The value of Jonson's plays is that they give us vivid pictures of

Elizabethan society, its speech, fashions, amusements, such as no other

dramatist has drawn. Shakespeare pictures men and women as they might be in

any age; but Jonson is content to picture the men and women of London as

they appeared superficially in the year 1600. His chief comedies, which

satirize the shams of his age, are: _Volpone, or the Fox_, a merciless

exposure of greed and avarice; _The Alchemist_, a study of quackery as

it was practiced in Elizabethan days; _Bartholomew Fair_, a riot of

folly; and _Epicoene, or the Silent Woman_, which would now be called

a roaring farce. His chief tragedies are _Sejanus_ and

_Catiline_.

In later life Jonson was appointed poet laureate, and wrote many masques,

such as the _Masque of Beauty_ and the unfinished _Sad Shepherd_.

These and a few lyrics, such as the "Triumph of Charis" and the song

beginning, "Drink to me only with thine eyes," are the pleasantest of

Jonson's works. At the end he abandoned the drama, as Shakespeare had done,

and lashed it as severely as any Puritan in the ode beginning, "Come leave

the loathëd stage."

* * * * *

THE PROSE WRITERS

Unless one have antiquarian tastes, there is little in Elizabethan prose to

reward the reader. Strange to say, the most tedious part of it was written

by literary men in what was supposed to be a very fine style; while the

small part that still attracts us (such as Bacon's _Essays_ or

Hakluyt's _Voyages_) was mostly written by practical men with no

thought for literary effect.

This curious result came about in the following way. In the sixteenth

century poetry was old, but English prose was new; for in the two centuries

that had elapsed since Mandeville wrote his _Travels_, Malory's

_Morte d' Arthur_ (1475) and Ascham's _Scholemaster_ (1563) are

about the only two books that can be said to have a prose style. Then, just

as the Elizabethans were turning to literature, John Lyly appeared with his

_Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit_ (1578), an alleged novel made up of

rambling conversations upon love, education, fashion,--everything that came

into the author's head. The style was involved, artificial, tortured; it

was loaded with conceits, antitheses and decorations:

"I perceive, Camilla, that be your cloth never so bad it will take

some colour, and your cause never so false it will bear some show

of probability; wherein you manifest the right nature of a woman,

who, having no way to win, thinketh to overcome with words.... Take

heed, Camilla, that seeking all the wood for a straight stick you

choose not at the last a crooked staff, or prescribing a good

counsel to others thou thyself follow the worst much like to Chius,

who selling the best wine to others drank himself of the lees."

[Sidenote: THE FAD OF EUPHUISM]

This "high fantastical" style, ever since called euphuistic, created a

sensation. The age was given over to extravagance and the artificial

elegance of _Euphues_ seemed to match the other fashions. Just as

Elizabethan men and women began to wear grotesque ruffs about their necks

as soon as they learned the art of starching from the Dutch, so now they

began to decorate their writing with the conceits of Lyly. [Footnote: Lyly

did not invent the fashion; he carried to an extreme a tendency towards

artificial writing which was prevalent in England and on the Continent. As

is often the case, it was the extreme of fashion that became fashionable.]

Only a year after _Euphues_ appeared, Spenser published _The

Shepherd's Calendar_, and his prose notes show how quickly the style,

like a bad habit, had taken possession of the literary world. Shakespeare

ridicules the fashion in the character of Holofernes, in _Love's Labor's

Lost_, yet he follows it as slavishly as the rest. He could write good

prose when he would, as is shown by a part of Hamlet's speech; but as a

rule he makes his characters speak as if the art of prose were like walking

a tight rope, which must be done with a balancing pole and some

contortions. The scholars who produced the translation of the Scriptures

known as the Authorized Version could certainly write well; yet if you

examine their Dedication, in which, uninfluenced by the noble sincerity of

the Bible's style, they were free to follow the fashion, you may find there

the two faults of Elizabethan prose; namely, the habit of servile flattery

and the sham of euphuism.

Among prose writers of the period the name that appears most frequently is

that of Philip Sidney (1554-1586). He wrote one of our first critical

essays, _An Apologie for Poetrie_ (cir. 1581), the spirit of which may

be judged from the following:

"Nowe therein of all sciences ... is our poet the monarch. For he

dooth not only show the way but giveth so sweete a prospect into

the way as will intice any man to enter into it. Nay, he dooth, as

if your journey should be through a faire vineyard, at the first

give you a cluster of grapes, that, full of that taste, you may

long to passe further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions,

which must blur the margent with interpretations, and load the

memory with doubtfulnesse; but hee cometh to you with words set in

delightfull proportion, either accompanied with or prepared for the

well enchaunting skill of musicke; and with a tale, forsooth, he

cometh unto you,--with a tale which holdeth children from play and

old men from the chimney corner."

[Illustration: SIR PHILIP SIDNEY]

Sidney wrote also the pastoral romance _Arcadia_ which was famous in

its day, and in which the curious reader may find an occasional good

passage, such as the prayer to a heathen god, "O All-seeing Light,"--a

prayer that became historic and deeply pathetic when King Charles repeated

it, facing death on the scaffold. That was in 1649, more than half a

century after _Arcadia_ was written:

"O all-seeing Light, and eternal Life of all things, to whom

nothing is either so great that it may resist or so small that it

is contemned, look upon my miserie with thine eye of mercie, and

let thine infinite power vouchsafe to limite out some proportion of

deliverance unto me, as to thee shall seem most convenient. Let not

injurie, O Lord, triumphe over me, and let my faults by thy hands

be corrected, and make not mine unjuste enemie the minister of thy

justice. But yet, my God, if in thy wisdome this be the aptest

chastisement for my inexcusable follie; if this low bondage be

fittest for my over-hie desires; if the pride of my not-inough

humble hearte be thus to be broken, O Lord, I yeeld unto thy will,

and joyfully embrace what sorrow thou wilt have me suffer."

[Sidenote: THE KING JAMES BIBLE]

The finest example of the prose of the period is the King James or

Authorized Version of the Bible, which appeared in 1611. This translation

was so much influenced by the earlier work of Wyclif, Tyndale, and many

others, that its style cannot properly be called Elizabethan or Jacobean;

it is rather an epitome of English at its best in the two centuries between

Chaucer and Shakespeare. The forty-seven scholars who prepared this

translation aimed at a faithful rendering of the Book which, aside from its

spiritual teaching, contains some of the noblest examples of style in the

whole range of human literature: the elemental simplicity of the Books of

Moses, the glowing poetry of Job and the Psalms, the sublime imagery of

Isaiah, the exquisite tenderness of the Parables, the forged and tempered

argument of the Epistles, the gorgeous coloring of the Apocalypse. All

these elements entered in some degree into the translation of 1611, and the

result was a work of such beauty, strength and simplicity that it remained

a standard of English prose for more than three centuries. It has not only

been a model for our best writers; it has pervaded all the minor literature

of the nation, and profoundly influenced the thought and the expression of

the whole English-speaking world.

* * * * *

FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)

"My name and memory I leave to foreign nations, and to mine own country

_after some time is passed over_," said Bacon in his will. That

reference to the future meant, not that England might learn to forget and

forgive (for Bacon was not greatly troubled by his disgrace), but that she

might learn to appreciate his _Instauratio Magna_. In the same

document the philosopher left magnificent bequests for various purposes,

but when these were claimed by the beneficiaries it was learned that the

debts of the estate were three times the assets. This high-sounding will is

an epitome of Bacon's life and work.

LIFE. Bacon belongs with Sidney and Raleigh in that group of

Elizabethans who aimed to be men of affairs, politicians,

reformers, explorers, rather than writers of prose or poetry. He

was of noble birth, and from an early age was attached to

Elizabeth's court. There he expected rapid advancement, but the

queen and his uncle (Lord Burghley) were both a little suspicious

of the young man who, as he said, had "taken all knowledge for his

province."

Failing to advance by favor, Bacon studied law and entered

Parliament, where he rose rapidly to leadership. Ben Jonson writes

of him, in that not very reliable collection of opinions called

_Timber_:

"There happened in my time one noble speaker who was full

of gravity in his speaking.... No man ever spake more

neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less

emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered.... The fear

of every man that heard him was lest he should make an

end."

[Illustration: FRANCIS BACON]

[Sidenote: HIS TRIUMPH]

When Elizabeth died, Bacon saw his way open. He offered his

services to the royal favorite, Buckingham, and was soon in the

good graces of King James. He was made Baron Verulam and Viscount

St. Albans; he married a rich wife; he rose rapidly from one

political honor to another, until at sixty he was Lord High

Chancellor of England. So his threefold ambition for position,

wealth and power was realized. It was while he held the highest

state office that he published his _Novum Organum_, which

established his reputation as "the first philosopher in Europe."

That was in 1620, the year when a handful of Pilgrims sailed away

unnoticed on one of the world's momentous voyages.

[Sidenote: HIS DISGRACE]

After four years of power Bacon, who had been engaged with

Buckingham in selling monopolies, and in other schemes to be rich

at the public expense, was brought to task by Parliament. He was

accused of receiving bribes, confessed his guilt (it is said to

shield the king and Buckingham, who had shared the booty), was

fined, imprisoned, banished from court, and forbidden to hold

public office again. All these punishments except the last were

remitted by King James, to whom Bacon had been a useful tool. His

last few years were spent in scientific study at Gorhambury, where

he lived proudly, keeping up the appearance of his former grandeur,

until his death in 1626.

Such a sketch seems a cold thing, but there is little of divine

fire or human warmth in Bacon to kindle one's enthusiasm. His

obituary might well be the final word of his essay "Of Wisdom for a

Man's Self":

"Whereas they have all their time sacrificed to themselves,

they become in the end sacrifices to the inconstancy of

fortune, whose wings they thought by their self-wisdom to

have pinioned."

Ben Jonson had a different and, possibly, a more just opinion. In

the work from which we have quoted he says:

"My conceit of his person was never increased towards him

by his place or honours; but I have and do reverence him

for his greatness that was only proper to himself, in that

he seemed to me ever by his work one of the greatest men,

and most worthy of admiration, that had been in many ages.

In his adversity I ever prayed that God would give him

strength; for greatness he could not want."

WORKS OF BACON. The _Essays_ of Bacon are so highly esteemed that the

critic Hallam declares it would be "derogatory to a man of the slightest

claim to polite letters" to be unacquainted with them. His first venture

was a tiny volume called _Essays, Religious Meditations, Places of

Persuasion and Dissuasion_ (1597). This was modeled upon a French work

by Montaigne (_Essais_, 1580) and was considered of small consequence

by the author. As time went on, and his ambitious works were overlooked in

favor of his sketches, he paid more attention to the latter, revising and

enlarging his work until the final edition of fifty-eight essays appeared

in 1625. Then it was that Bacon wrote, "I do now publish my Essays, which

of all my works have been most current; for that, as it seems, they come

home to men's business and bosoms."

[Sidenote: QUALITY OF THE ESSAYS]

The spirit of these works may be judged by the essay "Of Friendship." This

promises well, for near the beginning we read, "A crowd is not company, and

faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talking is but a tinkling cymbal

where there is no love." Excellent! As we read on, however, we find nothing

of the love that beareth all things for a friend's sake. We are not even

encouraged to be friendly, but rather to cultivate the friendship of other

men for the following advantages: that a friend is useful in saving us from

solitude; that he may increase our joy or diminish our trouble; that he

gives us good counsel; that he can finish our work or take care of our

children, if need be; and finally, that he can spare our modesty while

trumpeting our virtues:

"How many things are there which a man cannot, with any face or

comeliness, say or do himself! A man can scarce allege his own

merits with modesty, much less extol them; a man cannot sometimes

brook to supplicate or beg; and a number of the like. But all these

things are graceful in a friend's mouth, which are blushing in a

man's own."

In old Arabic manuscripts one frequently finds a record having the

appearance of truth; but at the very end, in parenthesis, one reads, "This

is all a lie," or "This was my thought when I was sick," or some other

enlightening climax. Bacon's essay "Of Friendship" might be more in accord

with the verities if it had a final note to the effect that the man who

cultivates friendship in the Baconian way will never have or deserve a

friend in the world.

