English Literature: Its History and Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World - William J. Long (book club books .TXT) 📗

of catching something. Among a thousand books on angling it stands almost alone in possessing a charming style, and so it will probably be read as long as men go fishing. Best of all, it leads to a better appreciation of nature, and it drops little moral lessons into the reader's mind as gently as one casts a fly to a wary trout; so that one never suspects his better nature is being angled for. Though we have sometimes seen anglers catch more than they need, or sneak ahead of brother fishermen to the best pools, we are glad, for Walton's sake, to overlook such unaccountable exceptions, and agree with the milkmaid that "we love all anglers, they be such honest, civil, quiet men."

Summary of the Puritan Period. The half century between 1625 and 1675 is called the Puritan period for two reasons: first, because Puritan standards prevailed for a time in England; and second, because the greatest literary figure during all these years was the Puritan, John Milton. Historically the age was one of tremendous conflict. The Puritan struggled for righteousness and liberty, and because he prevailed, the age is one of moral and political revolution. In his struggle for liberty the Puritan overthrew the corrupt monarchy, beheaded Charles I, and established the Commonwealth under Cromwell. The Commonwealth lasted but a few years, and the restoration of Charles II in 1660 is often put as the end of the Puritan period. The age has no distinct limits, but overlaps the Elizabethan period on one side, and the Restoration period on the other.

The age produced many writers, a few immortal books, and one of the world's great literary leaders. The literature of the age is extremely diverse in character, and the diversity is due to the breaking up of the ideals of political and religious unity. This literature differs from that of the preceding age in three marked ways: (1) It has no unity of spirit, as in the days of Elizabeth, resulting from the patriotic enthusiasm of all classes. (2) In contrast with the hopefulness and vigor of Elizabethan writings, much of the literature of this period is somber in character; it saddens rather than inspires us. (3) It has lost the romantic impulse of youth, and become critical and intellectual; it makes us think, rather than feel deeply.

In our study we have noted (1) the Transition Poets, of whom Daniel is chief; (2) the Song Writers, Campion and Breton; (3) the Spenserian Poets, Wither and Giles Fletcher; (4) the Metaphysical Poets, Donne and Herbert; (5) the Cavalier Poets, Herrick, Carew, Lovelace, and Suckling; (6) John Milton, his life, his early or Horton poems, his militant prose, and his last great poetical works; (7) John Bunyan, his extraordinary life, and his chief work, The Pilgrim's Progress; (8) the Minor Prose Writers, Burton, Browne, Fuller, Taylor, Baxter, and Walton. Three books selected from this group are Browne's Religio Medici, Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, and Walton's Complete Angler.

Selections for Reading. Milton. Paradise Lost, books 1-2, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, Lycidas, and selected Sonnets,--all in Standard English Classics; same poems, more or less complete, in various other series; Areopagitica and Treatise on Education, selections, in Manly's English Prose, or Areopagitica in Arber's English Reprints, Clarendon Press Series, Morley's Universal Library, etc.

Minor Poets. Selections from Herrick, edited by Hale, in Athenaeum Press 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.

The King and his FollowersOf 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