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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a723658 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #54142 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54142) diff --git a/old/54142-0.txt b/old/54142-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 525bc9e..0000000 --- a/old/54142-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7989 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, English Lands Letters and Kings: From -Elizabeth to Anne, by Donald Grant Mitchell - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: English Lands Letters and Kings: From Elizabeth to Anne - - -Author: Donald Grant Mitchell - - - -Release Date: February 9, 2017 [eBook #54142] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS: -FROM ELIZABETH TO ANNE*** - - -E-text prepared by MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team -(http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by -Internet Archive (https://archive.org) - - - -Note: Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - https://archive.org/details/englishlandslett02mitc - - - Project Gutenberg has the other three volumes of this work. - I: From Celt to Tudor - see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54168 - III: Queen Anne and the Georges - see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37226 - IV: The Later Georges to Victoria - see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54143 - - -Transcriber's note: - - Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). - - A carat character is used to denote superscription. A - single character following the carat is superscripted - (example: R^t). - - - - - -ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS - -From Elizabeth to Anne - - - * * * * * * - -ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS - -_By Donald G. Mitchell_ - - I. From Celt to Tudor - II. From Elizabeth to Anne -III. Queen Anne and the Georges - -_Each one volume, 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.50_ - - * * * * * * - - -ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS - -From Elizabeth to Anne - -by - -DONALD G. MITCHELL - -[Illustration] - - - - - - -New York -Charles Scribner’s Sons -MDCCCXCVI - -Copyright, 1890, by -Charles Scribner’S Sons - -Trow’S -Printing and Bookbinding Company, -New York. - - - - -_PREFATORY LETTER._ - -[TO MRS. J. C. G. PIATT, OF UTICA SCHOOL, N. Y.] - - -MY DEAR JULIA,--_We have both known, in the past, a certain delightsome -country home; you--in earliest childhood, and I--in latest youth-time: and -I think we both relish those reminders--perhaps a Kodak view, or an autumn -gentian plucked by the road-side, or actual glimpse of its woods, or -brook, on some summer’s drive--which have brought back the old homestead, -with its great stretch of undulating meadow--its elms--its shady -lanes--its singing birds--its leisurely going big-eyed oxen--its long, -tranquil days, when the large heart of June was pulsing in all the leaves -and all the air:_ - -_Well, even so, and by these light tracings of Lands and Kings, and little -whiffs of metric music, I seek to bring back to you, and to your pupils -and associates (who have so kindly received previous and kindred -reminders) the rich memories of that great current of English letters -setting steadily forward amongst these British lands, and these -sovereigns, from Elizabeth to Anne. But slight as these glimpses are, and -as this synopsis may be, they will together serve, I hope, to fasten -attention where I wish to fasten it, and to quicken appetite for those -fuller and larger studies of English Literature and History, which shall -make even these sketchy outlines valued--as one values little flowerets -plucked from old fields--for bringing again to mind the summers of -youth-time, and a world of summer days, with their birds and abounding -bloom._ - - _Affectionately yours, - D. G. M._ - -_EDGEWOOD; MARCH, 1890._ - - - - -_CONTENTS._ - - - PAGE - - CHAPTER I. - - PRELIMINARY, 1 - - THE STUART LINE, 4 - - JAMES I., 6 - - WALTER RALEIGH, 11 - - NIGEL AND HARRISON, 19 - - A LONDON BRIDE, 23 - - BEN JONSON AGAIN, 26 - - AN ITALIAN REPORTER, 29 - - SHAKESPEARE AND THE GLOBE, 32 - - CHAPTER II. - - GOSSON AND OTHER PURITANS, 42 - - KING JAMES’ BIBLE, 44 - - SHAKESPEARE, 56 - - SHAKESPEARE’S YOUTH, 61 - - FAMILY RELATIONS, 67 - - SHAKESPEARE IN LONDON, 73 - - WORK AND REPUTATION, 77 - - HIS THRIFT AND CLOSING YEARS, 81 - - CHAPTER III. - - WEBSTER, FORD, AND OTHERS, 88 - - MASSINGER, BEAUMONT, AND FLETCHER, 93 - - KING JAMES AND FAMILY, 99 - - A NEW KING AND SOME LITERARY SURVIVORS, 105 - - WOTTON AND WALTON, 109 - - GEORGE HERBERT, 115 - - ROBERT HERRICK, 120 - - REVOLUTIONARY TIMES, 126 - - CHAPTER IV. - - KING CHARLES AND HIS FRIENDS, 132 - - JEREMY TAYLOR, 135 - - A ROYALIST AND A PURITAN, 140 - - COWLEY AND WALLER, 144 - - JOHN MILTON, 150 - - MILTON’S MARRIAGE, 157 - - THE ROYAL TRAGEDY, 161 - - CHANGE OF KINGS, 167 - - LAST DAYS, 174 - - CHAPTER V. - - CHARLES II. AND HIS FRIENDS, 182 - - ANDREW MARVELL, 189 - - AUTHOR OF HUDIBRAS, 193 - - SAMUEL PEPYS, 198 - - A SCIENTIST, 207 - - JOHN BUNYAN, 209 - - CHAPTER VI. - - THREE GOOD PROSERS, 221 - - JOHN DRYDEN, 227 - - THE LONDON OF DRYDEN, 234 - - LATER POEMS AND PURPOSE, 240 - - JOHN LOCKE, 248 - - END OF THE KING AND OTHERS, 255 - - CHAPTER VII. - - KINGS CHARLES, JAMES, AND WILLIAM, 261 - - SOME LITERARY FELLOWS, 268 - - A PAMPHLETEER, 272 - - OF QUEEN ANNE, 277 - - AN IRISH DRAGOON, 280 - - STEELE’S LITERARY QUALITIES, 285 - - JOSEPH ADDISON, 288 - - SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY, 291 - - CHAPTER VIII. - - ROYAL GRIEFS AND FRIENDS, 301 - - BUILDERS AND STREETS, 306 - - JOHN GAY, 308 - - JONATHAN SWIFT, 312 - - SWIFT’S POLITICS, 324 - - HIS LONDON JOURNAL, 328 - - IN IRELAND AGAIN, 333 - - - - -_ENGLISH LANDS, LETTERS, & KINGS._ - - - - -CHAPTER I. - - -We take outlook to-day from the threshold of the seventeenth century. -Elizabeth is dead (1603), but not England. The powers it had grown to -under her quickening offices are all alive. The great Spanish dragon has -its teeth drawn; Cadiz has been despoiled, and huge galleons, gold-laden, -have come trailing into Devon ports. France is courteously friendly. -Holland and England are in leash, as against the fainter-growing blasts of -Popedom. In Ireland, Tyrone has been whipped into bloody quietude. A -syndicate of London merchants, dealing in pepper and spices, has made the -beginnings of that East-Indian empire which gives to the present British -sovereign her proudest title. London is growing apace in riches and in -houses; though her shipping counts for less than the Dutch shipping, great -cargoes come and go through the Thames--spices from the East, velvets and -glass from the Mediterranean, cloths from the Baltic. Cheapside is -glittering with the great array of goldsmiths’ shops four stories high, -and new painted and new gilded (in 1594) by Sir Richard Martin, Mayor. The -dudes of that time walk and “publish” their silken suits there, and thence -through all the lanes leading to Paul’s Walk--which is, effectively, the -aisle of the great church. There are noblemen who have tall houses in the -city and others who have built along the Strand, with fine grounds -reaching to the river and looking out upon the woods which skirt the -bear-gardens of Bankside in Southwark. The river is all alive with -boats--wherries, barges, skiffs. There are no hackney carriages as yet for -hire; but rich folks here and there rumble along the highways in heavy -Flemish coaches. - -Some of the great lights we have seen in the intellectual firmament of -England have set. Burleigh is gone; Hooker is gone, in the prime of his -years; Spenser gone, Marlowe gone, Sidney gone. But enough are left at the -opening of the century and at the advent of James (1603) to keep the great -trail of Elizabethan literary splendors all aglow. George Chapman (of the -Homer) is alive and active; and so are Raleigh, and Francis Bacon, and -Heywood, and Dekker, and Lodge. Shakespeare is at his best, and is acting -in his own plays at the newly built Globe Theatre. Michael Drayton is in -full vigor, plotting and working at the tremendous poem from which we -culled--in advance--a pageful of old English posies. Ben Jonson, too, is -all himself, whom we found a giant and a swaggerer, yet a man of great -learning and capable of the delicious bits of poesy which I cited. You -will further remember how we set right the story of poor Amy Robsart--told -of the great Queen’s vanities--of her visitings--of her days of -illness--and of the death of the last sovereign of the name of Tudor. - - -_The Stuart Line._ - -Henceforth, for much time to come, we shall meet--when we encounter -British royalty at all--with men of the house of Stuart. But how comes -about this shifting of the thrones from the family of Tudor to the family -of Stuart? I explained in a recent chapter how the name of Tudor became -connected with the crown, by the marriage of a Welsh knight--Owen -Tudor--with Katharine, widow of Henry V. Now let us trace, if we can, this -name of Stuart. Henry VII. was a Tudor, and so was Henry VIII.; so were -his three children who succeeded him--Edward, the bigot Mary, and -Elizabeth; no one of these, however, left direct heirs; but Henry VIII. -had a sister, Margaret, who married James IV. of Scotland. This James was -a lineal descendant of a daughter of Robert Bruce, who had married Walter -Stuart, the chief of a powerful Scotch family. That James I. of whom I -have spoken, who was a delicate poet, and so long a prisoner in Windsor -Tower, was great-grandson of this Stuart-daughter of Robert Bruce. And -from him--that is from James I.--was directly descended James IV., who -married the sister of Henry VIII. James IV. had a son, succeeding him, -called James V. who by a French marriage, became the father of that -Frenchy queen, poor Marie of Scotland, who suffered at Fotheringay, and -who had married her cousin, Henry Darnley (he also having Stuart blood), -by whom she had a son, James Stuart--being James VI. of Scotland and James -I. of England, who now succeeds Elizabeth. - -This strong Scotch strain in the Stuart line of royalty will explain, in a -certain degree, how ready so clannish a people as the Scotch were to join -insurrection in favor of the exiled Stuarts; a readiness you will surely -remember if you have read _Waverley_ and _Redgauntlet_. And in further -confirmation of this clannish love, you will recall the ever-renewed and -gossipy boastfulness with which the old Scotch gentlewoman, Lady Margaret -Bellenden, in _Old Mortality_, tells over and over of the morning when his -most gracious majesty Charles II. partook of his _disjune_ at Tillietudlem -Castle. - -But we have nothing to do with so late affairs now, and I have only made -this diversion into Scotland to emphasize the facts about the Stuart -affiliation to the throne of England, and the reasons for Scotch readiness -to fling caps in the air for King Charlie or for the Pretender. - - -_James I._ - -And now what sort of person was this James Stuart, successor to Elizabeth? -He was a man in his thirty-eighth year, who had been a king--or called a -king, of Scotland--ever since he was a baby of twelve months old; and in -many matters he was a baby still. He loved bawbles as a child loves its -rattle; loved bright feathers too--to dress his cap withal; was afraid of -a drawn sword and of hobgoblins. He walked, from some constitutional -infirmity, with the uncertain step of a child--swaying about in a -ram-shackle way--steadying himself with a staff or a hold upon the -shoulder of some attendant. He slobbered when he ate, so that his silken -doublet--quilted to be proof against daggers--was never of the cleanest. -He had a big head and protruding eyes, and would laugh and talk broad -Scotch with a blundering and halting tongue, and crack unsavory jokes with -his groom or his barber. - -Yet he had a certain kindness of heart; he hated to see suffering, though -he had no objection to suffering he did not see; the sight of blood almost -made him faint; his affection for favorites sometimes broke out into -love-sick drivel. Withal he had an acute mind; he had written bad poems, -before he left Scotland, calling himself modestly a royal apprentice at -that craft. He had a certain knack at logical fence and loved to argue a -man to death; he had power of invective, as he showed in his _Counterblast -to Tobacco_--of which I will give a whiff by and by. He had languages at -command, and loved to show it; for he had studied long and hard in his -young days, under that first and best of Scotch scholars and -pedagogues--George Buchanan. He had, in general, a great respect for -sacred things, and for religious observances--which did not prevent him, -in his moments of petulant wrath or of wine-y exaltation, from swearing -with a noisy vehemence. Lord Herbert of Cherbury--elder brother of the -poet Herbert, and English ambassador to France--wittily excused this -habit of his sovereign, by saying he was too kind to anathematize men -himself, and therefore asked God to do so. - -This was the man who was to succeed the great and courtly Elizabeth; this -was the man toward whom all the place-hunters of the court now directed -their thoughts, and (many of them) their steps too, eager to be among the -foremost to bow in obsequience before him; besieging him, as every United -States President is besieged, and will be besieged, until the disgraceful -hunt for spoils is checked by some nobler purpose on the part of political -victors than the rewarding of the partisans. - -There was Sir Robert Cary--a far-away cousin of Elizabeth’s--who was so -bewitched to be foremost in this agreeable business that he dashes away at -a headlong gallop, night and day--before the royal couriers have -started--gets thrown from his horse, who gave him a vicious blow with his -heels, which he says “made me shed much blood.” But he pushes on and -carries first to Edinburgh the tidings of the Queen’s death. Three days of -the sharpest riding would only carry the news in those days; and the -court messenger took a week or so to get over the heavy roads between the -Scotch capital and London. - -It does not appear that James made a show of much sorrow; he must have -remembered keenly, through all his stolidity, how his mother, Mary Queen -of Scots, had suffered at Fotheringay; and remembered through whose _fiat_ -this dismal tragedy had come about. He hints that perhaps the funeral -services had better not tarry for his coming;--writes that he would be -glad of the crown jewels (which they do not send, however) for the new -Queen’s wearing. - -Then he sets off at leisure; travels at leisure; receiving deputations at -leisure, and all manner of prostrations; stopping at Berwick; stopping at -Belvoir Castle; stopping at York; stopping wherever was good eating or -lodging or hunting; flatterers coming in shoals to be knighted by him; -even the great Bacon, wanting to be Sir Francised--as he was presently: -and I am afraid the poets of the time might have appeared, if they had -possessed the wherewithal to make the journey, and were as hopeful of fat -things. - -Curiously enough, the King is grandly entertained in Huntingdonshire by -one Oliver Cromwell, to whom James takes a great liking; not, of course, -the great Cromwell; but this was the uncle and the godfather of the famous -Oliver, who was to be chief instrument in bringing James’ royal son, -Charles, to the scaffold. Thence the King goes for four or five days of -princely entertainment to Theobalds, a magnificent seat of old Burleigh’s, -where Elizabeth had gone often; and where his son, Cecil, now plies the -King with flatteries, and poisons his mind perhaps against Raleigh--for -whom Cecil has no liking;--perhaps representing that Raleigh, being in -Parliament at the time, might have stayed the execution of Queen Mary, if -he had chosen. The King is delighted with Theobalds; so far delighted that -a few years after he exchanges for it his royal home of Hatfield House, -which magnificent place is still held by a descendant of Cecil, in the -person of the present Earl of Salisbury. - -That place of Theobalds became afterward a pet home of the King; he made -great gardens there, stocked with all manner of trees and fruits: every -great stranger in England must needs go to see the curious knots and -mazes of flowers, and the vineries and shrubbery; but the palace and -gardens are now gone. At last King Jamie gets to London, quartering at the -_Charter-house_--where is now a school and a home of worn-out old -pensioners (dear old Colonel Newcome died there!) within gunshot of the -great markets by Smithfield;--and James is as vain as a boy of sleeping -and lording it, at last, in a great capital of two realms that call him -master. - - -_Walter Raleigh._ - -I said that his mind had been poisoned against Raleigh;[1] that poison -begins speedily to work. There are only too many at the King’s elbow who -are jealous of the grave and courtly gentleman, now just turned of fifty, -and who has packed into those years so much of high adventure; who has -written brave poems; who has fought gallantly and on many fields; who has -voyaged widely in Southern and Western seas; who has made discovery of the -Guianas; who has, on a time, befriended Spenser, and was mate-fellow with -the gallant Sidney; who was a favorite of the great Queen; and whose fine -speech, and lordly bearing, and princely dress made him envied everywhere, -and hated by less successful courtiers. Possibly, too, Raleigh had made -unsafe speeches about the chances of other succession to the throne. -Surely he who wore his heart upon his sleeve, and loved brave deeds, could -have no admiration for the poltroon of a King who had gone a hunting when -the stains upon the scaffold on which his mother suffered were hardly dry. -So it happened that Sir Walter Raleigh was accused of conspiring for the -dethronement of the new King, and was brought to trial, with Cobham and -others. The street people jeered at him as he passed, for he was not -popular; he had borne himself so proudly with his exploits, and gold, and -his eagle eye. But he made so noble a defence--so full--so clear--so -eloquent--so impassioned, that the same street people cheered him as he -passed out of court--but not to freedom. The sentence was death: the King, -however, feared to put it to immediate execution. There was a show, -indeed, of a scaffold, and the order issued. Cobham and Gray were haled -out, and given last talks with an officiating priest, when the King -ordered stay of proceedings: he loved such mummery. Raleigh went to the -Tower, where for thirteen years he lay a prisoner; and they show now in -the Tower of London the vaulted chamber that was his reputed (but -doubtful) home, where he compiled, in conjunction with some outside -friends--Ben Jonson among the rest--that ponderous _History of the World_, -which is a great reservoir of facts, stated with all grace and dignity, -but which, like a great many heavy, excellent books, is never read. The -matter-of-fact young man remembers that Sir Walter Raleigh first brought -potatoes and (possibly) tobacco into England; but forgets his ponderous -_History_. - -I may as well finish his story here and now, though I must jump forward -thirteen and more years to accomplish it. At the end of that time the -King’s exchequer being low (as it nearly always was), and there being -rumors afloat of possible gold findings in Raleigh’s rich country of -Guiana, the old knight, now in his sixty-seventh year, felt the spirit of -adventure stirred in him by the west wind that crept through the gratings -of his prison bringing tropical odors; and he volunteered to equip a -fleet in company with friends, and with the King’s permission to go in -quest of mines, to which he believed, or professed to believe, he had the -clew. The permission was reluctantly granted; and poor Lady Raleigh sold -her estate, as well as their beloved country home of Sherborne (in Dorset) -to vest in the new enterprise. - -But the fates were against it: winds blew the ships astray; tempests beat -upon them; mutinies threatened; and in Guiana, at last, there came -disastrous fights with the Spaniards. - -Keymis, the second in command, and an old friend of Raleigh’s, being -reproached by this latter in a moment of frenzy, withdraws and shoots -himself; Raleigh’s own son, too, is sacrificed, and the crippled squadron -sets out homeward, with no gold, and shattered ships and maddened crews. -Storm overtakes them; there is mutiny; there is wreck; only a few forlorn -and battered hulks bring back this disheartened knight. He lands in his -old home of Devon--is warned to flee the wrath that will fall upon him in -London; but as of old he lifts his gray head proudly, and pushes for the -capital to meet his accusers. Arrived there, he is made to know by those -strong at court that there is no hope, for he has brought no gold; and -yielding to friendly entreaties he makes a final effort at escape. He does -outwit his immediate guards and takes to a little wherry that bears him -down the Thames: a half-day more and he would have taken wings for France. -But the sleuth-hounds are on his track; he is seized, imprisoned, and in -virtue of his old sentence--the cold-hearted Bacon making the law for -it--is brought to the block. - -He walks to the scaffold with serene dignity--greets old friends -cheerfully--dies cheerfully, and so enters on the pilgrimage he had set -forth in his cumbrous verse:-- - - “There the blessed paths we’ll travel, - Strow’d with rubies thick as gravel; - Ceilings of diamonds, sapphire floors, - High walls of coral and pearly bowers. - From thence to Heaven’s bribeless hall, - Where no corrupted voices brawl; - No conscience molten into gold, - No forg’d accuser bought or sold, - No cause deferr’d, no vain-spent Journey, - For there Christ is the King’s Attorney, - Who pleads for all without degrees, - And He hath angels, but no fees. - And when the grand twelve-million jury - Of our sins, with direful fury, - Against our souls black verdicts give, - Christ pleads his death and then we live.” - -Again to his wife, in a last letter from his prison, he writes:-- - - “You shall receive, my dear wife, my last words in these my last - lines: my love I send you, that you may keep when I am dead; and my - counsel, that you may remember when I am no more. I would not with - my will, present you sorrows, my dear Bess: let them go to the grave - with me and be buried in the dust. And seeing that it is not the - will of God that I shall meet you any more, bear my destruction - patiently, and with a heart like yourself. - - “I beseech you for the love that you bear me living, that you do not - hide yourself many days; but, by your labors seek to help my - miserable fortunes, and the rights of your poor child. Your mourning - cannot avail me, that am but dust. I sued for my life, but, God - knows, it was for you and yours that I desired it: for, know it, my - dear wife, your child is the child of a true man, who in his own - respect, despiseth Death and his misshapen and ugly forms. I cannot - write much (God knows how hardly I steal this time when all sleep), - and it is also time for me to separate my thoughts from the world. - Beg my dead body, which living was denied you, and either lay it in - Sherborne or Exeter church, by my father and mother. - - “My dear wife, farewell; bless my boy; pray for me; and let my true - God hold you both in his arms.” - -It is not as a literary man proper that I have spoken of Raleigh; the -poems that he wrote were very few, nor were they overfine; but they did -have the glimmer in them of his great courage and of his clear thought. -They were never collected in book shape in his own day, nor, indeed, till -long after he had gone: they were only occasional pieces,[2] coming to the -light fitfully under stress of mind--a trail of fire-sparks, as we may -say, flying off from under the trip-hammer of royal wrath or of desperate -fortunes. - -Even his _History_ was due to his captivity; his enthusiasms, when he -lived them in freedom, were too sharp and quick for words. They spent -themselves in the blaze of battles--in breasting stormy seas that washed -shores where southern cypresses grew, and golden promises opened with -every sunrise. - -And when I consider his busy and brilliant and perturbed life, with its -wonderful adventures, its strange friendships, its toils, its quiet hours -with Spenser upon the Mulla shore, its other hours amidst the jungles of -the Orinoco, its lawless gallantries in the court of Elizabeth, its booty -snatched from Spanish galleons he has set ablaze, its perils, its long -captivities--it is the life itself that seems to me a great Elizabethan -epic, with all its fires, its mated couples of rhythmic sentiment, its -poetic splendors, its shortened beat and broken pauses and blind turns, -and its noble climacteric in a bloody death that is without shame and full -of the largest pathos. - -When you read Charles Kingsley’s story of _Westward, Ho!_ (which you -surely should read, as well as such other matter as the same author has -written relating to Raleigh) you will get a live glimpse of this noble -knight of letters, and of those other brave and adventurous sailors of -Devonshire, who in those times took the keels of Plymouth over great -wastes of water. Kingsley writes of the heroes of his native Devon, in the -true Elizabethan humor--putting fiery love and life into his writing; the -roar of Atlantic gales breaks into his pages, and they show, up and down, -splashes of storm-driven brine. - - -_Nigel and Harrison._ - -In going back now to the earlier years of King James’ reign, I shall make -no apology for calling attention to that engaging old story of the -_Fortunes of Nigel_. I know it is the fashion with many of the astute -critics of the day to pick flaws in Sir Walter, and to expatiate on his -blunders and shortcomings; nevertheless, I do not think my readers can do -better--in aiming to acquaint themselves with this epoch of English -history--than to read over again Scott’s representation of the personality -and the surroundings of the pedant King. There may be errors in minor -dates, errors of detail; but the larger truths respecting the awkwardness -and the pedantries of the first Stuart King, and respecting the Scotch -adventurers who hung pressingly upon his skirts, and the lawless street -scenes which in those days did really disturb the quietude of the great -metropolis, are pictured with a liveliness which will make them -unforgetable. Macaulay says that out of the gleanings left by historic -harvesters Scott has made “a history scarce less valuable than theirs.” -Nor do I think there is in the _Fortunes of Nigel_ a deviation from the -truth (of which many must be admitted) so extravagant and misleading as -Mr. Freeman’s averment, that in _Ivanhoe_ “there is a mistake in every -line.” There are small truths and large truths; and the competent artist -knows which to seize upon. Titian committed some fearful anachronisms, and -put Venetian stuffs upon Judean women; Balthasar Denner, on the other -hand, painted with minute truthfulness every stubby hair in a man’s beard, -and no tailor could have excepted to his button-holes: nobody knows -Denner; Titian reigns. - -Among those whom Scott placed under tribute for much of his local coloring -was a gossipy, kindly clergyman, William Harrison[3] by name, who was -born close by Bow Lane, in London, who studied at Westminster, at Oxford, -and Cambridge (as he himself tells us), and who had a parish in Radwinter, -on the northern borders of Essex; who came to be a canon, finally, at -Windsor; and who died ten years before James came to power. He tells us, -in a delightfully quaint way, of all the simples which he grew in his -little garden--of the manner in which country houses were builded, and -their walls white-washed--of the open chimney vents, and the -smoke-burnished rafters. “And yet see the change,” he says, “for when our -houses were builded of willow, then had we oken men; but now that our -houses are come to be made of oke, our men are not onlie become willow, -but a great manie, through Persian delicacie crept in among us, altogether -of straw, which is a sore alteration.” - -When the old parson gets upon the subject of dress he waxes eloquent; nor -was he without fullest opportunities for observation, having been for much -time private chaplain to the Earl of Cobham. - - “Oh, how much cost,” he says, “is bestowed now-a-daies upon our - bodies, and how little upon our soules! How many sutes of apparel - hath the one, and how little furniture hath the other! How curious, - how nice are the men and women, and how hardlie can the tailer - please them in making things fit for their bodies. How many times - must they be sent back againe to him that made it. I will say - nothing of our heads, which sometimes are polled, sometimes curled, - or suffered to grow at length like woman’s locks, manie times cut - off above or under the ears, round, as by a wooden dish. Neither - will I meddle with our varieties of beards, of which some are shaven - from the chin like those of the Turks, not a few cut like to the - beard of Marquess Otto; some made round, like a rubbing brush, - others with a _pique devant_ (O fine fashion!). - - “In women, too, it is much to be lamented that they doo now far - exceed the lightness of our men, and such staring attire as in times - past was supposed meet for none but light housewives onelie, is now - become an habit for chaste and sober matrons. What should I say of - their doublets with pendant pieces on the brest, full of jags and - cuts, and sleeves of sundrie colors, I have met with some of these - _trulles_ in London, so disguised, that it hath passed my skill to - discerne whether they were men or women.” - -If this discerning old gentleman had shot his quill along our sidewalks, I -think it would have punctured a good deal of bloat, and stirred up no -little bustle. The King himself had a great liking for fine dress in -others, though he was himself a sloven. Lord Howard, a courtier, writes to -a friend who is hopeful of preferment: - - “I would wish you to be well trimmed; get a new Jerkin well - bordered, and not too short: the King liketh it flowing. Your ruff - should be well stiffened and bushy. The King is nicely heedful of - such points. Eighteen servants were lately discharged, and many more - will be discarded who are not to his liking in these matters.” And - again, speaking of a favorite, he says:--“Carr hath changed his - tailors, and tiremen many times, and all to please the Prince, who - laugheth at the long-grown fashion of our young courtiers, and - wisheth for change everie day.” - - -_A London Bride._ - -One other little bit of high light upon the every-day ways of London -living, in the early years of King James, we are tempted to give. It comes -out in the private letter of a new-married lady, who was daughter and -heiress of that enormously rich merchant, Sir John Spencer, who was Lord -Mayor of London; and who, in Elizabeth’s time (as well as James’), lived -in Crosby Hall, still standing in the thick of London city, near to where -Thread and Needle Street, at its eastern end, abuts upon Bishopsgate. -Every voyaging American should go to see this best type of domestic -architecture of the fifteenth century now existing in London; and it will -quicken his interest in the picturesque old pile to know that Richard -III., while Duke of Gloucester, passed some critical days and nights -there, and that for some years it was the home of Sir Thomas More. The -Spencer heiress, however--of whom we began to make mention--brightened its -interior at a later day; there were many suitors for her hand; among them -a son of Lord Compton--not looked upon with favor by the rich -merchant--and concealing his advances under the disguise of a baker’s boy, -through which he came to many stolen interviews, and at last (as tradition -tells) was successful enough to trundle away the heiress, covertly, in his -baker’s barrow. Through the good offices of Queen Elizabeth, who stood -god-mother to the first child, difficulties between father and son-in-law -were healed; and when, later, by the death of Sir John Spencer, the -bridegroom was assured of the enormous wealth inherited by his bride, he -was--poor man--nearly crazed. - -Among the curative processes for his relief may be reckoned the letter -from his wife to which I have made allusion, and which runs thus:-- - - “My sweet Life, I pray and beseech you to grant me the sum of £2,600 - [equivalent to some $30,000 now] quarterly: also, besides, £600 - quarterly for charities, of which I will give no account. Also, I - would have 3 horses for my own saddle, that none shall dare to lend - or borrow. Also; 2 gentlewomen (lest one should be sick)--seeing it - is an indecent thing for a gentlewoman to stand mumping alone, when - God hath blessed the Lord and Lady with a great Estate: Also, when I - ride, a hunting or a hawking, I would have them attend: so, for - either of those said women there must be a horse. - - “Also, I would have 6 or 8 gentlemen; I will have my two - coaches--one lined with velvet to myself, with four very fair - horses, and a coach for my women lined with cloth, and laced with - gold;--otherwise with scarlet and laced with silver, with four good - horses. Thereafter, my desire is that you defray all charges for me, - and beside my allowance, I would have 20 gowns of apparel a - year--six of them excellent good ones. Also, I would have to put in - my purse £2,000 or so--you to pay my debts. And seeing I have been - so reasonable, I pray you do find my children apparel, and their - schooling, and all my servants, men and women, with wages. Also, I - must have £6,000 to buy me jewels, and £4,000 to buy me a gold - chain. Also, my desire is, that you would pay your debts--build up - Ashley House, and lend no money as you love God! When you be an Earl - [as he was afterward in Charles I.’s time] I pray you to allow - £2,000 more than I now desire and double attendance.” - -Happy husband! - - -_Ben Jonson again._ - -We must not forget our literature; and what has become of our friend Ben -Jonson in these times? He is hearty and thriving; he has written -gratulatory and fulsome verses to the new sovereign. He is better placed -with James than even with Elizabeth. If his tragedy of “Sejanus” has not -found a great success, he has more than made up the failing by the -brilliant masques he has written. The pedantic King loves their pretty -show of classicism, which he can interpret better than his courtiers. He -battens, too, upon the flattery that is strown with a lavish hand:-- - - “Never came man more longed for, more desired, - And being come, more reverenced, lov’d, admired.”[4] - -This is the strain; no wonder that the poet comes by pension; no wonder he -has “commands,” with goodly fees, to all the fêtes in the royal honor. Yet -he is too strong and robust and learned to be called a mere sycophant. The -more I read of the literary history of those days the more impressed I am -by the predominance of Ben Jonson;--a great, careless, hard-living, -hard-drinking, not ill-natured literary monarch. His strength is evidenced -by the deference shown him--by his versatility; now some musical masque -sparkling with little dainty bits which a sentimental miss might copy in -her album or chant in her boudoir; and this, matched or followed by some -labored drama full of classic knowledge, full of largest wordcraft, -snapping with fire-crackers of wit, loaded with ponderous nuggets of -strong sense, and the whole capped and booted with prologue and epilogue -where poetic graces shine through proudest averments of indifference--of -scorn of applause--of audacious self-sufficiency. - -It was some fifteen years after James’ coming to power that Ben Jonson -made his memorable Scotch journey--perhaps out of respect for his -forebears, who had gone, two generations before, out of Annandale--perhaps -out of some lighter caprice. In any event it would have been only a -commonplace foot-journey of a middle-aged man, well known over all Britain -as poet and dramatist, with no special record of its own, except for a -visit of a fortnight which he made, in the north country, to Drummond of -Hawthornden:--this made it memorable. For this Drummond was a note-taker; -he was a smooth but not strong poet; was something proud of his Scotch -lairdship; lived in a beautiful home seated upon a crag that lifts above -the beautiful valley of Eskdale; its picturesque irregularities of tower -and turret are still very charming, and Eskdale is charming with its -wooded walks, cliffs, pools, and bridges; Roslin Castle is near by, and -Roslin Chapel, and so is Dalkeith. - -The tourist of our time can pass no pleasanter summer’s day than in -loiterings there and thereabout. Echoes of Scott’s border minstrelsy beat -from bank to bank. Poet Drummond was proud to have poet Jonson as a guest, -and hospitably plied him with “strong waters;” under the effusion Jonson -dilated, and Drummond, eagerly attentive, made notes. These jottings down, -which were not voluminous, and which were not published until after both -parties were in their graves, have been subject of much and bitter -discussion, and relate to topics lying widely apart. There is talk of -Petrarch and of Queen Elizabeth--of Marston and of Overbury--of Drayton -and Donne--of Shakespeare (all too little)--of King James and -Petronius--of Jonson’s “shrew of a wife” and of Sir Francis Bacon; and -there are more or less authentic stories of Spenser and Raleigh and -Sidney. Throughout we find the burly British poet very aggressive, very -outspoken, very penetrative and fearless: and we find his Scotch -interviewer a little overawed by the other’s audacities, and not a little -resentful of his advice to him--to study Quintillian. - - -_An Italian Reporter._ - -It was in the very year of Ben Jonson’s return from the north that a -masque of his--“Pleasure is Reconciled to Virtue”--was represented at -Whitehall; and it so happens that we have a lively glimpse of this -representation from the note-book of an Italian gentleman who was chaplain -to Pietro Contarini, then ambassador from Venice, and who was living at -Sir Pindar’s home in Bishopsgate Street (a locality still kept in mind by -a little tavern now standing thereabout called “Sir Pindar’s Head”). - -This report of Busino, the Italian gentleman of whom I spoke, about his -life in London, was buried in the archives of Venice, until unearthed -about twenty years since by an exploring Englishman.