The Age of Dryden Part 18

TRAVELLERS.

Travel was well represented in the literature of the period, as could hardly be otherwise in an age distinguished by the awakening of a spirit of curiosity and intelligent inquiry. The time for systematic scientific exploration had not arrived; no Englishman devoted himself to travel as a profession with the steadiness of the Italian Della Valle, or described a foreign land with such thoroughness as in the Indian monograph of the French jeweller, Tavernier. But if no such monumental work was produced, there was no lack of standard ones. The two which have come nearest to attaining the rank of literary cla.s.sics, however, were not the production of men of high attainments, but the work, or reputed work, of writers of imperfect education, whose chief claim to attention was the surpa.s.sing interest of their narratives.

[Sidenote: Robert Knox (1640?-1720).]

Robert Knox belongs to the especially interesting cla.s.s of travellers whose experience of foreign countries has been gained in captivity.

Driven by a storm on to the coast of Ceylon in 1659, he was made prisoner and carried into the interior, then almost unknown to Europeans. Here he supported himself for nearly twenty years by knitting caps and hawking goods, resisting all inducements to enter the service of the native sovereign, whose caprice and cruelty he dreaded with good reason. At length he escaped to a Dutch settlement, and returned safely to England, where he entered the service of the East India Company.

After several more voyages to the East he retired, and died in good circ.u.mstances in 1720. His letters to his cousin, Strype, preserved in the University Library, Cambridge, show him, it is said, 'to have been a man of morose temper, rough manners, and a woman-hater.' The 'ma.n.u.scripts of my own life,' bequeathed by him to his nephew, Knox Ward, have unfortunately gone astray. His account of his captivity was published in 1681, with a preface by the ill.u.s.trious natural philosopher, Robert Hooke, who no doubt gave Knox much literary a.s.sistance, but happily abstained from tampering with the simplicity of his narrative. As a cla.s.sic of travel this ranks with the similar works of Drury and Mariner, which also received literary form from intelligent collaborators, and it may have served in some measure as an example to Defoe.

[Sidenote: William Dampier (1652-1715).]

William Dampier fills a more important place than Knox in the history of travel, his experiences having been much more diversified, and his works being of much greater compa.s.s. Having gone in 1679 to the West Indies on a commercial adventure, he was persuaded to join a buccaneering expedition, many of the piratical incidents of which, judiciously pa.s.sed over in his own narrative, are recorded in the ma.n.u.scripts of his companions. It involved him in a series of adventures which took him all round the world, and from which he returned in 1691 with no other property than an 'amiable savage, curiously tattooed.' His voyage was published in 1697-99, and obtained such success that the government, overlooking or ill-informed of his piracies, employed him on a voyage of discovery to Australia. He was subsequently engaged in two privateering expeditions, in the first as commander, in the second only as pilot.

Alexander Selkirk was put on sh.o.r.e on Juan Fernandez in the first of these, and taken off in the second. Dampier's temper seems to have disqualified him for supreme authority, and he lost much of the reputation which he had formerly acquired. He died in 1715 in good circ.u.mstances, with a large amount of prize-money still owing to him. As a traveller he takes high rank from the interest of the occurrences he narrates, the clearness and simplicity of his style, his powers of description, and his practical knowledge. 'His _Discourse of the Winds_,' says Professor Laughton, 'may even now be regarded, so far as it goes, as a text-book of that branch of physical geography.' His literary merit, however, partly belongs to some unnamed coadjutor. 'I have,' says Charles Hatton, in the Hatton correspondence edited by Sir Edward Thompson, 'discoursed with Dampier. He is a blunt fellow, but of better understanding than would be expected from one of his education.

He is a very good navigator, kept his journal exactly, and set down every day what he thought of, but, you must imagine, had a.s.sistance in dressing up his history, in which are many mistakes in naming of places.'

[Sidenote: Burnet and Molesworth.]

