THE AGE OF DRYDEN
TIME-CHART OF THE CHIEF AUTHORS
_The thick line shows the period of active literary work._
1650 1660 1670 1680 1690 1700 1710
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Dryden |........|║===================================║ |
(1631–1700) | | | | | | |
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Butler |........|.║===========║...|║ | | |
(1612–80) | | | | | | |
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Wycherley |........|........|..║===║ |........|........|........|
(1640–1715) | | | | | | |
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Congreve | | |║.......|........|.║=====║|........|
(1670–1729) | | | | | | |
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Bunyan |........|║=========║=====║|.....║ | | |
(1628–1688) | | | ║ | | | |
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Evelyn |........|║======================================║ |
(1620–1706) | | | | | | |
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Pepys |........|║=====================================║ |
(1633–1703) |
THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (1660–1700)
Three historical events deeply influenced the literary movements of the
time: the Restoration of the year 1660; the Roman Catholic controversy
that raged during the latter half of Charles II’s reign; and the
Revolution of the year 1688.
=1. The Restoration (1660).= The Restoration of Charles II brought
about a revolution in our literature. With the collapse of the Puritan
Government there sprang up activities that had been so long suppressed
that they flew to violent excesses. The Commonwealth had insisted on
gravity and decorum in all things; the Restoration encouraged a levity
that often became immoral and indecent. Along with much that is sane
and powerful, this latter tendency is prominent in the writing of the
time, especially in the comedies.
=2. The Religious Question.= The strength of the religious-political
passions of the time is reflected in the current literature. The
religion of the King was suspect; that of his brother James was
avowedly Papist; and James was the heir-apparent to the crown. There
was a prevalent suspicion of the Catholics, which, though it might have
been groundless, was of such depth and intensity that it colors all
the writings of the time. The lies of Titus Oates added to the popular
frenzy, so that when the Earl of Shaftesbury sought to exclude James
from the throne and supplant him by the Duke of Monmouth it needed all
the efforts of Charles (himself secretly a Roman Catholic) to save
his brother. The famous poem of Dryden, _Absalom and Achitophel_, is
an outstanding example of a kind of poem that abounded during those
troubled years.
=3. The Revolution (1688).= James succeeded to the throne in 1685;
but so soon did he reveal his Roman Catholic prejudices that he was
rejected in three years and was replaced by Protestant sovereigns.
Henceforth religious passions diminish in intensity; and the literature
of the succeeding years tends to emphasize the political rather than
the religious side of public affairs.
THE NEW CLASSICISM
By the year 1660 Elizabethan romanticism had all but spent itself. Of
the great figures of the earlier era only one survived, John Milton,
and he had still to write _Paradise Lost_; but in everything Milton was
of the past. At the Restoration he retired and worked in obscurity, and
his great poem reveals no signs of the time in which his later years
were cast.
At the Restoration the break with the past was almost absolute. It
involved our literature in the deepest degree; subject and style took
on a new spirit and outlook, a different attitude and aim. Hence a
post-Restoration period is often set up as the converse and antithesis
of the previous Elizabethan age. It is called _classical_, as opposed
to the Elizabethan _romanticism_. Though the contrast between the two
epochs need not be over-emphasized, yet the differences are very great.
Let us see in what respects the new spirit is shown.
=1. Imitation of the Ancients.= Lacking the genius of the Elizabethans,
the authors of the time turned to the great classical writers, in
particular to the Latin writers, for guidance and inspiration. This
habit, quite noticeable during the time of Dryden, deepened and
hardened during the succeeding era of Pope--so much so that the latter
laid down as a final test of excellence
Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem;
To copy nature is to copy them.
=2. Imitation of the French.= Charles II had spent most of his years
of exile in France, and when he returned to England he brought with
him a new admiration for French literature. In particular the effects
of this penetrated very deeply into the drama, especially into comedy,
the most copious literary product of the Restoration. Of French comedy
the great Molière was the outstanding exponent, and his influence was
very great. In the more formal tragedy French and classical models were
combined to produce a new type called the _heroic play_. The type is
well represented by Dryden’s _Tyrannic Love_.
=3. The “Correct” School.= The Elizabethans too had drawn upon the
ancients, but they used their gains freely and joyously, bending the
work of the classical authors to their own wills. The imitative work
of the new school was of a frigid and limited quality. The school
of Dryden was loath to alter; the age of Pope abandoned freedom
altogether. Pope puts it thus:
Those Rules of old, discovered, not devised,
Are Nature still, but Nature methodised.
Thus they evolved a number of “rules,” which can usefully be summarized
in the injunction “Be correct.” “Correctness” means avoidance of
enthusiasm; modern opinions moderately expressed; strict care and
accuracy in poetical technique; and humble imitation of the style of
the Latin classics.
Dryden did not attain altogether to this ideal. Pope and his immediate
successors called him “copious,” thus hinting at a lack of care and
an unrestrained vigor that were survivals of an earlier virility. Yet
Dryden has the new tendency very clearly marked. To him Dr. Johnson
first applied the epithet “Augustan,” saying that Dryden did to English
literature what Augustus did to Rome, which he “found of brick and left
of marble.” Dryden is the first great exponent of the new ideas that
were to dominate our literature till the end of the eighteenth century.
JOHN DRYDEN (1631–1700)
=1. His Life.= Dryden’s life was a long one. It was, in addition,
an exceedingly fruitful one. For forty years he continued to produce
an abundance of literary works of every kind--poems, plays, and prose
works. The quality of it was almost unfailingly good, and at the end of
his life his poetry was as fresh and vivacious as it had been in the
prime of his manhood.
Of Dryden it can be said without qualification that he is
representative of his age. Indeed, it has been urged as a fault against
his character that he adapted himself with too facile a conscience to
the changing fortunes of the times. His earliest work of any importance
is pre-Restoration, and consists of a laudation of Oliver Cromwell. At
the Restoration he changed his views, attaching himself to the fortunes
of Charles II and to the Church of England. This loyalty brought its
rewards in honors and pensions, so that for many years Dryden was
easily the most considerable literary figure in the land. Yet his
career was not without its thorns, for smaller men were busy with
their slanders. On the accession of James II in 1685 Dryden changed
his faith and political persuasion, becoming a Roman Catholic. To his
new beliefs he adhered steadfastly, even when in 1688 the Revolution
brought certain disasters to such public men as adhered to Catholicism.
Thus Dryden lost his posts of Poet Laureate and Historiographer Royal.
The Laureateship was conferred on Shadwell, his most rancorous foe; and
Dryden retired with dignity to sustain his last years with his literary
labors. To this last period of his career we owe some of his finest
translations and narrative poems. When he died in 1700 he was accorded
a splendid funeral in Westminster Abbey, though it was many years
before his grave was marked by a tombstone.
=2. His Poetry.= Dryden began his life’s work with poetry; he
concluded it with poetry; and the years between are starred with
the brightness of his greater poems. As early as February, 1664,
Pepys records in his diary that he met “Mr. Dryden, the poet”; and
he remained “Mr. Dryden, the poet,” till the day of his death. It is
therefore as a poet that Dryden is chiefly to be judged.
His first published poem of any consequence was a series of heroic
stanzas on the death of the Protector Oliver Cromwell (1659). It
consists of thirty-seven quatrains of no particular merit. They
move stiffly, and are quite uninspired by any political or personal
enthusiasm, but they show a certain angular force and a little metrical
dexterity. Two stanzas will show the art of the earliest Dryden:
His grandeur he derived from Heaven alone,
For he was great, ere Fortune made him so;
And wars, like mists that rise against the sun,
Made him but greater seem, not greater grow.
No borrowed bays his temples did adorn,
But to our crown he did fresh laurels bring;
Nor was his virtue poisoned, soon as born,
With the too early thoughts of being king.
In 1660 he made a great step forward in poetical craftsmanship by
publishing _Astrœa Redux_, in celebration of Charles II’s return. The
poem represents a complete reversal of the poet’s political opinions;
but it is nevertheless a noteworthy literary advance. In its handling
of the subject it shows a firmer grip and stronger common sense; in
its style a new command of sonorous and dignified phrasing; and (as
important a feature as any of the others) it is written in the heroic
couplet.
Methinks I see those crowds on Dover’s strand,
Who in their haste to welcome you to land
Choked up the beach with their still growing store,
And made a wilder torrent on the shore.
