monk, toward "the quarters of the north," Scotland perhaps,

passing through well-governed districts, "empires," with their sheriffs

and lord lieutenants. Heaven is partitioned off like a good map. Satan

holds forth before his officers against royalty, opposes in a

word-combat the god royalist Abdiel, who refutes his "blasphemous,

false, and proud" arguments, and quits him to rejoin his prince at

Oxford. Well armed, the rebel marches with his pikemen and artillery to

attack the fortress.[205] The two parties slash each other with the

sword, mow each other down with cannon, knock each other down with

political arguments. These sorry angels have their mind as well

disciplined as their limbs; they have passed their youth in a class of

logic and in a drill school. Satan holds forth like a preacher:

"What heaven's Lord had powerfulest to send

Against us from about his throne, and judged,

Sufficient to subdue us to his will,

But proves not so: then fallible, it seems.

Of future we may deem him, though till now

Omniscient thought."[206]

He also talks like a drill sergeant. "Vanguard, to right and left the

front unfold." He makes quips as clumsy as those of Harrison, the former

butcher turned officer. What a heaven! It is enough to disgust a man

with Paradise; anyone would rather enter Charles I's troop of lackeys,

or Cromwell's Ironsides. We have orders of the day, a hierarchy, exact

submission, extra-duties, disputes, regulated ceremonials, prostrations,

etiquette, furbished arms, arsenals, depots of chariots and ammunition.

Was it worth while leaving earth to find in heaven carriage-works,

buildings, artillery, a manual of tactics, the art of salutations, and

the Almanach de Gotha? Are these the things which "eye hath not seen,

nor ear heard, nor hath entered into the heart to conceive"? What a gap

between this monarchical frippery[207] and the visions of Dante, the

souls floating like stars amid the harmonies, the mingled splendors, the

mystic roses radiating and vanishing in the azure, the impalpable world

in which all the laws of earthly life are dissolved, the unfathomable

abyss traversed by fleeting visions, like golden bees gliding in the

rays of the deep central sun! Is it not a sign of extinguished

imagination, of the inroad of prose, of the birth of practical genius,

replacing metaphysics by morality? What a fall! To measure it, read a

true Christian poem, the Apocalypse. I copy half a dozen verses; think

what it has become in the hands of the imitator:

"And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being

turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks;

"And in the midst of the seven candlesticks, one like unto the Son

of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the

paps with a golden girdle.

"His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and

his eyes were as a flame of fire;

"And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and

his voice as the sound of many waters.

"And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth

went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun

shineth in his strength.

"And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead."[208]

When Milton was arranging his celestial show, he did not fall as dead.

But if the innate and inveterate habits of logical argument, joined with

the literal theology of the time, prevented him from attaining to

lyrical illusion or from creating living souls, the splendor of his

grand imagination, combined with the passions of Puritanism, furnished

him with a heroic character, several sublime hymns; and scenery which no

one has surpassed. The finest thing in connection with this Paradise is

hell; and in this history of God, the chief part is taken by the devil.

The ridiculous devil of the Middle Ages, a horned enchanter, a dirty

jester, a petty and mischievous ape, band-leader to a rabble of old

women, has become a giant and a hero. Like a conquered and banished

Cromwell, he remains admired and obeyed by those whom he has drawn into

the abyss. If he continues master, it is because he deserves it; firmer,

more enterprising, more scheming than the rest, it is always from him

that deep counsels, unlooked-for resources, courageous deeds, proceed.

It was he who invented "deep-throated engines... disgorging,... chained

thunderbolts, and hail of iron globes," and won the second day's

victory; he who in hell roused his dejected troops, and planned the ruin

of man; he who, passing the guarded gates and the boundless chaos, amid

so many dangers, and across so many obstacles, made man revolt against

God, and gained for hell the whole posterity of the new-born. Though

defeated, he prevails, since he has won from the monarch on high the

third part of his angels, and almost all the sons of his Adam. Though

wounded, he triumphs, for the thunder which smote his head left his

heart invincible. Though feebler in force, he remains superior in

nobility, since he prefers suffering independence to happy servility,

and welcomes his defeat and his torments as a glory, a liberty, and a

joy. These are the proud and sombre political passions of the constant

though oppressed Puritans; Milton had felt them in the vicissitudes of

war, and the emigrants who had taken refuge amongst the wild beasts and

savages of America, found them strong and energetic in the depths of

their hearts.

"Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,

Said then the lost Archangel, this the seat

That we must change for heaven? this mournful gloom

For that celestial light? Be it so, since he,

Who now is Sovran, can dispose and bid

What shall be right: farthest from him is best,

Whom reason has equall'd, force hath made supreme

Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,

Where joy forever dwells! Hail, horrors; hail,

Infernal world! and thou, profoundest hell,

Receive thy new possessor; one who brings

A mind not to be changed by place or time.

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

What matter where, if I be still the same,

And what I should be; all but less than he

Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least

We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built

Here for his envy; will not drive us hence:

Here we may reign secure; and in my choice

To reign is worth ambition, though in hell:

Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven."[209]

This sombre heroism, this harsh obstinacy, this biting irony, these

proud stiff arms which clasp grief as a mistress, this concentration of

invincible courage which, cast on its own resources, finds everything in

itself, this power of passion and sway over passion,

"The unconquerable will,

And study of revenge, immortal hate,

And courage never to submit or yield,

And what is else not to be overcome,"[210]

are features proper to the English character and to English literature,

and you will find them later on in Byron's Lara and Conrad.

Around the fallen angel, as within him, all is great. Dante's hell is

but a hall of tortures, whose cells, one below another, descend to the

deepest wells. Milton's hell is vast and vague.

"A dungeon horrible on all sides round

As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames

No light, but rather darkness visible

Served only to discover sights of woe.

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades...[211]

"Beyond this flood a frozen continent

Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms

Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land

Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems

Of ancient pile."[212]

The angels gather, innumerable legions:

"As when heaven's fire

Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines,

With singed top their stately growth, though bare,

Stands on the blasted heath."[213]

Milton needs the grand and infinite; he lavishes them. His eyes are only

content in limitless space, and he produces colossal figures to fill it.

Such is Satan wallowing on the surges of the livid sea:

"In bulk as huge... as... that sea-beast

Leviathan, which God of all his works

Created hugest that swim the ocean stream:

Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway foam,

The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff,

Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,

With fixed anchor in his scaly rind

Moors by his side under the lee, while night

Invests the sea, and wished morn delays."[214]

Spenser has discovered images just as fine, but he has not the tragic

gravity which the idea of hell impresses on a Protestant. No poetic

creation equals in horror and grandeur the spectacle that greeted Satan

on leaving his dungeon:

"At last appear

Hell bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof,

And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass;

Three iron, three of adamantine rock,

Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire,

Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat

On either side a formidable shape;

The one seem'd woman to the waist, and fair,

But ended foul in many a scaly fold

Voluminous and vast, a serpent arm'd

With mortal sting: about her middle round

A cry of hell-hounds never ceasing bark'd

With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung

A hideous peal: yet, when they list, would creep,

If aught disturb'd their noise, into her womb,

And kennel there; yet there still bark'd and howl'd

Within unseen.... The other shape,

If shape it might be call'd, that shape had none

Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,

Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,

For each seem'd either: black it stood as night,

Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,

And shook a dreadful dart; what seem'd his head

The likeness of a kingly crown had on.

Satan was now at hand, and from his seat

The monster moving onward came as fast,

With horrid strides; hell trembled as he strode.

The undaunted fiend what this might be admired,

Admired, not fear'd."[215]

The heroic glow of the old soldier of the Civil Wars animates the

infernal battle; and if anyone were to ask why Milton creates things

greater than other men, I should answer, because he has a greater heart.

Hence the sublimity of his scenery. If I did not fear the paradox, I

should say that this scenery was a school of virtue. Spenser is a smooth

glass, which fills us with calm images. Shakespeare is a burning mirror,

which overpowers us, repeatedly, with multiplied and dazzling visions.

The one distracts, the other disturbs us. Milton raises our mind. The

force of the objects which he describes passes into us; we become great

by sympathy with their greatness. Such is the effect of his description

of the Creation. The calm and creative command of the Messiah leaves its

trace in the heart which listens to it, and we feel more vigor and moral

health at the sight of this great work of wisdom and will:

"On heavenly ground they stood; and from the shore

They view'd the vast immeasurable abyss

Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild,

Up from the bottom turn'd by furious winds

And surging waves, as mountains, to assault

Heaven's highth, and with the centre mix the pole.

'Silence, ye troubled waves, and thou deep, peace,'

Said then the omnific Word: 'Your discord end!'...

Let there be light, said God; and forthwith light

Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure,

Sprung from the deep; and from her native east

To journey through the aery gloom began,

Sphered in a radiant cloud....

The earth was form'd; but in the womb as yet

Of waters, embryon immature involved,

Appear'd not: over all the face of earth

Main ocean flow'd, not idle, but, with warm

Prolific humour softening all her globe,

Fermented the great mother to conceive,

Satiate with genial moisture, when God said,

'Be gather'd now, ye waters under heaven,

Into one place, and let dry land appear.'

Immediately the mountains huge appear

Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave

Into the clouds, their tops ascend the sky:

So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low

Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep,

Capacious bed of waters: thither they

Hasted with glad precipitance, uproll'd,

As drops on dust conglobing from the dry."[216]

This is primitive scenery; immense bare seas and mountains, as Raphael

Sanzio outlines them in the background of his biblical paintings. Milton

embraces the general effects, and handles the whole as easily as his

Jehovah.

Let us quit superhuman and fanciful spectacles. A simple sunset equals

them. Milton peoples it with solemn allegories and regal figures, and

the sublime is born in the poet, as just before it was born from the

subject:

"The sun, now fallen...

Arraying with reflected purple and gold

The clouds that on his western throne attend:

Now came still evening on, and twilight gray

Had in her sober livery all things clad;

Silence accompanied, for beast and bird,

They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,

Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;

She all night long her amorous descant sung;

Silence was pleased: now glowed the firmament

With living sapphires: Hesperus, that led

The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon,

Rising in clouded majesty, at length,

Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light,

And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw."[217]

The changes of the light become here a religious procession of vague

beings who fill the soul with veneration. So sanctified, the poet prays.

Standing by the "inmost bower" of Adam and Eve, he says:

"Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source

Of human offspring, sole propriety

In Paradise of all things common else!

By thee adulterous lust was driven from men

Among the bestial herds to range by thee,

Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure,

Relations dear, and all the charities

Of father, son, and brother, first were known."[218]

He justifies it by the example of saints and patriarchs. He immolates

before it "the bought smile" and "court-armours, mix'd dance, or wanton

mask, or midnight ball, or serenate." We are a thousand miles from

Shakespeare; and in this Protestant eulogy of the family tie, of lawful

love, of "domestic sweets," of orderly piety and of home, we perceive a

new literature and an altered time.

A strange great man, and a strange spectacle! He was born with the

instinct of noble things; and this instinct, strengthened in him by

solitary meditation, by accumulated knowledge, by stern logic, becomes

changed into a body of maxims and beliefs which no temptation could

dissolve, and no reverse shake. Thus fortified, he passes life as a

combatant, as a poet, with courageous deeds and splendid dreams, heroic

and rude, chimerical and impassioned, generous and calm, like every

self-contained reasoner, like every enthusiast, insensible to experience

and enamored of the beautiful. Thrown by the chance of a revolution into

politics and theology, he demands for others the liberty which his

powerful reason requires, and Strikes at the public fetters which impede

his personal energy. By the force of his intellect, he is more capable

than anyone of accumulating science; by the force of his enthusiasm, he

is more capable than any of experiencing hatred. Thus armed, he throws

himself into controversy with all the clumsiness and barbarism of the

time; but this proud logic displays its arguments with a marvellous

breadth, and sustains its images with an unwonted majesty: this lofty

imagination, after having spread over his prose an array of magnificent

figures, carries him into a torrent of passion even to the height of the

sublime or excited ode--a sort of archangel's song of adoration or

vengeance. The chance of a throne preserved, then re-established, led

him, before the revolution took place, into pagan and moral poetry,

after the revolution into Christian and moral verse. In both he aims at

the sublime, and inspires admiration; because the sublime is the work of

enthusiastic reason, and admiration is the enthusiasm of reason. In

both, he arrives at his point by the accumulation of splendors, by the

sustained fulness of poetic song, by the greatness of his allegories,

the loftiness of his sentiments, the description of infinite objects and

heroic emotions. In the first, a lyrist and a philosopher, with a wider

poetic freedom, and the creator of a stronger poetic illusion, he

produces almost perfect odes and choruses. In the second, an epic writer

and a Protestant, enslaved by a strict theology, robbed of the style

which makes the supernatural visible, deprived of the dramatic

sensibility which creates varied and living souls, he accumulates cold

dissertations, transforms man and God into orthodox and vulgar machines,

and only regains his genius in endowing Satan with his republican soul,

in multiplying grand landscapes and colossal apparitions, in

consecrating his poetry to the praise of religion and duty.

Placed, as it happened, between two ages, he participates in their two

characters, as a stream which, flowing between two different soils, is

tinged by both their hues. A poet and a Protestant, he receives from the

closing age the free poetic afflatus, and from the opening age the

severe political religion. He employed the one in the service of the

other, and displayed the old inspiration in new subjects. In his works

we recognize two Englands: one, impassioned for the beautiful, devoted

to the emotions of an unshackled sensibility and the fancies of pure

imagination, with no law but the natural feelings, and no religion but

natural belief; willingly pagan, often immoral; such as it is exhibited

by Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Shakespeare, Spenser, and the superb

harvest of poets which covered the ground for a space of fifty years;

the other fortified by a practical religion, void of metaphysical

invention, altogether political, worshipping rule, attached to measured,

sensible, useful, narrow opinions, praising the virtues of the family,

armed and stiffened by a rigid morality, driven into prose, raised to

the highest degree of power, wealth, and liberty. In this sense, this

style and these ideas are monuments of history; they concentrate,

recall, or anticipate the past and the future; and in the limits of a

single work are found the events and the feelings of several centuries

and of a whole nation.

[Footnote 105: Matre probatissimâ et eleemosynis per viciniam

potissimum nota.--"Defensio Secunda, Life of Milton," by Keightley.]

[Footnote 106: "My father destined me while yet a little child for the

study of humane letters."--Life by Masson, 1859, I. 51.]

[Footnote 107: Queen Elizabeth.]

[Footnote 108: The Poetical Works of John Milton, ed. Mitford, "Paradise

Regained," Book I. pp. 201-206.]

[Footnote 109: Milton's Prose Works, ed. Mitford, 8 vols., "The Reason of

Church Government," I. 150.]

[Footnote 110: Milton's Prose Works (Bohn's edition, 1848), "Second

Defence of the People of England," p. 257. See also his Italian Sonnets,

with their religious sentiment.]

[Footnote 111: Milton's Prose Works, Mitford, "Apology for Smectymnuus,"

I. 270.]

[Footnote 112: Ibid. 273. See also his "Treatise on Divorce," which shows

clearly Milton's meaning.]

[Footnote 113: "Though Christianity had been but slightly taught me,

yet a certain reservedness of natural disposition and moral discipline,

learnt out of the noblest philosophy, was enough to keep me in disdain of

far less incontinences than this of the bordello."--"Apology for

Smectymnuus," Mitford, I. 272.]

[Footnote 114: An expression of Jean Paul Richter. See an excellent

article on Milton in the "National Review," July, 1859.]

[Footnote 115: 1643, at the age of 35.]

[Footnote 116: "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce", Mitford, II. 27, 29,

32. "Mute and spiritless mate. The bashful muteness of the virgin may

oftentimes hide all the unliveliness and natural sloth which is really

unfit for conversation. A man shall find himself bound fast to an image

of earth and phlegm, with whom he looked to be the copartner of a sweet

and gladsome society." A pretty woman will say in reply: I cannot love a

man who carries his head like the sacrament.]

[Footnote 117: "Second Defence of the People of England," Prose Works

(Bohn), I. 257.]

[Footnote 118: "Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England,

and the Causes that hitherto have hindered it. Of Prelatical Episcopacy.

The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty:" 1641. "Apology

for Smectymnuus:" 1642.]

[Footnote 119: "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. Eikonoklastes:"

1648-9. "Defensio Populi Anglicani:" 1651. "Defensio Secunda:" 1654.

"Authoris pro se defensio. Responsio:" 1655.]

[Footnote 120: Milton's Prose Works, Mitford, vol. I. 329.]

[Footnote 121: Milton's Prose Works, Preface to the "Defence of the

People of England," VI. pp. 1, 2.]

[Footnote 122: Mitford, VI. pp. 2-3. This "Defence" was in Latin. Milton

ends it thus:

"He (god) has gloriously delivered you, the first of nations, from the

two greatest mischiefs of this life, and most pernicious to virtue,

tyranny and superstition; he has endued you with greatness of mind to be

the first of mankind, who after having conquered their own king, and

having had him delivered into their hands, have not scrupled to condemn

him judicially, and, pursuant to that sentence of condemnation, to put

him to death. After the performing so glorious an action as this, you

ought to do nothing that is mean and little, not so much as to think of,

much less to do, anything but what is great and sublime. Which to attain

to, this is your only way; as you have subdued your enemies in the

field, so to make appear, that unarmed, and in the highest outward peace

and tranquillity, you of all mankind are best able to subdue ambition,

avarice, the love of riches, and can best avoid the corruptions that

prosperity is apt to introduce (which generally subdue and triumph over

other nations), to show as great justice, temperance, and moderation in

the maintaining your liberty, as you have shown courage in freeing

yourselves from slavery."--Ibid. Vol. VI. 251-2.]

[Footnote 123: "Of Education," Mitford, II. 385.]

[Footnote 124: A scrivener caused him to lose £2,000. At the Restoration

he was refused payment of £2,000 which he had put into the Excise Office,

and derived of an estate of £50 a year, bought by him from the property of

the Chapter of Westminster. His house in Bread Street was burnt in the

great fire. When he died he is said to have left about £1,500 in money

(equivalent to about £5,000 now), besides household goods. (I am indebted

to the kindness of Professor Masson for the collation of this note.--Tr.)]

[Footnote 125: Milton's Poetical Works, Mitford, I. Sonnet XXII.]

[Footnote 126: "Italian Sonnets."]

[Footnote 127: Three vols, folio, 1697-8. The titles of Milton's chief

writings in prose are these: "Of Reformation in England; The Reason of

Church Government urged against Prelaty; Animadversions upon the

Remonstrants' Defence; Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce; Tetrachordon;

Tractate on Education; Areopagitica; Tenure of Kings and Magistrates;

Eikonoklastes; History of Britain; Defence of the People of England."]

[Footnote 128: "A Defence of the People of England," Mitford, VI. 21.]

[Footnote 129: Mitford, VI. 250. Salmasius said of the death of the

king: "Horribilis nuntius aures nostras atroci vulnere, sed magis mentes

perculit." Milton replied: "Profecto nuntius iste horribilis aut gladium

multo longiorem eo quem strinxit Petrus habuerit oportet, aut aures

istæ auritissimæ fuerint, quas tam longinquo vulnere perculerit."

"Oratorem tam insipidum et insulsum ut ne ex lacrymis quidem ejus mica

salis exiguissi ma possit exprimi."

"Salmasius nova quadam metamorphosi salmacis factus est."]

[Footnote 130: I copy from Neal's "History of the Puritans," II. ch. VII.

367, one of these sorrows and complaints. By the greatness of the outrage

the reader can judge of the intensity of the hatred:

"The humble petition of (Dr.) Alexander Leighton, Prisoner in the Fleet,

Humbly Sheweth.

"That on Feb. 17, 1630, he was apprehended coming from sermon by a high

commission warrant, and dragged along the street with bills and staves

to London-house. That the gaoler of Newgate being sent for, clapt him in

irons, and carried him with a strong power into a loathsome and ruinous

dog-hole, full of rats and mice, that had no light but a little grate,

and the roof being uncovered, the snow and rain beat in upon him, having

no bedding, nor place to make a fire, but the ruins of an old smoky

chimney. In this woeful place he was shut up for fifteen weeks, nobody

being suffered to come near him, till at length his wife only was

admitted. That the fourth day after his commitment the pursuivant, with

a mighty multitude, came to his house to search for jesuit's books, and

used his wife in such a barbarous and inhuman manner as he is ashamed to

express; that they rifled every person and place, holding a pistol to

the breast of a child of five years old, threatening to kill him if he

did not discover the books; that they broke open chests, presses, boxes,

and carried away everything, even household stuff, apparel, arms, and

other things; that at the end of fifteen weeks he was served with a

subpoena, on an information laid against him by Sir Robert Heath,

attorney-general, whose dealing with him was full of cruelty and deceit;

but he was then sick, and, in the opinion of four physicians, thought to

be poisoned, because all his hair and skin came off; that in the height

of this sickness the cruel sentence was passed upon him mentioned in the

year 1630, and executed Nov. 26 following, when he received thirty-six

stripes upon his naked back with a threefold cord, his hands being tied

to a stake, and then stood almost two hours in the pillory in the frost

and snow, before he was branded in the face, his nose slit, and his ears

cut off; that after this he was carried by water to the Fleet, and shut

up in such a room that he was never well, and after eight years was

turned into the common gaol."]

[Footnote 131: An answer to the "Eikon Basilike," a work on the king's

side, and attributed to the king.]

[Footnote 132: "Of Reformation in England," 4 to, 1641, p. 62.]

[Footnote 133: "Of Reformation in England."]

[Footnote 134: The loss of Cicero's works alone, or those of Livy, could

not be repaired by all the Fathers of the church.]

[Footnote 135: "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," Mitford, II. 4.]

[Footnote 136: Ibid. II. 5.]

[Footnote 137: "Areopagitica," Mitford, II. 423.]

[Footnote 138: "Areopagitica," Mitford, II. 439.]

[Footnote 139: Ibid. 437-8.]

[Footnote 140: Ibid. 441.]

[Footnote 141: "Animadversions upon Remonstrants' Defence," Mitford, I.

234-5.]

[Footnote 142: "Of Reformation in England," first book, Mitford, I. 23.]

[Footnote 143: Ibid., second book, Mitford, I. 42.]

[Footnote 144: "Of Reformation in England," book first, Mitford, I. 3.]

[Footnote 145: "Areopagitica," II. 411-12.]

[Footnote 146: "Of Reformation in England," book second, 40.]

[Footnote 147: "Areopagitica," II. 406. "Whatsoever time, or the heedless

hand of blind chance, hath drawn down from of old to this present, in her

huge drag-net, whether fish or sea-weed, shells or shrubs, unpicked,

unchosen, those are the fathers." ("Of Prelatical Episcopacy," Mitford.)]

[Footnote 148: "Areopagitica," Mitford, II. 400.]

[Footnote 149: Ibid. II. 404.]

[Footnote 150: "Areopagitica," II. 431-2.]

[Footnote 151: When he is simply comic, he becomes, like Hogarth and

Swift, eccentric, rude and farcical. "A bishop's foot that has all his

toes, maugre the gout, and a linen sock over it, is the aptest emblem of

the prelate himself; who, being a pluralist, may, under one surplice,

which is also linen, hide four benefices, beside the great metropolitan

toe."--"An Apology," etc. I. 275.]

[Footnote 152: "Of Reformation in England," Mitford, I. 17.]

[Footnote 153: Ibid. I. 71. (The old spelling has been retained in this

passage.--Tr.)]

[Footnote 154: "Of Reformation in England," Mitford.]

[Footnote 155: Ibid. I. 68-69.]

[Footnote 156: "Animadversions," etc., ibid. 220-2.]

[Footnote 157: See the "Hymn on the Nativity"; amongst others, the first

few strophes. See also "Lycidas."]

[Footnote 158: "Arcades," line 32.]

[Footnote 159: "Cornus," lines 188-190.]

[Footnote 160: "Cornus," lines 21-23.]

[Footnote 161: "Ode at a Solemn Musick," lines 6-11.]

