A Brief History of the English Language and Literature Part 15

15. BEN JONSON (+1574-1637+), the greatest dramatist of England after Shakespeare, was born in Westminster in the year 1574, just nine years after Shakespeare's birth. He received his education at Westminster School. It is said that, after leaving school, he was obliged to a.s.sist his stepfather as a bricklayer; that he did not like the work; and that he ran off to the Low Countries, and there enlisted as a soldier. On his return to London, he began to write for the stage. Jonson was a friend and companion of Shakespeare's; and at the Mermaid, in Fleet Street, they had, in presence of men like Raleigh, Marlowe, Greene, Peele, and other distinguished Englishmen, many "wit-combats" together. Jonson's greatest plays are +Volpone+ or the Fox, and the +Alchemist+-- both comedies. In 1616 he was created Poet-Laureate. For many years he was in receipt of a pension from James I. and from Charles I.; but so careless and profuse were his habits, that he died in poverty in the year 1637.

He was buried in an upright position in Westminster Abbey; and the stone over his grave still bears the inscription, "O rare Ben Jonson!" He has been called a "robust, surly, and observing dramatist."

16. RICHARD HOOKER (+1553-1600+), one of the greatest of Elizabethan prose-writers, was born at Heavitree, a village near the city of Exeter, in the year 1553. By the kind aid of Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, he was sent to Oxford, where he distinguished himself as a hard-working student, and especially for his knowledge of Hebrew. In 1581 he entered the Church. In the same year he made an imprudent marriage with an ignorant, coa.r.s.e, vulgar, and domineering woman. He was appointed Master of the Temple in 1585; but, by his own request, he was removed from that office, and chose the quieter living of Bos...o...b.., near Salisbury. Here he wrote the first four books of his famous work, +The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity+, which were published in the year 1594. In 1595 he was translated to the living of Bishopsborne, near Canterbury. His death took place in the year 1600. The complete work, which consisted of eight books, was not published till 1662.

17. +Hooker's Style.+-- His writings are said to "mark an era in English prose." His sentences are generally very long, very elaborate, but full of "an extraordinary musical richness of language." The order is often more like that of a Latin than of an English sentence; and he is fond of Latin inversions. Thus he writes: "That which by wisdom he saw to be requisite for that people, was by as great wisdom compa.s.sed." The following sentences give us a good example of his sweet and musical rhythm. "Of law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of G.o.d, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage; the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power: both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all, with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy."

18. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (+1554-1586+), a n.o.ble knight, a statesman, and one of the best prose-writers of the Elizabethan age, was born at Penshurst, in Kent, in the year 1554. He was educated at Shrewsbury School, and then at Christ Church, Oxford. At the age of seventeen he went abroad for three years' travel on the Continent; and, while in Paris, witnessed, from the windows of the English Emba.s.sy, the horrible Ma.s.sacre of St Bartholomew in the year 1572. At the early age of twenty-two he was sent as amba.s.sador to the Emperor of Germany; and while on that emba.s.sy, he met William of Orange-- "William the Silent"-- who p.r.o.nounced him one of the ripest statesmen in Europe. This was said of a young man "who seems to have been the type of what was n.o.blest in the youth of England during times that could produce a statesman." In 1580 he wrote the +Arcadia+, a romance, and dedicated it to his sister, the Countess of Pembroke. The year after, he produced his +Apologie for Poetrie+. His policy as a statesman was to side with Protestant rulers, and to break the power of the strongest Catholic kingdom on the Continent-- the power of Spain. In 1585 the Queen sent him to the Netherlands as governor of the important fortress of Flushing. He was mortally wounded in a skirmish at Zutphen; and as he was being carried off the field, handed to a private the cup of cold water that had been brought to quench his raging thirst. He died of his wounds on the 17th of October 1586. One of his friends wrote of him:--

"Death, courage, honour, make thy soul to live!-- Thy soul in heaven, thy name in tongues of men!"

19. +Sidney's Poetry.+-- In addition to the +Arcadia+ and the +Apologie for Poetrie+, Sidney wrote a number of beautiful poems. The best of these are a series of sonnets called +Astrophel+ and +Stella+, of which his latest critic says: "As a series of sonnets, the +Astrophel+ and +Stella+ poems are second only to Shakespeare's; as a series of love-poems, they are perhaps unsurpa.s.sed." Spenser wrote an elegy upon Sidney himself, under the t.i.tle of +Astrophel+. Sidney's prose is among the best of the sixteenth century. "He reads more modern than any other author of that century." He does not use "ink-horn terms," or cram his sentences with Latin or French or Italian words; but both his words and his idioms are of pure English. He is fond of using personifications.

