English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History Part 21

And again, the description of Chast.i.ty, in the same poem, is inimitable in the language:

So dear to Heaven is saintly Chast.i.ty, That when a soul is found sincerely so, A thousand liveried angels lackey her.

HIS SCHOLARSHIP.--It is unnecessary to state the well-known fact, attested by all his works, of his elegant and versatile scholarship. He was the most learned man in England in his day. If, like J. C. Scaliger, he did not commit Homer to memory in twenty-one days, and the whole of the Greek poets in three months, he had all cla.s.sical learning literally at his fingers' ends, and his works are absolutely glistening with drops which show that every one has been dipped in that Castalian fountain which, it was fabled, changed the earthly flowers of the mind into immortal jewels.

Nor need we refer to what every one concedes, that a vein of pure but austere morals runs through all his works; but Puritan as he was, his myriad fancy led him into places which Puritanism abjured: the cloisters, with their dim religious light, in _Il Penseroso_--and anon with mirth he cries:

Come and trip it as you go, On the light fantastic toe.

SONNETS.--His sonnets have been variously estimated: they are not as polished as his other poems, but are crystal-like and sententious, abrupt bursts of opinion and feeling in fourteen lines. Their masculine power it was which caused Wordsworth, himself a prince of sonneteers, to say:

In his hand, The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew Soul-animating strains....

That to his dead wife, whom he saw in a vision; that to Cyriac Skinner on his blindness, and that to the persecuted Waldenses, are the most known and appreciated. That to Skinner is a n.o.ble a.s.sertion of heart and hope:

Cyriac, this three-years-day these eyes, though clear To outward view, of blemish and of spot, Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot: Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year, Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?

The conscience friend to have lost them over-plied In liberty's defence, my n.o.ble task, Of which all Europe talks from side to side, This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask Content, though blind, had I no better guide.

Milton died in 1674, of gout, which had long afflicted him; and he left his name and works to posterity. Posterity has done large but mistaken justice to his fame. Men have not discriminated between his real merits and his faults: all parties have conceded the former, and conspired to conceal the latter. A just statement of both will still establish his great fame on the immutable foundations of truth--a fame, the honest pursuit of which caused him, throughout his long life,

To scorn delights, and live laborious days.

No writer has ever been the subject of more uncritical, ignorant, and senseless panegyric: like Bacon, he is lauded by men who never read his works, and are entirely ignorant of the true foundation of his fame. Nay, more; partisanship becomes very warlike, and we are reminded in this controversy of the Italian gentleman, who fought three duels in maintaining that Ariosto was a better poet than Ta.s.so: in the third he was mortally wounded, and he confessed before dying that he had never read a line of either. A similar logomachy has marked the course of Milton's champions; words like sharp swords have been wielded by ignorance, and have injured the poet's true fame.

He now stands before the world, not only as the greatest English poet, except Shakspeare, but also as the most remarkable example and ill.u.s.tration of the theory we have adopted, that literature is a very vivid and permanent interpreter of contemporary history. To those who ask for a philosophic summary of the age of Charles I. and Cromwell, the answer may be justly given: "Study the works of John Milton, and you will find it."

CHAPTER XX.

COWLEY, BUTLER, AND WALTON.

Cowley and Milton. Cowley's Life and Works. His Fame. Butler's Career.

Hudibras. His Poverty and Death. Izaak Walton. The Angler; and Lives.

Other Writers.

COWLEY AND MILTON.

In contrast with Milton, in his own age, both in political tenets and in the character of his poetry, stood Cowley, the poetical champion of the party of king and cavaliers during the civil war. Historically he belongs to two periods--antecedent and consequent--that of the rebellion itself, and that of the Restoration: the latter was a reaction from the former, in which the ma.s.ses changed their opinions, in which the Puritan leaders were silenced, and in which the constant and consistent Cavaliers had their day of triumph. Both parties, however, modified their views somewhat after the whirlwind of excitement had swept by, and both deprecated the extreme violence of their former actions. This is cleverly set forth in a charming paper of Lord Macaulay, ent.i.tled _Cowley and Milton_. It purports to be the report of a pleasant colloquy between the two in the spring of 1665, "set down by a gentleman of the Middle Temple." Their principles are courteously expressed, in a retrospective view of the great rebellion.

COWLEY'S LIFE AND WORKS.--Abraham Cowley, the posthumous son of a grocer, was born in London, in the year 1618. He is said to have been so precocious that he read Spenser with pleasure when he was twelve years old; and he published a volume of poems, ent.i.tled "Poetical Blossoms,"

before he was fifteen. After a preliminary education at Westminster school, he was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1636, and while there he published, in 1638, two comedies, one in English, ent.i.tled _Love's Riddle_, and one in Latin, _Naufragium Joculare, or, The Merry Shipwreck_.

When the troubles which culminated in the civil war began to convulse England, Cowley, who was a strong adherent of the king, was compelled to leave Cambridge; and we find him, when the war had fairly opened, at Oxford, where he was well received by the Royal party, in 1643. He vindicated the justice of this reception by publishing in that year a satire called _Puritan and Papist_. Upon the retirement of the queen to Paris, he was one of her suite, and as secretary to Viscount St. Albans he conducted the correspondence in cipher between the queen and her unfortunate husband.

He remained abroad during the civil war and the protectorate, returning with Charles II. in 1660. "The Blessed Restoration" he celebrated in an ode with that t.i.tle, and would seem to have thus established a claim to the king's grat.i.tude and bounty. But he was mistaken. Perhaps this led him to write a comedy, ent.i.tled _The Cutter of Coleman Street_, in which he severely censured the license and debaucheries of the court: this made the arch-debauchee, the king himself, cold toward the poet, who at once issued _A Complaint_; but neither satire nor complaint helped him to the desired preferment. He quitted London a disappointed man, and retired to the country, where he died on the 28th of July, 1667.