So with many other Baconian essays: with "Love" for example, in which we

are told that it is impossible for a man to love and be wise; or with

"Negotiations," which informs us that, unless a man intends to use his

letter to justify himself (lo! the politician), it is better to deal by

speech than by writing; for a man can "disavow or expound" his speech, but

his written word may be used against him.

[Sidenote: BACON'S VIEW OF LIFE]

To some men, to most men, life offers a problem to be solved by standards

that are eternally right; to others life is a game, the object is to win,

and the rules may be manipulated to one's own advantage. Bacon's moral

philosophy was that of the gamester; his leading motive was self-interest;

so when he wrote of love or friendship or any other noble sentiment he was

dealing with matters of which he had no knowledge. The best he could offer

was a "counsel of prudence," and many will sympathize with John Wesley, who

declared that worldly prudence is a quality from which an honest man should

pray God to be delivered.

[Sidenote: WHAT TO READ]

It is only when Bacon deals with practical matters, leaving the high places

of life, where he is a stranger, to write of "Discourse" or "Gardens" or

"Seeming Wise" that his essays begin to strike home by their vigor and

vitality. Though seldom profound or sympathetic, they are notable for their

keen observation and shrewd judgment of the ambitious world in which the

author himself lived. Among those that are best worth reading are

"Studies," "Wisdom for a Man's Self," "Riches," "Great Place," "Atheism,"

and "Travel."

The style of these essays is in refreshing contrast to most Elizabethan

prose, to the sonorous periods of Hooker, to the ramblings of Sidney, to

the conceits of Lyly and Shakespeare. The sentences are mostly short,

clear, simple; and so much meaning is crystallized in them that they

overshadow even the "Poor Richard" maxims of Franklin, the man who had a

genius for packing worldly wisdom into a convenient nutshell.

[Sidenote: AMBITIOUS WORKS]

Other works of Bacon are seldom read, and may be passed over lightly. We

mention only, as indicative of his wide range, his _History of Henry

VII_, his Utopian romance _The New Atlantis_, his Advancement of

Learning and his _Novum Organum_. The last two works, one in English,

the other in Latin, were parts of the _Instauratio Magna_, or _The

Great Institution of True Philosophy_, a colossal work which Bacon did

not finish, which he never even outlined very clearly.

The aim of the _Instauratio_ was, first, to sweep away ancient

philosophy and the classic education of the universities; and second, to

substitute a scheme of scientific study to the end of discovering and

utilizing the powers of nature. It gave Bacon his reputation (in Germany

especially) of a great philosopher and scientist, and it is true that his

vision of vast discoveries has influenced the thought of the world; but to

read any part of his great work is to meet a mind that seems ingenious

rather than philosophical, and fanciful rather than scientific. He had what

his learned contemporary Peter Heylyn termed "a chymical brain," a brain

that was forever busy with new theories; and the leading theory was that

some lucky man would discover a key or philosopher's stone or magic

_sesame_ that must straightway unlock all the secrets of nature.

Meanwhile the real scientists of his age were discovering secrets in the

only sure way, of hard, self-denying work. Gilbert was studying magnetism,

Harvey discovering the circulation of the blood, Kepler determining the

laws that govern the planets' motions, Napier inventing logarithms, and

Galileo standing in ecstasy beneath the first telescope ever pointed at the

stars of heaven.

[Sidenote: HIS VAST PLANS]

Of the work of these scientific heroes Bacon had little knowledge, and for

their plodding methods he had no sympathy. He was Viscount, Lord

Chancellor, "high-browed Verulam," and his heaven-scaling

_Instauratio_ which, as he said, was "for the glory of the Creator and

for the relief of man's estate" must have something stupendous,

Elizabethan, about it, like the victory over the Armada. In his plans there

was always an impression of vastness; his miscellaneous works were like the

strange maps that geographers made when the wonders of a new world opened

upon their vision. Though he never made an important discovery, his

conviction that knowledge is power and that there are no metes or bounds to

knowledge, his belief that the mighty forces of nature are waiting to do

man's bidding, his thought of ships that navigate the air as easily as the

sea,--all this Baconian dream of mental empire inspired the scientific

world for three centuries. It was as thoroughly Elizabethan in its way as

the voyage of Drake or the plays of Shakespeare.

* * * * *

SUMMARY. The most remarkable feature of the Elizabethan age was its

patriotic enthusiasm. This enthusiasm found its best expression on

the stage, in the portrayal of life in vigorous action; and dramas

were produced in such number and of such quality that the whole

period is sometimes called the age of the play. It was a time of

poetry rather than of prose, and nearly all of the poetry is

characterized by its emotional quality, by youthful freshness of

feeling, by quickened imagination, and by an extravagance of

language which overflows, even in Shakespeare, in a kind of

glorious bombast.

Our study of the literature of the age includes: (1) The outburst

of lyric poetry. (2) The life and works of Spenser, second in time

of the great English poets. (3) A review of the long history of the

drama, from the earliest church spectacle, through miracle,

morality, interlude, pageant and masque to the Elizabethan drama.

(4) The immediate forerunners of Shakespeare, of whom the most

notable was Marlowe. (5) The life and work of Shakespeare. (6) Ben

Jonson, the successors of Shakespeare, and the rapid decline of the

drama. (7) Elizabethan prose; the appearance of euphuism; Sidney's

_Apologie for Poetrie_; the Authorized Version of the

Scriptures; and the life and work of Francis Bacon.

SELECTIONS FOR READING. Selected lyrics in Manly, English Poetry;

Newcomer, Twelve Centuries of English Poetry and Prose; Palgrave,

Golden Treasury; Schilling, Elizabethan Lyrics; Ward, English

Poets.

_Spenser_. Selected poems in Temple Classics, Cambridge Poets

Series. Selections from The Faery Queen in Standard English

Classics and other school editions. (See Texts, in General

Bibliography.)

_Early Drama_. A miracle play, such as Noah, may be read in

Manly, Specimens of Pre-Shakespearean Drama (Ginn and Company).

Marlowe's plays in Everyman's Library; his Edward II in Holt's

English Readings; his Faustus in Temple Dramatists, and in Mermaid

Series.

_Shakespeare_. Several editions of Shakespeare's plays, such

as the revised Hudson (Ginn and Company) and the Neilson (Scott)

are available. Single plays, such as Julius Caesar, Merchant of

Venice, Macbeth, As You Like It, are edited for class use in

Standard English Classics, Lake Classics, and various other school

series. The Sonnets in Athenæum Press Series.

_Ben Jonson_. The Alchemist in Cambridge Poets Series; also in

Thayer, Best Elizabethan Plays (Ginn and Company), which includes

in one volume plays by Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, Beaumont and

Fletcher.

_Prose Writers_. Selections from Bacon's Essays in Riverside

Literature, or Maynard's English Classkcs. The Essays complete in

Everyman's Library. Selections from Hooker, Sidney and Lyly in

Manly, English Prose, or Craik, English Prose. Ampler selections in

Garnett, English Prose from Elizabeth to Victoria (Ginn and

Company), which contains in one volume typical works of 33 prose

writers from Lyly to Carlyle. Hakluyt's Voyages in Everyman's

Library.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

_HISTORY_. Creighton, The Age of Elizabeth; Winter,

Shakespeare's England; Goadby, The England of Shakespeare;

Harrison, Elizabethan England; Spedding, Francis Bacon and his

Times; Lee, Great Englishmen of the Sixteenth Century; Payne,

Voyages of Elizabethan Seamen.

_LITERATURE_. Saintsbury, Short History of Elizabethan

Literature; Seccombe and Allen, The Age of Shakespeare; Whipple,

Literature of the Age of Elizabeth; Schilling, Elizabethan Lyrics;

Lee, Elizabethan Sonnets; Sheavyn, Literary Profession in the

Elizabethan Age.

_Spenser_. Life, by Church (English Men of Letters Series).

Carpenter, Outline Guide to the Study of Spenser; Craik, Spenser

and his Times. Essays, by Lowell, in Among My Books; by Dowden, in

Transcripts and Studies; by Hazlitt, in Lectures on the English

Poets; by Leigh Hunt, in Imagination and Fancy.

_The Drama_. Gayley, Plays of Our Forefathers (a study of the

early drama); Evans, English Masques; Bates, The English Religious

Drama; Schilling, The Elizabethan Drama; Symonds, Shakespeare's

Predecessors in the English Drama; Boas, Shakespeare and his

Predecessors; Collier, History of English Dramatic Poetry; Ward,

English Dramatic Literature; Chambers, The Medieval Stage; Pollard,

English Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes.

_Shakespeare_. Life, by Raleigh (E. M. of L.), by Lee, by

Halliwell-Phillipps, by Brandes. Dowden, A Shakespeare Primer;

Dowden, Shakespeare: a Critical Study of his Mind and Art; Baker,

Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist.

_Other Dramatists_. Lowell, Old English Dramatists; Lamb,

Specimens of English Dramatic Poets; Fleay, Biographical Chronicle

of the English Drama; Ingram, Christopher Marlowe.

_Prose Writers_. Church, Life of Bacon (E. M. of L.); Nicol,

Bacon's Life and Philosophy; Macaulay, Essay on Bacon. Symonds,

Life of Sidney (E. M. of L.); Bourne, Life of Sidney (Heroes of the

Nations Series). Stebbing, Life of Raleigh.

_FICTION AND POETRY_. Kingsley, Westward Ho; Black, Judith

Shakespeare; Scott, Kenilworth; Schiller, Maria Stuart; Alfred

Noyes, Drake; Bates and Coman, English History Told by English

Poets.

CHAPTER V

THE PURITAN AGE AND THE RESTORATION (1625-1700)

Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour.

England hath need of thee: she is a fen

Of stagnant waters; altar, sword, and pen,

Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,

Have forfeited their ancient English dower

Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;

Oh! raise us up, return to us again,

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.

Wordsworth, "Sonnet on Milton"

HISTORICAL OUTLINE. The period from the accession of Charles I in

1625 to the Revolution of 1688 was filled with a mighty struggle

over the question whether king or Commons should be supreme in

England. On this question the English people were divided into two

main parties. On one side were the Royalists, or Cavaliers, who

upheld the monarch with his theory of the divine right of kings; on

the other were the Puritans, or Independents, who stood for the

rights of the individual man and for the liberties of Parliament

and people. The latter party was at first very small; it had

appeared in the days of Langland and Wyclif, and had been

persecuted by Elizabeth; but persecution served only to increase

its numbers and determination. Though the Puritans were never a

majority in England, they soon ruled the land with a firmness it

had not known since the days of William the Conqueror. They were

primarily men of conscience, and no institution can stand before

strong men whose conscience says the institution is wrong. That is

why the degenerate theaters were not reformed but abolished; that

is why the theory of the divine right of kings was shattered as by

a thunderbolt when King Charles was sent to the block for treason

against his country.

The struggle reached a climax in the Civil War of 1642, which ended

in a Puritan victory. As a result of that war, England was for a

brief period a commonwealth, disciplined at home and respected

abroad, through the genius and vigor and tyranny of Oliver

Cromwell. When Cromwell died (1658) there was no man in England

strong enough to take his place, and two years later "Prince

Charlie," who had long been an exile, was recalled to the throne as

Charles II of England. He had learned nothing from his father's

fate or his own experience, and proceeded by all evil ways to

warrant this "Epitaph," which his favorite, Wilmot, Earl of

Rochester, pinned on the door of his bedchamber:

Here lies our Sovereign Lord the King,

Whose word no man relies on,

Who never said a foolish thing,

Nor ever did a wise one.

The next twenty years are of such disgrace and national weakness

that the historian hesitates to write about them. It was called the

period of the Restoration, which meant, in effect, the restoration

of all that was objectionable in monarchy. Another crisis came in

the Revolution of 1688, when the country, aroused by the attempt of

James II to establish another despotism in Church and state,

invited Prince William of Orange (husband of the king's daughter

Mary) to the English throne. That revolution meant three things:

the supremacy of Parliament, the beginning of modern England, and

the final triumph of the principle of political liberty for which

the Puritan had fought and suffered hardship for a hundred years.

