THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

The age of Elizabeth was distinguished, beyond, perhaps, any other in our

history, by a number of great men, famous in different ways, and whose

names have come down to us with unblemished honours; statesmen, warriors,

divines, scholars, poets, and philosophers, Raleigh, Drake, Coke, Hooker,

and higher and more sounding still, and still more frequent in our mouths,

Shakspeare, Spenser, Sidney, Bacon, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, men

whom fame has eternised in her long and lasting scroll, and who, by their

words and acts, were benefactors of their country, and ornaments of human

nature. Their attainments of different kinds bore the same general stamp,

and it was sterling: what they did, had the mark of their age and country

upon it. Perhaps the genius of Great Britain (if I may so speak without

offence or flattery), never shone out fuller or brighter, or looked more

like itself, than at this period. Our writers and great men had something

in them that savoured of the soil from which they grew: they were not

French, they were not Dutch, or German, or Greek, or Latin; they were

truly English. They did not look out of themselves to see what they should

be; they sought for truth and nature, and found it in themselves. There

was no tinsel, and but little art; they were not the spoiled children of

affectation and refinement, but a bold, vigorous, independent race of

thinkers, with prodigious strength and energy, with none but natural

grace, and heartfelt unobtrusive delicacy. They were not at all

sophisticated. The mind of their country was great in them, and it

prevailed. With their learning and unexampled acquirement, they did not

forget that they were men: with all their endeavours after excellence,

they did not lay aside the strong original bent and character of their

minds. What they performed was chiefly nature's handy-work; and time has

claimed it for his own.--To these, however, might be added others not less

learned, nor with a scarce less happy vein, but less fortunate in the

event, who, though as renowned in their day, have sunk into "mere

oblivion," and of whom the only record (but that the noblest) is to be

found in their works. Their works and their names, "poor, poor dumb

names," are all that remains of such men as Webster, Deckar, Marston,

Marlow, Chapman, Heywood, Middleton, and Rowley! "How lov'd, how honour'd

once, avails them not:" though they were the friends and fellow-labourers

of Shakspeare, sharing his fame and fortunes with him, the rivals of

Jonson, and the masters of Beaumont and Fletcher's well-sung woes! They

went out one by one unnoticed, like evening lights; or were swallowed up

in the headlong torrent of puritanic zeal which succeeded, and swept away

everything in its unsparing course, throwing up the wrecks of taste and

genius at random, and at long fitful intervals, amidst the painted

gew-gaws and foreign frippery of the reign of Charles II. and from which

we are only now recovering the scattered fragments and broken images to

erect a temple to true Fame! How long, before it will be completed?

If I can do anything to rescue some of these writers from hopeless

obscurity, and to do them right, without prejudice to well-deserved

reputation, I shall have succeeded in what I chiefly propose. I shall not

attempt, indeed, to adjust the spelling, or restore the pointing, as if

the genius of poetry lay hid in errors of the press, but leaving these

weightier matters of criticism to those who are more able and willing to

bear the burden, try to bring out their real beauties to the eager sight,

"draw the curtain of Time, and shew the picture of Genius," restraining my

own admiration within reasonable bounds!...

We affect to wonder at Shakspeare, and one or two more of that period, as

solitary instances upon record; whereas it is our own dearth of

information that makes the waste; for there is no time more populous of

intellect, or more prolific of intellectual wealth, than the one we are

speaking of. Shakspeare did not look upon himself in this light, as a sort

of monster of poetical genius, or on his contemporaries as "less than

smallest dwarfs," when he speaks with true, not false modesty, of himself

and them, and of his wayward thoughts, "desiring this man's art, and that

man's scope." We fancy that there were no such men, that could either add

to or take anything away from him, but such there were. He indeed

overlooks and commands the admiration of posterity, but he does it from

the _tableland_ of the age in which he lived. He towered above his

fellows, "in shape and gesture proudly eminent;" but he was one of a race

of giants, the tallest, the strongest, the most graceful, and beautiful of

them; but it was a common and a noble brood. He was not something sacred

and aloof from the vulgar herd of men, but shook hands with nature and the

circumstances of the time, and is distinguished from his immediate

contemporaries, not in kind, but in degree and greater variety of

excellence. He did not form a class or species by himself, but belonged to

a class or species. His age was necessary to him; nor could he have been

wrenched from his place in the edifice of which he was so conspicuous a

part, without equal injury to himself and it. Mr. Wordsworth says of

Milton, that "his soul was like a star, and dwelt apart." This cannot be

said with any propriety of Shakspeare, who certainly moved in a

constellation of bright luminaries, and "drew after him a third part of

the heavens." If we allow, for argument's sake (or for truth's, which is

better), that he was in himself equal to all his competitors put together;

