English Literature
science? Can you explain what is meant by the inductive method of learning?
What subjects are considered in Bacon's _Essays_? What is the central idea
of the essay you like best? What are the literary qualities of these
essays? Do they appeal to the intellect or the emotions? What is meant by
the word "essay," and how does Bacon illustrate the definition? Make a
comparison between Bacon's essays and those of some more recent writer,
such as Addison, Lamb, Carlyle, Emerson, or Stevenson, having in mind the
subjects, style, and interest of both essayists.
11. Who are the minor prose writers of the Elizabethan Age? What did they
write? Comment upon any work of theirs which you have read. What is the
literary value of North's Plutarch? What is the chief defect in Elizabethan
prose as a whole? What is meant by euphuism? Explain why Elizabethan poetry
is superior to the prose.
CHRONOLOGY
_Last Half of the Sixteenth and First Half of the Seventeenth Centuries_
============================================================================
HISTORY | LITERATURE
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
1558. Elizabeth (_d_. 1603) | 1559. John Knox in Edinburgh
| 1562(?). Gammer Gurton's Needle.
| Gorboduc
| 1564. Birth of Shakespeare
1571. Rise of English Puritans | 1576. First Theater
1577. Drake's Voyage around the | 1579. Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar.
World | Lyly's Euphues. North's Plutarch.
|
| 1587. Shakespeare in London. Marlowe's
| Tamburlaine
|
1588. Defeat of the Armada |
|
| 1590. Spenser's Faery Queen. Sidney's
| Arcadia
|
| 1590-1595. Shakespeare's Early Plays
|
| 1597-1625. Bacon's Essays
|
| 1598-1614. Chapman's Homer
|
| 1598. Ben Jonson's Every Man in His
| Humour
|
| 1600-1607. Shakespeare's Tragedies
|
1603. James I (_d_. 1625) |
|
1604. Divine Right of Kings | 1605. Bacon's Advancement of Learning
proclaimed |
|
1607. Settlement at Jamestown, | 1608. Birth of Milton
Virginia |
|
| 1611. Translation (King James Version)
| of Bible
|
| 1614. Raleigh's History
|
| 1616. Death of Shakespeare
|
1620. Pilgrim Fathers at | 1620-1642. Shakespeare's successors.
Plymouth | End of drama
|
| 1620. Bacon's Novum Organum
|
| 1622. First regular newspaper, The
| Weekly News
|
1625. Charles I | 1626. Death of Bacon
============================================================================
* * * * *
CHAPTER VII
THE PURITAN AGE (1620-1660)
I. HISTORICAL SUMMARY
THE PURITAN MOVEMENT. In its broadest sense the Puritan movement may be
regarded as a second and greater Renaissance, a rebirth of the moral nature
of man following the intellectual awakening of Europe in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. In Italy, whose influence had been uppermost in
Elizabethan literature, the Renaissance had been essentially pagan and
sensuous. It had hardly touched the moral nature of man, and it brought
little relief from the despotism of rulers. One can hardly read the
horrible records of the Medici or the Borgias, or the political
observations of Machiavelli, without marveling at the moral and political
degradation of a cultured nation. In the North, especially among the German
and English peoples, the Renaissance was accompanied by a moral awakening,
and it is precisely that awakening in England, "that greatest moral and
political reform which ever swept over a nation in the short space of half
a century," which is meant by the Puritan movement. We shall understand it
better if we remember that it had two chief objects: the first was personal
righteousness; the second was civil and religious liberty. In other words,
it aimed to make men honest and to make them free.
Such a movement should be cleared of all the misconceptions which have
clung to it since the Restoration, when the very name of Puritan was made
ridiculous by the jeers of the gay courtiers of Charles II. Though the
spirit of the movement was profoundly religious, the Puritans were not a
religious sect; neither was the Puritan a narrow-minded and gloomy
dogmatist, as he is still pictured even in the histories. Pym and Hampden
and Eliot and Milton were Puritans; and in the long struggle for human
liberty there are few names more honored by freemen everywhere. Cromwell
and Thomas Hooker were Puritans; yet Cromwell stood like a rock for
religious tolerance; and Thomas Hooker, in Connecticut, gave to the world
the first written constitution, in which freemen, before electing their
officers, laid down the strict limits of the offices to which they were
elected. That is a Puritan document, and it marks one of the greatest
achievements in the history of government.
