English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History Part 22

Hudibras is the very prince of _burlesques_; it stands alone of its kind, and still retains its popularity. Although there is much that belongs to the age, and much that is of only local interest, it is still read to find apt quotations, of which not a few have become hackneyed by constant use.

With these, pages might be filled; all readers will recognize the following:

He speaks of the knight thus:

On either side he would dispute, Confute, change hands, and still confute:

For rhetoric, he could not ope His mouth but out there flew a trope.

Again: he refers, in speaking of religious characters, to

Such as do build their faith upon The holy text of pike and gun, And prove their doctrine orthodox, By apostolic blows and knocks; Compound for sins they are inclined to By d.a.m.ning those they have no mind to.

Few persons of the present generation have patience to read Hudibras through. Allibone says "it is a work to be studied once and gleaned occasionally." Most are content to glean frequently, and not to study at all.

HIS POVERTY AND DEATH.--Butler lived in great poverty, being neglected by a monarch and a court for whose amus.e.m.e.nt he had done so much. They laughed at the jester, and let him starve. Indeed, he seems to have had few friends; and this is accounted for quaintly by Aubrey, who says: "Satirical wits disoblige whom they converse with, and consequently make to themselves many enemies, and few friends; and this was his manner and case."

The best known of his works, after Hudibras, is the _Elephant in the Moon_, a satire on the Royal Society.

It is significant of the popularity of Hudibras, that numerous imitations of it have been written from his day to ours.

Butler died on the 25th of September, 1680. Sixty years after, the hand of private friendship erected a monument to him in Westminster Abbey. The friend was John Barber, Lord Mayor of London, whose object is thus stated: "That he who was dest.i.tute of all things when alive, might not want a monument when he was dead." Upon the occasion of erecting this, Samuel Wesley wrote:

While Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive, No generous patron would a dinner give; See him, when starved to death and turned to dust, Presented with a monumental bust.

The poet's fate is here in emblem shown, He asked for bread, and he received a stone.

To his own age he was the prince of jesters; to English literature he has given its best ill.u.s.tration of the burlesque in rhetoric. To the reader of the present day he presents rare historical pictures of his day, of far greater value than his wit or his burlesque.

IZAAK WALTON.

If men are to be measured by their permanent popularity, Walton deserves an enthusiastic mention in literary annals, not for the greatness of his achievements, but for his having touched a chord in the human heart which still vibrates without hint of cessation wherever English is spoken.

Izaak Walton was born at Stafford, on the 9th of August, 1593. In his earlier life he was a linen-draper, but he had made enough for his frugal wants by his shop to enable him to retire from business in 1643, and then he quietly a.s.sumed a position as _pontifex piscatorum_. His fishing-rod was a sceptre which he swayed unrivalled for forty years. He gathered about him in his house and on the borders of fishing streams an admiring and congenial circle, princ.i.p.ally of the clergy, who felt it a privilege to honor the retired linen-draper. There must have been a peculiar charm, a personal magnetism about him, which has also imbued his works. His first wife was Rachel Floud, a descendant of the ill-fated Cranmer; and his second was Anne Ken, the half-sister of the saintly Bishop Ken. Whatever may have been his deficiencies of early education, he was so constant and varied a reader that he made amends for these.

THE COMPLETE ANGLER.--His first and most popular work was _The Complete Angler, or, The Contemplative Man's Recreation_. It has been the delight of all sorts of people since, and has gone through more than forty respectable editions in England, besides many in America. Many of these editions are splendidly ill.u.s.trated and sumptuous. The dialogues are pleasant and natural, and his enthusiasm for the art of angling is quite contagious.

HIS LIVES.--Nor is Walton less esteemed by a smaller but more appreciative circle for his beautiful and finished biographies or _Lives_ of Dr.

Donne, Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, and Bishop Robert Sanderson.

Here Walton has bestowed and received fame: the simple but exquisite portraitures of these holy and worthy men have made them familiar to posterity; and they, in turn, by the virtues which Walton's pen has made manifest, have given distinction to the hand which portrayed them.

Walton's good life was lengthened out to fourscore and ten. He died at the residence of his son-in-law, the Reverend William Hawkins, prebendary of Winchester Cathedral, in 1683. Bishop Jebb has judiciously said of his _Lives_: "They not only do ample justice to individual piety and learning, but throw a mild and cheerful light upon the manners of an interesting age, as well as upon the venerable features of our mother Church." Less, however, than any of his contemporaries can Walton be appreciated by a sketch of the man: his works must be read, and their spirit imbibed, in order to know his worth.

OTHER WRITERS OF THE AGE.