TYPICAL WRITERS. Among the writers of the period three men stand out

prominently, and such was the confusion of the times that in the whole

range of our literature it would be difficult to find three others who

differ more widely in spirit or method. Milton represents the scholarship,

the culture of the Renaissance, combined with the moral earnestness of the

Puritan. Bunyan, a poor tinker and lay preacher, reflects the tremendous

spiritual ferment among the common people. And Dryden, the cool,

calculating author who made a business of writing, regards the Renaissance

and Puritanism as both things of the past. He lives in the present, aims to

give readers what they like, follows the French critics of the period who

advocate writing by rule, and popularizes that cold, formal, precise style

which, under the assumed name of classicism, is to dominate English poetry

during the following century.

* * * * *

JOHN MILTON (1608-1674)

Yet some there be that by due steps aspire

To lay their just hands on that golden key

That opes the palace of eternity:

To such my errand is.

In these words of the Attendant Spirit in _Comus_ we seem to hear

Milton speaking to his readers. To such as regard poetry as the means of an

hour's pleasant recreation he brings no message; his "errand" is to those

who, like Sidney, regard poetry as the handmaiden of virtue, or, like

Aristotle, as the highest form of human history.

LIFE. Milton was born in London (1608) at a time when Shakespeare

and his fellow dramatists were in their glory. He grew up in a home

where the delights of poetry and music were added to the moral

discipline of the Puritan. Before he was twelve years old he had

formed the habit of studying far into the night; and his field

included not only Greek, Latin, Hebrew and modern European

literatures, but mathematics also, and science and theology and

music. His parents had devoted him in infancy to noble ends, and he

joyously accepted their dedication, saying, "He who would not be

frustrate of his hope to write well ... ought himself to be a true

poem, that is, a composition and pattern of the best and

honorablest things."

[Sidenote: MILTON AT HORTON]

From St. Paul's school Milton went to Christ's College, Cambridge,

took his master's degree, wrote a few poems in Latin, Italian and

English, and formed a plan for a great epic, "a poem that England

would not willingly let die." Then he retired to his father's

country-place at Horton, and for six years gave himself up to

music, to untutored study, and to that formal pleasure in nature

which is reflected in his work. Five short poems were the only

literary result of this retirement, but these were the most perfect

of their kind that England had thus far produced.

Milton's next step, intended like all others to cultivate his

talent, took him to the Continent. For fifteen months he traveled

through France and Italy, and was about to visit Greece when,

hearing of the struggle between king and Parliament, he set his

face towards England again. "For I thought it base," he said, "to

be traveling at my ease for culture when my countrymen at home were

fighting for liberty."

[Sidenote: HOME LIFE]

To find himself, or to find the service to which he could devote

his great learning, seems to have been Milton's object after his

return to London (1639). While he waited he began to educate his

nephews, and enlarged this work until he had a small private

school, in which he tested some of the theories that appeared later

in his _Tractate on Education_. Also he married, in haste it

seems, and with deplorable consequences. His wife, Mary Powell, the

daughter of a Cavalier, was a pleasure-loving young woman, and

after a brief experience of Puritan discipline she wearied of it

and went home. She has been amply criticized for her desertion, but

Milton's house must have been rather chilly for any ordinary human

being to find comfort in. To him woman seemed to have been made for

obedience, and man for rebellion; his toplofty doctrine of

masculine superiority found expression in a line regarding Adam and

Eve, "He for God only, she for God in him,"--an old delusion, which

had been seriously disturbed by the first woman.

[Illustration: JOHN MILTON]

[Sidenote: PERIOD OF CONTROVERSY]

For a period of near twenty years Milton wrote but little poetry,

his time being occupied with controversies that were then waged

even more fiercely in the press than in the field. It was after the

execution of King Charles (1649), when England was stunned and all

Europe aghast at the Puritans' daring, that he published his

_Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_, the argument of which was,

that magistrates and people are equally subject to the law, and

that the divine right of kings to rule is as nothing beside the

divine right of the people to defend their liberties. That argument

established Milton's position as the literary champion of

democracy. He was chosen Secretary of the Commonwealth, his duties

being to prepare the Latin correspondence with foreign countries,

and to confound all arguments of the Royalists. During the next

decade Milton's pen and Cromwell's sword were the two outward

bulwarks of Puritanism, and one was quite as ready and almost as

potent as the other.

[Sidenote: HIS BLINDNESS]

It was while Milton was thus occupied that he lost his eyesight,

"his last sacrifice on the altar of English liberty." His famous

"Sonnet on his Blindness" is a lament not for his lost sight but

for his lost talent; for while serving the Commonwealth he must

abandon the dream of a great poem that he had cherished all his

life:

When I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent, which is death to hide,

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide;

"Doth God exact day labour, light denied?"

I fondly ask; but Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,

And post o'er land and ocean without rest;

They also serve who only stand and wait."

With the Restoration (1660) came disaster to the blind Puritan

poet, who had written too harshly against Charles I to be forgiven

by Charles II. He was forced to hide; his property was confiscated;

his works were burned in public by the hangman; had not his fame as

a writer raised up powerful friends, he would have gone to the

scaffold when Cromwell's bones were taken from the grave and hanged

in impotent revenge. He was finally allowed to settle in a modest

house, and to be in peace so long as he remained in obscurity. So

the pen was silenced that had long been a scourge to the enemies of

England.

[Sidenote: HIS LONELINESS]

His home life for the remainder of his years impresses us by its

loneliness and grandeur. He who had delighted as a poet in the

English country, and more delighted as a Puritan in the fierce

struggle for liberty, was now confined to a small house, going from

study to porch, and finding both in equal darkness. He who had

roamed as a master through the wide fields of literature was now

dependent on a chance reader. His soul also was afflicted by the

apparent loss of all that Puritanism had so hardly won, by the

degradation of his country, by family troubles; for his daughters

often rebelled at the task of taking his dictation, and left him

helpless. Saddest of all, there was no love in the house, for with

all his genius Milton could not inspire affection in his own

people; nor does he ever reach the heart of his readers.

[Sidenote: HIS MASTERPIECE]

In the midst of such scenes, denied the pleasure of hope, Milton

seems to have lived largely in his memories. He took up his early

dream of an immortal epic, lived with it seven years in seclusion,

and the result was _Paradise Lost_. This epic is generally

considered the finest fruit of Milton's genius, but there are two

other poems that have a more personal and human significance. In

the morning of his life he had written _Comus_, and the poem

is a reflection of a noble youth whose way lies open and smiling

before him. Almost forty years later, or just before his death in

1674, he wrote _Samson Agonistes_, and in this tragedy of a

blind giant, bound, captive, but unconquerable, we have a picture

of the agony and moral grandeur of the poet who takes leave of

life:

I feel my genial spirits droop, ...

My race of glory run, and race of shame;

And I shall shortly be with them that rest. [1]

[Footnote [1]: From Milton's _Samson_. For the comparison we

are indebted to Henry Reed, _Lectures on English Literature_

(1863), p. 223.]

[Illustration: COTTAGE AT CHALFONT, ST. GILES, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

Where Milton lived during the Plague, and where _Paradise Lost_ was

written]

THE EARLY POEMS. Milton's first notable poem, written in college days, was

the "Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity," a chant of victory and

praise such as Pindar might have written had he known the meaning of

Christmas. In this boyish work one may find the dominant characteristic of

all Milton's poetry; namely, a blending of learning with piety, a devotion

of all the treasures of classic culture to the service of religion.

Among the earliest of the Horton poems (so-called because they were written

in the country-place of that name) are "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," two

of the most widely quoted works in our literature. They should be read in

order to understand what people have admired for nearly three hundred

years, if not for their own beauty. "L'Allegro" (from the Italian, meaning

"the cheerful man") is the poetic expression of a happy state of mind, and

"Il Penseroso" [Footnote: The name is generally translated into

"melancholy," but the latter term is now commonly associated with sorrow or

disease. To Milton "melancholy" meant "pensiveness." In writing "Il

Penseroso" he was probably influenced by a famous book, Burton's _Anatomy

of Melancholy_, which appeared in 1621 and was very widely read.] of a

quiet, thoughtful mood that verges upon sadness, like the mood that follows

good music. Both poems are largely inspired by nature, and seem to have

been composed out of doors, one in the morning and the other in the evening

twilight.

[Sidenote: THE MASQUE OF COMUS]

_Comus_ (1634), another of the Horton poems, is to many readers the

most interesting of Milton's works. In form it is a masque, that is, a

dramatic poem intended to be staged to the accompaniment of music; in

execution it is the most perfect of all such poems inspired by the

Elizabethan love of pageants. We may regard it, therefore, as a late echo

of the Elizabethan drama, which, like many another echo, is sweeter though

fainter than the original. It was performed at Ludlow Castle, before the

Earl of Bridgewater, and was suggested by an accident to the Earl's

children, a simple accident, in which Milton saw the possibility of

"turning the common dust of opportunity to gold."

The story is that of a girl who becomes separated from her brothers

in a wood, and is soon lost. The magician Comus [Footnote: In

mythology Comus, the god of revelry, was represented as the son of

Dionysus (Bacchus, god of wine), and the witch Circe. In Greek

poetry Comus is the leader of any gay band of satyrs or dancers.

Milton's masque of _Comus_ was influenced by a similar story

in Peele's _Old Wives' Tale_, by Spenser's "Palace of

Pleasure" in _The Faery Queen_ (see above "Sir Guyon" in

Chapter IV), and by Homer's story of the witch Circe in the

_Odyssey_.] appears with his band of revelers, and tries to

bewitch the girl, to make her like one of his own brutish

followers. She is protected by her own purity, is watched over by

the Attendant Spirit, and finally rescued by her brothers. The

story is somewhat like that of the old ballad of "The Children in

the Wood," but it is here transformed into a kind of morality play.

[Sidenote: COMUS AND THE TEMPEST]

In this masque may everywhere be seen the influence of Milton's

predecessors and the stamp of his own independence; his Puritan spirit

also, which must add a moral to the old pagan tales. Thus, Miranda

wandering about the enchanted isle (in Shakespeare's _The Tempest_)

hears strange, harmonious echoes, to which Caliban gives expression:

The isle is full of noises,

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices,

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,

The clouds methought would open and show riches

Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked

I cried to dream again.

The bewildered girl in _Comus_ also hears mysterious voices, and has

glimpses of a world not her own; but, like Sir Guyon of _The Faery

Queen_, she is on moral guard against all such deceptions:

A thousand phantasies

Begin to throng into my memory,

Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire,

And airy tongues that syllable men's names

On sands and shores and desert wildernesses.

These thoughts may startle well but not astound

The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended

By a strong-siding champion, Conscience.

Again, in _The Tempest_ we meet "the frisky spirit" Ariel, who sings

of his coming freedom from Prospero's service:

Where the bee sucks, there suck I;

In a cowslip's bell I lie;

There I couch when owls do cry.

On a bat's back I do fly

After summer merrily:

Merrily, merrily shall I live now

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

[Illustration: LUDLOW CASTLE]

The Attendant Spirit in _Comus_ has something of Ariel's gayety, but

his joy is deeper-seated; he serves not the magician Prospero but the

Almighty, and comes gladly to earth in fulfilment of the divine promise,

"He shall give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways."

When his work is done he vanishes, like Ariel, but with a song which shows

the difference between the Elizabethan, or Renaissance, conception of

sensuous beauty (that is, beauty which appeals to the physical senses) and

the Puritan's idea of moral beauty, which appeals to the soul:

Now my task is smoothly done,

I can fly or I can run

Quickly to the green earth's end,

Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend,

And from thence can soar as soon

To the corners of the moon.

Mortals, that would follow me,

Love Virtue; she alone is free:

She can teach ye how to climb

Higher than the sphery chime;

Or if Virtue feeble were,

Heaven itself would stoop to her.