yet there was more dramatic excellence in that age than in the whole of

the period that has elapsed since. If his contemporaries, with their

united strength, would hardly make one Shakspeare, certain it is that all

his successors would not make half a one. With the exception of a single

writer, Otway, and of a single play of his (Venice Preserved), there is

nobody in tragedy and dramatic poetry (I do not here speak of comedy) to

be compared to the great men of the age of Shakspeare, and immediately

after. They are a mighty phalanx of kindred spirits closing him round,

moving in the same orbit, and impelled by the same causes in their

whirling and eccentric career. They had the same faults and the same

excellences; the same strength and depth and richness, the same truth of

character, passion, imagination, thought and language, thrown, heaped,

massed together without careful polishing or exact method, but poured out

in unconcerned profusion from the lap of nature and genius in boundless

and unrivalled magnificence. The sweetness of Deckar, the thought of

Marston, the gravity of Chapman, the grace of Fletcher and his young-eyed

wit, Jonson's learned sock, the flowing vein of Middleton, Heywood's ease,

the pathos of Webster, and Marlow's deep designs, add a double lustre to

the sweetness, thought, gravity, grace, wit, artless nature, copiousness,

ease, pathos, and sublime conceptions of Shakspeare's Muse. They are

indeed the scale by which we can best ascend to the true knowledge and

love of him. Our admiration of them does not lessen our relish for him;

but, on the contrary, increases and confirms it.--For such an

extraordinary combination and development of fancy and genius many causes

may be assigned; and we may seek for the chief of them in religion, in

politics, in the circumstances of the time, the recent diffusion of

letters, in local situation, and in the character of the men who adorned

that period, and availed themselves so nobly of the advantages placed

within their reach.

I shall here attempt to give a general sketch of these causes, and of the

manner in which they operated to mould and stamp the poetry of the country

at the period of which I have to treat; independently of incidental and

fortuitous causes, for which there is no accounting, but which, after all,

have often the greatest share in determining the most important results.

The first cause I shall mention, as contributing to this general effect,

was the Reformation, which had just then taken place. This event gave a

mighty impulse and increased activity to thought and inquiry, and agitated

the inert mass of accumulated prejudices throughout Europe. The effect of

the concussion was general; but the shock was greatest in this country. It

toppled down the full-grown, intolerable abuses of centuries at a blow;

heaved the ground from under the feet of bigotted faith and slavish

obedience; and the roar and dashing of opinions, loosened from their

accustomed hold, might be heard like the noise of an angry sea, and has

never yet subsided. Germany first broke the spell of misbegotten fear, and

gave the watch-word; but England joined the shout, and echoed it back with

her island voice, from her thousand cliffs and craggy shores, in a longer

and a louder strain. With that cry, the genius of Great Britain rose, and

threw down the gauntlet to the nations. There was a mighty fermentation:

the waters were out; public opinion was in a state of projection. Liberty

was held out to all to think and speak the truth. Men's brains were busy;

their spirits stirring; their hearts full; and their hands not idle. Their

eyes were opened to expect the greatest things, and their ears burned with

curiosity and zeal to know the truth, that the truth might make them free.

The death-blow which had been struck at scarlet vice and bloated

hypocrisy, loosened their tongues, and made the talismans and love-tokens

of Popish superstition, with which she had beguiled her followers and

committed abominations with the people, fall harmless from their necks.

The translation of the Bible was the chief engine in the great work. It

threw open, by a secret spring, the rich treasures of religion and

morality, which had been there locked up as in a shrine. It revealed the

visions of the prophets, and conveyed the lessons of inspired teachers

(such they were thought) to the meanest of the people. It gave them a

common interest in the common cause. Their hearts burnt within them as

they read. It gave a mind to the people, by giving them common subjects of

thought and feeling. It cemented their union of character and sentiment:

it created endless diversity and collision of opinion. They found objects

to employ their faculties, and a motive in the magnitude of the

consequences attached to them, to exert the utmost eagerness in the

pursuit of truth, and the most daring intrepidity in maintaining it.