Here we see Dryden, though not yet at his best, coming to his own. The
couplet marches with a steady but animated ring and swing. Its phrasing
is apt and vivid; and it possesses a strength and music that are new.
It marks the beginning of that adherence to the use of the couplet
which was to be Dryden’s lifelong habit, and which was to mark a new
epoch in our literature.
Two other poems of this year--one on the coronation and one addressed
to the Chancellor, Clarendon,--resemble _Astrœa Redux_ in their main
features, and are little inferior.
In 1666 he produced _Annus Mirabilis_, dealing with the extraordinary
events of the year, particularly the Fire of London and the Dutch
war. The poem is long, and often dull. When he attempts “style” he
is sometimes florid and ridiculous. Moreover, the meter returns to
the quatrain. The work is inferior to those of 1660, but is still an
advance on the stanzas to Cromwell.
For more than fifteen years succeeding this Dryden devoted himself
almost entirely to the writing of plays. Then, about 1680, events both
political and personal drove him back to the poetical medium, with
results both splendid and astonishing. Political passions over the
Exclusion Bills were at their height, and Dryden appeared as the chief
literary champion of the monarchy in the famous satirical allegory
_Absalom and Achitophel_ (1681). Absalom is the Duke of Monmouth,
the unfortunate aspirant to the succession; and Achitophel is his
daring but injudicious counselor Shaftesbury. These two are surrounded
by a cluster of lesser politicians, upon each of whom Dryden bestows
a Biblical name of deadly aptness and transparency. The satire is of
amazing force and range, rarely stooping to scurrility, but punishing
its victims with devastating scorn and a wrathful aloofness; and it
takes shape in the best quality of Dryden’s couplet. Long practice in
dramatic couplet-writing had now given Dryden a new metrical facility,
tightening and strengthening the measure, and giving it crispness and
energy without allowing it to become violent and obscure. We give a
specimen of this measure, which in many ways represents the summit of
Dryden’s poetical achievement:
Of these the false Achitophel was first;
A name to all succeeding ages curst:
For close designs and crooked counsels fit;
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;
Restless, unfixed in principles and place;
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace:
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o’er-informed the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity;
Pleased with the danger when the waves went high,
He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide;
Else why should he, with wealth and honour blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please;
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave what with his toil he won,
To that unfeathered two-legged thing--a son.
Of such satire as this Dryden himself says not unfairly, “It is not
bloody, but it is ridiculous enough. I avoided the mention of great
crimes, and applied myself to the representing of blind sides and
little extravagances.” The hitting is hard, but not foul.
Next year he produced another political poem, _The Medal_, which called
forth an answer from an old friend of Dryden’s, Shadwell. Dryden
retorted in _MacFlecknoe_, a personal lampoon of gigantic power and
ferocity, but degraded with much coarseness and personal spite. A
similar poem is the second part of _Absalom and Achitophel_, to which
poem Dryden contributed a violent attack on Shadwell, giving him the
name of Og. The main part of the work was composed by Nahum Tate, a
satellite of Dryden’s.
A new poetical development was manifest in _Religio Laici_ (1682)
and _The Hind and the Panther_ (1687). The first poem is a thesis in
support of the English Church; the second, written after the accession
of James, is an allegorical defense of the Roman Catholic faith.
Alterations like these in Dryden’s opinions gave free play to the
gibes of his enemies. In spite of their difference in opinion, these
poems have much in common: a clear light of argument, a methodical
arrangement of ideas, and a mastery of the couplet that often lifts
the drabness of the expository theme into passages of noble feeling
and splendor. The allegorical treatment of _The Hind and the Panther_
allows of a livelier handling; but the poem is very long, consisting of
more than one part, and much of it is dogmatic assertion and tedious
argument.
After the Revolution, when he was driven from his public appointments,
Dryden occupied himself chiefly with translations. He once more used
the couplet medium, turning Virgil, Ovid, and Boccaccio into English,
and adapting Chaucer to the taste of his time. The translation is so
free that much of it is Dryden’s own, and all of it teems with his own
individuality. We give a passage to illustrate both the latest phase of
his couplet and his power as a narrative poet:
Scarce the third glass of measured hours was run,
When like a fiery meteor sunk the sun,
The promise of a storm; the shifting gales
Forsake by fits and fill the flagging sails;
Hoarse murmurs of the main from far were heard,
And night came on, not by degrees prepared,
But all at once; at once the winds arise,
The thunders roll, the forky lightning flies.
In vain the master issues out commands,
In vain the trembling sailors ply their hands;
The tempest unforeseen prevents their care,
And from the first they labour in despair.
The giddy ship betwixt the winds and tides,
Forced back and forwards, in a circle rides,
Stunned with the different blows; then shoots amain,
Till counterbuffed she stops, and sleeps again.
_Cymon and Iphigenia_
Though it is small in bulk, Dryden’s lyrical poetry is of much
importance. The longest and the best-known pieces of this class are his
_Song for St. Cecilia’s Day_ (1687) and _Alexander’s Feast_, written
for the same anniversary in 1697. Both show Dryden as a master of
melodious verse and of a varied and powerful style. The numerous lyrics
that appear in his plays are charming. One stanza will illustrate this
sweetly facile phase of the poet’s art:
On a bank, beside a willow,
Heaven her covering, earth her pillow,
Sad Amynta sighed alone;
From the cheerless dawn of morning
Till the dews of night returning,
Singing thus she made her moan:
“Hope is banished,
Joys are vanished,
Damon, my beloved, is gone!”
His numerous prologues and epilogues, written in couplets, show
abundant wit and vivacity, yet they habitually appeal to the worst
instincts of his audiences, being very often coarse and unmannerly.
=3. His Drama.= In his dramatic work, as elsewhere, Dryden is a
faithful reflex of his time. His methods and objects vary as the public
appreciation of them waxes and wanes, with the result that he gives us
a historical summary of the popular fancy.
His first play was a comedy, _The Wild Gallant_ (1663), which had but
a very moderate success. It has the complicated plot of the popular
Spanish comedies and the “humors” of Jonson’s. After this unsuccessful
attempt at public favor Dryden turned to tragedy, which henceforth
nearly monopolizes his dramatic work.
His tragedies fall into two main groups:
(_a_) _The Heroic Play._ This is a new type of the tragedy that
became prominent after the Restoration, and of which Dryden is one of
the earliest and most skillful exponents. The chief features of the
new growth are the choice of a great heroic figure for the central
personage; a succession of stage incidents of an exalted character,
which often, through the inexpertness of the dramatist, became
ridiculous; a loud and ranting style; and the rhymed couplet. Dryden’s
_Rival Ladies_ (1663) is a hybrid between the comic and heroic species
of play; _The Indian Emperor_ (1665), _Tyrannic Love_ (1669), _The
Conquest of Granada_ (1670), and _Aurengzebe_ (1675) show the heroic
kind at its best and worst. Though Dryden is heavily weighted with the
ponderous mechanism of the heroic play, his gigantic literary strength
is often sufficient to give it an attraction and a kind of heavy-footed
animation.
(_b_) _His Blank-verse Tragedies._ The heroic play was so easily
parodied and made ridiculous, that the wits of the Restoration were
not slow to make a butt of it. Their onslaughts were not without their
effect on Dryden, for already in _Aurengzebe_ a shamefaced weakening of
the heroic mannerisms is apparent. In the prologue to this play Dryden
fairly admits it, saying that he
Grows weary of his long-loved mistress, Rime.
Passion’s too fierce to be in fetters bound,
And Nature flies him like enchanted ground.
His next play, _All for Love, or The World well Lost_ (1678), is in
blank verse, and is considered to be his dramatic masterpiece. For
subject he chose that of Shakespeare’s _Antony and Cleopatra_. It
was a daring thing to attempt what Shakespeare had already done; but
Dryden, while following the earlier play somewhat closely, never
actually copies it. He produces a play of a distinctly different
nature, and of a high merit. The characters are well drawn and
animated, and the style, though lacking the daimonic force of
Shakespeare’s at his best, is noble and restrained. We give Dryden’s
handling of the death of Cleopatra, a passage which should be compared
with that of Shakespeare given on p. 121.
(_Antony is lying dead on the stage; Charmion and Iras, the
Queen’s two handmaidens, are in attendance on her._)
_Charmion._ To what end
These ensigns of your pomp and royalty?