[Sidenote: LYCIDAS]

_Lycidas_ (1637), last of the Horton poems, is an elegy occasioned by

the death of one who had been Milton's fellow student at Cambridge. It was

an old college custom to celebrate important events by publishing a

collection of Latin or English poems, and _Lycidas_ may be regarded as

Milton's wreath, which he offered to the memory of his classmate and to his

university. The poem is beautifully fashioned, and is greatly admired for

its classic form; but it is cold as any monument, without a touch of human

grief or sympathy. Probably few modern readers will care for it as they

care for Tennyson's _In Memoriam_, a less perfect elegy, but one into

which love enters as well as art. Other notable English elegies are the

_Thyrsis_ of Matthew Arnold and the _Adonais_ of Shelley.

MILTON'S LEFT HAND. This expression was used by Milton to designate certain

prose works written in the middle period of his life, at a time of turmoil

and danger. These works have magnificent passages which show the power and

the harmony of our English speech, but they are marred by other passages of

bitter raillery and invective. The most famous of all these works is the

noble plea called _Areopagitica:_ [Footnote: From the Areopagus or

forum of Athens, the place of public appeal. This was the "Mars Hill" from

which St. Paul addressed the Athenians, as recorded in the Book of Acts.]

_a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing_ (1644).

There was a law in Milton's day forbidding the printing of any work until

it had been approved by the official Licenser of Books. Such a law may have

been beneficial at times, but during the seventeenth century it was another

instrument of tyranny, since no Licenser would allow anything to be printed

against his particular church or government. When _Areopagitica_ was

written the Puritans of the Long Parliament were virtually rulers of

England, and Milton pleaded with his own party for the free expression of

every honest opinion, for liberty in all wholesome pleasures, and for

tolerance in religious matters. His stern confidence in truth, that she

will not be weakened but strengthened by attack, is summarized in the

famous sentence, "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue."

Two interesting matters concerning _Areopagitica_ are: first, that

this eloquent plea for the freedom of printing had to be issued in defiance

of law, without a license; and second, that Milton was himself, a few years

later, under Cromwell's iron government, a censor of the press.

[Sidenote: THE SONNETS]

Milton's rare sonnets seem to belong to this middle period of strife,

though some of them were written earlier. Since Wyatt and Surrey had

brought the Italian sonnet to England this form of verse had been employed

to sing of love; but with Milton it became a heroic utterance, a trumpet

Wordsworth calls it, summoning men to virtue, to patriotism, to stern

action. The most personal of these sonnets are "On Having Arrived at the

Age of Twenty-three," "On his Blindness" and "To Cyriack Skinner"; the most

romantic is "To the Nightingale"; others that are especially noteworthy are

"On the Late Massacre," "On his Deceased Wife" [Footnote: This beautiful

sonnet was written to his second wife, not to Mary Powell.] and "To

Cromwell." The spirit of these sonnets, in contrast with those of

Elizabethan times, is finely expressed by Landor in the lines:

Few his words, but strong,

And sounding through all ages and all climes;

He caught the sonnet from the dainty hand

Of Love, who cried to lose it, and he gave the notes

To Glory.

MILTON'S LATER POETRY. [Footnote: The three poems of Milton's later life

are _Paradise Lost_, _Paradise Regained_ and _Samson

Agonistes_. The last-named has been referred to above under "His

Masterpiece". _Paradise Regained_ contains some noble passages, but is

inferior to _Paradise Lost_, on which the poet's fame chiefly rests.]

It was in 1658, the year of Cromwell's death, when the political power of

Puritanism was tottering, that Milton in his blindness began to write

_Paradise Lost_. After stating his theme he begins his epic, as Virgil

began the _Æneid_, in the midst of the action; so that in reading his

first book it is well to have in mind an outline of the whole story, which

is as follows:

[Sidenote: PLAN OF PARADISE LOST]

The scene opens in Heaven, and the time is before the creation of

the world. The archangel Lucifer rebels against the Almighty, and

gathers to his banner an immense company of the heavenly hosts, of

angels and flaming cherubim. A stupendous three days' battle

follows between rebel and loyal legions, the issue being in doubt

until the Son goes forth in his chariot of victory. Lucifer and his

rebels are defeated, and are hurled over the ramparts of Heaven.

Down, down through Chaos they fall "nine times the space that

measures day and night," until they reach the hollow vaults of

Hell.

In the second act (for _Paradise Lost_ has some dramatic as

well as epic construction) we follow the creation of the earth in

the midst of the universe; and herein we have an echo of the old

belief that the earth was the center of the solar system. Adam and

Eve are formed to take in the Almighty's affection the place of the

fallen angels. They live happily in Paradise, watched over by

celestial guardians. Meanwhile Lucifer and his followers are

plotting revenge in Hell. They first boast valiantly, and talk of

mighty war; but the revenge finally degenerates into a base plan to

tempt Adam and Eve and win them over to the fallen hosts.

The third act shows Lucifer, now called Satan or the Adversary,

with his infernal peers in Pandemonium, plotting the ruin of the

world. He makes an astounding journey through Chaos, disguises

himself in various forms of bird or beast in order to watch Adam

and Eve, is detected by Ithuriel and the guardian angels, and is

driven away. Thereupon he haunts vast space, hiding in the shadow

of the earth until his chance comes, when he creeps back into Eden

by means of an underground river. Disguising himself as a serpent,

he meets Eve and tempts her with the fruit of a certain "tree of

knowledge," which she has been forbidden to touch. She eats the

fruit and shares it with Adam; then the pair are discovered in

their disobedience, and are banished from Paradise. [Footnote: In

the above outline we have arranged the events in the order in which

they are supposed to have occurred. Milton tells the story in a

somewhat confused way. The order of the twelve books of _Paradise

Lost_ is not the natural or dramatic order of the story.]

[Sidenote: MILTON'S MATERIALS]

It is evident from this outline that Milton uses material from two

different sources, one an ancient legend which Cædmon employed in his

Paraphrase, the other the Bible narrative of Creation. Though the latter is

but a small part of the epic, it is as a fixed center about which all other

interests are supposed to revolve. In reading _Paradise Lost_,

therefore, with its vast scenes and colossal figures, one should keep in

mind that every detail was planned by Milton to be closely related to his

central theme, which is the fall of man.

In using such diverse materials Milton met with difficulties, some of which

(the character of Lucifer, for example) were too great for his limited

dramatic powers. In Books I and II Lucifer is a magnificent figure, the

proudest in all literature, a rebel with something of celestial grandeur

about him:

"Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,"

Said then the lost Archangel, "this the seat

That we must change for Heaven? this mournful gloom

For that celestial light? Be it so, since he

Who now is sovran can dispose and bid

What shall be right: farthest from him is best,

Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme

Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,

Where joy forever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail,

Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell,

Receive thy new possessor, one who brings

A mind not to be changed by place or time.

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

What matter where, if I be still the same,

And what I should be, all but less than he

Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least

We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built

Here for his envy, will not drive us hence;

Here we may reign secure; and in my choice

To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:

Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."

In other books of _Paradise Lost_ the same character appears not as

the heroic rebel but as the sneaking "father of lies," all his grandeur

gone, creeping as a snake into Paradise or sitting in the form of an ugly

toad "squat at Eve's ear," whispering petty deceits to a woman while she

sleeps. It is probable that Milton meant to show here the moral results of

rebellion, but there is little in his poem to explain the sudden degeneracy

from Lucifer to Satan.

[Sidenote: MATTER AND MANNER]

The reader will note, also, the strong contrast between Milton's matter and

his manner. His matter is largely mythical, and the myth is not beautiful

or even interesting, but childish for the most part and frequently

grotesque, as when cannon are used in the battle of the angels, or when the

Almighty makes plans,

Lest unawares we lose

This our high place, our sanctuary, our hill.

Indeed, all Milton's celestial figures, with the exception of the original

Lucifer, are as banal as those of the old miracle plays; and his Adam and

Eve are dull, wooden figures that serve merely to voice the poet's theology

or moral sentiments.

In contrast with this unattractive matter, Milton's manner is always and

unmistakably "the grand manner." His imagination is lofty, his diction

noble, and the epic of _Paradise Lost_ is so filled with memorable

lines, with gorgeous descriptions, with passages of unexampled majesty or

harmony or eloquence, that the crude material which he injects into the

Bible narrative is lost sight of in our wonder at his superb style.

THE QUALITY OF MILTON. If it be asked, What is Milton's adjective? the word

"sublime" rises to the lips as the best expression of his style. This word

(from the Latin _sublimis_, meaning "exalted above the ordinary") is

hard to define, but may be illustrated from one's familiar experience.

You stand on a hilltop overlooking a mighty landscape on which the

new snow has just fallen: the forest bending beneath its soft

burden, the fields all white and still, the air scintillating with

light and color, the whole world so clean and pure that it seems as

if God had blotted out its imperfections and adorned it for his own

pleasure. That is a sublime spectacle, and the soul of man is

exalted as he looks upon it. Or here in your own village you see a

woman who enters a room where a child is stricken with a deadly and

contagious disease. She immolates herself for the suffering one,

cares for him and saves him, then lays down her own life. That is a

sublime act. Or you hear of a young patriot captured and hanged by

the enemy, and as they lead him forth to death he says, "I regret

that I have but one life to give to my country." That is a sublime

expression, and the feeling in your heart as you hear it is one of

moral sublimity.

[Sidenote: SUBLIMITY]

The writer who lifts our thought and feeling above their ordinary level,

who gives us an impression of outward grandeur or of moral exaltation, is a

sublime writer, has a sublime style; and Milton more than any other poet

deserves the adjective. His scenes are immeasurable; mountain, sea and

forest are but his playthings; his imagination hesitates not to paint

Chaos, Heaven, Hell, the widespread Universe in which our world hangs like

a pendant star and across which stretches the Milky Way:

A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold,

And pavement stars.

No other poet could find suitable words for such vast themes, but Milton

never falters. Read the assembly of the fallen hosts before Lucifer in Book

I of _Paradise Lost_, or the opening of Hellgates in Book II, or the

invocation to light in Book III, or Satan's invocation to the sun in Book

IV, or the morning hymn of Adam and Eve in Book V; or open _Paradise

Lost_ anywhere, and you shall soon find some passage which, by the

grandeur of its scene or by the exalted feeling of the poet as he describes

it, awakens in you the feeling of sublimity.

[Sidenote: HARMONY]

The harmony of Milton's verse is its second notable quality. Many of our

poets use blank verse, as many other people walk, as if they had no sense

of rhythm within them; but Milton, by reason of his long study and practice

of music, seems to be always writing to melody. In consequence it is easy

to read his most prolix passages, as it is easy to walk over almost any

kind of ground if one but keeps step to outward or inward music. Not only

is Milton's verse stately and melodious, but he is a perfect master of

words, choosing them for their sound as well as for their sense, as a

musician chooses different instruments to express different emotions. Note

these contrasting descriptions of so simple a matter as the opening of

gates:

Heaven opened wide

Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound,

On golden hinges moving. On a sudden open fly

With impetuous recoil and jarring sound

Th' infernal doors, and on their hinges grate

Harsh thunder.

In dealing with a poet of such magnificent qualities one should be wary of

criticism. That Milton's poetry has little human interest, no humor, and

plenty of faults, may be granted. His _Paradise Lost_ especially is

overcrowded with mere learning or pedantry in one place and with pompous

commonplaces in another. But such faults appear trivial, unworthy of

mention in the presence of a poem that is as a storehouse from which the

authors and statesmen of three hundred years have drawn their choicest

images and expressions. It stands forever as our supreme example of

sublimity and harmony,--that sublimity which reflects the human spirit

standing awed and reverent before the grandeur of the universe; that

harmony of expression at which every great poet aims and which Milton

attained in such measure that he is called the organ-voice of England.

* * * * *

JOHN BUNYAN (1628-1688)

There is a striking contrast between the poet and the prose writer of the

Puritan age. Milton the poet is a man of culture, familiar with the best

literature of all ages; Bunyan the prose writer is a poor, self-taught

laborer who reads his Bible with difficulty, stumbling over the hard

passages. Milton writes for the cultivated classes, in harmonious verse

adorned with classic figures; Bunyan speaks for common men in sinewy prose,

and makes his meaning clear by homely illustrations drawn from daily life.