Religious controversy sharpens the understanding by the subtlety and

remoteness of the topics it discusses, and braces the will by their

infinite importance. We perceive in the history of this period a nervous

masculine intellect. No levity, no feebleness, no indifference; or if

there were, it is a relaxation from the intense activity which gives a

tone to its general character. But there is a gravity approaching to

piety; a seriousness of impression, a conscientious severity of argument,

an habitual fervour and enthusiasm in their mode of handling almost every

subject. The debates of the schoolmen were sharp and subtle enough; but

they wanted interest and grandeur, and were besides confined to a few:

they did not affect the general mass of the community. But the Bible was

thrown open to all ranks and conditions "to run and read," with its

wonderful table of contents from Genesis to the Revelations. Every village

in England would present the scene so well described in Burns's Cotter's

Saturday Night. I cannot think that all this variety and weight of

knowledge could be thrown in all at once upon the mind of a people, and

not make some impression upon it, the traces of which might be discerned

in the manners and literature of the age. For to leave more disputable

points, and take only the historical parts of the Old Testament, or the

moral sentiments of the New, there is nothing like them in the power of

exciting awe and admiration, or of rivetting sympathy. We see what Milton

has made of the account of the Creation, from the manner in which he has

treated it, imbued and impregnated with the spirit of the time of which we

speak. Or what is there equal (in that romantic interest and patriarchal

simplicity which goes to the heart of a country, and rouses it, as it

were, from its lair in wastes and wildernesses) equal to the story of

Joseph and his Brethren, of Rachael and Laban, of Jacob's Dream, of Ruth

and Boaz, the descriptions in the Book of Job, the deliverance of the Jews

out of Egypt, or the account of their captivity and return from Babylon?

There is in all these parts of the Scripture, and numberless more of the

same kind, to pass over the Orphic hymns of David, the prophetic

denunciations of Isaiah, or the gorgeous visions of Ezekiel, an

originality, a vastness of conception, a depth and tenderness of feeling,

and a touching simplicity in the mode of narration, which he who does not

feel, need be made of no "penetrable stuff." There is something in the

character of Christ too (leaving religious faith quite out of the

question) of more sweetness and majesty, and more likely to work a change

in the mind of man, by the contemplation of its idea alone, than any to be

found in history, whether actual or feigned. This character is that of a

sublime humanity, such as was never seen on earth before, nor since. This

shone manifestly both in his words and actions. We see it in his washing

the Disciples' feet the night before his death, that unspeakable instance

of humility and love, above all art, all meanness, and all pride, and in

the leave he took of them on that occasion, "My peace I give unto you,

that peace which the world cannot give, give I unto you;" and in his last

commandment, that "they should love one another." Who can read the account

of his behaviour on the cross, when turning to his mother he said, "Woman,

behold thy son," and to the Disciple John, "Behold thy mother," and "from

that hour that Disciple took her to his own home." without having his

heart smote within him! We see it in his treatment of the woman taken in

adultery, and in his excuse for the woman who poured precious ointment on

his garment as an offering of devotion and love, which is here all in all.

His religion was the religion of the heart. We see it in his discourse

with the Disciples as they walked together towards Emmaus, when their

hearts burned within them; in his sermon from the Mount, in his parable of

the good Samaritan, and in that of the Prodigal Son--in every act and word

of his life, a grace, a mildness, a dignity and love, a patience and

wisdom worthy of the Son of God. His whole life and being were imbued,

steeped in this word, _charity_; it was the spring, the well-head from

which every thought and feeling gushed into act; and it was this that

breathed a mild glory from his face in that last agony upon the cross,

"when the meek Saviour bowed his head and died," praying for his enemies.

He was the first true teacher of morality; for he alone conceived the idea

of a pure humanity. He redeemed man from the worship of that idol, self,

and instructed him by precept and example to love his neighbour as

himself, to forgive our enemies, to do good to those that curse us and

despitefully use us. He taught the love of good for the sake of good,

without regard to personal or sinister views, and made the affections of

the heart the sole seat of morality, instead of the pride of the

understanding or the sternness of the will. In answering the question,

"who is our neighbour?" as one who stands in need of our assistance, and

whose wounds we can bind up, he has done more to humanize the thoughts and

tame the unruly passions, than all who have tried to reform and benefit

mankind. The very idea of abstract benevolence, of the desire to do good

because another wants our services, and of regarding the human race as one

family, the offspring of one common parent, is hardly to be found in any

other code or system. It was "to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the

Greeks foolishness." The Greeks and Romans never thought of considering

others, but as they were Greeks or Romans, as they were bound to them by

certain positive ties, or, on the other hand, as separated from them by

fiercer antipathies. Their virtues were the virtues of political machines,

their vices were the vices of demons, ready to inflict or to endure pain

with obdurate and remorseless inflexibility of purpose. But in the

Christian religion, "we perceive a softness coming over the heart of a

nation, and the iron scales that fence and harden it, melt and drop off."