_Cleopatra._ Dull that thou art! Why, ’tis to meet my love;
As when I saw him first, on Cydnos’ bank,
All sparkling, like a goddess....
Haste, haste, both,
And dress the bride of Antony.
_Charmion._ ’Tis done.
_Cleopatra._ Now seat me by my lord; I claim this place....
Reach me the casket.
_Iras._ Underneath the fruit
The aspic lies.
_Cleopatra._ Welcome, thou kind deceiver!
[_Putting aside the leaves._
Thou best of thieves, who with an easy key
Dost open life, and, unperceived by us,
Even steal us from ourselves....
Haste, bare my arm, and rouse the serpent’s fury.
[_Holds out her arm, and draws it back._
Coward flesh,
Wouldst thou conspire with Cæsar to betray me,
As thou wert none of mine? I’ll force thee to it,
And not be sent by him,
But bring, myself, my soul to Antony.
[_Turns aside, and then shows her arm bloody._
Take hence; the work is done....
_Charmion._ The next is ours.
_Iras._ Now, Charmion, to be worthy
Of our great queen and mistress.
[_They apply the aspics._
_Cleopatra._ Already, death, I feel thee in my veins:
I go with such a will to find my lord,
That we shall quickly meet.
A heavy numbness creeps through every limb,
And now ’tis at my head: my eyelids fall,
And my dear love is vanquished in a mist.
Where shall I find him, where? O turn me to him,
And lay me on his breast! Cæsar, thy worst;
Now part us, if thou canst. [_Dies._
[_Iras sinks down at her feet, and dies; Charmion
stands behind her chair, as dressing her head._
After the Revolution he wrote _Don Sebastian_ (1690), _Cleomenes_
(1691), and _Love Triumphant_ (1694). The last was a tragi-comedy and
a failure. The other two, however, were quite up to the average of his
plays. In addition, at various stages of his career he collaborated
with Lee in two other tragedies, and attempted, with lamentable
results, to improve upon Shakespeare’s _Tempest_ and _Troilus and
Cressida_.
=4. His Prose.= Dryden’s versatility is apparent when we observe
that in prose, as well as in poetry and drama, he attains to primacy
in his generation. In the case of prose he has one rival, John Bunyan.
No single item of Dryden’s prose work is of very great length; but in
his _Essay of Dramatic Poesie_ (1668), in his numerous dedicatory
epistles and prefaces, and in the scanty stock of his surviving letters
we have a prose _corpus_ of some magnitude. The general subject
of his prose is literary criticism, and that of a sane and vigorous
quality. The style is free, but not too free; there are slips of
grammar, but they are not many. The _Essay of Dramatic Poesie_
is his longest single prose work. It is cast into dialogue form, in
which four characters, one of whom is Dryden himself, discuss such
well-worked themes as ancients _versus_ moderns and blank verse
_versus_ rhyme. Studded throughout the book are passages of rare
ability, one of which is the following, which illustrates not only his
prose style, but also his acute perception of literary values:
To begin, then, with Shakespeare. He was the man who, of all
modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most
comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present
to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily; when
he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too.
Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the
greater commendation. He was naturally learned; he needed not
the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards and
found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he
so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest
of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit
degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast.
But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to
him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and
did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,
_Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi._
VIRG., _Ecl., i, 26_
RESTORATION COMEDY
In comedy alone Dryden showed a certain incapacity; his mind seemed to
be too rugged and unresilient to catch the sharper moods of the current
wit. Fortunately this weakness of his was atoned for by the activities
of a brilliant group of dramatists who made Restoration comedy a thing
apart in English literature.
The new comedy, of a slower growth than the new heroic play, owed
much of its inspiration to French comedy. It marked a new stage in
the civilization of England. The plays of the Shakespearian era were
beginning to be thought out of date. In his diary Evelyn notes that
“the old plays begin to disgust this refined age.” Though the age was
no doubt refined in certain respects, it was also decadent, and this
decadent spirit is reflected in its comedy.
The novel features of the type are:
(_a_) The theme is mainly of courtiers and their class, their vices and
affectations, their love-intrigues and money-grabbing. The characters
are still to a great extent those of the “humorsome” quality so common
in the time of Jonson. Their names reveal their dispositions: Sir
Fopling Flutter; Scrub (a servant); Colonel Bully; Sir John Brute;
Squire Sullen; Gibbet (a highwayman); Lady Bountiful. Such characters
as these are involved in plots of great and unnatural complication,
with much bustle and unlimited love-intrigue. In rare cases, as in some
of the plays of Shadwell, the characters are much more human and the
conditions more natural; and then we obtain deeply interesting glimpses
of the habits of the time. But in general the whole atmosphere of the
comedies is artificial and unreal.
(_b_) The prevailing love-theme is treated in a characteristic fashion
which is fortunately rare in English. It is not handled coarsely;
indeed, the age shows a ridiculous squeamishness at the grosser forms
of vice; but it is handled with a cool licentiousness and a vicious
pleasure that are often exceedingly clever, but always repulsive. It is
art, but art of a perverted kind.
(_c_) The style of the comedy suits the treatment. It is prose of
a neat and brilliant kind: deft and forcible, clean-cut and precise.
The style of Congreve, a specimen of which is given below, is a model
of its kind.
=William Congreve (1670–1729).= Though Congreve is not the first in
time, he is probably the first in merit among the comedy-writers. He
had a long life, but a glance at the table at the head of the chapter
will show that only a short period of his life was productive of
literary work. His plays were produced between 1693 and 1700. The last
play was not successful, and repeated attacks were forthcoming upon his
defects, so he wrote no more.
His first comedy was _The Old Bachelor_ (1693); then came _The Double
Dealer_ (1693 or 1694), _Love for Love_ (1695), and _The Way of the
World_ (1700). In 1697 he produced one tragedy, _The Mourning Bride_,
which had no success. The earlier plays have a slight touch of
seriousness, which is rarer still in the later comedies.
All are marked by the same features. The characters are numerous,
brilliant, and sharply defined. In each case, however, they are too
one-sided to be real; but they fulfill their purpose in the plays. The
plots are full of scandalous notions delicately adumbrated; and the
style is as keen and deadly as a sharp sword.
The following is a passage from _The Way of the World_. Two gentleman
are backbiting an acquaintance.
_Fainall._ He comes to town in order to equip himself for
travel.
_Mirabell._ For travel! Why the man that I mean is above
forty.
_Fainall._ No matter for that; ’tis for the honour of
England, that all Europe should know that we have blockheads of
all ages.
_Mirabell._ I wonder there is not an act of parliament to
save the credit of the nation, and prohibit the exportation of
fools.
_Fainall._ By no means, ’tis better as ’tis; ’tis better to
trade with a little loss, than to be quite eaten up with being
overstocked.
_Mirabell._ Pray, are the follies of this knight-errant,
and those of the squire his brother, anything related?
_Fainall._ Not at all; Witwoud grows by the knight, like
a medlar grafted on a crab. One will melt in your mouth, and
t’other set your teeth on edge; one is all pulp, and the other
all core.
_Mirabell._ So one will be rotten before he be ripe, and
the other will be rotten without ever being ripe at all.
OTHER COMEDY-WRITERS
=1. William Wycherley (1640–1715).= The productive period of
Wycherley’s life was brief but fruitful. He produced four plays in five
years: _Love in a Wood_ (1672), _The Gentleman Dancing Master_ (1673),
_The Country Wife_ (1675), and _The Plain Dealer_ (1677). He was a man
of good family, and he was at Court, where he seems to have been no
better than the average courtier of his time.
His contemporaries call his plays “manly.” By this they probably refer
to a boisterous indecency that riots through his comedies, in which
nearly every person is a fool, and every clever man a rogue and a rake.
He is much coarser in the grain than Congreve, and cannot keep his work
at such a high level. Yet he shows much wit in handling dialogue, and
has a sharp, though distorted, vision for human weaknesses.
=2. George Etheredge (1635–91).= Not much is known regarding the life
of Etheredge; but he appears to have been a courtier, and to have
served abroad. If all stories about him are true, he had an ample
share of the popular vices. He is said to have been killed by tumbling
downstairs while drunk. His three plays are _The Comical Revenge, or
Love in a Tub_ (1664), _She Would if She Could_ (1668), and _The Man of
Mode_ (1676). They are more uneven than Wycherley’s, and at their worst
are grosser; but they are clever, and can be lively and amusing.