Milton is a solitary and austere figure, admirable but not lovable; Bunyan

is like a familiar acquaintance, ruddy-faced, clear-eyed, who wins us by

his sympathy, his friendliness, his good sense and good humor. He is known

as the author of one book, _The Pilgrim's Progress_, but that book has

probably had more readers than any other that England has ever produced.

LIFE. During Bunyan's lifetime England was in a state of religious

ferment or revival, and his experience of it is vividly portrayed

in a remarkable autobiography called _Grace Abounding to the

Chief of inners_. In reading this book we find that his life is

naturally separated into two periods. His youth was a time of

struggle with doubts and temptations; his later years were

characterized by inward peace and tireless labor. His peace meant

that he was saved, his labor that he must save others. Here, in a

word, is the secret of all his works.

[Illustration: JOHN BUNYAN]

He was born (1628) in the village of Elstow, Bedfordshire, and was

the son of a poor tinker. He was sent to school long enough to

learn elementary reading and writing; then he followed the tinker's

trade; but at the age of sixteen, being offended at his father's

second marriage, he ran away and joined the army.

As a boy Bunyan had a vivid but morbid imagination, which led him

to terrible doubts, fears, fits of despondency, hallucinations. On

such a nature the emotional religious revivals of the age made a

tremendous impression. He followed them for years, living in a

state of torment, until he felt himself converted; whereupon he

turned preacher and began to call other sinners to repentance. Such

were his native power and rude eloquence that, wherever he went,

the common people thronged to hear him.

[Sidenote: IN BEDFORD JAIL]

After the Restoration all this was changed. Public meetings were

forbidden unless authorized by bishops of the Established Church,

and Bunyan was one of the first to be called to account. When

ordered to hold no more meetings he refused to obey, saying that

when the Lord called him to preach salvation he would listen only

to the Lord's voice. Then he was thrown into Bedford jail. During

his imprisonment he supported his family by making shoe laces, and

wrote _Grace Abounding_ and _The Pilgrim's Progress_.

After his release Bunyan became the most popular writer and

preacher in England. He wrote a large number of works, and went

cheerfully up and down the land, preaching the gospel to the poor,

helping the afflicted, doing an immense amount of good. He died

(1688) as the result of exposure while on an errand of mercy. His

works were then known only to humble readers, and not until long

years had passed did critics awaken to the fact that one of

England's most powerful and original writers had passed away with

the poor tinker of Elstow.

WORKS OF BUNYAN. From the pen of this uneducated preacher came nearly sixty

works, great and small, the most notable of which are: _Grace

Abounding_ (1666), a kind of spiritual autobiography; _The Holy

War_ (1665), a prose allegory with a theme similar to that of Milton's

epic; and _The Life and Death of Mr. Badman_ (1682), a character study

which was a forerunner of the English novel. These works are seldom read,

and Bunyan is known to most readers as the author of _The Pilgrim's

Progress_ (1678). This is the famous allegory [Footnote: Allegory is

figurative writing, in which some outward object or event is described in

such a way that we apply the description to humanity, to our mental or

spiritual experiences. The object of allegory, as a rule, is to teach moral

lessons, and in this it is like a drawn-out fable and like a parable. The

two greatest allegories in our literature are Spenser's _Faery Queen_

and Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_.] in which, under guise of telling

the story of a pilgrim in search of a city, Bunyan portrays the experiences

of humanity in its journey from this world to the next. Here is an outline

of the story:

[Sidenote: STORY OF PILGRIM'S PROGRESS]

In the City of Destruction lives a poor sinner called Christian.

When he learns that the city is doomed, he is terrified and flees

out of it, carrying a great burden on his back. He is followed by

the jeers of his neighbors, who have no fear. He seeks a safe and

abiding city to dwell in, but is ignorant how to find it until

Evangelist shows him the road.

As he goes on his journey Mr. Worldly Wiseman meets him and urges

him to return; but he hastens on, only to plunge into the Slough of

Despond. His companion Pliable is here discouraged and turns back.

Christian struggles on through the mud and reaches the Wicket Gate,

where Interpreter shows him the way to the Celestial City. As he

passes a cross beside the path, the heavy burden which he carries

(his load of sins) falls off of itself. Then with many adventures

he climbs the steep hill Difficulty, where his eyes behold the

Castle Beautiful. To reach this he must pass some fearful lions in

the way, but he adventures on, finds that the lions are chained, is

welcomed by the porter Watchful, and is entertained in the castle

overnight.

Dangers thicken and difficulties multiply as he resumes his

journey. His road is barred by the demon Apollyon, whom he fights

to the death. The way now dips downward into the awful Valley of

the Shadow. Passing through this, he enters the town of Vanity,

goes to Vanity Fair, where he is abused and beaten, and where his

companion Faithful is condemned to death. As he escapes from

Vanity, the giant Despair seizes him and hurls him into the gloomy

dungeon of Doubt. Again he escapes, struggles onward, and reaches

the Delectable Mountains. There for the first time he sees the

Celestial City, but between him and his refuge is a river, deep and

terrible, without bridge or ford. He crosses it, and the journey

ends as angels come singing down the streets to welcome Christian

into the city. [Footnote: This is the story of the first part of

_Pilgrim's Progress_, which was written in Bedford jail, but

not published till some years later. In 1684 Bunyan published the

second part of his story, describing the adventures of Christiana

and her children on their journey to the Celestial City. This

sequel, like most others, is of minor importance.]

[Illustration: BUNYAN MEETINGHOUSE, SOUTHWARK]

Such an outline gives but a faint idea of Bunyan's great work, of its

realistic figures, its living and speaking characters, its knowledge of

humanity, its portrayal of the temptations and doubts that beset the

ordinary man, its picturesque style, which of itself would make the book

stand out above ten thousand ordinary stories. _Pilgrim's Progress_ is

still one of our best examples of clear, forceful, idiomatic English; and

our wonder increases when we remember that it was written by a man ignorant

of literary models. But he had read his Bible daily until its style and

imagery had taken possession of him; also he had a vivid imagination, a

sincere purpose to help his fellows, and his simple rule of rhetoric was to

forget himself and deliver his message. In one of his poems he gives us his

rule of expression, which is an excellent one for writers and speakers:

Thine only way,

Before them all, is to say out thy say

In thine own native language.

* * * * *

JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700)

For fifty years Dryden lived in the city of Milton, in the country of John

Bunyan; but his works might indicate that he inhabited a different planet.

Unlike his two great contemporaries, his first object was to win favor; he

sold his talent to the highest bidder, won the leading place among

second-rate Restoration writers, and was content to reflect a generation

which had neither the hearty enthusiasm of Elizabethan times nor the moral

earnestness of Puritanism.

LIFE. Knowledge of Dryden's life is rather meager, and as his

motives are open to question we shall state here only a few facts.

He was born of a Puritan and aristocratic family, at Aldwinkle, in

1631. After an excellent education, which included seven years at

Trinity College, Cambridge, he turned to literature as a means of

earning a livelihood, taking a worldly view of his profession and

holding his pen ready to serve the winning side. Thus, he wrote his

"Heroic Stanzas," which have a hearty Puritan ring, on the death of

Cromwell; but he turned Royalist and wrote the more flattering

"Astræa Redux" to welcome Charles II back to power.

[Sidenote: HIS VERSATILITY]

In literature Dryden proved himself a man of remarkable

versatility. Because plays were in demand, he produced many that

catered to the evil tastes of the Restoration stage,--plays that he

afterwards condemned unsparingly. He was equally ready to write

prose or verse, songs, criticisms, political satires. In 1670 he

was made poet laureate under Charles II; his affairs prospered; he

became a literary dictator in London, holding forth nightly in

Will's Coffeehouse to an admiring circle of listeners. After the

Revolution of 1688 he lost his offices, and with them most of his

income.

[Illustration: JOHN DRYDEN

From a picture by Hudson in the Hall of Trinity College, Cambridge]

In his old age, being reduced to hackwork, he wrote obituaries,

epitaphs, paraphrases of the tales of Chaucer, translations of

Latin poets,--anything to earn an honest living. He died in 1700,

and was buried beside Chaucer in Westminster Abbey.

Such facts are not interesting; nor do they give us a true idea of

the man Dryden. To understand him we should have to read his works

(no easy or pleasant task) and compare his prose prefaces, in which

he is at his best, with the comedies in which he is abominable.

When not engaged with the degenerate stage, or with political or

literary or religious controversies, he appears sane,

well-balanced, good-tempered, manly; but the impression is not a

lasting one. He seems to have catered to the vicious element of his

own age, to have regretted the misuse of his talent, and to have

recorded his own judgment in two lines from his ode "To the Memory

of Mrs. Killigrew":

O gracious God, how far have we

Profaned thy heavenly grace of poesy!

WORKS OF DRYDEN. The occasional poems written by Dryden may be left in the

obscurity into which they fell after they had been applauded. The same may

be said of his typical poem "Annus Mirabilis," which describes the

wonderful events of the year 1666, a year which witnessed the taking of New

Amsterdam from the Dutch and the great fire of London. Both events were

celebrated in a way to contribute to the glory of King Charles and to

Dryden's political fortune. Of all his poetical works, only the odes

written in honor of St. Cecilia are now remembered. The second ode,

"Alexander's Feast," is one of our best poems on the power of music.

[Sidenote: HIS PLAYS]

Dryden's numerous plays show considerable dramatic power, and every one of

them contains some memorable line or passage; but they are spoiled by the

author's insincerity in trying to satisfy the depraved taste of the

Restoration stage. He wrote one play, _All for Love_, to please

himself, he said, and it is noticeable that this play is written in blank

verse and shows the influence of Shakespeare, who was then out of fashion.

If any of the plays are to be read, _All for Love_ should be selected,

though it is exceptional, not typical, and gives but a faint idea of

Dryden's ordinary dramatic methods.

[Sidenote: SATIRES]

In the field of political satire Dryden was a master, and his work here is

interesting as showing that unfortunate alliance between literature and

politics which led many of the best English writers of the next century to

sell their services to the Whigs or Tories. Dryden sided with the later

party and, in a kind of allegory of the Bible story of Absalom's revolt

against David, wrote "Absalom and Achitophel" to glorify the Tories and to

castigate the Whigs. This powerful political satire was followed by others

in the same vein, and by "MacFlecknoe," which satirized certain poets with

whom Dryden was at loggerheads. As a rule, such works are for a day, having

no enduring interest because they have no human kindness, but occasionally

Dryden portrays a man of his own time so well that his picture applies to

the vulgar politician of all ages, as in this characterization of Burnet:

Prompt to assail and careless of defence,

Invulnerable in his impudence,

He dares the world, and eager of a name

He thrusts about and justles into fame;

So fond of loud report that, not to miss.

Of being known (his last and utmost bliss),

He rather would be known for what he is.

These satires of Dryden were largely influential in establishing the heroic

couplet, [Footnote: The heroic couplet consists of two iambic pentameter

lines that rime. By "pentameter" is meant that the line has five feet or

measures; by "iambic," that each foot contains two syllables, the first

short or unaccented, the second long or accented.] which dominated the

fashion of English poetry for the next century. The couplet had been used

by earlier poets, Chaucer for example; but in his hands it was musical and

unobtrusive, a minor part of a complete work. With Dryden, and with his

contemporary Waller, the making of couplets was the main thing; in their

hands the couplet became "closed," that is, it often contained a complete

thought, a criticism, a nugget of common sense, a poem in itself, as in

this aphorism from "MacFlecknoe":

All human things are subject to decay,

And when Fate summons, monarchs must obey.