The times were not ripe for archaeological exploration, or for profound investigation of the manners and inst.i.tutions of foreign nations; and the most gifted travellers of the age wrote with one eye upon things abroad and the other upon affairs at home. Among such itinerant politicians the first place must be given to Burnet, rather, however, for his celebrity in other fields than for the special merit of his travels. He recorded, nevertheless, a number of intelligent observations upon Switzerland, Italy, and Germany. Burnet is always lively and sagacious, and much more impartial than could have been expected in one so deeply concerned in political and theological controversies. His account of Venice is especially interesting. The book, written during his exile, was published in Holland, and was for some time prohibited in England. The somewhat similar work of Lord Molesworth (1656-1725) owes its existence to accident. Molesworth, a theoretical republican of Algernon Sidney's school, was English envoy at Copenhagen from 1690 to 1692, and was obliged to quit the country in consequence, as was a.s.serted, of an insult offered by him to the king; considering, however, the favourable character he gives of the monarch, this appears hardly probable. Whatever the reason, he threw up his emba.s.sy, and avenged himself by a severe indictment of the system of absolute government established in Denmark by the memorable revolution of 1660, which he declared to have entirely impoverished the country. Himself a patrician, he finds the princ.i.p.al cause of this in the abas.e.m.e.nt of his own cla.s.s; and he probably wrote rather from regard to the affairs of England than those of Denmark. He is a forcible, but, at the same time, a candid writer, admitting frankly that 'In Denmark there are no seditions, mutinies, or libels against the government; but all the people either are, or appear to be lovers of their king, notwithstanding their ill treatment, and the hards.h.i.+ps they groan under. There are no clippers or coiners, no robbers upon the highway, nor housebreakers; which conveniency of arbitrary government, among the mult.i.tude of mischiefs attending it, I have likewise observed in France.' He is greatly impressed with the merits of the Danish laws, apart from their administration. 'For justice, brevity, and perspicuity, they exceed all that I know in the world. They are grounded upon equity, and are all contained in one quarto volume, written in the language of the country.'

Such pa.s.sages are conclusive as to his impartiality, and the violent attacks which his book provoked were probably mainly due to its exceedingly plain speaking about individuals. Of the Danes in general he says: 'I never knew any country where the minds of the people were more of one calibre and pitch than here; you shall meet with none of extraordinary parts or qualifications, or excellent in particular studies and trades; you see no enthusiasts, madmen, natural fools, or fanciful folks; but a certain equality of understanding reigns among them. Every one keeps the ordinary beaten road of sense, which in this country is neither the fairest nor the foulest, without deviating to the right or left.' Molesworth was a man of parts and independent character, who afterwards rendered his country considerable services in Ireland, where Swift dedicated one of the Drapier's letters to him as a patriot.

[Sidenote: Paul Rycaut.]

Paul Rycaut, secretary to the English amba.s.sador at Constantinople, and author of an exceedingly valuable account of _The Present State of the Ottoman Empire_ (1668), should perhaps hardly be reckoned among travellers, as he gives no account of his residence, and merely condenses the results of his observation of Ottoman manners and polity.

The book must have been highly important at a time when the Ottoman still menaced Europe, and may be read with pleasure even now for its good sense and varied information, which includes a lively description of a palace revolution, and an account of the chief religious sects among the Turks.

[Sidenote: Edward Browne.]

Doctor Edward Browne, son of Sir Thomas Browne, was a highly accomplished man, whose travels in Eastern Europe (1673) contain a remarkable amount of accurate observation within a surprisingly narrow compa.s.s. It seems strange to find him foretelling a great territorial expansion of the Turkish empire at the expense of Christian Europe, but the prophecy came near being fulfilled by the peril of Vienna not long after Browne wrote.

[Sidenote: Foreign Travellers in England.]

This review of English travellers would not be complete without a brief notice of two foreign visitors to the country, whose narratives, translated into English, have probably been more read here than at home, and from whom much valuable information may be derived. Sorbiere, a philosopher of Ga.s.sendi's school, a Protestant by birth, but who had become a nominal Catholic, visited England in 1663. Being, as he admits, entirely ignorant of the language, his attention was princ.i.p.ally given to the intellectual aspects of the country, which were not unfamiliar to him, from his acquaintance with the works of Englishmen who had written in Latin. His accounts of Oxford and the Royal Society are neither unamusing nor uninstructive; he has a true veneration for English men of science, especially Bacon, whom he p.r.o.nounces 'the greatest man for the interest of natural philosophy that ever was.' Of English letters he can only say that 'he understands that all English eloquence consists in mere pedantry.' Writing in the character of a courtier, Sorbiere expresses himself antagonistically to the English const.i.tution, but it is difficult to believe that his remarks are not sometimes ironical. He can hardly have thought it a very extravagant idea on the part of the commons 'that their king ought to apply himself entirely to maintain the public peace, to promote the happiness of his people, and to advance the honour and reputation of his country abroad, as much as possibly he can.' We are nevertheless informed that this and similar views arise from 'a particular inclination they have by nature to supply themselves with such disrespectful arguments.'