=3. Sir John Vanbrugh (1666–1726).= Vanbrugh’s career, though much
of it is obscure, seems to have been a varied one, for at different
times he was a soldier, a herald, and an architect. His best three
comedies are _The Relapse_ (1697), _The Provoked Wife_ (1698), and _The
Confederacy_ (1705).
In the general opinion Vanbrugh is held to be a good second to
Congreve, but his plays are exceedingly unequal. His wit is rather more
genial than is common at this time, and sometimes his touch is firm and
sure.
=4. Thomas Shadwell (1640–92).= Dryden’s abuse of Shadwell has given
the latter a notoriety that he scarcely deserves. Little is known about
his life except that he was created Poet Laureate at the deposition
of Dryden in 1688. He wrote many plays, some of which were popular in
their day. The best three are _The Sullen Lovers_ (1668), _The Squire
of Alsatia_ (1688), and _Bury Fair_ (1689).
Shadwell is coarse without being clever to atone for it. His characters
are often wooden and unreal, but he has the knack of laying his hand
on good material. His _Squire of Alsatia_ is full of interesting
information about the life of the time, and Scott drew largely upon it
for _The Fortunes of Nigel_.
=5. George Farquhar (1678–1707).= He had an adventurous career, was in
turn a clergyman, an actor, and a soldier, and died when he was thirty
years old. The pathos of his early death has given him a fame of its
own. He wrote seven plays, the best of which are the last two, viz.,
_The Recruiting Officer_ (1706) and _The Beaux’ Stratagem_ (1707).
Farquhar comes late among the Restoration dramatists, and by this time
the cynical immorality of the age seems to have worn thin. His temper
is certainly more genial, and his wit, though it has lapses, is more
decorous. _The Beaux’ Stratagem_ (see pp. 225–6) is a lively and
ingenious comedy with a cleverly engineered plot.
RESTORATION TRAGEDY
With regard to tragedy, Dryden is amply representative of his age.
The period is less rich in tragedy than it is in comedy, for several
reasons. (_a_) The spirit of the time was too irresponsible and
vivacious to provide a healthy breeding-ground for this type of play.
(_b_) The average poetical standard was not high; and tragedy of
a superior type needs a high level of poetic merit. (_c_) There
was a lack of fresh models, the tragedians being dependent on the
Elizabethan plays (which were not popular), and on the classical French
tragedies. Yet there are a few tragedians who deserve a brief mention.
=1. Thomas Otway (1651–85).= As was so often the case with the
dramatists of the time, Otway had a varied and troubled career, closed
with a miserable death. His first play, _Alcibiades_, was produced
about 1675; then followed _Don Carlos_ (1676), _The Orphan_ (1680), and
his masterpiece, _Venice Preserved_ (1682).
_Venice Preserved_ (see p. 226) for long held the reputation of
being the best tragedy outside Shakespeare, and that reputation has
kept it in the forefront. It shows his work at its best. It has a
rugged and somber force, and reveals a considerable skill in working
out a dramatic situation. But Otway tends to lay on the horrors too
thickly; his style is unreliable, and his comic passages are farce of
the coarsest kind. If he is second to Shakespeare, he is a very bad
second.
=2. Nathaniel Lee (1653–92).= Lee’s life is the usual tale of mishaps,
miseries, and drunkenness, with a taint of madness as an additional
calamity. He wrote many tragedies, some of which are _Nero_ (1673),
_Sophonisba_ (1676), _The Rival Queens_ (1677), and _Mithridates_
(1678). He also collaborated with Dryden in the production of two
plays.
During his own time Lee’s name became a byword to distinguish a kind of
wild, raving style, which in part at least seems to have been a product
of his madness. But he can write well when the spirit is in him; he has
a command of pathos, and all through his work he has touches of real
poetic quality.
=3. Elkanah Settle (1648–1724).= Settle was in some ways the butt of
his literary friends, and Dryden has given him prominence by attacking
him in his satires. In his day he obtained some popularity with a
heroic play, _The Empress of Morocco_ (1673). It is a poor specimen of
its kind, but his other dramas are worse.
=4. John Crowne (1640–1703).= Crowne is another of the dramatists who
attacked Dryden and who were in turn assailed by the bigger man. A
voluminous playwright, Crowne’s best-known works are the tragedies of
_Caligula_ (1698), a heroic play, and _Thyestes_, in blank verse, and a
comedy, _Sir Courtly Nice_ (1685). Crowne is quite a good specimen of
the average Restoration dramatist. The plays show considerable talent
and a fair amount of skill in versification.
=5. Nicholas Rowe (1674–1718).= During his lifetime Rowe was a person
of some importance, and was made Poet Laureate in 1714. His best-known
plays are _Tamerlane_ (1702), _The Fair Penitent_ (1703), and the
popular _Jane Shore_ (1714). Johnson says of him, “His reputation comes
from the reasonableness of some of his scenes, the elegance of his
diction, and the suavity of his verse.”
POETRY
=Samuel Butler (1612–80).= Besides Dryden and the tragedy-writers the
only considerable poet of the period is Samuel Butler, and his fame
rests on one work, _Hudibras_.
As a middle-aged man Butler saw the rough and tumble of the Civil
War, and was nearly fifty when the Restoration occurred. He seems to
have been of humble birth and to have served as a kind of superior
menial in a number of noble households. In the course of these several
occupations he acquired the varied knowledge that he was to put to good
use in his poem. In 1663 he published _Hudibras_, which was at once a
success. Two other parts followed in 1664 and 1678 respectively.
_Hudibras_ was topical, for it was a biting satire on the Puritans, who
were the reverse of popular when the King returned. In general outline
it is modeled upon the adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, who
find their respective parallels in Sir Hudibras and his squire Ralpho.
Sir Hudibras is a Puritan knight who undergoes many absurd adventures;
but the poem lacks the real pathos and genuine insight of its great
Spanish original. It is wholly, almost spitefully, satirical. The poem
is composed artfully. The adventures are well chosen in order to throw
the greatest amount of ridicule on the maladroit hero; the humor,
though keen and caustic, is never absolutely brutal in expression;
there is a freakish spattering of tropes and a mock-solemn parade of
scholastic learning; and (a feature that added immeasurably to its
success) it is cast in an odd jigging octosyllabic couplet. This meter
of _Hudibras_ is remarkable. It is varied and yet uniform, and it
carries the tale with an easy relish. Though it is sometimes almost
doggerel, it has always a kind of distinction, and each couplet is
clenched with an ingenious rhyme that is the most amusing feature of
all.
He was in logic a great critic,
Profoundly drilled in analytic;
He could distinguish, and divide
A hair ’twixt south and south-west side;
On either which he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute;
He’d undertake to prove by force
Of argument a man’s no horse;
He’d prove a buzzard is no fowl,
And that a lord may be an owl--
A calf, an alderman--a goose, a justice--
And rooks, committee-men and trustees.
He’d run in debt by disputation,
And pay with ratiocination:
All this by syllogism, true
In mood and figure, he would do.
For rhetoric, he could not ope
His mouth but out there flew a trope;
And when he happened to break off
I’ th’ middle of his speech, or cough,
H’ had hard words, ready to show why.
And tell what rules he did it by:
Else, when with greatest art he spoke,
You’d think he talked like other folk;
For all a rhetorician’s rules
Teach nothing but to name his tools.
PROSE-WRITERS
=1. John Bunyan (1628–88).= In the domain of Restoration prose
Bunyan alone contests the supremacy of Dryden. And Bunyan stands in a
class by himself.
The main facts of his life are well known. He himself has given them an
imperishable shape in his _Grace Abounding_ (1666), a kind of religious
autobiography. Though the statements of this book need not be taken too
literally, he seems to have misspent his youth. He draws a horrible
picture of his own depravity; but as religious converts are well known
to delight in depicting their original wickedness in the darkest
colors, this need not be taken too seriously. He served as a soldier
in the Civil War, and seems to have been no better than the ordinary
soldier. Religious conversion came to him about 1656, saving him,
according to his own account, from everlasting fire. In the flood of
his new enlightenment he became a preacher, and, being unlicensed, was
arrested. He was cast into Bedford jail, and remained there for twelve
years (1660–72). He was released, and obtained a license; but this was
canceled in 1675, and he was imprisoned for six months. Beginning with
this latter period we have all his most famous works: _The Pilgrim’s
Progress_ (1677), _The Life and Death of Mr. Badman_ (1680), and _The
Holy War_ (1682). He was eventually set at liberty, and spent his last
years preaching in peace.