Such phrases as, "About the time that the candles began to inherit the sun's office;" "Seeing the day begin to disclose her comfortable beauties," are not uncommon. The rhythm of his sentences is always melodious, and each of them has a very pleasant close.

CHAPTER V.

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

1. +The First Half.+-- Under the wise and able rule of Queen Elizabeth, this country had enjoyed a long term of peace. The Spanish Armada had been defeated in 1588; the Spanish power had gradually waned before the growing might of England; and it could be said with perfect truth, in the words of Shakespeare:--

"In her days every man doth eat in safety Under his own vine what he plants, and sing The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours."

The country was at peace; and every peaceful art and pursuit prospered.

As one sign of the great prosperity and outstretching enterprise of commerce, we should note the foundation of the East India Company on the last day of the year 1600. The reign of James I. (1603-1625) was also peaceful; and the country made steady progress in industries, in commerce, and in the arts and sciences. The two greatest prose-writers of the first half of the seventeenth century were +Raleigh+ and +Bacon+; the two greatest poets were +Shakespeare+ and +Ben Jonson+.

2. SIR WALTER RALEIGH (+1552-1618+).-- +Walter Raleigh+, soldier, statesman, coloniser, historian, and poet, was born in Devonshire, in the year 1552. He was sent to Oriel College, Oxford; but he left at the early age of seventeen to fight on the side of the Protestants in France. From that time his life is one long series of schemes, plots, adventures, and misfortunes-- culminating in his execution at Westminster in the year 1618. He spent "the evening of a tempestuous life" in the Tower, where he lay for thirteen years; and during this imprisonment he wrote his greatest work, the +History of the World+, which was never finished. His life and adventures belong to the sixteenth; his works to the seventeenth century. Raleigh was probably the most dazzling figure of his time; and is "in a singular degree the representative of the vigorous versatility of the Elizabethan period."

Spenser, whose neighbour he was for some time in Ireland, thought highly of his poetry, calls him "the summer's nightingale," and says of him--

"Yet aemuling[18] my song, he took in hand My pipe, before that aemuled of many, And played thereon (for well that skill he conn'd), Himself as skilful in that art as any."

Raleigh is the author of the celebrated verses, "Go, soul, the body's guest;" "Give me my scallop-sh.e.l.l of quiet;" and of the lines which were written and left in his Bible on the night before he was beheaded:--

"Even such is time, that takes in trust Our youth, our joys, our all we have, And pays us but with age and dust; Who, in the dark and silent grave, When we have wandered all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days: But from this earth, this grave, this dust, The Lord shall raise me up, I trust!"

Raleigh's prose has been described as "some of the most flowing and modern-looking prose of the period;" and there can be no doubt that, if he had given himself entirely to literature, he would have been one of the greatest poets and prose-writers of his time. His style is calm, n.o.ble, and melodious. The following is the last sentence of the +History of the World+:--

"O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words _Hic jacet_."

[Footnote 18: Emulating.]

3. FRANCIS BACON (+1561-1626+), one of the greatest of English thinkers, and one of our best prose-writers, was born at York House, in the Strand, London, in the year 1561. He was a grave and precocious child; and Queen Elizabeth, who knew him and liked him, used to pat him and call him her "young Lord Keeper"-- his father being Lord Keeper of the Seals in her reign. At the early age of twelve he was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge, and remained there for three years. In 1582 he was called to the bar; in 1593 he was M.P. for Middles.e.x. But his greatest rise in fortune did not take place till the reign of James I.; when, in the year 1618, he had risen to be Lord High Chancellor of England. The t.i.tle which he took on this occasion-- for the Lord High Chancellor is chairman of the House of Lords-- was +Baron Verulam+; and a few years after he was created +Viscount St Albans+. His eloquence was famous in England; and Ben Jonson said of him: "The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end." In the year 1621 he was accused of taking bribes, and of giving unjust decisions as a judge. He had not really been unconscientious, but he had been careless; was obliged to plead guilty; and he was sentenced to pay a fine of 40,000, and to be imprisoned in the Tower during the king's pleasure. The fine was remitted; Bacon was set free in two days; a pension was allowed him; but he never afterwards held office of any kind. He died on Easter-day of the year 1626, of a chill which he caught while experimenting on the preservative properties of snow.

