CHAPTER XI.

PROGRESS OF THE NATION FROM THE CIVIL WAR TO THE GREAT REVOLUTION.

Religion: Nonconformist Sects--Imprisonment of Bunyan--Fox

and the Society of Friends--The Punishment of James

Naylor--Expulsion of Roger Williams--Other Religious

Sects--Literature: Milton--His Works--Cowley--Butler--Dryden--Minor

Poets--Dramatists of the Restoration--Prose Writers: Milton and

Dryden--Hobbes--Clarendon--Baxter--Bunyan--Walton--Evelyn and

Pepys--Founding of the Royal Society--Physical Science--Discoveries

of Napier, Newton, and Flamsteed--Mathematicians and

Chemists--Harvey and Worcester--Painting, Sculpture, and

Engraving--Coinage--Music--Furniture--Costume--Manners and

Customs--State of London--Sports and Amusements--Country

Life--Travelling--The Clergy--Yeomen--Village Sports--Growth

of the Revenue and Commerce--Growing prosperity of the North

of England--The Navigation Act--Norwich and Bristol--Postal

Arrangements--Advantages Derived from the Industries of the

Foreign Refugees--The East India Company--Condition of the People:

Wages--The Poor Law--Efforts of Philanthropists.

The struggles of the Church we have sufficiently traced in our

recent chapters. With the Restoration it came back to full power and

possession of its revenues and honours, and held them firmly against

all rivals till James menaced them with the recall of the Roman

hierarchy, when, joining with the alarmed public, it compelled the

monarch himself to fly, and continued on its own vantage-ground. The

only notice of religious phenomena at this period demanded of us is

rather what regards the sects which now became conspicuous.

The leading sects, the Presbyterians, the Independents, and the

Baptists--then called Anabaptists--differed little in their faith.

They were all of the Calvinistic school, whilst the Episcopal Church

was already divided by the contending parties of Calvinists and

Arminians. We have related the struggles of the Presbyterians, English

and Scottish, for the possession of the Establishment in England to

the exclusion of all other faiths; the triumph of the Independents,

with more liberal views, through Cromwell and the army, and the

expulsion of both these parties from the national pulpits following

on the Restoration. The Baptists, though many of them were high in

the army and the State during the Commonwealth, never displayed the

political ambition of the other two great denominations. They cut,

indeed, no figure in the secular affairs of the nation, but they were

most honourably distinguished by their assertion of the right of

private opinion. They were as tolerant of religious liberty as the

Independents, or more so, from whom they differed only in their views

of the rite of Baptism. Their early history in England was adorned by

the appearance in their pulpits of one of the most extraordinary men

of modern times--John Bunyan, whose "Pilgrim's Progress" continues

to delight all classes of men, and will continue to do so as long as

the English language is read. Bunyan, a tinker by trade, was serving

in the Parliamentary army at Leicester, at the time of the battle of

Naseby; and when Charles I. fled to that town John was ordered out as

a sentinel, and his life was saved by another soldier volunteering to

take his duty, who was shot at his post. Bunyan was thrown into prison

for daring to preach under Charles II., and lay in gaol twelve years

and a half, solely because he had a conscience of his own; and was only

liberated on the Declaration of Indulgence by James II. A Mr. Smyth, a

clergyman of the Church of England, who adopted their faith, was the

first to open a chapel for the Baptists in London, and, encouraged by

his example, others were soon opened, and the views of the denomination

soon spread over England and Wales, in later times to be eloquently

expounded by Robert Robinson and Robert Hall.

But the most remarkable organisation of a religious body was that of

the Society of Friends, or, as they soon came to be nicknamed, Quakers,

whose founder, George Fox, was born at Drayton, in Leicestershire,

in 1624. His father was a weaver, and George was apprenticed to a

shoemaker, who also had a little farm. He informs us in his own

journal that he preferred the farming, and chiefly devoted himself

to it. When he was about nineteen he became deeply impressed with a

religious feeling. It was a time when religious discussion was making

rapid progress amongst the people from the more general access to the

Bible, and many were dissatisfied with the different churches, which

seemed too much engaged in attempts at worldly aggrandisement, and

at achieving a dominance over each other. George was one of these.

In seeking for clear views of religious faith, such as could set his

mind at rest, he went to various clergymen of the Established Church

first, but he found no light. One of them bade him take tobacco and

sing psalms; and another, Cradock of Coventry, was beginning to speak

comfortably to George as they walked in the garden, when the embryo

reformer unluckily happened to set his foot on a flower-border, which

threw the clergyman into such a rage that the discourse was abruptly

brought to an end.

[Illustration: ROGER WILLIAMS LEAVING HIS HOME IN MASSACHUSETTS. (_See

p._ 354.)]

Finding no relief or illumination from professors, as he called them,

Fox wisely took his Bible, and used to retire into a hollow tree in

the fields, where he read and prayed earnestly to God to enlighten

his understanding to comprehend the sacred volume, and the genuine

will of the Lord. The result was that he came to a clear and steadfast

conviction that Christianity was strictly a spiritual thing, having

nothing specifically to do with States and Governments, with worldly

pomp and power, and strivings after mortal honours and high places;

that Christ simply and strictly defined it when He said, "My kingdom

is not of this world." He saw that it was the grand principle by which

the soul of man is intended to be regenerated--born again, in fact, and

made fitting to enter into the kingdom of disembodied souls, in the

presence of God and His angels. He found himself, in a word, called

back from the conflicting views and empty ceremonies of the time to

Christianity as it existed among the Apostles--a perfectly spiritual,

and holy, and disinterested thing, embodying the wisdom and the truth

of God, and inhabiting, not formal creeds and outward ceremonies, but

the heart of man, and thence influencing all his thoughts and actions

for good. George perceived that all fixed creeds, all rites and

ceremonies, all investments in State power, were but as cobwebs and old

rags with which the self-interest and self-love of men had enveloped,

encumbered, and degraded it; and he felt himself called to go forth and

proclaim this, which he emphatically styled "the truth."

Fox carried his great Christian text into every act and department

of life. He was the first to elevate woman to her true place--an

intellectual, moral, and political equality with man; basing his

principle on the apostolic declaration that male and female are all one

in Christ Jesus. Acting on this principle, the women of his Society

became preachers, and transacted their own affairs of association in

their own meetings. He refused to take an oath before a magistrate,

because Christ expressly forbade His disciples to swear at all under

any circumstances; he refused to say "Thou" to a poor man, and "You"

to a rich one, as was then the odious practice; he refused to take

off his hat as a mark of homage to the wealthy and great, on the same

principle that it was a custom of pride and invidious distinction; and

he addressed prince or magistrate with the respectful boldness which

became a man sensible that the only true dignity was the dignity of

truth. The sufferings which were brought upon him and his followers by

these novel doctrines and practices from all parties were terrible.

About three thousand of them were imprisoned, even under the more

liberal rule of the Commonwealth, and as many under Charles II. Their

property was spoliated, their meeting-houses were pulled down, and

their families grossly insulted in their absence. Yet the doctrine

spread rapidly, and many eminent men embraced it; amongst others,

William Penn, the son of Admiral Penn, and the learned Robert Barclay,

who wrote the celebrated vindication of their faith.

At the same time the violent agitation of the period, and the

enthusiasm of this new doctrine, led some of Fox's followers into

considerable extravagances. The most prominent case was that of

James Naylor, who for a time was undoubtedly led into insanity by

the effervescence of his mind under his religious zeal; and allowed

women to lead his horse into Exeter, crying "Holy! holy! holy!" and

spreading their scarves and handkerchiefs in the way before him, as if

he had been the Saviour come again. Naylor professed that this homage

was not offered to him personally, but to Christ within him. His case

occupied the House of Commons for nearly two months altogether. There

were violent debates on it from morning till night; but at length, on

the 17th of December, 1656, it was voted that he should be set in the

pillory in Palace Yard for two hours; then be whipped from Westminster

to the Old Exchange, London, twice, wearing a paper containing a

description of his crimes; should have his tongue bored through with a

hot iron by the hangman for his blasphemy; be branded on the forehead

with the letter B; that he should be sent to Bristol, and there

whipped through the city on a market-day, paraded face backwards on a

saddleless horse, and then sent back to Bridewell, in London, where

he should be kept to hard labour, and debarred from the visits of his

friends, and from access to pens, ink, and paper.

All this was rigidly inflicted upon him, and borne heroically. After

two years' confinement in Bridewell he was dismissed, thoroughly cured

of his hallucination, ready to admit it, but as firm in his adhesion

to the principles of Quakerism as ever; and the Society, pitying his

fall, never withdrew from him their sympathy or the enjoyment of his

membership. He died soon after his release.

In America, in New England, the Quakers were more fiercely persecuted

than in England by the Puritans, who had themselves fled from

persecution. In Massachusetts and Connecticut they were ordered to

have their ears cut off if men, to be publicly whipped if women; and

for a second offence to have their tongues bored through if they dared

to come into these colonies; and this not deterring them, they hanged

several men and women. Endicott, the Governor of Connecticut, when one

of them quoted the words of St. Paul, "For in Him we live, and move,

and have our being," irreverently replied, "And so does every cat and

dog."

This intolerance of the Puritans was equally exerted against one of

their own members, the venerable Roger Williams, who was driven from

Massachusetts for courageously advocating the doctrine of perfect

freedom of conscience. In fact, Roger Williams was one of the very

first, if not the first man, who proclaimed this great doctrine; and

therefore deserves to be held in eternal remembrance. The honour of

being the earliest publisher of the right of spiritual freedom must,

perhaps, be awarded to Leonard Busher, who published a work on the

subject in 1614, and dedicated it to King James. Roger Williams,

expelled from Massachusetts, proceeded to Narraganset Bay, and became

the founder of the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,

where the most perfect freedom of religious faith was allowed.