George Wither, born in Hampshire, June 11, 1588, died May 2, 1667: he was a voluminous and versatile writer. His chief work is _The Shepherd's Hunting_, which, with beautiful descriptions of rural life, abounds in those strained efforts at wit and curious conceits, which were acceptable to the age, but which have lost their charm in a more sensible and philosophic age. Wither was a Parliament man, and was imprisoned and ill-treated after the Restoration. He, and most of those who follow, were cla.s.sed by Dr. Johnson as _metaphysical poets_.

Francis Quarles, 1592-1644: he was a Royalist, but belongs to the literary school of Withers. He is best known by his collection of moral and religious poems, called _Divine Emblems_, which were accompanied with quaint engraved ill.u.s.trations. These allegories are full of unnatural conceits, and are many of them borrowed from an older source. He was immensely popular as a poet in his own day, and there was truth in the statement of Horace Walpole, that "Milton was forced to wait till the world had done admiring Quarles."

George Herbert, 1593-1632: a man of birth and station, Herbert entered the Church, and as the inc.u.mbent of the living at Bemerton, he ill.u.s.trated in his own piety and devotion "the beauty of holiness." Conscientious and self-denying in his parish work, he found time to give forth those devout breathings which in harmony of expression, fervor of piety, and simplicity of thought, have been a goodly heritage to the Church ever since, while they still retain some of those "poetical surprises" which mark the literary taste of the age. His princ.i.p.al work is _The Temple, or, Sacred Poems and Private e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns_. The short lyrics which form the stones of this temple are upon the rites and ceremonies of the Church and other sacred subjects: many of them are still in great favor, and will always be. In his portraiture of the _Good Parson_, he paints himself. He magnifies the office, and he fulfilled all the requirements he has laid down.

Robert Herrick, 1591-1674: like Herbert, Herrick was a clergyman, but, unlike Herbert, he was not a holy man. He wrote Anacreontic poems, full of wine and love, and appears to us like a reveller masking in a surplice.

Being a cavalier in sentiment, he was ejected from his vicarage in 1648, and went to London, where he a.s.sumed the lay habit. In 1647 he published _Hesperides_, a collection of small poems of great lyric beauty, Anacreontic, pastoral, and amatory, but containing much that is coa.r.s.e and indelicate. In 1648 he in part atoned for these by publishing his _n.o.ble Numbers_, a collection of pious pieces, in the beginning of which he asks G.o.d's forgiveness for his "unbaptized rhymes," "writ in my wild, unhallowed times." The best comment upon his works may be found in the words of a reviewer: "Herrick trifled in this way solely in compliment to the age; whenever he wrote to please himself, he wrote from the heart to the heart." His _Litanie_ is a n.o.ble and beautiful penitential pet.i.tion.

Sir John Suckling, 1609-1641: a writer of love songs. That by which he is most favorably known is his exquisite _Ballad upon a Wedding_. He was a man of versatile talents; an officer in the army of Gustavus Adolphus, and a captain of horse in the army of Charles I. He wrote several plays, of which the best are _Aglaura_ and _The Discontented Colonel_. While evidently tinctured by the spirit of the age, he exceeded his contemporaries in the purity of his style and manliness of his expression.

His wit is not so forced as theirs.

Edmund Waller, 1605-1687: he was a cousin of John Hampden. By great care and adroitness he seems to have trimmed between the two parties in the civil war, but was suspected by both. His poetry was like himself, artificial and designed to please, but has little depth of sentiment. Like other poets, he praised Cromwell in 1654 in _A Panegyric_, and welcomed Charles II. in 1660, upon _His Majesty's Happy Return_. His greatest benefaction to English poetry was in refining its language and harmonizing its versification. He has all the conceits and strained wit of the metaphysical school.

Sir William Davenant, 1605-1668: he was the son of a vintner, but sometimes claimed to be the natural son of Shakspeare, who was intimate with his father and mother. An ardent Loyalist, he was imprisoned at the beginning of the civil war, but escaped to France. He is best known by his heroic poem _Gondibert_, founded upon the reign of King Aribert of Lombardy, in the seventh century. The French taste which he brought back from his exile, is shown in his own dramas, and in his efforts to restore the theatre at the Restoration. His best plays are the _Cruel Brother_ and _The Law against Lovers_. He was knighted by Charles I., and succeeded Ben Jonson as poet laureate. On his monument in Westminster Abbey are these words: "O rare Sir William Davenant."

Charles Cotton, 1630-1687: he was a wit and a poet, and is best known as the friend of Izaak Walton. He made an addition to _Walton's Complete Angler_, which is found in all the later editions. The companion of Walton in his fishing excursions on the river Dove, Cotton addressed many of his poems to his "Adopted Father." He made travesties upon Virgil and Lucian, which are characterized by great licentiousness; and wrote a gossiping and humorous _Voyage to Ireland_.

