English Literature Part 19

The number of his works is almost incredible when one thinks of his busy life as a preacher and the slowness of manual writing. In all, he left nearly one hundred and seventy different works, which if collected would make fifty or sixty volumes. As he wrote chiefly to influence men on the immediate questions of the day, most of this work has fallen into oblivion.

His two most famous books are _The Saints' Everlasting Rest_ and _A Call to the Unconverted_, both of which were exceedingly popular, running through scores of successive editions, and have been widely read in our own generation.

IZAAK WALTON (1593-1683). Walton was a small tradesman of London, who preferred trout brooks and good reading to the profits of business and the doubtful joys of a city life; so at fifty years, when he had saved a little money, he left the city and followed his heart out into the country. He began his literary work, or rather his recreation, by writing his famous _Lives_,--kindly and readable appreciations of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert, and Sanderson, which stand at the beginning of modern biographical writing.

In 1653 appeared _The Compleat Angler_, which has grown steadily in appreciation, and which is probably more widely read than any other book on the subject of fis.h.i.+ng. It begins with a conversation between a falconer, a hunter, and an angler; but the angler soon does most of the talking, as fishermen sometimes do; the hunter becomes a disciple, and learns by the easy method of hearing the fisherman discourse about his art. The conversations, it must be confessed, are often diffuse and pedantic; but they only make us feel most comfortably sleepy, as one invariably feels after a good day's fis.h.i.+ng. So kindly is the spirit of the angler, so exquisite his appreciation of the beauty of the earth and sky, that one returns to the book, as to a favorite trout stream, with the undying expectation of catching something. Among a thousand books on angling it stands almost alone in possessing a charming style, and so it will probably be read as long as men go fis.h.i.+ng. Best of all, it leads to a better appreciation of nature, and it drops little moral lessons into the reader's mind as gently as one casts a fly to a wary trout; so that one never suspects his better nature is being angled for. Though we have sometimes seen anglers catch more than they need, or sneak ahead of brother fishermen to the best pools, we are glad, for Walton's sake, to overlook such unaccountable exceptions, and agree with the milkmaid that "we love all anglers, they be such honest, civil, quiet men."

SUMMARY OF THE PURITAN PERIOD. The half century between 1625 and 1675 is called the Puritan period for two reasons: first, because Puritan standards prevailed for a time in England; and second, because the greatest literary figure during all these years was the Puritan, John Milton. Historically the age was one of tremendous conflict. The Puritan struggled for righteousness and liberty, and because he prevailed, the age is one of moral and political revolution. In his struggle for liberty the Puritan overthrew the corrupt monarchy, beheaded Charles I, and established the Commonwealth under Cromwell. The Commonwealth lasted but a few years, and the restoration of Charles II in 1660 is often put as the end of the Puritan period. The age has no distinct limits, but overlaps the Elizabethan period on one side, and the Restoration period on the other.

The age produced many writers, a few immortal books, and one of the world's great literary leaders. The literature of the age is extremely diverse in character, and the diversity is due to the breaking up of the ideals of political and religious unity. This literature differs from that of the preceding age in three marked ways: (1) It has no unity of spirit, as in the days of Elizabeth, resulting from the patriotic enthusiasm of all cla.s.ses. (2) In contrast with the hopefulness and vigor of Elizabethan writings, much of the literature of this period is somber in character; it saddens rather than inspires us. (3) It has lost the romantic impulse of youth, and become critical and intellectual; it makes us think, rather than feel deeply.

In our study we have noted (1) the Transition Poets, of whom Daniel is chief; (2) the Song Writers, Campion and Breton; (3) the Spenserian Poets, Wither and Giles Fletcher; (4) the Metaphysical Poets, Donne and Herbert; (5) the Cavalier Poets, Herrick, Carew, Lovelace, and Suckling; (6) John Milton, his life, his early or Horton poems, his militant prose, and his last great poetical works; (7) John Bunyan, his extraordinary life, and his chief work, _The Pilgrim's Progress;_ (8) the Minor Prose Writers, Burton, Browne, Fuller, Taylor, Baxter, and Walton. Three books selected from this group are Browne's _Religio Medici_, Taylor's _Holy Living and Dying_, and Walton's _Complete Angler_.