Besides the sects in England already enumerated, there were many minor

ones. The "Millenarians," or "Fifth Monarchy Men," whose views we have

already explained. To this sect Major-General Harrison belonged; and

they created a riot under Venner, the wine-cooper. There was a sect

called "The Seekers," amongst whom Fox once fell, and many of them

joined him, believing they had found what they sought. There were the

"Ranters," a body noted for their noise and vociferation; "Behmenists,"

or disciples of the German mystic, Jacob Behmen; "Vanists," followers

of the religious views of Sir Harry Vane; and lastly, "Muggletonians,"

the disciples of one Ludovick Muggleton and John Reeve.

Muggleton was a journeyman tailor, and he and Reeve pretended to be the

two witnesses mentioned in the eleventh chapter of "The Revelation."

They were fanatics of the wildest and most furious character, and

professed to have power to save or damn all whom they pleased, and they

"dealt damnation round the land" with the utmost freedom. The Quakers

and Behmenists were the objects of their most violent denunciations,

probably because Fox and Penn protested against their wild and fanatic

doctrines, which were the antipodes of those of Fox; for, instead

of representing God as a pure spirit, they asserted that He had a

corporeal body, and came down to earth in it as Christ, leaving the

prophet Elias in heaven to rule in His absence. They contended that

man's soul is inseparably united to his body, dies and rises again

with it. They professed to have an especial knowledge of "the place

and nature of heaven, and the place and nature of hell;" with the

persons and natures of devils and angels. The truculent ravings of

these fanatics may be seen in the works and letters of Muggleton,

still extant. In one letter he delivers sentence of damnation on

six-and-twenty Quakers at once. "Inasmuch," he says, "as God hath

chosen me on earth to be the judge of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost,

therefore, in obedience to my commission from the true God, I do

pronounce all these twenty-six persons whose names are above written,

cursed and damned in their souls and bodies from the presence of God,

elect men, and angels in eternity." But this was little: he declared

all Quakers, and Behmenists, and numbers of other people damned and

cursed for ever.

This repulsive apostle of perdition was tried at the Old Bailey,

and convicted of blasphemy in 1676, and died in 1697, at the age of

eighty-eight.

We have seen with what a desolating sweep the bloody conflicts of

the Parliament against the encroachments of kingship prostrated the

pursuits of literature and art. We might have expected that the return

to established tranquillity under restored monarchy would have caused

a new spring of genius. But in no reign in England, and in no country

except France, have debauchery and the most hideous grossness so

defiled the productions of poetry and the drama.

Amid the satyr crew of degraded men and women who then represented

the literary world of England, some few, however, maintained a pure

and dignified career. At the head of these, equally exalted above the

rest by genius and purity of life and morals, stood John Milton (_b._

1608; _d._ 1674), one of the greatest epic poets, if not the greatest,

that the world has produced. Milton had saturated himself with the

poetic spirit, imagery, and expression of the Prophetic bards, as

well as with knowledge of those of Greece and Rome; and he brought to

bear an immense mass of varied learning on his subject with a power

of appropriation that gave to it a new and wonderful life instead

of the aspect of pedantry. The names of people and places which he

moulds into his diction seem to open up to the imagination regions of

unimagined grandeur and beauty amid strains of solemnest music; and

the descriptions of scenery, such as abound in "Comus," "Lycidas,"

and "Arcades," as well as those diffused through "Paradise Lost" and

"Paradise Regained," are like the most exquisite glimpses into the most

fair and solitary landscapes, breathing every rural fragrance, and

alive with all rural sounds and harmonies.

But it was when he was old, and poor, and blind, and living among the

hatred and the ribald obscenity of the Restoration, that he had scaled

those sublime altitudes of genius, and seemed to walk on the celestial

hills amid their pure and glorious inhabitants, rather than on earth

surrounded by rankest impurities and basest natures. It was when

"His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart,"

when he had fallen on evil days, that he had alone allowed himself

leisure to work out these the earliest of his aspirations. Long

before--when he had returned from his pleasant sojourn in Italy, where

he saw Galileo in his prison, and was himself received and honoured

by the greatest men of the land, as in anticipation of his after

glory, and was now engaged in defending the sternest measures of

the Republicans--in his "Reasons of Church Government urged against

Prelacy" he unfolded the grand design of his master work, but kept it

self-denyingly in his soul till he had done his duty to his country.

The views which he cherished in his literary ambition are as exalted in

their moral grandeur as his genius was in its native character. These

were, he said, "That what the greatest and choicest arts of Athens,

Rome, or modern Italy and those Hebrews of old did for their country,

I, in my proportion, with this over and above of being a Christian,

might do for mine, not caring to be named once abroad, though perhaps

I could attain unto that, but content me with these British islands

as my world." At this period, it seems, he had not made up his mind

whether he should adopt "the epic form, as exemplified by Homer,

Virgil, and Tasso, or the dramatic, wherein Sophocles and Euripides

reign; or in the style of those magnificent odes and hymns of Pindarus

and Callimachus, not forgetting that of all those kinds of writing the

highest models are to be found in the Holy Scriptures in the Book of

Job, in the Song of Solomon, and the Apocalypse of St. John, in the

grand songs interspersed throughout the Law and the Prophets." But in

one thing he was fixed--that the work should be one "not raised from

the heat of youth, or the vapours of wine, like that which flows at

waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist, or the trencher fury of some

rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory

and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit

who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out His

seraphim with the hallowed fire of His altar, to touch and purify the

lips of whom He pleases."

"So prayed, more gaining than he asked, the bard,

Holiest of men."

So he waited, fighting the battles of his country side by side with

Cromwell and Hampden, Pym and Marvell; and when at length he found

leisure to achieve his last great triumph, he was left alone in the

field. He had outlived the long battle of king and people, in which

extraordinary men and as extraordinary events had arisen, and shaken

the whole civilised world. Blind, poor, and old, as if some special

guardianship of Providence had shielded him, or as if the very foes who

had dragged the dreaded Cromwell from his grave feared the imprecations

of posterity, and shrank from touching that sacred head--there sat the

sublime old man at his door, feeling, with grateful enjoyment, the

genial sunshine falling upon him; or dictating immortal verses to his

daughters, as the divine _afflatus_ seized him.

Much has been said of the small sum received for his "Paradise Lost,"

and the slow recognition which it met with. But it is not a fact that

"Paradise Lost" was coolly greeted. Long before Addison gave his

laudatory critique in the _Spectator_, the glory of Milton's great poem

had been attested by Barrow, Andrew Marvell, Lord Anglesea, who used

often to visit him in Bunhill Fields, by the Duke of Buckingham, and

by many other celebrated men. Sir John Denham appeared in the House of

Commons with a proof-sheet of "Paradise Lost" in his hand, wet from

the press, and, being asked what it was, replied, "part of the noblest

poem that ever was written in any language or age." The poem went into

two editions during the author's life, and he corrected it for a third,

which was published soon after his death. In fact, Milton's fame had to

rise from under piled heaps of hatred and ignominy on account of his

politics and religion, for he had attacked the Church as formidably as

the State in his treatise on "The Best Mode of Removing Hirelings" out

of it, as well as in his book against prelacy; but it flung off all

that load of prejudice, and rose to universal acknowledgment.

We need not detain ourselves with much detail of his other poetical

works, which are now familiar to all readers. They consist of his early

poems, including the exquisite "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," his

"Comus" and "Lycidas," a mask and an elegy: his magnificent sonnets,

his "Samson Agonistes," a sacred drama, but constructed strictly on the

Grecian model. It has been often said that Milton had no genius for the

drama; the "Samson" is a sufficient refutation of that opinion. It is

full of dramatic power and interest; it is like some ancient piece of

sculpture, unique, grand, massive, and solemn; and, indeed, had Milton

devoted himself to the drama, it would have been rather in the style of

Sophocles than of Shakespeare, for he was too lofty and earnest in his

whole nature for real humour, or for much variation in mood and manner.

He could never have been a comic poet, but, had he willed it, would

undoubtedly have been a great tragic one. The epic character, however,

prevailed in him, and decided his career.

[Illustration: MILTON DICTATING "PARADISE LOST" TO HIS DAUGHTERS. (_See

p._ 356.)

(_After the Picture by Munkacsy._)]

Besides these poetical works, were his odes, including the splendid

ones of the "Nativity" and the "Passion," and a great number of

translations from the chief poets of Greece, Rome, and Italy, original

poems written in Latin and Italian, portion of the Psalms "done into

metre," and "Paradise Regained." This last poem, though bearing no

degree of equality to the "Paradise Lost," is yet a noble poem, and

would have made a great reputation for any other man. It is clearly not

so well thought out and elaborated as the "Paradise Lost," which was

the dream of his youth, the love and the labour of his prime. "Paradise

Regained," on the other hand, was the chance suggestion of Thomas

Elwood, his Latin reader, and closed with the temptation of Christ in

the wilderness, instead of including the Crucifixion and Ascension,

which might have given the poet a scope equal in magnificence to that

of his former great epic. Of his prose works we shall speak presently.

The most popular of all poets of this period was Abraham Cowley (_b._

1618; _d._ 1667). He is a striking example of those authors whom the

critics of the time cry to the skies, and whom more discriminating

posterity are willing to forget. Cowley, in his lifetime, had ten

times the fame of Milton. Johnson, so unjust to many of our poets,

can hardly be said to be so to Cowley. He says--"Though in his own

time considered of unrivalled excellence, and as having taken a flight

beyond all that went before him, Cowley's reputation could not last.