His poems bear the impress of the age in a remarkable degree. His _Mistress, or, Love Verses_, and his other Anacreontics or paraphrases of Anacreon's odes, were eminently to the taste of the luxurious and immoral court of Charles II. His _Davideis_ is an heroic poem on the troubles of King David.

His _Poem on the Late Civil War_, which was not published until 1679, twelve years after his death, is written in the interests of the monarchy.

His varied learning gave a wide range to his pen. In 1661 appeared his _Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy_, which was followed in the next year by _Two Books of Plants_, which he increased to six books afterward--devoting two to herbs, two to flowers, and two to trees. If he does not appear in them to be profound in botanical researches, it was justly said by Dr. Johnson that in his mind "botany turned into poetry."

His prose pen was as ready, versatile, and charming as his poetic pencil.

He produced discourses or essays on commonplace topics of general interest, such as _myself; the shortness of life; the uncertainty of riches; the danger of procrastination_, etc. These are well written, in easy-flowing language, evincing his poetic nature, and many of them are more truly poetic than his metrical pieces.

HIS FAME.--Cowley had all his good things in his lifetime; he was the most popular poet in England, and is the best ill.u.s.tration of the literary taste of his age. His poetry is like water rippling in the sunlight, brilliant but dazzling and painful: it bewilders with far-fetched and witty conceits: varied but full of art, there is little of nature or real pa.s.sion to be found even in his amatory verses. He suited the taste of a court which preferred an epigram to a proverb, and a repartee to an apothegm; and, as a consequence, with the growth of a better culture and a better taste, he has steadily declined in favor, so that at the present day he is scarcely read at all. Two authoritative opinions mark the history of this decline: Milton, in his own day, placed him with Spenser and Shakspeare as one of the three greatest English poets; while Pope, not much more than half a century later, asks:

Who now reads Cowley? If he pleases yet, His moral pleases, not his pointed wit.

Still later, Dr. Johnson gives him the credit of having been the first to master the Pindaric ode in English; while Cowper expresses, in his Task, regret that his "splendid wit" should have been

Entangled in the cobwebs of the schools.

But if he is neglected in the present day as a household poet, he stands prominently forth to the literary student as an historic personage of no mean rank, a type and representative of his age, country, and social conditions.

SAMUEL BUTLER.

BUTLER'S CAREER.--The author of Hudibras, a satirical poem which may as justly be called a comic history of England as any of those written in prose in more modern times, was born in Worcestershire, on the 8th of February, 1612. The son of poor parents, he received his education at a grammar school. Some, who have desired to magnify his learning, have said that he was for a time a student at Cambridge; but the chronicler Aubrey, who knew him well, denies this. He was learned, but this was due to the ardor with which he pursued his studies, when he was clerk to Mr.

Jeffreys, an eminent justice of the peace, and as an inmate of the mansion of the Countess of Kent, in whose fine library he was a.s.sociated with the accomplished Selden.

We next find him domiciled with Sir Samuel Luke, a Presbyterian and a parliamentary soldier, in whose household he saw and noted those characteristics of the Puritans which he afterward ridiculed so severely in his great poem, a poem which he was quietly engaged in writing during the protectorate of Cromwell, in hope of the coming of a day when it could be issued to the world.

This hope was fulfilled by the Restoration. In the new order he was appointed secretary to the Earl of Carbery, and steward of Ludlow Castle; and he also increased his frugal fortunes by marrying a widow, Mrs.

Herbert, whose means, however, were soon lost by bad investments.

HUDIBRAS.--The only work of merit which Butler produced was _Hudibras_.

This was published in three parts: the first appeared in 1663, the second in 1664, and the third not until 1678. Even then it was left unfinished; but as the interest in the third part seems to flag, it is probable that the author did not intend to complete it. His death, two years later, however, settled the question.

The general idea of the poem is taken from Don Quixote. As in that immortal work, there are two heroes. Sir Hudibras, corresponding to the Don, is a Presbyterian justice of the peace, whose features are said to have been copied from those of the poet's former employer, Sir Samuel Luke. For this, Butler has been accused of ingrat.i.tude, but the nature of their connection does not seem to have been such as to warrant the charge.

Ralph the squire, the humble Sancho of the poem, is a cross-grained dogmatic Independent.

These two the poet sends forth, as a knight-errant with a squire, to correct existing abuses of all kinds--political, religious, and scientific. The plot is rambling and disconnected, but the author contrives to go over the whole ground of English history in his inimitable burlesque. Unlike Cervantes, who makes his reader always sympathize with his foolish heroes, Butler brings his knight and squire into supreme contempt; he lashes the two hundred religious sects of the day, and attacks with matchless ridicule all the Puritan positions. The poem is directly historical in its statement of events, tenets, and factions, and in its protracted religious discussions: it is indirectly historical in that it shows how this ridicule of the Puritans, only four years after the death of Cromwell, delighted the merry monarch and his vicious court, and was greatly acceptable to the large majority of the English people. This fact marks the suddenness of the historic change from the influence of Puritanism to that of the restored Stuarts.

Hudibras is written in octosyllabic verse, frequently not rising above doggerel: it is full of verbal "quips and cranks and wanton wiles:" in parts it is eminently epigrammatic, and many of its happiest couplets seem to have been dashed off without effort. Walpole calls Butler "the Hogarth of poetry;" and we know that Hogarth ill.u.s.trated Hudibras. The comparison is not inapt, but the pictorial element in Hudibras is not its best claim to our praise. This is found in its string of proverbs and maxims elucidating human nature, and set forth in such terse language that we are inclined to use them thus in preference to any other form of expression.