Except for _Grace Abounding_, all Bunyan’s major works are allegorical.
In each case the allegory is worked out with ease, force, and
clearness. Readers of all ages enjoy the narrative, while they follow
the double meaning without an effort. The allegorical personages--for
example, Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Mrs. Diffidence, Giant Despair, Madame
Wanton, My Lord Hategood, Mr. Standfast--are fresh and apt, and are
full of an intense interest and a raw dramatic energy. Their individual
adventures combine and react with a variety that keeps the story from
monotony, and yet the simple idea of a forward journey is never lost.
The plot, working upon the fortunes of the different characters,
gives us the nearest approach to the pure novel that had so far been
effected. The numerous natural descriptions are simply done, but they
are full of a great unspoilt ability. Lastly, Bunyan’s style is unique
in prose. Though it is undoubtedly based upon the great Biblical
models, it is quite individual. It is homely, but not vulgar; strong,
but not coarse; equable, but not monotonous; it is sometimes humorous,
but it is never ribald; rarely pathetic, but never sentimental. It has
remained the pattern of a plain style, and is one of the masterpieces
of the English language.
The following extract gives us an idea of Bunyan’s narrative and
descriptive power, and is a fair specimen of his masculine prose:
I saw them in my dream, so far as this valley reached, there
was, on the right hand, a very deep ditch; that ditch it is
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 even if a good man
falls, he finds no bottom for his feet to stand on: into that
quag King David once did fall, and had no doubt therein been
smothered, had not He that is able plucked him out. The pathway
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 danger mentioned above, the pathway here was so dark, that
oft-times when he lifted up his foot to set forward, he knew
not where, or upon what, he should set it next. About the midst
of the valley I perceived the mouth of Hell to be; and it stood
also hard by the way-side. 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 towards
him. Also he heard doleful voices, and rushings to and fro; so
that sometimes he thought he should be torn to pieces or trodden
down like mire in the streets.
_The Pilgrim’s Progress_
=2. Lord Halifax (1633–95).= Halifax was an outstanding figure in the
House of Lords during the exciting times of the Exclusion Bills, of
which he was the chief opponent. He ranks high as an orator; as an
author his fame rests on a small volume called _Miscellanies_. The
book contains a number of political tracts, such as _The Character of
a Trimmer_, and a piece of a more general character called _Advice to
a Daughter_. In his writings Halifax adopts the manner and attitude of
the typical man of the world: a moderation of statement, a cool and
agreeably acid humor, and a style devoid of flourishes. In him we find
a decided approach to the essay-manner of Addison.
=3. Sir William Temple (1628–99).= Temple also was a politician of
some importance, filled diplomatic posts abroad, and was a moderate
success in affairs at home. He is an example of the moneyed, leisured
semi-amateur in literature. He wrote little and elegantly, as a
gentleman should, and patronized authors of lesser fortune and greater
genius. His best work is his _Essay on Poetry_. His style resembles
that of Halifax in its mundane, cultured reticence; but at times he
has higher flights, in which he shows some skill in the handling of
melodious and rhythmic prose.
=4. John Tillotson (1630–94).= In Tillotson we have one of the popular
preachers of the time, and his _Sermons_ is mentioned by Addison as
being a standard work of its class. He is a literary descendant of the
great school of Jeremy Taylor and Thomas Fuller, but his style lacks
their richness and melody, though it gains in clearness and crispness.
=5. The Diarists.= By a coincidence it happened that the two most
famous diary-writers in English were working at the same time, and
during this period. Not dissimilar in several respects, their works
show both the drawbacks and the advantages of the diary manner. The
books are private documents, and so have no formal pretensions to
literary excellence in style, which is not an undiluted misfortune.
Yet the style is often ragged and incoherent, and much reading at it
produces a feeling of flatness and monotony. But, on the other hand,
being private jottings, they are intimate, and so are interesting, full
of information concerning public and personal affairs, and containing
illuminating comments on people and incidents.
(_a_) Of the two =Samuel Pepys (1633–1703)= is the less worthy as a
man, but his very human quality makes him the livelier and the more
interesting. By occupation he was a kind of civil servant in the
Admiralty, and prospered so well that he became a member of Parliament
and Secretary to the Admiralty. His diary, which was meant to be
strictly personal, was written in cipher, and the reading of it gives
one the impression of surreptitiously peeping into his back window
when the blinds are up. By a multitude of detail the book shows Pepys
to have been mean and lustful; vain and trivial; ambitious, and
yet without the resolution that should attend it. Yet withal he is
intensely human and alive, full of a magpie alertness; and in addition
he has the gift of inspiring in his readers the same vividness of
curiosity. We could ill spare Pepys from among those mortals who have
become immortal in their own despite.
_May 1st, 1669_--Up betimes. Called by my tailor, and here
first put on a summer suit this year; but it was not my fine one
of flowered tabby vest and coloured camelot tunic, because it
was too fine with the gold lace at the bands, that I was afraid
to be seen in it; but put on the stuff suit I made the last
year, which is now repaired; and so did go to the office in it,
and sat all the morning, the day looking as if it would be foul.
At noon home to dinner, and there find my wife extraordinary
fine, with her flowered tabby gown that she made two years ago,
now laced exceeding pretty; and, indeed, was fine all over; and
mighty earnest to go, though the day was very lowering; and she
would have me put on my fine suit, which I did. And so anon we
went alone through the town with our new liveries of serge,
and the horses’ manes and tails tied with red ribbons, and the
standards gilt with varnish, and all clean, and green reins,
that people did mightily look upon us; and, the truth is, I did
not see any coach more pretty, though more gay, than ours all
the day.
(_b_) =John Evelyn (1620–1706)= is the other diarist, and is much
more respectable and much less amusing than Pepys. His diary is a
more finished production in the matter of style, and may have been
produced with an eye on the public. The style is only moderate in
quality, and has little of the freshness that distinguishes Pepys’. The
diary, however, is full of accurate information, and in some of the
more moving incidents, such as that of the Great Fire, it warms into
something like real eloquence.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS
Viewed as a whole, this period is seen to be one of transition; and,
being so, it is to a large extent one of stagnation, time’s dead
low-water. The Elizabethan fervor had spent itself, and the new
classicism was still in the making. Yet the time is important in the
development of literary forms and style.
=1. Poetry.= (_a_) _The Lyric._ The form of the lyric shows little
change. In bulk it is inconsiderable, for the lyrical spirit is largely
in abeyance. Outside Dryden, who is the best example of the lyrical
bard, we have the slight work of the courtiers, the =Earl of Dorset
(1637–1706)=, the =Earl of Rochester (1647–80)=, and =Sir Charles
Sedley (16391701)=. These were fashionable men, taking their poetry
with fashionable irresponsibility. Their poems, which nearly all deal
with the love-theme in an artificial manner, have a decided charm and
skill, being modeled on the Caroline poems that were the mode before
the Civil War. Of real originality there is hardly a trace.
(_b_) _The Ode._ Once more Dryden towers pre-eminent in this class of
poem. His two odes on the anniversary of St. Cecilia’s Day and his
other ode on the death of Mrs. Anne Killigrew are among the best of
any period. Written in the irregular Pindaric meter, they are full of
the high passion that gives the artificial medium some real fire and
energy. We give the opening lines of the elegiac poem:
Thou youngest Virgin-Daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the blest;
Whose palms, new plucked from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green above the rest:
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll’st above us in thy wandering race,
Or in procession fixed and regular
Moved with the heaven’s majestic pace,
Or called to more superior bliss,
Thou tread’st with seraphim the vast abyss.
(_c_) _The Satire._ Several circumstances combined to make this age
abound in satirical writing. It was a period of bitter political and
personal contention, of easy morals and subdued enthusiasms, of sharp
wit and acute discrimination. For these reasons satire acquired a new
importance and a sharper edge.