His character of writing was not his own; he unhappily adopted that

which was predominant. He saw a certain way to present praise; and, not

sufficiently inquiring by what means the ancients have continued to

delight through all the changes of human manners, he contented himself

with a deciduous laurel."

He, in fact, for popularity's sake, preferred art, or rather artifice,

to nature. Yet there are many beautiful thoughts, much real fancy

and wit scattered through his poems; but they are too often buried

in outrageous conceits and distorted metre. He never seems really in

earnest, but always playing with his subject, and constructing gewgaws

instead of raising immortal structures.

Cowley was a zealous Royalist; he went over to France when the queen

of Charles I. retired thither, and became her secretary for her

private correspondence with Charles. Afterwards he was sent over in

the character of a spy on the Republican party and its proceedings.

"Under pretence of privacy and retirement, he was to take occasion of

giving notice of the posture of things in this nation;" but became

suspected, and was arrested. He then fawned on Cromwell, wrote verses

in his honour, which, however, were only shown in private; and, when

the Commonwealth began to exhibit signs of dissolution, he again

hastened to the exiled Court in France, and came back in the crowd

of Royalists eager for promotion. But his flattering of Cromwell had

been reported, and he was treated with coldness. Yet after some time,

through Buckingham and the Earl of St. Albans, he obtained a lease of

some lands, and, after the ill reception of his play of "The Cutter of

Colman Street," he retired into the country, first to Barn Elms, and

next to Chertsey, in Surrey, where he died in his forty-ninth year.

The great satirist of the age was Samuel Butler (_b._ 1600; _d._

1680), who in his "Hudibras" introduced a new kind of poetry--a comic

doggerel, now styled, as _sui generis_, Hudibrastic. Butler was the

son of a yeoman, and had been educated for the Church without those

connections which lead to promotion. With an immense accumulation of

learning, and talent enough to have made half a dozen bishops, he

became at one time a clerk to one Jeffreys, a justice of the peace at

Earl's Coomb, in Worcestershire, and afterwards to Sir Samuel Luke, at

Woodend, in Bedfordshire. In these situations he gleaned the characters

and materials for his "Hudibras," a burlesque on the Puritans. Sir

Samuel Luke was the actual Hudibras. The poem ridicules the Puritans in

every way, but especially for attempting to put down bear-baiting; and

accordingly the first canto--

"The adventure of the bear and fiddle

Is sung, but breaks off in the middle."

Hudibras and his man Ralpho attack the bear, but are defeated,

and then Hudibras retires and makes love to a rich widow. He is a

Presbyterian, and Ralpho an Independent; and in the course of the story

all the leading characters of the Commonwealth, Cromwell, Fleetwood,

Desborough, Lambert, are ridiculed by name, as are Pym, Calamy,

Case, Byfield, Lentham, and the rest under more or less transparent

nicknames, as Ashley Cooper, under the name of the "politician," and

John Lilburne, under that of "brother haberdasher." The first part was

published in 1663, the second in 1664, and the third in 1678, fourteen

years later. Still the poem remained unfinished. It did not require,

however, even the second part to make it famous. It was received with

one universal burst of laughter and applause by the Royalists. Charles

II. and his courtiers were merrier over it than all, and Charles quoted

it continually with unfailing gusto. The Earl of Dorset resolved to

seize the opportunity, and introduce the author, through Buckingham,

to Charles. Buckingham gave him an audience, but just as they were

entering on conversation, Buckingham saw some ladies of loose character

going past, ran out after them, and the poet was not only forgotten,

but could never get a second interview. Clarendon, however, promised

to see him duly rewarded, but never kept his word, and Butler lived

poor and died neglected, at the age of eighty. This shameful neglect

has been much commented on; but no one seems to have reflected that

there may have been more in this than mere neglect. Butler, in his

double-edged satire, made some very hard hits at the Church, and,

while ridiculing the Puritans, gave some not very light back-strokes

to the licentiousness of the Royalists. He wrote an avowed "Satire on

the Licentiousness of the Age;" and in his third part so far vented

his resentment at his neglect as to satirise Charles himself for being

led by the apronstrings of his numerous mistresses. He laughed at the

sages of the newly established Royal Society in his "Elephant in the

Moon;" and such a man is more frequently kicked than rewarded. The

Church did not forget his sallies against it, and refused him burial in

Westminster Abbey. When he wrote the questions and answers between the

man disguised as a devil and Hudibras--

"What makes a church a den of thieves?--

A dean, a chapter, and white sleeves.

What makes all points of doctrine clear?--

About two hundred pounds a year.

And that which was proved true before,

Prove false again?--Two hundred more"--

though the sting was intended for the Puritans, the Puritans laid hold

on the passage, and quoted it against the Church, and this and like

blows rebounded, no doubt, on the poets head.

The most illustrious name of this period next to that of Milton is that

of John Dryden (_b._ 1631; _d._ 1701). He wrote almost every kind of

poetry--satires, odes, plays, romantic stories--and translated Juvenal,

Persius, the epistles of Ovid, and Virgil. It was unfortunate for the

genius of Dryden that he was generally struggling with poverty, and

by marrying an aristocratic and uncongenial wife, the sister of Sir

Robert Howard, he was all the more compelled to exert his powers to

live in the style which their circumstances demanded. Hence he produced

an immense mass of writings which added little to his fame. Foremost

amongst these are his plays, nearly thirty in number, which were mostly

unsuccessful, and which abound with such gross indecencies that, had

they even high merit otherwise, they would be found to be unperusable.

He had the presumption to new-model Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's

Dream" and the "Tempest"--two of the most poetical compositions in

existence--and blurred them with the foul leprosy of obscenity. He

treated the "Paradise Lost" in the same way; nor did his necessities

lead him to these enormities only; but there is little doubt they

drove him to apostatise from his religion, and from his original

political faith. His first poem of any note was a most eulogistic elegy

on the death of Cromwell, in which, amongst many other such things, he

said--

"Heav'n in his portrait showed a workman's hand,

And drew it perfect, yet without a shade."

His very next poem, and that of some length, was "Astræa Redux; a Poem

on the Happy Restoration and Return of his Sacred Majesty Charles II.,"

immediately followed by "A Panegyric on his Coronation," in which he

heaps still more glowing praise on the young royal libertine, and

flings dust as liberally at his late idol:--

"While our cross stars denied us Charles's bed,

Whom our first flames and virgin love did wed,

For his long absence Church and State did groan,

Madness the pulpit, faction seized the throne;

Experienced age in deep despair was lost,

_To see the rebel thrive_, the loyal crossed."

The accomplished sycophant received as his reward the office of Poet

Laureate, with three hundred pounds a year; and he paid officiously

more than his peppercorn of praise in the "Annus Mirabilis, or Year of

Wonders, 1666," in which the sea fights with the Dutch and the Fire

of London were commemorated in elegiac stanzas, and the most fulsome

and almost impious adulation was poured in showers on both the king

and his heir apparent, the Duke of York--not forgetting an especial

poetical address to the duchess on her husband's victories over the

Hollanders. No doubt Dryden made himself sure that his Laureate salary

was safe, but he was mistaken. James, though "the best who ever bore

the name," could forget benefits, and even flatteries; but he never

forgot an ill turn, or anything that endangered his great design of

restoring Popery; and Dryden, to please the Church and the late king,

whom he did not know to be at heart a Papist, had written his "Religio

Laici," in which he had pulled the Catholic Church to pieces, and

lauded superlatively the Anglican hierarchy. James first took away his

butt of sack, and then his salary; whereupon Dryden directly turned

Catholic, and wrote "The Hind and the Panther," to beslaver Popery,

kick down Protestantism, and reconcile the public to James's invidious

scheme of abolishing the Test Act for his own purposes. This succeeded,

and Dryden continued to receive his pay, and do his dirty work during

James's reign. It was expected that he would wheel round again on

William and Mary's success; but he lived and died Catholic.

With all respect for the genius of Dryden, it is thus impossible for a

truthful historian to take any but a melancholy view of his personal

character, and of the mass of his writings. They are, in fact, mostly

on subjects that do not fall within the legitimate province of true

poetry. His "Absalom and Achitophel"--written to ridicule Monmouth

and Shaftesbury, with their accomplice, Buckingham, under the name of

"Zimri," and to damage the Whig party generally--is transcendently

clever; but even the highest satirical and political verse is not

poetry--it is only cleverness in verse; and this is the grand

characteristic of Dryden's poetry--it is masterly verse. There is no

creative faculty in it; it is a matter of style rather than of soul and

sentiment; and in style he is a great master. This made Milton say that

Dryden was a good rhymester, but no poet; and in Milton's conception of

poetry, and in that which has taught us to venerate Homer, Shakespeare,

Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, and others, Dryden was not a poet of the

highest rank. A modern critic has given him great credit for "creative

power and genius" in his adaptations of some of Chaucer's tales; but

this is a mistake. The creative genius is Chaucer's; Dryden has only

remodelled the tales in modern language; the ideas, the invention,

are all Chaucer's; Dryden's share consists in his wonderful, elastic,

musical diction, in which he undoubtedly excels every English author

in the heroic measure. Pope's is more artificial, but is far behind

in musical rhythm and elastic vigour. Dryden's heroic verse is music

itself, and music full of its highest elements. In it the trumpet

sings, the drum beats, the organ blows in solemn thunder, the flute and

fife shrill forth eloquence, and all mingled instruments seem to chorus

in a combination of blissful sounds and feelings. In the latter part

of his life Dryden, standing independent of all Government drudgery,

shows more worthily both in life and verse. His translation of Virgil

yet remains the best in our language. He had done with his contemptible

squabbles with Elkanah Settle and Shadwell, who won from him the

honours and profits of the theatre; and his "Fables," as he called

them--tales from Chaucer--seemed to inspire him with a more really

poetic feeling. In them he seemed to grow purer, and to open his soul

to the influences of classical and natural beauty, to the charms of

nature, and of old romance. These tales will always remain the truest

monuments of Dryden's fame. His odes, much as they have been praised,

are rather feats of art than outpourings of poetic inspiration. His

"Alexander's Feast" is but a description of the effects of music on a

drunken conqueror and a courtesan. Who now would dream of placing it by

the side of Coleridge's "Ode to France," or Wordsworth's "Intimations

of Immortality from Recollections of Childhood"? But any one turning to

"Palamon and Arcite" will find himself in a real fairyland of poetry,

and perceive how much Keats, Leigh Hunt, and other modern poets have

formed themselves on his style, and have even adopted his triplets.

