Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/444

Rh 424 ENGLISH LITERATURE [RESTORATION. style is more unexceptionable ; he had resided much in France, and consorted with French literati, and thus learned the charm of a perfectly clear and simple way of writing. Among the divines of this age there was much eloquence, much richness and force, but little good style. Nothing can be more copious than Taylor, but it is a oloyiug manner ; his facility of speech and coining imagina tion&quot; are masters of him, not he of them. Isaac Barrow, who died in his forty-seventh year in 1677, seems to be the best of them ; he has more self-command than Taylor, more earnestness than South, and more dignity than Baxter. Against Tillotson s style no particular objection can be urged, except that it does not prevent his Sermons from being dull and dry. Bunyan. la the Pilgrim s Progress of John Bunyan (1684) the style, without being elevated or distinguished, is plain and manly. It is of course free from pedantry, which cannot be where there is no learning ; but it is also free from affectations, and almost always from vulgarity. It is interesting to observe in this, the most popular English work of the century, the revival of tlie old allegorical way of writing which was so much relished in the age of Chaucer. Mr Hallam remarks that there is some inconsistency or defectiveness of plan ; the persecution of the pilgrims in the city of Vanity, and the adventure of the cave and the two giants, might with equal propriety, so far as the allegorical meaning is concerned, have been placed at any other stage of the pilgrimage. This is true ; but it is only saying that in these passages the tale overpowers the allegory ; considered as incidents in the tale, they could not have been better placed than where they are. In the heyday of reaction against the hypocrisy and violence of the Puritans, it may be imagined that neither they nor their principles found any quarter. A long satire Hudi- in doggerel verse, the Hudibras of Samuel Butler, one of bras. the best second-rate poets of the day, was especially devoted to their discomfiture. The general texture of this poem is loose and careless ; the versification, as a rule, too un polished to invite to a second reading ; still there are epigrammatic couplets and sarcastic descriptions in it which will be remembered while English literature endures. Denham, best known as the author of the pretty descriptive poem of Cooper s Hill, wrote many pieces in the spirit of the reaction, which in him, as in Davenantand others, went to the length of identifying Puritanism with Christianity, and rejecting both together. Such at least seems the natural conclusion to be drawn from a perusal of Denham s strange poem entitled The Progress of Learning. In Dryden. Dryden s poetry the temper and policy of reaction are exhibited with great distinctness. At first, and for many years after the Restoration, his attacks are chiefly upon the political side of Puritanism; he rings the changes on &quot;rebellion,&quot; &quot;faction,&quot; &quot;disobedience,&quot; and &quot;anarchy.&quot; In Absalom and Achitoyhel (1681) he argues, with that skill of ratiocination in metre which never forsakes him, against the tenets of democracy and the absolute right of a majority : &quot; Nor is the people s judgment always true ; The most may err as grossly as the few.&quot; In Threnodia Augustalis he talks of &quot; senates insolently loud;&quot; and in the Hind and Panther (1687) cleverly presses home against the clergy, who were grumbling at the arbitrary acts of James II., their own declared principles of &quot; passive obedience &quot; and &quot; submission for conscience sake.&quot; In middle life Dryden began to take a lively interest in the controversy on the grounds of religious belief ; we see him in the Religio Laici (1681) perplexing himself with the endeavour to ascertain the limits of the province of authority and that of private judgment. Waiving the question as to the entire sincerity, or rather disinterested ness, of his conversion, we find him, after that event, ex emplifying the reaction against Puritanism in an extreme degree ; as he had magnified the authority of the prince in the political sphere, so now he magnifies the authority of the church in the religious sphere. The Hind and Panther, as all the world knows, is a theologico-political dialogue, disguised under a thin, a very thin veil of allegory, on some of the questions debated between the churches of Rome and England, and also on some of the political theories then in vogue. As for the drama, the mere fact of its revival was a part of the reaction against Puritanism. In the coarse play of The Roundheads, or the Good Old Cause, by Mrs Aphra Behn, which came out shortly after the Restoration, some of the great Commonwealthsmen are exhibited on the stage, of course in an odious light. Dryden kept clear, in his dramas, of scurrilities of this kind, probably because he himself had been brought up among Puritans. In the famous play of Sir Courtly Nice (1685) by Crovvne, the character of the Whig-Puritan, Mr Testimony, is a com pound of hypocrisy, knavery, and cowardice. Yet at the time when this play was represented, the party of the counter-action, represented now by the names of Whig and dissenter, was already so strong that Crowne could say of them in his dedication to the duke of Ormond, &quot; There were no living, if some great men, elevated not only in quality but understanding above the rest of the world, did not protect us [the dramatists] from those barbarians, because they know us.&quot; After the Revolution there was a truce ; the comedies of Congreve and Wycherley have Con- no political bearing. The comic stage was hardly, if at 8 reVl all, employed for party purposes till the reign of Queen Anne, when the strong high-church temper which prevailed in the country caused the revival of Sir Courtly Nice (1711). A few years later Gibber, in his play of the Nonjuror, imitated from Moliere s Tartufe, attacked the nonjurors and the Catholics in the interest of the Hanoverian succession. As altered by Bickersteth, the same play appeared soon afterwards with the title of The Hypocrite ; here dissent is attacked in the persons of Dr Cant well and Mawworm. In political philosophy the reactionary spirit was repre sented by Sir Robert Filmer, who, in his Patriarcha (1680), argued that legitimate kings inherited the absolute power over their subjects, which he assumed Adam and the patri archs to have possessed and exercised over their families. This doctrine was opposed by the republican Algernon Sidney, and also by Locke, whose admirable Treatises on Loci Government appeared in 1688. Though not indisposed to S ove admit that the monarchical constitution of existing kingdoms m&amp;lt; was originally imitated from the patriarchal rule, which in the infancy of society is known to have existed, nay, which still exists in families and clans, Locke denied that this imitation implied any devolution of right or power ; the origin of civil right he sought, like Hooker, in a contract, expressed or implied, between the governors and the governed, which bound the one to govern on certain prescribed terms, that is, according to law, and the other to obey the lawful commands of the government. It is well known that this doctrine of an original contract found its way into that celebrated state-paper, the Declaration of Rights, in which it is asserted that James II. had &quot; endeavoured to subvert the constitution of this kingdom, by breaking the original contract between king and, people.&quot; In other departments of literature, as well as political philosophy, the counter-action strongly asserted itself. Milton, &quot; on evil tongues though fallen, and evil times,&quot; Milto knew that he should &quot; fit audience find, though few,&quot; when at the close of life he gave his long-promised service to the epic muse, and sang &quot; an elaborate song to generations.&quot;