[5] So it happens, -that in this old Venetian document we seem to look directly through those -foreign eyes, closed for two hundred and seventy years, upon the play at -Whitehall. - - “For two hours,” he says, “we were forced to wait in the Venetian - box, very hot and very crowded. Then the Lord Chamberlain came up, - and wanted to add another, who was a greasy Spaniard.” - -This puts Busino in an ill humor (there was no good-will between Italy and -Spain in those days); but he admires the women--“all so many queens.” - - “There were some very lovely faces, and at every moment my - companions kept exclaiming: ‘Oh, do look at this one!’ ‘Oh, do see - that other!’ ‘Whose wife is this?’ ‘And that pretty one near her, - whose daughter is she?’ [Curious people!] Then the King came in and - took the ambassador to his royal box, directly opposite the stage, - and the play began at 10 P.M.” - -There was Bacchus on a car, followed by Silenus on a barrel, and twelve -wicker-flasks representing very lively beer bottles, who performed -numerous antics; then a moving Mount Atlas, as big as the stage would -permit; scores of classic affectations and astonishing mythologic -mechanism; and at last, with a great bevy of pages, twelve cavaliers in -masques--the Prince Charles (afterward Charles I.) being chief of the -revellers. - - “These all choose partners and dance every kind of dance--every - cavalier selecting his lady. After an hour or two of this, they, - being tired, began to flag;” whereat--says the chaplain--“the - choleric King James got impatient and shouted out from his box, ‘Why - don’t they dance? What did you make me come here for? Devil take you - all--dance!’” - -What a light this little touch of the old gentleman’s choleric spirit -throws upon the court manners of that time! - -Then Buckingham, the favorite, whom Scott introduces in _Nigel_ as -Steenie--comes forward to placate the King, and cuts a score of lofty -capers with so much grace and agility as not only to quiet the wrathy -monarch but to delight everybody. Afterward comes the banquet, at which -his most sacred majesty gets tipsy, and amid a general smashing of -Venetian glass, continues the Italian gentleman, “I went home, very -tired, at two o’clock in the morning.” - -Ah, if we could only unearth some good old play-going chaplain’s account -of how Shakespeare appeared--of his dress--of his voice--and with what -unction of manner he set before the little audience at the Globe, or -Blackfriars, his part of Old Adam (which there is reason to believe he -took), in his own delightful play of “As You Like It.” What would we not -give to know the very attitude, and the wonderful pity in his look, with -which he spoke to his young master, Orlando:-- - - “Oh, my sweet master, what make you here? - Why are you virtuous? Why do people love you? - Oh, what a world is this, when what is comely - Envenoms him, that bears it!” - - -_Shakespeare and the Globe._ - -Neither our Italian friend, however, nor Ben Jonson have given us any such -glimpse as we would like to have of that keen-witted Warwickshire actor -and playwright who, in the early years of James’ reign, is living off and -on in London; having bought, within a few years--as the records tell -us--a fine New Place in Stratford, and has won great favor with that King -Jamie, who with all his pedantry knows a good thing when he sees it, or -hears it. Indeed, there is some warrant for believing that the King wrote -a commendatory letter to the great dramatist, of which Mr. Black, in our -time, makes shadowy use in that Shakespearean romance of his,[6] you may -have encountered. The novelist gives us some very charming pictures of the -Warwickshire landscape, and he has made Miss Judith Shakespeare very arch -and engaging; but it was perilous ground for any novelist to venture upon; -and I think the author felt it, and has shown a timidity and doubt that -have hampered him; I do not recognize in it the breezy freedom that -belonged to his treatment of things among the Hebrides. But to return to -“Judith’s father”--he is part proprietor of the Globe Theatre, taking in -lots of money (old cronies say) in that way; was honored by the Queen, -too, before her death, and had written that “Merry Wives of Windsor,” -tradition says, to show Queen Bess how the Fat Falstaff would carry his -great hulk as a lover. - -We might meet this Shakespeare at that Mermaid Tavern we spoke of; but -should look out for him more hopefully about one of the playhouses. Going -from the Mermaid, supposing we were putting up there in those days, we -should strike across St. Paul’s Churchyard, and possibly taking Paul’s -Walk, and so down Ludgate Hill; and thence on, bearing southerly to -Blackfriars; which locality has now its commemoration in the name of -Playhouse Yard, and is in a dingy quarter, with dingy great warehouses -round it. Arrived there we should learn, perhaps by a poster on the door, -that the theatre would not open till some later hour. Blackfriars[7] was a -private theatre, roofed over entirely and lighted with candles; also, -through Elizabeth’s time, opening generally on Sundays--that being a -popular day--hours being chosen outside of prayer or church-time; and this -public dramatic observance of Sunday was only forbidden by express -enactment after James came to the throne. At her palace, and with her -child-players, Sunday was always Queen Elizabeth’s favorite day. - -This Blackfriars was at only a little remove down the Thames from that -famous Whitefriars region of which there is such melodramatic account in -Scott’s story of _Nigel_, where Old Trapbois comes to his wild death. If -we went to the Globe Theatre, we should push on down to the river--near to -a point where Blackfriars Bridge now spans it--then, a clear stream free -from all bridges, save only London Bridge, which would have loomed, with -its piles of houses, out of the water on our left. At the water-side we -should take wherry (fare only one penny) and be sculled over to -Southwark, landing at an open place--Bankside--near which was Paris -Garden, where bear-baiting was still carried on with high kingly approval; -and thereabout, on a spot now swallowed in a gulf of smoked and blackened -houses--just about the locality where at a later day stood Richard -Baxter’s Chapel, rose the octagonal walls of the Globe Theatre, in which -Mr. Shakespeare was concerned as player and part proprietor. There should -be a flag flying aloft and people lounging in, paying their two-pence, -their sixpences, their shillings, or even their half-crowns--as they chose -the commoner or the better places. Only the stage is roofed over; perhaps -also a narrow space all round the walls; from all otherwheres within, one -could look up straight into the murky sky of London. There is -apple-eating, nut-cracking, and some vender of pamphlets bawling “Buy a -new booke;” such a one perhaps as that _Horne Booke of Gulls_--which I -told you of, written by Dekker--would have been a favorite for such -venders. Or, possibly through urgence of the Court Chamberlain, King -James’ _Counterblaste to Tobacco_ may be put on sale there, to mend -manners; or Joshua Sylvester’s little poem to the same end, entitled -_Tobacco battered and the Pipes shattered about their Eares that idly -idolize so base and barbarous a Weed, by a Volley of hot shot, thundered -from Mount Helicon_. - - “How juster will the Heavenly God, - Th’ Eternal, punish with infernal rod - In Hell’s dark furnace, with black fumes to choak - Those that on Earth will still offend in Smoak.” - -But hot as this sort of shot might have been, we may be sure that some -fast fellows, the critics and _æsthetes_ of those days, will have their -place on the stage, sprawling there upon the edge, before the actors -appear; criticising players and audience and smoking their long pipes; may -be taking a hand at cards, and if very “swell,” tossing the cards over to -people in the pit when once their game is over--a showy and arrogant -largess. - -Perhaps Ben Jonson will come swaggering in, having taken a glass, or two, -very likely, or even three, in the tap-room of the Tabard Tavern--the -famous Tabard of Chaucer’s tales--which is within practicable drinking -distance; and Will Shakespeare, if indeed there, may greet him across two -benches with, “Ah, Ben,” and he--tipsily in reply, with “Ah, my good -fellow, Will.” Those prim young men, Beaumont and Fletcher, who are just -now pluming their wings for such dramatic flights as these two older men -have made, may also be there. And the play will open with three little -bursts of warning music; always a prologue with a first representation; -and it may chance that the very one we have lighted upon, is some special -exhibit of that great military spectacle of “Henry V.” which we know, and -all the times between have known; and it may be that this Shakespeare, -being himself author and in a sense manager of these boards, may come -forward to speak the prologue himself; how closely we would have eyed him, -and listened:-- - - “Pardon, gentles all; - The flat, unraiséd spirit, that hath dared - On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth - So great an object: Can this cockpit hold - The vasty fields of France? or may we cram - Within this wooden O, the very casques - That did affright the air at Agincourt? - Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts, - Into a thousand parts divide one man; - Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them - Printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth, - For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, - Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times; - Turning the accomplishment of many years - Into an hour-glass.” - -And then the play begins and we see them all: Gloucester and the brave -king, and Bedford, and Fluellen, and the pretty Kate of France (by some -boy-player), and Nym, and Pistol, and Dame Quickly; and the drums beat, -and the roar of battle breaks and rolls away--as only Shakespeare’s words -can make battles rage; and the French Kate is made Queen, and so the end -comes. - -All this might have happened; I have tried to offend against no historic -data of places, or men, or dates in this summing up. And from the doors of -the Globe, where we are assailed by a clamor of watermen and linkboys, we -go down to the river’s edge--scarce a stone’s-throw distant--and take our -wherry, on the bow of which a light is now flaming, and float away in the -murky twilight upon that great historic river--watching the red -torch-fires, kindling one by one along the Strand shores, and catching the -dim outline of London houses--the London of King James I.--looming -through the mists behind them. - -In our next chapter I shall have somewhat more to say of the Stratford -man--specially of his personality; and more to say of King James, and of -his English Bible. - - - - -CHAPTER II. - - -We have had our glimpse of the first (English) Stuart King, as he made his -shambling way to the throne--beset by spoilsmen; we had our glimpse, too, -of that haughty, high-souled, unfortunate Sir Walter Raleigh, whose memory -all Americans should hold in honor. We had our little look through the -magic-lantern of Scott at the toilet and the draggled feathers of the -pedant King James, and upon all that hurly-burly of London where the -Scotch Nigel adventured; and through the gossipy Harrison we set before -ourselves a great many quaint figures of the time. We saw a bride whose -silken dresses whisked along those balusters of Crosby Hall, which brides -of our day may touch reverently now; we followed Ben Jonson, afoot, into -Scotland, and among the pretty scenes of Eskdale; and thereafter we -sauntered down Ludgate Hill, and so, by wherry, to Bankside and the -Globe, where we paid our shilling, and passed the time o’ day with Ben -Jonson; and saw young Francis Beaumont, and smelt the pipes; and had a -glimpse of Shakespeare. But we must not, for this reason, think that all -the world of London smoked, or all the world of London went to the Globe -Theatre. - - -_Gosson and Other Puritans._ - -There was at this very time, living and preaching, in the great city, a -certain Stephen Gosson[8]--well-known, doubtless, to Ben Jonson and his -fellows--who had received a university education, who had written delicate -pastorals and other verse, which--with many people--ranked him with -Spenser and Sidney; who had written plays too, but who, somehow -conscience-smitten, and having gone over from all dalliance with the muses -to extremest Puritanism, did thereafter so inveigh against “_Poets, -Players, Jesters, and such like Caterpillars of the Commonwealth_”--as he -called them--as made him rank, for fierce invective, with that Stubbes -whose onslaught upon the wickedness of the day I cited. He had called his -discourse, “_pleasant for Gentlemen that favor Learning, and profitable -for all that will follow Vertue_.” He represented the Puritan -feeling--which was growing in force--in respect to poetry and the drama; -and, I have no doubt, regarded Mr. William Shakespeare as one of the best -loved and trusted emissaries of Satan. - -But between the rigid sectarians and those of easy-going faith who were -wont to meet at the Mermaid Tavern, there was a third range of thinking -and of thinkers;--not believing all poetry and poets Satanic, and yet not -neglectful of the offices of Christianity. The King himself would have -ranked with these; and so also would the dignitaries of that English -Church of which he counted himself, in some sense, the head. It was in the -first year of his reign, 1603--he having passed a good part of the summer -in hunting up and down through the near counties--partly from his old love -of such things, partly to be out of reach of the plague which ravaged -London that year (carrying off over thirty thousand people); it was, I -say, in that first year that, at the instance of some good Anglicans, he -issued a proclamation--“_Touching a meeting for the hearing and for the -determining things pretended to be amiss in the Church._” - -Out of this grew a conference at Hampton Court, in January, 1604. -Twenty-five were called to that gathering, of whom nine were Bishops. On -no one day were they all present; nor did there seem promise of any great -outcome from this assemblage, till one Rainolds, a famous Greek scholar of -Oxford, “moved his Majesty that there might be a new translation of the -Bible, because previous ones were not answerable altogether to the truth -of the Original.” - - -_King James’ Bible._ - -There was discussion of this; my Lord Bancroft, Bishop of London, -venturing the sage remark that if every man’s humor should be followed, -there would be no end of translating. In the course of the talk we may -well believe that King James nodded approval of anything that would -flatter his kingly vanities, and shook his big unkempt head at what would -make call for a loosening of his purse-strings. But out of this slumberous -conference, and out of these initial steps, did come the scriptural -revision; and did come that noble monument of the English language, and of -the Christian faith, sometimes called “King James’ Bible,” though--for -anything that the old gentleman had to do vitally or specifically with the -revision--it might as well have been called the Bible of King James’ -tailor, or the Bible of King James’ cat. - -It must be said, however, for the King, that he did press for a prompt -completion of the work, and that “it should be done by the best learned in -both universities.” Indeed, if the final dedication of the translators to -the “most High, and Mighty Prince James” (which many a New England boy of -fifty years ago wrestled with in the weary lapses of too long a sermon) -were to be taken in its literal significance, the obligations to him were -immense; after thanking him as “principal mover and author of the work,” -the dedication exuberantly declares that “the hearts of all your loyal and -religious people are so bound and firmly knit unto you, that your very -name is precious among them: Their eye doth behold you with comfort, and -they bless you in their hearts, as that sanctified person, who, under -God, is the immediate author of their true Happiness.” The King’s great -reverence for the Scriptures is abundantly evidenced by that little -tractate of his--the _Basilikon Doron_--not written for publication -(though surreptitiously laid hold of by the book-makers) but intended for -the private guidance of his eldest son, Prince Henry, in that time heir to -the throne. The little book shows large theologic discretions; and--saving -some scornings of the “vaine, Pharisaicall Puritaines”--is written in a -spirit which might be safely commended to later British Princes. - - “When yee reade the Scripture [says the King] reade it with a - sanctified and chast hart; admire reverentlie such obscure places as - ye understand not, blaming only your own capacitie; reade with - delight the plaine places, and study carefully to understand those - that are somewhat difficile: preasse to be a good textuare; for the - Scripture is ever the best interpreter of itselfe.” - -Some forty odd competent men were set out from the universities and -elsewheres for the work of the Bible revision. Yet they saw none of King -James’ money, none from the royal exchequer; which indeed from the King’s -disorderly extravagances, that helped nobody, was always lamentably low. -The revisers got their rations, when they came together in conference, in -Commons Hall, or where and when they could; and only at the last did some -few of them who were engaged in the final work of proof-reading, get a -stipend of some thirty shillings a week from that fraternity of -book-makers who were concerned with the printing and selling of the new -Bible. - -When the business of revision actually commenced it is hard to determine -accurately; but it was not till the year 1611--eight years after the -Hampton Conference--that an edition was published by printer Barker (who, -or whose company, was very zealous about the matter, it being a fat job -for him) and so presently, under name of King James’ version “appointed -(by assemblage of Bishops) to be read in churches,” it came to be the -great Bible of the English-speaking world--then, and thence-forward. And -now, who were the forty men who dealt so wisely and sparingly with the old -translators; who came to their offices of revision with so tender a -reverence, and who put such nervous, masculine, clear-cut English into -their own emendations of this book as to leave it a monument of -Literature? Their names are all of record: and yet if I were to print -them, the average reader would not recognize, I think, a single one out of -the twoscore.[9] You would not find Bacon’s name, who, not far from this -time was writing some of his noblest essays, and also writing (on the -King’s suggestion) about preaching and Church management. You would not -find the name of William Camden, who was then at the mellow age of sixty, -and of a rare reputation for learning and for dignity of character. You -would not find the name of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who though writing -much of religious intention, was deistically inclined; nor of Robert -Burton, churchman, and author of that famous book _The Anatomy of -Melancholy_--then in his early prime; nor of Sir Walter Raleigh, nor of -Sir Thomas Overbury--both now at the date of their best powers; nor yet -would one find mention of John Donne,[10] though he came to be Dean of St. -Paul’s and wrote poems the reader may--and ought to know; nor, yet again, -is there any hearing of Sir John Davies, who had commended himself -specially to King James, and who had written poetically and reverently on -the _Immortality of the Soul_[11] in strains that warrant our citing a few -quatrains:-- - - “At first, her mother Earth she holdeth dear, - And doth embrace the world and worldly things: - She flies close by the ground, and hovers here, - And mounts not up with her celestial wings. - - “Yet under heaven she cannot light on aught - That with her heavenly nature doth agree; - She cannot rest, she cannot fix her thought, - She cannot in this world contented be: - - “For who, did ever yet, in honor, wealth, - Or pleasure of the sense, contentment find? - Who ever ceased to wish, when he had health? - Or, having wisdom, was not vexed in mind? - - “Then, as a bee which among weeds doth fall, - Which seem sweet flowers, with lustre fresh and gay; - She lights on that and this, and tasteth all, - But, pleased with none, doth rise and soar away!” - -This is a long aside; but it gives us good breath to go back to our -translators, who if not known to the general reader, were educators or -churchmen of rank; men of trained minds who put system and conscience and -scholarship into their work. And their success in it, from a literary -aspect only, shows how interfused in all cultivated minds of that day was -a keen apprehension and warm appreciation of the prodigious range, and the -structural niceties, and rhythmic forces of that now well-compacted -English language which Chaucer and Spenser and Shakespeare, each in his -turn, had published to the world, with brilliant illustration. - -And will this old Bible of King James’ version continue to be held in -highest reverence? Speaking from a literary point of view--which is our -stand-point to-day--there can be no doubt that it will; nor is there good -reason to believe that--on literary lines--any other will ever supplant -it. There may be versions that will be truer to the Greek; there may be -versions that will be far truer to the Hebrew; there may be versions that -will mend its science--that will mend its archæology--that will mend its -history; but never one, I think, which, as a whole, will greatly mend that -orderly and musical and forceful flow of language springing from early -English sources, chastened by Elizabethan culture and flowing -out--freighted with Christian doctrine--over all lands where Saxon speech -is uttered. Nor in saying this, do I yield a jot to any one--in respect -for that modern scholarship which has shown bad renderings from the Greek, -and possibly far worse ones from the Hebrew. No one--it is reasonably to -be presumed--can safely interpret doctrines of the Bible without the aid -of this scholarship and of the “higher criticism;” and no one will be -henceforth fully trusted in such interpretation who is ignorant of, or who -scorns the recent revisions. - -And yet the old book, by reason of its strong, sweet, literary quality, -will keep its hold in most hearts and most minds. Prove to the utmost that -the Doxology,[12] at the end of the Lord’s Prayer, is an -interpolation--that it is nowhere in the earlier Greek texts (and I -believe it is abundantly proven), and yet hundreds, and thousands, and -tens of thousands who use that invocation, will keep on saying, in the -rhythmic gush of praise, which is due maybe to some old worthy of the -times of the Henrys (perhaps Tyndale himself)--“For thine is the Kingdom, -and the Power, and the Glory, for ever and ever, Amen!” - -And so with respect to that splendid Hebraic poem of Job, or that mooted -book of Ecclesiastes; no matter what critical scholarship may do in -amplification or curtailment, it can never safely or surely refine away -the marvellous graces of their strong, old English current--burdened with -tender memories--murmurous with hopes drifting toward days to come--“or -ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the -pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.” - -The scientists may demonstrate that this ancient oak--whose cooling -shadows have for so many ages given comfort and delight--is overgrown, -unshapely, with needless nodules, and corky rind, and splotches of moss, -and seams that show stress of gone-by belaboring tempests; they may make -it clear that these things are needless for its support--that they cover -and cloak its normal organic structure; but who shall hew them clean away, -and yet leave in fulness of stature and of sheltering power the majestic -growth we venerate? I know the reader may say that this is a sentimental -view; so it is; but science cannot measure the highest beauty of a poem; -and with whose, or what fine scales shall we weigh the sanctities of -religious awe? - -It must be understood, however, that the charms of the “King James’ -Version” do not lie altogether in Elizabethan beauties of phrase, or in -Jacobean felicities; there are quaint archaisms in it which we are sure -have brought their pleasant reverberations of lingual sound all the way -down from the days of Coverdale, of Tyndale, and of Wyclif. - -A few facts about the printing and publishing of the early English Bibles -it may be well to call to mind. In a previous chapter I spoke of the -fatherly edicts against Bible-reading and Bible-owning in the time of -Henry VIII.; but the reign of his son, Edward VI., was a golden epoch for -the Bible printers. During the six years when this boy-king held the -throne, fifty editions--principally Coverdale’s and Tyndale’s -versions--were issued, and no less than fifty-seven printers were engaged -in their manufacture. - -Queen Mary made difficulties again, of which a familiar and brilliant -illustration may be found in that old New England Primer which sets forth -in ghastly wood-cut “the burning of Mr. John Rogers at the Stake, in -Smithfield.” Elizabeth was coy; she set a great many prison-doors open; -and when a courtier said, “May it please your Majesty, there be sundry -other prisoners held in durance, and it would much comfort God’s people -that they be set free.” She asked, “Whom?” And the good Protestant said, -“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.” But she--young as she was--showed her -monarch habit. “Let us first find,” said she, “if they wish enlargement.” - -But she had accepted the gift of a Bible on first passing through -Cheapside--had pressed it to her bosom in sight of the street people, and -said she should “oft read that holy book”--which was easy to say, and -becoming. - -In the early days of her reign the Genevan Bible, always a popular one in -England, was completed, and printed mostly in Geneva; but a privilege for -printing it in England was assigned to John Bodley--that John Bodley whose -more eminent son, Sir Thomas, afterward founded and endowed the well-known -Bodleian Library at Oxford. - -In the early part of Elizabeth’s reign appeared, too, the so-called -Bishops’ Bible (now a rare book), under charge of Archbishop Parker, -fifteen dignitaries of the Church being joined with him in its -supervision. There were engravings on copper and wood--of Elizabeth, on -the title-page--of the gay Earl of Leicester at the head of the Book of -Joshua, and of old, nodding Lord Burleigh in the Book of Psalms. But the -Bishops’ Bible was never so popular as the Geneva one. During the reign of -Elizabeth there were no less than one hundred and thirty distinct issues -of Bibles and Testaments, an average of three a year. - -It may interest our special parish to know further that the first American -(English) Bible was printed at Philadelphia, by a Scotchman named Aitkin, -in the year 1782; but the first Bible printed in America was in the German -language, issued by Christopher Sauer, at Germantown, in 1743. - -But I will not encroach any further upon biblical teachings: we will come -back to our secular poets, and to that bravest and finest figure of them -all, who was born upon the Avon. - - -_Shakespeare._ - -I have tried--I will confess it now--to pique the reader’s curiosity, by -giving him stolen glimpses from time to time of the great dramatist, and -by putting off, in chapter after chapter, any full or detailed mention of -him, or of his work. Indeed, when I first entered upon these talks -respecting English worthies--whether places, or writers, or sovereigns--I -said to myself--when we come up with that famous Shakespeare, whom all the -world knows so well, and about whom so much has been said and written--we -will make our obeisance, lift our hat, and pass on to the lesser men -beyond. So large a space did the great dramatist fill in the delightsome -journey we were to make together, down through the pleasant country of -English letters, that he seemed not so much a personality as some great -British stronghold, with outworks, and with pennons flying--standing all -athwart the Elizabethan Valley, down which our track was to lead us. From -far away back of Chaucer, when the first Romances of King Arthur were -told, when glimpses of a King Lear and a Macbeth appeared in old -chronicles--this great monument of Elizabethan times loomed high in our -front; and go far as we may down the current of English letters, it will -not be out of sight, but loom up grandly behind us. And now that we are -fairly abreast of it, my fancy still clings to that figure of a great -castle--brimful of life--with which the lesser poets of the age contrast -like so many outlying towers, that we can walk all round about, and -measure, and scale, and tell of their age, and forces, and style; but this -Shakespearean hulk is so vast, so wondrous, so peopled with creatures, who -are real, yet unreal--that measure and scale count for nothing. We hear -around it the tramp of armies and the blare of trumpets; yet these do not -drown the sick voice of poor distraught Ophelia. We see the white banner -of France flung to the breeze, and the English columbine nodding in clefts -of the wall; we hear the ravens croak from turrets that lift above the -chamber of Macbeth, and the howling of the rain-storms that drenched poor -Lear; and we see Jessica at her casement, and the Jew Shylock whetting his -greedy knife, and the humpbacked Richard raging in battle, and the Prince -boy--apart in his dim tower--piteously questioning the jailer Hubert, who -has brought “hot-irons” with him. Then there is Falstaff, and Dame -Quickly, and the pretty Juliet sighing herself away from her moonlit -balcony. - -These are all live people to us; we know them; and we know Hamlet, and -Brutus, and Mark Antony, and the witty, coquettish Rosalind; even the -poor Mariana of the moated grange. We do not see enough of this -latter, to be sure, to give stereoscopic roundness; but the mere -glimpse--allusion--is of such weight--has such hue of realness, that it -buoys the dim figure over the literary currents and drifts of two hundred -and odd years, till it gets itself planted anew in the fine lines of -Tennyson;--not as an illusion only, a figment of the elder imagination -chased down and poetically adopted--but as an historic actuality we have -met, and so, greet with the grace and the knowingness of old -acquaintanceship. - -If you tell me of twenty historic names in these reigns of Elizabeth and -James--names of men or women whose lives and characters you know best--I -will name to you twenty out of the dramas of Shakespeare whose lives and -characters you know better. - -And herein lies the difference between this man Shakespeare, and most that -went before him, or who have succeeded him; he has supplied real -characters to count up among the characters we know. Chaucer did indeed in -that Canterbury Pilgrimage which he told us of in such winning numbers, -make us know by a mere touch, in some unforgetable way, all the outer -aspects of the Knight, and the Squire, and the Prioress, and the shrewish -Wife of Bath; but we do not see them insidedly; and as for the Una, and -Gloriana, and Britomart, of the “Faërie Queene,” they are phantasmic; we -may admire them, but we admire them as we admire fine bird-plumes tossing -airily, delightsomely--they have no flesh and blood texture: and if I were -to name to you a whole catalogue of the best-drawn characters out of -Jonson, and Fletcher, and Massinger, and the rest, you would hardly know -them. Will you try? You may know indeed the Sir Giles Overreach of -Massinger, because “A New Way to Pay Old Debts” has always a certain -relish; and because Sir Giles is a dreadful type of the unnatural, selfish -greed that maddens us everywhere; but do you know well--Sejanus, or -Tamburlaine, or Bellisant, or Boadicea, or Bellario, or Bobadil, or -Calantha? You do not even know them to bow to. And this, not alone because -we are unused to read or to hear the plays in which these characters -appear, but because none of them have that vital roundness, completeness, -and individuality which makes their memory stick in the mind, when once -they have shown their qualities. - -We are, all of us, in the way of meeting people in respect of whom a week, -or even a day of intercourse, will so fasten upon us--maybe their -pungency, their alertness, or some one of their decided, fixed, fine -attributes, that they thenceforth people our imagination; not obtrusively -there indeed, but a look, a name, an allusion, calls back their special -significance, as in a photographic blaze. Others there are, in shoals, -whom we may meet, day by day, month by month, who have such washed-out -color of mind, who do so take hues from all surroundings, without any -strong hue of their own, that in parting from them we forget, straightway, -what manner of folk they were. You cannot part so from the people -Shakespeare makes you know. - - -_Shakespeare’s Youth._ - -And now what was the personality of this man, who, out of his imagination, -has presented to us such a host of acquaintances? Who was he, where did -he live, how did he live, and what about his father, or his children, or -his family retinue? - -And here we are at once confronted by the awkward fact, that we have less -positive knowledge of him, and of his habits of life than of many smaller -men--poets and dramatists--who belonged to his time, and who--with a -pleasant egoism--let drop little tidbits of information about their -personal history. But Shakespeare did not write letters that we know of; -he did not prate of himself in his books; he did not entertain such -quarrels with brother authors as provoked reckless exposure of the family -“wash.” Of Greene, of Nashe, of Dekker, of Jonson, of Beaumont and -Fletcher, we have personal particulars about their modes of living, their -associates, their dress even, which we seek for vainly in connection with -Shakespeare. This is largely due, doubtless--aside from the pleasant -egoism at which I have hinted--to the circumstance that most of these were -university men, and had very many acquaintances among those of culture who -kept partial record of their old associates. But no school associate of -Shakespeare ever kept track of _him_; he ran out of sight of them all. - -He did study, however, in his young days, at that old town of Stratford, -where he was born--his father being fairly placed there among the honest -tradespeople who lived around. The ancient timber-and-plaster shop is -still standing in Henley Street, where his father served his -customers--whether in wool, meats, or gloves--and in the upper front -chamber of which Shakespeare first saw the light. Forty odd years ago, -when I first visited it, the butcher’s fixtures were not wholly taken down -which had served some descendant of the family--in the female -line[13]--toward the close of the eighteenth century, for the cutting of -meats. Into what Pimlico order it may be put to-day, under the hands of -the Shakespeare Society, I do not know; but it is understood that its most -characteristic features are religiously guarded; and house, and town, and -church are all worthy of a visit. The town does not lie, indeed, on either -of those great thoroughfares which Americans are wont to take on their -quick rush from Liverpool to London, and the Continent; but it is easily -approachable on the north from Warwick, in whose immediate vicinity are -Kenilworth and Guy’s Cliff; and from the south through Oxford, whose -scores of storied towers and turrets beguile the student traveller. The -country around Stratford has not, indeed, the varied picturesqueness of -Derbyshire or of Devon; but it has in full the quiet rural charm that -belongs to so many townships of Middle-England;--hawthorn hedges, smooth -roads, embowered side lanes, great swells of greensward where sheep are -quietly feeding; clumps of gray old trees, with rookeries planted in them, -and tall chimneys of country houses lifting over them and puffing out -little wavelets of blue smoke; meadows with cattle browsing on them; -wayside stiles; a river and canals, slumberous in their tides, with barges -of coal and lumber swaying with the idle currents that swish among the -sedges at the banks. - -On the north, toward Warwick, are the Welcombe hills, here and there -tufted with great trees, which may have mingled their boughs, in some -early time, with the skirts of the forest of Arden; and from these -heights, looking southwest, one can see the packed gray and red roofs of -the town, the lines of lime-trees, the elms and the willows of the river’s -margin, out of which rises the dainty steeple of Stratford church; while -beyond, the eye leaps over the hazy hollows of the Red-horse valley, and -lights upon the blue rim of hills in Gloucestershire, known as the -Cotswolds (which have given name to one of the famous breeds of English -sheep). More to the left, and nearer to a south line of view, crops up -Edgehill (near to Pilot-Marston), an historic battle-field--wherefrom -Shakespeare, on