[Sidenote: PROSE WORKS]

In his prose works Dryden proved himself the ablest critic of his time, and

the inventor of a neat, serviceable style which, with flattery to

ourselves, we are wont to call modern. Among his numerous critical works we

note especially "An Essay of Dramatic Poesy," "Of Heroic Plays," "Discourse

on Satire," and the Preface to his _Fables_. These have not the vigor

or picturesqueness of Bunyan's prose, but they are written clearly, in

short sentences, with the chief aim of being understood. If we compare them

with the sonorous periods of Milton, or with the pretty involutions of

Sidney, we shall see why Dryden is called "the father of modern prose." His

sensible style appears in this criticism of Chaucer:

"He must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive nature,

because, as it has been truly observed of him, he has taken into

the compass of his _Canterbury Tales_ the various manners and

humours (as we now call them) of the whole English nation in his

age. Not a single character has escaped him.... We have our fathers

and great-grand-dames all before us as they were in Chaucer's days:

their general characters are still remaining in mankind, and even

in England, though they are called by other names than those of

monks and friars and canons and lady abbesses and nuns; for mankind

is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature though everything

is altered."

* * * * *

SECONDARY WRITERS

PURITAN AND CAVALIER VERSE. The numerous minor poets of this period are

often arranged in groups, but any true classification is impossible since

there was no unity among them. Each was a law unto himself, and the result

was to emphasize personal oddity or eccentricity. It would seem that in

writing of love, the common theme of poets, Puritan and Cavalier must alike

speak the common language of the heart; but that is precisely what they did

not do. With them love was no longer a passion, or even a fashion, but any

fantastic conceit that might decorate a rime. Thus, Suckling habitually

made love a joke:

Why so pale and wan, fond lover,

Prithee why so pale?

Will, when looking well wont move her,

Looking ill prevail?

Prithee why so pale?

Crashaw turned from his religious poems to sing of love in a way to appeal

to the Transcendentalists, of a later age:

Whoe'er she be,

That not impossible she

That shall command my heart and me.

And Donne must search out some odd notion from natural (or unnatural)

history, making love a spider that turns the wine of life into poison; or

from mechanics, comparing lovers to a pair of dividers:

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two:

Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show

To move, but doth if the other do.

[Illustration: GEORGE HERBERT

From a rare print by White, prefixed to his poems]

Several of these poets, commonly grouped in a class which includes Donne,

Herbert, Cowley, Crashaw, and others famous in their day, received the name

of metaphysical poets, not because of their profound thought, but because

of their eccentric style and queer figures of speech. Of all this group

George Herbert (1593-1633) is the sanest and the sweetest. His chief work,

_The Temple_, is a collection of poems celebrating the beauty of

holiness, the sacraments, the Church, the experiences of the Christian

life. Some of these poems are ingenious conceits, and deserve the derisive

name of "metaphysical" which Dr. Johnson flung at them; but others, such as

"Virtue," "The Pulley," "Love" and "The Collar," are the expression of a

beautiful and saintly soul, speaking of the deep things of God; and

speaking so quietly withal that one is apt to miss the intensity that lurks

even in his calmest verses. Note in these opening and closing stanzas of

"Virtue" the restraint of the one, the hidden glow of the other:

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,

The bridal of the earth and sky!

The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;

For thou must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,

Like seasoned timber, never gives;

But, though the whole world turn to coal,

Then chiefly lives.

[Sidenote: CAVALIER POETS]

In contrast with the disciplined Puritan spirit of Herbert is the gayety of

another group, called the Cavalier poets, among whom are Carew, Suckling

and Lovelace. They reflect clearly the spirit of the Royalists who followed

King Charles with a devotion worthy of a better master. Robert Herrick

(1591-1674) is the best known of this group, and his only book,

_Hesperides and Noble Numbers_ (1648), reflects the two elements found

in most of the minor poetry of the age; namely, Cavalier gayety and Puritan

seriousness. In the first part of the book are some graceful verses

celebrating the light loves of the Cavaliers and the fleeting joys of

country life:

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers,

Of April, May, of June and July flowers;

I sing of Maypoles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes,

Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes.

In _Noble Numbers_ such poems as "Thanksgiving," "A True Lent,"

"Litany," and the child's "Ode on the Birth of Our Saviour" reflect the

better side of the Cavalier, who can be serious without pulling a long

face, who goes to his devotions cheerfully, and who retains even in his

religion what Andrew Lang calls a spirit of unregenerate happiness.

[Sidenote: BUTLER'S HUDIBRAS]

Samuel Butler (1612-1680) may also be classed with the Cavalier poets,

though in truth he stands alone in this age, a master of doggerel rime and

of ferocious satire. His chief work, _Hudibras_, a grotesque

caricature of Puritanism, appeared in 1663, when the restored king and his

favorites were shamelessly plundering the government. The poem (probably

suggested by _Don Quixote_) relates a rambling story of the adventures

of Sir Hudibras, a sniveling Puritan knight, and his squire Ralpho. Its

doggerel style may be inferred from the following:

Besides, 'tis known he could speak Greek

As naturally as pigs squeak;

That Latin was no more difficle

Than to a blackbird 'tis to whistle:

Being rich in both, he never scanted

His bounty unto such as wanted.

Such was the stuff that the Royalists quoted to each other as wit; and the

wit was so dear to king and courtiers that they carried copies of

_Hudibras_ around in their pockets. The poem was enormously popular in

its day, and some of its best lines are still quoted; but the selections we

now meet give but a faint idea of the general scurrility of a work which

amused England in the days when the Puritan's fanaticism was keenly

remembered, his struggle for liberty quite forgotten.

PROSE WRITERS. Of the hundreds of prose works that appeared in Puritan

times very few are now known even by name. Their controversial fires are

sunk to ashes; even the causes that produced or fanned them are forgotten.

Meanwhile we cherish a few books that speak not of strife but of peace and

charity.

[Illustration: SIR THOMAS BROWNE]

Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was a physician, vastly learned in a day when he

and other doctors gravely prescribed herbs or bloodsuckers for witchcraft;

but he was less interested in his profession than in what was then called

modern science. His most famous work is _Religio Medici_ (Religion of

a Physician, 1642), a beautiful book, cherished by those who know it as one

of the greatest prose works in the language. His _Urn Burial_ is even

more remarkable for its subtle thought and condensed expression; but its

charm, like that of the Silent Places, is for the few who can discover and

appreciate it.

[Illustration: ISAAC WALTON]

Isaac Walton (1593-1683), or Isaak, as he always wrote it, was a modest

linen merchant who, in the midst of troublous times, kept his serenity of

spirit by attending strictly to his own affairs, by reading good books, and

by going fishing. His taste for literature is reflected with rare

simplicity in his _Lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, George Herbert and

Bishop Sanderson_, a series of biographies which are among the earliest

and sweetest in our language. Their charm lies partly in their refined

style, but more largely in their revelation of character; for Walton chose

men of gentle spirit for his subjects, men who were like himself in

cherishing the still depths of life rather than its noisy shallows, and

wrote of them with the understanding of perfect sympathy. Wordsworth

expressed his appreciation of the work in a noble sonnet beginning:

There are no colours in the fairest sky

So fair as these. The feather whence the pen

Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men

Dropped from an angel's wing.

Walton's love of fishing, and of all the lore of trout brooks and spring

meadows that fishing implies, found expression in _The Compleat Angler,

or Contemplative Man's Recreation_ (1653). This is a series of

conversations in which an angler convinces his friends that fishing is not

merely the sport of catching fish, but an art that men are born to, like

the art of poetry. Even such a hard-hearted matter as impaling a minnow for

bait becomes poetical, for this is the fashion of it: "Put your hook in at

his mouth, and out at his gills, and do it as if you loved him." It is

enough to say of this old work, the classic of its kind, that it deserves

all the honor which the tribe of anglers have given it, and that you could

hardly find a better book to fall asleep over after a day's fishing.

[Sidenote: EVELYN AND PEPYS]

No such gentle, human, lovable books were produced in Restoration times.

The most famous prose works of the period are the diaries of John Evelyn

and Samuel Pepys. The former was a gentleman, and his _Diary_ is an

interesting chronicle of matters large and small from 1641 to 1697. Pepys,

though he became Secretary of the Admiralty and President of the Royal

Society, was a gossip, a chatterbox, with an eye that loved to peek into

closets and a tongue that ran to slander. His _Diary_, covering the

period from 1660 to 1669, is a keen but malicious exposition of private and

public life during the Restoration.

* * * * *

SUMMARY. The literary period just studied covers the last three

quarters of the seventeenth century. Its limits are very

indefinite, merging into Elizabethan romance on the one side, and

into eighteenth century formalism on the other. Historically, the

period was one of bitter conflict between two main political and

religious parties, the Royalists, or Cavaliers, and the Puritans.

The literature of the age is extremely diverse in character, and is

sadly lacking in the unity, the joyousness, the splendid enthusiasm

of Elizabethan prose and poetry.

The greatest writer of the period was John Milton. He is famous in

literature for his early or Horton poems, which are Elizabethan in

spirit; for his controversial prose works, which reflect the strife

of the age; for his epic of _Paradise Lost_, and for his

tragedy of _Samson_.

Another notable Puritan, or rather Independent, writer was John

Bunyan, whose works reflect the religious ferment of the

seventeenth century. His chief works are _Grace Abounding_, a

kind of spiritual biography, and _The Pilgrim's Progress_, an

allegory of the Christian life which has been more widely read than

any other English book.

The chief writer of the Restoration period was John Dryden, a

professional author, who often catered to the coarser tastes of the

age. There is no single work by which he is gratefully remembered.

He is noted for his political satires, for his vigorous use of the

heroic couplet, for his modern prose style, and for his literary

criticisms.

Among the numerous minor poets of the period, Robert Herrick and

George Herbert are especially noteworthy. A few miscellaneous prose

works are the _Religio Medici_ of Thomas Browne, _The

Compleat Angler_ of Isaac Walton, and the diaries of Pepys and

Evelyn.

SELECTIONS FOR READING. Minor poems of Milton, and parts of

Paradise Lost, in Standard English Classics, Riverside Literature,

and other school series (see Texts, in General Bibliography).

Selections from Cavalier and Puritan poets in Maynard's English

Classics, Golden Treasury Series, Manly's English Poetry, Century

Readings, Ward's English Poets. Prose selections in Manly's English

Prose, Craik's English Prose Selections, Garnett's English Prose

from Elizabeth to Victoria. Pilgrim's Progress and Grace Abounding

in Standard English Classics, Pocket Classics, Student's Classics.

Religio Medici and Complete Angler in Temple Classics and

Everyman's Library. Selections from Dryden in Manly's English Prose

and Manly's English Poetry. Dryden's version of Palamon and Arcite

(the Knight's Tale of Chaucer) in Standard English Classics,

Riverside Literature, Lake Classics.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. For texts and manuals dealing with the whole field of

English history and literature see the General Bibliography. The

following works deal chiefly with the Puritan and Restoration

periods.

_HISTORY_. Wakeling, King and Parliament (Oxford Manuals of

English History); Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan

Revolution (Great Epochs Series); Tulloch, English Puritanism;

Harrison, Oliver Cromwell; Hale, The Fall of the Stuarts; Airy, The

English Restoration and Louis XIV.

_LITERATURE_. Masterman, The Age of Milton; Dowden, Puritan

and Anglican; Wendell, Temper of the Seventeenth Century in

Literature; Gosse, Seventeenth-Century Studies; Schilling,

Seventeenth-Century Lyrics (Athenæum Press Series); Isaac Walton,

Lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert and Sanderson.

_Milton_. Life, by Garnett (Great Writers Series); by Pattison

(English Men of Letters). Corson, Introduction to Milton; Raleigh,

Milton; Stopford Brooke, Milton. Essays, by Macaulay; by Lowell, in

Among My Books; by M. Arnold, in Essays in Criticism.

_Bunyan_. Life, by Venables (Great Writers); by Froude (E. M.

of L.). Brown, John Bunyan; Woodberry's essay, in Makers of

Literature.

_Dryden_. Life by Saintsbury (E. M. of L.). Gosse, From

Shakespeare to Pope.

_Thomas Browne_. Life, by Gosse (E. M. of L.). Essays, by L.

Stephen, in Hours in a Library; by Pater, in Appreciations.

_FICTION AND POETRY_. Shorthouse, John Inglesant; Scott, Old

Mortality, Peveril of the Peak, Woodstock; Blackmore, Lorna Doone.

