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HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.

BOOK III.

THE CLASSIC AGE.

CHAPTER I.

The Restoration.

I. THE ROISTERERS.

WHEN we alternately look at the works of the court painters of Charles I. and Charles II., and pass from the noble portraits of Van Dyck to the figures of Lely, the fall is sudden and great; we have left a palace, and we light on a bagnio.

1

Instead of the proud and dignified lords, at once cavaliers and courtiers, instead of those high-born yet simple ladies who look at the same time princesses and modest maidens, instead of that generous and heroic company, elegant and resplendent, in whom the spirit of the Renaissance yet survived, but who already displayed the refine ment of the modern age, we are confronted by perilous and importunate courtesans, with an expression either vile or harsh, incapable of shame or of remorse. Their plump smooth hands toy fondlingly with dimpled fingers; ringlets of heavy hair fall on their bare shoulders; their swimming eyes lan

* See especially the portraits of Lady Morland, Lady Williams, the countess of Ossory the Duchess of Cleveland, Lady Price, and many others.

guish voluptuously; an insipid smile havers on their sensual lips. One is lifting a mass of dishevelled hair which streams over the curves of her rosy flesh; another falls down with languor, and uncloses a sleeve whose soft folds display the full whiteness of her aims. Nearly all are half-draped; many of them seem to be just rising from their beds; the rumpled dressing-gown clings to the neck, and looks as though it were soiled by a night's debauch; the tumbled under-garment slips down to the hips: their feet tread the bright and glossy silk. With bosoms uncov ered, they are decked out in all the lux urious extravagance of prostitutes; diamond girdles, puffs of lace, the vulgar splendor of gilding, a superfluity of embroidered and rustling fabrics, enor mous head-dresses, the cus and fringes of which rolled up and sticking out, compel notice by the very height of their shameless magnificence. Folding curtains hang round them in the shape of an alcove, and the eyes penetrate through a vista into the recesses of a wide park, whose solitude will not ill serve the purpose of their pleasures

I.

All this came by way of contrast; Puritanism had brought on an orgie (309)

and fanatics had talked down virtue. | them; they saw in them the agency of a supernatural power, and gave themselves up to it with the enthusiasm of madness and the stubbornness of faith.

To crown all, fanaticism had become an institution; the sectary had laid down all the steps cf mental transfig. uration, and reduced the encroachment of his dream to a theory: he set about methodically to drive out reason and enthrone ecstasy. George Fox wro its history, Bunyan gave it its laws Parliament presented an example of it, all the pulpits lauded its practice. Ar tisans, soldiers, women discussed it, mastered it, excited one another by the details of their experience and the publicity of the exaltations. A new life was inaugurated which had blighted and excluded the old. All secular tastes were suppressed, all sensual joys forbidden; the spiritual man alone remained standing upon the ruins of the past, and the heart, debarred from all its natural safety-valves, could only direct its views or aspirations towards a sinister Deity. The typica. Puritan walked slowly along the streets, his eyes raised towards heaven, with elongated features, yellow and haggard, with closely cropt nair, clad in brown or black, unadorned, clothed only to cover his nakedness. If a man had round cheeks, he passed for lukewarm.* The whole body, the exterior, the very tone of voice, all must wear the sign of penitence and divine grace. A Pu

For many years the gloomy English imagination, possessed by religious terrors, had desolated the life of men. Conscience had become disturbed at the thought of death and dark eternity; half-expressed doubts stealthily swarmed within like a bed of thorns, and the sick heart, starting at every motion, had ended by taking a disgust at all its pleasures, and abhorred all its natural instincts. Thus poisoned at its very beginning, the divine sentiment of justice became a mournful madness. Man, confessedly perverse and condemned, believed himself pent in a prison-house of perdition and vice, into which no effort and no chance could dart a ray of light, except a hand from above should come by free grace, to rend the sealed stone of this tomb. Men lived the life of the condemned, Amid torments and anguish, oppressed by a gloomy despair, haunted by spectres. People would frequently imagine themselves at the point of death; Cromwell himself, according to Dr. Simcott, physician in Huntingdon, "had fancies about the Town Cross; "* some would feel within them the motions of an evil spirit; one and all passed the night with their eyes glued to the tales of blood and the impassioned appeals of the Old Testament, listening to the threats and thunders of a terrible God, and renewing in their own hearts the ferocity of murderers and the exaltation of seers. Under such a strain reason gradual-ritan spoke slowly, with a solemn and ly left them. They continually were somewhat nasal tone of voice, as if to seeking after the Lord, and found but destroy the vivacity of conversation a dream. After long hours of exhaus- and the melody of the natural voice. tion, they labored under a warped and His speech stuffed with scriptural quoover-wrought imagination. Dazzling tations, his style borrowed from the forms, unwonted ideas, sprang up on prophets, his name and the names of a sudden ir neir heated brain; these his children drawn from the Bible, bore men were raised and penetrated by ex-witness that his thoughts were confed traordinary emotions. So transformed, to the terrible world of the seers and they knew themselves no longer; they ministers of divine vengeance. From did not ascribe to themselves these within, the contagion spread outwards. violent and sudden inspirations which The fears of conscience were converted were forced upon them, which compell-into laws of the state. Personal ascetied them to leave the beaten tracks, which had no connection one with another, which shook and enlightened them when least expected, without being able either to check or to govern

Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, ed. by Carlyle. 1866, i. 39.-TR.

cism grew into public tyranny. The Puritan proscribed pleasure as an ene my, for others as well as for himself Parliament closed the gambling houses

* Colonel Hutchinson was at one time held in suspicion because he wore long hair and dressed well.

II.

and theatres, and had the actors whip- | It seemed as though a black cloud had ped at the cart's tail; oaths were fined; weighed down the life of man, drownthe May-trees were cut down; the ing all light, wiping out all beauty, ex bears, whose fights amused the people, tinguishing all joy, pierced here and were put to death; the plaster of Puri- there by the glitter of the sword and tan masors reduced nude statues to de- by the flickering of torches, beneath cency; the beautiful poetic festivals which one might perceive the indistinct were forbidden. Fines and corporal forms of gloomy despots, of bilious punishments shut out, even from chil- sectarians, of silent victims. dren, games, dancing, bell-ringing, rejoicings, junketings, wrestling, the chase, all exercises and amusements which might profane the Sabbath. The ornanents, pictures, and statues in the churches were pulled down or mutila.ed. The only pleasure which they retained and permitted was the singing of psalms through the nose, the edification of long sermons, the excitement of acrimonious controversies, the harsh and sombre joy of a victory gained over the enemy of mankind, and of the tyranny exercised against the demon's supposed abettors. In Scotland, a colder and sterner land, intolerance reached the utmost limits of ferocity and pettiness, instituting a surveillance over the private life and home devotions of every member of a family, depriving Catholics of their children, imposing the abjuration of Popery under pain of perpetual imprisonment or death, dragging crowds of witches* to the stake.t

1648; thirty in one day. One of them confessed that she had been at a gathering of more than five hundred witches.

+ In 1652, the kirk-session of Glasgow "brot boyes and servants before them, for breaking the sabbath, and other faults. They had clandestine censors, and gave money to some for this end."-Note 28, taken from Wodrow's Analecta; Buckle, History of Civilization in England, 3 vols. 1867, iii. 208.

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Even early in the eighteenth century, most popular divines in Scotland affirmed that Satan "frequently appears clothed in a corporeal substance."-Ibid. iii. 233, note 76, aken from Memoirs of C. L. Lewes.

"No husband shall kiss his wife, and no mother shall kiss her child on the Sabbath day." -Note 135. Ibid. iii. 253; from Rev. C. J. Lyon's St. Andrews, vol. i. 458, with regard to government of a colony. It would have been satisfactory if Mr. Lyon had given his authority.]-TR.

"(Sept. 22, 1649) The quhilk day the Sessioune caused mak this act, that ther sould be no pypers at brydels," etc.-Ibid. iii. 258, note 153. In 1719, the Presbytery of Edinburgh indignantly declares: "Yea, some have arrived at that height of impiety, as not to be ashamed of washing in waters, and swimming in rivers upon the holy Sabbath."-Note 187. Ibid. iii.

206.

After the Restoration a deliverance ensued. Like a checked and choked up stream, public opinion dashed with all its natural force and all its acquired momentum, into the bed from which The outburst it had been debarred. carried away the dams. The violent return to the senses drowned morality Virtue had the semblance of Puritanism. Duty and fanaticism became mingled in common disrepute. In this great reaction, devotion and honesty, swept away together, left to mankind but the wreck and the mire. The more excellent parts of human nature disappeared; there remained but the animal, without bridle or guide, urged by his desires beyond justice and shame.