his way to London may have looked back--on spire, and -alder copse, and river--with more or less of yearning. To the right, -again, and more westerly than before, and on the hither side of the -Red-horse valley and plain, one can catch sight of the rounded thickets of -elms and of orcharding where nestles the hamlet of Shottery. Thence -Shakespeare brought away his bride, Anne Hathaway, she being well toward -the thirties, and he at that date a prankish young fellow not yet -nineteen. What means he may have had of supporting a family at this time, -we cannot now say; nor could his father-in-law tell then; on which score -there was--as certain traditions run--some vain demurral. He may have been -associated with his father in trade, whether as wool-dealer or glover; -doubtless was; doubtless, too, had abandoned all schooling; doubtless was -at all the wakes, and May festivals, and entertainments of strolling -players, and had many a bout of heavy ale-drinking. There are stories -too--of lesser authenticity--that he was over-familiar with the game in -the near Park of Charlecote, whereby he came to ugly issue with its owner. -We shall probably never know the truth about these stories. Charlecote -House is still standing, a few miles out of the town (northeasterly), and -its delightful park, and picturesque mossy walls--dappled with patches of -shadow and with ivy leaves--look charmingly innocent of any harm their -master could have done to William Shakespeare; but certain it is that the -neighborhood grew too warm for him; and that he set off one day (being -then about twenty-three years old) for London, to seek his fortune. - - -_Family Relations._ - -His wife and three children[14] stayed behind. In fact--and it may as well -be said here--they always stayed behind. It does not appear that -throughout the twenty or more succeeding years, during which Shakespeare -was mostly in London, that either wife or child was ever domiciled with -him there for ever so little time. Indeed, for the nine years immediately -following Shakespeare’s departure from Stratford, traces of his special -whereabouts are very dim; we know that rising from humblest work in -connection with companies of players, he was blazing a great and most -noticeable path for himself; but whether through those nine years he was -tied to the shadow of London houses, or was booked for up-country -expeditions, or (as some reckon) made brief continental journeyings, we -cannot surely tell. In 1596, however, on the occasion of his son Hamnet’s -death, he appears in Stratford again, in the prime of his powers then, a -well-to-do man (buying New Place the year following), his London fame very -likely blazoning his path amid old towns-people--grieving over his lost -boy, whom he can have seen but little--perhaps putting some of the color -of his private sorrow upon the palette where he was then mingling the -tints for his play of “Romeo and Juliet.” - - “Oh, my love, - Death that hath sucked the honey of thy breath - Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty. - Thou art not conquered; Beauty’s ensign yet - Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks, - And death’s pale flag is not advanced there. - Why art thou yet so fair?” - -His two daughters lived to maturity--both marrying; the favorite and elder -daughter, Susanna, becoming the wife of Dr. Hall, a well-established -physician in Stratford, who attended the poet in his last illness, and who -became his executor. Shakespeare was--so far as known--watchful and tender -of his children’s interest: nor is there positive evidence that he was -otherwise to his wife, save such inferences as may be drawn from the tenor -of some of his sonnets, and from those long London absences, over which it -does not appear that either party greatly repined. Long absences are not -_prima-facie_ evidence of a lack of domestic harmonies; do indeed often -promote them in a limited degree; and at worst, may possibly show only a -sagacious disposition to give pleasant noiselessness to bickerings that -would be inevitable. - -It is further to be borne in mind, in partial vindication of Shakespeare’s -marital loyalty, that this period of long exile from the family roof -entailed not only absence from his wife, but also from father and -mother--both of whom were living down to a date long subsequent,[15] and -with whom--specially the mother--most affectionate relations are -undoubted. A disloyalty that would have made him coy of wifely visitings -could hardly harden him to filial duties, while the phlegmatic -indifference of a very busy London man, which made him chary of home -visitings, would go far to explain the seeming family estrangement. - -But we must not, and cannot reckon the Stratford poet as a paragon of all -the virtues; his long London absences, for cause or for want of cause--or -both--may have given many twinges of pain to his own mother (of Arden -blood), and to the mother of his children. Yet after the date of his boy’s -death, up to the time of his final return to Stratford there are evidences -of very frequent home visits, and of large interest in what concerned his -family and towns-people. - -His journeyings to and fro, probably on horseback, may have taken him by -way of Edgehill, and into Banbury (of “Banbury-Cross” buns); or, more -likely, he would have followed the valley of the Stour by Shipston, and -thence up the hills to Chipping-Norton, and skirting Whichwood Forest, -which still darkens a twelve-mile stretch of land upon the right, and so -by Ditchley and the great Woodstock Park, into Oxford. I recall these -names and the succession of scenes the more distinctly, for the reason -that some forty years ago I went over the whole stretch of road from -Windsor to Stratford on foot, staying the nights at wayside inns, and -lunching at little, mossy hostelries, some of which the poet may possibly -have known, and looking out wonderingly and reverently for glimpses of -wood, or field, or flood, that may have caught the embalmment of his -verse. It was worth getting up betimes to verify such lines as these:-- - - “Full many a glorious morning have I seen - Kissing with golden face the meadows green, - Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;” - -or those others, telling how the gentle day - - “Dapples the drowsy East with spots of gray.” - -Again, there was delightful outlook for - - “----a bank whereon the wild thyme blows - Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows;” - -or, perhaps it was the - - “Summer’s green, all girded up in sheaves” - -that caught the eye; or, yet again, the picturesque hedge-rows, which, - - Like prisoners overgrown with hair - Put forth disordered twigs; - -and these flanked by some - - “----even mead, which erst brought sweetly forth - The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover.” - -What a wondrous light upon all the landscape along all the courses of his -country journeyings! Nor can I forbear to tell how such illumination once -made gay for me all the long foot-tramp from Chipping-Norton to -Stratford--past Long Compton, and past Shipston (with lunch at the “Royal -George”)--past Atherton Church, and thence along the lovely Stour banks, -and some weary miles of grassy level, till the spire of Trinity rose -shimmering in the late sunlight; afterward copses of elms, and willows -clearly distinguishable, and throwing afternoon shadows on the silvery -stretch of the Avon; then came sight of lazy boats, and of Clopton bridge, -over which I strolled foot-weary, into streets growing dim in the -twilight; coming thus, by a traveller’s chance, into the court of the -Red-Horse Tavern, and into its little back-parlor, where after dinner one -was served by the gracious hostess with a copy of Irving’s “Sketch Book” -(its Stratford chapter all tattered and thumb-worn). In short, I had the -rare good fortune to stumble upon the very inn where Geoffrey Crayon was -quartered twenty odd years before, and was occupying, for the nonce, the -very parlor where he had thrust his feet into slippers, made a sceptre of -the poker, and enjoyed the royalties of “mine inn.” - - -_Shakespeare in London._ - -But how fares our runaway Shakespeare in London? What is he to do there? -We do not positively know that he had a solitary acquaintance established -in the city; certainly not one of a high and helping position. He was not -introduced, as Spenser had been, by Sir Philip Sidney and by Raleigh to -the favor of the Queen. He has no literary backing of the colleges, or of -degrees, or of learned associates; nay, not being so high placed, or so -well placed, but that his townsmen of most respectability shook their -heads at mention of him. - -But he has heard the strolling players; perhaps has journeyed up in their -trail; he has read broadsides, very likely, from London; we may be sure -that he has tried his hand at verses, too, in those days when he went -courting to the Hathaway cottage. So he drifts to the theatres, of which -there were three at least established, when he first trudged along the -Strand toward Blackfriars. He gets somewhat to do in connection with -them; precisely what that is, we do not know. But he comes presently to -be enrolled as player, taking old men’s parts that demand feeling and -dignity. We know, too, that he takes to the work of mending plays, and -splicing good parts together. Sneered at very likely, by the young fellows -from the universities who are doing the same thing, and may be, writing -plays of their own; but lacking Shakespeare’s instinct as to what will -take hold of the popular appetite, or rather--let us say--what will touch -the human heart. - -There are poems, too, that he writes early in this town life of his, -dedicated to that Earl of Southampton[16] of whom I have already spoken, -and into whose good graces he has somehow fallen. But the Earl is eight or -ten years his junior, a mere boy in fact, just from Cambridge, strangely -attracted by this high-browed, blue-eyed, sandy-haired young fellow from -Stratford, who has shown such keenness and wondrous insight. - -Would you hear a little bit of what he wrote in what he calls the “first -heir of my invention?” It is wonderfully descriptive of a poor hare who is -hunted by hounds; which he had surely seen over and again on the -Oxfordshire or Cotswold downs: - - “Sometimes he runs among a flock of sheep, - To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell, - And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer; - Danger deviseth shifts; wit waits on fear. - - “For there, his smell, with others being mingled, - The hot-scent snuffing hounds are driven to doubt, - Ceasing their clamorous cry, till they have singled - With much ado, the cold fault clearly out; - Then do they spend their mouths: Echo replies - As if another chase were in the skies. - - “By this poor Wat, far off upon a hill, - Stands on his hinder legs with listening fear, - To hearken if his foes pursue him still; - Anon, their loud alarums he doth hear; - And now his grief may be comparéd well - To one sore-sick, that hears the passing bell.” - -It must have been close upon this that his first play was written and -played, though not published until some years after. It may have been -“Love’s Labor’s Lost,” it may have been the “Two Gentlemen of Verona;” no -matter what: I shall not enter into the question of probable succession of -his plays, as to which critics will very likely be never wholly -agreed.[17] It is enough that he wrote them; the merry ones when his heart -was light, and the tragic ones when grief lay heavily upon him. And yet -this is only partially true; he had such amazing power of subordinating -his feeling to his thought. - -I wonder how much of his own hopes and possible foretaste he did put into -the opening lines of what, by most perhaps, is reckoned his first play:-- - - “Let Fame, that all hunt after in their lives, - Live registered upon our brazen tombs, - And then grace us in the disgrace of Death; - When, spite of cormorant-devouring Time, - The endeavor of this present breath may buy - That honor, which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge - And make us heirs of all Eternity!” - - -_Work and Reputation._ - -And what was thought of him in those first days? Not overmuch; none looked -upon him as largely overtopping his compeers of that day. His _Venus and -Adonis_[18] was widely and admiringly known: so was his _Lucrece_; but -Marlowe’s “sound and fury” in “Tamburlaine” would have very possibly drawn -twice the house of “Love’s Labor’s Lost.” - -He had no coterie behind him; he was hail-fellow with Jonson; probably -knew Peele and Marlowe well; undoubtedly knew Drayton; he went to the -Falcon and the Mermaid; but there is, I believe, no certain evidence that -he ever saw much of Raleigh, or of Spenser, who was living some years -after he came to London. It is doubtful, indeed, if the poet of the _Faery -Queene_ knew him at all. Sidney he probably never saw; nor did he ever go, -so far as appears, to dine with the great Francis Bacon, as Jonson without -doubt sometimes did, or with Burleigh, or with Cecil. - -His lack of precise learning may have made him inapt for encounter with -school-men. But he had a faculty of apprehension that transcended mere -scholastic learning--apprehending everywhere, in places where studious -ones were blind. I can imagine that Oxford men--just up in town or those -who had written theses for university purposes, would sneer at such show -of learning as he made;--call it cheap erudition--call it result of -cramming--as many university men do nowadays when they find a layman and -outsider hitting anything that respects learning in the eye. But, ah, -what a gift of cramming! What a gift of apprehension! What a swift march -over the hedges that cramp schools! What a flight, where other men walked, -and were dazed and discomfited by this unheard-of progress into the ways -of knowledge and of wisdom! - -Again, these Shakespeare plays do sometimes show crude things, vulgar -things, coarse things--things we want to skip and do skip--things that -make us wonder if he ever wrote them; perhaps some which in the mendings -and tinkerings of those and later days have no business there; and yet he -was capable of saying coarse things; he did have a shrewd eye for the -appetites of the groundlings; he did look on all sides, and into all -depths of the moral Cosmos he was rounding out; and even his commonest -utterances, have, after all, a certain harmony, though in lowest key, with -the general drift. He is not always, as some of his dramatic compeers -were, on tragic stilts. He is never under strain to float high. - -Then, too, like Chaucer--his noblest twin-fellow of English poesy--he -steals, plagiarizes, takes tales of passion, and love, and wreck, wherever -in human history he can find them, to work into his purposes. But even -the authors could scarce recognize the thefts in either case, so glorified -are they by the changes they undergo under these wonder-making hands. - -As with story, so it is with sentiment. This he steals out of men’s brains -and hearts by wholesale. What smallest poet, whether in print or talk, -could have failed to speak of man’s journey to his last home? Shakespeare -talks of - - “That undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns,” - -and the sentiment is so imaged, and carries such a trail of agreeing and -caressing thoughts, that it supplants all kindred speech. - -“This life,” says Shakespeare, “is but a stage;” and the commentators can -point you out scores of like similes in older writers--Erasmus among the -rest, whose utterance seems almost duplicated; duplicated, indeed, but -with a tender music, and a point, and a breadth, that make all previous -related similes forgotten. Such utterances grow out of instincts common to -us all; but this man, in whom the common instinct is a masterful alembic, -fuses all old teachings, and white-hot they run out of the crucible of his -soul in such beauteous shapes that they are sought for and gloried in -forever after. Many a Hamlet has soliloquized--you and I perhaps; but -never a Hamlet in such way as did Shakespeare’s; so crisp--so full--so -suggestive--so marrowy--so keen--so poignant--so enthralling. - -No, no; this man did not go about in quest of newnesses; only little -geniuses do that; but the great genius goes along every commonest -road-side, looking on every commonest sight of tree or flower, of bud, of -death, of birth, of flight, of labor, of song; leads in old tracks; deals -in old truths, but with such illuminating power that they all come home to -men’s souls with new penetrative force and new life in them. He catches by -intuition your commonest thought, and my commonest thought, and puts them -into new and glorified shape. - - -_His Thrift and Closing Years._ - -Again, this Shakespeare of ours, singing among the stars, is a shrewd, -thrifty man; he comes to have an interest in all those shillings and -sixpences that go into the till of the Globe Theatre; he makes money. -Where he lived in London,[19] we do not definitely know; at one time, it -is believed, on the Southwark side, near to the old Bear-garden,[20] but -never ostentatiously; very likely sharing chambers with his brother -Edmond, who was much time an actor there;[21] he buys a house and -haberdasher’s shop somewhere near Blackfriars; and he had previously -bought, with his savings--even before Queen Elizabeth was dead--a great -house in Stratford. This he afterwards equips by purchase of outlying -lands--a hundred acres at one time, and twenty and more at another. He -has never forgotten and never forgotten to love, country sights and -sounds. These journeyings to and fro along the Oxford and Uxbridge road -(on horseback probably), from which he can see sheer over hedges, and note -every fieldfare, every lark rising to its morning carol, every gleam of -brook, have kept alive his old fondnesses, and he counts surely on a -return to these scenes in his great New Place of Stratford. He does break -away for that Stratford cover, while the game of life seems still at its -best promise; while Hamlet is still comparatively a new man upon the -boards; does settle himself in that country home, to gather his pippins, -to pet his dogs, to wander at will upon greensward that is his own. - -I wish we had record of only one of his days in that retirement. I wish we -could find even a two-page letter which he may have written to Ben Jonson, -in London, telling how his time passed; but there is nothing--positively -nothing. We do not know how, or by what exposure or neglect his last -illness came upon him and carried him to his final home, only two years or -so after his return to Stratford. Even that Dr. Hall, who had married his -favorite daughter, and who attended him, and who published a medical book -containing accounts of a thousand and more cases which he thought of -consequence for the world to know about, has no word to say concerning -this grandest patient that his eye ever fell upon. - -He died at the age of fifty-three. No descendant of his daughter Susanna -is alive; no descendant of his daughter Judith is alive.[22] The great new -home which he had built up in Stratford is torn down; scarce a vestige of -it remains. The famous mulberry-tree he planted upon that greensward, -where, in after years, Garrick and the rest held high commemorative -festival, is gone, root and branch. - -Shakespeare--an old county guide-book tells us stolidly--is a name unknown -in that region. Unknown! Every leaf of every tree whispers it; every -soaring skylark makes a carol of it; and the memory of it flows out -thence--as flows the Stratford river--down through all the green valley of -the Avon, down through all the green valley of the Severn, and so on, out -to farthest seas, whose “multitudinous waves” carry it to every shore. - - - - -CHAPTER III. - - -We were venturing upon almost sacred ground when--in our last chapter--we -had somewhat to say of the so-called King James’ Bible; of how it came to -bear that name; of those men who were concerned in its translation, and of -certain literary qualities belonging to it, which--however excellent other -and possible future Bibles may be--will be pretty sure to keep it alive -for a very long time to come. Next, I spoke of that king of the dramatists -who was born at Stratford. We followed him up to London; tracked him -awhile there; talked of a few familiar aspects of his life and character; -spared you the recital of a world of things--conjectural or -eulogistic--which might be said of him; and finally saw him go back to his -old home upon the Avon, to play the retired gentleman--last of all his -plays--and to die. - -This made a great coupling of topics for one chapter--Shakespeare and the -English Bible! No two titles in our whole range of talks can or should so -interest those who are alive to the felicities of English forms of speech, -and who are eager to compass and enjoy its largest and keenest and -simplest forces of phrase. No other vocabulary of words, and no other -exemplar of the aptitudes of language, than can be found in Shakespeare -and in the English Bible are needed by those who would equip their English -speech for its widest reach, and with its subtlest or sharpest powers. Out -of those twin treasuries the student may dredge all the words he wants, -and all the turns of expression that will be helpful, in the writing of a -two-page letter or in the unfolding of an epic. Other books may make -needful reservoir of facts, or record of theories, or of literary -experimentation; but these twain furnish sufficient lingual armament for -all new conquests in letters. - -We find ourselves to-day amid a great hurly-burly of dramatists, poets, -prose-writers, among whom we have to pick our way--making a descriptive -dash at some few of them--seeing the old pedant of a king growing more -slipshod and more shaky, till at last he yields the throne to that -unfortunate son of his, Charles I., in whose time we shall find some new -singing-birds in the fields of British poesy, and birds of a different -strain. - - -_Webster, Ford, and Others._ - -All those lesser dramatists going immediately before Shakespeare, and -coming immediately after or with him, may be counted in literary -significance only as the trail to that grander figure which swung so high -in the Elizabethan heavens; many a one among the lesser men has written -something which has the true poetic ring in it, and is to be treasured; -but ring however loudly it may, and however musically it may, it will very -likely have a larger and richer echo somewhere in Shakespeare. - -Among the names of those contemporaries whose names are sure of long -survival may be mentioned John Webster; a Londoner in all probability; -working at plays early in the seventeenth century; his name appearing on -various title-pages up to 1624 certainly--one time as “merchant tailor;” -and there are other intimations that he may have held some church -“clerkship;” but we know positively very little of him. Throughout the -eighteenth century his name and fame[23] had slipped away from people’s -knowledge; somewhere about the year 1800 Charles Lamb gave forth his -mellow piping of the dramatist’s deservings; a quarter of a century later -Mr. Dyce[24] wrote and published what was virtually a resurrection work -for Webster; and in our time the swift-spoken Swinburne transcends all the -old conventionalities of encyclopædic writing in declaring this dramatist -to be “hardly excelled for unflagging energy of impression and of pathos -in all the poetic literature of the world.” - -Webster was not a jocund man; he seems to have taken life in a hard way; -he swears at fate. Humane and pathetic touches there may be in his plays; -but he has a dolorous way of putting all the humanities to simmer in a -great broth of crime. At least this may not be unfairly said of his -chiefest works, and those by which he is best known--the “Vittoria -Corombona” and the “Duchess of Malfi.” There are blood-curdling scenes in -them through which one is led by a guidance that is as strenuous as it is -fascinating. The drapery is in awful keeping with the trend of the story; -the easy murders hardly appal one, and the breezes that fan the air seem -to come from the flutter of bat-like, leaden wings, hiding the blue. There -are, indeed, wondrous flashes of dramatic power; by whiles, too, there are -refreshing openings-out to the light or sinlessness of common day--a -lifting of thought and consciousness up from the great welter of crime and -crime’s entanglements; but there is little brightness, sparse sunshine, -rare panoply of green or blooming things; even the flowers are put to sad -offices, and - - “do cover - The friendless bodies of unburied men.” - -When a man’s flower culture gets reduced to such narrow margin as this it -does not carry exhilarating odors with it. - -John Ford[25] was another name much coupled in those and succeeding days -with that of Webster; he was indeed associated with him in some of his -work, as also with Dekker. He was a man of Devonshire birth, of good -family;--a little over-boastful of being above any “want for money;” -showing traces, indeed, of coarse arrogance, and swaying dramatically into -coarse brutalities. He, too, was borne down by enslavement to the red -splendors of crime; his very titles carry such foretaste of foulness we do -not name them. There are bloody horrors and moral ones. Few read him for -love. Murder makes room for incest, and incest sharpens knives for murder. -Animal passions run riot; the riot is often splendid, but never--to my -mind--making head in such grand dramatic utterance as crowns the gory -numbers of Webster. There are strong passages, indeed, gleaming out of the -red riotings like blades of steel; now and then some fine touch of -pathos--of quiet contemplative brooding--lying amid the fiery wrack, like -a violet on banks drenched with turbid floods; but they are rare, and do -not compensate--at least do not compensate me--for the wadings through -bloody, foul quagmires to reach them. - -Marston--another John[26]--if not up to the tragic level of the two last -named, had various talent; wrote satires, parodies; his _Image of -Pygmalion_ had the honor of being publicly burned; he wrought with Jonson -on _Eastward Hoe!_ won the piping praises of Charles Lamb in our century, -also of Hazlitt, and the eulogies of later and lesser critics. But he is -coarse, unequal, little read now. I steal a piquant bit of his satire on -metaphysic study from _What you Will_; it reminds of the frolic moods of -Browning: - - “I wasted lamp oil, bated my flesh, - Shrunk up my veins, and still my spaniel slept; - And still I held converse with Zabarell, - Aquinas, Scotus, and the musty saws - Of antique Donate:--still my spaniel slept. - Still on went I: first, _an sit anima_, - Then, an’ ’twere mortal. O hold, hold! - At that they are at brain buffets, fell by the ears - Amain [pell-mell] together--still my spaniel slept. - Then, whether ’twere corporeal, local, fixed, - _Ex traduce_; but whether’t had free will - Or no, hot philosophers - Stood banding factions, all so strongly propped, - I staggered, knew not which was firmer part; - But thought, quoted, read, observed, and pried, - Stuffed noting books,--and still my spaniel slept. - At length he waked, and yawned, and by yon sky, - For aught I know, he knew as much as I.” - - -_Massinger, Beaumont, and Fletcher._ - -Some dozen or more existing plays are attributed to Philip Massinger,[27] -and he was doubtless the author of many others now unknown save by name. -Of Wiltshire birth, his father had been dependant, or _protégé_ of the -Pembroke family, and the Christian name of Philip very likely kept alive -the paternal reverence for the great Philip Sidney. Though Massinger was -an industrious writer, and was well accredited in his time, it is certain -that he had many hard struggles, and passed through many a pinching day; -and at the last it would appear that he found burial, only as an outsider -and stranger, in that old church of St. Saviours, near to London Bridge, -where we found John Gower laid to rest with his books for pillow. If -Massinger did not lift his lines into such gleams of tragic intensity as -we spoke of in Webster and in Ford, he gave good, workman-like finish to -his dramas; and for bloody apparelling of his plots, I think there are -murderous zealots, in his Sforza[28] story at least, who could fairly have -clashed swords with the assassins of “Vittoria Corombona.” It is a large -honor to Massinger that of all the dramas I have named--outside some few -of Shakespeare’s--no one is so well known to modern play-goers as the “New -Way to Pay Old Debts.” The character of Sir Giles Overreach does not lose -its terrible significance. In our times, as in the old times, - - “He frights men out of their estates, - And breaks through all law-nets--made to curb ill men-- - As they were cobwebs.” - -When Massinger died tradition says that he was thrust into the same grave -which had been opened shortly before for John Fletcher; if not joined -there, these two had certainly been fellows in literary work; and there -are those who think that the name of Massinger should have recognition in -that great dramatic copartnery under style of Beaumont and Fletcher.[29] -Certain it is that other writers had share in the work; among them--in at -least one instance (that of “Two Noble Kinsmen”)--the fine hand of -Shakespeare. - -But whatever helping touches or of outside journey-work may have been -contributed to that mass of plays which bears name of Beaumont and -Fletcher, it is certain that they hold of right that brilliant reputation -for deft and lively and winning dramatic work which put their popularity -before Jonson’s, if not before Shakespeare’s. The coupling together of -this pair of authors at their work has the air of romance; both were well -born; Fletcher, son of a bishop; Beaumont, son of Sir Francis Beaumont, of -Grace-Dieu (not far away from Ashby-de-la-Zouch); both were university -men, and though differing in age by eight or nine years, yet coming--very -likely through the good offices of Ben Jonson--to that sharing of home and -work and wardrobe which the old gossip Aubrey[30] has delighted in -picturing. They wrought charmingly together, and with such a nice welding -of jointures, that literary craftsmen, of whatever astuteness, are puzzled -to say where the joinings lie. In agreement, however, with opinions of -best critics, it may be said that Beaumont (the younger, who died nine -years before his mate) was possessed of the deeper poetic fervors, while -Fletcher was wider in fertilities and larger in affluence of diction. - -The dramatic horrors of Ford and Webster are softened in the lines of -these later playwrights. These are debonair; they are lively; they are -jocund; they tell stories that have a beginning and an end; they pique -attention; there are delicacies, too, and--it must be said--a good many -indelicacies; there are light-virtued women, and marital infelicities get -an easy ripening toward the over-ripeness and rottenness that is to come -in Restoration times. These twain were handsome fellows, by Aubrey’s and -all other accounts; Beaumont most noticeably so; and Fletcher--brightly -swarthy, red-haired, full-blooded--dying a bachelor and of the plague, -down in the time of Charles I., and thrust hastily into the grave at St. -Saviours, where Massinger presently followed him. - -I must give at least one taste of the dramatic manner for which both of -these men were sponsors. It is from the well-known play of “Philaster” -that I quote, where Euphrasia tells of the tender discovery of what -stirred her heart:-- - - “My father oft would speak - Your worth and virtue: And as I did grow - More and more apprehensive, I did thirst - To see the man so praised; but yet all this - Was but a maiden longing, to be lost - As soon as found; till, sitting in my window - Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a god - I thought (but it was you) enter our gates. - My blood flew out, and back again as fast - As I had puffed it forth and sucked it in - Like breath. Then was I called away in haste - To entertain you. Never was a man - Heaved from a sheep-cote to a sceptre, raised - So high in thoughts as I: - I did hear you talk - Far above singing! After you were gone, - I grew acquainted with my heart, and searched - What stirred it so. Alas, I found it Love!” - -Nothing better in its way can be found in all their plays. One mentioning -word, however, should be given to those delightful lyrical aptitudes, by -virtue of which the blithe and easy metric felicities of Elizabethan days -were overlaid in tendrils of song upon the Carolan times. I wish, too, -that I had space for excerpts from that jolly pastoral of _The Faithful -Shepherdess_--bewildering in its easy gaieties, and its cumulated -classicisms--and which lends somewhat of its deft caroling, and of its -arch conceits to the later music of Milton’s “Comus.” Another foretaste of -Milton comes to us in these words of Fletcher:-- - - “Hence, all you vain delights, - As short as are the nights - Wherein you spend your folly! - There’s nought in this life, sweet, - If man were wise to see’t, - But only melancholy, - O sweetest melancholy! - Welcome folded arms and fixèd eyes, - A sigh that piercing mortifies, - A look that’s fastened to the ground, - A tongue chain’d up without a sound! - Fountain heads and pathless groves, - Places which pale passion loves! - Moonlight walks, when all the fowls - Are warmly hous’d save bats and owls! - A midnight bell, a parting groan, - These are the sounds we feed upon; - Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley; - Nothing’s so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.”