It becomes malleable, capable of pity, of forgiveness, of relaxing in its

claims, and remitting its power. We strike it, and it does not hurt us: it

is not steel or marble, but flesh and blood, clay tempered with tears,

and "soft as sinews of the newborn babe." The gospel was first preached to

the poor, for it consulted their wants and interests, not its own pride

and arrogance. It first promulgated the equality of mankind in the

community of duties and benefits. It denounced the iniquities of the chief

Priests and Pharisees, and declared itself at variance with principalities

and powers, for it sympathizes not with the oppressor, but the oppressed.

It first abolished slavery, for it did not consider the power of the will

to inflict injury, as clothing it with a right to do so. Its law is good,

not power. It at the same time tended to wean the mind from the grossness

of sense, and a particle of its divine flame was lent to brighten and

purify the lamp of love!

There have been persons who, being sceptics as to the divine mission of

Christ, have taken an unaccountable prejudice to his doctrines, and have

been disposed to deny the merit of his character; but this was not the

feeling of the great men in the age of Elizabeth (whatever might be their

belief) one of whom says of him, with a boldness equal to its piety:

"The best of men

That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer;

A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit;

The first true gentleman that ever breathed."

This was old honest Deckar, and the lines ought to embalm his memory to

every one who has a sense either of religion, or philosophy, or humanity,

or true genius. Nor can I help thinking, that we may discern the traces of

the influence exerted by religious faith in the spirit of the poetry of

the age of Elizabeth, in the means of exciting terror and pity, in the

delineation of the passions of grief, remorse, love, sympathy, the sense

of shame, in the fond desires, the longings after immortality, in the

heaven of hope, and the abyss of despair it lays open to us.[122]

The literature of this age then, I would say, was strongly influenced

(among other causes), first by the spirit of Christianity, and secondly by

the spirit of Protestantism.

The effects of the Reformation on politics and philosophy may be seen in

the writings and history of the next and of the following ages. They are

still at work, and will continue to be so. The effects on the poetry of

the time were chiefly confined to the moulding of the character, and

giving a powerful impulse to the intellect of the country. The immediate

use or application that was made of religion to subjects of imagination

and fiction was not (from an obvious ground of separation) so direct or

frequent, as that which was made of the classical and romantic literature.

For much about the same time, the rich and fascinating stores of the Greek

and Roman mythology, and those of the romantic poetry of Spain and Italy,

were eagerly explored by the curious, and thrown open in translations to

the admiring gaze of the vulgar. This last circumstance could hardly have

afforded so much advantage to the poets of that day, who were themselves,

in fact, the translators, as it shews the general curiosity and increasing

interest in such subjects, as a prevailing feature of the times. There

were translations of Tasso by Fairfax, and of Ariosto by Harrington, of

Homer and Hesiod by Chapman, and of Virgil long before, and Ovid soon

after; there was Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch, of which

Shakspeare has made such admirable use in his Coriolanus and Julius Caesar;