SELECTIONS FOR READING. _Milton_. Paradise Lost, books 1-2, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, Lycidas, and selected Sonnets,--all in Standard English Cla.s.sics; same poems, more or less complete, in various other series; Areopagitica and Treatise on Education, selections, in Manly's English Prose, or Areopagitica in Arber's English Reprints, Clarendon Press Series, Morley's Universal Library, etc.

_Minor Poets_. Selections from Herrick, edited by Hale, in Athenaeum Press Series; selections from Herrick, Lovelace, Donne, Herbert, etc., in Manly's English Poetry, Golden Treasury, Oxford Book of English Verse, etc.; Vaughan's Silex Scintillans, in Temple Cla.s.sics, also in the Aldine Series; Herbert's The Temple, in Everyman's Library, Temple Cla.s.sics, etc.

_Bunyan_. The Pilgrim's Progress, in Standard English Cla.s.sics, Pocket Cla.s.sics, etc.; Grace Abounding, in Ca.s.sell's National Library.

_Minor Prose Writers_. Wentworth's Selections from Jeremy Taylor; Browne's Religio Medici, Walton's Complete Angler, both in Everyman's Library, Temple Cla.s.sics, etc.; selections from Taylor, Browne, and Walton in Manly's English Prose, also in Garnett's English Prose.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.[170]

_HISTORY_. _Text-book_, Montgomery, pp. 238-257; Cheyney, pp. 431-464; Green, ch. 8; Traill; Gardiner.

_Special Works_. Wakeling's King and Parliament (Oxford Manuals); Gardiner's The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution; Tulloch's English Puritanism and its Leaders; Lives of Cromwell by Harrison, by Church, and by Morley; Carlyle's Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches.

_LITERATURE_. Saintsbury's Elizabethan Literature (extends to 1660); Masterman's The Age of Milton; Dowden's Puritan and Anglican.

_Milton_. Texts, Poetical Works, Globe edition, edited by Ma.s.son; Cambridge Poets edition, edited by Moody; English Prose Writings, edited by Morley, in Carisbrooke Library; also in Bohn's Standard Library.

Ma.s.son's Life of John Milton (8 vols.); Life, by Garnett, by Pattison (English Men of Letters). Raleigh's Milton; Trent's John Milton; Corson's Introduction to Milton; Brooke's Milton, in Student's Library; Macaulay's Milton; Lowell's Essays, in Among My Books, and in Latest Literary Essays; M. Arnold's Essay, in Essays in Criticism; Dowden's Essay, in Puritan and Anglican.

_Cavalier Poets_. Sch.e.l.ling's Seventeenth Century Lyrics, in Athenaeum Press Series; Cavalier and Courtier Lyrists, in Canterbury Poets Series; Gosse's Jacobean Poets; Lovelace, etc., in Library of Old Authors.

_Donne_. Poems, in Muses' Library; Life, in Walton's Lives, in Temple Cla.s.sics, and in Morley's Universal Library; Life, by Gosse; Jessup's John Donne; Dowden's Essay, in New Studies; Stephen's Studies of a Biographer, vol. 3.

_Herbert_. Palmer's George Herbert; Poems and Prose Selections, edited by Rhys, in Canterbury Poets; Dowden's Essay, in Puritan and Anglican.

_Bunyan_. Brown's John Bunyan, His Life, Times, and Works; Life, by Venables, and by Froude (English Men of Letters); Essays by Macaulay, by Dowden, _supra_, and by Woodberry, in Makers of Literature.

_Jeremy Taylor_. Holy Living, Holy Dying, in Temple Cla.s.sics, and in Bohn's Standard Library; Selections, edited by Wentworth; Life, by Heber, and by Gosse (English Men of Letters); Dowden's Essay, _supra_.

_Thomas Browne_. Works, edited by Wilkin; the same, in Temple Cla.s.sics, and in Bohn's Library; Religio Medici, in Everyman's Library; essay by Pater, in Appreciations; by Dowden, _supra;_ and by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library; Life, by Gosse (English Men of Letters).

_Izaak Walton_. Works, in Temple Cla.s.sics, Ca.s.sell's Library, and Morley's Library; Introduction, in A. Lang's Walton's Complete Angler; Lowell's Essay, in Latest Literary Essays.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS. 1. What is meant by the Puritan period? What were the objects and the results of the Puritan movement in English history?