Milton, Sonnet on Cromwell; Scott, Rokeby; Bates and Coman, English

History Told by English Poets.

CHAPTER VI

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE

In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold:

Alike fantastic if too new or old.

Be not the first by whom the new are tried,

Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

Pope, "An Essay on Criticism"

HISTORY OF THE PERIOD. The most striking political feature of the

times was the rise of constitutional and party government. The

Revolution of 1688, which banished the Stuarts, had settled the

king question by making Parliament supreme in England, but not all

Englishmen were content with the settlement. No sooner were the

people in control of the government than they divided into hostile

parties: the liberal Whigs, who were determined to safeguard

popular liberty, and the conservative Tories, with tender memories

of kingcraft, who would leave as much authority as possible in the

royal hands. On the extreme of Toryism was a third party of

zealots, called the Jacobites, who aimed to bring the Stuarts back

to the throne, and who for fifty years filled Britain with plots

and rebellion. The literature of the age was at times dominated by

the interests of these contending factions.

The two main parties were so well balanced that power shifted

easily from one to the other. To overturn a Tory or a Whig cabinet

only a few votes were necessary, and to influence such votes London

was flooded with pamphlets. Even before the great newspapers

appeared, the press had become a mighty power in England, and any

writer with a talent for argument or satire was almost certain to

be hired by party leaders. Addison, Steele, Defoe, Swift,--most of

the great writers of the age were, on occasion, the willing

servants of the Whigs or Tories. So the new politician replaced the

old nobleman as a patron of letters.

[Sidenote: SOCIAL LIFE]

Another feature of the age was the rapid development of social

life. In earlier ages the typical Englishman had lived much by

himself; his home was his castle, and in it he developed his

intense individualism; but in the first half of the eighteenth

century some three thousand public coffeehouses and a large number

of private clubs appeared in London alone; and the sociability of

which these clubs were an expression was typical of all English

cities. Meanwhile country life was in sore need of refinement.

The influence of this social life on literature was inevitable.

Nearly all writers frequented the coffeehouses, and matters

discussed there became subjects of literature; hence the enormous

amount of eighteenth-century writing devoted to transient affairs,

to politics, fashions, gossip. Moreover, as the club leaders set

the fashion in manners or dress, in the correct way of taking snuff

or of wearing wigs and ruffles, so the literary leaders emphasized

formality or correctness of style, and to write prose like Addison,

or verse like Pope, became the ambition of aspiring young authors.

There are certain books of the period (seldom studied amongst its

masterpieces) which are the best possible expression of its thought

and manners. The Letters of Lord Chesterfield, for example,

especially those written to his son, are more significant, and more

readable, than anything produced by Johnson. Even better are the

Memoirs of Horace Walpole, and his gossipy Letters, of which

Thackeray wrote:

"Fiddles sing all through them; wax lights, fine dresses,

fine jokes, fine plate, fine equipages glitter and sparkle;

never was such a brilliant, smirking Vanity Fair as that

through which he leads us."

[Sidenote: SPREAD OF EMPIRE]

Two other significant features of the age were the large part

played by England in Continental wars, and the rapid expansion of

the British empire. These Continental wars, which have ever since

influenced British policy, seem to have originated (aside from the

important matter of self-interest) in a double motive: to prevent

any one nation from gaining overwhelming superiority by force of

arms, and to save the smaller "buffer" states from being absorbed

by their powerful neighbors. Thus the War of the Spanish Succession

(1711) prevented the union of the French and Spanish monarchies,

and preserved the smaller states of Holland and Germany. As Addison

then wrote, at least half truthfully:

'T is Britain's care to watch o'er Europe's fate,

And hold in balance each contending state:

To threaten bold, presumptuous kings with war,

And answer her afflicted neighbors' prayer. [1]

[Footnote [1]: From Addison's Address to Liberty, in his poetical

"Letter to Lord Halifax."]

The expansion of the empire, on the whole the most marvelous

feature of English history, received a tremendous impetus in this

age when India, Australia and the greater part of North America

were added to the British dominions, and when Captain Cook opened

the way for a belt of colonies around the whole world.

The influence of the last-named movement hardly appears in the

books which we ordinarily read as typical of the age. There are

other books, however, which one may well read for his own

unhampered enjoyment: such expansive books as Hawkesworth's

_Voyages_ (1773), corresponding to Hakluyt's famous record of

Elizabethan exploration, and especially the _Voyages of Captain

Cook_, [Footnote: The first of Cook's fateful voyages appears in

Hawkesworth's collection. The second was recorded by Cook himself

(1777), and the third by Cook and Captain King (1784). See Synge,

_Captain Cook's Voyages Around the World_ (London, 1897).]

which take us from the drawing-room chatter of politics or fashion

or criticism into a world of adventure and great achievement. In

such works, which make no profession of literary style, we feel the

lure of the sea and of lands beyond the horizon, which is as the

mighty background of English literature from Anglo-Saxon times to

the present day.

It is difficult to summarize the literature of this age, or to group such

antagonistic writers as Swift and Addison, Pope and Burns, Defoe and

Johnson, Goldsmith and Fielding, with any fine discrimination. It is simply

for convenience, therefore, that we study eighteenth-century writings in

three main divisions: the reign of so-called classicism, the revival of

romantic poetry, and the beginnings of the modern novel. As a whole, it is

an age of prose rather than of poetry, and in this respect it differs from

all preceding ages of English literature.

* * * * *

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CLASSICISM

The above title is an unfortunate one, but since it is widely used we must

try to understand it as best we can. Yet when one begins to define

"classicism" one is reminded of that old bore Polonius, who tells how

Hamlet is affected:

Your noble son is mad:

Mad, call I it; for to define true madness,

What is't but to be nothing else but mad?

In our literature the word "classic" was probably first used in connection

with the writers of Greece and Rome, and any English work which showed the

influence of such writers was said to have a classic style. If we seek to

the root of the word, we shall find that it refers to the _classici_,

that is, to the highest of the classes into which the census divided the

Roman people; hence the proper use of "classic" to designate the writings

that have won first rank in any nation. As Goethe said, "Everything that is

good in literature is classical."

[Sidenote: CLASSIC AND PSEUDO-CLASSIC]

Gradually, however, the word "classic" came to have a different meaning, a

meaning now expressed by the word "formal." In the Elizabethan age, as we

have seen, critics insisted that English plays should conform to the rules

or "unities" of the Greek drama, and plays written according to such rules

were called classic. Again, in the eighteenth century, English poets took

to studying ancient authors, especially Horace, to find out how poetry

should be written. Having discovered, as they thought, the rules of

composition, they insisted on following such rules rather than individual

genius or inspiration. It is largely because of this adherence to rules,

this slavery to a fashion of the time, that so much of eighteenth-century

verse seems cold and artificial, a thing made to order rather than the

natural expression of human feeling. The writers themselves were well

satisfied with their formality, however, and called their own the Classic

or Augustan age of English letters. [Footnote: Though the eighteenth

century was dominated by this formal spirit, it had, like every other age,

its classic and romantic movements. The work of Gray, Burns and other

romantic poets will be considered later.]

* * * * *

ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744)

It was in 1819 that a controversy arose over the question, Was Pope a poet?

To have asked that in 1719 would have indicated that the questioner was

ignorant; to have asked it a half century later might have raised a doubt

as to his sanity, for by that time Pope was acclaimed as a master by the

great majority of poets in England and America. We judge now, looking at

him in perspective and comparing him with Chaucer or Burns, that he was not

a great poet but simply the kind of poet that the age demanded. He belongs

to eighteenth-century London exclusively, and herein he differs from the

master poets who are at home in all places and expressive of all time.

[Illustration: ALEXANDER POPE]

LIFE. Pope is an interesting but not a lovable figure. Against the

petty details of his life we should place, as a background, these

amazing achievements: that this poor cripple, weak of body and

spiteful of mind, was the supreme literary figure of his age; that

he demonstrated how an English poet could live by his pen, instead

of depending on patrons; that he won greater fame and fortune than

Shakespeare or Milton received from their contemporaries; that he

dominated the fashion of English poetry during his lifetime, and

for many years after his death.

[Sidenote: THE WRITER]

Such are the important facts of Pope's career. For the rest: he was

born in London, in the year of the Revolution (1688). Soon after

that date his father, having gained a modest fortune in the linen

business, retired to Binfield, on the fringe of Windsor Forest.

There Pope passed his boyhood, studying a little under private

tutors, forming a pleasurable acquaintance with Latin and Greek

poets. From fourteen to twenty, he tells us, he read for amusement;

but from twenty to twenty-seven he read for "improvement and

instruction." The most significant traits of these early years were

his determination to be a poet and his talent for imitating any

writer who pleased him. Dryden was his first master, from whom he

inherited the couplet, then he imitated the French critic Boileau

and the Roman poet Horace. By the time he was twenty four the

publication of his _Essay on Criticism_ and _The Rape of the

Lock_ had made him the foremost poet of England. By his

translation of Homer he made a fortune, with which he bought a

villa at Twickenham. There he lived in the pale sunshine of

literary success, and there he quarreled with every writer who

failed to appreciate his verses, his jealousy overflowing at last

in _The Dunciad_ (Iliad of Dunces), a witty but venomous

lampoon, in which he took revenge on all who had angered him.

[Illustration: TWICKENHAM PARISH CHURCH, WHERE POPE WAS BURIED

Pope lived at Twickenham for nearly thirty years]

[Sidenote: THE MAN]

Next to his desire for glory and revenge, Pope loved to be

considered a man of high character, a teacher of moral philosophy.

His ethical teaching appears in his _Moral Epistles_, his

desire for a good reputation is written large in his Letters, which

he secretly printed, and then alleged that they had been made

public against his wish. These Letters might impress us as the

utterances of a man of noble ideals, magnanimous with his friends,

patient with his enemies, until we reflect that they were published

by the author for the purpose of giving precisely that impression.

Another side of Pope's nature is revealed in this: that to some of

his friends, to Swift and Bolingbroke for example, he showed

gratitude, and that to his parents he was ever a dutiful son. He

came perhaps as near as he could to a real rather than an

artificial sentiment when he wrote of his old mother:

Me let the tender office long engage,

To rock the cradle of reposing age.

WORKS OF POPE. Pope's first important work, _An Essay on Criticism_

(1711), is an echo of the rules which Horace had formulated in his _Ars

Poetica_, more than seventeen centuries before Pope was born. The French

critic Boileau made an alleged improvement of Horace in his _L'Art

Poétique_, and Pope imitated both writers with his rimed _Essay_,

in which he attempted to sum up the rules by which poetry should be judged.

And he did it, while still under the age of twenty-five, so brilliantly

that his characterization of the critic is unmatched in our literature. A

few selections will serve to show the character of the work:

First follow nature, and your judgment frame

By her just standard, which is still the same:

Unerring nature, still divinely bright,

One clear, unchanged and universal light,

Life, force and beauty must to all impart,

At once the source and end and test of Art.

Poets, like painters, thus unskilled to trace

The naked nature and the living grace,

With gold and jewels cover every part,

And hide with ornaments their want of art.

True wit is nature to advantage dressed,

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.

Expression is the dress of thought, and still

Appears more decent, as more suitable.

[Sidenote: RAPE OF THE LOCK]

Pope's next important poem, _The Rape of the Lock_ (1712), is his most

original and readable work. The occasion of the poem was that a fop stole a

lock of hair from a young lady, and the theft plunged two families into a

quarrel which was taken up by the fashionable set of London. Pope made a

mock-heroic poem on the subject, in which he satirized the fads and

fashions of Queen Anne's age. Ordinarily Pope's fancy is of small range,

and proceeds jerkily, like the flight of a woodpecker, from couplet to

couplet; but here he attempts to soar like the eagle. He introduces dainty

aerial creatures, gnomes, sprites, sylphs, to combat for the belles and

fops in their trivial concerns; and herein we see a clever burlesque of the

old epic poems, in which gods or goddesses entered into the serious affairs

of mortals. The craftsmanship of the poem is above praise; it is not only a

neatly pointed satire on eighteenth-century fashions but is one of the most

graceful works in English verse.