and Ben Jonson's tragedies of Catiline and Sejanus may themselves be

considered as almost literal translations into verse, of Tacitus,

Sallust, and Cicero's Orations in his consulship. Boccacio, the divine

Boccacio, Petrarch, Dante, the satirist Aretine, Machiavel, Castiglione,

and others, were familiar to our writers, and they make occasional mention

of some few French authors, as Ronsard and Du Bartas; for the French

literature had not at this stage arrived at its Augustan period, and it

was the imitation of their literature a century afterwards, when it had

arrived at its greatest height (itself copied from the Greek and Latin),

that enfeebled and impoverished our own. But of the time that we are

considering, it might be said, without much extravagance, that every

breath that blew, that every wave that rolled to our shores, brought with

it some accession to our knowledge, which was engrafted on the national

genius. In fact, all the disposeable materials that had been accumulating

for a long period of time, either in our own, or in foreign countries,

were now brought together, and required nothing more than to be wrought

up, polished, or arranged in striking forms, for ornament and use. To this

every inducement prompted, the novelty of the acquisition of knowledge in

many cases, the emulation of foreign wits, and of immortal works, the want

and the expectation of such works among ourselves, the opportunity and

encouragement afforded for their production by leisure and affluence; and,

above all, the insatiable desire of the mind to beget its own image, and

to construct out of itself, and for the delight and admiration of the

world and posterity, that excellence of which the idea exists hitherto

only in its own breast, and the impression of which it would make as

universal as the eye of heaven, the benefit as common as the air we

breathe. The first impulse of genius is to create what never existed

before: the contemplation of that, which is so created, is sufficient to

satisfy the demands of taste; and it is the habitual study and imitation

of the original models that takes away the power, and even wish to do the

like. Taste limps after genius, and from copying the artificial models, we

lose sight of the living principle of nature. It is the effort we make,

and the impulse we acquire, in overcoming the first obstacles, that

projects us forward; it is the necessity for exertion that makes us

conscious of our strength; but this necessity and this impulse once

removed, the tide of fancy and enthusiasm, which is at first a running

stream, soon settles and crusts into the standing pool of dulness,

criticism, and _virtu_.

What also gave an unusual _impetus_ to the mind of man at this period, was

the discovery of the New World, and the reading of voyages and travels.

Green islands and golden sands seemed to arise, as by enchantment, out of

the bosom of the watery waste, and invite the cupidity, or wing the

imagination of the dreaming speculator. Fairy land was realized in new and

unknown worlds. "Fortunate fields and groves and flowery vales, thrice

happy isles," were found floating "like those Hesperian gardens famed of

old," beyond Atlantic seas, as dropt from the zenith. The people, the

soil, the clime, every thing gave unlimited scope to the curiosity of the

traveller and reader. Other manners might be said to enlarge the bounds of

knowledge, and new mines of wealth were tumbled at our feet. It is from a

voyage to the Straits of Magellan that Shakspeare has taken the hint of

Prospero's Enchanted Island, and of the savage Caliban with his god

Setebos.[123] Spenser seems to have had the same feeling in his mind in

the production of his Faery Queen, and vindicates his poetic fiction on

this very ground of analogy.

"Right well I wote, most mighty sovereign,

That all this famous antique history

Of some the abundance of an idle brain

Will judged be, and painted forgery,

Rather than matter of just memory:

Since none that breatheth living air, doth know

Where is that happy land of faery

Which I so much do vaunt, but no where show,

But vouch antiquities, which nobody can know.

But let that man with better sense avise,

That of the world least part to us is read:

And daily how through hardy enterprize

Many great regions are discovered,

Which to late age were never mentioned.

Who ever heard of th' Indian Peru?

Or who in venturous vessel measured

The Amazons' huge river, now found true?

Or fruitfullest Virginia who did ever view?

Yet all these were when no man did them know,

Yet have from wisest ages hidden been:

And later times things more unknown shall show.

Why then should witless man so much misween

That nothing is but that which he hath seen?

What if within the moon's fair shining sphere,

What if in every other star unseen,

Of other worlds he happily should hear,

He wonder would much more; yet such to some appear."

Fancy's air-drawn pictures after history's waking dream shewed like clouds

over mountains; and from the romance of real life to the idlest fiction,

the transition seemed easy.--Shakspeare, as well as others of his time,

availed himself of the old Chronicles, and of the traditions or fabulous

inventions contained in them in such ample measure, and which had not yet

been appropriated to the purposes of poetry or the drama. The stage was a

new thing; and those who had to supply its demands laid their hands upon

whatever came within their reach: they were not particular as to the

means, so that they gained the end. Lear is founded upon an old ballad;

Othello on an Italian novel; Hamlet on a Danish, and Macbeth on a Scotch

tradition: one of which is to be found in Saxo-Grammaticus, and the last

in Hollingshed. The Ghost-scenes and the Witches in each, are

authenticated in the old Gothic history. There was also this connecting

link between the poetry of this age and the supernatural traditions of a

former one, that the belief in them was still extant, and in full force

and visible operation among the vulgar (to say no more) in the time of our

authors. The appalling and wild chimeras of superstition and ignorance,

"those bodiless creations that ecstacy is very cunning in," were inwoven

with existing manners and opinions, and all their effects on the passions

of terror or pity might be gathered from common and actual

observation--might be discerned in the workings of the face, the

expressions of the tongue, the writhings of a troubled conscience. "Your

face, my Thane; is as a book where men may read strange matters." Midnight

and secret murders too, from the imperfect state of the police, were more

common; and the ferocious and brutal manners that would stamp the brow of

the hardened ruffian or hired assassin, more incorrigible and undisguised.

The portraits of Tyrrel and Forrest were, no doubt, done from the life. We

find that the ravages of the plague, the destructive rage of fire, the

poisoned chalice, lean famine, the serpent's mortal sting, and the fury of

wild beasts, were the common topics of their poetry, as they were common

occurrences in more remote periods of history. They were the strong

ingredients thrown into the cauldron of tragedy, to make it "thick and

slab." Man's life was (as it appears to me) more full of traps and

pit-falls; of hair-breadth accidents by flood and field; more way-laid by

sudden and startling evils; it trod on the brink of hope and fear;

stumbled upon fate unawares; while the imagination, close behind it,

caught at and clung to the shape of danger, or "snatched a wild and

fearful joy" from its escape. The accidents of nature were less provided

against; the excesses of the passions and of lawless power were less

regulated, and produced more strange and desperate catastrophes. The tales

of Boccacio are founded on the great pestilence of Florence, Fletcher the

poet died of the plague, and Marlow was stabbed in a tavern quarrel. The

strict authority of parents, the inequality of ranks, or the hereditary

feuds between different families, made more unhappy loves or matches.

"The course of true love never did run even."

Again, the heroic and martial spirit which breathes in our elder writers,

was yet in considerable activity in the reign of Elizabeth. "The age of

chivalry was not then quite gone, nor the glory of Europe extinguished for

ever." Jousts and tournaments were still common with the nobility in

England and in foreign countries: Sir Philip Sidney was particularly

distinguished for his proficiency in these exercises (and indeed fell a

martyr to his ambition as a soldier)--and the gentle Surrey was still more

famous, on the same account, just before him. It is true, the general use

of fire-arms gradually superseded the necessity of skill in the sword, or

bravery in the person: and as a symptom of the rapid degeneracy in this

respect, we find Sir John Suckling soon after boasting of himself as one--

"Who prized black eyes, and a lucky hit

At bowls, above all the trophies of wit."

It was comparatively an age of peace,

"Like strength reposing on his own right arm;"

but the sound of civil combat might still be heard in the distance, the

spear glittered to the eye of memory, or the clashing of armour struck on

the imagination of the ardent and the young. They were borderers on the

savage state, on the times of war and bigotry, though in the lap of arts,

of luxury, and knowledge. They stood on the shore and saw the billows

rolling after the storm: "they heard the tumult, and were still." The

manners and out-of-door amusements were more tinctured with a spirit of

adventure and romance. The war with wild beasts, &c. was more strenuously

kept up in country sports. I do not think we could get from sedentary

poets, who had never mingled in the vicissitudes, the dangers, or

excitements of the chase, such descriptions of hunting and other athletic

games, as are to be found in Shakspeare's Midsummer Night's Dream or

Fletcher's Noble Kinsmen.

With respect to the good cheer and hospitable living of those times, I

cannot agree with an ingenious and agreeable writer of the present day,

that it was general or frequent. The very stress laid upon certain

holidays and festivals, shews that they did not keep up the same

Saturnalian licence and open house all the year round. They reserved

themselves for great occasions, and made the best amends they could, for a

year of abstinence and toil by a week of merriment and convivial

indulgence. Persons in middle life at this day, who can afford a good

dinner every day, do not look forward to it as any particular subject of

exultation: the poor peasant, who can only contrive to treat himself to a

joint of meat on a Sunday, considers it as an event in the week. So, in

the old Cambridge comedy of the Return from Parnassus, we find this

indignant description of the progress of luxury in those days, put into

the mouth of one of the speakers.

"Why is't not strange to see a ragged clerke,

Some stammell weaver, or some butcher's sonne,

That scrubb'd a late within a sleeveless gowne,

When the commencement, like a morrice dance,

Hath put a bell or two about his legges,

Created him a sweet cleane gentleman:

How then he 'gins to follow fashions.

He whose thin sire dwelt in a smokye roofe,

Must make tobacco, and must wear a locke.

His thirsty dad drinkes in a wooden bowle,

But his sweet self is served in si'ver plate.

His hungry sire will scrape you twenty legges

For one good Christmas meal on new year's day,

But his mawe must be capon cramm'd each day."

_Act III. Scene 2._

This does not look as if in those days "it snowed of meat and drink," as a

matter of course throughout the year!--The distinctions of dress, the

badges of different professions, the very signs of the shops, which we

have set aside for written inscriptions over the doors, were, as Mr. Lamb

observes, a sort of visible language to the imagination, and hints for

thought. Like the costume of different foreign nations, they had an

immediate striking and picturesque effect, giving scope to the fancy. The

surface of society was embossed with hieroglyphics, and poetry existed "in

art and compliment extern." The poetry of former times might be directly

taken from real life, as our poetry is taken from the poetry of former

times. Finally, the face of nature, which was the same glorious object

then that it is now, was open to them; and coming first, they gathered her

fairest flowers to live for ever in their verse:--the movements of the

human heart were not hid from them, for they had the same passions as we,

only less disguised, and less subject to control. Deckar has given an

admirable description of a mad-house in one of his plays. But it might be

perhaps objected, that it was only a literal account taken from Bedlam at

that time; and it might be answered, that the old poets took the same

method of describing the passions and fancies of men whom they met at

large, which forms the point of communion between us: for the title of the

old play, "A Mad World, my Masters," is hardly yet obsolete; and we are

pretty much the same Bedlam still, perhaps a little better managed, like

the real one, and with more care and humanity shewn to the patients!

Lastly, to conclude this account; what gave a unity and common direction

to all these causes, was the natural genius of the country, which was

strong in these writers in proportion to their strength. We are a nation

of islanders, and we cannot help it; nor mend ourselves if we would. We

are something in ourselves, nothing when we try to ape others. Music and

painting are not our _forte_: for what we have done in that way has been

little, and that borrowed from others with great difficulty. But we may

boast of our poets and philosophers. That's something. We have had strong

heads and sound hearts among us. Thrown on one side of the world, and left

to bustle for ourselves, we have fought out many a battle for truth and

freedom. That is our natural style; and it were to be wished we had in no

instance departed from it. Our situation has given us a certain cast of

thought and character; and our liberty has enabled us to make the most of

it. We are of a stiff clay, not moulded into every fashion, with stubborn

joints not easily bent. We are slow to think, and therefore impressions do

not work upon us till they act in masses. We are not forward to express

our feelings, and therefore they do not come from us till they force their

way in the most impetuous eloquence. Our language is, as it were, to begin

anew, and we make use of the most singular and boldest combinations to

explain ourselves. Our wit comes from us, "like birdlime, brains and all."

We pay too little attention to form and method, leave our works in an

unfinished state, but still the materials we work in are solid and of

nature's mint; we do not deal in counterfeits. We both under and over-do,

but we keep an eye to the prominent features, the main chance. We are more

for weight than show; care only about what interests ourselves, instead

of trying to impose upon others by plausible appearances, and are

obstinate and intractable in not conforming to common rules, by which many

arrive at their ends with half the real waste of thought and trouble. We

neglect all but the principal object, gather our force to make a great

blow, bring it down, and relapse into sluggishness and indifference again.

_Materiam superabat opus_, cannot be said of us. We may be accused of

grossness, but not of flimsiness; of extravagance, but not of affectation;

of want of art and refinement, but not of a want of truth and nature. Our

literature, in a word, is Gothic and grotesque; unequal and irregular; not

cast in a previous mould, nor of one uniform texture, but of great weight

in the whole, and of incomparable value in the best parts. It aims at an

excess of beauty or power, hits or misses, and is either very good indeed,

or absolutely good for nothing. This character applies in particular to

our literature in the age of Elizabeth, which is its best period, before

the introduction of a rage for French rules and French models; for

whatever may be the value of our own original style of composition, there

can be neither offence nor presumption in saying, that it is at least

better than our second-hand imitations of others. Our understanding (such

as it is, and must remain to be good for anything) is not a thoroughfare

for common places, smooth as the palm of one's hand, but full of knotty

points and jutting excrescences, rough, uneven, overgrown with brambles;

and I like this aspect of the mind (as some one said of the country),

where nature keeps a good deal of the soil in her own hands. Perhaps the

genius of our poetry has more of Pan than of Apollo; "but Pan is a God,

Apollo is no more!"