Henry Vaughan, 1614-1695: he was called the _Silurist_, from his residence in Wales, the country of the Silures. He is favorably known by the _Silex Scintillans, or, Sacred Poems and Private e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns_. With a rigid religious tone, he has all the attempt at rhetorical effect which mark the metaphysical school, but his language is harsher and more rugged. He has more heart than most of his colleagues, and extracts of great terseness and beauty are still made from his poems. He reproves the corruptions of the age, and while acknowledging an indebtedness, he gives us a clue to his inspiration: "The first, that with any effectual success attempted a diversion of this foul and overflowing stream, was that blessed man, Mr.

George Herbert, whose holy life and verse gained many pious converts, of whom I am the least."

The Earl of Clarendon, 1608-1674: Edward Hyde, afterward the Earl of Clarendon, played a conspicuous part in the history of England during his life, and also wrote a history of that period, which, although in the interests of the king's party, is an invaluable key to a knowledge of English life during the rebellion and just after the Restoration. A member of parliament in 1640, he rose rapidly in favor with the king, and was knighted in 1643. He left England in charge of the Prince of Wales in 1646, and at once began his History of the Great Rebellion, which was to occupy him for many years before its completion. After the death of Charles I., he was the companion of his son's exile, and often without means for himself and his royal master, he was chancellor of the exchequer. At the Restoration in 1660, Sir Edward Hyde was created Earl of Clarendon, and entered upon the real duties of his office. He retained his place for seven years, but became disagreeable to Charles as a troublesome monitor, and at the same time incurred the hatred of the people. In 1667 he was accused of high treason, and made his escape to France. Neglected by his master, ignored by the French monarch, he wandered about in France, from time to time pet.i.tioning his king to permit him to return and die in England, but without success. Seven years of exile, which he reminded the king "was a time prescribed and limited by G.o.d himself for the expiation of some of his greatest judgments," pa.s.sed by, and the ex-chancellor died at Rouen. He had begun his history in exile as the faithful servant of a dethroned prince; he ended it in exile, as the cast-off servant of an ungrateful monarch. As a writer of contemporary history, Clarendon has given us the form and color of the time. The book is in t.i.tle and handling a Royalist history. Its faults are manifest: first those of partisanship; and secondly, those which spring from his absence, so that much of the work was written without an observant knowledge. His delineation of character is wonderful: the men of the times are more pictorially displayed than in the portraits of Van Dyk. The style is somewhat too pompous, being more that of the orator than of the historian, and containing long and parenthetic periods. Sir Walter Scott says: "His characters may match those of the ancient historians, and one thinks he would know the very men if he were to meet them in society." Macaulay concedes to him a strong sense of moral and religious obligation, a sincere reverence for the laws of his country, and a conscientious regard for the honor and interests of the crown; but adds that "his temper was sour, arrogant, and impatient of opposition." No one can rightly understand the great rebellion without reading Clarendon's history of it.

CHAPTER XXI.

DRYDEN, AND THE RESTORED STUARTS.

The Court of Charles II. Dryden's Early Life. The Death of Cromwell.

The Restoration. Dryden's Tribute. Annus Mirabilis. Absalom and Achitophel. The Death of Charles. Dryden's Conversion. Dryden's Fall.

His Odes.

THE COURT OF CHARLES II.

The ant.i.thetic literature which takes its coloring from the great rebellion, was now to give place to new forms not immediately connected with it, but incident to the Restoration. Puritanism was now to be oppressed, and the country was to be governed, under a show of const.i.tutional right, more arbitrarily than ever before. The moral rebound, too, was tremendous; the debaucheries of the cavaliers of Charles I. were as nothing in comparison with the lewdness and filth of the court of Charles II. To say that he brought in French fashions and customs, is to do injustice to the French: there never was a viler court in Europe than his own. It is but in accordance with our historical theory that the literature should partake of and represent the new condition of things; and the most remarkable ill.u.s.trations of this are to be found in the works of Dryden.

It may indeed with truth be said that we have now reached the most absolute of the literary types of English history. There was no great event, political or social, which is not mirrored in his poems; no sentiment or caprice of the age which does not there find expression; no kingly whim which he did not prost.i.tute his great powers to gratify; no change of creed, political or religious, of which he was not the recorder--few indeed, where royal favor was concerned, to which he was not the convert. To review the life of Dryden himself, is therefore to enter into the chronicle and philosophy of the times in which he lived. With this view, we shall dwell at some length upon his character and works.