The older satire, such as is represented in the poems of Donne and
of Andrew Marvell (1621–78), was of a more general kind, and seemed
to have been written with deliberate clumsiness and obscurity. These
habits were repugnant to the ideals of the new age, whose satire
is more personal and more vindictive. Its effect is immensely more
incisive, and it obtains a new freshness and point by the use of
the heroic couplet, in which it is almost wholly written. Dryden’s
_Absalom and Achitophel_ is an excellent example of the political
satire, while his _MacFlecknoe_ shows the personal type. Literary
satire is also well represented in _The Rehearsal_ (1671), which
parodied the literary vices of the time, especially those of the heroic
play. This work, which was reproduced year after year, with topical
hits in every new edition, was the work of several hands, though the
Duke of Buckingham receives the chief credit. Butler’s _Hudibras_
is a satire on the Puritans. The miscellaneous satire of John Oldham
(1653–83) had much of the earlier clumsiness.
(_d_) _Narrative poetry._ Dryden’s translations and adaptations of
Chaucer, Virgil, Ovid, and Boccaccio are the chief examples of this
form. Among others, he gives us Chaucer’s _Wife of Bath’s Tale_, _The
Knight’s Tale_, and several tales from Boccaccio. There is no fresh
development to record. Butler’s _Hudibras_ is narrative of a kind,
though the chief interest is satirical.
=2. Drama.= The development of the drama is considerable. We
summarize briefly what has already been indicated.
(_a_) In _tragedy_ the most novel in the matter of form is the _heroic
play_, whose peculiarities have already been pointed out on p. 199.
There is little further development. The tragical faculty is weakening
all through the period, even in comparison with the post-Shakespearian
plays. This type of play is best represented by Dryden’s _All for
Love_ and Otway’s _Venice Preserved_. The characters are becoming more
stagy, and the situations are made as horrible as the ingenuity of the
dramatist can devise.
(_b_) In _comedy_ the advance is noteworthy. The comedy of “humors”
is dying out, though considerable traces of it are still visible. The
influence of the French is giving the comedy a new “snap” and glitter,
and the almost universal medium is prose. Congreve’s _Way of the World_
(1700), Wycherley’s _Country Wife_ (1675), and Farquhar’s _Beaux’
Stratagem_ (1707) are good examples.
=3. Prose.= With the exception of the work of Dryden and Bunyan,
the prose work of the time is of little moment. Dryden’s prose is
almost entirely devoted to literary criticism; Bunyan’s contribution
shows a remarkable development of the prose allegory. The remainder of
the prose-writers deal with political and miscellaneous subjects, with,
in addition, some theological and historical writing.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY STYLE
The main tendency of the age, in all departments of literature, is
toward a clear, plain, and forcible style.
=1. Poetry.= The new movement was seen most clearly in the
development of the _heroic couplet_, which was soon to spread
throughout poetry and through much of the drama. As we have seen
(p. 182), in the previous age the couplet had become so loose that
it resembled a cross between prose and verse. An exponent of such a
measure is Chamberlayne (1619–89):
Poor love must dwell
Within no climate but what’s parallel
Unto our honoured births; the envied fate
Of princes oft these burdens find from state
When lowly swains, knowing no parent’s voice
Of negative, make a free and happy choice.
This is a curious liquid measure. The pause is irregularly distributed,
and the rhythm is light and easy.
Cowley and Denham likewise obtain much credit for the introduction of
the new measure; but the chief innovator is Edmund Waller (1606–87).
Dryden, in his dedication to _The Rival Ladies_ says, “Rime has all the
advantages of prose besides its own. But the excellence and dignity of
it were never fully known till Mr. Waller first taught it.” An extract
from Waller will suffice:
While in this park I sing, the listening deer
Attend my passion, and forget to fear;
When to the beeches I report my flame,
They bow their heads, as if they felt the same,
To gods appealing, when I reach their bowers,
With loud complaints, they answer me in showers.
The note here is quite different from that of the previous extract. The
tread of the meter is steady and almost uniform, and the pauses cluster
about the middle and the end of the lines. It must be noted, too, that
a large proportion of Waller’s poetry took this form.
Dryden adopted the heroic couplet, but he improved upon the wooden
respectability of his predecessors’ verse. While he retained all the
couplet’s steadiness and force, he gave it an additional vigor, a
sinewy elegance, and a noble rhythm and beauty. It is worth while
giving another example of his couplet:
A milk-white hind, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on the lawns and in the forest ranged;
Without unspotted, innocent within,
She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.
Yet had she oft been chased with horns and hounds
And Scythian shafts; and many winged wounds
Aimed at her heart; was often forced to fly,
And doomed to death, though fated not to die.
DRYDEN, _The Hind and the Panther_
In its own fashion this passage is as melodious and powerful as some of
the noblest lines of Milton.
In other forms of poetry the style contains little to be commented
upon. The _blank verse_ continues the disintegration that
(with the exception of the verse of Milton) began with the death of
Shakespeare. We give a good example of this Restoration blank verse:
Through a close lane as I pursued my journey,
And meditating on the last night’s vision,
I spied a wrinkled hag, with age grown double,
Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself;
Her eyes with scalding rheum were galled and red,
And palsy shook her head; her hands seemed withered;
And on her crooked shoulder had she wrapped
The tattered remnant of an old striped hanging.
OTWAY, _The Orphan_
In this passage we can observe the absence of the high poetic fire
of the Elizabethans and the lack of the thunderous depth of Milton.
Observe the regularity of the beat, the uniformity of the pauses, and
the frequency of the hypermetrical ending. There is, nevertheless, a
certain somber, dogged attraction about the style of the passage. The
average blank verse of the time is much less regular, and much less
attractive.
The _lyric_ still shows a reflection of the Caroline manner, as can be
seen in the following example:
Love still has something of the sea,
From whence his mother rose;
No time his slaves from doubt can free,
Nor give their thoughts repose.
They are becalmed in clearest days,
And in rough weather tossed;
They wither under cold delays,
Or are in tempests lost.
SEDLEY (_out of seven stanzas_)
This lyric has an undoubted sweetness of expression, though it is
artificial in thought.
=2. Prose.= Though the prose writing of the period is not great
in bulk, it shows a profound change in style. Previous writers, such
as Browne, Clarendon, and Hobbes, had done remarkable and beautiful
work in prose, but their style had not yet found itself. It was wayward
and erratic, often cumbrous and often obscure, and weighted with a
Latinized construction and vocabulary. In Dryden’s time prose begins
definitely to find its feet. It acquires a general utility and a
permanence; it is smoothed and straightened, simplified and harmonized.
This is the age of average prose, and prepares the way for the work
of Swift and Addison, who stand on the threshold of the modern prose
style. Less than forty years intervene between Dryden and Sir Thomas
Browne; yet Dryden and his school seem to be nearer the twentieth
century than they are to Browne.
Not that Dryden’s style is flawless. It is sometimes involved
and obscure; there are little slips of grammar and many slips of
expression; but on the average it is of high quality, and the
impression that the reader receives is one of great freshness and
abounding vitality. Further examples of this good average style will be
found in the work of Temple and Halifax.
In the case of Bunyan the style becomes plainer still. But it is
powerful and effective, and bears the narrative nobly. Pepys and Evelyn
have no pretensions to style as such, but their work is admirably
expressed, and Evelyn in especial has passages of more elevated diction.
In some authors of the period we find this desire for unornamented
style degenerating into coarseness and ugliness. Such a one is =Jeremy
Collier (1650–1726)=, whose _Short View of the Profaneness and
Immorality of the English Stage_ (1698) caused a great commotion in
its day. It attacked the vices of the stage with such vigor that it is
said to have driven some of the playwrights from their evil courses.
The style of this famous book is so colloquial that it becomes in
places ungrammatical. =Thomas Sprat (1635–1713)= was another disciple
of the same school. He wrote on the newly formed Royal Society, which
demanded from its members, “a close, naked, natural way of speaking.”
This expresses the new development quite well. A greater man than Sprat
but a fellow-member of the Royal Society, was =John Locke (1632–1704)=,
who in his famous _Essay concerning Human Understanding_ (1690) put the
principle into practice. Locke’s style is bare to baldness, but it is
clear. We give an example:
Some men are remarked for pleasantness in raillery; others,
for apologues, and apposite, diverting stories. This is apt to
be taken for the effect of pure nature, and that the rather,
because it is not got by rules, and those who excel in either
of them, never purposely set themselves to the study of it as an
art to be learnt. But yet it is true, that at first some lucky
hit, which took with somebody, and gained him commendation,
encouraged him to try again, inclined his thoughts and
endeavours that way, till at last he insensibly got a facility
in it without perceiving how; and that is attributed wholly to
nature, which was much more the effect of use and practice. I
do not deny that natural disposition may often give the first
rise to it; but that never carries a man far without use and
exercise, and it is practice alone that brings the powers of
the mind as well as those of the body to their perfection. Many
a good poetic vein is buried under a trade, and never produces
anything for want of improvement. We see the ways of discourse
and reasoning are very different, even concerning the same
matter, at court and in the university. And he that will go but
from Westminster Hall to the Exchange, will find a different
genius and turn in their ways of talking; and one cannot think
that all whose lot fell in the city were born with different
parts from those who were bred at the university or inns of
court.