From a religious view point Puritanism included all shades of belief. The
name was first given to those who advocated certain changes in the form of
worship of the reformed English Church under Elizabeth; but as the ideal of
liberty rose in men's minds, and opposed to it were the king and his evil
counselors and the band of intolerant churchmen of whom Laud is the great
example, then Puritanism became a great national movement. It included
English churchmen as well as extreme Separatists, Calvinists, Covenanters,
Catholic noblemen,--all bound together in resistance to despotism in Church
and State, and with a passion for liberty and righteousness such as the
world has never since seen. Naturally such a movement had its extremes and
excesses, and it is from a few zealots and fanatics that most of our
misconceptions about the Puritans arise. Life was stern in those days, too
stern perhaps, and the intensity of the struggle against despotism made men
narrow and hard. In the triumph of Puritanism under Cromwell severe laws
were passed, many simple pleasures were forbidden, and an austere standard
of living was forced upon an unwilling people. So the criticism is made
that the wild outbreak of immorality which followed the restoration of
Charles was partly due to the unnatural restrictions of the Puritan era.
The criticism is just; but we must not forget the whole spirit of the
movement. That the Puritan prohibited Maypole dancing and horse racing is
of small consequence beside the fact that he fought for liberty and
justice, that he overthrew despotism and made a man's life and property
safe from the tyranny of rulers. A great river is not judged by the foam on
its surface, and certain austere laws and doctrines which we have ridiculed
are but froth on the surface of the mighty Puritan current that has flowed
steadily, like a river of life, through English and American history since
the Age of Elizabeth.
CHANGING IDEALS. The political upheaval of the period is summed up in the
terrible struggle between the king and Parliament, which resulted in the
death of Charles at the block and the establishment of the Commonwealth
under Cromwell. For centuries the English people had been wonderfully loyal
to their sovereigns; but deeper than their loyalty to kings was the old
Saxon love for personal liberty. At times, as in the days of Alfred and
Elizabeth, the two ideals went hand in hand; but more often they were in
open strife, and a final struggle for supremacy was inevitable. The crisis
came when James I, who had received the right of royalty from an act of
Parliament, began, by the assumption of "divine right," to ignore the
Parliament which had created him. Of the civil war which followed in the
reign of Charles I, and of the triumph of English freedom, it is
unnecessary to write here. The blasphemy of a man's divine right to rule
his fellow-men was ended. Modern England began with the charge of
Cromwell's brigade of Puritans at Naseby.
Religiously the age was one of even greater ferment than that which marked
the beginning of the Reformation. A great ideal, the ideal of a national
church, was pounding to pieces, like a ship in the breakers, and in the
confusion of such an hour the action of the various sects was like that of
frantic passengers, each striving to save his possessions from the wreck.
The Catholic church, as its name implies, has always held true to the ideal
of a united church, a church which, like the great Roman government of the
early centuries, can bring the splendor and authority of Rome to bear upon
the humblest village church to the farthest ends of the earth. For a time
that mighty ideal dazzled the German and English reformers; but the
possibility of a united Protestant church perished with Elizabeth. Then,
instead of the world-wide church which was the ideal of Catholicism, came
the ideal of a purely national Protestantism. This was the ideal of Laud
and the reactionary bishops, no less than of the scholarly Richard Hooker,
of the rugged Scotch Covenanters, and of the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay.
It is intensely interesting to note that Charles called Irish rebels and
Scotch Highlanders to his aid by promising to restore their national
religions; and that the English Puritans, turning to Scotland for help,
entered into the solemn Covenant of 1643, establishing a national
Presbyterianism, whose object was:
To bring the churches of God in the three kingdoms to uniformity in
religion and government, to preserve the rights of Parliament and the
liberties of the Kingdom; ... that we and our posterity may as brethren
live in faith and love, and the Lord may delight to live in the midst of
us.
In this famous Covenant we see the national, the ecclesiastical, and the
personal dream of Puritanism, side by side, in all their grandeur and
simplicity.
Years passed, years of bitter struggle and heartache, before the
impossibility of uniting the various Protestant sects was generally
recognized. The ideal of a national church died hard, and to its death is
due all the religious unrest of the period. Only as we remember the
national ideal, and the struggle which it caused, can we understand the
amazing life and work of Bunyan, or appreciate the heroic spirit of the
American colonists who left home for a wilderness in order to give the new
ideal of a free church in a free state its practical demonstration.