[Footnote 162: "Lycidas," lines 136-151.]

[Footnote 163: "Faust," Prolog im Himmel.]

[Footnote 164: See the prophecy against Archbishop Laud in "Lycidas,"

line 130:

"But that two-handed engine at the

door

Stands ready to smite once, and smite

no more."]

[Footnote 165: "Arcades," lines 61-73.]

[Footnote 166: "The Reason of Church Government," book II. Mitford, I.

147.]

[Footnote 167: "L'Allegro," lines 41-68.]

[Footnote 168: "Il Penseroso," lines 31-40.]

[Footnote 169: Ibid, lines 156-160.]

[Footnote 170: Ibid, lines 88-92.]

[Footnote 171: "Comus," lines 1-11.]

[Footnote 172: Ibid, lines 37-39.]

[Footnote 173: Ibid, lines 115-118.]

[Footnote 174: "Comus," lines 213-225.]

[Footnote 175: Ibid, lines 555-557.]

[Footnote 176: Ibid, lines 244-264.]

[Footnote 177: "Comus," lines 463-473. It is the elder brother who

utters these lines when speaking of his sister.--Tr.]

[Footnote 178: Ibid, lines 861-863.]

[Footnote 179: Ibid, line 890.]

[Footnote 180: "Comus," lines 976-1023.]

[Footnote 181: Edward King, died in 1637.]

[Footnote 182: ω δῖος αιθὴρ και ταχύπτεροι πνοαί

ποταμῶν τε πηγαί, ποντίων τe κυμάτων

άνήριθμον γέλασμα, παμμῆτόρ τε γῆ,

καὶ τὸν πανόπτην κύκλον ήλίου καλῶ,

ϊδεσθέ μ, οϊα πρὸς θεῶν πάσχω θεός.

--"Prometheus Vinctus," ed. Hermann, p. 487, line 88.--Tr.]

[Footnote 183: Psalm XC. 5.]

[Footnote 184: "Paradise Lost," book IV. line 489.]

[Footnote 185: "Paradise Lost," lines 492-502.]

[Footnote 186: Ibid, lines 610-622.]

[Footnote 187: It would be impossible that a man so learned, so

argumentative, should spend his whole time in gardening and

making up nosegays.]

[Footnote 188: "Paradise Lost," book V. lines 100-113.]

[Footnote 189: Ibid, lines 116-119.]

[Footnote 190: Ibid, lines 313-316.]

[Footnote 191: Ibid, lines 328-330.]

[Footnote 192: "Paradise Lost," book V. lines 333-336.]

[Footnote 193: Ibid, lines 351-357.]

[Footnote 194: Ibid, lines 434-439.]

[Footnote 195: "Paradise Lost," book VIII. lines 102-107.]

[Footnote 196: Ibid, book IX. line 232.]

[Footnote 197: Ibid, book IX. lines 753-760.]

[Footnote 198: "Paradise Lost," book III. lines 98-123.]

[Footnote 199: End of the continuation of "Faust."

Prologue in Heaven.]

[Footnote 200: "Paradise Lost," book V. line 243.]

[Footnote 201: We are reminded of the history of Ira in Voltaire,

condemned to hear without intermission or end the praises of four

chamberlains, and the following hymn:

"Que son mérite est extreme!

Que de grâces, que de grandeur.

Ah! combien monseigneur

Doit être content de lui-même!"]

[Footnote 202: "Paradise Lost," book V. lines 588-594.]

[Footnote 203: Ibid, lines 607-612.]

[Footnote 204: Ibid, lines 617-631.]

[Footnote 205: The Miltonic Deity is so much on the level of a king and

man, that he uses (with irony certainly) words like these:

"Lest unawares we lose

This our high place, our Sanctuary, our

Hill."

His son, about to flesh his maiden

sword, replies:

"If I be found the worst in heaven,"

etc.

Book V. lines 731-742.]

[Footnote 206: "Paradise Lost," book VI. lines 425-430.]

[Footnote 207: When Raphael comes on earth, the angels who are "under

watch, in honour rise." The disagreeable and characteristic feature of

this heaven is, that the universal motive is obedience, while in Dante's

it is love. "Lowly reverent they bow.... Our happy state we hold, like

yours, while our obedience holds."]

[Footnote 208: Revelation, I. 12.]

[Footnote 209: "Paradise Lost," book I. lines 242-263.]

[Footnote 210: Ibid, lines 106-109.]

[Footnote 211: "Paradise Lost," book I. lines 61-65.]

[Footnote 212: Ibid, book II. lines 587-591.]

[Footnote 213: Ibid, book I. lines 612-615.]

[Footnote 214: Ibid, lines 100-109.]

[Footnote 215: "Paradise Lost," book II. lines 643-678.]

[Footnote 216: "Paradise Lost," book VII. lines 210-292.]

[Footnote 217: "Paradise Lost," book IV. lines 591-609.]

[Footnote 218: Ibid, lines 750-757.]

BOOK III.--THE CLASSIC AGE

CHAPTER FIRST

The Restoration

_Part I.--The Roisterers_

When we alternately look at the works of the court painters of Charles I

and Charles II, and pass from the noble portraits of Vandyke to the

figures of Lely, the fall is sudden and great; we have left a palace,

and we light on a bagnio.

Instead of the proud and dignified lords, at once cavaliers and

courtiers, instead of those high-born yet simple ladies who look at the

same time princesses and modest maidens, instead of that generous and

heroic company, elegant and resplendent, in whom the spirit of the

Renaissance yet survived, but who already displayed the refinement of

the modern age, we are confronted by perilous and importunate

courtesans, with an expression either vile or harsh, incapable of shame

or of remorse.[219] Their plump, smooth hands toy fondlingly with

dimpled fingers; ringlets of heavy hair fall on their bare shoulders;

their swimming eyes languish voluptuously; an insipid smile hovers on

their sensual lips. One is lifting a mass of dishevelled hair which

streams over the curves of her rosy flesh; another falls down with

languor, and uncloses a sleeve whose soft folds display the full

whiteness of her arms. Nearly all are half draped; many of them seem to

be just rising from their beds; the rumpled dressing-gown clings to the

neck, and looks as though it were soiled by a night's debauch; the

tumbled under-garment slips down to the hips: their feet tread the

bright and glossy silk. With bosoms uncovered, they are decked out in

all the luxurious extravagance of prostitutes; diamond girdles, puffs of

lace, the vulgar splendor of gilding, a superfluity of embroidered and

rustling fabrics, enormous head-dresses, the curls and fringes of which,

rolled up and sticking out, compel notice by the very height of their

shameless magnificence. Folding curtains hang round them in the shape of

an alcove, and the eyes penetrate through a vista into the recesses of a

wide park, whose solitude will not ill serve the purpose of their

pleasures.

Section I.--The Excesses of Puritanism

All this came by way of contrast; Puritanism had brought on an orgie,

and fanatics had talked down virtue. For many years the gloomy English

imagination, possessed by religious terrors, had desolated the life of

men. Conscience had become disturbed at the thought of death and dark

eternity; half-expressed doubts stealthily swarmed within like a bed of

thorns, and the sick heart, starting at every motion, had ended by

taking a disgust at all its pleasures, and abhorred all its natural

instincts. Thus poisoned at its very beginning, the divine sentiment of

justice became a mournful madness. Man, confessedly perverse and

condemned, believed himself pent in a prison-house of perdition and

vice, into which no effort and no chance could dart a ray of light,

except a hand from above should come by free grace, to rend the sealed

stone of this tomb. Men lived the life of the condemned, amid torments

and anguish, oppressed by a gloomy despair, haunted by spectres. People

would frequently imagine themselves at the point of death; Cromwell

himself, according to Dr. Simcott, physician in Huntingdon, "had fancies

about the Town Cross";[220] some would feel within them the motions of

an evil spirit; one and all passed the night with their eyes glued to

the tales of blood and the impassioned appeals of the Old Testament,

listening to the threats and thunders of a terrible God, and renewing in

their own hearts the ferocity of murderers and the exaltation of seers.

Under such a strain reason gradually left them. They continually were

seeking after the Lord, and found but a dream. After long hours of

exhaustion, they labored under a warped and over-wrought imagination.

Dazzling forms, unwonted ideas, sprang up on a sudden in their heated

brain; these men were raised and penetrated by extraordinary emotions.

So transformed, they knew themselves no longer; they did not ascribe to

themselves these violent and sudden inspirations which were forced upon

them, which compelled them to leave the beaten tracks, which had no

connection one with another, which shook and enlightened them when least

expected, without being able either to check or to govern them; they saw

in them the agency of a supernatural power, and gave themselves up to it

with the enthusiasm of madness and the stubbornness of faith.

To crown all, fanaticism had become an institution; the secretary had

laid down all the steps of mental transfiguration, and reduced the

encroachment of his dream to a theory: he set about methodically to

drive out reason and enthrone ecstasy. George Fox wrote its history,

Bunyan gave it its laws, Parliament presented an example of it, all the

pulpits lauded its practice. Artisans, soldiers, women discussed it,

mastered it, excited one another by the details of their experience and

the publicity of their exaltations. A new life was inaugurated which had

blighted and excluded the old. All secular tastes were suppressed, all

sensual joys forbidden; the spiritual man alone remained standing upon

the ruins of the past, and the heart, debarred from all its natural

safety-valves, could only direct its views or aspirations towards a

sinister Deity. The typical Puritan walked slowly along the streets, his

eyes raised towards heaven, with elongated features, yellow and haggard,

with closely cropped hair, clad in brown or black, unadorned, clothed

only to cover his nakedness. If a man had round cheeks, he passed for

lukewarm.[221] The whole body, the exterior, the very tone of voice, all

must wear the sign of penitence and divine grace. A Puritan spoke

slowly, with a solemn and somewhat nasal tone of voice, as if to destroy

the vivacity of conversation and the melody of the natural voice. His

speech stuffed with scriptural quotations, his style borrowed from the

prophets, his name and the names of his children drawn from the Bible,

bore witness that his thoughts were confined to the terrible world of

the seers and ministers of divine vengeance. From within, the contagion

spread outwards. The fears of conscience were converted into laws of the

state. Personal asceticism grew into public tyranny. The Puritan

proscribed pleasure as an enemy, for others as well as for himself.

Parliament closed the gambling-houses and theatres, and had the actors

whipped at the cart's tail; oaths were fined; the May-trees were cut

down; the bears, whose fights amused the people, were put to death; the

plaster of Puritan masons reduced nude statues to decency; the beautiful

poetic festivals were forbidden. Fines and corporeal punishments shut

out, even from children, games, dancing, bell-ringing, rejoicings,

junketings, wrestling, the chase, all exercises and amusements which

might profane the Sabbath. The ornaments, pictures, and statues in the

churches were pulled down or mutilated. The only pleasure which they

retained and permitted was the singing of psalms through the nose, the

edification of long sermons, the excitement of acrimonious

controversies, the harsh and sombre joy of a victory gained over the

enemy of mankind, and of the tyranny exercised against the demon's

supposed abettors. In Scotland, a colder and sterner land, intolerance

reached the utmost limits of ferocity and pettiness, instituting a

surveillance over the private life and home devotions of every member of

a family, depriving Catholics of their children, imposing the abjuration

of Popery under pain of perpetual imprisonment or death, dragging crowds

of witches[222] to the stake.[223] It seemed as though a black cloud had

weighed down the life of man, drowning all light, wiping out all beauty,

extinguishing all joy, pierced here and there by the glitter of the

sword and by the dickering of torches, beneath which one might perceive

the indistinct forms of gloomy despots, of bilious sectarians, of silent

victims.

Section II.--A Frenchman's View of the Manners of the Time

After the Restoration a deliverance ensued. Like a checked and choked-up

stream, public opinion dashed with all its natural force and all its

acquired momentum, into the bed from which it had been debarred. The

outburst carried away the dams. The violent return to the senses drowned

morality. Virtue had the semblance of Puritanism. Duty and fanaticism

became mingled in common disrepute. In this great reaction, devotion and

honesty, swept away together, left to mankind but the wreck and the

mire. The more excellent parts of human nature disappeared; there

remained but the animal, without bridle or guide, urged by his desires

beyond justice and shame.

When we see these manners through the medium of a Hamilton or a

Saint-Évremond, we can tolerate them. Their French varnish deceives us.

Debauchery in a Frenchman is only half disgusting; with him, if the

animal breaks loose, it is without abandoning itself to excess. The

foundation is not, as with the Englishman, coarse and powerful. You may

break the glittering ice which covers him, without bringing down upon

yourself the swollen and muddy torrent that roars beneath his

neighbor;[224] the stream which will issue from it will only have its

petty dribblings, and will return quickly and of itself to its

accustomed channel. The Frenchman is mild, naturally refined, little

inclined for great or gross sensuality, liking a sober style of talk,

easily armed against filthy manners by his delicacy and good taste. The

Count de Grammont has too much wit to love an orgie. After all an orgie

is not pleasant; the breaking of glasses, brawling, lewd talk, excess in

eating and drinking--there is nothing in this very tempting to a rather

delicate taste; the Frenchman, after Grammont's type, is born an

epicurean, not a glutton or a drunkard. What he seeks is amusement, not

unrestrained joy or bestial pleasure. I know full well that he is not

without reproach. I would not trust him with my purse; he forgets too

readily the distinction between _meum_ and _tuum_; above all, I would

not trust him with my wife: he is not over-delicate; his escapades at

the gambling-table and with women smack too much of the sharper and the

briber. But I am wrong to use these big words in connection with him;

they are too weighty; they crush so delicate and so pretty a specimen of

humanity. These heavy habits of honor or shame can only be worn by

serious-minded men, and Grammont takes nothing seriously, neither his

fellow-men, nor himself, nor vice, nor virtue. To pass his time

agreeably is his sole endeavor. "They had said good-by to dulness in the

army," observed Hamilton, "as soon as he was there." That is his pride

and his aim; he troubles himself, and cares for nothing beside. His

valet robs him; another would have brought the rogue to the gallows; but

the theft was clever, and he keeps his rascal. He left England

forgetting to marry the girl he was betrothed to; he is caught at Dover;

he returns and marries her: this was an amusing _contretemps_; he asks

for nothing better. One day, being penniless, he fleeces the Count de

Caméran at play. "Could Grammont, after the figure he had once cut,

pack off like any common fellow? By no means; he is a man of feeling; he

will maintain the honor of France." He covers his cheating at play with

a joke; in reality, his notions of property are not over-clear. He

regales Caméran with Caméran's own money; would Caméran have acted

better or otherwise? What matter if his money be in Grammont's purse or

his own? The main point is gained, since there is pleasure in getting

the money, and there is pleasure in spending it. The hateful and the

ignoble vanish from such a life. If he pays his court to princes, you

may be sure it is not on his knees; so lively a soul is not weighed down

by respect; his wit places him on a level with the greatest; under

pretext of amusing the king, he tells him plain truths.[225] If he finds

himself in London, surrounded by open debauchery, he does not plunge

into it; he passes through on tiptoe, and so daintily that the mire does

not stick to him. We do not recognize any longer in his anecdotes the

anguish and the brutality which were really felt at that time; the

narrative flows on quickly, raising a smile, then another, and another

yet, so that the whole mind is brought by an adroit and easy progress to

something like good humor. At table, Grammont will never stuff himself;

at play, he will never grow violent; with his mistress, he will never

give vent to coarse talk; in a duel, he will not hate his adversary. The

wit of a Frenchman is like French wine; it makes men neither brutal, nor

wicked, nor gloomy. Such is the spring of these pleasures: a supper will

destroy neither delicacy, nor good nature, nor enjoyment. The libertine

remains sociable, polite, obliging; his gayety culminates only in the

gayety of others;[226] he is attentive to them as naturally as to

himself; and in addition, he is ever on the alert and intelligent:

repartees, flashes of brilliancy, witticisms, sparkle on his lips; he

can think at table and in company, sometimes better than if alone or

fasting. It is clear that with him debauchery does not extinguish the

man; Grammont would say that it perfects him; that wit, the heart, the

senses, only arrive at excellence and true enjoyment, amid the elegance

and animation of a choice supper.

Section III.--Butler's Hudibras

It is quite the contrary in England. When we scratch the covering of an

Englishman's morality, the brute appears in its violence and its

deformity. One of the English statesmen said that with the French an

unchained mob could be led by words of humanity and honor,[227] but that

in England it was necessary, in order to appease them, to throw to them

raw flesh. Insults, blood, orgie, that is the food on which the mob of

noblemen, under Charles II, precipitated itself. All that excuses a

carnival was absent; and, in particular, wit. Three years after the

return of the king, Butler published his "Hudibras"; and with what

_éclat_ his contemporaries only could tell, while the echo of applause

is kept up even to our own days. How low is the wit, with what

awkwardness and dulness he dilutes his revengeful satire. Here and there

lurks a happy picture, the remnant of a poetry which has just perished;

but the whole work reminds one of a Scarron, as unworthy as the other,

and more malignant. It is written, people say, on the model of Don

Quixote; Hudibras is a Puritan knight, who goes about, like his

antitype, redressing wrongs, and pocketing beatings. It would be truer

to say that it resembles the wretched imitation of Avellaneda.[228] The

short metre, well suited to buffoonery, hobbles along without rest and

limpingly, floundering in the mud which it delights in, as foul and as

dull as that of the "Enéide Travestie."[229] The description of

Hudibras and his horse occupies the best part of a canto; forty lines

are taken up by describing his beard, forty more by describing his

breeches. Endless scholastic discussions, arguments as long as those of

the Puritans, spread their wastes and briers over half the poem. No

action, no simplicity, all is would-be satire and gross caricature;

there is neither art, nor harmony nor good taste to be found in it; the

Puritan style is converted into an absurd gibberish; and the engalled

rancor, missing its aim by its mere excess, spoils the portrait it

wishes to draw. Would you believe that such a writer gives himself airs,

wishes to enliven us, pretends to be funny? What delicate raillery is

there in this picture of Hudibras's beard!

"His tawny beard was th' equal grace

Both of his wisdom and his face;

In cut and die so like a tile,

A sudden view it would beguile:

The upper part whereof was whey,

The nether orange, mix'd with grey.

This hairy meteor did denounce

The fall of sceptres and of crowns:

With grisly type did represent

Declining age of Government,

And tell with hieroglyphic spade

Its own grave and the state's were made."[230]

Butler is so well satisfied with his insipid fun, that he prolongs it

for a good many lines:

"Like Samson's heart-breakers, it grew

In time to make a nation rue;

Tho' it contributed its own fall,

To wait upon the public downfall....

'Twas bound to suffer persecution

And martyrdom with resolution;

T' oppose itself against the hate

And vengeance of the incens'd state,

In whose defiance it was worn,

Still ready to be pull'd and torn,

With red-hot irons to be tortur'd,

Revil'd, and spit upon, and martyr'd.

Maugre all which, 'twas to stand fast

As long as monarchy should last;

But when the state should hap to reel,

'Twas to submit to fatal steel,

And fall, as it was consecrate,

A sacrifice to fall of state,

Whose thread of life the fatal sisters

Did twist together with its whiskers,

And twine so close, that time should never,

In life or death, their fortunes sever;

But with his rusty sickle mow

Both down together at a blow."[231]

The nonsense increases as we go on. Could anyone have taken pleasure in

humor such as this?

"This sword a dagger had, his page,

That was but little for his age;

And therefore waited on him so

As dwarfs upon knights-errant do....

When it had stabb'd, or broke a head,

It would scrape trenchers, or chip bread....

'Twould make clean shoes, and in the earth

Set leeks and onions, and so forth."[232]

Everything becomes trivial; if any beauty presents itself, it is spoiled

by burlesque. To read those long details of the kitchen, those servile

and crude jokes, people might fancy themselves in the company of a

common buffoon in the market-place; it is the talk of the quacks on the

bridges, adapting their imagination and language to the manners of the

beer-shop and the hovel. There is filth to be met with there; indeed,

the rabble will laugh when the mountebank alludes to the disgusting acts

of private life.[233] Such is the grotesque stuff in which the courtiers

of the Restoration delighted; their spite and their coarseness took a

pleasure in the spectacle of these bawling puppets; even now, after two

centuries, we hear the ribald laughter of this audience of lackeys.

Section IV.--Morals of the Court

Charles II, when at his meals, ostentatiously drew Grammont's attention

to the fact that his officers served him on their knees. They were in

the right; it was their fit attitude. Lord Chancellor Clarendon, one of

the most honored and honest men of the Court, learns suddenly and in

full council that his daughter Anne is enceinte by the Duke of York, and

that the Duke, the king's brother, has promised her marriage. Listen to

the words of this tender father; he has himself taken care to hand them

down:

"The Chancellor broke out into a very immoderate passion against the

wickedness of his daughter, and said with all imaginable earnestness,

'that as soon as he came home, he would turn her (his daughter) out of

his house as a strumpet to shift for herself, and would never see her

again.'"[234]

Observe that this great man had received the news from the king

unprepared, and that he made use of these fatherly expressions on the

spur of the moment. He added, "that he had much rather his daughter

should be the duke's whore than his wife." Is that not heroical? But let

Clarendon speak for himself. Only such a true monarchical heart can

surpass itself:

"He was ready to give a positive judgment, in which he hoped their

lordships would concur with him; that the king should immediately cause

the woman to be sent to the Tower, and to be cast into a dungeon under

so strict a guard, that no person living should be admitted to come to

her; and that an act of Parliament should be immediately passed for the

cutting off her head, to which he would not only give his consent, but

would very willingly be the first man that should propose it."[235]

What Roman virtue! Afraid of not being believed, he insists whoever knew

the man, will believe that all this came from the very bottom of his

heart. He is not yet satisfied; he repeats his advice; he addresses to

the king different conclusive reasonings, in order that they might cut

off the head of his daughter:

"I had rather submit and bear it (this disgrace) with all humility, than

that it should be repaired by making her his wife, the thought whereof I

do so much abominate, that I had much rather see her dead, with all the

infamy that is due to her presumption."[236]

In this manner, a man, who is in difficulty, can keep his salary and his

Chancellor's robes. Sir Charles Berkley, captain of the Duke of York's

guards, did better still; he solemnly swore "that he had lain with the

young lady," and declared himself ready to marry her "for the sake of

the duke, though he knew well the familiarity the duke had with her."

Then, shortly afterwards, he confessed that he had lied, but with a good

intention, in all honor, in order to save the royal family from such a

mésalliance. This admirable self-sacrifice was rewarded; he soon had a

pension from the privy purse, and was created Earl of Falmouth. From the

first, the baseness of the public corporations rivalled that of

individuals. The House of Commons, but recently master of the country,

still full of Presbyterians, rebels, and conquerors, voted "that neither

themselves nor the people of England could be freed from the horrid

guilt of the late unnatural rebellion, or from the punishment which that

guilt merited, unless they formally availed themselves of his Majesty's

grace and pardon, as set forth in the declaration of Breda." Then all

these heroes went in a body and threw themselves with contrition at the

sacred feet of their monarch. In this universal prostration it seemed

that no one had any courage left. The king became the hireling of Louis

XIV, and sold his country for a large pension. Ministers, members of

Parliament, ambassadors, all received French money. The contagion

spread even to patriots, to men noted for their purity, to martyrs. Lord

William Russell intrigued with Versailles; Algernon Sidney accepted 500

guineas. They had not discrimination enough to retain a show of spirit;

they had not spirit enough to retain a show of honor.[237]

In men thus laid bare, the first thing that strikes you is the

bloodthirsty instinct of brute beasts. Sir John Coventry, a member of

Parliament, let some word escape him, which was construed into a

reproach of the royal amours. His friend, the Duke of Monmouth,

contrived that he should be treacherously assaulted under the king's

command, by respectable men devoted to his service, who slit his nose to

the bone. A vile wretch of the name of Blood tried to assassinate the

Duke of Ormond, and to stab the keeper of the Tower, in order to steal

the crown jewels. Charles II, considering that this was an interesting

and distinguished man of his kind, pardoned him, gave him an estate in

Ireland, and admitted him to his presence, side by side with the Duke of

Ormond, so that Blood became a sort of hero, and was received in good

society. After such splendid examples, men dared everything. The Duke of

Buckingham, a lover of the Countess of Shrewsbury, slew the Earl in a

duel; the Countess, disguised as a page, held Buckingham's horse, while

she embraced him, covered as he was with her husband's blood; and the

murderer and adulteress returned publicly, and as triumphantly, to the

house of the dead man. We can no longer wonder at hearing Count

Königsmark describe as a "peccadillo" an assassination which he had

committed by waylaying his victim. I transcribe a duel out of Pepys, to

give a notion of the manners of these bloodthirsty cut-throats. Sir H.

Bellassis and Tom Porter, the greatest friends in the world, were

talking together:

"and Sir H. Bellassis talked a little louder than ordinary to Tom

Porter, giving him some advice. Some of the company standing by said,

'What! are they quarrelling, that they talk so high?' Sir H. Bellassis,

hearing it, said, 'No!' says he: 'I would have you know I never quarrel,

but I strike: and take that as a rule of mine!' 'How?' says Tom Porter,

'strike! I would I could see the man in England that durst give me a

blow!' with that Sir H. Bellassis did give him a box of the eare; and so

they were going to fight there, but were hindered.... Tom Porter, being

informed that Sir H. Bellassis's coach was coming, went down out of the

coffee-house where he staid for the tidings, and stopped the coach, and

bade Sir H. Bellassis come out. 'Why,' says H. Bellassis, 'you will not

hurt me coming out, will you?' 'No,' says Tom Porter. So out he went,

and both drew.... They wounded one another, and Sir H. Bellassis so much

that it is feared he will die"--[238]

which he did ten days after.

Bull-dogs like these took no pity on their enemies. The Restoration

opened with a butchery. The Lords conducted the trials of the

republicans with a shamelessness of cruelty and an excess of rancor that

were extraordinary. A sheriff struggled with Sir Harry Vane on the

scaffold, rummaging his pockets, and taking from him a paper which he

attempted to read. During the trial of Major-General Harrison, the

hangman was placed by his side, in a black dress, with a rope in his

hand; they sought to give him a full enjoyment of the foretaste of

death. He was cut down alive from the gibbet, and disembowelled; he saw

his entrails cast into the fire; he was then quartered, and his still

beating heart was torn out and shown to the people. The cavaliers

gathered round for amusement. Here and there one of them would do worse

even than this. Colonel Turner, seeing them quarter John Coke, the

lawyer, told the sheriff's men to bring Hugh Peters, another of the

condemned, nearer; the executioner came up, and rubbing his bloody

hands, asked the unfortunate man if the work pleased him. The rotting

bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were dug up in the night, and

their heads fixed on poles over Westminster Hall. Ladies went to see

these disgusting sights; the good Evelyn applauded them; the courtiers

made songs on them. These people were fallen so low, that they did not

even turn sick at it. Sight and smell no longer aided humanity by

producing repugnance; their senses were as dead as their hearts.

From carnage they threw themselves into debauchery. You should read the

life of the Earl of Rochester, a courtier and a poet, who was the hero

of the time. His manners were those of a lawless and wretched

mountebank; his delight was to haunt the stews, to debauch women, to

write filthy songs and lewd pamphlets; he spent his time between

gossiping with the maids of honor, broils with men of letters, the

receiving of insults, the giving of blows. By way of playing the

gallant, he eloped with his wife before he married her. Out of a spirit

of bravado, he declined fighting a duel, and gained the name of a

coward. For five years together he was said to be drunk. The spirit

within him failing of a worthy outlet, plunged him into adventures more

befitting a clown. Once with the Duke of Buckingham he rented an inn on

the Newmarket road, and turned innkeeper, supplying the husbands with

drink and defiling their wives. He introduced himself, disguised as an

old woman, into the house of a miser, robbed him of his wife, and passed

her on to Buckingham. The husband hanged himself; they made very merry

over the affair. At another time he disguised himself as a chairman,

then as a beggar, and paid court to the gutter-girls. He ended by

turning a quack astrologer, and vender of drugs for procuring abortion,

in the suburbs. It was the licentiousness of a fervid imagination, which

fouled itself as another would have adorned it, which forced its way

into lewdness and folly as another would have done into sense and

beauty. What can come of love in hands like these? We cannot copy even

the titles of his poems; they were written only for the haunts of vice.

Stendhal said that love is like a dried up bough cast into a mine; the

crystals cover it, spread out into filagree work, and end by converting

the worthless stick into a sparkling tuft of the purest diamonds.

Rochester begins by depriving love of all its adornment, and to make

sure of grasping it, converts it into a stick. Every refined sentiment,

every fancy; the enchantment, the serene, sublime glow which transforms

in a moment this wretched world of ours; the illusion which, uniting all

the powers of our being, shows us perfection in a finite creature, and

eternal bliss in a transient emotion--all has vanished; there remain but

satiated appetites and palled senses. The worst of it is, that he writes

without spirit, and methodically enough. He has no natural ardor, no

picturesque sensuality; his satires prove him a disciple of Boileau.

Nothing is more disgusting than obscenity in cold blood. We can endure

the obscene works of Giulio Romano and his Venetian voluptuousness,

because in them genius sets off sensuality, and the loveliness of the

splendid colored draperies transforms an orgie into a work of art. We

pardon Rabelais, when we have entered into the deep current of manly joy

and vigor, with which his feasts abound. We can hold our nose and have

done with it, while we follow with admiration, and even sympathy, the

torrent of ideas and fancies which flows through his mire. But to see a

man trying to be elegant and remaining obscene, endeavoring to paint the

sentiments of a navvy in the language of a man of the world, who tries

to find a suitable metaphor for every kind of filth, who plays the

blackguard studiously and deliberately, who, excused neither by genuine

feeling, nor the glow of fancy, nor knowledge, nor genius, degrades a

good style of writing to such work--it is like a rascal who sets himself

to sully a set of gems in a gutter. The end of all is but disgust and

illness. While La Fontaine continues to the last day capable of

tenderness and happiness, this man at the age of thirty insults the

weaker sex with spiteful malignity:

"When she is young, she whores herself for sport;

And when she's old, she bawds for her support....

She is a snare, a shamble, and a stews;

Her meat and sauce she does for lechery chuse,

And does in laziness delight the more,

Because by that she is provoked to whore.

Ungrateful, treacherous, enviously inclined,

Wild beasts are tamed, floods easier far confined,

Than is her stubborn and rebellious mind....

Her temper so extravagant we find,

She hates, or is impertinently kind.

Would she be grave, she then looks like a devil,

And like a fool or whore, when she be civil....

Contentious, wicked, and not fit to trust,

And covetous to spend it on her lust."[239]

What a confession is such a judgment! what an abstract of life. You see

the roisterer stupefied at the end of his career, dried up like a mummy,

eaten away by ulcers. Amid the choruses, the crude satires, the

remembrance of plans miscarried, the sullied enjoyments which are heaped

up in his wearied brain as in a sink, the fear of damnation is

fermenting; he dies a devotee at the age of thirty-three.

At the head of all, the king sets the example. This "old goat," as the

courtiers call him, imagines himself a man of gayety and elegance. What

gayety! what elegance! French manners do not suit men beyond the

Channel. When they are Catholics, they fall into narrow superstition;

when epicureans, into gross debauchery; when courtiers, into base

servility; when sceptics, into vulgar atheism. The court of England

could only imitate French furniture and dress. The regular and decent

exterior which public taste maintained as Versailles was here dispensed

with as troublesome. Charles and his brother, in their state dress,

would set off running as in a carnival. On the day when the Dutch fleet

burned the English ships in the Thames, the king supped with the Duchess

of Monmouth, and amused himself by chasing a moth. In council, while

business was being transacted, he would be playing with his dog.

Rochester and Buckingham insulted him by insolent repartees or dissolute

epigrams; he would fly into a passion and suffer them to go on. He

quarrelled with his mistress in public; she called him an idiot, and he

called her a jade. He would leave her in the morning, "so that the very

sentrys speak of it."[240] He suffered her to play him false before the

eyes of all; at one time she received a couple of actors, one of whom

was a mountebank. If need were, she would use abusive language to him.

"The King hath declared that he did not get the child of which she is

conceived at this time." But she told him, "...!but you shall own

it."[241] Whereupon he did acknowledge the child, and took to himself a

couple of actresses for consolation. When his new wife, Catherine of

Braganza, arrived, he drove away her attendants, used coarse language to

her, that he might force on her the familiarities of his mistress, and

finished by degrading her to a friendship such as this. The good Pepys,

notwithstanding his loyal feelings, ends by saying, having heard the

king and the duke talk, and seeing and observing their manner of

discourse. "God forgive me! though I admire them with all the duty

possible, yet the more a man considers and observes them, the less he

finds of difference between them and other men, though, blessed be God!

they are both princes of great nobleness and spirits."[242] He heard

that, on a certain day, the king was so besotted with Mrs. Stewart that

he gets "into corners, and will be with her half an hour together

kissing her to the observation of all the world."[243] Another day,

Captain Ferrers told him "how, at a ball at Court, a child was dropped

by one of the ladies in dancing." They took it off on a handkerchief,

"and the King had it in his closet a week after, and did dissect it,

making great sport if it."[244] These ghastly freaks and these lewd

events make us shudder. The courtiers went with the stream. Miss

Jennings, who became Duchess of Tyrconnel, disguised herself one day as

an orange girl, and cried her wares in the street.[245] Pepys recounts

festivities in which lords and ladies smeared one another's faces with

candle-grease and soot, "till most of us were like devils." It was the

fashion to swear, to relate scandalous adventures, to get drunk, to

prate against the preachers and Scripture, to gamble. Lady Castlemaine

in one night lost £25,000. The Duke of St. Albans, a blind man, eighty

years old, went to the gambling-house with an attendant at his side to

tell him the cards. Sedley and Buckhurst stripped nearly naked, and ran

through the streets after midnight. Another, in the open day, stood

naked at the window to address the people. I let Grammont keep to

himself his accounts of the maids of honor brought to bed, and of

unnatural lusts. We must either exhibit or conceal them, and I have not

the courage lightly to insinuate them, after his fashion. I end by a

quotation from Pepys, which will serve for example: "Here I first

understood by their talk the meaning of company that lately were called

Bailers; Harris telling how it was by a meeting of some young blades,

where he was among them, and my Lady Bennet and her ladies; and their

dancing naked, and all the roguish things in the world."[246] The

marvellous thing is, that this fair is not even gay; these people were

misanthropic, and became morose; they quote the gloomy Hobbes, and he is

their master. In fact, the philosophy of Hobbes shall give us the last

word and the last characteristics of this society.

Section V.--Method and Style of Hobbes

Hobbes was one of those powerful, limited, and, as they are called,

positive minds, so common in England, of the school of Swift and

Bentham, efficacious and remorseless as an iron machine. Hence we find

in him a method and style of surprising dryness and vigor, most adapted

to build up and pull down; hence a philosophy which, by the audacity of

its teaching, has placed in an undying light one of the indestructible

phases of the human mind. In every object, every event, there is some

primitive and constant fact, which forms, as it were, the nucleus around

which group themselves the various developments which complete it. The

positive mind swoops down immediately upon this nucleus, crushes the

brilliant growth which covers it; disperses, annihilates it; then,

concentrating upon it the full force of its violent grasp, loosens it,

raises it up, shapes it, and lifts it into a conspicuous position, from

whence it may henceforth shine out to all men and for all time like a

crystal. All ornament, all emotions, are excluded from the style of

Hobbes; it is a mere aggregate of arguments and concise facts in a small

space, united together by deduction, as by iron bands. There are no

tints, no fine or unusual word. He makes use only of words most familiar

to common and lasting usage; there are not a dozen employed by him

which, during two hundred years, have grown obsolete; he pierces to the

root of all sensation, removes the transient and brilliant externals,

narrows the solid portion which is the permanent subject-matter of all

thought, and the proper object of common intelligence. He curtails

throughout in order to strengthen; he attains solidity, by suppression.

Of all the bonds which connect ideas, he retains but one, and that the

most stable; his style is only a continuous chain of reasoning of the

most stubborn description, wholly made up of additions and subtractions,

reduced to a combination of certain simple ideas, which added on to or

diminishing from one another, make up, under various names, the totals

or differences, of which we are forever either studying the formation or

unravelling the elements. He pursued beforehand the method of Condillac,

beginning with tracing to the original fact, palpably and clearly, so as

to pursue step by step the filiation and parentage of the ideas of which

this primary fact is the stock, in such a manner that the reader

conducted from total to total, may at any moment test the exactness of

his operation, and verify the truth of his results. Such a logical

system cuts across the grain of prejudice with a mechanical stiffness

and boldness. Hobbes clears science of scholastic words and theories. He

laughs down quiddities, he does away with rational and intelligible

classifications, he rejects the authority of references.[247] He cuts,

as with a surgeon's knife, at the heart of the most living creeds. He

denies the authenticity of the books of Moses, Joshua, and the like. He

declares that no argument proves the divinity of Scripture, and that, in

order to believe it, every man requires a supernatural and personal

revelation. He upsets in half a dozen words the authority of this and

every other revelation.[248] He reduces man to a mere body, the soul to

a function, God, to an unknown existence. His phrases read like

equations or mathematical results. In fact, it is from mathematics[249]

that he derives the idea of all science. He would reconstitute moral

science on the same basis. He assigns to it this foundation when he lays

down that sensation is an internal movement caused by an external shock;

desire, an internal movement toward an external object; and he builds

upon these two notions the whole system of morals. Again, he assigns to

morals a mathematical method, when he distinguishes, like the

geometrician, between two simple ideas, which he transforms by degrees

into two more complex; and when on the basis of sensation and desire he

constructs the passions, the rights, and institutions of man, just as

the geometrician out of straight lines and curves constructs all the

varieties of figure. To morals he gives a mathematical aspect, by

mapping out the incomplete and rigid construction of human life, like

the network of imaginary forms which geometricians have conceived. For

the first time there was discernible in him, as in Descartes, but

exaggerated and standing out more conspicuously, that species of

intellect which produced the classic age in Europe: not the independence

of inspiration and genius which marked the Renaissance; not the mature

experimental methods and conceptions of aggregates which distinguish the

present age, but the independence of argumentative reasoning, which,

dispensing with the imagination, liberating itself from tradition, badly

practising experience, acknowledges its queen in logic, its model in

mathematics, its instrument in ratiocination, its audience in polished

society, its employment in average truth, its subject-matter in abstract

humanity, its formula in ideology, and in the French Revolution at once

its glory and its condemnation, its triumph and its close.

But whereas Descartes, in the midst of a purified society and religion,

noble and calm, enthroned intelligence and elevated man, Hobbes, in the

midst of an overthrown society and a religion run mad, degraded man and

enthroned matter. Through disgust of Puritanism, the courtiers reduced

human existence to an animal licentiousness; through disgust of

Puritanism, Hobbes reduced human nature to its merely animal aspect. The

courtiers were practically atheists and brutish, as he was atheistic and

brutish in the province of speculation. They had established the fashion

of instinct and egotism; he wrote the philosophy of egotism and

instinct. They had wiped out from their hearts all refined and noble

sentiments; he wiped out from the heart all noble and refined

sentiments. He arranged their manners into a theory, gave them the

manual of their conduct, wrote down beforehand the maxims which they

were to reduce to practice.[250] With him, as with them, "the greatest

good is the preservation of life and limb; the greatest evil is death,

especially with pain." Other goods and other evils are only the means of

these. None seek or wish for anything but that which is pleasurable. "No

man gives except for a personal advantage." Why are friendships good

things? "Because they are useful; friends serve for defence and

otherwise." Why do we pity one another? "Because we imagine that a

similar misfortune may befall ourselves." Why is it noble to pardon him

who asks it? "Because thus one proves confidence in self." Such is the

background of the human heart. Consider now what becomes of the most

precious flowers in these blighting hands. "Music, painting, poetry, are

agreeable as imitations which recall the past, because if the past was

good, it is agreeable in its imitation as a good thing; but if it was

bad, it is agreeable in its imitation as being past." To this gross

mechanism he reduces the fine arts; it was perceptible in his attempt to

translate the Iliad. In his sight, philosophy is a thing of like kind.

"Wisdom is serviceable, because it has in it some kind of protection; if

it is desirable in itself, it is because it is pleasant." Thus there is

no dignity in knowledge. It is a pastime or an assistance; good, as a

servant or a puppet is a good thing. Money being more serviceable, is

worth more. "Not he who is wise is rich, as the Stoics say; but, on the

contrary, he who is rich is wise."[251] As to religion, it is but "the

fear of an invisible power, whether this be a figment, or adopted from

history by general consent."[252] Indeed, this was true for a Rochester

or a Charles II; cowards or bullies, superstitious or blasphemers, they

conceived of nothing beyond. Neither is there any natural right. "Before

men were bound by contract one with another, each had the right to do

what he would against whom he would." Nor any natural friendship. "All

association is for the cause of advantage or of glory; that is, for love

of one's self, not of one's associates. The origin of great and durable

associations is not mutual well-wishing but mutual fear. The desire of

injuring is innate in all. Man is to man a wolf.... Warfare was the

natural condition of men before societies were formed; and this not

incidentally, but of all against all: and this war is of its own nature

eternal."[253] Sectarian violence let loose, the conflict of ambitions,

the fall of governments, the overflow of soured imaginations and

malevolent passions, had raised up this idea of society and of mankind.

One and all, philosophers and people, yearned for monarchy and repose.

Hobbes, an inexorable logician, would have it absolute; repression would

thus be more stern, peace more lasting. The sovereign should be

unopposed. Whatsoever he might do against a subject, under whatever

pretext, would not be injustice. He ought to decide upon the canonical

books. He was pope, and more than pope. Were he to command it, his

subjects should renounce Christ, at least with their mouth; the original

contract has given up to him, without any reservation, all

responsibility of external actions; at least, according to this view,

the sectarian will no longer have the pretext of his conscience in

harassing the state. To such extremities had the intense weariness and

horror of civil war driven a narrow but logical intellect. Upon the

secure den in which he had with every effort imprisoned and confined the

evil beast of prey, he laid as a final weight, in order that he might

perpetuate the captivity of humanity, the whole philosophy and theory

not simply of man, but of the remainder of the universe. He reduced

judgment to the "combination of two terms," ideas to conditions of the

brain, sensations to motions of the body, general laws to simple words,

all substance to corporeality, all science to the knowledge of sensible

bodies, the human being to a body capable of motion given or received;

so that man, recognizing himself and nature only under this despised

form, and degraded in his conception of himself and of the world, might

bow beneath the burden of a necessary authority, and submit in the end

to the yoke which his rebellious nature rejects, yet is forced to

tolerate.[254] Such, in brief, is the aim which this spectacle of the

English Restoration suggests. Men deserved then this treatment, because

they gave birth to this philosophy; they were represented on the stage

as they had proved themselves to be in theory and in manners.

[Illustration: CHOICE EXAMPLES OF BOOK ILLUMINATION.

Fac-similes from Illuminated Manuscripts and Illustrated Books

of Early Date.

_INITIAL LETTER FROM THE GIFFORD PSALTER._

This is a richly illuminated initial from a psalter written at Clare

Priory about the year 1250. In the margin may be seen the arms of

Gilbert de Clare and Joan of Arc.]

Section VI.--The Theatre

When the theatres, which Parliament had closed, were reopened, the

change of public taste was soon manifested. Shirley, the last of the

grand old school, wrote and lived no longer. Waller, Buckingham, and

Dryden were compelled to dish up the plays of Shakespeare and Beaumont

and Fletcher, and to adapt them to the modern style. Pepys, who went to

see "Midsummer Night's Dream," declared that he would never go there

again; "for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw in

my life."[255] Comedy was transformed; the fact was, that the public was

transformed.

What an audience was that of Shakespeare and Beaumont and Fletcher! What

youthful and delightful souls! In this evil-smelling room in which it

was necessary to burn juniper, before that miserable half-lighted stage,

before decorations worthy of an alehouse, with men playing the women's

parts, illusion enchained them. They scarcely troubled themselves about

probabilities; they could be carried in an instant over forest and

ocean, from clime to clime, across twenty years of time, through ten

battles and all the hurry of adventure. They did not care to be always

laughing; comedy, after a burst of buffoonery, resumed its serious or

tender tone. They came less to be amused than to muse. In these fresh

minds, amidst a woof of passions and dreams, there were hidden passions

and brilliant dreams whose imprisoned swarm buzzed indistinctly, waiting

for the poet to come and lay bare to them the novelty and the splendor

of heaven. Landscapes revealed by a lightning flash, the gray mane of a

long and overhanging billow, a wet forest nook where the deer raise

their startled heads, the sudden smile and purpling cheek of a young

girl in love, the sublime and various flight of all delicate sentiments,

a cloak of ecstatic and romantic passion over all--these were the

sights and feelings which they came to seek. They raised themselves

without any assistance to the summit of the world of ideas; they desired

to contemplate extreme generosity, absolute love; they were not

astonished at the sight of fairy-land; they entered without an effort

into the region of poetical transformation, whose light was necessary to

their eyes. They took in at a glance its excesses and its caprices; they

needed no preparation; they followed its digressions, its

whimsicalities, the crowding of its abundant creations, the sudden

prodigality of its high coloring, as a musician follows a symphony. They

were in that transient and strained condition in which the imagination,

adult and pure, laden with desire, curiosity, force develops man all at

once, and in that man the most exalted and exquisite feelings.

The roisterers took the place of these. They were rich, they had tried

to deck themselves with the polish of Frenchmen; they added to the stage

movable decorations, music, lights, probability, comfort, every external

aid; but they wanted heart. Imagine those foppish and half-intoxicated

men, who saw in love nothing beyond desire, and in man nothing beyond

sensuality; Rochester in the place of Mercutio. What part of his soul

could comprehend poesy and fancy? The comedy of romance was altogether

beyond his reach; he could only seize the actual world, and of this

world but the palpable and gross externals. Give him an exact picture of

ordinary life, commonplace and probable occurrences, literal imitations

of what he himself was and did; lay the scene in London, in the current

year; copy his coarse words, his brutal jokes, his conversation with the

orange girls, his rendezvous in the park, his attempts at French

dissertation. Let him recognize himself, let him find again the people

and the manners he had just left behind him in the tavern or the

antechamber; let the theatre and the street reproduce one another.

Comedy will give him the same entertainment as real life; he will wallow

equally well there in vulgarity and lewdness; to be present there will

demand neither imagination nor wit; eyes and memory are the only

requisites. This exact imitation will amuse him and instruct him at the

same time. Filthy words will make him laugh through sympathy; shameless

imagery will divert him by appealing to his recollections. The author,

too, will take care to arouse him by his plot, which generally has the

deceiving of a father or a husband for its subject. The fine gentlemen

agree with the author in siding with the gallant; they follow his

fortunes with interest, and fancy that they themselves have the same

success with the fair. Add to this women debauched, and willing to be

debauched; and it is manifest how these provocations, these manners of

prostitutes, that interchange of exchanges and surprises, that carnival

of rendezvous and suppers, the impudence of the scenes only stopping

short of physical demonstration, those songs with their double meaning,

that coarse slang shouted loudly and replied to amidst the tableaux

vivants, all that stage-imitation of orgie, must have stirred up the

innermost feelings of the habitual practisers of intrigue. And what is

more, the theatre gave its sanction to their manners. By representing

nothing but vice, it authorized their vices. Authors laid it down as a

rule, that all women were impudent hussies, and that all men were

brutes. Debauchery in their hands became a matter of course, nay more, a

matter of good taste; they profess it. Rochester and Charles II could

quit the theatre highly edified; more convinced than they were before

that virtue was only a pretence, the pretence of clever rascals who

wanted' to sell themselves dear.

Section VII.--Dryden and the Drama

Dryden, who was amongst the first[256] to adopt this view of the matter,

did not adopt it heartily. A kind of hazy mist, the relic of the former

age, still floated over his plays. His wealthy imagination half bound

him to the comedy of romance. At one time he adapted Milton's

"Paradise," Shakespeare's "Tempest," and "Troilus and Cressida." Another

time he imitated, in "Love in a Nunnery," in "Marriage à la Mode," in

"The Mock Astrologer," the imbroglios and surprises of the Spanish

stage. Sometimes he displays the sparkling images and lofty metaphors of

the older national poets, sometimes the affected figures of speech and

cavilling wit of Calderon and Lope de Vega. He mingles the tragic and

the humorous, the overthrow of thrones and the ordinary description of

manners. But in this awkward compromise the poetic spirit of ancient

comedy disappears; only the dress and the gilding remain. The new

characters are gross and immoral, with the instincts of a lackey beneath

the dress of a lord, which is the more shocking, because by it Dryden

contradicts his own talents, being at bottom grave and a poet; he

follows the fashion, and not his own mind; he plays the libertine with

deliberate forethought, to adapt himself to the taste of the day.[257]

He plays the blackguard awkwardly and dogmatically; he is impious

without enthusiasm, and in measured periods. One of his gallants cries:

"Is not love love without a priest and altars?

The temples are inanimate, and know not

What vows are made in them; the priest stands ready

For his hire, and cares not what hearts he couples;

Love alone is marriage."[258]

Hippolita says, "I wished the ball might be kept perpetually in our

cloister, and that half the handsome nuns in it might be turned to men,

for the sake of the other."[259] Dryden has no tact or contrivance. In

his "Spanish Friar," the queen, a good enough woman, tells Torrismond

that she is going to have the old dethroned king put to death, in order

to marry him, Torrismond, more at her ease. Presently she is informed

that the murder is completed. "What hinders now," says she, "but that

the holy priest, in secret joins our mutual vows? and then this night,

this happy night, is yours and mine."[260] Side by side with this

sensual tragedy, a comic intrigue, pushed to the most indecent

familiarity, exhibits the love of a cavalier for a married woman, who in

the end turns out to be his sister. Dryden discovers nothing in this

situation to shock him. He has lost the commonest repugnances of natural

modesty. Translating any pretty broad play, "Amphitryon" for instance,

he finds it too pure; he strips off all its small delicacies, and

enlarges its very improprieties.[261] Thus Jupiter says:

"For kings and priests are in a manner bound,

For reverence' sake, to be close hypocrites."[262]

And he proceeds thereupon boldly to lay bare his own despotism. In

reality, his sophisms and his shamelessness serve Dryden as a means of

decrying by rebound the arbitrary Divinity of the theologians. He lets

Jupiter say:

"Fate is what I,

By virtue of omnipotence, have made it;

And power omnipotent can do no wrong!

Not to myself, because I will it so;

Nor yet to men, for what they are is mine.--

This night I will enjoy Amphitryon's wife;

For when I made her, I decreed her such

As I should please to love."[263]

This open pedantry is changed into open lust as soon as Jupiter sees

Alemena. No detail is omitted: Jupiter speaks his whole mind to her, and

before the maids; and next morning, when he is going away, she outdoes

him: she hangs on to him, and indulges in the most familiar details. All

the noble externals of high gallantry are torn off like a troublesome

garment; it is a cynical recklessness in place of aristocratic decency;

the scene is written after the example of Charles II and Castlemaine,

not of Louis XIV and Mme de Montespan.[264]

Section VIII.--Wycherley

I pass over several writers: Crowne, author of "Sir Courtly Nice";

Shadwell, an imitator of Ben Jonson; Mrs. Aphra Behn, who calls herself

Astræa, a spy and a courtesan, paid by government and the public.

Etherege is the first to set the example of imitative comedy in his "Man

of Fashion" and to depict only the manners of his age; for the rest he

is an open roisterer, and frankly describes his habits:

"From hunting whores, and haunting play,

And minding nothing all the day,

And all the night too, you will say...."

Such were his pursuits in London; and further on, in a letter from

Ratisbon to Lord Middleton,

"He makes grave legs in formal fetters,

Converses with fools and writes dull letters;"

and gets small consolation out of the German ladies. In this grave mood

Etherege undertook the duties of an ambassador. One day, having dined

too freely, he fell from the top of a staircase, and broke his neck; a

death of no great importance. But the hero of this society was William

Wycherley, the coarsest writer who ever polluted the stage. Being sent

to France during the Revolution, he there became a Roman Catholic; then

on his return abjured; then in the end, as Pope tells us, abjured again.

Robbed of their Protestant ballast, these shallow brains ran from dogma

to dogma, from superstition to incredulity or indifference, to end in a

state of fear. He had learned at M. de Montausier's[265] residence the

art of wearing gloves and a peruke, which sufficed in those days to make

a gentleman. This merit, and the success of a filthy piece, "Love in a

Wood," drew upon him the eyes of the Duchess of Cleveland, mistress of

the king and of anybody. This woman, who used to have amours with a

rope-dancer, picked him up one day in the very midst of the Ring. She

put her head out of her carriage-window, and cried to him before all,

"Sir, you are a rascal, a villain, the son of a----." Touched by this

compliment, he accepted her favors, and in consequence obtained those of

the king. He lost them, married the Countess of Drogheda, a woman of bad

temper, ruined himself, remained seven years in prison, passed the

remainder of his life in pecuniary difficulties, regretting his youth,

losing his memory, scribbling bad verses, which he got Pope to correct,

amidst many twitches of wounded self-esteem, stringing together dull

obscenities, dragging his worn-out body and enervated brain through the

stages of misanthropy and libertinage, playing the miserable part of a

toothless roisterer and a white-haired blackguard. Eleven days before

his death he married a young girl, who turned out to be a strumpet. He

ended as he had begun, by stupidity and misconduct, having succeeded

neither in becoming happy nor honest, having used his vigorous

intelligence and real talent only to his own injury and the injury of

others.

The reason was, that Wycherley was not an epicurean born. His nature,

genuinely English, that is to say, energetic and sombre, rebelled

against the easy and amiable carelessness which enables one to take life

as a pleasure-party. His style is labored, and troublesome to read. His

tone is virulent and bitter. He frequently forces his comedy in order to

get at spiteful satire. Effort and animosity mark all that he says or

puts into the mouths of others. It is Hobbes, not meditative and calm,

but active and angry, who sees in man nothing but vice, yet feels

himself man to the very core. The only fault he rejects is hypocrisy;

the only virtue he preaches is frankness. He wants others to confess

their vice, and he begins by confessing his own. "Though I cannot lie

like them (the poets), I am as vain as they; I cannot but publicly give

your Grace my humble acknowledgments.... This is the poet's gratitude,

which in plain English is only pride and ambition."[266] We find in him

no poetry of expression, no glimpse of the ideal, no settled morality

which could console, raise, or purify men. He shuts them up in their

perversity and uncleanness, and installs himself among them. He shows

them the filth of the lowest depths in which he confines them; he

expects them to breathe this atmosphere; he plunges them into it, not to

disgust them with it as by an accidental fall, but to accustom them to

it as if it were their natural element. He tears down the partitions and

decorations by which they endeavor to conceal their state, or regulate

their disorder. He takes pleasure in making them fight, he delights in

the hubbub of their unfettered instincts; he loves the violent changes

of the human mass, the confusion of their wicked deeds, the rawness of

their bruises. He strips their lusts, sets them forth at full length,

and of course feels them himself; and whilst he condemns them as

nauseous, he enjoys them. People take what pleasure they can get: the

drunkards in the suburbs, if asked how they can relish their miserable

liquor, will tell you it makes them drunk as soon as better stuff, and

that is the only pleasure they have.

I can understand that an author may dare much in a novel. It is a

psychological study, akin to criticism or history, having almost equal

license, because it contributes almost equally to explain the anatomy of

the heart. It is quite necessary to expose moral diseases, especially

when this is done to add to science, coldly, accurately, and in the

fashion of a dissection. Such a book is by its nature abstruse; it must

be read in the study, by lamp-light. But transport it to the stage,

exaggerate the bedroom liberties, give them additional life by a few

disreputable scenes, bestow bodily vigor upon them by the energetic

action and words of the actresses; let the eyes and the senses be filled

with them, not the eyes of an individual spectator, but of a thousand

men and women mingled together in the pit, excited by the interest of

the story, by the correctness of the literal imitation, by the glitter

of the lights, by the noise of applause, by the contagion of impressions

which run like a shudder through fiery and longing minds. That was the

spectacle which Wycherley furnished, and which the court appreciated. Is

it possible that a public, and a select public, could come and listen to

such scenes? In "Love in a Wood," amidst the complications of nocturnal

rendezvous, and violations effected or begun, we meet with a witling,

named Dapperwit, who desires to sell his mistress Lucy to a fine

gentleman of that age, Ranger. With what minuteness he bepraises her! He

knocks at her door; the intended purchaser meantime, growing impatient,

is treating him like a slave. The mother comes in, but wishing to sell

Lucy herself and for her own advantage, scolds them and packs them off.

Next appears an old puritanical usurer and hypocrite, named Gripe, who

at first will not bargain:

"_Mrs. Joyner._ You must send for something to entertain her with.

... Upon my life a groat! What will this purchase?

_Gripe._ Two black pots of ale and a cake, at the cellar--Come, the wine

has arsenic in't....

_Mrs. J._ A treat of a groat! I will not wag.

_G._ Why don't you go? Here, take more money, and fetch what you

will; take here, half-a-crown.

_Mrs. J._ What will half-a-crown do?

_G._ Take a crown then, an angel, a piece;--begone!

_Mrs. J._ A treat only will not serve my turn; I must buy the poor

wretch there some toys.

_G._ What toys? what? speak quickly.

_Mrs. J._ Pendants, necklaces, fans, ribbons, points, laces, stockings,

gloves....

_G._ But here, take half a piece for the other things.

_Mrs. J._ Half a piece!--

_G._ Prithee, begone!--take t'other piece then--two pieces--three

pieces--five!

here; 'tis all I have.

_Mrs. J._ I must have the broad-seal ring too, or I stir not."[267]

She goes away at last, having extorted all, and Lucy plays the innocent,

seems to think that Gripe is à dancing-master, and asks for a lesson.

What scenes, what double meanings! At last she calls out, her mother,

Mrs. Crossbite, breaks open the door, and enters with men placed there

beforehand; Gripe is caught in the trap; they threaten to call in the

constable, they swindle him out of five hundred pounds.

Need I recount the plot of the "Country Wife"? It is useless to wish to

skim the subject only; we sink deeper and deeper. Horner, a gentleman

returned from France, spreads the report that he is no longer able to

trouble the peace of husbands. You may imagine what becomes of such a

subject in Wycherley's hands, and he draws from it all that it contains.

Women converse about Horner's condition, even before him; they suffer

themselves to be undeceived, and boast of it. Three of them come to him

and feast, drink, sing such songs! The excess of orgie triumphs,

adjudges itself the crown, displays itself in maxims. "Our virtue," says

one of them, "is like the statesman's religion, the Quaker's word, the

gamester's oath, and the great man's honor; but to cheat those that

trust us."[268] In the last scene, the suspicions which had been

aroused, are set at rest by a new declaration of Horner. All the

marriages are polluted, and the carnival ends by a dance of deceived

husbands. To crown all, Horner recommends his example to the public, and

the actress who comes on to recite the epilogue, completes the

shamefulness of the piece, by warning gallants that they must look what

they are doing; for that if they can deceive men, "we women--there's no

cozening us."[269]

But the special and most extraordinary sign of the times is, that amid

all these provocatives, no repellent circumstance is omitted, and that

the narrator seems to aim as much at disgusting as at depraving us.[270]

Every moment the fine gentlemen, even the ladies, introduce into their

conversation the ways and means by which, since the sixteenth century,

love has endeavored to adorn itself. Dapperwit, when making an offer of

Lucy, says, in order to account for the delay: "Pish! give her but leave

to ... put on... the long patch under the left eye; awaken the roses on

her cheeks with some Spanish wool, and warrant her breath with some

lemon-peel."[271] Lady Flippant, alone in the park, cries out:

"Unfortunate lady that I am! I have left the herd on purpose to be

chased, and have wandered this hour here; but the park affords not so

much as a satyr for me; and no Burgundy man or drunken scourer will reel

my way. The rag-women and cinder-women have better luck than I."[272]

Judge by these quotations, which are the best, of the remainder!

Wycherley makes it his business to revolt even the senses; the nose, the

eyes, everything suffers in his plays; the audience must have had the

stomach of a sailor. And from this abyss English literature has ascended

to the strict morality, the excessive decency which it now possesses!

This stage is a declared war against beauty and delicacy of every kind.

If Wycherley borrows a character anywhere, it is only to do violence, or

degrade it to the level of his own characters. If he imitates the Agnes

of Molière,[273] as he does in the "Country Wife," he marries her in

order to profane marriage, deprives her of honor, still more of modesty,

still more of grace, and changes her artless tenderness into shameless

instincts and scandalous confessions. If he takes Shakespeare's Viola,

as in the "Plain Dealer," it is to drag her through the vileness of

infamy, amidst brutalities and surprises. If he translates the part of

Molière's Célimène, he wipes out at one stroke the manners of a great

lady, the woman's delicacy, the tact of the lady of the house, the

politeness, the refined air, the superiority of wit and knowledge of the

world, in order to substitute for them the impudence and deceit of a

foul-mouthed courtesan. If he invents an almost innocent girl,

Hippolita,[274] he begins by putting into her mouth words that will not

bear transcribing. Whatever he does or says, whether he copies or

originates, blames or praises, his stage is a defamation of mankind,

which repels even when it attracts, and which sickens a man while it

corrupts.

A certain gift hovers over all--namely, vigor--which is never absent in

England, and gives a peculiar character to their virtues as well as to

their vices. When we have removed the oratorical and heavily constructed

phrases imitated from the French, we get at the genuine English

talent--a deep sympathy with nature and life. Wycherley possessed that

lucid and vigorous perspicacity which in any particular situation seizes

upon gesture, physical expression, evident detail, which pierces to the

depths of the crude and base, which hits off, not men in general, and

passion as it ought to be, but an individual man, and passion as it is.

He is a realist, not of set purpose, as the realists of our day, but

naturally. In a violent manner he lays on his plaster over the grinning

and pimpled faces of his rascals, in order to bring before our very eyes

the stern mask to which the living imprint of their ugliness has stuck

on the way. He crams his plays with incident, he multiples action, he

pushes comedy to the verge of dramatic effect; he hustles his characters

amidst surprises and violence, and all but stultifies them in order to

exaggerate his satire. Observe in Olivia, a copy of Célimène, the fury

of the passions which he depicts. She describes her friends, as does

Célimène, but with what insults! Novel, a coxcomb, says:

"Madam, I have been treated to-day with all the ceremony and kindness

imaginable at my lady Autumn's. But the nauseous old woman at the upper

end of her table..."

"_Olivia._ Revives the old Grecian custom, of serving in a death's head

with their banquets.... I detest her hollow cherry cheeks: she looks

like an old coach new painted.... She is still most splendidly,

gallantly ugly, and looks like an ill piece of daubing in a rich

frame."[275]

The scene is borrowed from Molière's "Misanthrope" and the "Critique de

l'École des Femmes"; but how transformed! Our modern nerves would not

endure the portrait Olivia draws of Manly, her lover: he hears her

unawares; she forthwith stands before him, laughs at him to his face,

declares herself to be married; tells him she means to keep the diamonds

which he has given her, and defies him. Fidelia says to her:

"But, madam, what could make you dissemble love to him, when 'twas so

hard a thing for you; and flatter his love to you?"

"_Olivia._ That which makes all the world flatter and dissemble, 'twas

his money: I had a real passion for that... As soon as I had his money,

I hastened his departure, like a wife, who when she has made the most of

a dying husband's breath, pulls away his pillow."[276]

The last phrase is rather that of a morose satirist than of an accurate

observer. The woman's impudence is like a professed courtesan's. In love

at first sight with Fidelia, whom she takes for a young man, she hangs

upon her neck, "stuffs her with kisses," gropes about in the dark,

crying, "Where are thy lips?" There is a kind of animal ferocity in her

love. She sends her husband off by an Improvised comedy; then skipping

about like a dancing-girl cries out: "Go, husband, and come up, friend;

just the buckets in the well; the absence of one brings the other. But

I hope, like them, too, they will not meet in the Way, jostle, and clash

together."[277] Surprised in _flagrante delicto_, and having confessed

all to her cousin, as soon as she sees a chance of safety, she swallows

her avowal with the effrontery of an actress:

"_Eliza._ Well, cousin, this, I confess, was reasonable hypocrisy; you

were the better for 't.

_Olivia._ What hypocrisy?

_E._ Why, this last deceit of your husband was lawful, since in your

own defence.

_O._ What deceit? I'd have you know I never deceived my husband.

_E._ You do not understand me, sure; I say, this was an honest come-off,

and a good one. But 'twas a sign your gallant had had enough of

your conversation, since he could so dexterously cheat your husband in

passing for a Woman.

_O._ What d'ye mean, once more, With my gallant, and passing for a

woman?

_E._ What do you mean? you see your husband took him for a woman!

_O._ Whom?

_E._ Heyday! why the man he found with....

_O_. Lord, you rave sure!

_E._ Why, did you not tell me last night.... Fy, this fooling is

so insipid, 'tis offensive.

_O._ And fooling with my honour will be more offensive....

_E._ O admirable confidence!...

_O._ Confidence, to me! to me such language! nay, then I'll never see

your face again.... Lettice, where are you? Let us begone from

this censorious ill woman....

_E._ One word first, pray, madam; can you swear that whom your

husband found you with...

_O._ Swear! ay, that whosoever 'twas that stole up, unknown, into my

room, when 'twas dark, I know not, whether man or woman, by heavens,

by all that's good; or, may I never more have joys here, or in the

other world! Nay, may I eternally--

_E._ Be damned. So, so, you are damned enough already by your

oaths. . . . Yet take this advice with you, in this plain-dealing age,

to leave off forswearing yourself....

_O._ O hideous, hideous advice! let us go out of the hearing of it. She

will spoil us, Lettice."[278]

Here is animation; and if I dared to relate the boldness and the

asseveration in the night scene, it would easily appear that Mme

Marneffe had a sister, and Balzac a predecessor.

There is a character who shows in a concise manner Wycherley's talent

and his morality, wholly formed of energy and indelicacy--Manly, the

"plain dealer," so manifestly the author's favorite, that his

contemporaries gave him the name of his hero for a surname. Manly is

copied after Alceste, and the great difference between the two heroes

shows the difference between the two societies and the two

countries.[279] Manly is not a courtier, but a ship-captain, with the

bearing of a sailor of the time, his cloak stained with tar, and

smelling of brandy,[280] ready with blows or foul oaths, calling those

he came across dogs and slaves, and when they displeased him, kicking

them downstairs. And he speaks in this fashion to a lord with a voice

like a mastiff. Then, when the poor nobleman tries to whisper something

in his ear, "My lord, all that you have made me know by your whispering

which I knew not before, is that you have a stinking breath; there's a

secret for your secret." When he is in Olivia's drawing-room, with

"these fluttering parrots of the town, these apes, these echoes of men,"

he bawls out as if he were on his quarter-deck, "Peace, you Bartholomew

fair buffoons!" He seizes them by the collar, and says: "Why, you

impudent, pitiful wretches,... you are in all things so like women, that

you may think it in me a kind of cowardice to beat you. Begone, I

say.... No chattering, baboons; instantly begone, or..." Then he turns

them out of the room. These are the manners of a plain-dealing man. He

has been ruined by Olivia, whom he loves, and who dismisses him. Poor

Fidelia, disguised as a man, and whom he takes for a timid youth, comes

and finds him while he is fretting with anger:

"_Fidelia._ I warrant you, sir; for, at worst, I could beg or steal for

you.

_Manly._ Nay, more bragging!... You said you'd beg for me.

_F._ I did, sir.

_M._ Then you shall beg for me.

_F._ With all my heart, sir.

_M._ That is, pimp for me.

_F._ How, sir?

_M._ D'ye start?... No more dissembling: here (I say,) you

must go use it for me to Olivia.... Go, flatter, lie, kneel, promise,

anything to get her for me: I cannot live unless I have her."[281]

And when Fidelia returns to him, saying that Olivia has embraced her, by

force, in a fit of love, he exclaims: "Her love!--a whore's, a witch's

love!--But what, did she not kiss well, sir? I'm sure, I thought her

lips--but I must not think of 'em more--but yet they are such I could

still kiss--grow to--and then tear off with my teeth, grind 'em into

mammocks, and spit 'em into her cuckold's face."[282] These savage words

indicate savage actions. He goes by night to enter Olivia's house with

Fidelia, and under her name; and Fidelia tries to prevent him, through

jealousy. Then his blood boils, a storm of fury mounts to his face, and

he speaks to her in a whispering, hissing voice: "What, you are my

rival, then! and therefore you shall stay, and keep the door for me,

whilst I go in for you; but when I'm gone, if you dare to stir off from

this very board, or breathe the least murmuring accent, I'll cut her

throat first; and if you love her, you will not venture her life. Nay,

then I'll cut your throat too, and I know you love your own life at

least.... Not a word more, lest I begin my revenge on her by killing

you."[283] He knocks over Olivia's husband, another traitor seizes from

her the casket of jewels he had given her, casts her one or two of them,

saying, "Here, madam, I never yet left my wench unpaid," and gives this

same casket to Fidelia, whom he marries. All these actions then appeared

natural. Wycherley took to himself in his dedication the title of his

hero, "Plain Dealer"; he fancied he had drawn the portrait of a frank,

honest man, and praised himself for having set the public a fine

example; he had only given them the model of an unreserved and energetic

brute. That was all the manliness that was left in this pitiable world.

Wycherley deprived man of his ill-fitting French cloak, and displayed

him with his framework of muscles, and in his naked shamelessness.

And in the midst of all these, a great poet, blind, and sunk into

obscurity, his soul saddened by the misery of the times, thus depicted

the madness of the infernal rout:

"Belial came last, than whom a spirit more lewd

Fell not from heaven, or more gross to love

Vice for itself... who more oft than he

In temples and at altars, when the priest

Turns atheist, as did Eli's sons, who fill'd

With lust and violence the house of God?

In courts and palaces he also reigns,

And in luxurious cities, where the noise

Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,

And injury, and outrage: and when night

Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons

Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine."[284]

_Part II--The Worldlings_

Section I.--Court Life in Europe

In the seventeenth century a new mode of life was inaugurated in Europe,

the worldly, which soon took the lead of and shaped every other. In

France especially, and in England, it appeared and gained ground, from

the same causes and at the same time.

In order to people the drawing-rooms, a certain political condition is

necessary; and this condition, which is the supremacy of the king in

combination with a regular system of police, was established at the same

period on both sides of the Channel. A regular police brings about peace

among men, draws them out of their feudal independence and provincial

isolation, increases and facilitates intercommunication, confidence,

union, comfort, and pleasures. The kingly supremacy calls into existence

a court, the centre of intercourse, from which all favors flow, and

which calls for a display of pleasure and splendor. The aristocracy thus

attracted to one another, and attracted to the throne by security,

curiosity, amusement, and interest, meet together, and become at once

men of the world and men of the court. They are no longer, like the

barons of a preceding age, standing in their lofty halls, armed and

stern, possessed by the idea that they might perhaps, when they quit

their palace, cut each other to pieces, and that if they fall to blows

in the precincts of the court, the executioner is ready to cut off their

hand and stop the bleeding with a red-hot iron; knowing, moreover, that

the king may probably have them beheaded to-morrow, and ready

accordingly to cast themselves on their knees and break out into

protestations of submissive fidelity, but counting under their breath

the number of swords that will be mustered on their side, and the trusty

men who keep sentinel behind the drawbridge of their castles.[285] The

rights, privileges, constraints, and attractions of feudal life have

disappeared. There is no more need that the manor should be a fortress.

These men can no longer experience the joy of reigning there as in a

petty state. It has palled on them, and they quit it. Having no further

cause to quarrel with the king, they go to him. His court is a

drawing-room, most agreeable to the sight, and most serviceable to those

who frequent it. Here are festivities, splendid furniture, a decked and

select company, news and tittle-tattle; here they find pensions, titles,

places for themselves and their friends; they receive amusement and

profit; it is all gain and all pleasure. Here they attend the levée,

are present at dinners, return to the ball, sit down to play, are there

when the king goes to bed. Here they cut a dash with their half-French

dress, their wigs, their hats loaded with feathers, their trunk-hose,

their cannions, the large rosettes on their shoes. The ladies paint and

patch their faces, display robes of magnificent satin and velvet, laced

up with silver and very long, and above you may see their white busts,

whose brilliant nakedness is extended to their shoulders and arms. They

are gazed upon, saluted, approached. The king rides on horseback in Hyde

Park; by his side canters the queen, and with her the two mistresses,

Lady Castlemaine and Mrs. Stewart: "the queen in a white-laced waistcoat

and a crimson short pettycoat, and her hair dressed _à la

négligence_;... Mrs. Stewart with her hat cocked and a red plume, with

her sweet eye, little Roman nose, and excellent taille."[286] Then they

returned to Whitehall "where all the ladies walked, talking and fiddling

with their hats and feathers, and changing and trying one another's by

one another's heads, and laughing,"[287] In such fine company there was

no lack of gallantry. Perfumed gloves, pocket mirrors, work-cases fitted

up, apricot paste, essences, and other little love-tokens, came over

every week from Paris. London furnished more substantial gifts,

ear-rings, diamonds, brilliants, and golden guineas; the fair ones put

up with these, as if they had come from a greater distance.[288] There

were plenty of intrigues--Heaven knows how many or of what kind.

Naturally, also, conversation does not stop. They did not mince the

adventures of Miss Warmestré the haughty, who, "deceived apparently by

a bad reckoning, took the liberty of lying-in in the midst of the

court,"[289] They spoke in whispers about the attempts of Miss Hobart,

or the happy misfortune of Miss Churchill, who, being very plain, but

having the wit to fall from her horse, touched the eyes and heart of the

Duke of York. The Chevalier de Grammont relates to the king the history

of Termes, or of Poussatin the almoner; everyone leaves the dance to

hear it; and when it is over, they all burst out laughing. We perceive

that this is not the world of Louis XIV, and yet it is a world; and if

it has more froth, it runs with the identical current. The great object

here also is selfish amusement, and to put on appearances; people strive

to be men of fashion; a coat bestows a certain kind of glory on its

wearer. De Grammont was in despair when the roguery of his valet obliged

him to wear the same suit twice over. Another courtier piques himself on

his songs and his guitar-playing. "Russell had a collection of two or

three hundred quadrilles in tablature, all of which he used to dance

without ever having studied them." Jermyn was known for his success with

the fair. "A gentleman," said Etherege, "ought to dress well, dance

well, fence well, have a talent for love-letters, a pleasant voice in a

room, to be always very amorous, sufficiently discreet, but not too

constant." These are already the court manners as they continued in

France up to the time of Louis XVI. With such manners, words take the

place of deeds. Life is passed in visits and conversation. The art of

conversing became the chief of all; of course, to converse agreeably, to

fill up an idle hour, on twenty subjects in an hour, hinting always,

without going deep, in such a fashion that conversation should not be a

labor, but a promenade. It was followed up by letters written in the

evening, by madrigals or epigrams to be read in the morning, by

drawing-room tragedies, or caricatures of society. In this manner a new

literature was produced, the work and the portrait of the world which

was at once its audience and its model, which sprung from it, and ended

in it.

Section II.--Dawn of the Classic Spirit

The art of conversation being then a necessity, people set themselves to

acquire it. A revolution was effected in mind as well as in manners. As

soon as circumstances assume new aspects, thought assumes a new form.

The Renaissance is ended, the Classic Age begins, and the artist makes

room for the author. Man is returned from his first voyage round the

world of facts; enthusiasm, the labor of a troubled imagination, the

tumultuous crowding of new ideas, all the faculties which a first

discovery calls into play, have become satiated, then depressed. The

incentive is blunted, because the work is done. The eccentricities, the

far vistas, the unbridled originality, the all-powerful flights of

genius aimed at the centre of truth through the extremes of folly, all

the characteristics of grand inventive genius have disappeared. The

imagination is tempered; the mind is disciplined: it retraces its steps;

it walks its own domain once more with a satisfied curiosity, an

acquired experience. Judgment, as it were, chews the cud and corrects

itself. It finds a religion, an art, a philosophy, to reform or to form

anew. It is no longer the minister of inspired intuition, but of a

regular process of decomposition. It no longer feels or looks for

generalities; it handles and observes specialties. It selects and

classifies, it refines and regulates. It ceases to be a creator, and

becomes a discourser. It quits the province of invention and settles

down into criticism. It enters upon that magnificent and confused

aggregate of dogmas and forms, in which the preceding age has gathered

up indiscriminately its dreams and discoveries; it draws thence the

ideas which it modifies and verifies. It arranges them in long chains of

simple ratiocination, which descend link by link to the vulgar

apprehension. It expresses them in exact terms, which present a

graduated series, step by step, to the vulgar reasoning power. It marks

out in the entire field of thought a series of compartments and a

network of passages, which, excluding all error and digression, lead

gradually every mind to every object. It becomes at last clear,

convenient, charming. And the world lends its aid; contingent

circumstances finish the natural revolution; the taste becomes changed

through a declivity of its own, but also through the influence of the

court. When conversation becomes the chief business of life, it modifies

style after its own image, and according to its peculiar needs. It

repudiates digression, excessive metaphor, impassioned exclamations, all

loose and overstrained ways. We cannot bawl, gesticulate, dream aloud,

in a drawing-room; we restrain ourselves; we criticise and keep watch

over ourselves; we pass the time in narration and discussion; we stand

in need of concise expression, exact language, clear and connected

reasoning; otherwise we cannot fence or comprehend each other. Correct

style, good language, conversation, are self-generated, and very quickly

perfected; for refinement is the aim of the man of the world: he studies

to render everything more becoming and more serviceable, his furniture

and his speech, his periods and his dress. Art and artifice are there

the distinguishing mark. People pride themselves on being perfect in

their mother-tongue, never to miss the correct sense of any word, to

avoid vulgar expressions, to string together their antitheses, to

develop their thoughts, to employ rhetoric. Nothing is more marked than

the contrast of the conversations of Shakespeare and Fletcher with those

of Wycherley and Congreve. In Shakespeare the dialogue resembles an

assault of arms; we could imagine men of skill fencing with words and

gestures as it were in a fencing-school. They play the buffoon, sing,

think aloud, burst out into a laugh, into puns, into fishwomen's talk

and into poets' talk, into quaint whimsicalities; they have a taste for

the ridiculous, the sparkling; one of them dances while he speaks; they

would willingly walk on their hands; there is not one grain of

calculation to more than three grains of folly in their heads. In

Wycherley, on the other hand, the characters are steady; they reason and

dispute; ratiocination is the basis of their style; they are so perfect

that the thing is overdone, and we see through it all the author

stringing his phrases. They arrange a tableau, multiply ingenious

comparisons, balance well-ordered periods. One character delivers a

satire, another serves up a little essay on morality. We might draw from

the comedies of the time a volume of sentences; they are charged with

literary morsels which foreshadow the "Spectator."[290] They hunt for

clever and suitable expressions, they clothe indecent circumstances with

decent words; they glide swiftly over the fragile ice of decorum, and

scratch the surface without breaking it. I see gentlemen, seated in gilt

arm-chairs, of quiet wit and studied speech, cool in observation,

eloquent sceptics, expert in the fashions, lovers of elegance, liking

fine talk as much from vanity as from taste, who, while conversing

between a compliment and a reverence, will no more neglect their good

style than their neat gloves or their hat.

Section III.--Sir William Temple

Amongst the best and most agreeable specimens of this new refinement,

appears Sir William Temple, a diplomatist and man of the world,

cautions, prudent, and polite, gifted with tact in conversation and in

business, expert in the knowledge of the times, and in the art of not

compromising himself, adroit in pressing forward and in standing aside,

who knew how to attract to himself the favor and the expectations of

England, to obtain the eulogies of men of letters, of savants, of

politicians, of the people, to gain a European reputation, to win all

the crowns appropriated to science, patriotism, virtue, genius, without

having too much of science, patriotism, genius, or virtue. Such a life

is the masterpiece of that age: fine externals on a foundation not so

fine; this is its abstract. His manner as an author agrees with his

maxims as a politician. His principles and style are homogeneous; a

genuine diplomatist, such as one meets in the drawing-rooms, having

probed Europe and touched everywhere the bottom of things; tired of

everything, specially of enthusiasm, admirable in an arm-chair or at a

levée, a good storyteller, waggish if need were, but in moderation,

accomplished in the art of maintaining the dignity of his station and of

enjoying himself. In his retreat at Sheen, afterwards at Moor Park, he

employs his leisure in writing; and he writes as a man of his rank would

speak, very well, that is to say, with dignity and facility,

particularly when he writes of the countries he has visited, of the

incidents he has seen, the noble amusements which serve to pass his

time.[291] He has an income of fifteen hundred a year, and a nice

sinecure in Ireland. He retired from public life during momentous

struggles, siding neither with the king nor against him, resolved, as he

tells us himself, not to set himself against the current when the

current is irresistible. He lives peacefully in the country with his

wife, his sister, his secretary, his dependents, receiving the visits of

strangers, who are anxious to see the negotiator of the Triple Alliance,

and sometimes of the new King William, who, unable to obtain his

services, comes occasionally to seek his counsel. He plants and gardens,

in a fertile soil, in a country the climate of which agrees with him,

amongst regular flower-beds, by the side of a very straight canal,

bordered by a straight terrace; and he lauds himself in set terms, and

with suitable discreetness, for the character he possesses and the part

he has chosen: "I have often wondered how such sharp and violent

invectives come to be made so generally against Epicurus, by the ages

that followed him, whose admirable wit, felicity of expression,

excellence of nature, sweetness of conversation, temperance of life and

constancy of death, made him so beloved by his friends, admired by his

scholars, and honoured by the Athenians."[292] He does well to defend

Epicurus, because he has followed his precepts, avoiding every great

confusion of the mind, and installing himself, like one of Lucretius's

gods, in the interspace of worlds; as he says: "Where factions were once

entered and rooted in a state, they thought it madness for good men to

meddle with public affairs." And again: "The true service of the public

is a business of so much labour and so much care, that though a good and

wise man may not refuse it, if he be called to it by his prince or his

country, and thinks he may be of more than vulgar use, yet he will

seldom or never seek it; but leaves it commonly to men who, under the

disguise of public good, pursue their own designs of wealth, power, and

such bastard honours as usually attend them, not that which is the true,

and only true, reward of virtue."[293] This is how he ushers himself in.

Thus presented to us, he goes on to talk of the gardening which he

practises, and first of the six grand Epicureans who have illustrated

the doctrine of their master--Cæsar, Atticus, Lucretius, Horace,

Maecenas, Vergil; then of the various sorts of gardens which have a name

in the world, from the garden of Eden, and the garden of Alcinous, to

those of Holland and Italy; and all this at some length, like a man who

listens to himself and is listened to by others, who does rather

profusely the honors of his house and of his wit to his guests, but does

them with grace and dignity, not dogmatically nor haughtily, but in

varied tones, aptly modulating his voice and gestures. He recounts the

four kinds of grapes which he has introduced into England, and confesses

that he has been extravagant, yet does not regret it; for five years he

has not once wished to see London. He intersperses technical advice with

anecdotes; whereof one relates to Charles II, who praised the English

climate above all others, saying: "He thought that was the best climate,

where he could be abroad in the air with pleasure, or at least without

trouble or inconvenience, most days of the year, and most hours of the

day." Another about the Bishop of Munster, who, unable to grow anything

but cherries in his orchard, had collected all varieties, and so

perfected the trees that he had fruit from May to September. The reader

feels an inward gratification when he hears an eye-witness relate minute

details of such great men. Our attention is aroused immediately; we in

consequence imagine ourselves denizens of the court, and smile

complacently; no matter if the details be slender; they serve passably

well, they constitute "a half hour with the aristocracy," like a lordly

way of taking snuff or shaking the lace of one's ruffles. Such is the

interest of courtly conversation; it can be held about nothing; the

excellence of the manner lends this nothing a peculiar charm; you hear

the sound of the voice, you are amused by the half smile, abandon

yourself to the fluent stream, forget that these are ordinary ideas; you

observe the narrator, his peculiar breeches, the cane he toys with, the

beribboned shoes, his easy walk over the smooth gravel of his garden

paths between the faultless hedges; the ear, the mind even is charmed,

captivated by the appropriateness of his diction, by the abundance of

his ornate periods, by the dignity and fulness of a style which is

involuntarily regular, which, at first artificial, like good breeding,

ends, like true good breeding, by being changed into a real necessity

and a natural talent.

Unfortunately, this talent occasionally leads to blunders; when a man

speaks well about everything, he thinks he has a right to speak of

everything. He plays the philosopher, the critic, even the man of

learning; and indeed becomes so actually, at least with the ladies. Such

a man writes, like Temple, "Essays on the Nature of Government," on

"Heroic Virtue,"[294] on "Poetry"; that is, little treatises on society,

on the beautiful, on the philosophy of history. He is the Locke, the

Herder, the Bentley of the drawing-room, and nothing else. Now and then,

doubtless, his mother-wit leads him to fair original judgments. Temple

was the first to discover a Pindaric glow in the old chant of Ragnar

Lodbrog, and to place Don Quixote in the first rank of modern fictions;

moreover, when he handles a subject within his range, like the causes of

the power and decline of the Turks, his reasoning is admirable. But

otherwise, he is simply a tyro; nay, in him the pedant crops out, and

the worst of pedants, who, being ignorant, wishes to seem wise, who

quotes the history of every land, hauling in Jupiter, Saturn, Osiris,

Fo-hi, Confucius, Manco-Capac, Mahomet, and discourses on all these

obscure and unknown civilizations, as if he had laboriously studied

them, at the fountain-head and not at second hand, through the extracts

of his secretary, or the books of others. One day he came to grief;

having plunged into a literary dispute, and claimed superiority for the

ancients over the moderns, he imagined himself a Hellenist, an

antiquarian, related the voyages of Pythagoras, the education of

Orpheus, and remarked that the Greek sages "were commonly excellent

poets, and great physicians: they were so learned in natural philosophy,

that they foretold not only eclipses in the heavens, but earthquakes at

land and storms at sea, great droughts and great plagues, much plenty or

much scarcity of certain sorts of fruits of grain; not to mention the

magical powers attributed to several of them, to allay storms, to raise

gales, to appease commotions of people, to make plagues cease."[295]

Admirable faculties, which we no longer possess. Again he regretted the

decay of music, "by which men and beasts, fishes, fowls, and serpents,

were so frequently enchanted, and their very natures changed; by which

the passions of men were raised to the greatest height and violence, and

then as suddenly appeased, so as they might be justly said to be turned

into lions or lambs, into wolves or into harts, by the powers and charms

of this admirable art."[296] He wished to enumerate the greatest modern

writers, and forgot to mention in his catalogue, "amongst the Italians,

Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso; in his list of French, Pascal,

Bossuet, Molière, Corneille, Racine, and Boileau; in his list of

Spaniards, Lope and Calderon; and in his list of English, Chaucer,

Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton";[297] though, by way of compensation,

he inserted the names of Paolo Sarpi, Guevara, Sir Philip Sidney,

Selden, Voiture, and Bussy-Rabutiri, "author of the 'Histoire amoureuse

des Gaules.'" To cap all, he declared the fables of Æsop, which are a

dull Byzantine compilation, and the letters of Phalaris, a wretched

sophistical forgery, to be admirable and authentic: "It may perhaps be

further affirmed, in favor of the ancients, that the oldest books we

have are still in their kind the best. The two most ancient that I know

of in prose, among those we call profane authors, are Æsop's Fables and

Phalaris's Epistles, both living near the same time, which was that of

Cyrus and Pythagoras. As the first has been agreed by all ages since for

the greatest master in his kind, and all others of that sort have been

but imitations of his original; so I think the 'Epistles of Phalaris' to

have more grace, more spirit, more force of wit and genius, than any

others I have ever seen, either ancient or modern." And then, in order

to commit himself beyond remedy, he gravely remarked: "I know several

learned men (or that usually pass for such, under the name of critics)

have not esteemed them genuine, and Politian with some others have

attributed them to Lucian; but I think he must have little skill in

painting that cannot find out this to be an original: such diversity of

passions, upon such variety of actions and passages of life and

government, such freedom of thought, such boldness of expression, such

bounty to his friends, such scorn of his enemies, such honor of learned

men, such esteem of good, such knowledge of life, such contempt of

death, with such fierceness of nature and cruelty of revenge, could

never be represented but by him that possessed them; and I esteem Lucian

to have been no more capable of writing than of acting what Phalaris

did. In all one writ, you find the scholar or the sophist; and in all

the other, the tyrant and the commander."[298]

Fine rhetoric truly; it is sad that a passage so aptly turned should

cover so many stupidities. All this appeared very triumphant; and the

universal applause with which this fine oratorical bombast was greeted

demonstrates the taste and the culture, the hollowness and the

politeness, of the elegant world of which Temple was the marvel, and

which, like Temple, loved only the varnish of truth.

Section IV.--Writers à la Mode

Such were the ornate and polished manners which gradually pierce through

debauchery and assume the ascendant. Gradually the current grows

clearer, and marks out its course, like a stream, which forcibly

entering a new bed, moves with difficulty at first through a heap of

mud, then pushes forward its still murky waters, which are purified

little by little. These debauchees try to be men of the world, and

sometimes succeed in it. Wycherley writes well, very clearly, without

the least trace of euphuism, almost in the French manner. He makes

Dapperwit say of Lucy, in measured phrase, "She is beautiful without

affectation, amorous without impertinence,... frolic without

rudeness."[299] When he wishes it he is ingenious, and his gentlemen

exchange happy comparisons. "Mistresses," says one, "are like books: if

you pore upon them too much, they doze you, and make you unfit for

company; but if used discreetly, you are the fitter for conversation by

'em. Yes," says another, "a mistress should be like a little country

retreat near the town; not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night

and away, to taste the town the better when a man returns."[300] These

folk have style, even out of place, often not in accordance with the

situation or condition of the persons. A shoemaker in one of Etherege's

plays says: "There is never a man in the town lives more like a

gentleman with his wife than I do. I never mind her motions; she never

inquires into mine. We speak to one another civilly, hate one another

heartily." There is perfect art in this little speech; everything is

complete, even to the symmetrical antithesis of words, ideas, sounds:

what a fine talker is this same satirical shoemaker! After a satire, a

madrigal. In one place a certain character exclaims, in the very middle

of a dialogue, and in sober prose, "Pretty pouting lips, with a little

moisture hanging on them, that look like the Provence rose fresh on the

bush, ere the morning sun has quite drawn up the dew." Is not this the

graceful gallantry of the court? Rochester himself sometimes might

furnish a parallel. Two or three of his songs are still to be found in

the expurgated books of extracts in use among modest young girls. It

matters nothing that such men are really scamps; they must be every

moment using compliments and salutations: before women whom they wish to

seduce they are compelled to warble tender words and insipidities: they

acknowledge but one check, the necessity to appear well-bred; yet this

check suffices to restrain them. Rochester is correct even in the midst

of his filth; if he talks lewdly, it is in the able and exact manner of

Boileau. All these roisterers aim at being wits and men of the world.

Sir Charles Sedley ruins and pollutes himself, but Charles II calls him

"the viceroy of Apollo." Buckingham extols "the magic of his style." He

is the most charming, the most sought-after of talkers; he makes puns

and verses, always agreeable, sometimes refined; he handles dexterously

the pretty jargon of mythology; he insinuates into his airy, flowing

verses all the dainty and somewhat affected prettiness of the

drawing-room. He sings thus to Chloris:

"My passion with your beauty grew,

While Cupid at my heart,

Still as his mother favour'd you,

Threw a new flaming dart."

And then sums up:

"Each gloried in their wanton part:

To make a lover, he

Employ'd the utmost of his art;

To make a beauty, she."[301]

There is no love whatever in these pretty things; they are received as

they are presented, with a smile; thy form part of the conventional

language, the polite attentions due from gentlemen to ladies. I suppose

they would send them in the morning with a nosegay, or a box of

preserved fruits. Roscommon indites some verses on a dead lapdog, on a

young lady's cold; this naughty cold prevents her singing--cursed be the

winter! And hereupon he takes the winter to task, abuses it at length.

Here you have the literary amusements of the worldling. They first treat

love, then danger, most airily and gayly. On the eve of a naval contest,

Dorset, at sea, amidst the pitching of his vessel, addresses a

celebrated song to the ladies. There is nothing weighty in it, either

sentiment or wit; people hum the couplets as they pass; they emit a

gleam of gayety; the next moment they are forgotten. Dorset at sea

writes to the ladies, on the night before an engagement:

"Let's hear of no inconstancy,

We have too much of that at sea."

And again:

"Should foggy Opdam chance to know

Our sad and dismal story,

The Dutch would scorn so weak a foe,

And quit their fort at Goree.

For what resistance can they find

From men who've left their hearts behind?"

Then come jests too much in the English style:

"Then if we write not by each post,

Think not we are unkind;...

Our tears we'll send a speedier way;

The tide shall bring them twice a day."

Such tears can hardly flow from sorrow; the lady regards them as the

lover sheds them, good-naturedly. She is "at a play" (he thinks so, and

tells her so):

"Whilst you, regardless of our woe,

Sit careless at a play,

Perhaps permit some happier man

To kiss your hand, or flirt your fan."[302]

Dorset hardly troubles himself about it, plays with poetry without

excess or assiduity, just as it flows, writing to-day a verse against

Dorinda, to-morrow a satire against Mr. Howard, always easily and

without study, like a true gentleman. He is an earl, lord-chamberlain,

and rich; he pensions and patronizes poets as he would flirts--to amuse

himself, without binding himself. The Duke of Buckingham does the same,

and also the contrary; caresses one poet, parodies another; is

flattered, mocked, and ends by having his portrait taken by Dryden--a

_chef d'œuvre_, but not flattering. We have seen such pastimes and such

bickerings in France; we find here the same manners and the same

literature, because we find here also the same society and the same

spirit.

Among these poets, and in the front rank, is Edmund Waller, who lived

and wrote in this manner to his eighty-second year: a man of wit and

fashion, well-bred, familiar from his youth with great people, endued

with tact and foresight, quick at repartee, not easy to put out of

countenance, but selfish, with hardly any feelings, having changed sides

more than once, and bearing very well the memory of his tergiversations;

in short, a good model of the worldling and the courtier. It was he who,

having once praised Cromwell, and afterwards Charles II, but the latter

mote feebly than the former, said by way of excuse: "Poets, your

Majesty, succeed better in fiction than in truth." In this kind of

existence, three-quarters of the poetry is written for the occasion; it

is the small change of conversation or flattery; it resembles the little

events or the little sentiments from which it sprang. One piece is

written "Of Tea," another on the queen's portrait; it is necessary to

pay court; moreover "His Majesty has requested some verses." One lady

makes him a present of a silver pen, straight he throws his gratitude

into rhyme; another has the power of sleeping at will, straight a

sportive stanza; a false report is spread of her being painted, straight

a copy of verses on this grave affair. A little further on there are

verses to the Countess of Carlisle on her chamber, condolences to my

Lord of Northumberland on the death of his wife, a pretty thing on a

lady "passing through a crowd of people," an answer, verse for verse, to

some rhymes of Sir John Suckling. He seizes anything frivolous, new, or

becoming on the wing; and his poetry is only a written conversation--I

mean the conversation which goes on at a ball, when people speak for the

sake of speaking, lifting a lock of one's wig, or twisting about a

glove. Gallantry holds the chief place here, as it ought to do, and we

may be pretty certain that the love is not over-sincere. In reality,

Waller sighs on purpose (Sacharissa had a fine dowry), or at least for

the sake of good manners: that which is most evident in his tender poems

is, that he aims at a flowing style and good rhymes. He is affected, he

exaggerates, he strains after wit, he is always an author. Not venturing

to address Sacharissa herself, he addresses Mrs. Braughton, her

attendant, "his fellow-servant":

"So, in those nations which the Sun adore,

Some modest Persian, or some weak-eyed Moor,

No higher dares advance his dazzled sight

Than to some gilded cloud, which near the light

Of their ascending god adorns the east,

And, graced with his beam, outshines the rest."[303]

A fine comparison! That is a well-made courtesy; I hope Sacharissa

responds with one equally correct. His despairs bear the same flavor; he

pierces the groves of Penshurst with his cries, "reports his flame to

the beeches," and the well-bred beeches "bow their heads, as' if they

felt the same."[304] It is probable that, in these mournful walks, his

greatest care was lest he should wet the soles of his high-heeled shoes.

These transports of love bring in the classical machinery, Apollo and

the Muses. Apollo is annoyed that one of his servants is ill-treated,

and bids him depart; and he departs, telling Sacharissa that she is

harder than an oak, and that she was certainly produced from a

rock.[305]

There is one genuine reality in all this--sensuality; not ardent, but

light and gay. There is a certain piece, "The Fall," which an abbé of

the court of Louis XV might have written:

"Then blush not, Fair! or on him frown,...

How could the youth, alas! but bend

When his whole Heav'n upon him lean'd?

If aught by him amiss were done,

'Twas that he let you rise so soon."[306]

Other pieces smack of their surroundings, and are not so polished:

"Amoret! as sweet as good,

As the most delicious food,

Which but tasted does impart

Life and gladness to the heart."[307]

I should not be pleased, were I a woman, to be compared to a beef-steak,

though that be appetizing; nor should I like any more to find myself,

like Sacharissa, placed on a level with good wine, which flies to the

head:

"Sacharissa's beauty's wine,

Which to madness doth incline;

Such a liquor as no brain

That is mortal can sustain."[308]

This is too much honor for port wine and meat. The English background

crops up here and elsewhere; for example, the beautiful Sacharissa,

having ceased to be beautiful, asked Waller if he would again write

verses for her: he answered, "Yes, madame, when you are once more as

young and as handsome as you were." Here is something to shock a

Frenchman. Nevertheless Waller is usually amiable; a sort of brilliant

light floats like a halo round his verses; he is always elegant, often

graceful. His gracefulness is like the perfume exhaled from the world;

fresh toilettes, ornamented drawing-rooms, the abundance and the pursuit

of all those refined and delicate comforts give to the mind a sort of

sweetness which is breathed forth in obliging compliments and smiles.

Waller has many of these compliments and smiles, and those most

flattering, _à propos_ of a bud, a girdle, a rose. Such bouquets become

his hands and his art. He pays an excellent compliment "To young Lady

Lucy Sidney" on her age. And what could be more attractive for a

frequenter of drawing-rooms, than this bud of still unopened youth, but

which blushes already, and is on the point of expanding?

"Yet, fairest blossom! do not slight

That age which you may know so soon.

The rosy morn resigns her light

And milder glory to the noon."[309]

All his verses flow with a continuous harmony, clearness, facility,

though his voice is never raised, or out of tune, or rough, nor loses

its true accent, except by the worldling's affectation, which regularly

changes all tones in order to soften them. His poetry resembles one of

those pretty, affected, bedizened women, busy in inclining their heads

on one side, and murmuring with a soft voice commonplace things which

they can hardly be said to think, yet agreeable in their beribboned

dresses, and who would please altogether if they did not dream of always

pleasing.

It is not that these men cannot handle grave subjects; but they handle

them in their own fashion, without gravity or depth. What the courtier

most lacks is the genuine sentiment of a true and original idea. That

which interests him most is the correctness of the adornment, and the

perfection of external form. They care little for the matter itself,

much for the outward shape. In fact, it is form which they take for

their subject in nearly all their serious poetry; they are critics, they

lay down precepts, they compose Arts of Poetry. Denham in his "Preface

to the Destruction of Troy" lays down rules for translating, whilst

Roscommon teaches in a complete poem, an "Essay on Translated Verse,"

the art of translating poetry well. The Duke of Buckinghamshire

versified an "Essay on Poetry" and an "Essay on Satire." Dryden is in

the first rank of these pedagogues. Like Dryden again, they turn

translators, amplifiers. Roscommon translated the "Ars Poetica" of

Horace; Waller, the first act of "Pompée," a tragedy by Corneille;

Denham some fragments of Homer and Vergil, and two poems, one "Of

Prudence" and another "Of Justice." Rochester composed a satire against

Mankind, in the style of Boileau, and also an epistle upon Nothing; the

amorous Waller wrote a didactic poem on "The Fear of God," and another

in six cantos on "Divine Love." These are exercises of style. They take

a theological thesis, a commonplace subject of philosophy, a poetic

maxim, and develop it in jointed prose, furnished with rhymes; invent

nothing, feel little, and only aim at expressing good arguments in

classical metaphors, in noble terms, after a conventional model. Most of

their verses consist of two nouns, furnished with epithets, and

connected by a verb, like college Latin verses. The epithet is good:

they had to hunt through the Gradus for it, or, as Boileau wills it,

they had to carry the line unfinished in their heads, and had to think

about it an hour in the open air, until at last, at the corner of a

wood, they found the right word which they could not hit upon before. I

yawn, but applaud. After so much trouble a generation ends by forming

the sustained style which is necessary to support, make public, and

demonstrate grand things. Meanwhile, with their ornate, official

diction, and their borrowed thought they are like formal chamberlains,

in embroidered coats, present at a royal marriage or an imperial

baptism, empty of head, grave in manner, admirable for dignity and

bearing, with the punctilio and the ideas of a dummy.

Section V.--Sir John Denham

One of them only (Dryden always excepted) showed talent, Sir John

Denham, Charles I's secretary. He was employed in public affairs, and

after a dissolute youth, turned to serious habits; and leaving behind

him satiric verse and party broad-jokes, attained in riper years a lofty

oratorical style. His best poem, "Cooper's Hill," is the description of

a hill and its surroundings, blended with the historical ideas which the

sight recalls, and the moral reflections which its appearance naturally

suggests. All these subjects are in accordance with the nobility and the

limitation of the classical spirit, and display his vigor without

betraying his weaknesses; the poet could show off his whole talent

without forcing it. His fine language exhibits all its beauty, because

it is sincere. We find pleasure in following the regular progress of

those copious phrases in which his ideas, opposed or combined, attain

for the first time their definite place and full clearness, where

symmetry only brings out the argument more clearly, expansion only

completes thought, antithesis and repetition do not induce trifling and

affectation, where the music of verse, adding the breadth of sound to

the fulness of sense, conducts the chain of ideas, without effort or

disorder, by an appropriate measure to a becoming order and movement.

Gratification is united with solidity; the author of "Cooper's Hill,"

knows how to please as well as to impress. His poem is like a king's

park, dignified and level without doubt, but arranged to please the eye,

and full of choice prospects. It leads us by easy digressions across a

multitude of varied thoughts. It shows us here a mountain, yonder a

memorial of the nymphs, a classic memorial, like a portico filled with

statues, further on a broad stream, and by its side the ruins of an

abbey; each page of the poem is like a distinct alley, with its distinct

perspective. Further on, our thoughts are turned to the superstitions of

the ignorant Middle Ages, and to the excesses of the recent revolution;

then comes the picture of a royal hunt; we see the trembling stag make

his retreat to some dark covert:

"He calls to mind his strength, and then his speed,

His winged heels, and then his armed head;

With these t' avoid, with that his fate to meet;

But fear prevails, and bids him trust his feet.

So fast he flies, that his reviewing eye

Has lost the chasers, and his ear the cry."[310]

These are the worthy spectacles and the studied diversity of the grounds

of a nobleman. Every object, moreover, receives here, as in a king's

palace, all the adornment which can be given to it; elegant epithets are

introduced to embellish a feeble substantive, the decorations of art

transform the commonplace of nature: vessels are "floating towers"; the

Thames is "the most loved of all the Ocean's sons"; the airy mountain

hides its proud head among the clouds, whilst a shady mantle clothes its

sides. Among different kinds of ideas, there is one kingly, full of

stately and magnificent ceremonies of self-contained and studied

gestures, of correct yet commanding figures, uniform and imposing like

the appointments of a palace; hence the classic writers, and Denham

amongst them, draw all their poetic tints. From this every object and

event takes its coloring, because constrained to come into contact with

it. Here the object and events are compelled to traverse other things.

Denham is not a mere courtier, he is an Englishman; that is, preoccupied

by moral emotions. He often quits his landscape to enter into some grave

reflection; politics, religion, disturb the enjoyment of his eyes; in

reference to a hill or forest, he meditates upon man; externals lead him

inward; impressions of the senses to contemplations of the soul. The men

of this race are by nature and custom esoteric. When he sees the Thames

throw itself into the sea, he compares it with "mortal life hasting to

meet eternity." The "lofty forehead" of a mountain, beaten by storms,

reminds him of "the common fate of all that's high or great." The course

of the river suggests to him ideas of inner reformation:

"O could I flow like thee! and make thy stream

My great example, as it is my theme!

Though deep, yet clear, though gentle yet not dull;

Strong without rage, without o'erflowing, full.

"But his proud head the airy mountain hides

Among the clouds; his shoulders and his sides

A shady mantle clothes; his curled brows

Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows;

While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat,

The common fate of all that's high or great."[311]

There is in the English mind an indestructible store of moral instincts,

and grand melancholy; and it is the greatest confirmation of this, that

we can discover such a stock at the court of Charles II.

These are, however, but rare openings, and as it were crop-pings up of

the original rock. The habits of the worldling are as a thick layer

which cover it throughout. Manners, conversation, style, the stage,

taste, all is French, or tries to be; they imitate France as well as

they are able, and go there to mould themselves. Many cavaliers went

there, driven away by Cromwell. Denham, Waller, Roscommon, and Rochester

resided there; the Duchess of Newcastle, a poetess of the time, was

married at Paris; the Duke of Buckinghamshire served for a short time

under Turenne; Wycherley was sent to France by his father, who wished to

rescue him from the contagion of Puritan opinions; Vanbrugh, one of the

best comic playwrights, went thither to contract a polish. The two

courts were allied almost always in fact, and always at heart, by a

community of interests, and of religious and monarchical ideas. Charles

II accepted from Louis XIV a pension, a mistress, counsels, and

examples; the nobility followed their prince, and France was the model

of the English court. Her literature and manners, the finest of the

classic age, led the fashion. We perceive in English writings that

French authors are their masters, and that they were in the hands of all

well-educated people. They consulted Bossuet, translated Corneille,

imitated Molière, respected Boileau. It went so far, that the greatest

gallants of them tried to be altogether French, to mix some scraps of

French in every phrase. "It is as ill-breeding now to speak good

English," says Wycherley, "as to write good English, good sense, or a

good hand." These Frenchified coxcombs[312] are compliment-mongers,

always powdered, perfumed, "eminent for being _bien gantés._" They

affect delicacy, they are fastidious; they find Englishmen coarse,

gloomy, stiff; they try to be giddy and thoughtless; they giggle and

prate at random, placing the reputation of man in the perfection of his

wig and his bows. The theatre, which ridicules these imitators, is an

imitator after their fashion. French comedy, like French politeness,

becomes their model. They copy both, altering without equalling them;

for monarchical and classic France is, amongst all nations, the best

fitted from its instincts and institutions for the modes of worldly

life, and the works of an oratorical mind. England follows it in this

course, being carried away by the universal current of the age, but at a

distance, and drawn aside by its national peculiarities. It is this

common direction and this particular deviation which the society and its

poetry have proclaimed, and which the stage and its characters will

display.

Section VI.--Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh and Farquhar

Four principal writers established this comedy--Wycherley, Congreve,

Vanbrugh, Farquhar:[313] the first gross, and in the pristine irruption

of vice; the others more sedate, possessing more a taste for urbanity

than debauchery; yet all men of the world, and priding themselves on

their good breeding, on passing their days at court or in fine company,

on having the tastes and bearing of gentlemen. "I am not a literary

man," said Congreve to Voltaire, "I am a gentleman." In fact, as Pope

said, he lived more like a man of quality than a man of letters, was

noted for his successes With the fair, and passed his latter years in

the house of the Duchess of Marlborough. I have said that Wycherley,

under Charles II, was one of the most fashionable courtiers. He served

in the army for some time, as did also Vanbrugh and Farquhar; nothing is

more gallant than the name of Captain which they employed, the military

stories they brought back, and the feather they stuck in their hats.

They all wrote comedies oft the same worldly and classical model, made

up of probable incidents such as we observe around us every day, of

well-bred characters such as we commonly meet in a drawing-room, correct

and elegant conversations such as well-bred men can carry on. This

theatre, wanting in poetry, fancy, and adventures, imitative and

discursive, was formed at the same time as that of Molière, by the same

causes, and on his model, so that in order to comprehend it we must

compare it with that of Molière.

"Molière belongs to no nation," said a great English actor (Kemble);

"one day the god of comedy, wishing to write, became a man, and happened

to fall into France." I accept this saying; but in becoming a man, he

found himself, at the same time, a man of the seventeenth century and a

Frenchman, and that is how he was the god of comedy. "To amuse

respectable people," said Molière, "what a strange task!" Only the

French art of the seventeenth century could succeed in that; for it

consists in leading by an agreeable path to general notions; and the

taste for these notions, as well as the custom of treading this path, is

the peculiar mark of respectable people. Molière, like Racine, expands

and creates. Open any one of his plays that comes to hand, and the first

scene in it, chosen at random; after three replies you are carried away,

or rather led away. The second continues the first, the third carries

out the second, the fourth completes all; a current is created which

bears us on, which bears us away, which does not release us until it is

exhausted. There is no check, no digression, no episodes to distract our

attention. To prevent the lapses of an absent mind, a secondary

character intervenes, a lackey, a lady's maid, a wife, who, couplet by

couplet, repeat in a different fashion the reply of the principal

character, and by means of symmetry and contrast keep us in the path

laid down. Arrived at the end, a second current seizes us and acts like

the first. It is composed like the other, and with reference to the

other. It throws it out by contrast, or strengthens it by resemblance.

Here the valets repeat the dispute, then the reconciliation of their

masters. In one place, Alceste, drawn in one direction through three

pages, by anger, is drawn in a contrary direction, and through three

pages, by love. Further on, tradesmen, professors, relatives, domestics,

relieve each other scene after scene, in order to bring out in clearer

light the pretentiousness and gullibility of M. Jourdain. Every scene,

every act, brings out in greater relief, completes, or prepares another.

Everything is united, and everything is simple; the action progresses,

and progresses only to carry on the idea; there is no complication, no

incidents. One comic event suffices for the story. A dozen conversations

make up the play of the "Misanthrope." The same situation, five or six

times renewed, is the whole of "L'École des Femmes." These pieces are

made out of nothing. They have no need of incidents, they find ample

space in the compass of one room and one day, without surprises, without

decoration, with an arras and four arm-chairs. This paucity of matter

throws out the ideas more clearly and quickly; in fact, their whole aim

is to bring those ideas prominently forward; the simplicity of the

subject, the progress of the action, the linking together of the

scenes--to this everything tends. At every step clearness increases,

the impression is deepened, vice stands out: ridicule is piled up,

until, before so many apt and united appeals, laughter forces its way

and breaks forth. And this laughter is not a mere outburst of physical

amusement; it is the judgment which incites it. The writer is a

philosopher, who brings us into contact with a universal truth by a

particular example. We understand through him, as through La Bruyère or

Nicole, the force of prejudice, the obstinacy of conventionality, the

blindness of love. The couplets of his dialogue, like the arguments of

their treatises, are but the worked-out proof and the logical

justification of a preconceived conclusion. We philosophize with him on

humanity; we think because he has thought. And he has only thought thus

in the character of a Frenchman, for an audience of French men of the

world. In him we taste a national pleasure. French refined and

systematic intelligence, the most exact in seizing on the subordination

of ideas, the most ready in separating ideas from matter, the most fond

of clear and tangible ideas, find in him its nourishment and its echo.

None who has sought to show us mankind, has led us by a straighter and

easier mode to a more distinct and speaking portrait. I will add, to a

more pleasing portrait--and this is the main talent of comedy: it

consists in keeping back what is hateful; and observe that which is

hateful abounds in the world. As soon as you will paint the world truly,

philosophically, you meet with vice, injustice, and everywhere

indignation; amusement flees before anger and morality. Consider the

basis of Tartuffe; an obscene pedant, a red-faced hypocritical wretch,

who, palming himself off on a decent and refined family, tries to drive

the son away, marry the daughter, corrupt the wife, ruin and imprison

the father, and almost succeeds in it, not by clever plots, but by

vulgar mummery, and by the coarse audacity of his caddish disposition.

What could be more repelling? And how is amusement to be drawn from such

a subject, where Beaumarchais and La Bruyère failed?[314] Similarly, in

the "Misanthrope," is not the spectacle of a loyally sincere and honest

man, very much in love, whom his virtue finally overwhelms with ridicule

and drives from society, a sad sight to see? Rousseau was annoyed that

it should produce laughter; and if we were to look upon the subject, not

in Molière, but in itself, we should find enough to revolt our natural

generosity. Recall his other plots; Georges Dandin mystified, Géronte

beaten, Arnolphe duped, Harpagon plundered, Sganarelle married, girls

seduced, louts thrashed, simpletons turned financiers. There are sorrows

here, and deep ones; many would rather weep than laugh at them.

Arnolphe, Dandin, Harpagon, are almost tragic characters; and when we

see them in the world instead of the theatre, we are not disposed to

sarcasm, but to pity. Picture to yourself the originals from whom

Molière has taken his doctors. Consider this venturesome

experimentalist, who, in the interest of science, tries a new saw, or

inoculates a virus; think of his long nights at the hospital, the wan

patient carried on a mattress to the operating-table, and stretching out

his leg to the knife; or again imagine the peasant's bed of straw in the

damp cottage, where an old dropsical mother lies choking,[315] while her

children grudgingly count up the crowns she has already cost them. You

quit such scenes deeply moved, filled with sympathy for human misery;

you discover that life, seen near and face to face, is a mass of trivial

harshnesses and grievous passions; you are tempted, if you wish to

depict it, to enter into the mire of sorrows whereon Balzac and

Shakespeare have built: you see in it no other poetry than that

audacious reasoning power which from such a confusion abstracts the

master-forces, or the light of genius which flickers over the swarm and

the falls of so many polluted and wounded wretches. How everything

changes under the hand of a mercurial Frenchman! how all this human

ugliness is blotted out! how amusing is the spectacle which Molière has

arranged for us! how we ought to thank the great artist for having

transformed his subject so well! At last we have a cheerful world, on

canvas at least; we could not have it otherwise, but this we have. How

pleasant it is to forget truth! what an art is that which divests us of

ourselves! what a point of view which converts the contortions of

suffering into funny grimaces! Gayety has come upon us, the dearest

possession of a Frenchman. The soldiers of Villars used to dance that

they might forget they had no longer any bread. Of all French

possessions, too, it is the best. This gift does not destroy thought,

but it masks it. In Molière, truth is at the bottom, but concealed; he

has heard the sobs of human tragedy, but he prefers not to re-echo them.

It is quite enough to feel our wounds smart; let us not go to the

theatre to see them again. Philosophy, while it reveals them, advises us

not to think of them too much. Let us enliven our condition with the

gayety of easy conversation and light wit, as we would the chamber of

sickness. Let us cover Tartuffe, Harpagon, the doctors, with outrageous

ridicule: ridicule will make us forget their vices; they will afford us

amusement instead of causing horror. Let Alceste be grumpy and awkward.

It is in the first place true, because our more valiant virtues are only

the outbreaks of a temper out of harmony with circumstances; but, in

addition, it will be amusing, His mishaps will cease to make him the

martyr of justice; they will only be the consequences of a cross-grained

character. As to the mystifications of husbands, tutors, and fathers, I

fancy that we are not to see in them a concerted attack on society or

morality. We are only entertaining ourselves for one evening, nothing

more. The syringes and thrashings, the masquerades and dances, prove

that it is a sheer piece of buffoonery. Do not be afraid that philosophy

will perish in a pantomime; it is present even in the "Marriage Forcé,"

even in the "Malade Imaginaire." It is the mark of a Frenchman and a man

of the world to clothe everything, even that which is serious, in

laughter. When he is thinking, he does not always wish to show it. In

his most violent moments he is still the master of the house, the polite

host; he conceals from you his thoughts or his suffering. Mirabeau, when

in agony, said to one of his friends with a smile, "Come, you who take

an interest in plucky deaths, you shall see mine!" The French talk in

this style when they are depicting life; no other nation knows how to

philosophize smartly, and die with good taste.

This is the reason why in no other nation comedy, while it continues

comic, affords a moral; Molière is the only man who gives us models

without getting pedantic, without trenching on the tragic, without

growing solemn. This model is the "respectable man," as the phrase was,

Philinte, Ariste, Clitandre, Éraste;[316] there is no other who can at

the same time instruct and amuse us. His talent has reflection for its

basis, but it is cultivated by the world. His character has honesty for

its basis, but it is in harmony with the world. You may imitate him

without transgressing either reason or duty; he is neither a coxcomb nor

a roisterer. You can imitate him without neglecting your interests or

making yourself ridiculous; he is neither an ignoramus nor unmannerly.

He has read and understands the jargon of Trissotin and Lycidas, but in

order to pierce them through and through, to beat them with their own

arguments, to set the gallery in a roar at their expense. He will

discuss even morality and religion, but in a style so natural, with

proofs so clear, with warmth so genuine, that he interests women, and is

listened to by men of the world. He knows man, and reasons about him,

but in such brief sentences, such living delineations, such pungent

humor, that his philosophy is the best of entertainments. He is faithful

to his ruined mistress, his calumniated friend, but gracefully, without

fuss. All his actions, even noble ones, have an easy way about them

which adorns them; he does nothing without pleasantness. His great

talent is knowledge of the world; he shows it not only in the trivial

circumstances of everyday life, but in the most passionate scenes, the

most embarrassing positions. A noble swordsman wants to take Philinte,

the "respectable man," as his second in a duel; he reflects a moment,

excuses himself in a score of phrases, and "without playing the Hector,"

leaves the bystanders convinced that he is no coward. Armande insults

him, then throws herself in his arms; he politely averts the storm,

declines the reconciliation with the most loyal frankness, and without

employing a single falsehood, leaves the spectators convinced that he is

no boor. When he loves Éliante,[317] who prefers Alceste, and whom

Alceste may possibly marry, he proposes to her with a complete delicacy

and dignity, without lowering himself, without recrimination, without

wronging himself or his friend. When Oronte reads him a sonnet, he does

not assume in the fop a nature which he has not, but praises the

conventional verses in conventional language, and is not so clumsy as to

display a poetical judgment which would be out of place. He takes at

once his tone from the circumstances; he perceives instantly what he

must say and what be silent about, in what degree and in what

gradations, what exact expedient will reconcile truth and conventional

propriety, how far he ought to go or where to take his stand, what faint

line separates decorum from flattery, truth from awkwardness. On this

narrow path he proceeds free from embarrassment or mistakes, never put

out of his way by the shocks or changes of circumstance, never allowing

the calm smile of politeness to quit his lips, never omitting to receive

with a laugh of good humor the nonsense of his neighbor. This

cleverness, entirely French, reconciles in him fundamental honesty and

worldly breeding; without it, he would be altogether on the one side or

the other. In his way comedy finds its hero half-way between the _roué_

and the preacher.