TABLE TO ILLUSTRATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS
+----+-----------------------------+-------------------+--------------------------+
| | POETRY | DRAMA | PROSE |
| +---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+------+---------+
|DATE| | |Satirical| | | | | Miscel- |
| | Lyrical |Narrative| and | Tragedy | Comedy |Narrative|Essay | laneous |
| | | |Didactic | | | | | |
+----+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+------+---------+
|1650| | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |
|1660| | | | | | | |Pepys |
+----+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+------+---------+
| |Dryden |Dryden | | | | | | |
| | | Butler | | | | |Evelyn |
| | | | | |Dryden | | | |
| |Dorset | | | |Etheredge|Bunyan | | |
| |Sedley | | |Dryden | | |Dryden|Dryden[136]|
| |Rochester| | | | | | | |
|1670| | | | |Shadwell | | |Tillotson|
+----+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+------+---------+
| | | | | | | | |Sprat |
| | | | |Lee |Wycherley| | | |
| | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |
| | | | |Otway | | | | |
| | | |Oldham | | | | | |
|1680| | | | | | | |Halifax |
+----+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+------+---------+
| | | |Shadwell | | | |Temple|Temple |
| | | |Dryden[137]| | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |
| | | | |Rowe | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |
| | | |Dryden[138]| | | | | |
|1690| | | |Dryden[139]| | | | |
+----+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+------+---------+
| | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | |Congreve | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | |Vanbrugh | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |
| |Dryden[140]| | | | | | | |
|1700| |Dryden[141]| | |Farquhar | | | |
+----+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+------+---------+
In one prominent case we have a survival of the more elaborate style of
the past, and that is in the history of =Gilbert Burnet (1643–1715)=,
Bishop of Salisbury, whose _History of his own Times_ was published
after his death. The style of the book is modeled on that of Clarendon.
Burnet’s style is not of the same class as that of his predecessor: it
has lapses into colloquialism; its sentences are snipped into small
pieces by means of frequent colons and semicolons; and he has not
Clarendon’s command of vocabulary.
EXERCISES
1. The two following lyrics are respectively of the Restoration and the
Caroline periods. Compare and contrast them in (_a_) subject, (_b_)
style, and (_c_) meter. Summarize the effect of either of them, and say
which you prefer and why you prefer it.
(1) Love in fantastic triumph sate,
Whilst bleeding hearts around him flowed,
For whom fresh pains he did create,
And strange tyrannic power he showed.
From thy bright eyes he took his fires,
Which round about in sport he hurled;
But ’twas from mine he took desires
Enough t’ undo the amorous world.
From me he took his sighs and tears,
From thee his pride and cruelty;
From me his languishment and fears,
And every killing dart from thee:
Thus thou, and I, the god have armed
And set him up a deity;
But my poor heart alone is harmed,
While thine the victor is, and free.
APHRA BEHN (1640–89)
(2) Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon:
As yet the early-rising Sun
Has not attain’d his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray’d together, we
Will go with you along.
We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a Spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay
As you, or any thing.
We die,
As your hours do, and dry
Away
Like to the Summer’s rain;
Or as the pearls of morning’s dew
Ne’er to be found again.
_To Daffodils_, HERRICK (1591–1674)
2. Write a brief criticism of the following passage of Dryden’s prose.
Comment upon (_a_) the vocabulary, (_b_) the type of sentence, (_c_)
any colloquialisms or slips of grammar, and (_d_) its value as literary
criticism.
He must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive
nature, because, as it has been truly observed of him, he has
taken into the compass of his _Canterbury Tales_ the various
manners and humours (as we now call them) of the whole English
nation, in his age. Not a single character has escaped him. All
his pilgrims are severally distinguished from each other; and
not only in their inclinations, but in their very physiognomies
and persons. Baptista Porta could not have described their
natures better, than by the marks which the poet gives them.
The matter and manner of their tales, and of their telling, are
so suited to their different educations, humours, and callings,
that each of them would be improper in any other mouth. Even
the grave and serious characters are distinguished by their
several sorts of gravity: their discourses are such as belong
to their age, their calling, and their breeding; such as are
becoming of them, and of them only. Some of his persons are
vicious, and some virtuous; some are unlearned, or (as Chaucer
calls them) lewd, and some are learned. Even the ribaldry of
the low characters is different; the Reeve, the Miller, and
the Cook, are several men, and distinguished from each other
as much as the mincing Lady Prioress, and the broad-speaking,
gap-toothed Wife of Bath. But enough of this; there is such a
variety of game springing up before me, that I am distracted in
my choice, and know not which to follow. ’Tis sufficient to say,
according to the proverb, that “Here is God’s plenty.” We have
our forefathers and great-granddames all before us, as they were
in Chaucer’s days; their general characters are still remaining
in mankind, and even in England, though they are called by other
names than those of monks and friars, and canons, and lady
abbesses, and nuns; for mankind is ever the same, and nothing
lost out of Nature, though everything is altered.
_Preface to the “Fables”_
3. The extracts given below illustrate the development of the stopped
couplet. Point out briefly the change that comes over the meter, paying
attention to (_a_) the regularity of the accent, (_b_) the pause, and
(_c_) the cæsura.
(1) The sable mantle of the silent night
Shut from the world the ever-joysome light.
Care fled away, and softest slumbers please
To leave the court for lowly cottages.
Wild beasts forsook their dens on woody hills,
And sleightful otters left the purling rills;
Rooks to their nests in high woods now were flung,
And with their spread wings shield their naked young.
When thieves from thickets to the cross-ways stir,
And terror frights the lonely passenger;
When naught was heard but now and then the howl
Of some vile cur, or whooping of the owl.
WILLIAM BROWNE, 1620
(2) Oh, virtue’s pattern, glory of our times,
Sent of past days to expiate the crimes;
Great King, but better far than thou art great,
Whom state not honours but who honours state;
By wonder born, by wonder first installed,
By wonder after to new kingdoms called;
Young, kept by wonder from home-bred alarms,
Old, saved by wonder from pale traitor’s harms,
To be for this thy reign, which wonders brings,
A king of wonder, wonder unto kings.
If Pict, Dane, Norman, thy smooth yoke had seen,
Pict, Dane, and Norman, had thy subjects been;
If Brutus knew the bliss thy rule doth give,
E’en Brutus joy would under thee to live.
For thou thy people dost so dearly love,
That they a father more than prince thee prove.
DRUMMOND, 1630
(3) The seas are quiet when the winds give o’er;
So, calm are we when passions are no more!
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness which age descries.
The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made;
Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become
As they draw near to their eternal home.
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,
That stand upon the threshold of the new.
WALLER, 1687
(4) See barbarous nations at thy gates attend,
Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend;
See thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings,
And heaped with products of Sabæan springs!
For thee Idume’s spicy forests blow,
And seeds of golden Ophir’s mountains glow.
See heaven its sparkling portals wide display,
And break upon thee in a flood of day.
POPE, 1730
4. In the following extract from Bunyan explain carefully the literal
meaning that lies behind the allegory. Remark upon (_a_) its
clearness, (_b_) its appropriateness and beauty. Add a note on Bunyan’s
style, especially with regard to its connection with the Bible.
But we will come again to this valley of humiliation. It is
the best and most fruitful piece of ground in all these parts.
It is fat ground, and, as you see, consisteth much in meadows;
and if a man was to come here in summer-time, as we do now, if
he knew not anything before thereof, and if he also delighted
himself in the sight of his eyes, he might see that which would
be delightful to him. Behold how green this valley is! also how
beautiful with lilies! I have known many labouring men that
have got good estates in this valley of humiliation. “For God
resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble”; for indeed
it is a very fruitful soil, and doth bring forth handfuls. Some
also have wished that the next way to their father’s house were
here, that they might be troubled no more with either hills or
mountains to go over; but the way is the way, and there’s an end.
5. The following extracts illustrate respectively Restoration comedy
and tragedy:
(1) (_This is part of a scene between Aimwell, a gentleman who
is staying at an inn, and Gibbet, a highwayman, who is trying to
insinuate himself into his company by calling himself a military
officer._)
_Enter_ GIBBET
_Gibbet._ Sir, I’m yours.
_Aimwell._ ’Tis more than I deserve, sir, for I don’t know
you.
_Gibbet._ I don’t wonder at that, sir, for you never saw me
before--[_aside_]--I hope.
_Aimwell._ And pray, sir, how came I by the honour of
seeing you now?
_Gibbet._ Sir, I scorn to intrude upon any gentleman, but
my landlord--
_Aimwell._ O sir, I ask your pardon, you’re the captain he
told me of?
_Gibbet._ At your service, sir.
_Aimwell._ What regiment, may I be so bold?
_Gibbet._ A marching regiment, an old corps.
_Aimwell_ [_aside_]. Very old, if your coat be
regimental. [_Aloud_] You have served abroad, sir?
_Gibbet._ Yes, sir, in the plantations,’twas my lot to be
sent into the worst service; I would have quitted it indeed, but
a man of honour, you know--Besides, ’twas for the good of my
country that I should be abroad: anything for the good of one’s
country--I’m a Roman for that.
_Aimwell._ You found the West Indies very hot, sir?
_Gibbet._ Ay, sir, too hot for me.
_Aimwell._ Pray, sir, han’t I seen your face at Will’s
coffee-house?
_Gibbet._ Yes, sir, and at White’s too.
_Aimwell._ And where is your company now, captain?
_Gibbet._ They an’t come yet.
_Aimwell._ Why, d’ye expect them here?
_Gibbet._ They’ll be here to-night, sir.
_Aimwell._ Which way do they march?
_Gibbet._ Across country.
FARQUHAR, _The Beaux’ Stratagem_
Remark upon the style of the dialogue, and how it suits the situation.
(2) (_This extract occurs near the end of “Venice Preserved,”
Otway’s famous tragedy. Pierre, a conspirator against the
Venetian Senate, is about to be tortured publicly on the wheel.
His friend Jaffier, who has wronged Pierre, has come to witness
the execution._)
_Officer._ The day grows late, sir.
_Pierre._ I’ll make haste. O Jaffier!
Though thou’st betrayed me, do me some way justice.
_Jaffier._ No more of that: thy wishes shall be satisfied....
[_Going away, Pierre holds him._
_Pierre._ No--this--no more! [_He whispers Jaffier._
_Jaffier._ Ha! is’t then so?
_Pierre._ Most certainly.
_Jaffier._ I’ll do’t.
_Pierre._ Remember.
_Officer._ Sir.
_Pierre._ Come, now I’m ready.
[_He and Jaffier ascend the scaffold._
Captain, you should be a gentleman of honour.
Keep off the rabble, that I may have room
To entertain my fate and die with decency.
Come!
[_Takes off his gown. Executioner prepares to bind him._
_Priest._ Son!
_Pierre._ Hence, tempter!
_Officer._ Stand off, priest.
_Pierre._ I thank you, sir.
You’ll think on’t. [_To Jaffier._
_Jaffier._ ’Twon’t grow stale before to-morrow.
_Pierre._ Now, Jaffier! Now I am going. Now--
[_Executioner having bound him._
_Jaffier._ Have at thee, thou honest heart!
Then, here! [_Stabs him._
And this is well too! [_Stabs himself._
_Priest._ Damnable deed!
_Pierre._ Now thou hast indeed been faithful.
This was done nobly--we’ve deceived the Senate.
_Jaffier._ Bravely.
_Pierre._ Ha! Ha! Ha!--Oh! Oh!-- [_Dies._
_Jaffier._ Now, you curs’d rulers,
Thus of the blood ye’ve shed I make libation,
And sprinkle it mingling; may it rest upon you,
And all your race: be henceforth peace a stranger
Within your walls; let plagues and famine waste
Your generations--O poor Belvidera!...
I’m sick--I’m quiet-- [_Dies._
Remark upon the power of this scene, the skill shown in the variation
of the speeches, the use of colloquialisms, and the climax. Does it
strike you as being overdone? Add a note on the meter.
6. The following is Dryden’s character-sketch of the Duke of
Buckingham, who receives the name of Zimri. (Dryden, in his _Essay
on Satire_, says: “How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and
that wittily! but how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead,
or a knave without using any of these opprobrious names! There is
a vast difference between the slovenly butchering of a man and the
fineness of stroke that separates the head from the body, and leaves
it standing in its place.... The character of Zimri, in my _Absalom
and Achitophel_, is, in my opinion, worth the whole poem. It is not
bloody, but it is ridiculous enough.”)
Some of their chiefs were princes of the land;
In the first rank of these did Zimri stand,
A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind’s epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But in the course of one revolving moon
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Blest madman who could every hour employ
With something new to wish or to enjoy!
Railing and praising were his usual themes,
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes:
So over violent or over civil
That every man with him was God or Devil.
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art;
Nothing went unrewarded but desert.
Beggared by fools whom still he found too late,
He had his jest, and they had his estate.
He laughed himself from Court; then sought relief
By forming parties, but could ne’er be chief:
For spite of him, the weight of business fell
On Absalom and wise Achitophel;
Thus wicked but in will, of means bereft,
He left not faction, but of that was left.
From this passage quote the lines which hint that Buckingham is
respectively “a fool, a blockhead, or a knave” without actually calling
him so. Quote other lines that seem to be particularly effective.
Remark upon the style of the couplet: the meter, the position of the
pause, and the kind of rhyme. Finally, write a paragraph summarizing
the effect the passage produces on the reader.
7. The passage given below is an extract from Dryden’s earliest printed
poem (1658). Compare it with the passage given in the last exercise.
Each little pimple had a tear in it,
To wail the fault its rising did commit,
Who, rebel-like, with their own lord at strife,
Thus made an insurrection ’gainst his life.
Or were these gems sent to adorn his skin,
The cabinet of a richer soul within?
No comet need foretell his change drew on,
Whose corpse might seem a constellation.
_Upon the Death of the Lord Hastings_
8. Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full resounding line,
The long majestic march, the energy divine.
POPE
From the passages already quoted give extracts to show the truth of the
above statement.
9. Use the following quotation to sketch the development of English
prose from the death of Shakespeare to the death of Dryden:
When we find Chapman, the Elizabethan translator of Homer,
expressing himself in his preface thus: “Though truth in her
very nakedness sits in so deep a pit, that from Gades to Aurora
and Ganges few eyes can sound her, I hope yet those few here
will so discover and confirm, that, the date being out of her
darkness in this morning of our poet, he shall now gird his
temples with the sun,”--we pronounce that such a prose is
intolerable. When we find Milton writing: “And long it was not
after, when 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,”--we pronounce that
such a prose has its own grandeur, but that it is obsolete and
inconvenient. But when we find Dryden telling us: “What Virgil
wrote in the vigour of his age, in plenty and at ease, I have
undertaken to translate in my declining years; struggling with
wants, oppressed with sickness, curbed in my genius, liable to
be misconstrued in all I write,” then we exclaim that here at
last we have the true English prose, prose such as we would
all gladly use if we only knew how. Yet Dryden was Milton’s
contemporary.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
10. “A good deal of the unconquerable individuality of the earlier part
of the century survives in it, and prevents monotony. After Addison
everybody tries to write like Addison; after Johnson almost everybody
tries to write like Johnson. But after Dryden everybody dare not yet
try to write like Dryden.” (Saintsbury.) Show how far this statement
applies to the prose style of the age.
11. “The characteristic feature of _The Pilgrim’s Progress_ is that it
is the only work of its kind which possesses a strong human interest.”
(Macaulay.) Show how Bunyan, in plot, characters, and style, arouses
this “strong human interest” in his allegory. From this point of view
compare him with Spenser, who, Macaulay says, does not arouse this
interest.
12. The period of Dryden is often called “the Age of Satire.” Account
for the prominence of satire in this period, and point out some of the
effects it had on current and the succeeding writing.
13. What are the main features of Restoration drama?
14. “No man exercised so much influence on the age. The reason is
obvious. On no man did the age exercise so much influence.” (Macaulay.)
How far is this statement true of Dryden?