The travels in England of Duke Cosmo de' Medici, heir-apparent to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, were performed in 1669, and described by Signor Magalotti, a member of his suite, whose ma.n.u.script account was translated into English, and published in 1821. They are more interesting than most foreign narratives of English travel, in so far as Cosmo, having landed at Plymouth and travelled up to London, and having afterwards made excursions to Oxford, Cambridge, and other places, saw more of English country life than usual, and inasmuch as they are accompanied by excellent sketches taken by artists in his suite. It is most delightful to be thus enabled to see towns and villages and country-houses exactly as they appeared in the days of Charles II., and it is only to be regretted that the artists did not exercise their pencils upon the streets of London. Magalotti is an intelligent and inquisitive traveller; but, voyaging in the train of a prince, and unacquainted with the language, he can tell us little respecting the people. His account of what fell within his sphere is sensible and impartial, with a few errors, such as the strange a.s.sertion that Clarendon had been secretly a Presbyterian! He is too much of a courtier to inform us respecting the court of Charles II., except in the enumeration of t.i.tled persons and officials, in which he is very exact.

He gives a fair account of the Royal Society, and of the theatre; but seems unconscious of the existence of English literature outside the walls of the playhouse.

We have now accompanied the literature of the Restoration period from its apparently sudden manifestation contemporaneously with the return of the exiled monarch to its transition into what is so appropriately in one point of view, so unaptly in another, termed England's Augustan age.

We have seen that this apparent abruptness was deceptive, arising from the interruption of English literary development by the Civil War and its consequences; and that the Restoration literature represented tendencies which must inevitably have prevailed without the infusion of any French element. The old Elizabethan mode had become inadequate to the vastly extended needs of the time, and we are now able to recognize the literature of the Restoration in its proper connection as a transition to the thoroughly practical and business-like style of the eighteenth century, which, having worked itself out in its turn, and arrived at an impracticable position through the total negation of imagination by its most characteristic representatives,[15] brought about the revival of the Elizabethan spirit in the imaginative, spiritual, and at the same time intensely human literature of the nineteenth century. This in turn seems threatened with decay from the exaggeration of its characteristic qualities; and the antidote might be sought in less hopeful quarters than in the sound sense, manly vigour, and solid execution of the robust if prosaic writers of the Age of Dryden.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] Fox thought that Shakespeare's reputation would have stood higher if he had never written _Hamlet_!

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.

1660. Dryden's _Astraea Redux_.

Pepys begins his _Diary_.

1662. Bentley born.

Atterbury born.

Royal Society incorporated.

1663. First part of _Hudibras_ published.

Dryden begins to write for the stage.

_London Gazette_ established.

L'Estrange licenser of the press.

1664. Second part of _Hudibras_.

Evelyn's _Sylva_.

Vanbrugh born.

1665. Bunyan's _Grace Abounding_.

1667. _Paradise Lost._ Dryden's _Annus Mirabilis_.

Dryden's _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_.

Cowley died.

Swift born.

1669. Pepys discontinues his _Diary_.

1670. Dryden made Poet Laureate.

Walton's _Lives_ collected.

Congreve born.

1671. _Paradise Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_.

_The Rehearsal._ 1672. Wycherley begins to write for the stage.

Addison born.

Steele born.

1674. Milton died.

1676. Barclay's _Apology_.

Hoadly born.

1677. Barrow died.

1678. _Pilgrim's Progress_, first part.

Cudworth's _Intellectual System_.

_Hudibras_, third part.

Dryden's _All for Love_.

Farquhar born.

Marvell died.

1679. Burnet's _History of the Reformation in England_.

1680. Bunyan's _Life and Death of Mr. Badman_.

Otway's _Orphan_.

Butler died.

1681. _Absalom and Achitophel_, first part.

Thomas Burnet's _Sacred Theory of the Earth_.

1682. _The Medal._ _Absalom and Achitophel_, second part.

_Religio Laici._ Otway's _Venice Preserved_.

Bunyan's _Holy War_.

1683. Izaak Walton died.

Oldham died.