We have given so much space to these the greatest poets of this period,

that we have little for the rest. We have mentioned Andrew Marvell's

beautiful ballad, "The Emigrants" (p. 180), and Wither's poems (p.

178), in our previous review. Sir John Denham's descriptive poem,

"Cooper's Hill," had great popularity, and is a good specimen of that

class of verse. Waller was a reigning favourite for his lyrics, which

are elegant, but destitute of any high principle or emotion, as the man

was, who wrote a panegyric on Cromwell and another on Charles II.; and

when Charles told him he thought that on Cromwell the better, replied,

"Sir, we poets never excel so well in writing truth as in writing

fiction." Amongst the courtiers of Charles, Buckingham and Rochester

were poets. Buckingham's comedy, "The Rehearsal," which was written

to ridicule the heroic drama copied by Dryden from the French, still

finds admirers; and the genius of Rochester was unquestionable, but

still inferior to his obscenity. Sir Charles Sedley, another courtier,

wrote comedies and songs almost equally famous for their dissoluteness.

Charles Cotton, the author of "Virgil Travestied," was a writer of much

wit, but nearly equal grossness, though he was the intimate friend of

Izaak Walton, who was also no mean poet. The Earls of Roscommon and

Dorset were popular, the first for his "Essay on Translated Verse,"

written in verse, and the other for his splendid ballad written at sea,

commencing "To all you ladies now on land." Pomfret, a clergyman, wrote

a didactic poem called "The Choice," which Dr. Johnson declared to be

more frequently read than almost any poem in the language, and which

Southey believed to be the most popular poem in the language. It is,

in reality, one of the common-places gone by. Sir William Davenant, a

reputed son of Shakespeare, wrote "Gondibert," a heroic poem in elegiac

stanzas, which has good parts, but, as a whole, is intolerably dull.

Sir Richard Fanshawe was celebrated as a translator, especially of

Guarini's "Pastor Fido." Another translator from Greek and Spanish

was Thomas Stanley, the learned editor of Æschylus, and the author of

"The History of Philosophy." Besides these may be mentioned Bulteel,

a popular songwriter; Philip Ayres, a lyrical poet; Dr. Henry More,

author of a poem, "The Life of the Soul," in Spenserian stanzas; and

Flatman, an imitator of Cowley.

[Illustration: SAMUEL BUTLER.]

The dramatic writing of the period was rather voluminous than

first-rate. Davenant wrote above twenty plays, masks, etc.; but the

most eminent dramatists were the unfortunate Otway, Nathaniel Lee,

Sir George Etherege, Wycherley, Crowne, Southern, and Jasper Mayne.

Otway's "Orphan" and "Venice Preserved" still maintain their fame;

he wrote altogether ten plays. Nathaniel Lee wrote ten tragedies,

a great mixture of talent and bombast. The most celebrated of them

are his "Theodosius" and his "Rival Queens." Crowne wrote seventeen

plays, in which the selections made by Charles Lamb in his "Dramatic

Specimens" show that there exists perhaps the most pre-eminent dramatic

genius of the age. Etherege is the author of three comedies of great

polish and brilliancy, and set the pattern for Wycherley, and for

Congreve, Farquhar, and Vanbrugh in the next period. Wycherley wrote

four comedies equally remarkable for vigour and indecency. In fact,

it is scarcely necessary to repeat that the whole of the dramatic

literature of this period is thoroughly disfigured with the coarsest

and most revolting sensuality and obscenity. Southern belongs properly

to the next era, as he produced only two of his plays during this

period--his tragedy of "The Loyal Brother," and his comedy of "The

Disappointment." Shadwell and Settle inundated the stage with worthless

plays; and Mrs. Aphra Behn, a courtesan as well as writer, was the

author of a whole host of comedies, novels, and poems. Of the two

comedies by Jasper Mayne--who, by-the-by, was a clergyman--"The City

Match" is the better. Perhaps we ought not to close this review of

the poets without a mention of the most successful poetaster of the

age, Nahum Tate, who was in such estimation as to be allowed to supply

our churches with his most wretched version of the Psalms, and to be

employed by Dryden to continue his satire of "Absalom and Achitophel."

At the head of the prose writers of this period, as of the poets,

we must place Milton. Though his writings are for the most part on

controversial subjects, they were subjects of such immense importance

that they acquired a lasting value. They bear a certain relation to

his poetry. This in its highest exhibition celebrated the triumph of

the Deity over the powers of evil. His prose writings were employed to

support the struggle of liberty against the advocates of all political

evil--absolutism. Poetry seemed to have become the habitual expression

of his mind, and, therefore, there is in his prose style a certain

awkwardness and stiffness. He moves like David in armour that he had

not well proved; and his utterance, solemn and full of deep thought and

erudition, is, as it were, forced and formal. But when he warms up with

the greatness of his subject, he runs into a strain of grave eloquence

which has scarcely an equal in the language.

The great prose works of Milton comprise his "History of England"

from the earliest times to the Conquest, including all the old

legends of the chroniclers, the arrival of Brute from Rome, the

story of King Lear, and those fine fables which have been the

storehouses of poets and dramatists; his "Tractate on Education;" his

magnificent "Areopagitica;" his "Tenure of Kings and Magistrates;" the

"Eikonoklastes;" the "Defensio pro Populo Anglicano" and "Defensio

Secunda"--vindicating the conduct of England in deposing impracticable

kings; his "Treatise on the Best Manner of Removing Hirelings out of

the Church;" his essay on "Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes;" his

"State Letters," written at the command of Cromwell; an "Art of Logic;"

a "Treaty of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and what Best

Means may be used against the Growth of Popery;" and his "Familiar

Letters," in Latin. Besides these he left in manuscript a "Brief

History of Muscovy," and a "System of Theology"--both since published.

It may be safely said that scarcely any other writer has left such a

sound and profound body of knowledge of all that is necessary for the

maintenance of freedom, civil and religious, in the State.

Dryden is also a vigorous prose writer; but nothing can be more

characteristic of the two men than the prose of Milton and Dryden.

The one is grave, solemn, independent, upholding the sacred interests

of religion and liberty; the other, that of Dryden--besides short

lives of Polybius, Lucian, and Plutarch, and an "Essay on Dramatic

Literature"--consists chiefly of a mass of his dramatic writings,

couched in the most extravagant and unmanly terms of flattery. It is in

vain to say that this was the spirit of the time; we have only to turn

to Milton and behold that a great soul despised such sycophancy as much

then as now.

Clarendon's "History of the Rebellion" and Memoirs of his own life

assume a permanent importance from the position which he occupied in

the struggles of those times; as literary compositions they are unique

in style, but as historical authority, it is necessary to read them

with caution.

Hobbes (_b._ 1588; _d._ 1679), the celebrated philosopher of

Malmesbury, was one of the most powerful minds of the age. By his

works, called the "Leviathan," his treatise on "Human Nature," on

"Liberty and Necessity," and his "Decameron Physiologicum," with others

of the like kind, he became the head of a great school of writers,

which found wide acceptance in France, Germany, and England. Mr. Mill

says--"Hobbes is a great name in philosophy, on account both of what

he taught, and the extraordinary impulse which he communicated to the

spirit of free inquiry in Europe." But, on the other hand, it has been

well observed by a modern writer that, "as for what is properly to be

called his system of philosophy--and it is to be observed that in his

own writings his views in metaphysics, in morals, in politics, are all

bound and built up together into one consistent whole--the question

of the truth or falsehood of that seems to be completely settled.

Nobody now professes more than a partial Hobbism. If so much of the

creed of the philosopher of Malmesbury as affirms the non-existence of

any essential distinction between right and wrong, the non-existence

of conscience or the moral sense, the non-existence of anything

beyond mere sensation in either emotion or intelligence, and other

similar negatives of his moral and metaphysical doctrine, has still

its satisfied disciples, who is now a Hobbist either in politics or

mathematics? Yet certainly it is in these latter departments that we

must look for the greater part of what is absolutely original in the

notions of this teacher. Hobbes's philosophy of human nature is not

amiss as a philosophy of Hobbes's own human nature. Without passions or

imagination himself, and steering his own course through life by the

mere calculations of an enlightened selfishness, one half of the broad

mass of Humanity was to him nothing better than a blank."

Hobbes was a thorough advocate of personal monarchy, as is testified

by his "De Corpore Politico," his "Leviathan," and "Behemoth," the

last being a history of the Civil War from 1640 to 1660. Hobbes lived

to a great age, praised by his admirers as an example of independence.

His arguments were ably answered by Cudworth, by Clarendon, Bishops

Cumberland, Bramhall, and Tenison, by Dr. Henry More in his "History of

Philosophy;" by Eachard, and others.