When we see these manners through the medium of a Hamilton or a SaintEvremond, we can tolerate them. Their

French varnish deceives us. Debauch-
ery in a Frenchman is only half dis
gusting; with him, if the animal breaks
loose, it is without abandoning itself to
excess. The foundation is not, as with
the Englishman, coarse and powerful.
You may break the glittering ice which
covers him, without bringing down upon
yourself the swollen and muddy torrent
that roars beneath his neighbor ; * the
stream which will issue from it will
only have its petty dribblings, and will
tomed channel.
return quickly and of itself to its accus-
The Frenchman is
mild, naturally refined, little inclined
for great or gross sensuality, liking a

"I think David had never so sweet a time as then, when he was pursued as a partridge by his son Absalom."-Note 190. Gray's Greas and Precious Promises.

See the whole of Chapter iii. vol. iii., in which Buckle has described, by similar quotations, the condition of Scotland. chiefly in the seventeenth century.

*See, in Richardson, Swift, and Fielding, but particularly in Hogarth, the delineation of brutish debauchery.

sober style of talk, easily armed against | main point is gained, since there is filthy manners by his delicacy and good pleasure in getting the money, and taste. The Coun: de Grammont has there is pleasure in spending it. The too much wit to love an orgie. After hateful and the ignoble vanish from all an orgie is not pleasant; the break- such a life. If he pays his court to ing of glasses, brawling, lewd talk, ex- princes, you may be sure it is not on his cess in eating and drinking,—there is knees; so lively a soul is not weighed nothing in this very tempting to a ra- down by respect, his wit places him on ther delicate taste: the Frenchman, | a level with the greatest; under pre after Grammont's type, is born an text of amusing the king, he tells him epicurean, not a glutton or a drunkard. plain truths.* If he finds himself in What he seeks is amusement, not unre- London, surrounded by open debauch strained joy or bestial pleasure. I ery, he does not plunge into it; he know full well that he is not without passes through on tiptoe, and so daintily reproach. I would not trust him with that the mire does not stick to him. my purse, he forgets too readily the We do not recognize any longer in his distinction between meum and tuum; anecdotes the anguish and the brutality above all, I would not trust him with which were really felt at that time; the my wife he is not over-delicate; his narrative flows on quickly, raising a escapades at the gambling-table ard smile, then another, and another yet, so with women smack too much of the that the whole mind is brought by an sharper and the briber. But I am adroit and easy progress to something wrong to use these big words in con- like good humor. At table, Grammont nection with him; they are too weighty, will never stuff himself; at play, he they crush so delicate and so pretty a will never grow violent; with his misspecimen of humanity. These heavy tress, he will never give vent to coarse habits of honor or shame can only be talk; in a duel, he will not hate his worn by serious-minded men, and adversary. The wit of a Frenchman is Grammont takes nothing seriously, nei- like French wine; it makes men nei ther his fellow-men, nor himself, nor ther brutal, nor wicked, nor gloomy. vice, nor virtue. To pass his time Such is the spring of these pleasures: a agreeably is his sole endeavor. "They supper will destroy neither delicacy, had said good-by to dulness in the nor good nature, nor enjoyment. The army," observed Hamilton, as soon libertine remains sociable, polite, oblig. as he was there." That is his pride ing; his gayety culminates only in the and his aim; he troubles himself, and gayety of others; † he is attentive to cares for nothing beside. His valet them as naturally as to himself; and in robs him; another would have brought addition, he is ever on the alert and the rogue to the gallows; but the theft intelligent: repartees, flashes of brilwas clever, and he keeps his rascal. liancy, witticisms, sparkle on his lips; He left England forgetting to marry the he can think at table and in company, girl he was betrothed to; he is caught sometimes better than if alone or fastat Dover; he returns and marries her: ing. It is clear that with him debauch. this was an amusing contre-temps; he ery does not extinguish the man; Gramasks for nothing better. One day, mont would say that it perfects him ; being penniless, he fleeces the Count de that wit, the heart, the senses, only Caméran at play. "Could Grammont, arrive at excellence and true enjoyment, after the figure he had once cut, pack amid the elegance and animation of a off like any common fellow? By no choice supper. means; he is a man of feeling; he will maintain the honor of France." He covers his cheating at play with a joke; in reality, his notions of property are not over-clear. He regales Caméran with Caméran's own money; would Caméran have acted better or otherwise? What matter if his money be in Grammont's purse or his own? The

66

and decide."

The king was playing at backgammon; a Ah, here is Gramdoubtful throw occurs: mont who'll decide for us; Grammont, come "Sire, you have lost." "What: you do not yet know 66 Ah, Sire, if the throw had been merely doubtful, these gentle men would not have failed to say you had

won.

† Hamilton says of Grammont, "He sought out the unfortunate only to suecour them

III.

It is quite the contrary in England. When we scratch the covering of an Englishman's morality, the brute ap pears in its violence and its deformity; One of the English statesmen said that could be led by words of humanity and with the French an unchained mob honor, but that in England it was necessary, in order to appease them, to throw to them raw flesh. Insults, blood, orgie, that is the food on which the mob of noblemen, under Charles II., precipitated itself. All that excuses a carnival was absent; and, in particular, wit. Three years after the return of the king, Butler published his Hudibras; and with what éclat his contemporaries only could tell, while the echo of applause is kept up even to our own days. How low is the wit, with what awkwardness and dulness he dilutes his revengeful satire. Here and there lurks a happy picture, the remnant of a poetry which has just perished; but the whole work reminds one of a Scarron, as unworthy as the other, and more malignant. It is written, people say, on the model of Don Quixote; Hudibras is a Puritan knight, who goes about, like his antitype, redressing wrongs, and pocketing beatings. It would be truer to say that it resembles the wretched imitation of Avellaneda.† The short metre, well suited to buffoonery, hobbles along without rest and limpingly, floundering in the nud which it delights in, as foul and as dull as that of the Enéide Travestie. The description of Hudibras and his horse occupies the best part of a canto; forty lines are taken up by describing his beard, forty more by describing his breeches. Endless scholastic discussions, arguments as long as those of the Puritans, spread

their wastes and briars over half the poem. No action, no simplicity, all is ould-be satire and gross caricature;

This saying sounds strange after the hor rors of the Commune.-TR.

† A Spanish author, who continued and imitated Cervantes' Don Quixote.

A work by Scarron. Hudibras, ed. Z. Grey, 1801, 2 vols., i. canto i. 7. 289, says also:

"For as Æneas bore his sire

Upon his shoulders through the fire,
Our knight did bear no less a pack
Of his own buttocks on his back.

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"His tawny beard was th' equal grace
Both of his wisdom and his face;
In cut and die so like a tile,
A sudden view it would beguile :
The upper part whereof was whey,
The nether orange, mix'd with grey.
This hairy meteor did denounce
The fall of sceptres and of crowns:
With grisly type did represent
Declining age of government,
And tell with hieroglyphic spade

Its own grave and the state's were made." Butler is so well satisfied with his insipid fun, that he prolongs it for a good many lines:

"Like Samson's heart-breakers, it grew
In time to make a nation rue;

Tho' it contributed its own fall,
To wait upon the public downfall.
'Twas bound to suffer persecution
And martyrdom with resolution;
T'oppose itself against the hate
And vengeance of the incens'd state,
In whose defiance it was worn,
Still ready to be pull'd and torn,
With red-hot irons to be tortur'd,
Revil'd, and spit upon, and martyr'd.
Maugre all which, 'twas to stand fast
As long as monarchy should last;
But when the state should hap to reel,
'Twas to submit to fatal steel,
And fall, as it was consecrate,
A sacrifice to fall of state,

Whose thread of life the fatal sisters
Did twist together with its whiskers,
And twine so close, that time should never,
In life or death, their fortunes sever;
But with his rusty sickle mow

Both down together at a blow." ↑

The nonsense increases as we go on Could any one have taken pleasure i humor such as this?—

...

"This sword a dagger had, his page, That was but little for his age; And therefore waited on him so As dwarfs upon knights-errant do. When it had stabb'd, or broke a head, It would scrape trenchers, or chip bread... 'Twould make clean shoes, and in the earth Set leeks and onions, and so forth." ‡ Every thing becomes trivial; if any beauty presents itself, it is spoiled by

Hudibras, part 1. canto i. 7. 241-250. ↑ Ibid. 1. 253-280. Ibid. L. 375-386.

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