[31] - - -_King James and Family._ - -Meanwhile, how are London and England getting on with their ram-shackle -dotard of a King? Not well; not proudly. Englishmen were not as boastful -of being Englishmen as in the days when the virgin Elizabeth queened it, -and shattered the Spanish Armada, and made her will and England’s power -respected everywhere. James, indeed, had a son, Prince Henry, who promised -far better things for England, and for the Stuart name, than his pedant of -a father. - -This son was a friend of Raleigh’s (would, maybe, have saved that great man -from the scaffold, if he had lived), a friend, too, of all the -high-minded, far-seeing ones who best represented Elizabethan enterprise; -but he died, poor fellow, at nineteen, leaving the heirship to that -Charles I. whose dismal history you know. James had also a -daughter--Elizabeth--a high-spirited maiden, who, amid brilliant fêtes -made in her honor, married that Frederic, Elector Palatine, who received -his bride in the magnificent old castle, you will remember at Heidelberg. -There they show still the great gateway of the Princess Elizabeth, clad in -ivy, and the Elizabeth gardens. ’Twas said that her ambition and high -spirit pushed the poor Elector into political complications that ruined -him, and that made the once owner of that princely château an outcast, and -almost a beggar. The King, too, by his vanities, his indifference, and -cowardice, helped largely the discomfiture of this branch of his family, -as he did by his wretched bringing up of Charles pave the way for that -monarch’s march into the gulf of ruin. - -In foreign politics this weak king coquetted in a childish way--sometimes -with the Catholic powers; sometimes with the Protestant powers of Middle -Europe; and at home, with a ridiculous sense of his own importance, he -angered the Presbyterians of Scotland and the Puritans of England by his -perpetual interferences. He provoked the emigration that was planting, -year by year, a New England west of the Atlantic; he harried the House of -Commons into an antagonism which, by its growth and earnestness was, by -and by, to upset his throne and family together. His power was the power -of a blister that keeps irritating--and not like Elizabeth’s--the power of -a bludgeon that thwacks and makes an end. - -And in losing respect this King gained no love. Courtiers could depend on -his promises as little as kingdoms. He chose his favorites for a fine -coat, or a fine face, and thereafter, from sheer indolence yielded to them -in everything. In personal habits, too, he grew more and more unbearable; -his doublets were all dirtier; his wigs shabbier; his coarse jokes -coarser; his tipsiness frequenter. A foulness grew up in the court which -tempted such men as Fletcher and Massinger to fouler ways of speech, and -which lured such creatures as Lady Essex to ruin. A pretty sort of King -was this to preach against tobacco! - -James had given up poetry-writing, in which he occasionally indulged -before coming to England; yet he had poetical tastes; he enjoyed greatly -many of Shakespeare’s plays; Ben Jonson, too, was a pet of his, and had -easy access to royalty, certainly until his quarrel with the great court -architect, Inigo Jones. But, as in all else, the King’s taste in poetry -grew coarser as he grew older, and he showed a great liking for a certain -John Taylor,[32] called “the Water-Poet,” a rough, coarse creature, who -sculled boats across the Thames for hire; who made a foot-trip into -Scotland in rivalry of Ben Jonson, and who wrote a _Very merry wherry -Voyage from London to York_, and a _Kecksy-Winsey, or a Lerry-cum-twang_, -which you will not find in your treasures of literature, but which the -leering King loved to laugh over in his cups. Taylor afterward was keeper -of a rollicking, Royalist tavern in Oxford, and of another in London, -where he died at the age of seventy-four. - -Tobacco, first introduced in Raleigh’s early voyaging times, came to have -a little fund of literature crystallizing about it--what with histories of -its introduction and properties, and onslaughts upon it. Bobadil, the -braggart, in “Every Man in his Humor,” says: “I have been in the Indies -(where this herbe growes), where neither myself nor a dozen gentlemen more -(of my knowledge) have received the taste of any other nutriment, in the -world, for the space of one and twenty weeks, but Tobacco only. Therefore -it cannot be, but ’tis most Divine.” - -There were many curious stories afloat too--taking different shapes--of -the great apprehension ignorant ones felt on seeing people walking about, -as first happened in these times, with smoke pouring from their mouths -and noses. In an old book called _The English Hue and Crie_ (printed about -1610), it takes something like this form: - - “A certain Welchman, coming newly to London, and beholding one to - take Tobacco, never seeing the like before, and not knowing the - manner of it, but perceiving him vent smoak so fast, and supposing - his inward parts to be on fire, screamed an alarm, and dashed over - him a big pot of Beer.” - -King James’ _Counterblaste to the Use of Tobacco_, had about the same -efficacy with the Welshman’s beer-pot. But to show the King’s method of -arguing, I give one little whiff of it. Tobacco-lovers of that day alleged -that it cleared the head and body of ugly rheums and distillations; - - “But,” says the King, “the fallacy of this argument may easily - appeare, by my late preceding description of the skyey meteors. For - even as the smoaky Vapors sucked up by the sunne and stay’d in the - lowest and colde region of the Ayre, are there contracted into - clouds, and turned into Raine, and such other watery meteors: so - this nasty smoke sucked up by the Nose, and imprisoned in the cold - and moist braines, is by their colde and wet faculty, turned and - cast forth againe in watery distillations, and so are you made free - and purged of nothing, but _that_ wherewith you wilfully burdened - yourselves.” - -Is it any wonder people kept on smoking? He reasoned in much the same way -about church matters; is it any wonder the Scotch would not have -Anglicanism thrust upon them? - -The King died at last (1625), aged fifty-nine, at his palace of Theobalds, -a little out of London, and very famous, as I have said, for its fine -gardens; and these gardens this prematurely old and shattered man did -greatly love; loved perhaps more than his children. I do not think Charles -mourned for him very grievously; but, of a surety there was no warrant for -the half-hinted allegation of Milton’s (at a later day) that the royal son -was concerned in some parricidal scheme. There was, however, nowhere great -mourning for James. - - -_A New King and some Literary Survivors._ - -The new King, his son, was a well-built young fellow of twenty-five, of -fine appearance, well taught, and just on the eve of his marriage to -Henrietta of France. He had a better taste than his father, and lived a -more orderly life; indeed, he was every way decorous save in an obstinate -temper and in absurd notions about his kingly prerogative. He loved -play-going and he loved poetry, though not so accessible as his father had -been to the buffoonery of the water-poet Taylor, or the tipsy obeisance of -old Ben Jonson. For Ben Jonson was still living, not yet much over fifty, -though with his great bulk and reeling gait seeming nearer seventy; now, -too, since Shakespeare is gone, easily at the head of all the literary -workers in London; indeed, in some sense always at the head by reason of -his dogged self-insistence and his braggadocio. All the street world[33] -knows him, as he swaggers along the Strand to his new jolly rendezvous at -the Devil Tavern, near St. Dunstan’s, in Fleet Street--not far off from -the Temple Church--where he and his fellows meet in the Apollo Chamber, -over whose door Ben has written: - - “Welcome, all who lead or follow - To the oracle of Apollo! - Here he speaks out of his pottle - On the tripos--his tower-bottle,” etc. - -Of all we have named hitherto among the Elizabethan poets, the only ones -who would be likely to appear there in Charles I.’s time would be George -Chapman, of the Homer translation; staid and very old now, with snowy -hair; and Dekker--what time he was out of prison for debt; possibly, too, -John Marston. Poor Ben Jonson wrote about this time his last play, which -did not take either with courtiers or the public; whereupon the old -grumbler was more rough than ever, and died a few years thereafter, -wretchedly poor, and was put into the ground--upright, tradition says, as -into a well--in Westminster Abbey. There one may walk over his name and -his crown; and this is the last we shall see of him, whose swagger has -belonged to three reigns. - -Among other writers known to these times and who went somewhiles to these -suppers at the Apollo was James Howell,[34] notable because he wrote so -much; and I specially name him because he was the earliest and best type -of what we should call a hack-writer; ready for anything; a shrewd -salesman, too, of all he did write; travelling largely--having modern -instincts, I think; making small capital--whether of learning or -money--reach enormously. He was immensely popular, too, in his day; a -Welshman by birth, and never wrote at all till past forty; but afterward -he kept at it with a terrible pertinacity. He gives quaint advice about -foreign travel, with some shrewdness cropping out in it. Thus of languages -he says: - - “Whereas, for other Tongues one may attaine to speak them to very - good purpose, and get their good will at any age; the French tongue, - by reason of the huge difference ’twixt their writing and speaking, - will put one often into fits of despaire and passion; but the - Learner must not be daunted a whit at that, but after a little - intermission hee must come on more strongly, and with a pertinacity - of resolution set upon her againe and againe, and woo her as one - would do a coy mistress, with a kind of importunity, until he - over-master her: She will be very plyable at last.” - -Then he says, for improvement, it is well to have the acquaintance of some -ancient nun, with whom one may talk through the grated windows--for they -have all the news, and “they will entertain discourse till one be weary, -if one bestow on them now and then some small bagatells--as English -Gloves, or Knives, or Ribands--and before hee go over, hee must furnish -himself with such small curiosities.” - -The expenses of travel in that day on the Continent, he says, for a young -fellow who has his “Riding and Dancing and Fencing, and Racket, and -Coach-hire, with apparel and other casual charges will be about £300 per -annum”--which sum (allowing for differences in moneyed values) may have -been a matter of $6,000. He says with great aptness, too, that the -traveller must not neglect letter-writing, which - - “he should do exactly and not carelessly: For letters are the ideas - and truest mirrors of the mind; they show the inside of a man and - how he improveth himself.” - - -_Wotton and Walton._ - -Another great traveller of these times--but one whose dignities would, I -suspect have kept him away from the Devil Tavern--was Sir Henry -Wotton.[35] He was a man who had supplemented his university training by -long residence abroad; who had been of service to King James (before the -King had yet left Scotland) by divulging to him and defeating some -purposed scheme of poisoning. Wotton was, later, English ambassador at the -brilliant court of Venice, whence he wrote to the King many suggestions -respecting the improvement of his garden, detailing Italian methods, and -forwarding grafts and rare seedlings; he was familiar with most European -courts--hobnobbed with Doges and with Kings, was a scholar of elegant and -various accomplishments, and the reputed maker of that old and well-worn -witticism about ambassadors--that “they were honest men, sent to lie -abroad for the good of their country.” He was, furthermore, himself -boastful of the authorship of this prickly saying, “The itch of -disputation is the scab of the church.”[36] There is also a charming -little poem of his--which gets place in the anthologies--addressed to that -Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, whom we encountered as a bride at the Castle -of Heidelberg, and who became the mother of the accomplished and daring -Prince Rupert. Such a man as Wotton, full of anecdote, bristling with wit, -familiar with courts, and one who could match phrases with James, or -Charles, or Buckingham, in Latin, or French, or Italian, must have been a -god-send for a dinner-party at Theobalds, or at Whitehall. To crown his -graces, Walton[37] tells us that he was an excellent fisherman. - -And this mention of the quiet Angler tempts me to enroll him here, a -little before his time; yet he was well past thirty when James died, and -must have been busy in the ordering of his draper’s shop in Fleet Street -when Charles I. came to power. He was of Staffordshire birth, and no -millinery of the city could have driven out of his mind the pretty -ruralities of his Staffordshire home, and the lovely far-off views of the -Welsh hills. His first wife was grandniece of Bishop Cranmer; he was -himself friend of Dr. Donne, to whom he listened from Sunday to Sunday; a -second wife was sister of that Thomas Ken who came to be Bishop of Bath -and Wells; so he was hemmed in by ecclesiasticisms, and loved them as he -loved trout. He was warm Royalist always, and lived by old traditions in -Church and State--not easily overset by Reformers. No fine floral triumphs -of any new gardeners, however accredited, could blind him to the old -glories of the eglantine or of a damask rose. A good and quiet friend, a -placid book, a walk under trees, made sufficient regalement for him. -These, with a fishing bout (by way of exceptional entertainment), and a -Sunday in a village church, with the Litany well intoned, were all in all -to him. His book holds spicy place among ranks of books, as lavender keeps -fresh odor among stores of linen. It is worth any man’s dalliance with the -fishing-craft to make him receptive to the simplicities and limpidities of -Walton’s _Angler_. I am tempted to say of him again, what I have said of -him before in other connection:--very few fine writers of our time could -make a better book on such a subject to-day, with all the added -information and all the practice of the newspaper columns. What Walton -wants to say, he says. You can make no mistake about his meaning; all is -as lucid as the water of a spring. He does not play upon your wonderment -with tropes. There is no chicane of the pen; he has some pleasant matters -to tell of, and he tells of them--straight. - -Another great charm about Walton is his childlike truthfulness. I think he -is almost the only earnest trout-fisher (unless Sir Humphry Davy be -excepted) whose report could be relied upon for the weight of a trout. I -have many excellent friends--capital fishermen--whose word is good upon -most concerns of life, but in this one thing they cannot be religiously -confided in. I excuse it; I take off twenty per cent. from their estimates -without either hesitation, anger, or reluctance. - -I must not omit to mention his charming biographic sketches (rather than -“lives”) of Hooker, of Wotton, of Herbert, of Donne--the letterpress of -all these flowing easily and limpidly as the brooks he loved to picture. -He puts in very much pretty embroidery too, for which tradition or street -gossip supplied him with his needs, in figure and in color; this is not -always of best authenticity, it is true;[38] but who wishes to question -when it is the simple-souled and always honest Walton who is talking? And -as for his great pastoral of _The Complete Angler_--to read it, in -whatever season, is like plunging into country air, and sauntering through -lovely country solitudes. - -I name Sir Thomas Overbury[39]--who was the first, I think, to make that -often-repeated joke respecting people who boasted of their ancestry, -saying “they were like potatoes, with the best part below ground”--because -he belonged to this period, and was a man of elegant culture and literary -promise. He was poisoned in the Tower at the instance of some great people -about the court of James, who feared damaging testimony of his upon a -trial that was just then to come off; and this trial and poisoning -business, in which (Carr) Somerset and Lady Essex were deeply concerned, -made one of the greatest scandals of the scandalous court of King James. -Overbury’s _Characters_ are the best known of his writings, but they are -slight; quaint metaphors and tricksy English are in them, with a good many -tiresome affectations of speech. What he said of the Dairymaid is best of -all. - - -_George Herbert._ - -This is a name which will be more familiar to the reader, and if he has -never encountered the little olive-green, gilt-edged budget of -Herbert’s[40] poems, he can hardly have failed to have met, on some page -of the anthologies, such excerpt as this about Virtue: - - “Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, - The bridal of the earth and sky, - The dew shall weep thy fall to-night; - For thou must die. - - “Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave, - Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye, - Thy root is ever in its grave, - And thou must die. - - “Only a sweet and virtuous soul, - Like season’d timber, never gives; - But though the whole world turn to coal, - Then chiefly lives.” - -And now, that I have quoted this, I wish that I had quoted another; and so -it would be, I suppose, were I to go through the little book. One cannot -go amiss of lines that will show his tenderness, his strong religious -feeling, his gloomy coloring, his quaint conceits--with not overmuch -rhythmic grace, but a certain spiritual unction that commends him to hosts -of devout-minded people everywhere. Yet I cannot help thinking that he -would have been lost sight of earlier in the swarm of seventeenth-century -poets, had it not been for a certain romantic glow attaching to his short -life. And first, he was a scion from the old Pembroke stock, born in a -great castle on the Welsh borders, and bred in luxury. He went to -Cambridge for study at a time when he may have encountered there the grim -boy-student, Oliver Cromwell, or possibly that other fair-faced Cambridge -student, John Milton, who was upon the rolls eight years later. He was a -young fellow of rare scholarship, winning many honors; was tall, spare, -with an eagle eye; and so he wins upon old James I., when he comes down on -a visit to the University (the Mother Herbert managing to have the King -see his best points, even to his silken doublets and his jewelled buckles, -of which the lad was fond). And he is taken into favor, bandies -compliments with the monarch, goes again and again to London and to court; -sees Chancellor Bacon familiarly--corrects proofs for him--and has hopes -of high preferment. But his chief patron dies; the King dies; and that -bubble of royal inflation is at an end. - -It was after long mental struggle, it would seem, that George Herbert, -whom we know as the saintly poet, let the hopes of court consequence die -out of his heart. But once wedded to the Church his religious activities -and sanctities knew no hesitations. His marriage even was an incident that -had no worldly or amorous delays. A Mr. Danvers, kinsman of Herbert’s -step-father, thought all the world of the poet, and declared his utter -willingness that Herbert “should marry any one of his nine daughters [for -he had so many], but rather Jane, because Jane was his beloved daughter.” -And to such good effect did the father talk to Jane, that she, as old -Walton significantly tells us, was in love with the poet before yet she -had seen him. Only four days after their first meeting these twain were -married; nor did this sudden union bring such disastrous result as so -swift an engineering of similar contracts is apt to show. - -At Bemerton vicarage, almost under the shadow of Salisbury cathedral, he -began, shortly thereafter, that saintly and poetic life which his verse -illustrates and which every memory of him ennobles. His charities were -beautiful and constant; his love of the flesh, his early “choler,” and all -courtly leanings crucified. Even the peasants thereabout stayed the plough -and listened reverently (another Angelus!) when the sounds of his -“Praise-bells” broke upon the air. It is a delightful picture the old -Angler biographer gives of him there in his quiet vicarage of Bemerton, or -footing it away over Salisbury Plain, to lift up his orison in symphony -with the organ notes that pealed from underneath the arches of -Salisbury’s wondrous cathedral. - -Yet over all the music and the poems of this Church poet, and over his -life, a tender gloom lay constantly; the grave and death were always in -his eye--always in his best verses. And after some half-dozen years of -poetic battling with the great problems of life and of death, and a -further battling with the chills and fogs of Wiltshire, that smote him -sorely, he died. - -He was buried at Bemerton, where a new church has been built in his honor. -It may be found on the high-road leading west from Salisbury, and only a -mile and a half away; and at Wilton--the carpet town--which is only a -fifteen minutes’ walk beyond, may be found that gorgeous church, built not -long ago by another son of the Pembroke stock (the late Lord Herbert of -Lea), who perhaps may have had in mind the churchly honors due to his -poetic kinsman; and yet all the marbles which are lavished upon this -Wilton shrine are poorer, and will sooner fade than the mosaic of verse -builded into _The Temple_ of George Herbert. - - -_Robert Herrick._ - -I deal with a clergyman again; but there are clergymen--and clergymen. - -Robert Herrick[41] was the son of a London goldsmith, born on Cheapside, -not far away from that Mermaid Tavern of which mention has been made; and -it is very likely that the young Robert, as a boy, may have stood before -the Tavern windows on tiptoe, listening to the drinking songs that came -pealing forth when Ben Jonson and the rest were in their first lusty -manhood. He studied at Cambridge, receiving, may be, some scant help from -his rich uncle, Sir William Herrick, who had won his title by giving good -jewel bargains to King James. He would seem to have made a long stay in -Cambridge; and only in 1620, when our Pilgrims were beating toward -Plymouth shores, do we hear of him domiciled in London--learning the town, -favored by Ben Jonson and his fellows, perhaps apprenticed to the -goldsmith craft, certainly putting jewels into fine settings of verse even -then; some of them with coarse flaws in them, but full of a glitter and -sparkle that have not left them yet. Nine years later, after such town -experiences as we cannot trace, he gets, somehow, appointment to a church -living down in Devonshire at Dean Prior. His parish was on the -southeastern edge of that great heathery stretch of wilderness called -Dartmoor Forest: out of this, and from under cool shadows of the Tors, ran -brooks which in the cleared valleys were caught by rude weirs and shot out -in irrigating skeins of water upon the grassland. Yet it was far away from -any echo of the Mermaid; old traditions were cherished there; old ways -were reckoned good ways; and the ploughs of that region are still the -clumsiest to be found in England. There Robert Herrick lived, preaching -and writing poems, through those eighteen troublous years which went -before the execution of Charles I. What the goldsmith-vicar’s sermons were -we can only conjecture: what the poems were he writ, we can easily guess -from the flowers that enjewel them, or the rarer “noble numbers” which -take hold on religious sanctities. This preacher-poet twists the lilies -and roses into bright little garlands, that blush and droop in his pretty -couplets, as they did in the vicar’s garden of Devon. The daffodils and -the violets give out their odors to him, if he only writes their names. - -Hear what he says to Phyllis, and how the numbers flow: - - “The soft, sweet moss shall be thy bed, - With crawling woodbine overspread: - By which the silver-shedding streams - Shall gently melt thee into dreams. - Thy clothing next, shall be a gown - Made of the fleeces’ purest down. - The tongues of kids shall be thy meat; - Their milk thy drink; and thou shalt eat - The paste of filberts for thy bread, - With cream of cowslips butterèd: - Thy feasting table shall be hills - With daisies spread and daffodils; - Where thou shalt sit, and Red-breast by, - For meat, shall give thee melody.” - -Then again, see how in his soberer and meditative moods, he can turn the -rich and resonant Litany of the Anglican Church into measures of sweet -sound: - - “In the hour of my distress, - When temptations me oppress, - And when I my sins confess, - Sweet Spirit, comfort me! - - “When I lie within my bed, - Sick in heart, and sick in head, - And with doubts discomforted, - Sweet Spirit, comfort me! - - “When the house doth sigh and weep, - And the world is drown’d in sleep, - Yet mine eyes the watch do keep, - Sweet Spirit, comfort me! - - “When the passing bell doth toll, - And the furies in a shoal - Come, to fright a parting soul, - Sweet Spirit, comfort me! - - “When the judgment is reveal’d, - And that opened which was seal’d, - When to thee I have appeal’d, - Sweet Spirit, comfort me!” - -Now, in reading these two poems of such opposite tone, and yet of agreeing -verbal harmonies, one would say--here is a singer, serene, devout, of -delicate mould, loving all beautiful things in heaven and on earth. One -would look for a man saintly of aspect, deep-eyed, tranquil, too ethereal -for earth. - -Well, I must tell the truth in these talks, so far as I can find it, no -matter what cherished images may break down. This Robert Herrick was a -ponderous, earthy-looking man, with huge double chin, drooping cheeks, a -great Roman nose, prominent glassy eyes, that showed around them the red -lines begotten of strong potions of Canary, and the whole set upon a -massive neck which might have been that of Heliogabalus.[42] It was such a -figure as the artists would make typical of a man who loves the grossest -pleasures. - -The poet kept a pet goose at the vicarage, and also a pet pig, which he -taught to drink beer out of his own tankard; and an old parishioner, for -whose story Anthony à Wood is sponsor, tells us that on one occasion when -his little Devon congregation would not listen to him as he thought they -ought to listen, he dashed his sermon on the floor, and marched with -tremendous stride out of church--home to fondle his pet pig. - -When Charles I. came to grief, and when the Puritans began to sift the -churches, this Royalist poet proved a clinker that was caught in the -meshes and thrown aside. This is not surprising. It was after his enforced -return to London, and in the year 1648 (one year before Charles’ execution -at Whitehall), that the first authoritative publication was made of the -_Hesperides, or Works, both Humane and Divine, of Robert Herrick, -Esq._--his clerical title dropped. - -There were those critics and admirers who saw in Herrick an allegiance to -the methods of Catullus; others who smacked in his epigrams the verbal -felicities of Martial; but surely there is no need, in that fresh -spontaneity of the Devon poet, to hunt for classic parallels; nature made -him one of her own singers, and by instincts born with him he fashioned -words and fancies into jewelled shapes. The “more’s the pity” for those -gross indelicacies which smirch so many pages; things unreadable; things -which should have been unthinkable and unwritable by a clergyman of the -Church of England. To what period of his life belonged his looser verses -it is hard to say; perhaps to those early days when, fresh from Cambridge, -Ben Jonson patted him on the shoulder approvingly; perhaps to those later -years when, soured by his ejection from the Church, he dropped his -Reverend, and may have capped verses with such as Davenant or Lovelace, -and others, whose antagonism of Puritanism provoked wantonness of speech. - -At the restoration of Charles II., Herrick was reinstated in his old -parish in Devonshire, and died there, among the meadows and the daffodils, -at the ripe age of eighty-four. And as we part with this charming singer, -we cannot forbear giving place to this bit of his penitential verse: - - “For these my unbaptizèd rhymes - Writ in my wild unhallowed times, - For every sentence, clause, and word - That’s not inlaid with thee, O Lord; - Forgive me, God, and blot each line - Out of my book, that is not thine!” - - -_Revolutionary Times._ - -I have given the reader a great many names to remember to-day; they are -many, because we have found no engrossing one whose life and genius have -held us to a long story. But we should never enjoy the great memories -except they were set in the foil of lesser ones, to emphasize their -glories. - -The writers of this particular period--some of whom I have named--fairly -typify and illustrate the drift of letters away from the outspoken ardors -and full-toned high exuberance of Elizabethan days, to something more coy, -more schooled, more reticent, more measured, more tame.[43] The cunning of -word arrangement comes into the place of spontaneous, maybe vulgar wit; -humor is saddled with school-craftiness; melodious echoes take the place -of fresh bursts of sound. Poetry, that gurgled out by its own wilful laws -of progression, now runs more in channels that old laws have marked. Words -and language that had been used to tell straightforwardly stories of love -and passion and suffering are now put to uses of pomp and decoration. - -Moreover, in Elizabethan times, when a great monarch and great ministers -held the reins of power undisturbed and with a knightly hand, minstrelsy, -wherever it might lift its voice, had the backing and the fostering -support of great tranquillity and great national pride. In the days when -the Armada was crushed, when British ships and British navigators brought -every year tales of gold, tales of marvellous new shores, when princes of -the proudest courts came flocking to pay suit to England’s great Virgin -Queen, what poet should not sing at his loudest and his bravest? But in -the times into which we have now drifted, there is no tranquillity; the -fever of Puritans against Anglicans, of Independents against Monarchy Men, -is raging through all the land; pride in the kingship of such as James I. -had broken down; pride in the kingship of the decorous Charles I. has -broken down again. All intellectual ardors run into the channels of the -new strifes. Only through little rifts in the stormy sky do the sunny -gleams of poesy break in. - -There are colonies, too, planted over seas, and growing apace in these -days, whither the eyes and thoughts of many of the bravest and clearest -thinkers are turning. Even George Herbert, warmest of Anglicans, and of -the noble house of Pembroke, was used to say, “Religion[44] is going over -seas.” They were earnest, hard workers, to be sure, who -went--keen-thoughted--far-seeing--most diligent--not up to poems indeed, -save some little occasional burst of melodious thanksgiving. But they -carried memories of the best and of the strongest that belonged to the -intellectual life of England. The ponderous periods of Richard Hooker, and -the harshly worded wise things of John Selden,[45] found lodgement in -souls that were battling with the snows and pine-woods where Andover and -Salem and Newburyport were being planted. And over there, maybe, first of -all, would hope kindle and faith brighten at sound of that fair young -Puritan poet, who has just now, in Cambridge, sung his “Hymn of the -Nativity.”[46] - -But the storm and the wreck were coming. There were forewarnings of it in -the air; forewarnings of it in the court and in Parliament; forewarnings -of it in every household. City was to be pitted against city; brother -against brother; and in that “sea of trouble,” down went the King and the -leaders of old, and up rose the Commonwealth and the leaders of the new -faith. - -In our next talk we shall find all England rocking on that red wave of -war. You would think poets should be silent, and the eloquent dumb; but we -shall hear, lifting above the uproar, the golden language of Jeremy -Taylor--the measured cadences of Waller--the mellifluous jingle of -Suckling and of his Royalist brothers, and drowning all these with its -grand sweep of sound, the majestic organ-music of Milton. - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - - -I did not hold the reader’s attention long to the nightmare tragedies of -Webster and Ford, though they show shining passages of amazing dramatic -power. Marston was touched upon, and that satiric vein of his, better -known perhaps than his more ambitious work. We spoke of Massinger, whose -money-monster, Giles Overreach, makes one think of the railway wreckers of -our time; then came the gracious and popular Beaumont and Fletcher, twins -in work and in friendship; the former dying in the same year with -Shakespeare, and Fletcher dying the same year with King James (1625). I -spoke of that Prince Harry who promised well, but died young, and of -Charles, whose sad story will come to ampler mention in our present talk. -We made record of the death of Ben Jonson--of the hack-writing service of -James Howell--of the dilettante qualities of Sir Henry Wotton, and of the -ever-delightful work and enduring fame of the old angler, Izaak Walton. -And last we closed our talk with sketches of two poets: the one, George -Herbert, to whom his priestly work and his saintly verse were “all in -all;” and the other, Robert Herrick, born to a goldsmith’s craft, but -making verses that glittered more than all the jewels of Cheapside. - - -_King Charles and his Friends._ - -We open this morning upon times when New-England towns were being planted -among the pine-woods, and the decorous, courtly, unfortunate Charles I. -had newly come to the throne. Had the King been only plain Charles Stuart, -he would doubtless have gone through life with the reputation of an -amiable, courteous gentleman, not over-sturdy in his friendships[47]--a -fond father and good husband, with a pretty taste in art and in books, but -strongly marked with some obstinacies about the ways of wearing his -rapier, or of tying his cravat, or of overdrawing his bank account. - -In the station that really fell to him those obstinacies took hold upon -matters which brought him to grief. The man who stood next to Charles, and -who virtually governed him, was that George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, -who by his fine doublets, fine dancing, and fine presence, had very early -commended himself to the old King James, and now lorded it with the son. -He was that Steenie who in Scott’s _Fortunes of Nigel_ plays the -braggadocio of the court: he had attended Prince Charles upon that -Quixotic errand of his, incognito, across Europe, to play the wooer at the -feet of the Infanta of Spain; and when nothing came of all that show of -gallantry and the lavishment of jewels upon the dusky heiress of Castile, -the same Buckingham had negotiated the marriage with the French princess, -Henrietta. He was a brazen courtier, a shrewd man of the world; full of -all accomplishments; full of all profligacy. He made and unmade bishops -and judges, and bolstered the King in that antagonism to the Commons of -England which was rousing the dangerous indignation of such men as Eliot -and Hampden and Pym. Private assassination, however, took him off before -the coming of the great day of wrath. You must not confound this Duke of -Buckingham with another George Villiers, also Duke of Buckingham, who was -his son, and who figured largely in the days of Charles II.--being even -more witty, and more graceful, and more profligate--if possible--than his -father; a literary man withal, and the author of a play[48] which had -great vogue. - -Another striking figure about the court of Charles was a small, red-faced -man, keen-eyed, sanctimonious, who had risen from the humble ranks (his -father having been a clothier in a small town of Berkshire) to the -position of Archbishop of Canterbury. So starched was he in his -High-Church views that the Pope had offered him the hat of a cardinal. He -made the times hard for Non-conformists; your ancestors and mine, if they -emigrated in those days, may very likely have been pushed over seas by the -edicts of Archbishop Laud. His monstrous intolerance was provoking, and -intensifying that agitation in the religious world of England which -Buckingham had already provoked in the political world; and the days of -wrath were coming. - -This Archbishop Laud is not only keen-sighted but he is bountiful and -helpful within the lines of his own policy. He endowed Oxford with great, -fine buildings. Some friend has told him that a young preacher of -wonderful attractions has made his appearance at St. Paul’s--down on a -visit from Cambridge--a young fellow, wonderfully handsome, with curling -locks and great eyes full of expression, and a marvellous gift of -language; and the Archbishop takes occasion to see him or hear him; and -finding that beneath such exterior there is real vigor and learning, he -makes place for him as Fellow at Oxford; appoints him presently his own -chaplain, and gives him a living down in Rutland. - - -_Jeremy Taylor._ - -This priest, of such eloquence and beauty, was Jeremy Taylor,[49] who was -the son of a barber at Cambridge, was entered at Caius College as sizar, -or charity scholar, just one year after Milton was entered at Christ -College, and from the door of his father’s shop may have looked admiringly -many a time upon the - - “rosy cheeks - Angelical, keen eye, courageous look, - And conscious step of purity and pride,” - -which belonged even then to the young Puritan poet. But Jeremy Taylor was -not a Puritan; never came to know Milton personally. One became the great -advocate and the purest illustration of the tenets of Episcopacy in -England; and the other--eventually--their most effective and weighty -opponent. In 1640, only one year after Jeremy Taylor was established in -his pleasant Rutland rectory, Archbishop Laud went to the Tower, not to -come forth till he should go to the scaffold; and in the Civil War, -breaking out presently, Jeremy Taylor joined the Royalists, was made -chaplain to the King, saw battle and siege and wounds; but in the top of -the strife he is known by his silvery voice and his exuberant piety, and -by the rare eloquence which colors prayer and sermon with the bloody tinge -of war and the pure light of heaven. He is wounded (as I said), he is -imprisoned, and finally, by the chances of battle, he is stranded in a -small country town near to Caermarthen, in South Wales. - - “In the great storm,” he says, “which dashed the vessel of the - Church all in pieces, I was cast on the coast of Wales, and in a - little boat thought to have enjoyed that rest and quietness which in - England I could not hope for.” - -The little boat he speaks of was the obscure mountain home where he taught -school, and where he received, some time, visits from the famous John -Evelyn,[50] who wrote charming books in these days about woods and -gardens, and who befriended the poor stranded chaplain. Here, too, he -wrote that monument of toleration, _The Liberty of Prophesying_, a work -which would be counted broad in its teachings even now, and which -alienated a great many of his more starched fellows in the Church. A -little fragment from the closing pages of this book will show at once his -method of illustration and his extreme liberality: - - “When Abraham sat at his tent door, waiting to entertain strangers, - he espied an old man stopping by the way, leaning on his staff, - weary with much travel, and who was a hundred years of age. - - “He received him kindly, provided supper, caused him to sit down; - but observing that the old man ate, and prayed not, neither begged - for a blessing on his meat, he asked him why he did not worship the - God of Heaven? - - “The old man told him he had been used to worship the sun only. - - “Whereupon Abraham in anger thrust him from his tent. When he was - gone into the evils of the night, God called to Abraham, and said, - ‘I have suffered this man, whom thou hast cast out, these hundred - years, and couldest thou not endure him one night, when he gave thee - no trouble?’ Upon this Abraham fetched the man back and gave him - entertainment: ‘Go thou and do likewise,’ said the preacher, ‘and - thy charity will be rewarded by the God of Abraham.’”