Such a theatre depicts a race and an age. This mixture of solidity and

elegance belongs to the seventeenth century, and belongs to France. The

world does not deprave, it develops Frenchmen; it polished then not only

their manners and their homes, but also their sentiments and ideas.

Conversation provoked thought; it was no mere talk, but an inquiry; with

the exchange of news, it called forth the interchange of reflections.

Theology and philosophy entered into it; morals, and the observation of

the heart, formed its daily pabulum. Science kept up its vitality, and

lost only its aridity. Pleasantness cloaked reason, but did not smother

it. Frenchmen never think better than in society; the play of features

excites them; their ready ideas flash into lightning, in their shock

with the ideas of others. The varied current of conversation suits their

fits and starts; the frequent change of subject fosters their invention;

the pungency of piquant speeches reduces truth to small but precious

coin, suitable to the lightness of their hands. And the heart is no more

tainted by it than the intelligence. The Frenchman is of a sober

temperament, with little taste for the brutishness of the drunkard, for

violent joviality, for the riot of loose suppers; he is moreover gentle,

obliging, always ready to please; in order to set him at ease he needs

that flow of good-will and elegance which polite society creates and

cherishes. And in accordance therewith, he shapes his temperate and

amiable inclinations into maxims; it is a point of honor with him to be

serviceable and refined. Such is the gentleman, the product of society

in a sociable race. It was not so with the English. Their ideas do not

spring up in chance conversation, but by the concentration of solitary

thought; this is the reason why ideas were then wanting. Their

gentlemanly feelings are not the fruit of sociable instincts, but of

personal reflection; that is why gentlemanly feelings were then at a

discount. The brutish foundation remained; the outside alone was smooth.

Manners were gentle, sentiments harsh; speech was studied, ideas

frivolous. Thought and refinement of soul were rare, talent and fluent

wit abundant. There was politeness of manner, not of heart; they had

only the set rules and the conventionalities of life, its giddiness and

heedlessness.

Section VII.--Superficiality Of English Comedy

The English comedy-writers paint these vices, and possess them. Their

talent and their stage are tainted by them. Art and philosophy are

absent. The authors do not advance upon a general idea, and they do not

proceed by the most direct method. They put together ill, and are

embarrassed by materials. Their pieces have generally two intermingled

plots, manifestly distinct,[318] combined in order to multiply

incidents, and because the public demands a multitude of characters and

facts. A strong current of boisterous action is necessary to stir up

their dense appreciation; they do as the Romans did, who packed several

Greek plays into one. They grew tired of the French simplicity of

action, because they had not the French refined taste. The two series of

actions mingle and jostle one with another. We cannot see where we are

going; every moment we are turned out of our path. The scenes are ill

connected; they change twenty times from place to place. When one scene

begins to develop itself, a deluge of incidents interrupts. An

irrelevant dialogue drags on between the incidents, suggesting a book

with the notes introduced promiscuously into the text. There is no plan

carefully conceived and rigorously carried out; they took, as it were, a

plan, and wrote out the scenes one after another, pretty much as they

came into their head. Probability is not well cared for. There are

poorly arranged disguises, ill simulated folly, mock marriages, and

attacks by robbers worthy of the comic opera. In order to obtain a

sequence of ideas and probability, we must set out from some general

idea. The conception of avarice, hypocrisy, the education of women,

ill-assorted marriages, arranges and binds together by its individual

power incidents which are to reveal it. But in the English comedy we

look in vain for such a conception. Congreve, Farquhar, Vanbrugh, are

only men of wit, not thinkers. They skim the surface of things, but do

not penetrate. They play with their characters. They aim at success, at

amusement. They sketch caricatures, they spin out in lively fashion a

vain and bantering conversation; they make answers clash with one

another, fling forth paradoxes; their nimble fingers manipulate and

juggle with the incidents in a hundred ingenious and unlooked-for ways.

They have animation, they abound in gesture and repartee; the constant

bustle of the stage and its lively spirit surround them with continual

excitement. But the pleasure is only skin-deep; we have seen nothing of

the eternal foundation and the real nature of mankind; we carry no

thought away; we have passed an hour, and that is all; the amusement

teaches us nothing, and serves only to fill up the evenings of coquettes

and coxcombs.

Moreover, this pleasure is not real; it has no resemblance to the hearty

laugh of Molière. In English comedy there is always an undercurrent of

tartness. We have seen this, and more, in Wycherley; the others, though

less cruel, joke sourly. Their characters in a joke say harsh things to

one another; they amuse themselves by hurting each other; a Frenchman is

pained to hear this interchange of mock politeness; he does not go to

blows by way of fun. Their dialogue turns naturally to virulent satire;

instead of covering vice, it makes it prominent; instead of making it

ridiculous, it makes it odious:

"_Clarissa._ Prithee, tell me how you have passed the night?...

_Araminta._ Why, I have been studying all the ways my brain could

produce to plague my husband.

_Cl._ No wonder indeed you look so fresh this morning, after the

satisfaction of such pleasing ideas all night"[319]

These women are really wicked, and that too openly. Throughout vice is

crude, pushed to extremes, served up with material adjuncts. Lady Fidget

says: "Our virtue is like the statesman's religion, the Quaker's word,

the gamester's oath, and the great man's honour; but to cheat those that

trust us."[320] Or again: "If you'll consult the widows of this town,"

says a young lady who does not wish to marry again, "they'll tell you,

you should never take a lease of a house you can hire for a quarter's

warning."[321] Or again: "My heart cut a caper up to my mouth," says a

young heir, "when I heard my father was shot through the head."[322] The

gentlemen collar each other on the stage, treat the ladies roughly

before spectators, contrive an adultery not far off between the wings.

Base or ferocious parts abound. There are furies like Mrs. Loveit and

Lady Touchwood. There are swine like Parson Bull and the go-between

Coupler. Lady Touchwood wants to stab her lover on the stage.[323]

Coupler, on the stage, uses gestures which recall the court of Henry III

of France. Wretches like Fainall and Maskwell are unmitigated

scoundrels, and their hatefulness is not even cloaked by the grotesque.

Even honest women like Silvia and Mrs. Sullen are plunged into the most

shocking situations. Nothing shocked the English public of those days;

they had no real education, but only its varnish.

There is a forced connection between the mind of a writer, the world

which surrounds him, and the characters which he produces; for it is

from this world that he draws the materials out of which he composes

them. The sentiments which he contemplates in others and feels himself

are gradually arranged into characters; he can only invent after his

given model and his acquired experience; and his characters only

manifest what he is, or abridge what he has seen. Two features are

prominent in this world; they are prominent also on this stage. All the

successful characters can be reduced to two classes--natural beings on

the one part, and artificial on the other; the first with the coarseness

and shamelessness of their primitive inclinations, the second with the

frivolities and vices of worldly habits: the first uncultivated, their

simplicity revealing nothing but their innate baseness; the second

cultivated, their refinement instilling into them nothing but a new

corruption. And the talent of the writers is suited to the painting of

these two groups: they possess the grand English faculty, which is the

knowledge of exact detail and real sentiments; they see gestures,

surroundings, dresses; they hear the sounds of voices, and they have the

courage to exhibit them; they have inherited very little, and at a great

distance, and in spite of themselves, still they have inherited from

Shakespeare; they manipulate freely, and without any softening, the

coarse harsh red color which alone can bring out the figures of their

brutes. On the other hand, they have animation and a good style; they

can express the thoughtless chatter, the frolicsome affectations, the

inexhaustible and capricious abundance of drawing-room stupidities; they

have as much liveliness as the maddest, and at the same time they speak

as well as the best instructed; they can give the model of witty

conversation; they have lightness of touch, brilliancy, and also

facility, exactness, without which you cannot draw the portrait of a man

of the world. They find naturally on their palette the strong colors

which suit their barbarians, and the pretty tints which suit their

exquisites.

Section VIII.--Natural Characters

First there is the blockhead, Squire Sullen, a low kind of sot, of whom

his wife speaks in this fashion: "After his man and he had rolled about

the room, like sick passengers in a storm, he comes flounce into bed,

dead as a salmon into a fishmonger's basket; his feet cold as ice, his

breath hot as a furnace, and his hands and his face as greasy as his

flannel nightcap. O matrimony! He tosses up the clothes with a barbarous

swing over his shoulders, disorders the whole economy of my bed, leaves

me half naked, and my whole night's comfort is the tuneable serenade of

that wakeful nightingale, his nose!"[324] Sir John Brute says: "What the

plague did I marry her (his wife) for? I knew she did not like me; if

she had, she would have lain with me."[325] He turns his drawing-room

into a stable, smokes it foul to drive the women away, throws his pipe

at their heads, drinks, swears, and curses. Coarse words and oaths flow

through his conversation like filth through a gutter. He gets drunk at

the tavern, and howls out, "Damn morality! and damn the watch! and let

the constable be married."[326] He cries out that he is a free-born

Englishman; he wants to go out and break everything. He leaves the inn

with other besotted scamps, and attacks the women in the street. He robs

a tailor who was carrying a doctor's gown, puts it on, thrashes the

guard. He is seized and taken by the constable; on the road he breaks

out into abuse, and ends by proposing to him, amid the hiccoughs and

stupid reiterations of a drunken man, to go and find out somewhere a

bottle and a girl. He returns home at last, covered with blood and mud,

growling like a dog, with red swollen eyes, calling his wife a slut and

a liar. He goes to her, forcibly embraces her, and as she turns away,

cries, "I see it goes damnably against your stomach--and therefore--kiss

me again. (_Kisses and tumbles her._) So, now you being as dirty and as

nasty as myself, we may go pig together."[327] He wants to get a cup of

cold tea out of the closet, kicks open the door, discovers his wife's

and niece's gallants. He storms, raves madly with his clammy tongue,

then suddenly falls asleep. His valet comes and takes the insensible

burden on his shoulders.[328] It is the portrait of a mere animal, and I

fancy it is not a nice one.

That is the husband; let us look at the father, Sir Tunbelly Clumsey, a

country gentleman, elegant, if any of them were. Tom Fashion knocks at

the door of the mansion, which looks like "Noah's ark," and where they

receive people as in a besieged city. A servant appears at a window with

a blunderbuss in his hand, who is at last with great difficulty

persuaded that he ought to let his master know that somebody wishes to

see him. "Ralph, go thy weas, and ask Sir Tunbelly if he pleases to be

waited upon. And dost hear? call to nurse that she may lock up Miss

Hoyden before the geat's open."[329] Please to observe that in this

house they keep a watch over the girls. Sir Tunbelly comes up with his

people, armed with guns, pitchforks, scythes, and clubs, in no amiable

mood, and wants to know the name of his visitor. "Till I know your name,

I shall not ask you to come into my house; and when I know your

name--'tis six to four I don't ask you neither."[330] He is like a

watchdog growling and looking at the calves of an intruder. But he

presently learns that this intruder is his future son-in-law; he utters

some exclamations, and makes his excuses. "Cod's my life! I ask your

lordship's pardon ten thousand times. (_To a servant._) Here, run in

a-doors quickly. Get a Scotch-coal fire in the great parlor; set all the

Turkey-work chairs in their places; get the great brass candlesticks

out, and be sure stick the sockets full of laurel. Run!... And do you

hear, run away to nurse, bid her let Miss Hoyden loose again, and if it

was not shifting-day, let her put on a clean tucker, quick!"[331] The

pretended son-in-law wants to marry Hoyden straight off. "Not so soon

neither! that's shooting my girl before you bid her stand!... Besides,

my wench's wedding-gown is not come home yet."[332] The other suggests

that a speedy marriage will save money. Spare money? says the father,

"Udswoons, I'll give my wench a wedding dinner, though I go to grass

with the king of Assyria for't.... Ah! poor girl, she'll be scared out

of her wits on her wedding-night; for, honestly speaking, she does not

know a man from a woman but by his beard and his breeches."[333]

Foppington, the real son-in-law, arrives. Sir Tunbelly, taking him for

an impostor, calls him a dog; Hoyden proposes to drag him in the

horse-pond; they bind him hand and foot, and thrust him into the

dog-kennel; Sir Tunbelly puts his fist under his nose and threatens to

knock his teeth down his throat. Afterwards, having discovered the

impostor, he says, "My lord, will you cut his throat? or shall I?...

Here, give me my dog-whip.... Here, here, here, let me beat out his

brains, and that will decide all."[334] He raves, and wants to fall upon

Tom Fashion with his fists. Such is the country gentleman, of high birth

and a farmer, boxer and drinker, brawler and beast. There steam up from

all these scenes a smell of cooking, the noise of riot, the odor of a

dunghill.

Like father like child. What a candid creature is Miss Hoyden! She

grumbles to herself, "It's well I have a husband a-coming, or, ecod, I'd

marry the baker; I would so! Nobody can knock at the gate, but presently

I must be locked up; and here's the young greyhound bitch can run loose

about the house all the day long, she can; 'tis very well."[335] When

the nurse tells her her future husband has arrived, she leaps for joy,

and kisses the old woman. "O Lord! I'll go put on my laced smock, though

I'm whipped till the blood run down my heels for't."[336] Tom comes

himself, and asks her if she will be his wife. "Sir, I never disobey my

father in anything but eating of green gooseberries. But your father

wants to wait a whole week. A week!--Why I shall be an old woman by

that time."[337] I cannot give all her answers. There is the spirit of a

goat behind her kitchen-talk. She marries Tom secretly on the spot, and

the chaplain wishes them many children. "Ecod," she says, "with all my

heart! the more the merrier, I say; ha! nurse!"[338] But Lord

Foppington, her real intended, turns up, and Tom makes off. Instantly

her plan is formed. She bids the nurse and chaplain hold their tongues.

"If you two will be sure to hold your tongues, and not say a word of

what's past, I'll e'en marry this lord too. What," says nurse, "two

husbands, my dear? Why, you had three, good nurse, you may hold your

tongue."[339] She nevertheless takes a dislike to the lord, and very

soon; he is not well made, he hardly gives her any pocket-money; she

hesitates between the two. "If I leave my lord, I must leave my lady

too; and when I rattle about the streets in my coach, they'll only say,

There goes mistress--mistress--mistress what? What's this man's name I

have married, nurse? Squire Fashion. Squire Fashion is it?--Well,

'Squire,' that's better than nothing.[340]... Love him! why do you think

I love him, nurse? ecod, I would not care if he were hanged, so I were

but once married to him!--No--that which pleases me, is to think what

work I'll make when I get to London; for when I am a wife and a lady

both, nurse, ecod, I'll flaunt it with the best of 'em."[341] But she is

cautious all the same. She knows that her father has his dog's whip

handy, and that he will give her a good shake. "But, d'ye hear?" she

says to the nurse. "Pray take care of one thing: when the business comes

to break out, be sure you get between me and my father, for you know his

tricks: he'll knock me down."[342] Here is your true moral ascendancy.

For such a character, there is no other, and Sir Tunbelly does well to

keep her tied up, and to let her taste a discipline of daily

stripes.[343]

Section IX.--Artificial Characters

Let us accompany this modest character to town, and place her with her

equals in fine society. All these artless ladies do wonders there, both

in the way of actions and maxims. Wycherley's "Country Wife" gives us

the tone. When one of them happens to be partly honest,[344] she has the

manners and the boldness of a hussar in petticoats. Others seem born

with the souls of courtesans and procuresses. "If I marry my Lord

Aimwell," says Dorinda, "there will be title, place, and precedence, the

Park, the play, and the drawing-room, splendor, equipage, noise and

flambeaux. Hey, my Lady Aimwell's servants there! Lights, lights to the

stairs! My Lady Aimwell's coach put forward! Stand by, make room for her

ladyship!--Are not these things moving?"[345] She is candid, and so are

others--Corinna, Miss Betty, Belinda, for example. Belinda says to her

aunt, whose virtue is tottering: "The sooner you capitulate the

better."[346] Further on, when she has decided to marry Heartfree, to

save her aunt who is compromised, she makes a confession of faith which

promises well for the future of her new spouse: "Were't not for your

affair in the balance, I should go near to pick up some odious man of

quality yet, and only take poor Heartfree for a gallant."[347] These

young ladies are clever, and in all cases apt to follow good

instruction. Listen to Miss Prue: "Look you here, madam, then, what Mr.

Tattle has given me. Look you here, cousin, here's a snuff-box: nay,

there's snuff in't;--here, will you have any?--Oh, good! how sweet it

is!--Mr. Tattle is all over sweet; his peruke is sweet, and his gloves

are sweet, and his handkerchief is sweet, pure sweet, sweeter than

roses. Smell him, mother, madam, I mean. He gave me this ring for a

kiss.... Smell, cousin; he says, he'll give me something that will make

my smocks smell this way. Is not it pure?--It's better than lavender,

mun. I'm resolved I won't let nurse put any more lavender among my

smocks--ha, cousin?"[348] It is the silly chatter of a young magpie, who

flies for the first time. Tattle, alone with her, tells her he is going

to make love:

"_Miss Prue._ Well; and how will you make love to me? come, I long

to have you begin. Must I make love too? you must tell me how.

_Tattle._ You must let me speak, miss, you must not speak first; I must

ask you questions, and you must answer.

_Miss P._ What, is it like the catechism?--come then, ask me.

_T._ D'ye think you can love me?

_Miss P._ Yes.

_T._ Pooh! pox! you must not say yes already; I shan't care a farthing

for you then in a twinkling.

_Miss P._ What must I say then?

_T._ Why, you must say no, or you believe not, or you can't tell.

_Miss P._ Why, must I tell a lie then?

_T._ Yes, if you'd be well-bred; all well-bred persons lie. Besides, you

are a woman, you must never speak what you think: your words must

contradict your thoughts; but your actions may contradict your words.

So, when I ask you, if you can love me, you must say no, but you must

love me too. If I tell you you are handsome, you must deny it, and

say I flatter you. But you must think yourself more charming than I

speak you: and like me, for the beauty which I say you have, as much

as if I had it myself. If I ask you to kiss me, you must be angry, but

you must not refuse me....

_Miss P._ O Lord, I swear this is pure!--I like it better than our

old-fashioned country way of speaking one's mind;--and must not you

lie too?

_T._ Hum!--Yes; but you must believe I speak truth.

_Miss P._ O Gemini! well, I always had a great mind to tell lies; but

they frighted me, and said it was a sin.

_T._ Well, my pretty creature; will you make me happy by giving me

a kiss?

_Miss P._ No, indeed; I'm angry at you. (_Runs and kisses him._)

_T._ Hold, hold, that's pretty well;--but you should not have given it

me, but have suffered me to have taken it.

_Miss P._ Well, we'll do it again.

_T._ With all my heart. Now, then, my little angel. (_Kisses her._)

_Miss P._ Pish!

_T._ That's right--again, my charmer! (_Kisses again._)

_Miss P._ O fy! nay, now I can't abide you.

_T._ Admirable! that was as well as if you had been born and bred in

Covent Garden."[349]

She makes such rapid progress that we must stop the quotation forthwith.

And mark, what is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh. All these

charming characters soon employ the language of kitchen-maids. When Ben,

the dolt of a sailor, wants to make love to Miss Prue, she sends him off

with a flea in his ear, raves, lets loose a string of cries and coarse

expressions, calls him a "great sea-calf. What does father mean," he

says, "to leave me alone, as soon as I come home, with such a dirty

dowdy? Sea-calf! I an't calf enough to lick your chalked face, you

cheese-curd, you." Moved by these amenities, she breaks out into a rage,

weeps, calls him a "stinking tar-barrel."[350] People come and put a

stop to this first essay at gallantry. She fires up, declares she will

marry Tattle, or the butler, if she cannot get a better man. Her father

says, "Hussy, you shall have a rod." She answers, "A fiddle of a rod!

I'll have a husband: and if you won't get me one, I'll get one for

myself. I'll marry our Robin the butler."[351] Here are pretty and

prancing mares if you like; but decidedly, in these authors' hands, the

natural man becomes nothing but a waif from the stable or the kennel.

Will you be better pleased by the educated man? The worldly life which

they depict is a regular carnival, and the heads of their heroines are

full of wild imaginations and unchecked gossip. You may see in Congreve

how they chatter, with what a flow of words and affectations, with what

a shrill and modulated voice, with what gestures, what twisting of arms

and neck, what looks raised to heaven, what genteel airs, what grimaces.

Lady Wishfort speaks:

"But art thou sure Sir Rowland will not fail to come? or will he not

fail when he does come? Will he be importunate, Foible, and push? For if

he should not be importunate, I shall never break decorums:--I shall die

with confusion, if I am forced to advance.--Oh no, I can never

advance!--I shall swoon, if he should expect advances. No, I hope Sir

Rowland is better bred than to put a lady to the necessity of breaking

her forms. I won't be too coy neither--I won't give him despair--but a

little disdain is not amiss; a little scorn is alluring."

_Foible._ A little scorn becomes your ladyship.

_Lady Wishfort._ Yes, but tenderness becomes me best--a sort of

dyingness--you see that picture has a sort of a--ha, Foible! a swimmingness

in the eye--yes, I'll look so--my niece affects it; but she wants features.

Is Sir Rowland handsome? Let my toilet be removed--I'll dress above.

I'll receive Sir Rowland here. Is he handsome? Don't answer me. I

won't know: I'll be surprised, I'll be taken by surprise.[352]... And

how do I look, Foible?

_F._ Most killing well, madam.

_Lady W._ Well, and how shall I receive him? in what figure shall I

give his heart the first impression?... Shall I sit?--no, I won't

sit--I'll walk--ay, I'll walk from the door upon his entrance; and then

turn full upon him--no, that will be too sudden. I'll lie--ay, I'll lie

down--I'll receive him in my little dressing-room; there's a couch--yes,

yes, I'll give the first impression on a couch. I won't lie neither;

but loll and lean upon one elbow: with one foot a little dangling off,

jogging in a thoughtful way--yes--and then as soon as he appears, start,

ay, start, and be surprised, and rise to meet him in a pretty

disorder."[353]

These hesitations of a finished coquette become still more vehement at

the critical moment. Lady Plyant thinks herself beloved by Mellefont,

who does not love her at all, and tries in vain to undeceive her.

"_Mellefont._ For heaven's sake, madam.

_Lady Plyant._ O, name it no more!--Bless me, how can you talk of

heaven! and have so much wickedness in your heart? May be you don't

think it a sin.--They say some of you gentlemen don't think it a sin.--May

be it is no sin to them that don't think it so; indeed, if I did not

think it a sin--but still my honour, if it were no sin.--But then, to

marry my daughter, for the conveniency of frequent opportunities, I'll

never consent to that; as sure as can be I'll break the match.

_Mel._ Death and amazement.--Madam, upon my knees.

_Lady P._ Nay, nay, rise up; come, you shall see my good nature. I

know love is powerful, and nobody can help his passion: 'tis not your

fault; nor I swear it is not mine. How can I help it, if I have charms?

and how can you help it if you are made a captive? I swear it is pity

it should be a fault. But my honour--well, but your honour too--but

the sin!--well, but the necessity--O Lord, here is somebody coming, I

dare not stay. Well, you must consider of your crime; and strive as

much as can be against it--strive, be sure--but don't be melancholic,

don't despair.--But never think that I'll grant you anything; O Lord,

no.--But be sure you lay aside all thoughts of the marriage: for though

I know you don't love Cynthia, only as a blind to your passion for me,

yet it will make me jealous.--O Lord, what did I say? jealous! no,

no; I can't be jealous, for I must not love you--therefore don't hope--but

don't despair neither.--O, they're coming! I must fly."[354]

She escapes and we will not follow her.