A writer who has had a different influence was Richard Baxter (_b._

1615; _d._ 1691). Baxter held the same position in the religious world

as Halifax in the political one. Halifax gloried in the name of a

"Trimmer." He was constantly occupying the middle post in the world of

party. Sometimes one party congratulated itself that it had him, but

presently it found him defending measures of its opponents. In fact, he

was an independent thinker, and, extending his hand to either party as

he thought it right at the moment, he turned the balance of conflicting

opinions. Exactly so with Baxter; a clergyman of the Church of England,

he was yet a decided Nonconformist. He was a Monarchist in theory,

but was so disgusted with the Royalists for their licentiousness and

notions of absolutism, that he went over to the camp of Cromwell and

preached in it. But when Cromwell assumed the supreme power, again

Baxter was on the other side, condemning to his face his usurpation.

Baxter's mediating views led him to hope, on the return of Charles II.,

that Nonconformity and the Church might shake hands. He believed in

Charles's "Healing Declaration," and drew up an accommodating Liturgy,

but found himself deceived; the Hierarchy rejected such compromises.

He became a sufferer from Nonconformity, and yet remained an advocate

of Conformity to a certain extent. So was it in his theological

views; with one hand he embraced Calvin, with the other Arminius. He

rejected Calvin's doctrine of Reprobation, yet accepted his theory

of Election--that is, that certain persons are pre-ordained from all

eternity as instruments for certain work by God; but he agreed with

Arminius's assertion that all men whatever are capable of salvation,

for that Christ distinctly declared that He died for all, and that

whoever believed should be saved. The views of Baxter were adopted by

large numbers, who became a sect under the name of "Baxterians;" but

they were gradually absorbed into the different denominations of the

Independents, Baptists, etc., who may now be considered as generally

holding Baxter's mild and amiable opinions. Watts and Doddridge were

eminent professors of Baxter's creed. The chief works of Baxter are

his "Methodus Theologiæ," his "Catholic Theology," and his "Saints'

Everlasting Rest." The last is by far the most popular. It has been

circulated by tens of thousands into all quarters where the English

language reaches, and, like the "Pilgrim" of Bunyan, is to be found on

the shelves of the cottage and the farm in the remotest nooks. Perhaps

no book ever gave so much consolation to the spirits of so many simple

and earnest seekers after religious rest as this work of the venerable

Richard Baxter.

Bunyan (_b._ 1628; _d._ 1688) was a contemporary of Baxter, but a man

of a more robust and sturdy temper. Lying twelve years in Bedford gaol

for his religious faith, he there produced his immortal "Pilgrim's

Progress," a work which, as the production of an illiterate tinker,

was contemptuously ignored by the critics and the learned of the time,

till it had spread like a flood over the whole land and was become the

delight of the nation. The "Pilgrim" is a wonderful work for any man,

and Bunyan was undoubtedly a genius of the very first class.

With Baxter and Bunyan, the gentle angler, Izaak Walton (_b._ 1593;

_d._ 1683), claims a place for his "Lives of Religious Worthies," and

not less for his "Complete Angler," one of the first works, along with

"Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," which awoke the love of

nature.

Side by side with these worthies stands John Evelyn (_b._ 1620; _d._

1706), a man who mixed with the Court in Charles II.'s reign without

defiling himself. He was the model of a true English gentleman--pious,

honourable, and exerting himself at once to maintain sound morals

and to promote science. His Memoirs present a lively picture of the

dissolute age in which he lived; and he sought to draw men away from

the sink of corruption by encouraging them to plant and cultivate

their estates. For this he wrote his "Sylva; or, a Discourse of

Forest Trees," still a standard and most delightful work. He was one

of the first members and promoters of the Royal Society, and wrote

"Numismata, a Discourse of Medals;" a "Parallel of Ancient and Modern

Architecture;" a work on Theology; and the first "Gardener's Almanac."

[Illustration: JOHN BUNYAN.]

As a memoir-writer of the same period Samuel Pepys (_b._ 1632;

_d._ 1703) is more popular than Evelyn. Pepys was Secretary to

the Admiralty in the reigns of Charles II. and James II.; and his

inimitably-gossiping volumes of whatever he saw during those times have

been often reprinted and read everywhere with great unction. Pepys,

besides this, continued a most invaluable collection of old ballads

begun by Selden, from which Bishop Percy amply helped himself in

collecting his "Reliques;" so that to Pepys and John Selden we really

owe much of that great revolution in taste and poetry which we ascribe

almost exclusively to Percy. Another Memorialist of this period was Sir

William Temple, a man who, like Evelyn, maintained a high moral status,

and was held in great esteem for his philosophical essays. In Scotland

Sir George Mackenzie stood conspicuous for his "Institution of the Laws

of Scotland," and not less for various works of taste, as his "Aretina;

or, The Serious Romance," and his "Religio Stoici; or, The Virtuoso."

Burnet, the author of "The Sacred Theory of the Earth," also belongs

to this period. In his work the Biblical account of the origin of the

earth is made the foundation of a scientific treatise.

The Church at this period possessed great and eloquent men--Tillotson,

Sherlock, Barrow, South, Stillingfleet, and others. Their sermons

remain as storehouses of religious argument. They were nearly all

of the Arminian school. Barrow was, besides, one of the ablest

geometricians that have appeared.

[Illustration: GRESHAM COLLEGE, WHERE THE ROYAL SOCIETY WAS FIRST

HOUSED.]

During the period now under review a great step in the progress of

science was made by the foundation of the Royal Society. The honour of

originating this famous society belongs to Mr. Theodore Haak, a German,

who was resident in London. At his suggestion a number of scientific

gentlemen, including Dr. Goddard, a physician in Wood Street, but also

a preparer of lenses for telescopes; Dr. Wallis, the mathematician; Dr.

Wilkins, afterwards Bishop of Chester; Drs. Ent, Gisson, and Merrit,

and Mr. Samuel Foster, professor of astronomy in Gresham College.

These meetings began in 1645, and were held at one of their houses,

or in Gresham College, or at apartments in Cheapside. Though some

of these gentlemen were removed by promotion, others continued to

join it, as Boyle, Evelyn, Wren--afterwards Sir Christopher. In 1662

a royal charter was obtained, and in the following year additional

privileges were granted under a second charter. The first President

was Lord Brouncker, and the first council consisted of Mr.--afterwards

Lord--Brereton, Sir Kenelm Digby, Sir Robert Moray, Sir William Petty,

Sir Paul Neile, Messrs. Boyle, Slingsbey, Christopher and Matthew

Wren, Balle, Areskine, Oldenburg, Henshaw, and Dudley Palmer, and

Drs. Wilkins, Wallis, Timothy Clarke, and Ent. Balle was the first

treasurer, and Wilkins and Oldenburg the first secretaries. The Society

was pledged not to meddle with questions of theology or State, and

their chief subjects of notice were the physical sciences, anatomy,

medicine, astronomy, mathematics, navigation, statistics, chemistry,

magnetism, mechanics, and kindred topics. In the spring of the second

year the Society numbered a hundred and fifteen members; amongst them,

besides many noblemen and gentlemen of distinction, we find the names

of Aubrey, Dr. Barrow, Dryden, Cowley, Waller, and Sprat, afterwards

Bishop of Rochester. The Society commenced the publication of its

Transactions in 1665, which became a record of the progress of physical

and mathematical science for a long series of years.

During the short period over which the present review ranges--that

is, from the Restoration in 1660 to the Revolution in 1688, that is,

only twenty-eight years--some of the greatest discoveries in science

were made which have occurred in the history of the world; namely, the

discovery of the circulation of the blood by Dr. William Harvey; the

improvement of the tables of logarithms constructed by Napier; the

invention of fluxions by Newton, and the calculus of fluxions, or the

differential calculus, by Leibnitz; the discovery of the perfected

theory of gravitation, by Newton; the foundation of modern astronomy,

by Flamsteed; and the construction of a steam-engine by the Marquis of

Worcester, originally suggested by Solomon de Caus, a Frenchman.

Napier (_b._ 1550; _d._ 1617) published his tables of Logarithms in

1614, under the title of "Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio,"

and in the same or the next year he and his friend, Henry Briggs, gave

them their improved and perfect form, for from that time to the present

they have admitted of no further improvement. They came from the

hands of their author and his assisting friend perfect. The principle

of their construction Napier did not declare; but this important

revelation was made by Briggs and Napier's son in 1619. By these tables

Napier superseded the long and laborious arithmetical operations

which great calculators had previously to undergo, and which the most

simple trigonometrical operations demanded. Without this wonderful

aid even Newton could not have lived to formulate the principles that

he drew from, and established for ever upon, the material accumulated

by prior mathematicians. Napier in fact furnished by these tables a

scale by which not only the advantages which he proposed of shortening

arithmetical and trigonometrical labour were effected, but which

enabled his successors to weigh the atmosphere and take the altitudes

of mountains, compute the lengths and areas of all curves, and to

introduce a calculus by which the most unexpected results should

be reached. "By reducing to a few days the labour of many months,"

says Laplace, "it doubles, as it were, the life of an astronomer,

besides freeing him from the errors and disgust inseparable from long

calculations."

We are not, however, to suppose that Napier was the first who had a

perception of the nature of logarithms. In almost all grand discoveries

the man of genius stands upon the shoulders of preceding geniuses to

reach that culminating point which brings out the full discovery. In

very early ages it was known that if the terms of an arithmetical and

geometrical series were placed in juxtaposition, the multiplication,

division, involution, and evolution of the latter would answer to and

might actually be effected by a corresponding addition, subtraction,

multiplication, and division of the former. Archimedes employed this

principle in his "Arenarius," a treatise on the number of the sands.