[51] - -Jeremy Taylor did not learn this teaching from Archbishop Laud, but from -the _droiture_ of his own conscience, and the kindness of his own heart. -He wrote much other and most delectable matter in his years of Welsh -retirement, when a royal chaplain was a bugbear in England. He lost sons, -too--who had gone to the bad under the influences of that young Duke of -Buckingham I mentioned; but at last, when the restoration of Charles II. -came, he was given a bishopric in the wilds of Ireland, in a sour, gloomy -country, with sour and gloomy looks all around him, which together, broke -him down at the age of fifty-five. I have spoken thus much of him, because -he is a man to be remembered as the most eloquent, and the most kindly, -and the most tolerant of all the Church of England people in that day; and -because his treatises on _Holy Living_ and _Holy Dying_ will doubtless -give consolation to thousands of desponding souls, in the years to come, -as they have in the years that are past. He was saturated through and -through with learning and with piety; and they gurgled from him together -in a great tide of mellifluous language. The ardors and fervors of -Elizabethan days seem to have lapped over upon him in that welter of the -Commonwealth wars. He has been called the Shakespeare of the pulpit; I -should rather say the Spenser--there is such unchecked, and uncheckable, -affluence of language and illustration; thought and speech struggling -together for precedence, and stretching on and on, in ever so sweet and -harmonious jangle of silvery sounds. - - -_A Royalist and a Puritan._ - -Another Royalist of these times, of a different temper, was Sir John -Suckling:[52] a poet too, very rich, bred in luxury, a man of the world, -who had seen every court in Europe worth seeing, who dashed off songlets -and ballads between dinners and orgies; which songlets often hobbled on -their feet by reason of those multiplied days of high living; but yet they -had prettinesses in them which have kept them steadily alive all down to -these prosaic times. I give a sample from his “Ballad upon a Wedding,” -though it may be over-well known: - - “Her cheeks so rare a white was on - No daisy makes comparison - (Who sees them is undone): - For streaks of red were mingled there - Such as are on a Catharine pear, - The side that’s next the sun. - - Her feet beneath her petticoat - Like little mice stole in and out - As if they feared the light. - But O, she dances such a way! - No sun upon an Easter day - Is half so fine a sight!” - -He was a frequenter of a tavern which stood at the Southwark end of London -Bridge. Aubrey says he was one of the best bowlers of his time. He played -at cards, too, rarely well, and “did use to practise by himself abed.” He -was rich; he was liberal; he was accomplished--almost an “Admirable -Crichton.” His first military service was in support of Gustavus Adolphus, -in Germany. At the time of trouble with the Scots (1639) he raised a troop -for the King’s service that bristled with gilded spurs and trappings; but -he never did much serious fighting on British soil; and in 1641--owing to -what was counted treasonable action in behalf of Strafford, he was -compelled to leave England. - -He crossed over to the Continent, wandered into Spain, and somehow became -(as a current tradition reported) a victim of the Inquisition there, and -was put to cruel torture; a strange subject surely to be put to the -torture--in this life. He was said to be broken by this experience, and -strayed away, after his escape from those priest-fangs, to Paris, where, -not yet thirty-five, and with such promise in him of better things, he -came to his death in some mysterious way: some said by a knife-blade which -a renegade servant had fastened in his boot; but most probably by suicide. -There is, however, great obscurity in regard to his life abroad. - -He wrote some plays, which had more notice than they should have had; -possibly owing to a revival of dramatic interests very strangely brought -about in Charles I.’s time--a revival which was due to the over-eagerness -and exaggeration of attacks made upon it by the Puritans: noticeable among -these was that of William Prynne[53]--“utter barrister” of Lincoln’s Inn. -“Utter barrister” does not mean æsthetic barrister, but one not yet come -to full range of privilege. - -This Prynne was a man of dreadful insistence and severities; he would have -made a terrific schoolmaster. He was the author, in the course of his -life, of no less than one hundred and eighty distinct works; many of them, -it is true, were pamphlets, but others terribly bulky--an inextinguishable -man; that onslaught on the drama and dramatic people, and play-goers, -including people of the Court, called _Histriomastix_, was a foul-mouthed, -close-printed, big quarto of a thousand pages. One would think such a book -could do little harm; but he was tried for it, was heavily fined, and -sentenced to stand in the pillory and lose his ears. He pleaded strongly -against the sentence, and for its remission upon “divers passages [as he -says in his petition] fallen inconsiderately from my pen in a book called -_Histriomastix_.” - -But he pleaded in vain; there was no sympathy for him. Ought there to be -for a man who writes a book of a thousand quarto pages--on any subject? -The violence of this diatribe made a reaction in favor of the theatre; his -fellow-barristers of Lincoln’s Inn hustled him out of their companionship, -and got up straightway a gay masque to demonstrate their scorn of his -reproof. - -They say he bore his punishment sturdily, though the fumes of his book, -which was burned just below his nose, came near to suffocate him. Later -still, he underwent another sentence for offences growing out of his -unrelenting and imperious Puritanism--this time in company with one Burton -(not Robert Burton,[54] of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_), who was a -favorite with the people and had flowers strown before him as he walked to -the pillory. But Prynne had no flowers, and his ears having been once -cropt, the hangman had a rough time (a very rough time for Prynne) in -getting at his task. Thereafter he was sent to prison in the isle of -Jersey; but he kept writing, ears or no ears, and we may hear his strident -voice again--hear it in Parliament, too. - - -_Cowley and Waller._ - -Two other poets of these times I name, because of the great reputation -they once had; a reputation far greater than they maintain now. These are -Abraham Cowley and Edmund Waller.[55] The former of these (Cowley) was the -son of a London grocer, whose shop was not far from the home of Izaak -Walton; he was taught at Westminster School, and at Cambridge, and blazed -up precociously at the age of fifteen in shining verses.[56] Indeed his -aptitude, his ingenuities, his scholarship, kept him in the first rank of -men of letters all through his day, and gave him burial between Spenser -and Chaucer in Westminster Abbey. He would take a humbler place if he were -disentombed now; yet, in Cromwell’s time, or in that of Charles II., the -average reading man knew Cowley better than he knew Milton, and admired -him more. I give you a fragment of what is counted his best; it is from -his “Hymn to Light:” - - “When, Goddess, thou lift’st up thy waken’d head - Out of the morning’s purple bed, - Thy quire of birds about thee play, - And all the joyful world salutes the rising day. - - “All the world’s bravery, that delights our eyes, - Is but thy sev’ral liveries, - Thou the rich dye on them bestowest, - Thy nimble pencil paints this landscape as thou goest. - - “A crimson garment in the Rose thou wear’st; - A crown of studded gold thou bear’st, - The virgin lilies in their white, - Are clad but with the lawn of almost naked light!” - -If I were to read a fragment from Tennyson in contrast with Cowley’s -treatment of a similar theme I think you might wonder less why his -reputation has suffered gradual eclipse. Shall we try? Cowley wrote a poem -in memory of a dear friend, and I take one of the pleasantest of its -verses: - - “Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say, - Have ye not seen us walking every day? - Was there a tree about, which did not know - The love betwixt us two? - Henceforth, ye gentle trees, for ever fade, - Or your sad branches thicker join, - And into darksome shades combine, - Dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid.” - -Tennyson wrote of _his_ dead friend, and here is a verse of it: - - “The path by which we twain did go, - Which led by tracts that pleased us well - Thro’ four sweet years, arose and fell - From flower to flower, from snow to snow; - - But where the path we walk’d began - To slant the fifth autumnal slope, - As we descended, following hope, - _There_ sat the shadow feared of man, - - Who broke our fair companionship, - And spread his mantle dark and cold, - And wrapped thee formless in the fold, - And dulled the murmur on thy lip, - - And bore thee where I could not see - Nor follow--though I walk in haste; - And think--that somewhere in the waste, - The shadow sits, and waits for me!” - -Can I be wrong in thinking that under the solemn lights of these stanzas -the earlier poet’s verse grows dim? - -Cowley was a good Kingsman; and in the days of the Commonwealth held -position of secretary to the exiled Queen Henrietta, in Paris; he did, at -one time, think of establishing himself in one of the American colonies; -returned, however, to his old London haunts, and, wearying of the city, -sought retirement at Chertsey, on the Thames’ banks (where his old house -is still to be seen), and where he wrote, in graceful prose and cumbrous -verse, on subjects related to country life--which he loved overmuch--and -died there among his trees and the meadows. - -Waller was both Kingsman and Republican--steering deftly between extremes, -so as to keep himself and his estates free from harm. This will weaken -your sympathy for him at once--as it should do. He lived in a grand -way--affected the philosopher; _was_ such a philosopher as quick-witted -selfishness makes; yet he surely had wonderful aptitudes in dealing with -language, and could make its harmonious numbers flow where and how he -would. Waller has come to a casual literary importance in these days under -the deft talking and writing of those dilettante critics who would make -this author the pivot (as it were) on which British poesy swung away from -the “hysterical riot of the Jacobeans” into measured and orderly classic -cadence. It is a large influence to attribute to a single writer, though -his grace and felicities go far to justify it. And it is further to be -remembered that such critics are largely given to the discussion of -_technique_ only; they write as distinct art-masters; while we, who are -taking our paths along English Letters for many other things besides art -and rhythm, will, I trust, be pardoned for thinking that there is very -little pith or weighty matter in this great master of the juggleries of -sound. - -Waller married early in life, but lost his wife while still very young; -thenceforth, for many years--a gay and coquettish widower--he pursued the -Lady Dorothy Sidney with a storm of love verses, of which the best (and it -is really amazingly clever in its neatness and point) is this: - - “Go, lovely Rose, - Tell her, that wastes her time and me, - That now she knows - When I resemble her to thee - How sweet and fair she seems to be. - Tell her that’s young, - And shuns to have her graces spied, - That hadst thou sprung - In deserts where no men abide, - Thou must have, uncommended, died.” - -But neither this, nor a hundred others, brought the Lady Dorothy to terms: -she married--like a wise woman--somebody else. And he? He went on singing -as chirpingly as ever--sang till he was over eighty. - - -_John Milton._ - -And now we come to a poet of a larger build--a weightier music--and of a -more indomitable spirit; a poet who wooed the world with his songs; and -the world has never said him “Nay.” I mean John Milton.[57] - -He is the first great poet we have encountered, in respect to whom we can -find in contemporary records full details of family, lodgement, and birth. -A great many of these details have been swooped together in Dr. Masson’s -recently completed _Life and Times of Milton_, which I would more -earnestly commend to your reading were it not so utterly long--six fat -volumes of big octavo--in the which the pith and kernel about Milton, the -man, floats around like force meat-balls in a great sea of historic soup. -Our poet was born in Bread Street, just out of Cheapside, in London, in -the year 1608. - -In Cheapside--it may be well to recall--stood the Mermaid Tavern; and it -stood not more than half a block away from the corner where Milton’s -father lived. And on that corner--who knows?--the boy, eight years old, or -thereby, when Shakespeare died, may have lingered to see the stalwart Ben -Jonson go tavern-ward for his cups, or may be, John Marston, or Dekker, or -Philip Massinger--all these being comfortably inclined to taverns. - -The father of this Bread Street lad was a scrivener by profession; that -is, one who drafted legal papers; a well-to-do man as times went; able to -give his boy some private schooling; proud of him, too; proud of his clear -white and red face, and his curly auburn hair carefully parted--almost a -girl’s face; so well-looking, indeed, that the father employed a good -Dutch painter of those days to take his portrait; the portrait is still in -existence--dating from 1618, when the poet was ten, showing him in a -banded velvet doublet and a stiff vandyke collar, trimmed about with lace. -In those times, or presently after, he used to go to St. Paul’s Grammar -School; of which Lily, of Lily’s _Latin Grammar_, was the first master -years before. It was only a little walk for him, through Cheapside, and -then, perhaps, Paternoster Row--the school being under the shadow of that -great cathedral, which was burned fifty years after. He studied hard -there; studied at home, too; often, he says himself, when only fourteen, -studying till twelve at night. He loved books, and he loved better to be -foremost. - -He turns his hand to poetry even then. Would you like to see a bit of what -he wrote at fifteen? Well, here it is, in a scrap of psalmody: - - “Let us blaze his name abroad, - For of gods, he is the God, - … - Who by his wisdom did create - The painted heavens so full of state, - … - And caused the golden tressèd sun - All the day long his course to run, - The hornèd moon to hang by night - Amongst her spangled sisters bright; - For his mercies aye endure, - Ever faithful, ever sure.” - -It is not of the best, but I think will compare favorably with most that -is written by young people of fifteen. At Christ’s College, Cambridge, -whither he went shortly afterward--his father being hopeful that he would -take orders in the Church--he was easily among the first; he wrote Latin -hexameters, quarrelled with his tutor (notwithstanding his handsome face -had given to him the mocking title of “The Lady”), had his season of -_rustication_ up in London, sees all that is doing in theatrics -thereabout, but goes back to study more closely than ever. - -The little Christmas song, - - “It was the winter wild, - While the heaven-born Child,” etc., - -belongs to his Cambridge life; though his first public appearance as an -author was in the “Ode to Shakespeare,” attaching with other and various -commendatory verses to the second folio edition of that author’s dramas, -published in the year 1632. - -Milton was then twenty-four, had been six or seven at Cambridge; did not -accept kindly his father’s notion of taking orders in the Church, but had -exaggerated views of a grandiose life of study and literary work; in which -views his father--sensible man that he was--did not share; but--kind man -that he was--he did not strongly combat them. So we find father and son -living together presently, some twenty miles away from London, in a little -country hamlet called Horton, where the old gentleman had purchased a -cottage for a final home when his London business was closed up. - -Here, too, our young poet studies--not books only, borrowed where he can, -and bought if he can; but studies also fields and trees and skies and -rivers, and all the natural objects that are to take embalmment sooner or -later in his finished verse. Here he wrote, almost within sight of Windsor -towers, “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso.” You know them; but they are -always new and always fresh; freshest when you go out from London on a -summer’s day to where the old tower of Horton Church still points the -road, and trace there (if you can) - - “The russet lawns and fallows gray - Where the nibbling flocks do stray, - … - Meadows trim with daisies pied, - Shallow brooks and rivers wide. - … - Sometimes with secure delight - The upland hamlets will invite, - When the merry bells ring round - And the jocund rebecks sound - To many a youth and many a maid - Dancing in the chequered shade; - And young and old come forth to play - On a sunshine holiday.” - -In reading such verse we do not know where to stop--at least, I do not. He -writes, too, in that country quietude, within sight of Windsor forest, his -charming “Lycidas,” one of the loveliest of memorial poems, and the -“Comus,” which alone of all the masques of that time, and preceding times, -has gone in its entirety into the body of living English literature. - -In 1638, then thirty years old, equipped in all needed languages and -scholarship, he goes for further study and observation to the Continent; -he carries letters from Sir Henry Wotton; he sees the great Hugo Grotius -at Paris; sees the sunny country of olives in Provence; sees the superb -front of Genoa piling out from the blue waters of the Mediterranean; sees -Galileo at Florence--the old philosopher too blind to study the face of -the studious young Englishman that has come so far to greet him. He sees, -too, what is best and bravest at Rome; among the rest St. Peter’s, just -then brought to completion, and in the first freshness of its great tufa -masonry. He is fêted by studious young Italians; has the freedom of the -Accademia della Crusca; blazes out in love sonnets to some dark-eyed -signorina of Bologna; returns by Venice, and by Geneva where he hobnobs -with the Diodati friends of his old school-fellow, Charles Diodati; and -comes home to England to find changes brewing--the Scotch marching over -the border with battle-drums--the Long Parliament portending--Strafford -and Laud in way of impeachment--his old father drawing near to his -end--and bloody war tainting all the air. - -The father’s fortune, never large, is found crippled at his death; and -Milton, now thirty-two, must look out for his own earnings. He takes a -house; first in Fleet Street, then near Aldersgate, with garden attached, -where he has three or four pupils; his nephew Phillips[58] among them. - - -_Milton’s Marriage._ - -It was while living there that he brought back, one day, a bride--Mary -Powell; she was a young maiden in her teens, daughter of a -well-established loyalist family near to Oxford. The young bride is at the -quiet student’s house in Aldersgate a month, perhaps two, when she goes -down for a visit to her mother; she is to come back at Michaelmas; but -Michaelmas comes, and she stays; Milton writes, and she stays; Milton -writes again, and she stays; he sends a messenger--and she stays. - -What is up, then, in this new household? Milton, the scholar and poet, is -up, straightway, to a treatise on divorce, whereby he would make it easy -to undo yokes where parties are unevenly yoked. There is much scriptural -support and much shrewd reasoning brought by his acuteness to the -overthrow of those rulings which the common-sense of mankind has -established; even now those who contend for easy divorce get their best -weapons out of this old Miltonian armory. - -Meantime the poet went on teaching, I suspect rapping his boys over the -knuckles in these days for slight cause. But what does it all mean? It -means incongruity; not the first case, nor will it be the last. -He--abstracted, austere, bookish, with his head in the clouds; she--with -her head in ribbons, and possibly loving orderly housewifery:[59] -intellectual affinities and sympathies are certainly missing. - -Fancy the poet just launched into the moulding of such verse as this: - - “Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire - Mirth and youth, and warm desire! - Woods and groves are of thy dressing----” - -when a servant gives sharp rat-tat at the door, “Please, sir, missus says, -‘Dinner’s waiting!’” But the poet sweeps on-- - - “O nightingale, that on yon blooming spray - Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still, - Thou, with fresh heat, the lover’s heart dost fill, - Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate----” - -And there is another rat-tat!--“Please, sir, missus says, ‘Dinner is all -getting cold.’” Still the poet ranges in fairyland-- - - “----ere the rude bird of hate - Foretell my hopeless doom, in some grove nigh, - As thou from year to year hast sung too late - For my relief, yet hadst no reason why----” - -And now, maybe, it is the pretty mistress who comes with a bounce--“Mr. -Milton, are you _ever_ coming?”--and a quick bang of the door, which is a -way some excellent petulant young women have of--not breaking the -commandments. - -There is a little prosaic half-line in the “Paradise Lost” (I don’t think -it was ever quoted before), which in this connection seems to me to have a -very pathetic twang in it; ’tis about Paradise and its charms-- - - “No fear lest dinner cool!” - -However, it happens that through the advocacy of friends on both sides -this great family breach is healed, or seems to be; and two years after, -Milton and his recreant, penitent, and restored wife are living again -together; lived together till her death; and she became the mother of his -three daughters: Anne, who was crippled, never even learned to write, and -used to be occupied with her needle; Mary, who was his amanuensis and -reader most times, and Deborah, the youngest, who came to perform similar -offices for him afterward. - -Meantime the Royalist cause had suffered everywhere. The Powells (his -wife’s family having come to disaster) did--with more or less children--go -to live with Milton. Whether the presence of the mother-in-law mended the -poet’s domesticity I doubt; doubt, indeed, if ever there was absolute -harmony there. - -On the year of the battle of Naseby appeared Milton’s first unpretending -booklet of poems,[60] containing with others, those already named, and -not before printed. Earlier, however, in the lifetime of the poet had -begun the issue of those thunderbolts of pamphlets which he wrote on -church discipline, education, on the liberty of unlicensed printing, and -many another topic--cumbrous with great trails of intricate sentences, -wondrous word-heaps, sparkling with learning, flaming with anger--with -convolutions like a serpent’s, and as biting as serpents. - -A show is kept up of his school-keeping, but with doubtful success; for in -1647 we learn that “he left his great house in Barbican, and betook -himself to a smaller in High Holborn, among those that open back into -Lincoln’s Inn Fields;” but there is no poem-making of importance (save one -or two wondrous Sonnets) now, or again, until he is virtually an old man. - - -_The Royal Tragedy._ - -Meantime the tide of war is flowing back and forth over England and -engrossing all hopes and fears. The poor King is one while a captive of -the Scots, and again a captive of the Parliamentary forces, and is -hustled from palace to castle. What shall be done with the royal prisoner? -There are thousands who have fought against him who would have been most -glad of his escape; but there are others--weary of his doublings--who have -vowed that this son of Baal shall go to his doom and bite the dust. - -Finally, and quickly too (for events move with railroad speed), his trial -comes--the trial of a King. A strange event for these English, who have -venerated and feared and idolized so many kings and queens of so many -royal lines. How the Royalist verse-makers must have fumed and raved! -Milton, then just turned of forty, was, as I have said, living near High -Holborn; the King was eight years his senior--was in custody at St. -James’s, a short way above Piccadilly. He brought to the trial all his -kingly dignity, and wore it unflinchingly--refusing to recognize the -jurisdiction of the Parliament, cuddling always obstinately that poor -figment of the divine right of kings--which even then Milton, down in his -Holborn garden, was sharpening his pen to undermine and destroy. - -The sentence was death--a sentence that gave pause to many. Fairfax, and -others such, would have declared against it; even crop-eared Prynne, who -had suffered so much for his truculent Puritanism, protested against it; -two-thirds of the population of England would have done the same; but -London and England and the army were all in the grip of an iron man whose -name was Cromwell. Time sped; the King had only two days to live; his son -Charles was over seas, never believing such catastrophe could happen; only -two royal children--a princess of thirteen and a boy of eight--came to say -adieu to the royal prisoner. “He sat with them some time at the window, -taking them on his knees, and kissing them, and talking with them of their -duty to their mother, and to their elder brother, the Prince of Wales.” He -carried his habitual dignity and calmness with him on the very morning, -going between files of soldiers through St. James’s Park--pointing out a -tree which his brother Henry had planted--and on, across to Whitehall, -where had come off many a gay, rollicking masque of Ben Jonson’s, in -presence of his father, James I. He was led through the window of the -banqueting-hall--the guides show it now--where he had danced many a -night, and so to the scaffold, just without the window, whence he could -see up and down the vast court of Whitehall, from gate to gate,[61] paved -with a great throng of heads. Even then and there rested on him the same -kingly composure; the fine oval face, pale but unmoved; the peaked beard -carefully trimmed, as you see it in the well-known pictures by Vandyke, at -Windsor or at Blenheim. - -He has a word with old Bishop Juxon, who totters beside him; a few words -for others who are within hearing; examines the block, the axe; gives some -brief cautions to the executioner; then, laying down his head, lifts his -own hand for signal, and with a crunching thud of sound it is over. - -And poet Milton--has he shown any relenting? Not one whit; he is austere -among the most austere; in this very week he is engaged upon his defence -of regicide, with its stinging, biting sentences. He is a friend and -party to the new Commonwealth; two months only after the execution of the -King, he is appointed Secretary to the State Council, and under it is -conducting the Latin correspondence. He demolishes, by order of the same -Council, the _Eikon Basilike_ (supposed in that day to be the king’s work) -with his fierce onslaught of the _Eikonoklastes_. His words are bitter as -gall; he even alludes, in no amiable tone--with acrid emphasis, indeed--to -the absurd rumor, current with some, that the King, through his -confidential instrument, Buckingham, had poisoned his own father. - -He is further appointed to the answering of Salmasius,[62] an answer with -which all Europe presently rings. It was in these days, and with such work -crowding him, that his vision fails; and to these days, doubtless belongs -that noble sonnet on his blindness, which is worth our staying for, here -and now: - - “When I consider how my light is spent - Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, - And that one talent, which is death to hide, - Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent - To serve therewith my Maker, and present - My true account, lest he, returning, chide; - ‘Dost God exact day-labor, light denied?’ - I fondly ask: But Patience, to prevent - That murmur, soon replies--‘God doth not need - Either man’s work, or his own gifts; who best - Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state - Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed - And post o’er land and ocean without rest; - They also serve, who only stand and wait.’” - -Wonderful, is it not, that such a sonnet--so full of rare eloquence and -rare philosophy--so full of all that most hallows our infirm humanity -could be written by one--pouring out his execrations on the head of -Salmasius--at strife in his own household--at strife (as we shall find) -with his own daughters? Wonderful, is it not, that Carlyle could write as -he did about the heroism of the humblest as well as bravest, and yet grow -into a rage--over his wife’s shoulders and at her cost--with a rooster -crowing in his neighbor’s yard? Ah, well, the perfect ones have not yet -come upon our earth, whatever perfect poems they may write. - - -_Change of Kings._ - -But at last comes a new turn of the wheel to English fortunes. Cromwell is -dead; the Commonwealth is ended; all London is throwing its cap in the air -over the restoration of Charles II. Poor blind Milton[63] is in hiding and -in peril. His name is down among those accessory to the murder of the -King. The ear-cropped Prynne--who is now in Parliament, and who hates -Milton as Milton scorned Prynne--is very likely hounding on those who -would bring the great poet to judgment. ’Tis long matter of doubt. Past -his house near Red Lion Square the howling mob drag the bodies of Cromwell -and Ireton, and hang them in their dead ghastliness. - -Milton, however, makes lucky escape, with only a short term of prison; but -for some time thereafter he was in fear of assassination. Such a -rollicking daredevil, as Scott in his story of _Woodstock_, has painted -for us in Roger Wildrake (of whom there were many afloat in those times) -would have liked no better fun than to run his rapier through such a man -as John Milton; and in those days he would have been pardoned for it. - -That capital story of _Woodstock_ one should read when they are upon these -times of the Commonwealth. There are, indeed, anachronisms in it; kings -escaping too early or too late, or dying a little out of time to -accommodate the exigencies of the plot; but the characterization is -marvellously spirited; and you see the rakehelly cavaliers, and the fine -old king-ridden knights, and the sour-mouthed Independents, and the glare -and fumes and madness of the civil war, as you find them in few history -pages. - -Milton, meanwhile, in his quiet home again, revolves his old project of a -great sacred poem. He taxes every visitor who can, to read to him in -Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Dutch. His bookly appetite is omnivorous. His -daughters have large share of this toil. Poor girls, they have been little -taught, and not wisely. They read what they read only by rote, and count -it severe task-work. Their mother is long since dead, and a second wife, -who lived only for a short time, dead too. We know very little of that -second wife; but she is embalmed forever in a sonnet, from which I steal -this fragment:-- - - “Methought I saw my late espousèd saint - Brought to me, like Alcestis from the grave; - … - Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight - Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shin’d - So clear as in no face with more delight. - But oh, as to embrace me she inclined - I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.” - -The Miltonian reading and the work goes on, but affection, I fear, does -not dominate the household; the daughters overtasked, with few -indulgences, make little rebellions; and the blind, exacting old man is as -unforgiving as the law. Americans should take occasion to see the great -picture by Munkacsy, in the Lenox Gallery, New York, of Milton dictating -_Paradise Lost_; it is in itself a poem; a dim Puritan interior; light -coming through a latticed window and striking on the pale, something -cadaverous face of the old poet, who sits braced in his great armchair, -with lips set together, and the daughters, in awed attention, listening or -seeming to listen. - -I am sorry there is so large room to doubt of the intellectual and -affectionate sympathy existing between them; nevertheless--that it did not -is soberly true; his own harsh speeches, which are of record, show it; -their petulant innuendoes, which are also of record, show it. - -Into this clouded household--over which love does not brood so fondly as -we would choose to think--there comes sometimes, with helpfulness and -sympathy, a certain Andrew Marvell, who had been sometime assistant to -Milton in his official duties, and who takes his turn at the readings, and -sees only the higher and better lights that shine there; and he had -written sweet poems of his own, (to which I shall return) that have kept -his name alive, and that will keep it alive, I think, forever. - -There comes also into this home, in these days, very much to the surprise -and angerment of the three daughters, a third wife to the old poet, after -some incredibly short courtship.[64] She is only seven years the senior of -the daughter Anne; but she seems to have been a sensible young person, not -bookishly given, and looking after the household, while Anne and Mary and -Deborah still wait, after a fashion, upon the student-wants of the poet. -In fits of high abstraction he is now bringing the “Paradise” to a -close--not knowing, or not caring, maybe, for the little bickerings which -rise and rage and die away in the one-sided home. - -I cannot stay to characterize his great poem; nor is there need; immortal -in more senses than one; humanity counts for little in it; one pair of -human creatures only, and these looked at, as it were, through the big end -of the telescope; with gigantic, Godlike figures around one, or colossal -demons prone on fiery floods. It is not a child’s book; to place it in -schools as a parsing-book is an atrocity that I hope is ended. Not, I -think, till we have had some fifty years to view the everlasting fight -between good and evil in this world, can we see in proper perspective the -vaster battle which, under Milton’s imagination, was pictured in Paradise -between the same foes. Years only can so widen one’s horizon as to give -room for the reverberations of that mighty combat of the powers of light -and darkness. - -We talk of the organ-music of Milton. The term has its special -significance; it gives hint of that large quality which opens heavenly -spaces with its billows of sound; which translates us; which gives us a -lookout from supreme heights, and so lifts one to the level of his -“Argument.” There is large learning in his great poem--weighty and -recondite; but this spoils no music; great, cumbrous names catch sonorous -vibrations under his modulating touch, and colossal shields and spears -clash together like cymbals. The whole burden of his knowledges--Pagan, -Christian, or Hebraic, lift up and sink away upon the undulations of his -sublime verse, as heavy-laden ships rise and fall upon some great -ground-swell making in from outer seas. - -A bookish color is pervading; if he does not steal flowers from books, he -does what is better--he shows the fruit of them. There are stories of his -debt to Cædmon, and still more authentic, of his debt to the Dutch poet -Vondel,[65] and the old Provençal Bishop of Vienne,[66] who as early as -the beginning of the sixth century wrote on kindred themes. There is -hardly room for doubt that Milton not only knew, but literally translated -some of the old Bishop’s fine Latin lines, and put to his larger usage -some of his epithets. - -Must we not admit that--in the light of such developments--when the -Puritan poet boasts of discoursing on - - “Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme,” - -that it is due to a little lurking stimulant of that Original Sin which -put bitterness into his Salmasian papers, and an ugly arrogance into his -domestic discipline? But, after all, he was every way greater than his -forerunners, and can afford to admit Cædmon and Vondel and Avitus, and all -other claimants, as supporting columns in the underlying crypt upon which -was builded the great temple of his song. - - -_Last Days._ - -The home of Milton in these latter days of his life was often changed. -Now, it was Holborn again; then Jewin Street; then Bunhill Row; and--one -while--for a year or more, when the great plague of 1665 desolated the -city, he fled before it to the little village of Chalfont, some twenty -miles distant from London on the Aylesbury road. There the cottage[67] may -still be seen in which he lived, and the garden in which he walked--but -never saw. There, too, is the latticed window looking on the garden, at -which he sat hour by hour, with the summer winds blowing on him from over -honeysuckle beds, while he brooded, with sightless eyes turned to the sky, -upon the mysteries of fate and foreknowledge. - -A young Quaker, Ellwood, perhaps his dearest friend, comes to see him -there, to read to him and to give a helping hand to the old man’s study; -his daughters, too, are at their helpful service; grateful, maybe, that -even the desolation of the plague has given a short relief from the dingy -house in the town and its treadmill labors, and put the joy of blooming -flowers and of singing birds into their withered hearts. - -The year after, which finds them in Bunhill Row again, brings that great -London fire which the Monument now commemorates; they passing three days -and nights upon the edge of that huge tempest of flame and smoke which -devoured nearly two-thirds of London; the old poet hearing the din and -roar and crackle, and feeling upon his forehead the waves of fierce heat -and the showers of cinders--a scene and an experience which might have -given, perhaps, other color to his pictures of Pandemonium, if his great -poem had not been just now, in these fateful years, completed--completed -and bargained for; £20 were to be paid for it conditionally,[68] in four -payments of £5 each, at a day when London had been decimated by the -plague, and half the city was a waste of ruin and ashes. And to give an -added tint of blackness to the picture, we have to fancy his three -daughters leaving him, as they did, tired of tasks, tired of wrangling. -Anne, the infirm one, who neither read nor wrote, and Mary, so overworked, -and Deborah, the youngest (latterly being very helpful)--all desert him. -They never return. “Undutiful daughters,” he says to Ellwood; but I think -he does not soften toward them, even when gone. Poor, stern, old man! He -would have cut them off by will from their small shares of inheritance in -his estate; but the courts wisely overruled this. Anne, strangely enough, -married--dying shortly after; Mary died years later, a spinster; and -Deborah, who became Mrs. Clark, had some notice, thirty years later, when -it was discovered that a quiet woman of that name was Milton’s daughter. -But she seems to have been of a stolid make; no poetry, no high sense of -dignity belonging to her; a woman like ten thousand, whose descendants are -now said (doubtfully) to be living somewhere in India. - -But Milton wrought on; his wife Betty, of whom he spoke more -affectionately than ever once of his daughters, humored his poor fagged -appetites of the table. _Paradise Regained_ was in hand; and later the -“Samson Agonistes.” His habits were regular; up at five o’clock; a chapter -of the Hebrew Bible read to him by his daughter Mary--what time she -stayed; an early breakfast, and quiet lonely contemplation after it (his -nephew tells us) till seven. Then work came, putting Quaker Ellwood to -helpful service, or whoever happened in, and could fathom the -reading--this lasting till mid-day dinner; afterward a walk in his garden -(when he had one) for two hours, in his old gray suit, in which many a -time passers-by saw him sitting at his door. There was singing in later -afternoon, when there was a voice to sing for him; and instrumental music, -when his, or a friendly hand touched the old organ. After supper, a pipe -and a glass of water; always persistently temperate; and then, night and -rest. - -He attended no church in his later years, finding none in absolute -agreement with his beliefs; sympathizing with the Quakers to a certain -degree, with the orthodox Independents too; but flaming up at any -procrustean laws for faith; never giving over a certain tender love, I -think, for the organ-music and storied splendors of the Anglican Church; -but with a wild, broad freedom of thought chafing at any ecclesiastic law -made by man, that galled him or checked his longings. His clear, clean -intellect--not without its satiric jostlings and wrestlings--its -petulancies and caprices--sought and maintained, independently, its own -relation with God and the mysterious future. - -Our amiable Dr. Channing, with excellent data before him, demonstrated his -good Unitarian faith; but though Milton might have approved his nice -reasonings, I doubt if he would have gone to church with him. He loved -liberty; he could not travel well in double harness, not even in his -household or with the elders. His exalted range of vision made light of -the little aids and lorgnettes which the conventional teachers held out to -him. Creeds and dogmas and vestments and canons, and all humanly -consecrated helps, were but Jack-o’-lanterns to him, who was swathed all -about with the glowing clouds of glory that rolled in upon his soul from -the infinite depths. - -In the year 1674--he being then sixty-five years old--on a Sunday, late at -night, he died; and with so little pain that those who were with him did -not know when the end came. He was buried--not in the great cemetery of -Bunhill Fields, close by his house--but beside his father, in the old -parish church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, where he had been used to go as a -boy, and where he had been used to hear the old burial Office for the -Dead--now intoned over his grave--“_Ashes to ashes, dust to dust_.” There -was no need for the monument erected to him there in recent years. His -poems make a monument that is read of all the world, and will be read in -all times of the world. - - - - -CHAPTER V. - - -As we launched upon the days of Charles I., in our last talk, we had -somewhat to say of the King’s advisers, lay and ecclesiastic; we came to -quick sense of the war-clouds, fast gathering, through which Jeremy Taylor -shot his flashes of pious eloquence; we heard a strain of Suckling’s -verse, to which might have been added other, and may be better, from such -Royalist singers as Carew or Lovelace;[69] but we cannot swoop all the -birds into our net. We had glimpse of the crop-eared Prynne of the -_Histriomastix_; and from Cowley, that sincere friend of both King and -Queen in the days of their misfortunes, we plucked some “Poetical -Blossoms;” also a charming “Rose,” from the orderly parterres of that -great gardener, and pompous, time-serving man, Edmund Waller. - -Then came Milton with the fairy melodies, always sweet, of “Comus”--the -cantankerous pamphleteering--the soured home-life--the bloody thrusts at -the image of the King, and the grander flight of his diviner music into -the courts of Paradise. - - -_Charles II. and his Friends._ - -Some fourteen years or so before the death of Milton, the restoration of -Charles II. had come about. He had drifted back upon the traces of the -stout Oliver Cromwell, and of the feebler Richard Cromwell, on a great -tide of British enthusiasm. Independents, Presbyterians, Church of England -men, and Papists were all by the ears; and it did seem to many among the -shrewdest of even the Puritan workers that some balance-wheel (of whatever -metal), though weighted with royal traditions and hereditary privileges, -might keep the governmental machinery to the steady working of old days. - -So the Second Charles had come back, with a great throwing up of caps all -through the London streets; Presbyterians giving him welcome because he -was sure to snub the Independents; the Independents giving him welcome -because he was sure to snub the Presbyterians; the Church of England men -giving him welcome because he was sure to snub both (as he did); and -finally, the Papists giving him high welcome because all other ways their -hopes were lean and few. - -You know, or should know, what manner of man he was: accomplished--in his -way; an expert swordsman; an easy talker--capable of setting a tableful of -gentlemen in a roar; telling stories inimitably, and a great many of them; -full of grimaces that would have made his fortune on the stage; saying -sweetest things, and meaning the worst things; a daredevil who feared -neither God nor man; generous, too--most of all in his cups; and -liberal--with other people’s money; hating business with all his soul; -loving pleasure with all his heart; ready always to do kindness that cost -him nothing; laughing at all Puritans and purity; yet winning the maudlin -affection of a great many people, and the respect of none. - -Notwithstanding all this, the country gentlemen of England, of good blood, -who had sniffed scornfully at the scent of the beer-vats which hung about -the name of Cromwell, welcomed this clever, swarthy, black-haired, -dissolute Prince, who had a pedigree which ran back on the father’s side -to the royal Bruce of Scotland, and on the mother’s side to the great -Clovis, and to the greater Charlemagne. - -You will find a good glimpse of this scion of royalty in Scott’s story of -_Peveril of the Peak_. The novel is by no means one of the great -romancer’s best; but it is well worth reading for the clear and vivid idea -it will give one of the social clashings between the reserves of old -Puritanism and the incontinencies of new monarchism; you will find in it -an excellent sample of the gruff, stalwart Cromwellian; and another of the -hot-tempered, swearing cavalier; and still others of the mincing, -scheming, gambling, roystering crew which overran all the purlieus of the -court of Charles. Buckingham was there--that second Villiers,[70] of whom -I had somewhat to say when the elder Buckingham came up for mention in -the days of Charles I.; this younger Villiers running before the elder in -all accomplishments and all villainies; courtly; of noble bearing; with -daintiest of speeches; a pattern of manly graces; capable of a tender -French song, with all his tones in exultant accord with best of court -singers, and of a comedy that drew all the play-goers of London to the -“Rehearsal;” capable too, of the wickedest of plots and of the foulest of -lies. And yet this Buckingham was one of the best accredited advisers of -the Crown. - -To the same court belonged Rochester,[71] his great, fine wig covering a -great, fine brain; he writing harmonious verses about--“Nothing”--or worse -than nothing; and at the last wheedling Bishop Burnet into the belief that -he had changed his courses, and that if he might rise from that ugly -deathbed where the good-natured, pompous bishop sought him, he would be -enrolled among the moralists. I think it was lucky that he died with such -good impulse flashing at the top of his badnesses. - -Dorset belonged to this court, with his pretty verselets, and Sedley and -Etherege; also the Portsmouth and Lady Castelmaine, and the rest of those -venturesome ladies who show their colors of cheek and bosom, even now, in -the well-handled paintings of Sir Peter Lely. When you go to Hampton Court -you can see these fair and frail beauties by the dozen on the walls of the -King William room. Sir Peter Lely[72] was a rare painter, belonging to -these times; a great favorite of Charles; and he loved such subjects for -his brush; he drew the delicatest hands that were ever put on canvas--too -delicate and too small, unfortunately, to cover the undress of his -figures. - -But, at the worst, England was not altogether a Pandemonium in those days -following upon the Restoration. I think, perhaps, the majority of -historians and commentators are disposed to over-color the orgies; it is -so easy to make prodigious effects with strong sulphurous tints and -blazing vermilions. Certain it is that Taine, in writing of these times, -has put an almost malignant touch into his story, blinking the fact that -the trail which shows most of corrupting phosphorescence came over the -Channel with the new King; forgetting that French breeding was at the -bottom of the new tastes, and that French gold made the blazonry of the -chariots in which the Jezebels rode on their triumphal way through London -to--perdition. - -Then, again, English vice is more outspoken and less secretive than that -of the over-Channel neighbors. It is now, and has always been true, that -when his Satanic majesty takes possession of a man (or a woman), he can -cover himself in sweeter and more impenetrable disguise under the pretty -perukes and charming millinery of French art than in a homely British -body, out of which the demon horns stick stark through all the wigs and -cosmetics that art can put upon a man. - -It is worth while for us to remember that in this London, when the elegant -Duke of Rochester was beating time with his jewelled hand to a French -gallop, Richard Baxter’s[73] ever-living _Saints’ Rest_ was an accredited -book, giving consolation to many a poor soul wrestling with the fears of -death and of future judgment. It was published, indeed, somewhat earlier; -but its author was still wakeful and earnest; and many a time his thin, -stooping figure might be seen threading a way through the street crowds to -his chapel in Southwark, where delighted listeners came to hear him, -almost upon the very spot where Shakespeare, eighty years before, had -played in the Globe Theatre. - -The eloquent Tillotson, too, in these times--more liberal than Baxter or -Doddridge--was writing upon _The Wisdom of Being Religious_ and the right -_Rule of Faith_, and by his catholicity and clear-headedness winning such -favor and renown as to bring him later to the see of Canterbury. - -I would have you keep in mind, too, that John Milton was still alive--his -“Samson Agonistes” not being published until Charles II. had been some -twelve years upon the throne--and in quiet seclusion was cultivating and -cherishing that serene philosophy which glows along the closing line of -his greatest sonnet, - - “They also serve who only stand and wait!” - - -_Andrew Marvell._ - -When upon the subject of Milton, I made mention of a certain poet who used -to go and see him in his country retirement, and who was also assistant to -him in his duties as Latin Secretary to the Council. This was Andrew -Marvell,[74] a poet of so true a stamp, and so true a man, that it is -needful to know something more of him. - -He was son of a preacher at Kingston-upon-Hull (or, by metonomy, Hull) in -the north of England. In a very singular way, the occasion of his father’s -sudden death by drowning (if current tradition may be trusted) was also -the occasion of the young poet’s entrance upon greatly improved worldly -fortune. - -The story of it is this, which I tell to fix his memory better in mind. -Opposite his father’s home, on the other bank of the Humber, lived a lady -with an only daughter, the idol of her mother. This daughter chanced to -visit Hull, that she might be present at the baptism of one of Mr. -Marvell’s children. A tempest came up before night, and the boatmen -declared the crossing of the river to be dangerous; but the young lady, -with girlish wilfulness insisted, notwithstanding the urgence of Mr. -Marvell; who, finding her resolved, went with her; and the sea breaking -over the boat both were lost. The despairing mother found what consolation -she could in virtually adopting the young Andrew Marvell, and eventually -bestowing upon him her whole fortune. - -This opened a career to him which he was not slow to follow upon with -diligence and steadiness. Well-taught, well-travelled, well-mannered, he -went up to London, and was there befriended by those whose friendship -insured success. He was liberal in his politics, beautifully tolerant in -religious matters, kept a level head through the years of Parliamentary -rule, and was esteemed and admired by both Puritans and Royalists. He used -a sharp pen in controversy and wrote many pamphlets, some of which even -now might serve as models for incisive speech; he was witty with the -wittiest; was caustic, humorous; his pages adrip with classicisms; and he -had a delicacy of raillery that amused, and a power of logic that smote -heavily, where blows were in order. He was for a long time member of -Parliament for Hull, and by his honesties of speech and pen, made himself -so obnoxious to the political jackals about Charles’s court--that he was -said to be in danger again and again of assassination; he finally died -under strong (but unfounded) suspicion of poisoning. - -Those who knew him described him as “of middling stature, strong set, -roundish face, cherry-cheeked, hazel-eyed, brown-haired.”[75] - -There are dainty poems of his, which should be read, and which are worth -remembering. Take this, for instance, from his _Garden_, which was written -by him first in Latin, and then rendered thus: - - “What wondrous life is this I lead! - Ripe apples drop about my head; - The luscious clusters of a vine - Upon my mouth do crush their wine; - The nectarine and curious peach - Into my hands themselves do reach; - Stumbling on melons, as I pass, - Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass. - - “Here at the fountain’s sliding foot - Or at some fruit-tree’s mossy root, - Casting the body’s vest aside - My soul into the boughs does glide: - There, like a bird, it sits and sings, - Then whets and claps its silver wings, - And, till prepared for longer flight, - Waves in its plumes the various light.” - -And this other bit, from his “Appleton House” (Nuneaton), still more full -of rural spirit: - - “How safe, methinks, and strong behind - These trees, have I encamped my mind, - Where beauty aiming at the heart - Bends in some tree its useless dart, - And where the world no certain shot - Can make, or me it toucheth not. - - “Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines, - Curl me about, ye gadding vines, - And, oh, so close your circles lace - That I may never leave this place! - But, lest your fetters prove too weak - Ere I your silken bondage break, - Do you, O brambles, chain me too, - And, courteous briars, nail me through!” - -This is better than Rochester’s “Nothing,” and has no smack of Nell Gwynne -or of Charles’s court. - - -_Author of Hudibras._ - -It is altogether a different, and a far less worthy character that I now -bring to the notice of the reader. The man is Samuel Butler,[76] and the -book _Hudibras_--a jingling, doggerel poem, which at the time of its -publication had very great vogue in London, and was the literary sensation -of the hour in a court which in those same years[77] had received the -great epic of Milton without any noticeable ripple of applause. - -For myself, I have no great admiration for _Hudibras_, or for Mr. Samuel -Butler. He was witty, and wise in a way, and coarse, and had humor; but he -was of a bar-room stamp, and although he could make a great gathering of -the court people stretch their sides with laughter, it does not appear -that he had any high sense of honor, or much dignity of character. - -Mr. Pepys (whose memoirs you have heard of, and of whom we shall have more -to tell) says that he bought the book one day in the Strand because -everybody was talking of it--which is the only reason a good many people -have for buying books; and, he continues--that having dipped into it, -without finding much benefit, he sold it next day in the Strand for -half-price. But poor Mr. Pepys, in another and later entry, says, “I have -bought _Hudibras_ again; everybody does talk so much of it;” which is very -like Mr. Pepys, and very like a good many other buyers of books. - -_Hudibras_ is, in fact, a great, coarse, rattling, witty lunge at the -stiff-neckedness and the cropped heads of the Puritans, which the -roistering fellows about the palace naturally enjoyed immensely. He calls -the Presbyterians, - - “Such, as do build their faith upon - The holy text of pike and gun; - Decide all controversies - By infallible artillery; - And prove their doctrines orthodox - By apostolic blows and knocks; - Call fire and sword and desolation - A godly, thorough reformation, - Which always must be going on - And still be doing--never done; - As if Religion were intended - For nothing else but to be mended. - A sect whose chief devotion lies - In odd, perverse antipathies, - In falling out with that or this, - And finding somewhat still amiss. - - That with more care keep holyday, - The wrong--than others the right way; - Compound for sins they are inclined to - By damning those they have no mind to. - - The self same thing they will abhor - One way, and long another--for: - - Quarrel with mince-pies and disparage - Their best and dearest friend plum-porridge; - Fat pig and goose itself oppose, - And blaspheme custard thro’ the nose.” - -It is not worth while to tell the story of the poem--which, indeed, its -author did not live to complete. Its fable was undoubtedly suggested by -the far larger and worthier work of Cervantes; Hudibras and Ralpho -standing in the place of the doughty Knight of La Mancha, and Sancho -Panza; but there is a world between the two. - -_Hudibras_ had also the like honor of suggesting its scheme and measure -and jingle to an early American poem--that of _McFingal_, by John -Trumbull--in which our compatriot with less of wit and ribaldry, but equal -smoothness, and rhythmic zest, did so catch the humor of the Butler work -in many of his couplets that even now they pass muster as veritable parts -of _Hudibras_.[78] - -Samuel Butler was the son of a farmer, over in the pretty Worcestershire -region of England; but there was in him little sense of charming -ruralities; they never put their treasures into his verse. For sometime he -was in the household of one of Cromwell’s generals,[79] who lived in a -stately country-hall a little way out of Bedford; again, he filled some -dependency at that stately Ludlow Castle on the borders of Wales--forever -associated with the music of Milton’s “Comus.” It was after the -Restoration that he budded out in his anti-Puritan lampoon; but though he -pandered to the ruling prejudices of the time, he was not successful in -his search for place and emoluments; he quarrelled with those who laughed -loudest at his buffoonery and died neglected. His name is to be remembered -as that of one of the noticeable men of this epoch, who wrote a poem -bristling all through with coarse wit, and whose memory is kept alive more -by the stinging couplets which have passed from his pen into common speech -than by any high literary merit or true poetic savor. His chief work in -verse must be regarded as a happy, witty extravaganza, which caused so -riotous a mirth as to be mistaken for valid fame. The poem is a curio of -letters--a specimen of literary bric-à-brac--an old, ingeniously -enamelled snuff-box, with dirty pictures within the lid. - - -_Samuel Pepys._ - -I had occasion just now to speak of the _Pepys Diary_, and promised later -and further talk about its author, whom we now put in focus, and shall -pour what light we can upon him.[80] - -He was a man of fair personal appearance and great self-approval, the son -of a well-to-do London tailor, and fairly educated; but the most piquant -memorial of his life at Cambridge University is the “admonition”--which is -of record--of his having been on one occasion “scandalously over-served -with drink.” In his after life in London he escaped the admonitions; but -not wholly the “over-service” in ways of eating and drinking. - -Pepys was a not far-off kinsman of Lord Sandwich (whom he strongly -resembled), and it was through that dignitary’s influence that he -ultimately came into a very good position in connection with the -Admiralty, where he was most intrepid in his examination of tar and -cordage, and brought such close scrutiny to his duties as to make him an -admirable official in the Naval Department under Charles II. For this -service, however, he would never have been heard of, any more than another -straightforward, plodding clerk; nor would he have been heard of for his -book about naval matters, which you will hardly find in any library in the -country. But he did write a _Diary_, which you will find everywhere. - -It is a _Diary_ which, beginning in 1660, the first of Charles’ reign, -covers the ten important succeeding years; within which he saw regicides -hung and quartered, and heard the guns of terrific naval battles with the -Dutch, and braved all the horrors of the Great Plague from the day when he -first saw house-doors with a red cross marked on them, and the words -“Lord, have mercy on us!” to the time when ten thousand died in a week, -and “little noise was heard, day or night, but tolling of bells.” Page -after page of his _Diary_ is also given to the great fire of the following -year--from the Sunday night when he was waked by his maid to see a big -light on the back side of Mark Lane, to the following Thursday when -two-thirds of the houses and of the churches of London were in ashes. - -But Pepys’ _Diary_ is not so valued for its story of great events as for -its daily setting down of little unimportant things--of the plays which he -saw acted--of the dust that fell on the theatre-goers from the -galleries--of what he bought, and what he conjectured, and what his wife -said to him, and what new dresses she had, and how he slept comfortably -through the sermon of Dr. So-and-So--just as you and I might have -done--never having a thought either that his _Diary_ would ever be -printed. He wrote it, in fact, in a blind short-hand, which made it lie -unnoticed and undetected for a great many years, until at last some prying -Cambridge man unriddled his cipher and wrote out and published _Pepys’ -Diary_ to the world. And it is delightful; it is so true and honest, and -straightforward, and gossipy; and it throws more light upon the every-day -life in London in those days of the Restoration than all the other books -ever written. - -There have been other diaries which have historic value; there was Hyde, -Earl of Clarendon,[81] with some humor and a lordly grace, who wrote a -_History of the Rebellion_--more than half diary--with sentences as long -as his pages; but it does not compare with Pepys’ for flashes of light -upon the accidents of life. There was good, earnest, well-meaning John -Evelyn,[82] who had a pretty place called Says-Court (inherited through -his wife) down at Deptford--which Scott introduces as the residence of -Essex in his story of _Kenilworth_--who had beautiful trees and flowers -there which he greatly loved. Well, John Evelyn wrote a diary, and a very -good one; with perhaps a better description of the great London fire of -1666 in it than you will find anywhere else; he gives us, too, a -delightful memorial of his young daughter Mary--who read the Ancients, who -spoke French and Italian, who sang like an angel, who was as gentle and -loving as she was wise and beautiful--whose death “left him desolate;” -but John Evelyn is silent upon a thousand points in respect to which Pepys -bristles all over like a gooseberry bush. Dr. Burnet, too, wrote a -_History of his Own Times_, bringing great scholarly attainments to its -execution, and a tremendous dignity of authorship; and he would certainly -have turned up his bishop’s nose at mention of Samuel Pepys; yet Pepys is -worth a dozen of him for showing the life of that day. He is so simple; he -is so true; he is so unthinking; he is the veriest photographer. Hear him -for a little--and I take the passages almost at random: - - “_November 9, 1660._--Lay long in bed this morning. - - “To the office, and thence to dinner at the Hoope Tavern, given us - by Mr. Ady and Mr. Wine the King’s fishmonger. Good sport with Mr. - Talbot, who eats no sort of fish, and there was nothing else till we - sent for a neat’s tongue. - - “Thence I went to Sir Harry Wright’s, where my Lord was busy at - cards, and so I staid below with Mrs. Carter and Evans, who did give - me a lesson upon the lute, till he came down, and having talked with - him at the door about his late business of money, I went to my - father’s, and staid late talking with my father about my sister - Poll’s coming to live with me--if she would come and be as a servant - (which my wife did seem to be pretty willing to do to-day); and he - seems to take it very well, and intends to consider of it.” - -And again: - - “Home by coach, notwithstanding this was the first day of the King’s - proclamation against hackney coaches coming into the streets to - stand to be hired; yet I got one to carry me home.” - -Again: - - “_11th November, Lord’s Day._--To church into our new gallery, the - first time it was used. There being no woman this day, we sat in the - foremost pew, and behind us our servants, and I hope it will not - always be so, it not being handsome for our servants to sit so equal - with us. Afterward went to my father’s, where I found my wife, and - there supped; and after supper we walked home, my little boy - carrying a link [torch], and Will leading my wife. So home and to - prayers and to bed.” - -Another day, having been to court, he says: - - “The Queene, a very little plain old woman, and nothing more in any - respect than any ordinary woman. The Princess Henrietta is very - pretty, but much below my expectation; and her dressing of herself - with her haire frizzed short up to her eares did make her seem so - much the less to me. But my wife, standing near her, with two or - three black patches on, and well dressed, did seem to me much - handsomer than she. Lady Castelmaine not so handsome as once, and - begins to decay; which is also my wife’s opinion.” - -One more little extract and I have done: - - “_Lord’s Day, May 26._ After dinner I, by water, alone to - Westminster to the Parish Church, by which I had the great pleasure - of seeing and gazing at a great many very fine women; and what with - that, and sleeping, I passed away the time till sermon was done.” - -Was there ever anything more ingenuous than that? How delightfully sure we -are that such writing was never intended for publication! - -The great charm of Mr. Pepys and all such diary writing is, that it gives -us, by a hundred little gossipy touches, the actual complexion of the -times. We have no conventional speech to wrestle with, in order to get at -its meaning. The plain white lights of honesty and common-sense--so much -better than all the rhetorical prismatic hues--put the actual situation -before us; and we have an approach to that realism which the highest art -is always struggling to reach. The courtiers in their great, fresh-curled -wigs, strut and ogle and prattle before us. We scent the perfumed locks of -Peter Lely’s ladies, and the eels frying in the kitchen. We see Mr. Samuel -Pepys bowing to the Princess Henrietta, and know we shall hear of it if he -makes a misstep in backing out of her august presence. How he gloats over -that new plush, or moire-antique, that has just come home for his -wife--cost four guineas--which price shocks him a little, and sends him -to bed vexed, and makes him think he had better have kept by the old -woollen stuff; but, next Lord’s day being bright, and she wearing it to -St. Margaret’s or St. Giles’, where he watches her as she sits under the -dull fire of the sermon--her face beaming with gratitude, and radiant with -red ribbons--he relents, and softens, and is proud and glad, and goes to -sleep! This Pepys stands a good chance to outlive Butler, and to outlive -Burnet, and to outlive Clarendon, and to outlive John Evelyn. - -I may add further to this mention of the old diarist, that at a certain -period of his life he became suspected--and without reason--of complicity -with the Popish plots (of whose intricacies you will get curious and -graphic illustration in _Peveril of the Peak_); and poor Pepys had his -period of prisonship like so many others in that day. He also became, at a -later time, singularly enough, the President of the Royal Society of -England--a Society formed in the course of Charles II.s’ reign, and which -enrolled such men as Robert Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton in its early days; -and which now enrols the best and worthiest of England’s scientists. - -I do not think they would elect such a man as Samuel Pepys for President -now; yet it would appear that the old gentleman in his long wig and his -new coat made a good figure in the chair, and looked wise, and used to -have the members down informally at his rooms in York Building, where he -made good cheer for them, and broached his best bin of claret. Nor should -it be forgotten that Pepys had an appreciative ear for the melodies of -Chaucer (like very few in his day), and spurred Dryden to the making of -some of his best imitations. - -When he died--it was in the early years of the eighteenth century--he left -his books, manuscripts, and engravings, which were valuable, to Magdalen -College, Cambridge; and there, as I said when we first came upon his name, -his famous _Diary_, in short-hand, lay unheard of and unriddled for more -than a hundred years. - - -_A Scientist._ - -Science was making a push for itself in these times. Newton had discovered -the law of gravitation before Charles II. died; the King himself was no -bad dabbler in chemistry. - -Robert Boyle, the son of an Earl, and with all moneyed appliances to help -him, was one of the early promoters and founders of the Royal Society I -spoke of; a noticeable man every way in that epoch of the Ethereges and -the Buckinghams and the Gwynnes--devoting his fortune to worthy works; -estimable in private life; dignified and serene; tall in person and -spare--wearing, like every other well-born Londoner, the curled, -long-bottomed wig of France, and making sentences in exposition of his -thought which were longer and stiffer than his wigs. I give you a sample. -He is discussing the eye, and wants to say that it is wonderfully -constructed; and this is the way he says it: - - “To be told that an eye is the organ of sight, and that this is - performed by that faculty of the mind which, from its function, is - called visive, will give a man but a sorry account of the - instruments and manner of vision itself, or of the knowledge of that - Opificer who, as the Scripture speaks, formed the eye; and he that - can take up with this easy theory of Vision, will not think it - necessary to take the pains to dissect the eyes of animals, nor - study the books of mathematicians to understand Vision; and - accordingly will have but mean thoughts of the contrivance of the - Organ, and the skill of the Artificer, in comparison of the ideas - that will be suggested of both of them to him, that being profoundly - skilled in anatomy and optics, by their help takes asunder the - several coats, humors, muscles, of which that exquisite dioptrical - instrument consists; and having separately considered the size, - figure, consistence, texture, diaphaneity or opacity, situation, and - connection of each of them, and their coaptation in the whole eye, - shall discover, by the help of the laws of optics, how admirably - this little organ is fitted to receive the incident beams of light - and dispose them in the best manner possible for completing the - lively representation of the almost infinitely various objects of - sight.” - -What do you think of that for a sentence? If the Fellows of the Royal -Society wrote much in that way (and the Honorable Boyle did a good deal), -is it any wonder that they should have an exaggerated respect for a man -who could express himself in the short, straight fashion in which Samuel -Pepys wrote his _Diary_? - - -_John Bunyan._ - -I have a new personage to bring before you out of this hurly-burly of the -Restoration days, and what I have to say of him will close up our talk for -this morning. - -I think he did never wear a wig. Buckingham, who courted almost all orders -of men, would not have honored him with a nod of recognition; nor would -Bishop Burnet. I think even the amiable Dr. Tillotson, or the very liberal -Dr. South, would have jostled away from him in a crowd, rather than toward -him. Yet he was more pious than they; had more humor than Buckingham; and -for imaginative power would outrank every man living in that day, unless -we except the blind old poet Milton. You will guess easily the name I have -in mind: it is John Bunyan.[83] Not a great name then; so vulgar a one -indeed that--a good many years later--the amiable poet Cowper spoke of it -charily. But it is known now and honored wherever English is spoken. - -He was born at Elstow, a mile away from Bedford, amid fat green meadows, -beside which in early May long lines of hawthorn hedges are all abloom. -You will go straight through that pleasant country in passing from -Liverpool to London, if you take, as I counsel you to do, the Midland -Railway; and you will see the lovely rural pictures which fell under -Bunyan’s eye as he strolled along beside the hedge-rows, from Elstow--a -mile-long road--to the grammar-school at Bedford. - -The trees are beautiful thereabout; the grass is as green as emerald; old -cottages are mossy and picturesque; gray towers of churches hang out a -great wealth of ivy boughs; sleek Durham cattle and trim sheep feed -contentedly on the Bedford meadows, and rooks, cawing, gather into flocks -and disperse, and glide down singly, or by pairs, into the tops of trees -that shade country houses. - -The aspects have not changed much in all these years; even the cottage of -Bunyan’s tinker father is still there, with only a new front upon it. The -boy received but little schooling, and that at hap-hazard; but he got -much religious teaching from the elders of the Baptist chapel, or from -this or that old Puritan villager. A stern doctrinal theology overshadowed -all his boyish years, full of threatening, fiery darts, and full of golden -streaks of promise. - -He was a badish boy--as most boys are; a goodly _quantum_ of original sin -in him; he says, with his tender conscience, that he was “very bad;” a -child of the devil; swearing, sometimes; playing “three old cat” very -often; picking flowers, I dare say, or idly looking at the rooks of a -Sunday. Yet I would engage that the Newhaven High School would furnish -thirty or forty as bad ones as John Bunyan any day in the year. But he -makes good resolves; breaks them again; finally is convicted, but falters; -marries young (and, as would seem, foolishly, neither bride nor groom -being turned of twenty), and she bringing for sole dower not so much as -one dish or spoon, but only two good books--_The Plain Man’s Pathway to -Heaven_ and _The Practice of Piety_. - -Even before this he had been drafted for service in the battles which were -aflame in England--doubtless fighting for the Commonwealth, as most of -his biographers[84] allege. Very probably, too, he was under orders of -that Sir Samuel Luke, who lived near by, and who--as I have mentioned--was -the butt of much of Samuel Butler’s Hudibrastic satire. - -Next we hear of him as preacher--not properly sanctioned even by the -non-conforming authorities--but opening that intense religious talk of his -upon whatever and whomsoever would come to hear. Even his friendly Baptist -brothers look doubtfully upon his irregularities; but he sees only the -great golden cross before him in the skies, and hears only the crackle of -the flames in the nethermost depths below. He is bound to save, in what -way he can, those who will be saved, and to warn, in fearfullest way, -those who will be damned. - -Hundreds came to hear this working-man who was so dreadfully in earnest, -and who had no more respect for pulpits or liturgies than for -preaching-places in the woods. It was not strange that he offended -against non-conformist acts, nor strange that, after accession of Charles -II. he came to imprisonment for his illegal pieties. This prison-life -lasted for some twelve years, in the which he still preached to those who -would listen within prison walls, and read his Bible, and wrought at -tagged laces (still a great industry of that district) for the support of -his family, a separation from whom--most of all from his poor blind -daughter Mary--was, he says, like “pulling the flesh from his bones.” Over -and over in that reach of prison-life he might have been free if he would -have promised to abstain from his irregular preachments, or if he would go -over seas to America. But he would not; he could not forbear to warn -whomsoever might hear, of the fiery pit, and of the days when the heavens -should be opened. He loved not the thought of over-ocean crossing; his -duties lay near; and with all his radicalism he never outlived a gracious -liking for British kingly traditions, and for such ranking of men and -powers as belonged to Levitical story. - -Finally, under Charles’ Declaration of Indulgence (1672), which was -intended more for the benefit of ill-used Romanists than for -Non-conformists, Bunyan’s prison-doors were laid open, and he went to his -old work of preaching in public places. There may have been, as his more -recent biographers intimate, a later (1675) short imprisonment;[85] and -this, or some portion of the previous prison-life, was certainly passed in -that ancient Bedford jail, which, only a few years since, was standing on -Bedford bridge, hanging over the waters of the river Ouse--whose slow -current we shall find flowing again in our story of William Cowper. - -And if the whole weight of tradition is not to be distrusted, it was in -this little prison over the river, where passers-by might shout a greeting -to him--that John Bunyan fell into the dreamy fashioning of that book -which has made his name known everywhere, and which has as fixed a place -in the great body of English literature as Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” or -Spenser’s _Faery Queen_--I mean the _Pilgrim’s Progress_. - -But how is it, the reader may ask, that this tinker’s son, who had so far -forgotten his school learning that his wife had to teach him over again to -read and write--how is it that he makes a book which takes hold on the -sympathies of all Christendom, and has a literary quality that ranks it -with the first of allegories?[86] - -Mr. Pepys told plainly what we wanted him to tell; but he had nothing but -those trifles which give a color to every-day life to tell of. If he had -undertaken to make a story of a page long, involving imaginative powers, -he would have made a failure of it; and if he had tried to be eloquent he -would have given himself away deplorably. But this poor _brazier_ (as he -calls himself in his last will), with not one-fourth of his knowledge of -the world, with not one-twentieth of his learning (bald as the old diarist -was in this line), with not one-hundredth part of his self-confidence, -makes this wonderful and charming book of which we are talking. How was -it? - -Well, there was, first, the great compelling and informing Christian -purpose in him: he was of the Bible all compact; every utterance of it was -a vital truth to him; the fire and the brimstone were real; the Almighty -fatherhood was real; the cross and the passion were real; the teeming -thousands were real, who hustled him on either side and who were pressing -on, rank by rank, in the broad road that leads to the City of Destruction. -The man who believes such things in the way in which John Bunyan believed -them has a tremendous motive power, which will make itself felt in some -shape. - -Then that limited schooling of his had kept him to a short vocabulary of -the sharpest and keenest and most telling words. Rhetoric did not lead him -astray after flowers; learning did not tempt him into far-fetched -allusions; literary habit had not spoiled his simplicities. And again, and -chiefest of all, there was a great imaginative power, coming--not from -schools, nor from grammar teachings--but coming as June days come, and -which, breathing over his pages with an almost divine afflatus, lifted -their sayings into the regions of Poetry. - -Therefore and thereby it is that he has fused his thought into such shape -as takes hold on human sympathies everywhere, and his characters are all -live creatures. All these two hundred and twenty years last past the noble -Great-heart has been thwacking away at Giant Grim and thundering on the -walls of Doubting Castle with blows we hear; and poor, timid Christian has -been just as many years, in the sight of all of us, making his way through -pitfalls and quagmires and Vanity Fairs--hard pressed by Apollyon, and -belabored by Giant Despair--on his steady march toward the Delectable -Mountains and the river of Death, and the shining shores which lie -Beyond. - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - - -There were some unsavory names which crept into the opening of our last -chapter; but they were sweet in the nostrils of Charles II. Of such were -Buckingham, Rochester, Etherege, Dorset, and the Castelmaine. And we made -a little moral counterpoise by the naming of Baxter’s _Saints’ Rest_, and -of Tillotson, and of the healthful, noble verse of Andrew Marvell, by -which we wished to impress upon our readers the fact that the whole world -of England in that day was not given over to French court-dances and to -foul-mouthed poets; but that the Puritan leaven was still working, even in -literary ways, and that there were men of dignity, knowledge, culture, and -rank, who never bowed down to such as the pretty Duchess of Portsmouth. - -We had our glimpse of that witty buffoon Samuel Butler, who made clever -antics in rhyme; and I think, we listened with a curious eagerness to what -Samuel Pepys had to say of his play-going, and of the black patches with -which his pretty wife set forth her beauty. Then came Bunyan, with his -great sermonizing in barns and woods, and that far finer sermonizing which -in the days of his jailhood took shape in the immortal story of Christian -and Great-heart. He died over a grocer’s shop, in Snow Hill, London (its -site now all effaced by the great Holborn Viaduct), whither he had gone on -a preaching bout in the year 1688, only a few months before James II. was -driven from his throne. It is worth going out by the City Road--only a -short walk from Finsbury Square--to the cemetery of Bunhill Fields, where -Bunyan was buried--to see the marble figure of the tinker preacher -stretched upon the monument modern admirers have built, and to see -Christian toiling below, with his burden strapped to his back. - - -_Three Good Prosers._ - -In the course of that old _Pepys’ Diary_--out of which we had our -regalement--there is several times mention of Thomas Fuller;[87] among -others this: - - “I sat down reading in Fuller’s _English Worthies_; being much - troubled that (though he had some discourse with me about my family - and armes) he says nothing at all. But I believe, indeed, our family - were never considerable.” - -Honest Pepys! Shrewd Dr. Fuller, and a man not to be forgotten! He was a -“Cavalier parson” through the Civil-War days; was born down in -Northamptonshire in the same town where John Dryden, twenty-three years -later, first saw the light. He was full of wit, and full of knowledges; -people called him--as so many have been and are called--“a walking -library;” and his stout figure was to be seen many a time, in the -Commonwealth days, striding through Fleet Street, and by Paul’s Walk, to -Cheapside. There is quaint humor in his books, and quaintness and aptness -of language. Coleridge says he was “the most sensible and least prejudiced -great man of his time.” - -Sir Thomas Browne,[88] a doctor, and the author of the _Religio Medici_ -and _Urn-Burial_, was another delightful author of the Civil-War times, -whose life reached almost through the reign of Charles II.; yet he was not -a war man--in matter of kings or of churches. Serenities hung over him in -all those times wherein cannon thundered, and traitors (so called) were -quartered, and cathedrals despoiled. He loved not great cities. London -never magnetized him; but after his thorough continental travel and his -doctorate at Leyden, he planted himself in that old, crooked-streeted city -of Norwich, in Norfolk; and there, under the shadow of the stupendous -mound and Keep (which date from the early Henrys) he built up a home, of -which he made a museum--served the sick--reared a family of ten children, -and followed those meditative ways of thought which led him through -sepulchral urns, and the miracles of growth, and the Holy Scriptures, away -from all the “decrees of councils and the niceties of the schools” to the -altitudes he reaches in the _Religio Medici_. - -I must excerpt something to show the humors of this Norwich doctor, and it -shall be this: - - “Light that makes things seen makes some things invisible. Were it - not for darkness, and the shadow of the earth, the noblest part of - Creation had remained unseen, and the stars in Heaven as invisible - as on the Fourth day when they were created above the horizon with - the Sun, and there was not an eye to behold them. The greatest - mystery of Religion is expressed by adumbration, and in the noblest - part of Jewish types we find the Cherubim _shadowing_ the Mercy - Seat. Life itself is but the Shadow of Death, and souls departed but - the Shadows of the Living. The sun itself is but the dark - _Simulacrum_, and light but the shadow of God.” - -If there were no other reason for our love of the best writings of Sir -Thomas Browne, it would be for this--that in some scarce distinguishable -way he has inoculated our “Elia” of a later day with something very like -his own quaint egoisms and as quaint garniture of speech. How Charles Lamb -must have enjoyed him, and joyed in the meditation--of a twilight--on the -far-reaching, mystic skeins of thought which so keen a reader would ravel -out from the stores of the _Urn-Burial_! And with what delighted sanction -the later writer permits, here and there, the tender solemnities of the -elder to shine through and qualify his own periods; not through -imitativeness, conscious or unconscious, but because the juices from the -mellow fruitage of the old physician have been quietly assimilated by the -stuttering clerk of the India House, and so his thought burgeons--by very -necessity--into that kindred leafage of phrase which lifts and sways in -the gentle breezes of his always gentle purpose. - -Another name, of a man far less lovable, but perhaps more widely known, is -that of Sir William Temple.[89] He was of excellent family, born in -London, highly cultivated, and lived all through the reign of Charles -II., and much beyond. He represented England, in diplomatic ways, often -upon the Continent, and with great success; he negotiated the so-called -Triple Alliance; he also brought about that royal marriage of the daughter -of the Duke of York (afterward James II.), with William of Orange, and so -gave to England that royal couple, William and Mary. He had great dignity; -he had wealth; a sort of earlier Edward Everett--as polished and cold and -well-meaning and fastidious; looking rather more to the elegance of his -speech than to the burden of it; always making show of Classicism--nothing -if not correct; cautious; keeping well out of harm’s way, and all -pugnacious expressions of opinion; courteous to strong Churchmen; -courteous to Papists; bowing low to my Lady Castelmaine; very considerate -of Cromwellians who had power; moulding his habit and speech so as to show -no ugly angles of opinion anywhere, but only such convenient roundness as -would roll along life’s level easily to the very end. You will not be in -the way of encountering much that he wrote, though he had the reputation -in those days, and long after, of writing excellently well. “He was the -first writer,” said Johnson, “who gave cadence to English prose.” - -Among his essays is one on “Ancient and Modern Learning,” showing the -pretensions of a scholastic man, whose assumptions brought about a -controversy into which Richard Bentley, a rare young critic, entered, and -out of which grew eventually Swift’s famous _Battle of the Books_. - -Temple also wrote on gardens, with a safer swing for his learning and his -taste; traces of what his taste was in such matters are still discernible -about his old home of Moor Park, in Surrey. It lies some forty miles from -London, on the way to Southampton and the Isle of Wight, near the old town -of Farnham, where there is a venerable bishop’s palace worth the seeing; a -mile away one may find the terraces of Sir William’s old garden, and the -mossy dial under which he ordered his heart to be buried. Another -interest, moreover, attaches to these Moor Park gardens, which will make -them doubly worth a visit. On their terraces and under their trees used to -pace and meditate that strange creature Jonathan Swift, who was in his -young days a _protégé_ or secretary of Sir William Temple; and there, -too, in the same shade, and along the same terraces, used to stroll and -meditate in different mood, poor Mistress Hester Johnson, the “Stella” of -Swift’s life-long love-dream. - -We shall meet these people again. But I leave Sir William Temple, -commending to your attention a delightful little essay of Charles Lamb, in -his volume of Elia, upon “The Genteel Style in Writing.” It gives a fair -though flattering notion of the ways of Sir William’s life, and of the way -of his work. - - -_John Dryden._ - -Of course we know John Dryden’s name a great deal better than we know Sir -William Temple’s; better, perhaps, than we know any other name of that -period. And yet do we know his poems well? Are there any that you -specially cherish and doat upon? any that kindle your sympathies easily -into blaze? any that give electric expression to your own poetic -yearnings, and put you upon quick and enchanting drift into that empyrean -of song whereto the great poets decoy us? I doubt if there is much of -Dryden which has this subtle influence upon you; certainly it has not upon -me. - -There are the great Cecilia odes, which hold their places in the -reading-books, with their - - “Double--double--double beat - Of the thundering drum;” - -and the royal - - “Philip’s warlike son, - Aloft in awful state; - The lovely Thais by his side, - --Like a blooming Eastern bride - In flower of youth and beauty’s pride;” - -all which we read over and over, always with an ambitious vocalism which -the language invites, but, I think, with not much hearty unction. - -And yet, notwithstanding the little that we recall of this man’s work, he -did write an enormous amount of verse, in all metres, and of all lengths. -All the poems that Milton ever published would hardly fill the space -necessary for a full synopsis of what John Dryden wrote. But let us begin -at the beginning. - -This poet, and important man of letters, was born only a year or two later -than John Bunyan, and in the same range of country--a little to the -northward, in an old rectory of Aldwinckle (Northamptonshire), upon the -banks of the river Nen. And this river flows thence northerly, in great -loops, where sedges grow, past the tall spire of Oundle--past the grassy -ruins of Fotheringay; and thence easterly, in other great loops, through -flat lands, under the huge towers of Peterborough Cathedral. But the river -singing among the sedges does not come into Dryden’s verse; nor does -Fotheringay, with its tragic memories; nor do the noble woods of Lilford -Park, or of that Rockingham Forest which, in the days of Dryden’s boyhood, -must in many places have brought its spurs of oak timber and its haunts of -the red-deer close down to the Nen banks. Indeed, Wordsworth says, with a -little exaggeration, it is true, “there is not a single image from nature -in the whole body of his [Dryden’s] works.” - -He was a well-born boy, with titled kinsfolk, and had money at command for -good courses in books. He was at Westminster School under Dr. Busby; was -at Cambridge, where he fell one time into difficulties, which somehow -angered him in a way that made him somewhat irreverent of his old college -in after life. There are pretty traditions that in extreme youth he -addressed some very earnest amatory verses to a certain Helen Driden, -daughter of his baronet uncle at Canons-Ashby;[90] and there are hints -dropped by some biographers of a rebuff to him; which, if it came about, -did not pluck away the cheerfulness and self-approval that lay in him. It -was in London, however, where he went after his father’s death, and when -he was twenty-seven, that the first verse was written by him which made -the literary world prick up its ears at sound of a new voice. - -’Tis in eulogy of Cromwell, dying just then, and this is a bit of it: - - “Swift and resistless thro’ the land he past, - Like that bold Greek, who did the East subdue, - And made to battles such heroic haste, - As if on wings of Victory he flew. - - “He fought, secure of fortune as of fame: - Still by new maps the island might be shown, - Of conquests, which he strew’d where-e’er he came, - Thick as the galaxy with stars is strown. - - “His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest, - His name, a great example stands, to show - How strangely high endeavors may be blest, - Where piety and valor jointly go.” - -A short two years after, you will remember, and Charles II. came to his -own and was crowned; and how does this eulogist of Cromwell treat his -coronation? In a way that is worth our listening to; for, I think, a -comparison of the Cromwellian verses with the Carolan eulogy gives us a -key to John Dryden’s character: - - “All eyes you draw, and with the eyes, the heart: - Of your own pomp yourself the greatest part: - Next to the sacred temple you are led, - Where waits a crown for your more sacred head: - The grateful choir their harmony employ, - Not to make greater, but more solemn joy. - Wrapt soft and warm your name is sent on high, - As flames do on the waves of incense fly: - Music herself is lost, in vain she brings - Her choicest notes to praise the best of kings; - Her melting strains in you a tomb have found, - And lie like bees in their own sweetness drown’d.” - -No wonder that he came ultimately to have the place of Poet-laureate, and -thereafter an extra £100 a year with it! No wonder that, with all his -cleverness--and it was prodigious--he never did, and never could, win an -unsullied reputation for sterling integrity and straightforward purpose. - -I know that his latest biographer and advocate, Mr. Saintsbury, whose work -you will be very apt to encounter in the little series edited by John -Morley, sees poems like those I have cited with other eyes, and fashions -out of them an agreeable poetic consistency very honorable to Dryden; but -I cannot twist myself so as to view the matter in his way. I think rather -of a conscienceless thrifty newspaper, setting forth the average every-day -drift of opinion, with a good deal more than every-day skill. - -Meantime John Dryden has married, and has married the daughter of an earl; -of just how this came about we have not very full record; but there were a -great many who wondered why she should marry him; and a good many more, as -it appeared, who persisted in wondering why he should marry her. Such -wonderments of wondering people overtake a good many matches. It is quite -certain that it was not a marriage which went to make a domestic man of -him; and I think you will search vainly through his poems for any -indication of those home instincts which, like the “melting strains” he -flung about King Charles, - - “Lie like bees in their own sweetness drown’d.” - -The only positive worldly good which seemed to come of this marriage was -an occasional home at Charlton, in Wiltshire--an estate of the Earl of -Berkshire, his father-in-law--where Dryden wrote, shortly after his -marriage, his _Annus Mirabilis_, in which he gave to all the notable -events of the year 1666 a fillip with his pen; and the odd conceits that -lie in a single one of his stanzas keep yet alive a story of the capture -by the British of a fleet of Dutch India ships:-- - - “Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball, - And now their odors armed against them fly; - Some preciously by shattered porcelain fall, - And some by aromatic splinters die.” - -There are three hundred other stanzas in the poem, of the same make and -rhythm, telling of fire, of plague, and of battles. I am not sure if -anybody reads it nowadays; but if you do--and it is not fatiguing--you -will find wonderful word-craft in it, which repeats the din and crash of -battle, and paints the smouldering rage and the blazing power of the -Great Fire of London in a way which certain boys, I well remember in old -school days, thought represented the grand climacteric of poetic diction. - - -_The London of Dryden._ - -But let us not forget where we are in our English story; it is London that -has been all aflame in that dreadful year of 1666. Thirteen thousand -houses have been destroyed, eighty odd churches, and some four hundred -acres of ground in the central part of the city have been burned over. The -fire had followed swiftly upon the devastating plague of the previous -year, which Dryden had gone into Wiltshire to avoid. It is doubtful, -indeed, if he came back soon enough to see the great blaze with his own -eyes; “chemical fire,” the poet calls it, and it licked up the poison of -the plague; but it did not lick up the leprosy of Charles’ court. There -was a demand for plays, and for plays of a bad sort; and Dryden met the -demand. Never was there an author more apt to divine what the public did -want, and more full of literary contrivances to meet it. Dryden knew all -the purveyors of this sort of intellectual repast, and all their methods, -and soon became a king among them; and to be a king among the playwrights -was to have a very large sovereignty in that time. Everybody talked of the -plays; all of Royalist faith went to the plays, if they had money; and -money was becoming more and more plentiful. There had been the set-back, -it is true, of the Great Fire; but English commerce was making enormous -strides in these days. There was a pathetic folding of the hands and -dreary forecastings directly after the disaster, as after all such -calamities. But straight upon this the city grew, with wider streets and -taller houses, and in only a very few years the waste ground was covered -again, and the new temple of St. Paul’s rising, under the guidance of Sir -Christopher Wren, into those grand proportions of cupola and dome, which, -in their smoked and sooty majesty, dominate the city of London to-day. - -Houses of nobles and of rich merchants which stood near to Cornhill and -Lombard Street, and private gardens which had occupied areas -thereabout--now representing millions of pounds in value--were crowded -away westward by the new demands of commerce. In Dryden’s day there were -ducal houses looking upon Lincoln’s Inn Fields; and others, with pleasure -grounds about them, close upon Covent Garden Square. Americans go to that -neighborhood now, in early morning, to catch sight of the immense stores -of fruit and vegetables which are on show there upon market-days; and they -are well repaid for such visit; yet the houses are dingy, and a welter of -straw and mud and market _débris_ stretches to the doors; but the -stranger, picking his way through this, and through Russell Street to the -corner of Bow Street, will find, close by, the site of that famous Will’s -Coffee-house, where Dryden lorded it so many years, and whose figure -there--in the chimney-corner, with his pipe, laying down the law between -the whiffs, and conferring honors by offering a pinch from his -snuff-box--Scott has made familiar to the whole world. - -It was an earlier sort of club-house, where the news in the _Gazette_ was -talked of, and the last battle--if there were a recent one--and the last -play, and the last scandal of the court. Its discussions and potations -made away with a good many nights, and a good many pipes and bottles, and -was not largely provocative of domesticity. But it does not appear that -the Lady Elizabeth--Dryden’s wife--ever made remonstrances on this score; -indeed, Mr. Green, the historian, would intimate that my lady had -distractions of her own, not altogether wise or worthy; but we prefer to -believe the best we can of her. - -To this gathering-place at Covent Garden Etherege and Wycherley found -their way--all writing men, in fact; even the great Buckingham -perhaps--before his quarrel; and Dorset, fellow-member with Dryden, of the -Royal Society; maybe Butler too, when he found himself in London; and poor -Otway,[91] hoping to meet some one generous enough to pay his score for -him; and the young Congreve, proud in his earlier days to get a nod from -the great Dryden; and, prouder yet, when, at a later time, he was honored -by that tender and pathetic epistle from the Laureate: - - “Already I am worn with cares and age, - And just abandoning the ungrateful stage; - But you, whom every muse and grace adorn, - Whom I foresee to better fortune born, - Be kind to my remains; and O defend, - Against your judgment, your departed friend!” - -I said that he wrote plays; wrote them by the couple--by the dozen--by the -score possibly. - -You do not know them; and I hope you never will know them to love them. -They have fallen away from literature--never acted, and rarely read. He -could not plot a story, and he had not the dramatic gift. One wonders how -a theatreful could have listened to their pomposity and inflation and -exaggerations. But they did, and they filled Dryden’s pockets. There were -scenic splendors, indeed, about many of them which delighted the pit, and -which the poet loved as accompaniments to the roll of his sonorous verse; -there were, too, fragments here and there, with epithet and -characterization that showed his mastership; and sometimes the most -graceful of lyrics budded out from the coarse groundwork of the play, as -fair in sound as they were foul in thought. - -In private intercourse Dryden is represented to have been a man of -courteous speech, never low and ribald--as were many of the royal -favorites; and when he undertook playwriting to order, to meet the -profligate tastes of the court, he could not, like some lesser -playwrights, disguise double-meanings and vulgarities under a flimsy veil -of courtliness; but by his very sincerity he made all his lewdness rank, -and all his indelicacies brutal. This will, and should, I think, keep his -plays away from our reading-desks. - -Dryden’s satires, written later, show a better and far stronger side of -his literary quality; and Buckingham, long after his lineaments shall have -faded from a mob of histories, will stand preserved as Zimri, in the -strong pickle of Dryden’s verse; you will have met the picture, perhaps -without knowing it, for the magnificent courtier, who wrote “The -Rehearsal:” - - “A man so various that he seemed to be - Not one, but all mankind’s epitome: - Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong; - Was everything by starts, and nothing long, - But in the course of one revolving moon - Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon; - Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, - Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.” - -A man who writes in that way about a peer of England was liable to write -of lesser men in a manner that would stir hot blood; and he did. Once upon -a time this great king at “Will’s” was waylaid and sorrily cudgelled; -which is an experience that--however it may come about--is not elevating -in its effects, nor does it increase our sense of a man’s dignity; for it -is an almost universal fact that the men most worthy of respect, in almost -any society, are the men who never do get quietly cudgelled. - - -_Later Poems and Purpose._ - -Far on in 1682, when our Dryden was waxing oldish, and when he had given -over play-going for somewhat more of church-going, he wrote, in the same -verse with his satires, and with the same ringing couplets of sound, a -defence of the moderate liberal churchmanship that does not yield to -ecclesiastic fetters, and that thinks widely. A little later, in 1687, he -writes in a more assured vein, assuming bold defence of Romanism--as it -existed in that day in England--to which faith he had become a convert. -This last is a curiously designed poem, showing how little he had the arts -of construction in hand; it is a long argument between a Hind and a -Panther, in the shades of a forest. Was ever ecclesiasticism so -recommended before? Yet there are brave and unforgetable lines in it: -instance the noble rhythm, and the noble burden of that passage -beginning--like a trumpet note-- - - “What weight of ancient witness can prevail, - If private reason hold the public scale?” - -And again the fine tribute to “the Church:” - - “Thus one, thus pure, behold her largely spread, - Like the fair ocean from her mother bed; - From East to West triumphantly she rides; - All shores are watered by her wealthy tides; - The Gospel-sound, diffused from pole to pole - Where winds can carry, and where waves can roll; - The self-same doctrine of the sacred page - Conveyed to every clime, in every age.” - -I think Bishop Heber had a reverent and a stealthy look upon these lines -when he wrote a certain stanza of his “Greenland’s icy mountains.” - -The enemies of Dryden did not fail to observe that between the dates of -the two professions of faith named, Charles II. had died, summoning a -Papist priest, at the very last, to give him a chance--and, it is feared, -a small one--of reconcilement with Heaven; furthermore, these enemies -remembered that the bigot James II. had come to the throne, full of Papist -zeal and of a poor hope to bring all England to a great somerset of faith. -Did Dryden undergo an innocent change? Maybe; may not be. Certainly -neither Lord Macaulay, nor Elkanah Settle, nor Saintsbury, nor you, nor I, -have the right to go behind the veil of privacy which in such matters is -every man’s privilege. - -How odd it seems that this Papist convert of James II.’s time, and author -of so many plays that outranked Etherege in rankness, should have put the -_Veni, Creator_, of Charlemagne (if it be his) into such reverent and -trenchant English as carries it into so many of our hymnals. - - “Creator Spirit, by whose aid - The world’s foundations first were laid, - Come, visit every humble mind; - Come, pour thy joys on humankind; - From sin and sorrow set us free, - And make thy temples worthy thee.” - -Nor was this all of Dryden’s translating work. He roamed high and low -among all the treasures of the ancients. Theocritus gave his tangle of -sweet sounds to him, and Homer his hexameters; Juvenal and Horace and Ovid -were turned into his verse; and Dryden’s _Virgil_ is the only Virgil of -thousands of readers. He sought motive, too, in Boccaccio and Chaucer; and -within times the oldest of us can remember his “Flower and Leaf” and his -“Palamon and Arcite” were more read and known than the poems of like name -attributed to Chaucer. But in the newer and more popular renderings and -printings of the old English poet, Chaucer has come to his own again, and -rings out his tales with a lark-like melody that outgoes in richness and -charm all the happy paraphrases of Dryden. - -A still more dangerous task our poet undertook in the days of his dramatic -work. I have in my library some half dozen of Dryden’s plays--yellowed -and tattered, and of the imprint of 1710 or thereabout--and among them is -one bearing this title, _The Tempest, originally written by William -Shakespeare, and altered and improved by John Dryden_; and the story of -Antony and Cleopatra underwent the same sort of improvement--dangerous -work for Dryden; dangerous for any of us. And yet this latter, under name -of “All for Love,” was one of Dryden’s greatest successes, and reckoned by -many dramatic critics of that day far superior to Shakespeare. - -One more extract from this voluminous poet and we shall leave him; it was -written when he was well toward sixty, and when his dramatic experiences -were virtually ended; it is from an ode in memory of Mistress Killigrew, a -friend and a poetess. In the course of it he makes honest bewailment, into -which it would seem his whole heart entered: - - “O gracious God! how far have we - Profaned thy heavenly gift of Poesy? - Made prostitute and profligate the muse, - Debased to each obscene and impious use, - Whose harmony was first ordained above - For tongues of angels, and for hymns of love?” - -And again, a verselet that is full of all his most characteristic manner: - - “When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound, - To raise the nations under ground; - When in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, - The judging God shall close the book of Fate; - And there the last assizes keep, - For those who wake and those who sleep: - When rattling bones together fly, - From the four corners of the sky; - When sinews o’er the skeletons are spread, - Those clothed with flesh, and life inspires the dead; - The sacred poets first shall hear the sound, - And foremost from the tomb shall bound, - For they are covered with the lightest ground; - And straight, with inborn vigor, on the wing, - Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing. - Then thou, sweet Saint, before the quire shall go, - As Harbinger of Heaven, the way to show, - The way which thou so well hast learnt below!” - -We have given much space to our talk about Dryden. Is it because we like -him so well? By no means. It is because he was the greatest master among -the literary craftsmen of his day; it is because he wrought in so many and -various forms, and always with a steady, unflinching capacity for toil, -which knew no shake or pause; it is because he had a marvellously keen -sense for all the symphonies of heroic language, and could always cheat -and charm the ear with his reverberant thunders; it is because he spanned -a great interval of English letters, covering it with various -accomplishment; criticising keenly, and accepted as a critic; judging -fairly, and accepted as a judge in the great court of language; teaching, -by his example, of uses and fashions of use, which were heeded by his -contemporaries, and which put younger men upon the track of better and -worthier achievement. - -Again, it is because he, more than any other of his epoch, represented in -himself and in what he wrought, the drift and bent and actualities of the -time. There were changes of dynasties, and he put into language, for all -England, the lamentation over the old and the glorification of the new; -there were plagues and conflagrations and upbuildings of desolated -cities--and the fumes and the flames and the din of all these get speech -of him, and such color as put them in undying record upon the roll of -history; there were changes of faith, and vague out-reaches for some sure -ground of religious establishment--and his poems tell of the struggle, -and in his own personality represent the stress of a whole nation’s -doubts; there are battles raging round the coasts--and the echo of them, -in some shape of trumpet blare or shrill military resonance, seems never -to go out of his poems; dissoluteness rules in the court and in the city, -infecting all--and Dryden wallows with them through a score of his uncanny -dramas. - -Put his poems together in the order of their composition, and without any -other historic data whatever, they would show the changes and quavers and -sudden enthusiasms and bestialities and doubts and growth of the National -Life. But they would most rarely show the noble impulses that kindle hope -and foretoken better things to come--rarely the elevating purpose that -commands our reverence. - -No fictitious character of his is a live one to-day; you can hardly recall -one if you try.[92] No couplet or verselet of his is so freighted with a -serene or hopeful philosophy as to make our march the blither by reason of -it down the corridors of time. No blast of all his fanfaron of trumpets -sounds the opening of the gates upon any Delectable Mountains. A great, -clever, literary worker! I think that is all we can say of him. And when -you or I pass under his monument in the corner of Westminster Abbey, we -will stand bowed respectfully, but not with any such veneration, I think, -as we expect to carry to the tomb of Milton or of Chaucer; and if one -falls on Pope--what then? I think we might pause--waver; more polish -here--more power there--the humanities not radiant in either; and so we -might safely sidle away to warm ourselves before the cenotaph of -Goldsmith. - - -_John Locke._ - -Another man who grew up in these times in England, and who from his -study-window at Oxford (where he had been Lecturer on Rhetoric) saw the -Great Fire of London in the shape of a vast, yellow, sulphurous-looking -cloud, of portentous aspect, rolling toward the zenith, and covering half -the sky, was Mr. John Locke.