2. What are the main characteristics of the literature of this period?

Compare it with Elizabethan literature. How did religion and politics affect Puritan literature? Can you quote any pa.s.sages or name any works which justify your opinion?

3. What is meant by the terms Cavalier poets, Spenserian poets, Metaphysical poets? Name the chief writers of each group. To whom are we indebted for our first English hymn book? Would you call this a work of literature? Why?

4. What are the qualities of Herrick's poetry? What marked contrasts are found in Herrick and in nearly all the poets of this period?

5. Who was George Herbert? For what purpose did he write? What qualities are found in his poetry?

6. Tell briefly the story of Milton's life. What are the three periods of his literary work? What is meant by the Horton poems? Compare "L'Allegro"

and "Il Penseroso." Are there any Puritan ideals in "Comus"? Why is "Lycidas" often put at the summit of English lyrical poetry? Give the main idea or argument of _Paradise Lost_. What are the chief qualities of the poem? Describe in outline _Paradise Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_. What personal element entered into the latter? What quality strikes you most forcibly in Milton's poetry? What occasioned Milton's prose works? Do they properly belong to literature? Why? Compare Milton and Shakespsare with regard to (1) knowledge of men, (2) ideals of life, (3) purpose in writing.

7. Tell the story of Bunyan's life. What unusual elements are found in his life and writings? Give the main argument of _The Pilgrim's Progress_. If you read the story before studying literature, tell why you liked or disliked it. Why is it a work for all ages and for all races? What are the chief qualities of Bunyan's style?

8. Who are the minor prose writers of this age? Name the chief works of Jeremy Taylor, Thomas Browne, and Izaak Walton. Can you describe from your own reading any of these works? How does the prose of this age compare in interest with the poetry? (Milton is, of course, excepted in this comparison.)

CHRONOLOGY _Seventeenth Century_ ===================================================================== HISTORY | LITERATURE --------------------------------------------------------------------- | 1621. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy | | 1623. Wither's Hymn Book | 1625. Charles I | Parliament dissolved | | 1628. Pet.i.tion of Right | 1629. Milton's Ode on the Nativity | 1630-1640. King rules without | Parliament. Puritan migration | to New England | 1630-1633. Herbert's poems | | 1632-1637. Milton's Horton poems | 1640. Long Parliament | | 1642. Civil War begins | 1642. Browne's Religio Medici | 1643. Scotch Covenant | | 1643. Press censors.h.i.+p | 1644. Milton's Areopagitica | 1645. Battle of Naseby; | triumph of Puritans | | 1649. Execution of Charles I. | Cavalier migration to Virginia | | 1649-1660. Commonwealth | 1649. Milton's Tenure of Kings | | 1650. Baxter's Saints' Rest.

| Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living | | 1651. Hobbes's Leviathan | 1653-1658. Cromwell, Protector | 1653. Walton's Complete Angler | 1658-1660. Richard Cromwell | | 1660. Restoration of Charles II | 1663-1694. Dryden's dramas | (next chapter) | | 1666. Bunyan's Grace Abounding | | 1667. Paradise Lost | | 1674. Death of Milton | | 1678. Pilgrim's Progress published | (written earlier) =====================================================================

CHAPTER VIII

PERIOD OF THE RESTORATION (1660-1700)

THE AGE OF FRENCH INFLUENCE

HISTORY OF THE PERIOD. It seems a curious contradiction, at first glance, to place the return of Charles II at the beginning of modern England, as our historians are wont to do; for there was never a time when the progress of liberty, which history records, was more plainly turned backwards. The Puritan regime had been too severe; it had repressed too many natural pleasures. Now, released from restraint, society abandoned the decencies of life and the reverence for law itself, and plunged into excesses more unnatural than had been the restraints of Puritanism. The inevitable effect of excess is disease, and for almost an entire generation following the Restoration, in 1660, England lay sick of a fever. Socially, politically, morally, London suggests an Italian city in the days of the Medici; and its literature, especially its drama, often seems more like the delirium of illness than the expression of a healthy mind. But even a fever has its advantages. Whatever impurity is in the blood "is burnt and purged away,"