Stifel, in his "Arithmetica Integra," published at Nürnberg in 1644,

exhibits a still clearer notion of the use of this principle; but the

merit of Napier was this--that whilst those who preceded him could

only apply the principle to certain numbers, he discovered the means

of applying it to all, and thus was enabled to construct and bring

to perfection at once his admirable tables. There was an attempt to

show that he had stolen the idea from Longomontanus, but that great

mathematician settles this matter by himself attributing the whole

invention to Napier.

Besides the Logarithms, Napier--or, to give him his full title, Lord

Napier of Merchiston--is also noted for his elegant theorems, called

his "Analogies," and his theorem of "the five circular parts," which

furnishes a ready solution of all the cases of right-angled spherical

triangles. He also invented what are called "Napier's Bones," to

facilitate the performance of multiplication and division; instruments

of such value, that had he not discovered the logarithms, they would

have, to a certain extent, supplied their place.

The discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (_b._ 1642; _d._ 1727), however,

put the crown to the glories of this period. Their extent can only be

learnt by a perusal of his "Principia; or, Mathematical Principles of

Natural Philosophy," containing his complete theory of the laws of

the universe, based on the grand doctrine of Gravitation, of which

he published afterwards a popular view under the title of "De Mundi

Systemate," enunciating the truths contained in the third book of the

"Principia;" his "Optics," containing his theories of light and colour,

founded on a host of curious experiments; his "De Quadratura Curvarum,"

containing an exposition of his method of fluxions; his "Method of

Fluxions and Analysis by Infinite Series." A great many of those

discoveries were made known to the public through his communications

to the Royal Society. The announcement of his binomial theorem, by

which he was able to determine the area and rectification of curves,

the surface and contacts of the solids formed by their revolution and

the position of their centre of gravity--a theory of infinite avail

in his determination of the laws of the planetary bodies--is dated

1664, that of his "Method of Fluxions," 1665; but he did not claim

this till 1669. He professed to have written a tract on the subject in

1664, but he did not produce this tract till he had seen some of the

same results published in Mercator's "Logarithmotechnia," four years

afterwards. In 1666 he demonstrated the great law of gravitation, and

applied it to the planets, but was baffled in his attempts to apply

it to the moon through a false estimate of the earth's diameter. This

was corrected by Picard's measurement of an arc of the meridian, with

which Newton became acquainted in 1682, and then after sixteen years'

delay he completed his system. But his "Principia" was not published

collectively till 1687; his "Optics" till 1704, with his "De Quadratura

Curvarum."

Unparalleled as were the achievements of Newton, these were not

accomplished, any more than any other great performances, without

substantial hints and assistance from preceding or contemporary genius.

The very principle of gravitation had been pointed out by Robert Hooke,

and Newton was compelled to admit, and offered to publish a scholium

acknowledging the fact, that Hooke, Wren, and Halley had already

deduced this law--that the gravitation of the planets was as the curvic

square of the distance--from Kepler's second law of analogy between

the periodic times and the mean distances of the planets. Newton's

defenders say that he probably made this concession for the sake of

peace; but was Newton likely to surrender a great truth, vitally

affecting his fame for science and discovery, if there were not solid

grounds for it?

Still less to the credit of Newton was his conduct towards Leibnitz

in the dispute regarding the Differential Calculus. Leibnitz having

heard through Oldenburg that Newton had made discoveries as to the

measurement of tangents, in fact, as to his binomial theorem, and

as to fluxions, desired to have some account of them, and Newton,

through Oldenburg, communicated to Leibnitz his binomial theorem, but

concealed his knowledge of fluxions under a most abstruse anagram,

which was formed from the words, "_Data Equatione quotcunque fluentes

quantitates envolvente fluxiones invenire, et vice versâ_." It has

been well observed that if Leibnitz could draw any light from that

anagram, he must have possessed superhuman sagacity. Leibnitz, however,

having himself made most important discoveries in fluxions, at once

and candidly communicated the theory of what he called, and what is

still called, the differential calculus, to Newton. This, Newton, in a

scholium included in his "Principia," admitted to be a method hardly

differing from his own except in the form of words and symbols. Yet

in the third edition of the "Principia" he omitted this confession,

claimed the exclusive invention of the differential calculus for

himself, and branded Leibnitz as a plagiarist. The fact was, that

Leibnitz had gone a step beyond Newton. Newton had discovered fluxions,

but Leibnitz had discovered the fluxionary calculus, or, as he termed

it, the differential calculus.

Still more discreditable was the conduct of Newton to Flamsteed (_b._

1646; _d._ 1719). Flamsteed was the first Astronomer Royal. Charles

II. established an observatory at Greenwich, one of the best things

he ever did. The observatory was, in fact, the queen's house in

Greenwich Park, and Flamsteed was appointed Astronomical Observator,

with the magnificent salary of a hundred pounds a year, and not a

single instrument, not even a telescope. It was in vain that he applied

for instruments; and his appointment might have been a sinecure had

he not procured instruments at his own expense, and taught pupils to

maintain himself. But through all these difficulties he went on making

observations, and in time not only made a mass of the most valuable

lunar observations, but had made a map and catalogue of the stars,

such as there had never been before for completeness and accuracy.

His catalogue included three thousand three hundred stars, "whose

places were more accurate than any determined in the next fifty years,

and whose selection and nomenclature has served as a basis to every

catalogue since that time." Bailey, Flamsteed's biographer, claims--and

very justly claims--that the commencement of modern astronomy dates

from his observations, for no one would care to go beyond them to

compare any made in our day.

Newton was very intimate with Flamsteed, and with good cause, for

he depended on his supplying him with the necessary observations to

enable him to establish his lunar theory, and it is on evidence that

Flamsteed furnished him with every lunar observation that he made. When

Flamsteed had completed his catalogue, he proposed to publish it, and

Prince George of Denmark, knowing that Flamsteed had expended on his

instruments two thousand pounds more than his salary, offered to pay

for the printing. A committee, consisting of Newton, Sir Christopher

Wren, Dr. Arbuthnot, Dr. Gregory, and Mr. Roberts, was appointed to

superintend this publication. The whole story, based on letters and

documents of the time found at Greenwich observatory, is too long to

be detailed here; but the upshot of it is, that the catalogue and

observations of Flamsteed were printed and published, not as his own,

but as those of Halley. In vain did Flamsteed protest against this

most scandalous deed. Newton and his associates were strong in the

favour of the queen and Halifax, and Newton used the most opprobrious

language to the man by whose labours he had so greatly benefited, and

whom he had now helped to rob of his dearest possession--his fame.

The softest name that he gave him was that of "puppy." Flamsteed

could obtain no redress--though they had broken his seal to come at

his catalogue--till after the death of Queen Anne and Halifax, when

he was enabled to get possession of the remainder of the books called

Halley's, styled, "Historia Celestis libri duo." He immediately began

preparations for publishing them himself, and demanded his MSS. from

Newton, who refused, and was sued for them by Flamsteed. In the

meantime, to avoid being compelled to give up the MSS. to the rightful

owner, Newton handed them over to Halley! Every insult was offered to

Flamsteed. He was summoned before the Royal Society to answer whether

he had his instruments in order, a matter in which the Society had no

authority, and what made the matter more atrocious, the instruments

were Flamsteed's own. Newton even twitted Flamsteed with his one

hundred pounds a year salary, at which Flamsteed indignantly reminded

him that he had been receiving three hundred pounds a year himself

ever since he came to London. Flamsteed's work was not completed till

after his death, when it appeared under the name of "Historia Cœlestis

Britannica."

It is difficult to conceive more overbearing, unjust, and unworthy

proceedings than those of Newton against Flamsteed. Sir David Brewster,

in his "Life of Newton," endeavoured to defend him by asserting that

Flamsteed did not appreciate Newton's theory; as if Flamsteed was

not quite at liberty to have his own opinion, an opinion shared by

many at the time, and which theory, in the first edition of the

"Principia," the only one then out, was in some respects grossly

incorrect--"rejected," as Flamsteed remarked, "by the heavens."

Brewster also urged that Flamsteed showed unwillingness to furnish

Newton with the requisite lunar observations. He was under no

obligation whatever to do so; yet, as proved, he furnished him with all

he had made. It is contended also that the committee had a right to

break the seal of Flamsteed to get at his catalogue--an assertion than

which nothing can be more immoral.

On the whole view of this case, as it rests on broad facts, we are

compelled, in justice between man and man, to declare our opinion that

Flamsteed was not only one of the most illustrious astronomers which

England has ever produced, but also one of the most ill-used of men;

and without derogating an iota from the scientific merits of Sir Isaac

Newton, it is clear, from his conduct to both Leibnitz and Flamsteed,

that he adds another proof to that of Bacon, that intellectual

greatness and moral greatness do not necessarily reside in the same

mind.

Amongst the other men of mathematical note in this period we may

mention Henry Briggs, the coadjutor of Napier. His "Trigonometrica

Britannica" showed that he had had a near view of the binomial theorem

afterwards discovered by Newton. This work was published after his

death by his friend, Henry Gellibrand, also an able mathematician.

Thomas Harriott, author of a work on algebra--"Artis Analyticæ

Praxis"--is said to have discovered the solar spots before Galileo,

and the satellites of Jupiter only a few days after Galileo. Jeremiah

Horrocks was beforehand with Newton in the theory of the lunar motions,

which Newton afterwards demonstrated to be the necessary consequence

of gravitation. Dr. Wallis, Crabtree, Gascoigne, Milbourn, Shakerley,

and Gunter--the author of Gunter's Scale--were all men of high merit

in those branches of science. Barrow we have already mentioned as

a distinguished geometrician as well as a theologian. He was only

excelled in optics by Newton himself; and in his "Sectiones Geometricæ"

he nearly anticipated Newton's principle of fluxions. James Gregory,

professor of mathematics at Edinburgh, the first constructor of a

reflecting telescope; and his nephew, David Gregory, of Oxford; John

Collins, author of various philosophical works and papers; Roger Cotes,

author of "Harmonia Mensurarum," etc.; and Dr. Brook Taylor, author of

"Methodus Incrementorum," were all substantial contributors to the

higher sciences at this era. Halley, whose name occurs so unfavourably

in the affair with Flamsteed, succeeded him as Astronomer Royal, and is

noted as being the first to find out the exact return of a comet which

bears his name, and for his catalogue of the southern stars, published

in 1679. Besides his profound astronomical talents, he added in various

ways to the knowledge of the time. He was the first to construct tables

of mortality; introduced improvements in the diving-bell; and wrote

treatises on the variations of the compass, on the trade winds, and

other subjects.

[Illustration: SIR ISAAC NEWTON.]

In pneumatics and chemistry the Honourable Robert Boyle made some

discoveries, and considerably improved the air-pump; and Robert Hooke,

already mentioned as one of the earliest theorists of gravitation,

also had a pretty clear notion of the gas now termed oxygen. Thomas

Sydenham is a great name in medicine of this time; and the department

of natural history took a new start under the hands of Ray, Willoughby,

Lester, and others. Ray published his "Historia Plantarum," and edited

Willoughby's works on birds and fishes. Conchology was advanced by

Martin Lester, and Woodward opened up the new region of mineralogy. The

two most extraordinary discoveries, however, next to those of Newton,

were those of the circulation of the blood by Harvey (_b._ 1578; _d._

1657), and of the steam-engine by Solomon de Caus, introduced into

England by the Marquis of Worcester (_b._ 1601; _d._ 1667).

The theory of the circulation of the blood, like almost every other

great theory founded on fact, was not left for Harvey to think out _ab

origine_. That the blood flowed from the heart to the extremities was

known to the ancients, and stated by Aristotle. Galen even had argued,

from the discovery of valves in the pulmonary artery, that the blood

was also returned to the heart. Servetus, of Geneva, the same who was

put to death for heresy, had demonstrated the circulation through the

lungs, and again this theory had been propounded by Rualdus Columbus

in 1559. In 1571 Cæsalpinus of Arezzo came still nearer to the true

theory, from observing the swelling of veins below a ligature--thence

inferring that the blood flowed from the extremities as well as to

them. It is clear, therefore, that all but positive demonstration was

arrived at when Harvey appeared. But though this demonstration was

all that was now needed, it was a work of no ordinary courage and

genius. The few facts known were overlaid by such a mass of absurd

and contradictory notions amongst medical men, that nothing but the

nicest and completest experiments could establish the truth. This

Harvey undertook to do, and accomplished it. He informed Boyle, as we

learn from that philosopher's "Treatise on Final Causes," that the

idea of the true circulation was first suggested to him when studying

under Fabricius Aquapendente, at Padua, by noticing the valves in the

veins--the same that had attracted the attention of Galen. To ascertain

the fact, he made numerous accurate experiments on both dead and living

animals, and the result was the clearest proof of the fact that the

blood is propelled from the heart through the arteries, and returned

to it through the veins. Besides this, his experiments threw a flood

of light on the action of the heart, on its diastolic and systolic

functions, as observed both in adult subjects and in the fœtus; on the

true action of the lungs on the blood, and other important points.

His completed views were so opposed to the notions of the Faculty

at the time, that a stupendous prejudice was raised against him,

and his practice fell off greatly from the clamour which was raised

against what his fellow-practitioners called his wild speculations.

It is a well-known fact that not one medical man who had passed his

fortieth year ever admitted the discovery of Harvey. The most famous

anatomists abroad joined in the outcry against his theory. Primrosius,

Parisanus, Riolanus, professors of anatomy at Paris, and Plempius,

professor at Louvain, were violent against it. Harvey very modestly

permitted the storm to blow, certain that a truth built on positive

facts would in the end prevail. He refused to answer the attacks of any

one but Riolanus; but his friend, Dr. Ent, ably wielded the pen in

his defence, and Harvey had the pleasure to see Plempius before long

confess himself a convert, and many others then followed.

Besides Harvey's great discovery, he made many other anatomical

investigations with great care and ability, and especially on a vital

subject, detailed in his treatise "De Generatione." His merits became

so fully acknowledged that he was elected President of the College of

Physicians.

But the gifted men of this age who could determine the laws of worlds,

and systems of worlds, and the vital principles of the living body,

failed to perceive the wondrous capabilities of another invention

destined to revolutionise society at a later day. The Marquis of

Worcester, whom we have seen figuring conspicuously as the Earl of

Glamorgan, in the civil strife of Charles I.'s reign, constructed a

steam-engine--a very rude one, of course--which Sorbiere, a Frenchman,

saw at work at his lordship's house at Vauxhall in 1663. It was capable

of throwing up water to a great height. This engine is described by the

marquis in his "Century of Inventions," published this same year, 1663.

It is the sixty-eighth in the catalogue, and entitled "An admirable and

most forcible way to drive up water by fire." He used a cannon for his

boiler, and says he has seen "water run like a constant fountain-stream

forty feet high. One vessel of water rarefied by fire driveth up forty

of cold water."

The marquis had learned this invention from the work of a Frenchman,

Solomon de Caus, entitled "Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes." This De

Caus had travelled in England, and had importuned his own countrymen

to examine what he deemed a wonderful discovery--the power of steam;

but, like Thomas Gray, when urging on England a system of railroads, he

was treated as a bore and a maniac. The marquis found De Caus actually

confined in the Bicêtre in Paris as a madman, for wanting to convince

his countrymen of the marvellous powers of steam. The marquis's own

notion appeared to be that the engine might be employed chiefly for

the raising of water--a trait attributed to him by Stuart, in his

"Anecdotes of Steam-Engines," published in 1651, in which the writer

mentions a little engine at work at his house in Lambeth, which "might

be applied to draw or hale ships, boates, etc., up rivers against the

stream; to draw carts, wagons, etc., as fast without cattel; to draw

the plough without cattel, to the same dispatch, if need be."

The views of the marquis were thus rapidly expanding on the subject;

and it is wonderful that the invention should have been suffered to

sleep a century and a half longer. Still more wonderful is it that the

powers of steam slept so long, when, according to Gibbon, the architect

of St. Sophia, Constantinople, centuries ago, was so well aware of it

that he used to shake the house of his neighbour, an enemy of his, with

steam machinery.

Of architecture there was none belonging to this period. The glorious

old Gothic had closed for the time its career, and even the most

eminent architects despised it. Inigo Jones introduced an Italian

style, and committed the atrocity of erecting Grecian screens in

Gothic cathedrals; and we shall find Wren, the architect of the noble

classical fabric of St. Paul's, equally incapable of perceiving the

beauty of Gothic. To him it was barbarian.

With Charles II. came in French taste, and almost all the professors of

painting, sculpture, and engraving were foreigners. The whole art of

painting was expended in portraiture and on the decorations of walls

and ceilings after the fashion of Le Brun, but not with his genius.

Verrio and Sir Peter Lely engrossed the patronage of the Court, and the

admiration of the public.

Antonio Verrio, a Neapolitan painter, who transferred himself to

France and then to England, covered immense spaces of wall and

ceiling at Windsor Castle and other places with his gods, goddesses,

and similar figures, pouring them out, as Walpole observes, without

much invention and as little taste, but certainly with a great show

of colour. He painted most of the ceilings at Windsor, one side of

the Hall of St. George and the chapel, most of which works are now

destroyed. On the ceiling of St. George's Hall he drew Ashley Cooper,

Earl of Shaftesbury, as Faction dispersing libels; and the housekeeper,

Mrs. Marriott, as Fury, because she had offended him. He was paid an

enormous sum for these works, and spent it in ostentation. He had a

house in St. James's Park, and was also master gardener to the king.

Walpole gives an extraordinary example of his freedom in demanding

money of the king. He had just received a thousand pounds when he

appeared at Court, and found Charles in such a circle that he could

not approach him; but, nothing daunted, he called out to him that

he desired to speak to him. Being asked what he wanted, he replied,

"Money." The king smiled, and reminded him of the thousand pounds just

had. "Yes," said he, "but pedlars and painters cannot give long credit;

that was soon paid away, and I have no gold left." "At that rate,"

said Charles, "you would spend more than I do." "True," replied the

impudent foreigner; "but does your majesty keep an open table as I do?"

Being a Tory, at the Revolution he refused to paint for King William;

but was employed by the Earl of Exeter at Burleigh House, and the Earl

of Devonshire, at Chatsworth, where plenty of his works remain. Dr.

Waagen says he received more from Lord Exeter alone than Raphael or

Michael Angelo received for all their immortal works. The earl paid

him for twelve years one thousand five hundred pounds a year--that

is, eighteen thousand pounds, besides his keep and equipage at his

disposal. At length the earl persuaded him to work for King William at

Hampton Court, where, besides other things, he painted the staircase so

badly that he was suspected to have done it on purpose.

In the wake of Verrio came Jacques Rousseau and Charles de la

Fosse, the painters of the dome of the Invalides in Paris. Some few

Englishmen, too, were employed in fresco-painting. Among them were

Isaac Fuller, remains of whose performance may be seen in the dome

of St. Mary Abchurch, in London; John Freeman, a scene painter; and

Robert Streater, a man of superior skill, who painted the ceiling of

the theatre at Oxford, and many other ceilings, besides historical

subjects, and even still life.

Lely, the painter of Charles's beauties, now at Hampton Court, was

a native of Germany, but had studied chiefly in Holland, where

Charles is supposed to have met with him. His ladies are endowed with

remarkable beauty and grace, but there is a certain likeness running

through them all, especially in the complexion, the tone and tint of

the flesh, as well as the disposal of the drapery, which gives one

the inevitable impression that they are to a great degree got up, and

made rather after his peculiar model than their own real appearance.

However, whether they are striking likenesses or not, they are

beautiful pictures. His draperies are arranged in broad folds, and he

relieves his figures by a landscape background, which made Walpole

say, "His nymphs trail fringes and embroidery through meadows and

purling streams." The essence of Lely's painting is Court artifice.

It is showy, affected, and meretricious. Besides his Court portraits

he occasionally attempted the historic, one of the best of this kind

which he executed being "Susannah and the Elders," at Burleigh House.

Amongst a crowd of foreigners who sought to share Sir Peter Lely's

popularity were Henry Gascar, James Huysman, and Sunman, from the

Netherlands--all excellent portrait painters. Netscher also came to

England for a time; and William Wissing, of Amsterdam, an admirable

artist, succeeded Lely at his death, and was only eclipsed by the

rising fame of Kneller, a German, who afterwards became King William's

Court painter. Of the French school was Philip Duval, a pupil of the

celebrated Le Brun.

[Illustration: EVELYN "DISCOVERING" GRINLING GIBBONS. (_See p._ 372.)]

Amongst native portrait painters may be mentioned Michael Wright, a

Scotsman, who painted the judges for the Guildhall of London; though he

is more noted for his portrait of Lacy, the actor, in three characters;

of Henry Anderton, a pupil of Streater's, who became very popular; of

John Greenhill, and Thomas Flatman, the last being also a poet of some

note.

A number of Dutch and Flemish painters of still life were also employed

in England at this period, of whom the most celebrated were Vansoon,

Hoogstraten, Roestraten, and Varelst, who also attempted portraiture.

There were also Abraham Hondius, animal painter, and Danker, Vosterman,

Griffier, Lancrinck, and the two Vanderveldes, landscape painters. The

Vanderveldes were justly in high esteem; Lancrinck was the painter of

Lely's backgrounds.

The two great sculptors were Caius Gabriel Cibber, a native of

Holstein, and Grinling Gibbons, whom Macaulay calls a Dutchman, but

who, though supposed to be of Dutch extraction, was an Englishman, born

in Spur Alley, London. Cibber--who was the father of Colley Cibber,

afterwards Poet Laureate, and immortalised by Pope in the "Dunciad"--is

now chiefly known by his two figures of "Raging" and "Melancholy

Madness," which adorned the principal gate of old Bethlehem Hospital,

and were afterwards removed to South Kensington--works of real genius.

He also erected the bas-reliefs on the pedestal of the London Monument,

and did much work at Chatsworth.

Grinling Gibbons was found by John Evelyn in a cottage at Deptford,

carving his celebrated "Stoning of St. Stephen," after Tintoretto, and

by him introduced at Court. He executed a marble statue of Charles II.

for the area of the Royal Exchange, and another in bronze of James II.

for the garden at the back of Whitehall, which fixed his high merit as

a sculptor; but his unrivalled genius in carving soon drew him from

sculpture, and he became extensively employed at Windsor, Chatsworth,

Petworth, and other great houses, carving flowers, feathers, foliage,

and like ornaments, which rival in wood the lightness and accuracy of

nature. In the chapel at Windsor he executed abundance of carving of

doves, pelicans, palm-branches, etc. At St. Paul's he did much of the

foliage and festoons of the stalls and the side aisles of the choir.

At Chatsworth there are feathers in lime-wood that rival those of the

living goose; and he there executed in wood a point-lace cravat of

marvellous delicacy. At Southwick, in Hants, he embellished an entire

gallery, and a room at Petworth, which is generally regarded as amongst

his very finest performances.

Engraving at this era fell also greatly into the hands of foreigners.

Loggan, Booteling, Valet, Hollar, and Vanderbank were amongst the

chief; but there were two Englishmen who were not less patronised by

their countrymen. Robert White was a pupil of Loggan's, and, like his

master, excelled in portraits. Walpole enumerates two hundred and

fifty-five works of this artist, many of them heads drawn by himself,

and striking likenesses. But William Faithorne was unquestionably at

the head of his profession. Faithorne in his youth fought on the royal

side, and was taken by Cromwell at the siege of Basing House along with

Hollar. Hollar left England during the Commonwealth, and resided at

Antwerp, where he executed his fine portraits from Leonardo da Vinci,

Holbein, and other great masters. On the Restoration he returned to

England, and did the plates in Dugdale's "Monasticon," "History of

St. Paul's," and "Antiquities of Warwickshire," and in Thoroton's

"Nottinghamshire;" and he made drawings of the town and fortress of

Tangier for Charles, which he engraved, some of these drawings still

remaining in the British Museum. Faithorne took refuge in France, and

there studied under Nanteuil, and acquired a force, freedom, richness,

and delicacy in portrait engraving which were unequalled in his own

time, and have scarcely been surpassed in ours. He drew also in crayons.

The art of mezzotint was introduced at this period by Prince Rupert,

who was long supposed to have invented it; this, however, has since

then been doubted; but its introduction by him is certain; and it

became so much cultivated as to become almost exclusively an English

art.

The coins of this period were the work of the Roteri family. Of these

there were John and Norbert (his son), Joseph and Philip. Their father

was a Dutch banker, who had obliged Charles during his exile by the

loan of money, on condition that, in case of restoration, he should

employ his sons. They were men of much taste and skill, as their coins

show, though by no means equal to Simon, the coiner of Cromwell.

They, however, introduced some decided improvements into our coin,

particularly that of graining or letters on the rims of the coin.

Charles called in all the Commonwealth money, and coined fresh. In 1662

the gold coin called a guinea was first invented, from gold brought

from the coast of Guinea, and bore the stamp of an elephant under the

king's head, in honour of the African company which imported it. In

the last year of Charles's reign he coined farthings of tin, with only

a bit of copper in the middle. The figure of Britannia still retained

on our copper coinage was first introduced in the copper coinage of

Charles (_see p._ 205), and was modelled by Philip Roteri from Miss

Stuart, afterwards Duchess of Richmond, of whom Charles was deeply

enamoured, much to the scandal of all decent subjects.

James II. followed the fashion of Charles in coining tin halfpence and

farthings with copper centres. After his abdication he was reduced in

Ireland to the necessity of coining money out of old brass cannon, and

pots and pans, and, when these failed, out of pewter.

With the Restoration came back mirth and music, which had been banished

by the Puritans from both churches and private houses. However, it

is but just to except Cromwell and Milton from censure. Cromwell was

especially fond of the organ, and gave concerts in his own house when

at the head of the Government. Milton, as might be supposed from

his poetical nature, and the solemn music of his verse, was equally

attached to harmony of sounds. He was the friend of Henry Lawes, one of

the greatest composers of the time, and addressed to him the well-known

sonnet on the publication of his airs, beginning

"Harry, whose tuneful and well-measur'd song

First taught our English music how to span

Words with just note and accent."

But perhaps the Royalists were all the more musical on their return

to power to mark their contempt of the gloomy Puritans, and music

burst forth in church and chapel, in concert, and theatre, and private

house with redoubled energy. The theatres and operas did not delay to

draw the public by the charms of music as well as of representation.

Even during the latter years of the Commonwealth Sir William Davenant

opened a kind of theatre under the name of masque and concert, and

enlivened it by music. The Royalists at Oxford during the time Charles

I.'s Court was there, held weekly musical parties with the members of

the University; and no sooner was the Commonwealth at an end than the

heads of houses, fellows, and other gentlemen renewed these parties,

and furnished themselves with all necessary instruments, and the

compositions of the best masters. But what marks the musical _furore_

of this period more than all was the flocking of the aristocracy and

the finest musical performers to the miserable house of a dealer in

coal-dust in Clerkenwell, where musical parties were held. "It was,"

says Dr. John Hawkins, "in Aylesbury Street, Clerkenwell. The room

of the performance was over the coal-shop; and, strange to tell, Tom

Britton's concert was the weekly resort of the old, the young, the

gay, the fair of all ranks, including the highest order of nobility."

Dr. Pepusch and frequently Handel played the harpsichord there--though

this must have been at a later period, for he did not arrive in England

till 1710. Mr. Needler, Accountant-General of the Excise; Hughes the

poet, Wollaston the painter, and many other amateurs were among the

performers. Walpole says Britton took money from his visitors, but

Hawkins entirely denies it.

The example of Tom Britton was contagious, and similar places of

musical entertainment, but on the principle of professional emolument,

were soon opened east and west. Amongst the first of these was Sadler's

Wells.

One of the finest composers for the theatre and opera was Matthew Lock.

He was appointed Composer in Ordinary to Charles II., and composed a

church service and some anthems; but he was much more famous for his

setting of songs, and the music to plays. He wrote that to Davenant's

alteration of "Macbeth," to Shadwell's opera, "Psyche," and various

other dramas. He received a salary of two hundred pounds a year as

Director of the King's Music. He became a convert to Catholicism, and

was made Organist to Catherine, the queen of Charles. But the rage for

everything French was growing, and Lock was succeeded in his office by

a Frenchman, Cambert, who produced an English opera; and he by Louis

Grabut, another Frenchman, who set Dryden's "Albion and Albanius," a

satire on Shaftesbury--a poor performance. After Charles quarrelled

with Louis XIV., Italian taste superseded the French, and Italian music

and musicians were patronised. Amongst the latter Nicola Matteis was a

popular violinist.