Outlines of English and American Literature Part 17

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 compa.s.ses are two: Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth if the other do.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GEORGE HERBERT From a rare print by White, prefixed to his poems]

Several of these poets, commonly grouped in a cla.s.s 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 G.o.d; 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 n.o.ble 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, wa.s.sails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes.

In _n.o.ble 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 cla.s.sed 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 fis.h.i.+ng. 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 cheris.h.i.+ng 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 n.o.ble 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 fis.h.i.+ng, and of all the lore of trout brooks and spring meadows that fis.h.i.+ng 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 cla.s.sic 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 fis.h.i.+ng.

[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 coa.r.s.er 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 Cla.s.sics, Riverside Literature, and other school series (see Texts, in General Bibliography).

Selections from Cavalier and Puritan poets in Maynard's English Cla.s.sics, 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 Cla.s.sics, Pocket Cla.s.sics, Student's Cla.s.sics.

Religio Medici and Complete Angler in Temple Cla.s.sics 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 Cla.s.sics, Riverside Literature, Lake Cla.s.sics.

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 (Athenaeum 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 fas.h.i.+ons, 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.