This giddiness, this volubility, this pretty corruption, these reckless

and affected airs, are collected in the most brilliant, the most worldly

portrait of the stage we are discussing, that of Mrs. Millamant, "a fine

lady," as the Dramatis Personæ say.[355] She enters, "with her fan

spread and her streamers out," dragging a train of furbelows and

ribbons, passing through a crowd of laced and bedizened fops, in

splendid perukes, who flutter about her path, haughty and wanton, witty

and scornful, toying with gallantries, petulant, with a horror of every

grave word and all nobility of action, falling in only with change and

pleasure. She laughs at the sermons of Mirabell, her suitor:

"Sententious Mirabell!--Prithee don't look with that violent and

inflexible wise face, like Solomon at the dividing of the child in an

old tapestry-hanging.[356]... Ha! ha! ha!--pardon me, dear creature,

though I grant you 'tis a little barbarous, ha! ha! ha!"[357]

She breaks out into laughter, then gets into a rage, then banters, then

sings, then makes faces, and changes at every motion while we look at

her. It is a regular whirlpool; all turns round in her brain as in a

clock when the mainspring is broken. Nothing can be prettier than her

fashion of entering on matrimony:

"_Millamant._ Ah! I'll never marry unless I am first made sure of my

will and pleasure!... My dear liberty, shall I leave thee? my

faithful solitude, my darling contemplation, must I bid you then adieu?

Ay--h--adieu--my morning thoughts, agreeable wakings, indolent slumbers,

all ye _douceurs ye sommeils du matin_ adieu?--I can't do it; 'tis

more than impossible--positively, Mirabell, I'll lie a-bed in a morning

as long as I please.

_Mirabell._ Then I'll get up in a morning as early as I please.

_Mill._ Ah! idle creature, get up when you will--and d'ye hear, I won't

be called names after I'm married; positively I won't be called names.

_Mir._ Names!

_Mill._ Ay, as wife, spouse, my dear, joy, jewel, love, sweet heart, and

the rest of that nauseous cant, in which men and their wives are so

fulsomely familiar--I shall never bear that--good Mirabell, don't let

us be familiar or fond, nor kiss before folks, like my Lady Fadler, and

Sir Francis.... Let us never visit together, nor go to a play together;

but let us be very strange and well-bred: let us be as strange

as if we had been married a great while; and as well bred as if we were

not married at all....

_Mir._ Shall I kiss your hand upon the contract?[358]

_Mill._ Fainall, what shall I do? shall I have him? I think I must

have him.

_Fainall._ Ay, ay, take him. What should you do?

_Mill._ Well then--I'll take my death I'm in a horrid fright--Fainall, I

shall never say it--well--I think--I'll endure you.

_Fain._ Fy! fy! have him, have him, and tell him so in plain terms:

for I am sure you have a mind to him.

_Mill._ Are you? I think I have--and the horrid man looks as if he

thought so too--well, you ridiculous thing you, I'll have you--I won't

be kissed, nor I won't be thanked--here kiss my hand, though.--So,

hold your tongue now, don't say a word."[359]

The agreement is complete. I should like to see one more article to

it--a divorce "_a mensâ et thoro_": this would be the genuine marriage

of the worldlings, that is a decent divorce. And I am sure that in two

years Mirabell and Millamant will come to this. Hither tends the whole

of this theatre; for, with regard to the women, but particularly with

regard to the married women, I have only presented their most amiable

aspects. Deeper down it is all gloomy, bitter, above all, pernicious. It

represents a household as a prison, marriage as a warfare, woman as a

rebel, adultery as the result looked for, irregularity as a right,

extravagance as pleasure.[360] A woman of fashion goes to bed in the

morning, rises at mid-day, curses her husband, listens to obscenities,

frequents balls, haunts the plays, ruins reputations, turns her home

into a gambling-house, borrows money, allures men, associates her honor

and fortune with debts and assignations. "We are as wicked (as men),"

says Lady Brute, "but our vices lie another way. Men have more courage

than we, so they commit more bold, impudent sins. They quarrel, fight,

swear, drink, blaspheme, and the like; whereas we being cowards, only

backbite, tell lies, cheat at cards, and so forth."[361] An admirable

résumé, in which the gentlemen are included and the ladies too! The

world has done nothing but provide them with correct phrases and elegant

dresses. In Congreve especially they talk in the best style; above all

they know how to hand ladies about and entertain them with news; they

are expert in the fence of retorts and replies; they are never out of

countenance, find means to make the most ticklish notions understood;

they discuss very well, speak excellently, make their bow still better;

but to sum up, they are blackguards, systematical epicureans, professed

seducers. They set forth immorality in maxims, and reason out their

vice. "Give me," says one, "a man that keeps his five senses keen and

bright as his sword, that has 'em always drawn out in their just order

and strength, with his reason, as commander at the head of 'em, that

detaches 'em by turns upon whatever party of pleasure agreeably offers,

and commands 'em to retreat upon the least appearance of disadvantage or

danger.... I love a fine house, but let another keep it; and just so I

love a fine woman."[362] One deliberately seduces his friend's wife;

another under a false name gets possession of his brother's intended. A

third hires false witnesses to secure a dowry. I must ask the reader to

consult for himself the fine stratagems of Worthy, Mirabell, and others.

They are cold-blooded rascals who forge, commit adultery, swindle, as if

they had done nothing else all their lives. They are represented here as

men of fashion; they are theatrical lovers, heroes, and as such they

manage to get hold of an heiress. We must go to Mirabell for an example

of this medley of corruption and elegance. Mrs. Fainall, his former

mistress, married by him to a common friend, a miserable wretch,

complains to him of this hateful marriage. He appeases her, gives her

advice, shows her the precise mode, the true expedient for setting

things on a comfortable footing. "You should have just so much disgust

for your husband, as may be sufficient to make you relish your lover."

She cries in despair, "Why did you make me marry this man?" He smiles

calmly, "Why do we daily commit disagreeable and dangerous actions? to

save that idol, reputation." How tender is this argument! How can a man

better console a woman whom he has plunged into bitter unhappiness! What

a touching logic in the insinuation which follows: "If the familiarities

of our loves had produced that consequence of which you were

apprehensive, where could you have fixed a father's name with credit,

but on a husband?" He continues his reasoning in an excellent style;

listen to the dilemma of a man of feeling: "A better man ought not to

have been sacrificed to the occasion; a worse had not answered to the

purpose. When you are weary of him, you know your remedy."[363] Thus are

a woman's feelings to be considered, especially a woman whom we have

loved. To cap all, this delicate conversation is meant to force the poor

deserted Mrs. Fainall into a low intrigue which shall obtain for

Mirabell a pretty wife and a good dowry. Certainly this gentleman knows

the world; no one could better employ a former mistress. Such are the

cultivated characters of this theatre, as dishonest as the uncultivated

ones: having transformed their evil instincts into systematic vices,

lust into debauchery, brutality into cynicism, perversity into

depravity, deliberate egotists, calculating sensualists, with rules for

their immorality, reducing feeling to self-interest, honor to decorum,

happiness to pleasure.

The English Restoration altogether was one of those great crises which,

while warping the development of a society and a literature, show the

inward spirit which they modify, but which contradicts them. Society did

not lack vigor, nor literature talent; men of the world were polished,

writers inventive. There was a court, drawing-rooms, conversation,

worldly life, a taste for letters, the example of France, peace,

leisure, the influence of the sciences, of politics, of theology--in

short, all the happy circumstances which can elevate the mind and

civilize manners. There was the vigorous satire of Wycherley, the

sparkling dialogue and delicate raillery of Congreve, the frank nature

and animation of Vanbrugh, the manifold invention of Farquhar, in short,

all the resources which might nourish the comic element, and offer a

genuine theatre to the best constructions of human intelligence. Nothing

came to a head; all was abortive. Their age left nothing behind but the

memory of corruption; their comedy remains a repertory of viciousness;

society had only a soiled elegance, literature a frigid wit. Their

manners are gross and trivial; their ideas are futile or incomplete.

Through disgust and reaction, a revolution was at hand in literary

feeling and moral habits, as well as in general beliefs and political

institutions. Man was to change altogether, and to turn completely round

at once. The same repugnance and the same experience were to detach him

from every aspect of his old condition. The Englishman discovered that

he was not monarchical, Papistical, nor sceptical, but liberal,

Protestant, and a believer. He came to understand that he was not a

roisterer nor a worldling, but reflective and introspective. He

possesses a current of animal life too violent to suffer him without

danger to abandon himself to enjoyment; he needs a barrier of moral

reasoning to repress his outbreaks. There is in him a current of

attention and will too strong to suffer himself to rest content with

trifles; he needs some weighty and serviceable labor on which to expend

his power. He needs a barrier and an employment. He needs a constitution

and a religion which shall restrain him by duties which must be

performed, and which shall occupy him by rights which must be defended.

He is content only in a serious and orderly life; there he finds the

natural groove and the necessary outlet for his faculties and his

passions. From this time he enters upon it, and this theatre itself

exhibits the impress of it. It undoes and transforms itself. Collier

threw discredit upon it; Addison condemned it. National sentiment awoke

on the stage; French manners are jeered at; the prologues celebrate the

defeats of Louis XIV; the license, elegance, religion of his court, are

presented under a ridiculous or odious light.[364] Immorality gradually

diminishes, marriage is more respected, the heroines go no further than

to the verge of adultery;[365] the roisterers are pulled up at the

critical moment; one of them suddenly declares himself purified, and

speaks in verse, the better to mark his enthusiasm; another praises

marriage;[366] some aspire in the fifth act to an orderly life. We shall

soon see Steele writing a moral treatise called "The Christian Hero."

Henceforth comedy declines and literary talent flows into another

channel. Essay, novel, pamphlet, dissertation, take the place of the

drama; and the English classical spirit, abandoning the kinds of writing

which are foreign to its nature, enters upon the great works which are

destined to immortalize it and give it expression.

Section X.--Sheridan.--Decadence of the Theatre

Nevertheless, in this continuous decline of dramatic invention, and in

the great change of literary vitality, some shoots strike out at distant

intervals towards comedy; for mankind always seeks for entertainment,

and the theatre is always a place of entertainment. The tree once

planted grows, feebly no doubt, with long intervals of almost total

dryness and almost constant barrenness, yet subject to imperfect

renewals of life, to transitory partial blossomings, sometimes to an

inferior fruitage bursting forth from the lowest branches. Even when the

great subjects are worn out, there is still room here and there for a

happy idea. Let a wit, clever and experienced, take it in hand, he will

catch up a few oddities on his way, he will introduce on the scene some

vice or fault of his time; the public will come in crowds and ask no

better than to recognize itself and laugh. There was one of these

successes when Gay, in the "Beggars' Opera" brought out the rascaldom of

the great world, and avenged the public on Walpole and the court;

another, when Goldsmith, inventing a series of mistakes, led his hero

and his audience through five acts of blunders.[367] After all, if true

comedy can only exist in certain ages, ordinary comedy can exist in any

age. It is too akin to the pamphlet, novels, satire, not to raise itself

occasionally by its propinquity. If I have an enemy, instead of

attacking him in a brochure, I can take my fling at him on the stage. If

I am capable of painting a character in a story, I am not far from

having the talent to bring out the pith of this same character in a few

turns of a dialogue. If I can quietly ridicule a vice in a copy of

verses, I shall easily arrive at making this vice speak out from the

mouth of an actor. At least I shall be tempted to try it; I shall be

seduced by the wonderful _éclat_ which the footlights, declamation,

scenery give to an idea; I shall try and bring my own into this strong

light; I shall go in for it even when it is necessary that my talent be

a little or a good deal forced for the occasion. If need be, I shall

delude myself, substitute expedients for artless originality and true

comic genius. If on a few points I am inferior to the great masters, on

some, it may be, I surpass them; I can work up my style, refine upon it,

discover happier words, more striking jokes, a brisker exchange of

brilliant repartees, newer images, more picturesque comparisons; I can

take from this one a character, from the other a situation, borrow of a

neighboring nation, out of old plays, good novels, biting pamphlets,

polished satires, and petty newspapers; I can accumulate effects, serve

up to the public a stronger and more appetizing stew; above all, I can

perfect my machine, oil the wheels, plan the surprises, the stage

effects, the see-saw of the plot, like a consummate playwright. The art

of constructing plays is as capable of development as the art of

clock-making. The farce-writer of to-day sees that the catastrophe of

half of Molière's plays is ridiculous; nay, many of them can produce

catastrophes better than Molière; in the long run, they succeed in

stripping the theatre of all awkwardness and circumlocution. A piquant

style, and perfect machinery; pungency in all the words, and animation

in all the scenes; a superabundance of wit, and marvels of ingenuity;

over all this, a true physical activity, and the secret pleasure of

depicting and justifying one's self, of public self-glorification: here

is the foundation of the "School for Scandal," here the source of the

talent and the success of Sheridan.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan was the contemporary of Beaumarchais, and

resembled him in his talent and in his life. The two epochs, the two

dramatic schools, the two characters, correspond. Like Beaumarchais, he

was a lucky adventurer, clever, amiable, and generous, reaching success

through scandal, who flashed up in a moment, dazzled everybody, scaled

with a rush the empyrean of politics and literature, settled himself, as

it were, among the constellations, and, like a brilliant rocket,

presently went out completely exhausted. Nothing failed him; he attained

all at the first attempt, without apparent effort, like a prince who

need only show himself to win his place. He took as his birthright

everything that was most surpassing in happiness, most brilliant in art,

most exalted in worldly position. The poor unknown youth, the wretched

translator of an unreadable Greek sophist, who at twenty walked about

Bath in a red waistcoat and a cocked hat, destitute of hope, and ever

conscious of the emptiness of his pockets, had gained the heart of the

most admired beauty and musician of her time, had carried her off from

ten rich, elegant, titled adorers, had fought with the best-hoaxed of

the ten, beaten him, had carried by storm the curiosity and attention of

the public. Then, challenging glory and wealth, he placed successively

on the stage the most diverse and the most applauded dramas, comedies,

farce, opera, serious verse; he bought and worked a large theatre

without a farthing, inaugurated a reign of successes and pecuniary

advantages, and led a life of elegance amid the enjoyments of social and

domestic joys, surrounded by universal admiration and wonder. Thence,

aspiring yet higher, he conquered power, entered the House of Commons,

showed himself a match for the first orators, opposed Pitt, accused

Warren Hastings, supported Fox, jeered at Burke; sustained with

brilliancy, disinterestedness, and constancy, a most difficult and

liberal part; became one of the three or four most noted men in England,

an equal of the greatest lords, the friend of the Prince of Wales, in

the end even Receiver-General of the Duchy of Cornwall, treasurer to the

fleet. In every career he took the lead. As Byron said of him:

"Whatsoever Sheridan has done or chosen to do has been, _par

excellence_, always the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy

('The School for Scandal'), the best drama (in my mind far before that

St. Giles lampoon 'The Beggars' Opera'), the best farce ('The

Critic'--it is only too good for a farce), and the best address

('Monologue on Garrick'), and, to crown all, delivered the very best

oration (the famous Begum Speech) ever conceived or heard in this

country."[368]

All ordinary rules were reversed in his favor. He was forty-four years

old, debts began to accumulate; he had supped and drunk to excess; his

cheeks were purple, his nose red. In this state he met at the Duke of

Devonshire's a charming young lady with whom he fell in love. At the

first sight she exclaimed, "What an ugly man, a regular monster!" He

spoke to her; she confessed that he was very ugly, but that he had a

good deal of wit. He spoke again, and again, and she found him very

amiable. He spoke yet again, and she loved him, and resolved at all

hazard to marry him. The father, a prudent man, wishing to end the

affair, gave out that his future son-in-law must provide a dowry of

fifteen thousand pounds; the fifteen thousand pounds were deposited as

by magic in the hands of a banker; the young couple set off into the

country; and Sheridan, meeting his son, a fine strapping fellow, not

very satisfied with the marriage, persuaded him that it was the most

sensible thing that a father could do, and the most fortunate event that

a son could rejoice over. Whatever the business, whoever the man, he

persuaded; none withstood him, everyone fell under his charm.

What is more difficult than for an ugly man to make a young girl forget

his ugliness? There is one thing more difficult, and that is to make a

creditor forget you owe him money. There is something more difficult

still, and that is, to borrow money from a creditor who has come to dun

you. One day one of his friends was arrested for debt; Sheridan sends

for Mr. Henderson, the crabbed tradesman, coaxes him, interests him,

moves him to tears, works upon his feelings, hedges him in with general

considerations and lofty eloquence, so that Mr. Henderson offers his

purse, actually wants to lend two hundred pounds, insists, and finally,

to his great joy, obtains permission to lend it. No one was ever more

amiable, quicker to win confidence than Sheridan; rarely has the

sympathetic, affectionate; and fascinating character been more fully

displayed; he was literally seductive. In the morning, creditors and

visitors filled the rooms in which he lived; he came in smiling with an

easy manner with so much loftiness and grace, that the people forgot

their wants and their claims, and looked as if they had only come to see

him. His animation was irresistible; no one had a more dazzling wit; he

had an inexhaustible fund of puns, contrivances, sallies, novel ideas.

Lord Byron, who was a good judge, said that he had never heard nor

conceived of a more extraordinary power of conversation. Men spent

nights in listening to him; no one equalled him during a supper; even

when drunk he retained his wit. One morning he was picked up by the

watch, and they asked him his name; he gravely answered, "Wilberforce."

With strangers and inferiors he had no arrogance or stiffness; he

possessed in an eminent degree that unreserved character which always

exhibits itself complete, which holds back none of its light, which

abandons and gives itself up; he wept when he received a sincere eulogy

from Lord Byron, or in recounting his miseries as a plebeian parvenu.

Nothing is more charming than this openness of heart; it at once sets

people on a footing of peace and amity; men suddenly desert their

defensive and cautious attitude; they perceive that a man is giving

himself up to them, and they give themselves up to him; the outpouring

of his innermost feelings invites the outpouring of theirs. A minute

later, Sheridan's impetuous and sparkling individuality flashes out; his

wit explodes, rattles like a discharge of fire-arms; he takes the

conversation to himself, with a sustained brilliancy, a variety, an

inexhaustible vigor, till five o'clock in the morning. Against such a

necessity for launching out in unconsidered speech, of indulgence, of

self-outpouring, a man had need be well on his guard; life cannot be

passed like a holiday; it is a strife against others and against one's

self; people must think of the future, mistrust themselves, make

provision; there is no subsisting without the precaution of a

shop-keeper, the calculation of a tradesman. If we sup too often, we

will end by not having wherewithal to dine upon; when our pockets have

holes in them, the shillings will fall out; nothing is more of a truism,

but it is true. Sheridan's debts accumulated, his digestion failed. He

lost his seat in Parliament, his theatre was burned; sheriff's officer

succeeded sheriff's officer, and they had long been in possession of his

house. At last, a bailiff arrested the dying man in his bed, and was for

taking him off in his blankets; nor would he let him go until threatened

with a lawsuit, the doctor having declared that the sick man would die

on the road. A certain newspaper (the "Examiner") cried shame on the

great lords who suffered such a man to end so miserably; they hastened

to leave their cards at his door. In the funeral procession two brothers

of the king, dukes, earls, bishops, the first men in England, carried or

followed the body. A singular contrast, picturing in abstract all his

talent, and all his life; lords at his funeral and bailiffs at his

death-bed.

His theatre was in accordance with his life; all was brilliant, but the

metal was not all his own, nor was it of the best quality. His comedies

were comedies of society, the most amusing ever written, but merely

comedies of society. Imagine the exaggerated caricatures artists are

wont to improvise, in the drawing-room of a house where they are

intimate, about eleven o'clock in the evening. His first play, "The

Rivals," and afterwards his "Duenna," and "The Critic," are filled with

these, and scarce anything else. There is Mrs. Malaprop, a silly,

pretentious woman, who uses grand words higgledy-piggledy, delighted

with herself, in "a nice derangement of epitaphs" before her nouns, and

declaring that her niece is "as headstrong as an allegory on the banks

of the Nile." There is a Bob Acres, who suddenly becomes a hero, gets

engaged in a duel, and being led on the ground, calculates the effect of

the balls, thinks of his will, burial, embalmment, and wishes he were at

home. There is another caricature in the person of a clumsy and cowardly

servant, of an irascible and brawling father, of a sentimental and

romantic young lady, of a touchy Irish duellist. All this jogs and

jostles on, without much order, amid the surprises of a twofold plot, by

aid of appliances and _rencontres_, without the full and regular control

of a dominating idea. But in vain we perceive it is a patchwork; the

high spirit carries off everything: we laugh heartily; every single

scene has its facetious and rapid movement; we forget that the clumsy

valet makes remarks as witty as Sheridan himself,[369] and that the

irascible gentleman speaks as well as the most elegant of writers.[370]

The playwright is also a man of letters; if, through mere animal and

social spirit, he wished to amuse others and to amuse himself, he does

not forget the interests of his talent and the care for his reputation.

He has tastes, he appreciates the refinement of style, the worth of a

new image, of a striking contrast, of a witty and well-considered

insinuation. He has, above all, wit, a wonderful conversational wit, the

art of rousing and sustaining the attention, of being biting, varied, of

taking his hearers unawares, of throwing in a repartee, of setting folly

in relief, of accumulating one after another witticisms and happy

phrases. He brought himself to perfection subsequently to his first

play, having acquired theatrical experience, writing and erasing; trying

various scenes, recasting, arranging them; his desire was that nothing

should arrest the interest, no improbability shock the spectator; that

his comedy might glide on with the precision, certainty, uniformity of a

good machine. He invents jests, replaces them by better ones; he whets

his jokes, binds them up like a sheaf of arrows, and writes at the

bottom of the last page, "Finished, thank God.--Amen." He is right, for

the work costs him some pains; he will not write a second. This kind of

writing, artificial and condensed as the satires of La Bruyère, is like

a cut phial, into which the author has distilled all his reflections,

his reading, his wit, without keeping anything for himself.

What is there in this celebrated "School for Scandal"? And how is it

that it has cast upon English comedy, which day by day was being more

and more forgotten, the radiance of a last success? Sheridan took two

characters from Fielding, Blifil, and Tom Jones; two plays of Molière,

"Le Misanthrope" and "Tartuffe"; and from these puissant materials,

condensed with admirable cleverness, he has constructed the most

brilliant firework imaginable. Molière has only one female slanderer,

Célimène; the other characters serve only to give her a cue; there is

quite enough of such a jeering woman; she rails on within certain

bounds, without hurry, like a true queen of the drawing-room, who has

time to converse, who knows that she is listened to, who listens to

herself: she is a woman of society, who preserves the tone of refined

conversation; and in order to smooth down the harshness, her slanders

are interrupted by the calm reason and sensible discourse of the amiable

Éliante. Molière represents the malice of the world without

exaggeration; but in Sheridan they are rather caricatured than depicted.

"Ladies, your servant," says Sir Peter; "mercy upon me! the whole set--a

character dead at every sentence."[371] In fact, they are ferocious: it

is a regular quarry; they even befoul one another, to deepen the

outrage. Mrs. Candour remarks: "Yesterday Miss Prim assured me, that Mr.

and Mrs. Honeymoon are now become mere man and wife, like the rest of

their acquaintance. She likewise hinted, that a certain widow in the

next street had got rid of her dropsy, and recovered her shape in a most

surprising manner.... I was informed, too, that Lord Flimsy caught his

wife at a house of no extraordinary fame; and that Tom Saunter and Sir

Harry Idle were to measure swords on a similar occasion."[372] Their

animosity is so bitter that they lower themselves to play the part of

buffoons. The most elegant person in the room, Lady Teazle, shows her

teeth to ape a ridiculous lady, draws her mouth on one side, and makes

faces. There is no pause, no softening; sarcasms fly about like pistol

shots. The author had laid in a stock, he had to use them up. He himself

is speaking through the mouth of his characters; he gives them all the

same wit, that is his own, his irony, his harshness, his picturesque

vigor; whatever they are, clowns, fops, old maids, no matter, the

author's main business is to break out into twenty explosions in a

minute:

"_Mrs. Candour._ Well, I will never join in the ridicule of a friend;

so I tell my cousin Ogle, and ye all know what pretensions she has to

beauty.

_Crab._ She has the oddest countenance--a collection of features from

all the corners of the globe.