4. His chief prose-works in English-- for he wrote many in Latin-- are the +Essays+, and the +Advancement of Learning+. His +Essays+ make one of the wisest books ever written; and a great number of English thinkers owe to them the best of what they have had to say. They are written in a clear, forcible, pithy, and picturesque style, with short sentences, and a good many ill.u.s.trations, drawn from history, politics, and science. It is true that the style is sometimes stiff, and even rigid; but the stiffness is the stiffness of a richly embroidered cloth, into which threads of gold and silver have been worked. Bacon kept what he called a +Promus+ or Commonplace-Book; and in this he entered striking thoughts, sentences, and phrases that he met with in the course of his reading, or that occurred to him during the day. He calls these sentences "salt-pits, that you may extract salt out of, and sprinkle as you will."

The following are a few examples:--

"That that is Forced is not Forcible."

"No Man loveth his Fetters though they be of Gold."

"Clear and Round Dealing is the Honour of Man's Nature."

"The Arch-flatterer, with whom all the petty Flatterers have intelligence, is a Man's Self."

"If Things be not tossed upon the Arguments of Counsell, they will be tossed upon the Waves of Fortune."

The following are a few striking sentences from his +Essays+:--

"Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set."

"A man's nature runs either to herbs or weeds; therefore, let him seasonably water the one, and destroy the other."

"A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, when there is no love."

No man could say wiser things in pithier words; and we may well say of his thoughts, in the words of Tennyson, that they are--

"Jewels, five words long, That on the stretched forefinger of all time Sparkle for ever."

5. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (+1564-1616+) has been already treated of in the chapter on the sixteenth century. But it may be noted here that his first two periods-- as they are called-- fall within the sixteenth, and his last two periods within the seventeenth century. His first period lies between 1591 and 1596; and to it are ascribed his early poems, his play of +Richard II.+, and some other historical plays. His second period, which stretches from 1596 to 1601 holds the Sonnets, the +Merchant of Venice+, the +Merry Wives of Windsor+, and a few historical dramas. But his third and fourth periods were richer in production, and in greater productions. The third period, which belongs to the years 1601 to 1608, produced the play of +Julius Caesar+, the great tragedies of +Hamlet+, +Oth.e.l.lo+, +Lear+, +Macbeth+, and some others. To the fourth period, which lies between 1608 and 1613, belong the calmer and wiser dramas,-- +Winter's Tale+, +The Tempest+, and +Henry VIII+. Three years after-- in 1616-- he died.

6. +The Second Half.+-- The second half of the great and unique seventeenth century was of a character very different indeed from that of the first half. The Englishmen born into it had to face a new world!

New thoughts in religion, new forces in politics, new powers in social matters had been slowly, steadily, and irresistibly rising into supremacy ever since the Scottish King James came to take his seat upon the throne of England in 1603. These new forces had, in fact, become so strong that they led a king to the scaffold, and handed over the government of England to a section of Republicans. Charles I. was executed in 1649; and, though his son came back to the throne in 1660, the face, the manners, the thoughts of England and of Englishmen had undergone a complete internal and external change. The Puritan party was everywhere the ruling party; and its views and convictions, in religion, in politics, and in literature, held unquestioned sway in almost every part of England. In the Puritan party, the strongest section was formed by the Independents-- the "root and branch men"-- as they were called; and the greatest man among the Independents was Oliver Cromwell, in whose government +John Milton+ was Foreign Secretary. Milton was certainly by far the greatest and most powerful writer, both in prose and in verse, on the side of the Puritan party. The ablest verse-writer on the Royalist or Court side was +Samuel Butler+, the unrivalled satirist-- the Hogarth of language,-- the author of +Hudibras+. The greatest prose-writer on the Royalist and Church side was +Jeremy Taylor+, Bishop of Down, in Ireland, and the author of +Holy Living+, +Holy Dying+, and many other works written with a wonderful eloquence.

The greatest philosophical writer was +Thomas Hobbes+, the author of the +Leviathan+. The most powerful writer for the people was +John Bunyan+, the immortal author of +The Pilgrim's Progress+. When, however, we come to the reigns of Charles II. and James II., and the new influences which their rule and presence imparted, we find the greatest poet to be +John Dryden+, and the most important prose-writer, +John Locke+.