and a man rises from fever with a new strength and a new idea of the value of life, like King Hezekiah, who after his sickness and fear of death resolved to "go softly" all his days. The Restoration was the great crisis in English history; and that England lived through it was due solely to the strength and excellence of that Puritanism which she thought she had flung to the winds when she welcomed back a vicious monarch at Dover. The chief lesson of the Restoration was this,--that it showed by awful contrast the necessity of truth and honesty, and of a strong government of free men, for which the Puritan had stood like a rock in every hour of his rugged history. Through fever, England came slowly back to health; through gross corruption in society and in the state England learned that her people were at heart sober, sincere, religious folk, and that their character was naturally too strong to follow after pleasure and be satisfied. So Puritanism suddenly gained all that it had struggled for, and gained it even in the hour when all seemed lost, when Milton in his sorrow unconsciously portrayed the government of Charles and his Cabal in that tremendous scene of the council of the infernal peers in Pandemonium, plotting the ruin of the world.

Of the king and his followers it is difficult to write temperately. Most of the dramatic literature of the time is atrocious, and we can understand it only as we remember the character of the court and society for which it was written. Unspeakably vile in his private life, the king had no redeeming patriotism, no sense of responsibility to his country for even his public acts. He gave high offices to blackguards, stole from the exchequer like a common thief, played off Catholics and Protestants against each other, disregarding his pledges to both alike, broke his solemn treaty with the Dutch and with his own ministers, and betrayed his country for French money to spend on his own pleasures. It is useless to paint the dishonor of a court which followed gayly after such a leader. The first Parliament, while it contained some n.o.ble and patriotic members, was dominated by young men who remembered the excess of Puritan zeal, but forgot the despotism and injustice which had compelled Puritanism to stand up and a.s.sert the manhood of England. These young politicians vied with the king in pa.s.sing laws for the subjugation of Church and State, and in their thirst for revenge upon all who had been connected with Cromwell's iron government. Once more a wretched formalism--that perpetual danger to the English Church--came to the front and exercised authority over the free churches. The House of Lords was largely increased by the creation of hereditary t.i.tles and estates for ign.o.ble men and shameless women who had flattered the king's vanity. Even the Bench, that last strong refuge of English justice, was corrupted by the appointment of judges, like the brutal Jeffreys, whose aim, like that of their royal master, was to get money and to exercise power without personal responsibility. Amid all this dishonor the foreign influence and authority of Cromwell's strong government vanished like smoke. The valiant little Dutch navy swept the English fleet from the sea, and only the thunder of Dutch guns in the Thames, under the very windows of London, awoke the nation to the realization of how low it had fallen.

Two considerations must modify our judgment of this disheartening spectacle. First, the king and his court are not England. Though our histories are largely filled with the records of kings and soldiers, of intrigues and fighting, these no more express the real life of a people than fever and delirium express a normal manhood. Though king and court and high society arouse our disgust or pity, records are not wanting to show that private life in England remained honest and pure even in the worst days of the Restoration. While London society might be entertained by the degenerate poetry of Rochester and the dramas of Dryden and Wycherley, English scholars hailed Milton with delight; and the common people followed Bunyan and Baxter with their tremendous appeal to righteousness and liberty. Second, the king, with all his pretensions to divine right, remained only a figurehead; and the Anglo-Saxon people, when they tire of one figurehead, have always the will and the power to throw it overboard and choose a better one. The country was divided into two political parties: the Whigs, who sought to limit the royal power in the interests of Parliament and the people; and the Tories, who strove to check the growing power of the people in the interests of their hereditary rulers. Both parties, however, were largely devoted to the Anglican Church; and when James II, after four years of misrule, attempted to establish a national Catholicism by intrigues which aroused the protest of the Pope[171] as well as of Parliament, then Whigs and Tories, Catholics and Protestants, united in England's last great revolution.

The complete and bloodless Revolution of 1688, which called William of Orange to the throne, was simply the indication of England's restored health and sanity. It proclaimed that she had not long forgotten, and could never again forget, the lesson taught her by Puritanism in its hundred years of struggle and sacrifice. Modern England was firmly established by the Revolution, which was brought about by the excesses of the Restoration.

LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS. In the literature of the Restoration we note a sudden breaking away from old standards, just as society broke away from the restraints of Puritanism. Many of the literary men had been driven out of England with Charles and his court, or else had followed their patrons into exile in the days of the Commonwealth. On their return they renounced old ideals and demanded that English poetry and drama should follow the style to which they had become accustomed in the gayety of Paris. We read with astonishment in Pepys's _Diary_ (1660-1669) that he has been to see a play called _Midsummer Night's Dream_, but that he will never go again to hear Shakespeare, "for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life." And again we read in the diary of Evelyn,--another writer who reflects with wonderful accuracy the life and spirit of the Restoration,--"I saw _Hamlet_ played; but now the old plays begin to disgust this refined age, since his Majesty's being so long abroad." Since Shakespeare and the Elizabethans were no longer interesting, literary men began to imitate the French writers, with whose works they had just grown familiar; and here begins the so-called period of French influence, which shows itself in English literature for the next century, instead of the Italian influence which had been dominant since Spenser and the Elizabethans.

One has only to consider for a moment the French writers of this period, Pascal, Bossuet, Fenelon, Malherbe, Corneille, Racine, Moliere,--all that brilliant company which makes the reign of Louis XIV the Elizabethan Age of French literature,--to see how far astray the early writers of the Restoration went in their wretched imitation. When a man takes another for his model, he should copy virtues not vices; but unfortunately many English writers reversed the rule, copying the vices of French comedy without any of its wit or delicacy or abundant ideas. The poems of Rochester, the plays of Dryden, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, all popular in their day, are mostly unreadable. Milton's "sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine," is a good expression of the vile character of the court writers and of the London theaters for thirty years following the Restoration. Such work can never satisfy a people, and when Jeremy Collier,[172] in 1698, published a vigorous attack upon the evil plays and the playwrights of the day, all London, tired of the coa.r.s.eness and excesses of the Restoration, joined the literary revolution, and the corrupt drama was driven from the stage.

With the final rejection of the Restoration drama we reach a crisis in the history of our literature. The old Elizabethan spirit, with its patriotism, its creative vigor, its love of romance, and the Puritan spirit with its moral earnestness and individualism, were both things of the past; and at first there was nothing to take their places. Dryden, the greatest writer of the age, voiced a general complaint when he said that in his prose and poetry he was "drawing the outlines" of a new art, but had no teacher to instruct him. But literature is a progressive art, and soon the writers of the age developed two marked tendencies of their own,--the tendency to realism, and the tendency to that preciseness and elegance of expression which marks our literature for the next hundred years.

In realism--that is, the representation of men exactly as they are, the expression of the plain, unvarnished truth without regard to ideals or romance--the tendency was at first thoroughly bad. The early Restoration writers sought to paint realistic pictures of a corrupt court and society, and, as we have suggested, they emphasized vices rather than virtues, and gave us coa.r.s.e, low plays without interest or moral significance. Like Hobbes, they saw only the externals of man, his body and appet.i.tes, not his soul and its ideals; and so, like most realists, they resemble a man lost in the woods, who wanders aimlessly around in circles, seeing the confusing trees but never the whole forest, and who seldom thinks of climbing the nearest high hill to get his bearings. Later, however, this tendency to realism became more wholesome. While it neglected romantic poetry, in which youth is eternally interested, it led to a keener study of the practical motives which govern human action.

The second tendency of the age was toward directness and simplicity of expression, and to this excellent tendency our literature is greatly indebted. In both the Elizabethan and the Puritan ages the general tendency of writers was towards extravagance of thought and language. Sentences were often involved, and loaded with Latin quotations and cla.s.sical allusions.

The Restoration writers opposed this vigorously. From France they brought back the tendency to regard established rules for writing, to emphasize close reasoning rather than romantic fancy, and to use short, clean-cut sentences without an unnecessary word. We see this French influence in the Royal Society,[173] which had for one of its objects the reform of English prose by getting rid of its "swellings of style," and which bound all its members to use "a close, naked, natural way of speaking ... as near to mathematical plainness as they can." Dryden accepted this excellent rule for his prose, and adopted the heroic couplet, as the next best thing, for the greater part of his poetry. As he tells us himself: