English Literature
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 Classics, also in the Aldine Series;
Herbert's The Temple, in Everyman's Library, Temple Classics, etc.
_Bunyan_. The Pilgrim's Progress, in Standard English Classics, Pocket
Classics, etc.; Grace Abounding, in Cassell'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 Classics, 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 Masson; Cambridge
Poets edition, edited by Moody; English Prose Writings, edited by Morley,
in Carisbrooke Library; also in Bohn's Standard Library.
Masson'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_. Schelling'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
Classics, 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 Classics, 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 Classics, 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 Classics, Cassell'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 passages 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. Petition 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 censorship | 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 régime 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 noble 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 assert the manhood
of England. These young politicians vied with the king in passing laws for
the subjugation of Church and State, and in their thirst for revenge upon