7. +The Poetry of the Second Half.+-- The poetry of the second half of the seventeenth century was not an outgrowth or lineal descendant of the poetry of the first half. No trace of the strong Elizabethan poetical emotion remained; no writer of this half-century can claim kinship with the great authors of the Elizabethan period. The three most remarkable poets in the latter half of this century are +John Milton+, +Samuel Butler+, and +John Dryden+. But Milton's culture was derived chiefly from the great Greek and Latin writers; and his poems show few or no signs of belonging to any age or generation in particular of English literature. Butler's poem, the +Hudibras+, is the only one of its kind; and if its author owes anything to other writers, it is to France and not to England that we must look for its sources. Dryden, again, shows no sign of being related to Shakespeare or the dramatic writers of the early part of the century; he is separated from them by a great gulf; he owes most, when he owes anything, to the French school of poetry.

8. JOHN MILTON (+1608-1674+), the second greatest name in English poetry, and the greatest of all our epic poets, was born in Bread Street, Cheapside, London, in the year 1608-- five years after the accession of James I. to the throne, and eight years before the death of Shakespeare. He was educated at St Paul's School, and then at Christ's College, Cambridge. He was so handsome-- with a delicate complexion, clear blue eyes, and light-brown hair flowing down his shoulders-- that he was known as the "Lady of Christ's." He was destined for the Church; but, being early seized with a strong desire to compose a great poetical work which should bring honour to his country and to the English tongue, he gave up all idea of becoming a clergyman. Filled with his secret purpose, he retired to Horton, in Buckinghamshire, where his father had bought a small country seat. Between the years 1632 and 1638 he studied all the best Greek and Latin authors, mathematics, and science; and he also wrote +L'Allegro+ and +Il Penseroso+, +Comus+, +Lycidas+, and some shorter poems. These were preludes, or exercises, towards the great poetical work which it was the mission of his life to produce. In 1638-39 he took a journey to the Continent. Most of his time was spent in Italy; and, when in Florence, he paid a visit to Galileo in prison.

It had been his intention to go on to Greece; but the troubled state of politics at home brought him back sooner than he wished. The next ten years of his life were engaged in teaching and in writing his prose works. His ideas on teaching are to be found in his +Tractate on Education+. The most eloquent of his prose-works is his +Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing+ (1644)-- a plea for the freedom of the press, for relieving all writings from the criticism of censors. In 1649-- the year of the execution of Charles I.-- Milton was appointed Latin or Foreign Secretary to the Government of Oliver Cromwell; and for the next ten years his time was taken up with official work, and with writing prose-volumes in defence of the action of the Republic. In 1660 the Restoration took place; and Milton was at length free, in his fifty-third year, to carry out his long-cherished scheme of writing a great Epic poem. He chose the subject of the fall and the restoration of man. +Paradise Lost+ was completed in 1665; but, owing to the Plague and the Fire of London, it was not published till the year 1667. Milton's young Quaker friend, Ellwood, said to him one day: "Thou hast said much of Paradise Lost, what hast thou to say of Paradise Found?" +Paradise Regained+ was the result-- a work which was written in 1666, and appeared, along with +Samson Agonistes+, in the year 1671.

Milton died in the year 1674-- about the middle of the reign of Charles II. He had been three times married.

9. +L'Allegro+ (or "The Cheerful Man") is a companion poem to +Il Penseroso+ (or "The Meditative Man"). The poems present two contrasted views of the life of the student. They are written in an irregular kind of octosyllabic verse. The +Comus+-- mostly in blank verse-- is a lyrical drama; and Milton's work was accompanied by a musical composition by the then famous musician Henry Lawes. +Lycidas+-- a poem in irregular rhymed verse-- is a threnody on the death of Milton's young friend, Edward King, who was drowned in sailing from Chester to Dublin.

This poem has been called "the touchstone of taste;" the man who cannot admire it has no feeling for true poetry. The +Paradise Lost+ is the story of how Satan was allowed to plot against the happiness of man; and how Adam and Eve fell through his designs. The style is the n.o.blest in the English language; the music of the rhythm is lofty, involved, sustained, and sublime. "In reading 'Paradise Lost,'" says Mr Lowell, "one has a feeling of s.p.a.ciousness such as no other poet gives."

+Paradise Regained+ is, in fact, the story of the Temptation, and of Christ's triumph over the wiles of Satan. Wordsworth says: "'Paradise Regained' is most perfect in execution of any written by Milton;" and Coleridge remarks that "it is in its kind the most perfect poem extant, though its kind may be inferior in interest." +Samson Agonistes+ ("Samson in Struggle") is a drama, in highly irregular unrhymed verse, in which the poet sets forth his own unhappy fate--

"Eyeless, in Gaza, at the mill with slaves."

It is, indeed, an autobiographical poem-- it is the story of the last years of the poet's life.