[Sidenote: ESSAY OF MAN]

An excellent supplement to _The Rape of the Lock_, which pictures the

superficial elegance of the age, is _An Essay on Man_, which reflects

its philosophy. That philosophy under the general name of Deism, had

fancied to abolish the Church and all revealed religion, and had set up a

new-old standard of natural faith and morals. Of this philosophy Pope had

small knowledge; but he was well acquainted with the discredited

Bolingbroke, his "guide, philosopher and friend," who was a fluent exponent

of the new doctrine, and from Bolingbroke came the general scheme of the

_Essay on Man_.

The poem appears in the form of four epistles, dealing with man's place in

the universe, with his moral nature, with social and political ethics, and

with the problem of happiness. These were discussed from a common-sense

viewpoint, and with feet always on solid earth. As Pope declares:

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;

The proper study of mankind is man....

Created half to rise, and half to fall;

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;

Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled;

The glory, jest and riddle of the world.

Throughout the poem these two doctrines of Deism are kept in sight: that

there is a God, a Mystery, who dwells apart from the world; and that man

ought to be contented, even happy, in his ignorance of matters beyond his

horizon:

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;

All chance, direction which thou canst not see;

All discord, harmony not understood;

All partial evil, universal good;

And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,

One truth is clear: whatever is, is right.

The result is rubbish, so far as philosophy is concerned, but in the heap

of incongruous statements which Pope brings together are a large number of

quotable lines, such as:

Honor and shame from no condition rise;

Act well your part, there all the honor lies.

It is because of such lines, the care with which the whole poem is

polished, and the occasional appearance of real beauty (such as the passage

beginning, "Lo, the poor Indian") that the _Essay on Man_ occupies

such a high place in eighteenth-century literature.

[Sidenote: THE QUALITY OF POPE]

It is hardly necessary to examine other works of Pope, since the poems

already named give us the full measure of his strength and weakness. His

talent is to formulate rules of poetry, to satirize fashionable society, to

make brilliant epigrams in faultless couplets. His failure to move or even

to interest us greatly is due to his second-hand philosophy, his inability

to feel or express emotion, his artificial life apart from nature and

humanity. When we read Chaucer or Shakespeare, we have the impression that

they would have been at home in any age or place, since they deal with

human interests that are the same yesterday, to-day and forever; but we can

hardly imagine Pope feeling at ease anywhere save in his own set and in his

own generation. He is the poet of one period, which set great store by

formality, and in that period alone he is supreme.

* * * * *

JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745)

In the history of literature Swift occupies a large place as the most

powerful of English satirists; that is, writers who search out the faults

of society in order to hold them up to ridicule. To most readers, however,

he is known as the author of _Gulliver's Travels_, a book which young

people still read with pleasure, as they read _Robinson Crusoe_ or any

other story of adventure. In the fate of that book, which was intended to

scourge humanity but which has become a source of innocent entertainment,

is a commentary on the colossal failure of Swift's ambition.

[Illustration: JONATHAN SWIFT]

LIFE. Little need be recorded of Swift's life beyond the few facts

which help us to understand his satires. He was born in Dublin, of

English parents, and was so "bantered by fortune" that he was

compelled to spend the greater part of his life in Ireland, a

country which he detested. He was very poor, very proud; and even

in youth he railed at a mocking fate which compelled him to accept

aid from others. For his education he was dependent on a relative,

who helped him grudgingly. After leaving Trinity College, Dublin,

the only employment he could find was with another relative, Sir

William Temple, a retired statesman, who hired Swift as a secretary

and treated him as a servant. Galled by his position and by his

feeling of superiority (for he was a man of physical and mental

power, who longed to be a master of great affairs) he took orders

in the Anglican Church; but the only appointment he could obtain

was in a village buried, as he said, in a forsaken district of

Ireland. There his bitterness overflowed in _A Tale of a Tub_

and a few pamphlets of such satiric power that certain political

leaders recognized Swift's value and summoned him to their

assistance.

[Illustration: TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN]

[Sidenote: SWIFT IN LONDON]

To understand his success in London one must remember the times.

Politics were rampant; the city was the battleground of Whigs and

Tories, whose best weapon was the printed pamphlet that justified

one party by heaping abuse or ridicule on the other. Swift was a

master of satire, and he was soon the most feared author in

England. He seems to have had no fixed principles, for he was ready

to join the Tories when that party came into power and to turn his

literary cannon on the Whigs, whom he had recently supported. In

truth, he despised both parties; his chief object was to win for

himself the masterful position in Church or state for which, he

believed, his talents had fitted him.

For several years Swift was the literary champion of the victorious

Tories; then, when his keen eye detected signs of tottering in the

party, he asked for his reward. He obtained, not the great

bishopric which he expected, but an appointment as Dean of St.

Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. Small and bitter fruit this seemed

to Swift, after his years of service, but even so, it was given

grudgingly. [Footnote: Swift's pride and arrogance with his

official superiors worked against him. Also he had published _A

Tale of a Tub_, a coarse satire against the churches, which

scandalized the queen and her ministers, who could have given him

preferment. Thackeray says, "I think the Bishops who advised Queen

Anne not to appoint the author of the _Tale of a Tub_ to a

Bishopric gave perfectly good advice."]

[Sidenote: LIFE IN IRELAND]

When the Tories went out of power Swift's political occupation was

gone. The last thirty years of his life were spent largely in

Dublin. There in a living grave, as he regarded it, the scorn which

he had hitherto felt for individuals or institutions widened until

it included humanity. Such is the meaning of his _Gulliver's

Travels_. His only pleasure during these years was to expose the

gullibility of men, and a hundred good stories are current of his

practical jokes,--such as his getting rid of a crowd which had

gathered to watch an eclipse by sending a solemn messenger to

announce that, by the Dean's orders, the eclipse was postponed till

the next day. A brain disease fastened upon him gradually, and his

last years were passed in a state of alternate stupor or madness

from which death was a blessed deliverance.

WORKS OF SWIFT. The poems of Swift, though they show undoubted power (every

smallest thing he wrote bears that stamp), may be passed over with the

comment of his relative Dryden, who wrote: "Cousin Swift, you will never be

a poet." The criticism was right, but thereafter Swift jeered at Dryden's

poetry. We may pass over also the _Battle of the Books_, the

_Drapier's Letters_ and a score more of satires and lampoons. Of all

these minor works the _Bickerstaff Papers_, which record Swift's

practical joke on the astrologers, are most amusing. [Footnote: Almanacs

were at that time published by pretender astrologers, who read fortunes or

made predictions from the stars. Against the most famous of these quacks,

Partridge by name, Swift leveled his "Predictions for the year 1708, by

Isaac Bickerstaff." Among the predictions of coming events was this trifle:

that Partridge was doomed to die on March 29 following, about eleven

o'clock at night, of a raging fever. On March 30 appeared, in the

newspapers, a letter giving the details of Partridge's death, and then a

pamphlet called "An Elegy of Mr. Partridge." Presently Partridge, who could

not see the joke, made London laugh by his frantic attempts to prove that

he was alive. Then appeared an elaborate "Vindication of Isaac

Bickerstaff," which proved by the infallible stars that Partridge was dead,

and that the astrologer now in his place was an impostor. This joke was

copied twenty-five years later by Franklin in his _Poor Richard's

Almanac._]

[Sidenote: GULLIVER'S TRAVELS]

Swift's fame now rests largely upon his _Gulliver's Travels_, which

appeared in 1726 under the title, "Travels into Several Remote Nations of

the World, by Lemuel Gulliver, first a Surgeon and then a Captain of

Several Ships." In the first voyage we are taken to Lilliput, a country

inhabited by human beings about six inches tall, with minds in proportion.

The capers of these midgets are a satire on human society, as seen through

Swift's scornful eyes. In the second voyage we go to Brobdingnag, where the

people are of gigantic stature, and by contrast we are reminded of the

petty "human insects" whom Gulliver represents. The third voyage, to the

Island of Laputa, is a burlesque of the scientists and philosophers of

Swift's day. The fourth leads to the land of the Houyhnhnms, where

intelligent horses are the ruling creatures, and humanity is represented by

the Yahoos, a horribly degraded race, having the forms of men and the

bestial habits of monkeys.

Such is the ferocious satire on the elegant society of Queen Anne's day.

Fortunately for our peace of mind we can read the book for its grim humor

and adventurous action, as we read any other good story. Indeed, it

surprises most readers of _Gulliver_ to be told that the work was

intended to wreck our faith in humanity.

[Sidenote: QUALITY OF SWIFT]

In all his satires Swift's power lies in his prose style--a convincing

style, clear, graphic, straightforward--and in his marvelous ability to

make every scene, however distant or grotesque, as natural as life itself.

As Emerson said, he describes his characters as if for the police. His

weakness is twofold: he has a fondness for coarse or malodorous references,

and he is so beclouded in his own soul that he cannot see his fellows in a

true light. In one of his early works he announced the purpose of all his

writing:

My hate, whose lash just Heaven has long decreed,

Shall on a day make Sin and Folly bleed.

That was written at twenty-six, before he took orders in the Church. As a

theological student it was certainly impressed upon the young man that

Heaven keeps its own prerogatives, and that sin and folly have never been

effectually reformed by lashing. But Swift had a scorn of all judgment

except his own. As the eyes of fishes are so arranged that they see only

their prey and their enemies, so Swift had eyes only for the vices of men

and for the lash that scourges them. When he wrote, therefore, he was not

an observer, or even a judge; he was a criminal lawyer prosecuting humanity

on the charge of being a sham. A tendency to insanity may possibly account

both for his spleen against others and for the self-tortures which made

him, as Archbishop King said, "the most unhappy man on earth."

[Sidenote: JOURNAL TO STELLA]

There is one oasis in the bitter desert of Swift's writings, namely, his

_Journal to Stella_. While in the employ of Temple he was the daily

companion of a young girl, Esther Johnson, who was an inmate of the same

household. Her love for Swift was pure and constant; wherever he went she

followed and lived near him, bringing a ray of sunshine into his life, in a

spirit which reminds us of the sublime expression of another woman: "For

whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy

people shall be my people, and thy God my God." She was probably married to

Swift, but his pride kept him from openly acknowledging the union. While he

was at London he wrote a private journal for Esther (Stella) in which he

recorded his impressions of the men and women he met, and of the political

battles in which he took part. That journal, filled with strange

abbreviations to which only he and Stella had the key, can hardly be called

literature, but it is of profound interest. It gives us glimpses of a woman

who chose to live in the shadow; it shows the better side of Swift's

nature, in contrast with his arrogance toward men and his brutal treatment

of women; and finally, it often takes us behind the scenes of a stage on

which was played a mixed comedy of politics and society.

* * * * *

JOSEPH ADDISON (1672-1719)

In Addison we have a pleasant reflection of the new social life of England.

Select almost any feature of that life, and you shall find some account of

it in the papers of Addison: its party politics in his _Whig

Examiner_; its "grand tour," as part of a gentleman's education, in his

_Remarks on Italy_; its adventure on foreign soil in such poems as

"The Campaign"; its new drama of decency in his _Cato_; its classic

delusions in his _Account of the Greatest English Poets_; its frills,

fashions and similar matters in his _Spectator_ essays. He tried

almost every type of literature, from hymns to librettos, and in each he

succeeded well enough to be loudly applauded. In his own day he was

accounted a master poet, but now he is remembered as a writer of prose

essays.

[Illustration: JOSEPH ADDISON]

LIFE. Addison's career offers an interesting contrast to that of

Swift, who lived in the same age. He was the son of an English

clergyman, settled in the deanery of Lichfield, and his early

training left upon him the stamp of good taste and good breeding.

In school he was always the model boy; in Oxford he wrote Latin

verses on safe subjects, in the approved fashion; in politics he

was content to "oil the machine" as he found it; in society he was

shy and silent (though naturally a brilliant talker) because he

feared to make some slip which might mar his prospects or the

dignity of his position.