[93] - -We are too apt, I think, to dismiss this author from our thoughts as a man -full only of dreary metaphysic subtleties; and support the belief with the -story that our Jonathan Edwards read his treatise on the _Human -Understanding_ with great delight at the age of fourteen. Yet Locke, -although a man of the keenest and rarest intellect--which almost -etherialized his looks--was possessed of a wonderful deal of what he would -have called “hard, round-about sense;” indeed it would be quite possible -to fill a whole calendar with bits of his printed talk that would be as -pitpat and common-sensical as anything in _Poor Richard’s Almanac_. -Moreover, he could, on occasions, tell a neat and droll story, which would -set the “table in a roar.” - -Some facts in the life of this great thinker and writer are worth our -remembering, not only by reason of the fame of his books, but because in -all those years whose turbulent rush and corrupting influences have shown -themselves in our pages, John Locke lived an upright, manly, -self-respecting life, though brought into intimate relations with many -most prominent at court. He was born in Western England, north of the -Mendip Hills; and after fourteen years of quiet country life, and kind -parental training, among the orchard slopes of Somersetshire, went to -Westminster School; was many years thereafter at Oxford; studied medicine; -met Lord Ashley (afterward the great Shaftesbury--first party-leader in -English parliamentary history), who was so taken by the pale, intellectual -face of the young Doctor that he carried him off to London, and domiciled -him in his great house upon the Strand. There Locke directed the studies -of Ashley’s son; and presently--such was my Lord’s confidence in him--was -solicited to find a wife for the young gentleman;[94] which he did, to the -great acceptance of all parties, by taking him off into Rutlandshire, and -introducing him to a pretty daughter of the Earl of Rutland. Fancy the -author of an _Essay Concerning the Human Understanding_ setting off in a -coach, with six long-tailed Flemish horses, for a four days’ journey into -the north of England--with a young scion of the Ashleys--upon such an -errand as that! Our doctors in metaphysics do not, I believe, engage in -similar service; yet I suppose nice observation would disclose great and -curious mental activities in the evolution of such schemes. - -The philosopher must have known Dryden, both being early members of the -Royal Society; but I have a fancy that Locke was a man who did not--save -on rarest occasions--take a pipe and a mug at such a place as Will’s -Coffee-house. His tastes led him more to banquets at Exeter House. There -was foreign travel, also, in which he accomplished himself in continental -languages and socialities; he had offers of diplomatic preferment, but his -doubtful health (always making him what over-well people call a fussy man) -forbade acceptance; else we might have had in him another Sir William -Temple. Shaftesbury interested him in his scheme of new planting the -Carolina colony in America; and John Locke drew up rules for its political -guidance. Some of these sound very drolly now. Thus--no man was to be a -freeman of Carolina unless he acknowledged a God, and agreed that he was -to be publicly and solemnly worshipped. The members of one church were not -to molest or persecute those of another. Again, “no one shall be permitted -to plead before a court of justice for money or reward.” What a howling -desert this would make of most of our courts! - -Again, he writes with great zest upon the subject of Education, and almost -with the warmth of that old Roger Ascham, whose maxims I cited in one of -our earlier talks: - - “Till you can find a school wherein it is possible for the master to - look after the manners of his scholars, and can show as great - effects of his care of forming their minds to virtue, and their - carriage to good breeding, as of forming their tongues to the - learned languages, you must confess that you have a strange value - for words, to hazard your sons’ innocence and virtue for a little - Greek and Latin.” - -And again: - - “I know not why anyone should waste his time and beat his head about - the Latin grammar, who does not intend to be a critic, or make - speeches, and write despatches in it. If his use of it be only to - understand some books writ in it without a critical knowledge of the - tongue itself, reading alone will attain his end, without charging - his mind with the multiplied rules and intricacies of grammar.”… - - “If there may be any reasons against children’s making Latin themes - at school, I have much more to say and of more weight against their - making verses--verses of any sort. For if he has no genius to - poetry, ’tis the most unreasonable thing in the world to torment a - child and waste his time about that which can never succeed: and if - he have a poetic vein--methinks the parents should labor to have it - stifled: for if he proves a successful rhymer, and get once the - reputation of a wit, I desire it may be considered what company and - places he is likely to spend his time in--nay, and his estate too.” - -By which I am more than ever convinced that Locke did not sup often with -Dryden at “Will’s,” and that you will find no pleasant verselets--look as -hard as you may--on a single page of his discourse on the _Human -Understanding_. - -When Charles grew suspicious of Shaftesbury, and the Earl was shorn of his -power, no little of the odium fell upon his _protégé_; and for a time -there was an enforced--or at least a very prudent--exile for Locke, at one -time in France and at another in Holland. It was on these absences that -his pen was busiest. In 1689 he returned to England in the trail of -William III.; came to new honors under that monarch; published his great -work, which had been simmering in his brain for ten years or more; made a -great fame at home and abroad, and wrote wisely on many topics. Meanwhile -his old enemy, the asthma, was afflicting him sorely. London smoke was a -torture to him; but when he went only so little distance away (twenty -miles northward) as the country home of his friends Sir Francis and Lady -Masham, a delightful calm came to him. He was given his own apartment -there; never did hosts more enjoy a guest; and never a guest enjoyed more -the immunities and kindnesses which Sir Francis and Lady bestowed upon -him. Twelve or fourteen years of idyllic life for the philosopher -followed, in the wooded alleys and upon the charming lawns of the old -manor-house of Oates, in the county of Essex; there were leisurely, coy -journeys to London; there were welcoming visits from old friends; there -was music indoors, and music--of the birds--without. Bachelors rarely come -to those quietudes and joys of a home-life which befell the old age of -Locke, and equipped all his latter days with such serenities as were a -foretaste of heaven. - -He does not lie in Westminster Abbey: I think he would have rebelled among -the poets: he sleeps more quietly in the pretty church-yard of -High-Lavor, a little way off, northward, from the New Park of Epping -Forest. - - -_End of the King and Others._ - -The lives of these two men--Dryden and Locke--have brought us past the -whole reach of Charles II.’s reign. That ignoble monarch has met his fate -courageously; some days before the immediate end he knew it was coming, -and had kind words for those about him. - -He died on a Friday,[95] and on the Sunday before had held great revel in -the famous gallery of Whitehall; next day came the warnings, and then the -blow--paralytic, or other such--which shrivelled his showy powers, and -brought his swarthy face to a whiteness and a death-like pallor that -shocked those gay people who belonged in the palace. Then came the -scourging with hot iron, and the administration of I know not what foul -drugs that belonged to the blind medication of that day--all in vain; -there were suspicions of poison; but the poison he died of was of his own -making, and he had been taking it ever since boyhood. - -A Catholic priest came to him stealthily and made the last promises to him -he was ever to hear. To a courtier, who came again and again, he -apologized--showing his courtesy to the last. “I’m an awful time in -dying,” he said; and to somebody else--his brother, perhaps--“don’t let -poor Nell Gwynne starve;” and so died. - -James, the successor, was not loved--scarce by anyone; bigoted, obstinate, -selfish, he ran quickly through the short race of which the histories will -tell you. Only three years of it, or thereabout, and then--_presto!_ like -the changing of the scenes at Drury Lane Theatre in one of the splendid -spectacles of the day--James scuds away, and Cousin William (with his wife -Mary, both of the blood royal of England) comes in, and sets up a fashion -of rule, and an assured Protestant succession of regal names which is not -ended yet. - -And now, in closing this talk, I will summon into presence once again some -of the notable personages who have given intellectual flavor to the years -we have gone over, and will call the roll of a few new names among those -actors who are to take in swift succession the places of those who -disappear. At the date where we now are--1688--the date of the last -English Revolution (who, pray, can predict the next?), the date of John -Bunyan’s death, the date of Alexander Pope’s birth--excellent -remembrancers, these!--at this epoch, I say, of the incoming of William -and Mary, all those dramatic writers--of whom we made mention as having -put a little tangled fringe of splendor about the great broidery of -Shakespeare’s work--were gone. So was Herrick, with his sweet poems, and -his pigs and tankards; and Howell, and Wotton, and the saintly George -Herbert, and dear, good, old Izaak Walton--all comfortably dead and -buried. So were Andrew Marvell, and the author of _Hudibras_. Archbishop -Laud was gone long since to the scaffold, with the fullest acquiescence of -all New Englanders; Jeremy Taylor gone--if ever man had right of way -there--to heaven; Milton dead; Cowley dead; Waller dead. - -Old, ear-cropped Prynne, of the _Histriomastix_, was still living--close -upon seventy--grim and gray, and as pugnacious as a bull-terrier. Among -others lingering upon the downhill side of life were Robert Boyle and that -John Evelyn, whose love of the fields and gardens and trees had put long -life in his blood and brain. Sir William Temple, too, had still some years -of elegant distinction to coquet with; our old friend of the Pepysian -journal was yet alert--his political ambitions active, his eye-sight -failing--never thinking, we may be sure, that his pot-luck of a _Diary_ -would keep him more savory with us to-day than all his wigs and his -coaches, and his fine acquaintance, and his great store of bric-à-brac. - -Isaac Newton was not fifty yet, but had somehow lost that elasticity and -searchingness of brain which had untwisted the sunbeams, and solved the -riddle of gravitation. Bishop Burnet, and that William Penn whose name -ought to hold place on any American file of England’s worthies, were in -the full vigor of middle age. Daniel De Foe was some eight and twenty, and -known only as a sharp trader, who had written a few pamphlets, and who was -enrolled in those soldier ranks which went to greet William III. on his -arrival at Torbay. - -Matthew Prior was still younger, and had made no show of those graces and -that art which gave him later an ambassador’s place, and a tomb and -monument in the “Poet’s Corner” of the Abbey. Jonathan Swift, then scarce -twenty-one, is unheard of as yet, and is nursing quietly the power and the -bitterness with which, through two succeeding reigns, he is to write and -rave and rage. - -Still more youthful are those two promising lads, Addison and Steele, -listening with their sharp young ears to the fine verses of Mr. Dryden, -and watching and waiting for the day when they, too, shall say somewhat to -be of record for ages after them. And so, with these bright young fellows -at the front, and the excellent gray-heads I have named at the rear, we -ring down the curtain upon our present entertainment with an “_Exeunt -omnes!_” - - - - -CHAPTER VII. - - -I have a fear that my readers were not overmuch interested in what I had -to say of that witty Dr. Thomas Fuller who wrote about the _Worthies of -England_, and who pressed his stalwart figure (for he was of the bigness -of our own Phillips Brooks--corporeal and mental) through many a London -crowd that came to his preachments. Yet his worthiness is something larger -than that which comes from his story of the _Worthies_. - -Sir William Temple, too, is a name that can hardly have provoked much -enthusiasm, unless among those who love gardens, and who recall with rural -unction his horticultural experiences at Sheen, and at Moor Park in -Surrey. But that kindly, handsome, meditative, eccentric doctor of -Norwich--Sir Thomas Browne--was of a different and more lovable quality, -the memory of which I hope may find lodgement in the reader’s heart. His -_Religio Medici_, if not his _Hydriotaphia_, should surely find place in -every well-appointed library. - -As for John Dryden--do what you like with his books; but do not forget -that he left behind him writings that show all the colors and reflect all -the follies and faiths of the days in which he lived--plays with a -portentous pomp of language--lyrics that were most melodious and most -unsavory--satire that flashed and cut like a sword, and odes that had the -roll and swell of martial music in them. - -John Locke if less known, was worthier; and we have reason, which I tried -to show, for thinking of him as a pure-hearted, level-headed, high-minded -man--an abiding honor to his race. - - -_Kings Charles, James, and William._ - -It may help the reader to keep in memory the sequence of these English -sovereigns if I tell him somewhat of their relationship. James -II.--previously and longer known as that Duke of York, in honor of whom -our metropolitan city (in those days conquered from the Dutch) was called -New York--we know as only brother to Charles II., who died without -legitimate children. This James was as bigoted and obstinate as Charles -was profligate and suave. We think of him as having lost his throne in -that revolution of 1688, by reason of his popish tendencies; but it is -doubtful if Protestantism would have saved him, or made a better man of -him. He had married--and it was a marriage he tried hard to abjure and -escape from--a daughter of that Earl of Clarendon whose _History of the -Rebellion_ I named to you. There were two daughters by this marriage, Mary -and Anne; both of them, through the influence of their Clarendon -grandfather, brought up as Protestants. The elder of these, Mary, was a -fine woman, tall, dignified, graceful, cultivated--as times went--whose -greatest foible was a love for cards, at which she played for heavy -stakes, and--often. Her sister Anne shared the same foible, and gave it -cherishment all her life; but was not reckoned the equal of her elder -sister; had none of her grace; was short, dumpy, overfond of good dinners, -and with such limited culture as made her notelets (even when she came to -be Queen) full of blunders that would put a school-mistress of our day -into spasms. We shall meet her, and more pleasantly, again. - -But Mary--heir next after James to the throne--had married William of -Orange, who was a fighting Dutch general; keen, cool, selfish, brave, -calculating, with an excellent head for business; cruel at times, -unscrupulous, too, but a good Protestant. He was great-grandson to that -famous William the Silent, whose story everyone has read, or should read, -in the pages of Motley. - -But how came he, a Dutchman, and speaking English brokenly, to share the -British throne with Mary? There were two very excellent reasons: First, he -was own cousin to Mary, his mother having been a daughter of Charles I.; -and next, he had kingly notions of husbandship, and refused to go to -England on any throne-seeking errand, which might involve hard fighting, -without sharing to the full the sovereignty of his wife Mary. - -So he did go as conqueror and king; there being most easy march to London; -the political scene changing like the turn of a kaleidoscope; but there -came fighting in Ireland, as at Londonderry and the battle of the Boyne; -and a brooding unrest in Scotland, of which, whenever you come to read or -study, you should mate your reading with that charming story of _Old -Mortality_--one of the best of Scott’s. Its scene reaches over from the -days of Charles II. to the early years of the Dutch King William, and sets -before one more vividly than any history all those elements of unrest with -which the new sovereign had to contend on his northern borders--the crazy -fanaticism of fierce Cameronians--the sturdy, cantankerous zeal of -Presbyterians--the workings of the old, hot, obstinate leaven of Prelacy, -and the romantic, lingering loyalty to a Stuart king. - -But William ended by having all his kingdom well in hand, and all his -household too. There was strong affection between William and Mary; he -relishing her discretion, her reserves, and her culture; and she loving -enough to forget the harsh gauntleted hand which he put upon those who -were nearest and dearest to him. He was more military than diplomatic, and -I think believed in no Scripture more devoutly than in that which sets -forth the mandate, “Wives, obey your husbands.” - -The King was not a strong man physically, though a capital soldier; he was -short, awkward, halting in movement, appearing best in the saddle and with -battle flaming in his front; he had asthma, too, fearfully; was -irritable--full of coughs and colds--building a new palace upon the flank -of Hampton Court, to get outside of London smoke and fogs; setting out -trees there, and digging ponds in Dutch style, which you may see now; -building Kensington, too, which was then out of town, and planting and -digging there--of which you may see results over the mouldy brick wall -that still hems in that old abode of royalty. He carried his asthma, and -dyspepsia, and smoking Dutch dragoons to both places. People thought -surely that the Queen, so well made and blessed with wonderful appetite, -would outlive him, and so give to the history of England a Mary II.; but -she did not. An attack of small-pox, not combated in those days by -vaccination, or even inoculation, carried her off on a short illness. - -He grieved, as people thought so stern a master could not grieve; but -rallied and built to the Queen’s memory that most magnificent of -monuments, Greenwich Hospital, which shows its domes and its royal façade -stretching along the river bank, to the myriad of strangers who every year -sail up or down the Thames. - -He made friends, too, with Princess Anne, the sister of the dead Queen, -and now heir to the throne. This Princess Anne (afterward Queen Anne) was -married to a prince of Denmark, only notable for doing nothing excellently -well; and was mother of a young lad, called Duke of Gloucester, whom all -England looked upon as their future king. And this little Duke, after -Queen Mary’s death, came to be presented at court in a blue velvet -costume, blazing all over with diamonds, of which one may get a good -notion from Sir Godfrey Kneller’s painting of him, now in Hampton Court. -But the velvet and the diamonds and best of care could not save the -weakly, blue-eyed, fair-cheeked, precocious lad; his precocity was a fatal -one, due to a big hydrocephalic head that bent him down and carried him to -the grave while William was yet King. - -The Princess mother was in despair; was herself feeble, too; small, heavy, -dropsical, from all which she rallied, however, and at the death of -William, which occurred by a fall from his horse in 1702, came to be that -Queen Anne, who through no special virtues of her own, gave a name to a -great epoch in English history, and in these latter days has given a name -to very much architecture and furniture and crockery, which have as little -to do with her as they have with our King Benjamin of Washington. - -I may have more to say of her when we shall have brought the literary -current of our story more nearly abreast of her times. - -There was not much of literary patronage flowing out from King William. I -think there was never a time when he would not have counted a good -dictionary the best of books, not excepting the Bible; and I suspect that -he had about the same contempt for “literary fellers” which belongs to our -average Congressman. Yet there were shoals of poets in his time who would -have delighted to burn incense under the nostrils of the asthmatic King. - - -_Some Literary Fellows._ - -There was Prior,[96] for instance, who, from having been the son of a -taverner at Whitehall, came to be a polished wit, and at last an -ambassador, through the influence of strong friends about the court. In -his university days he had ventured to ridicule, in rattling verse, the -utterances of the great Dryden. You will know of him best, perhaps, if you -know him at all, by a paraphrase he made of that tender ballad of the -“Nut-brown Maid,” in which the charming naturalness of the old verse is -stuck over with the black patches of Prior’s pretty rhetoric. But I am -tempted to give you a fairer and a more characteristic specimen of his -vivacity and grace. Here it is: - - “What I speak, my fair Chloe, and what I write, shows - The difference there is betwixt nature and art; - I court _others_ in verse; but I love _thee_ in prose; - And _they_ have my whimsies, but _thou_ hast my heart. - So when I am wearied with wandering all day, - To thee, my delight, in the evening I come, - No matter what beauties I saw in my way; - They were but my _visits_, and thou art my home.” - -Remember, these lines were written by a poet, who on an important occasion -represented the Government of Queen Anne at the great court of Louis XIV. -of France. This Prior--when Queen Mary died--had his consolatory verses -for King William. Indeed that death of Queen Mary set a great deal of -poetry upon the flow. There was William Congreve,[97] who though a young -man, not yet turned of thirty, had won a great rank in those days by his -witty comedies. He wrote a pastoral--cleaner than most of his writing--in -honor of William’s lost Queen: - - “No more these woods shall with her sight be blest, - Nor with her feet these flowery plains be prest; - No more the winds shall with her tresses play, - And from her balmy breath steal sweets away. - Oh, she was heavenly fair, in face and mind, - Never in nature were such beauties joined; - Without--all shining, and within--all white; - Pure to the sense, and pleasing to the sight; - Like some rare flower, whose leaves all colors yield, - And--opening--is with sweetest odors filled.” - -Yet all this would have comforted the King not half so much as a whiff of -smoke from the pipe of one of his Dutch dragoons. He never went to see one -of Mr. Congreve’s plays, though the whole town was talking of their -neatness, and their skill, and their wit. That clever gentleman’s -conquests on the stage, and in the social world--lording it as he did -among duchesses and countesses--would have weighed with King William not -so much as the buzzing of a blue-bottle fly. - -Yet Congreve was in his way an important man--immensely admired; Voltaire -said he was the best comedy writer England had ever known; and when he -came to London this keen-witted Frenchman (who rarely visited) went to see -Mr. Congreve at his rooms in the Strand. Nothing was too good for Mr. -Congreve; he had patronage and great gifts; it seemed always to be raining -roses on his head. The work he did was not great work, but it was -exquisitely done; though, it must be said, there was no preserving savor -in it but the art of it. The talk in his comedies, by its pliancy, grace, -neat turns, swiftness of repartee, compares with the talk in most comedies -as goldsmith’s work compares with the heavy forgings of a blacksmith. It -matches exquisitely part to part, and runs as delicately as a hair-spring -on jewelled pinions. - -I gave my readers a bit of the “Pandora Lament,” which Sir Richard Steele -thought one of the most perfect of all pastoral compositions. And the -little whimsey about Amoret, everybody knows; certainly it is best known -of all he did: - - “Coquet and coy at once her air, - Both studied, tho’ both seemed neglected; - Careless she is with artful care, - Affecting to seem unaffected. - With skill her eyes dart every glance, - Yet change so soon, you’d ne’er suspect ’em, - For she’d persuade they wound by chance, - Tho’ certain aim and art direct them.” - -They are very pretty; yet are you not sure that our wheezing, phlegmatic, -business-loving, Dutch King William would have sniffed contemptuously at -the reading of any such verselets? - - -_A Pamphleteer._ - -A writer, however, of that time, of about the same age with Congreve, whom -King William did favor, and did take at one period into his -confidence,--and one of whose books, at least, you all have liked at some -epoch of your life, and thought quite wonderful and charming--I must tell -you more about. His presence counted for nothing; he was short, wiry, -hook-nosed--not anyway elegant; Mr. Congreve would have scorned -association with him. He was the son of a small butcher in London, and had -never much schooling; but he was quick of apprehension, always eager to -inform himself; bustling, shrewd, inquisitive, with abundance of what we -call “cheek.” He never lacked simple, strong language to tell just what he -thought, or what he knew; and he never lacked the courage to put his -language into print or into speech, as the case might be. - -By dint of his dogged perseverance and much natural aptitude he came to -know Latin and Spanish and Italian, and could speak French, such as it -was, very fluently. He was well up in geography and history, and such -science as went into the books of those days. He wrote sharp, stinging -pamphlets about whatever struck him as wrong, or as wanting a good slap, -whether in morals, manners, or politics. - -He was in trade, which took him sometimes into France, Spain, or Flanders. -He could tell everyone how to make money and how to conduct business -better than he could do either himself. He had his bankruptcies, his -hidings, his compoundings with creditors, and his times in prison; but he -came out of all these experiences with just as much animation and pluck -and assurance as he carried into them. - -There was a time when he was advertised as a fugitive, and a reward -offered for his apprehension--all due to his sharp pamphlet-writing; and -he was apprehended and had his fines to pay, and stood in the pillory; but -the street-folk, with a love for his pluck and for his trenchant, homely, -outspokenness, garnished the pillory with flowers and garlands. It was -this power of incisive speech, and his capacity to win audience of the -street-people, that made King William value his gifts and put them to -service. - -But I cannot tell of the half he wrote. Now it was upon management of -families; again an _Essay on Projects_--from which Dr. Franklin used to -say he derived a great many valuable hints--then upon a standing army; -then upon the villainies of stock-jobbery. What he called poems, too, he -wrote, with a harsh jingle of rhymes; one specially, showing that-- - - “as the world goes, and is like to go, the best way for Ladies is to - keep unmarried, for I will ever expose,” he says, “these infamous, - impertinent, cowardly, censorious, sauntering _Idle wretches_, - called _Wits_ and _Beaux_, the _Plague_ of the nation and the - _Scandal_ of mankind.” But, he continues, “if Lesbia is sure she has - found a man of _Honor_, _Religion_ and _Virtue_, I will never forbid - the _Banns_: Let her love him as much as she pleases, and value him - as an _Angel_, and be married to-morrow if she will.” - -Again, he has a whole volume of _Advice to English Tradesmen_, as to how -to manage their shops and bargainings; and it gives one a curious notion -of what was counted idle extravagance in that day to read his description -of the extraordinary and absurd expenditure of a certain insane -pastry-cook: - - “It will hardly be believed,” he says, “in ages to come, that the - fitting of his shop has cost 300 pounds! I have good authority for - saying that this spendthrift has sash-windows all of looking-glass - plate twelve inches by sixteen--two large pier looking-glasses, and - one very large pier-glass seven feet high; and all the walls of the - shop are lined up with galley tiles.” - -He advises a young apothecary who has not large acquaintance to hire a -stout man to pound in a big mortar (though he may have nothing to pound) -all the early hours of the morning, and all the evening, as if he were a -man of great practice. Then, in his _Family Instructor_, he advises -against untruth and all hypocrisies; and he compresses sharp pamphlets -into the shape of a leading article--is, in fact, the first man to design -“leading articles,” which he puts into his _Review_ or _Indicator_, in -which periodicals he saves a corner for well-spiced gossip and scandal, to -make--he says--the “paper relished by housewives.” He interviews all the -cut-throats and thieves encountered in prison, and tells stories of their -lives. I think he was the first and best of all interviewers; but not the -last! Fifty of these pages of mine would scarce take in the mere titles -of the books and pamphlets he wrote. His career stretched far down -throughout Queen Anne’s days, and was parallel with that of many worthy -men of letters, I shall have to mention; yet he knew familiarly none of -them. Swift, who knew everybody he thought worth knowing, speaks of him as -an illiterate fellow, whose name he has forgotten; and our pamphleteer -dies at last--in hiding--poor, embroiled with his family, and sought by -very few--unless his creditors. - -I do not suppose you have read much that he wrote except one book; that, I -know you have read; and this bustling, bouncing, inconsistent, -indefatigable, unsuccessful, earnest scold of a man was named Daniel -Defoe;[98] and the book you have read is _Robinson Crusoe_--loved by all -boys better than any other book; and loved by all girls, I think, better -than any other book--that has no love in it. - -You will wonder, perhaps, that a man without academic graces of speech -should have made a book that wears so and that wins so. But it wears and -wins, because--for one thing--it is free from any extraneous graces of -rhetoric; because he was not trying to write a fine book, but only to tell -in clearest way a plain story. And if you should ever have any story of -your own to tell, and want to tell it well, I advise you to take _Robinson -Crusoe_ for a model; if you ever want to make a good record of any -adventures of your own by sea, or by land, I advise you to take _Robinson -Crusoe_ for a model; and if you do, you will not waste words in painting -sunsets, or in decorating storms and sea-waves; but, without your -straining, and by the simple colorless truth of your language, the sunsets -will show their glow, and the storms rise and roar, and the waves dash and -die along the beach as they do in nature. - - -_Of Queen Anne._ - -Though not in great favor with the courtiers of Queen Anne, Defoe did -serve her government effectively upon the Commission in Edinburgh, which -brought about in this Queen’s time (and to her great honor) the -legislative union of England and Scotland. She came, you know, to be -called the “Good Queen Anne;” and we must try and get a better glimpse of -her before we push on with our literary story. Royal duties brought more -ripeness of character than her young days promised. I have said that she -was not so attractive personally as her sister Mary; not tall, but heavy -in figure--not unlike the present good Queen of England, but less active -by far; sometimes dropsical--gouty, too, and never getting over a strong -love for the table. She had great waves of brown hair--ringleted and -flowing over her shoulders; and she had an arm and hand which Sir Godfrey -Kneller--who painted her--declared to be the finest in all England; and -whoso is curious in such matters can still see that wonderful hand and arm -in her portrait at Windsor. Another charm she possessed was a singularly -sweet and sympathetic voice; and she read the royal messages to the high -court of Parliament with a music that has never been put in them since. If -she had written them herself, I am afraid music would not have saved them; -for she was not strong-minded, and was a shallow student; she _would_ -spell phonetically, and played havoc with the tenses. Nor was she rich in -conversation, or full. Swift--somewhere in his journal--makes merry with -her disposition to help out--as so many of us do--by talk about the -weather; and there is a story that when, after King William’s death, the -great Marquis of Normanby came on a visit of sympathy and gratulation to -the new sovereign, the Queen, at an awkward pause, piped out, in her sweet -voice: “It’s a fine day, Marquis!” Whereat the courtier, who was more full -of dainty speech, said--in pretty recognition of its being the first day -of her reign--“Your Majesty must allow me to say that it’s the finest day -I ever saw in my life!” But this good Queen was full of charities, always -beloved, and never failed to show that best mark of real ladyhood--the -utmost courtesy and kindliness of manner to dependants and to her -servants. - - -_An Irish Dragoon._ - -Among the writers specially identified with this Queen’s reign was Sir -Richard Steele;[99] not a grand man, or one of large influence; and yet -one so kindly by nature, and so gracious in his speech and writing, that -the world is not yet done with pardoning, and loving, and pitying that -elegant author of the _Tatler_--though he was an awful spendthrift, and a -fashionable tippler, and a creature of always splendid, and always broken, -promises. - -He was Irish born; was schooled at the Charter-house in London, where he -met with that other master of delicate English, Joseph Addison--they being -not far from the same age--and knitting a boy friendship there which -withstood a great many shocks of manhood. They were together at Oxford, -too, but not long; for Steele, somehow, slipped College early and became a -trooper, and learned all the ways of the fast fellows of the town. With -such a training--on the road to which his Irish blood led him with great -jollity--one would hardly have looked to him for any early talk about the -life of a true _Christian Hero_. But he did write a book so entitled, in -those wild young days, as a sort of kedge anchor, he says, whereby he -might haul out from the shoals of the wicked town, and indulge in a sort -of contemplative piety. It was and is a very good little book;[100] but it -did not hold a bit, as an anchor. And when he came to be joked about his -Christian Heroship, he wrote plays (perhaps to make averages good) more -moral and cleanly than those of Etherege or Wycherley--with bright things -in them; but not enough of such, or of orderly proprieties, to keep them -popular. Of course, this fun-loving, dusky, good-hearted, broad-shouldered -Irish trooper falls in love easily; marries, too, of a sudden, some West -Indian lady, who dies within a year, leaving him a Barbadoes estate--said -to be large--does look large to Captain Steele through his cups--but -which gives greater anxieties than profits, and is a sort of castle in -Spain all through his life. With almost incredible despatch--after this -affliction--he is in love again; this time with the only daughter of a -rich Welsh lady. This is his famous Prue, who plays the coquette with him -for a while; but writes privily to her anxious mamma that she “can _never, -never_ love another;” that “he is not high--nor rich--but so dutiful; and -for his morals and understanding [she says] I refer you to his _Christian -Hero_.” - -Steele’s marriage comes of it--a marriage whose ups and downs, and lights -and shadows have curious and very graphic illustration in the storm of -notelets which he wrote to his wife--on bill-heads, perfumed paper, tavern -reckonings--all, singularly enough, in existence now, and carefully kept -in the Library of the British Museum. - -Here is a part of one, written just before his marriage: - - “Madam, it is the hardest thing in the World to be in Love, and yet - attend Business. As for me all that speak to me find me out.… A - gentleman ask’d me this morning what news from Lisbon, and I - answered, ‘She’s exquisitely handsome.’” Here’s another--after - marriage: “Dear Prue, I enclose two guineas, and will come home - exactly at seven. Yrs tenderly.” And again: “Dear Prue, I enclose - five guineas, but cannot come home to dinner. Dear little woman, - take care of thyself, and eat and drink cheerfully.” Yet again: - “Dear Prue, if you do not hear of me before three to-morrow, believe - that I am too [tipsy] to obey your orders; but, however, know me to - be your most affectionate, faithful husband.” - -It is more promising for a man to speak of his own tippling than to have -others speak of it; nor was this writer’s sinning in that way probably -beyond the average in his time. But he was of that mercurial temperament -which took wine straight to the brain; and so was always at bad odds with -those men of better digestion (such as Swift and Addison) who were only -tickled effusively with such bouts as lifted the hilarious Captain Steele -into a noisy effervescence. - -There are better and worse letters than those I have read; but never any -lack of averment that he enjoys most of anything in life his wife’s -delightful presence--but can’t get home, really cannot; some excellent -fellows have come in, or he is at the tavern--business is important; and -she is always his charming Prue; and always he twists a little wordy -aureole of praise about her head or her curls. I suppose she took a deal -of comfort out of his tender adjectives; but I think she learned early not -to sit up for him, and got over that married woe with great alacrity. -There is evidence that she loved him throughout; and other evidence that -she gave him some moral fisticuffs--when he did get home--which made his -next stay at the tavern easier and more defensible. - -But he loved his Prue, in his way, all her life through, and showed a -beautiful fondness for his children. In that budget of notelets I spoke of -(and which the wife so carefully cherished), are some charming ones to his -children: thus he writes to his daughter Elizabeth, whose younger sister, -Mary, has just begun to put her initials, M. S., to messages of love to -him: - - “Tell her I am delighted: tell her how many fine things those two - letters stand for when she writes them: _M. S._ is _milk and sugar_; - _mirth and safety_; _musick and songs_; _meat and sauce_, as well as - _Molly and Spot_, and _Mary and Steele_. You see I take pleasure in - conversing with you by prattling anything to divert you. - - Yr aff. father.” - -But you must not think Steele was a man of no importance save in his own -family. His friends counted by scores and hundreds; he had warm patrons -among the chiefest men of the time; had political preferment and places of -trust and profit, far better than his old captaincy; could have lived in -handsome style and without anxieties, if his reckless kindnesses and -convivialities had not made him improvident. - - -_Steele’s Literary Qualities._ - -Nor must we forget the work by which he is chiefly known, I mean his -establishment of the _Tatler_--the forerunner of all those delightful -essays which went to the making of the _Spectator_ and the _Guardian_; -these latter having the more credit for their dignity and wise reticence, -but the _Tatler_ being more vivacious, and quite as witty. Addison came to -the help of Steele in the _Tatler_, and Steele, afterward joined forces -with Addison in the _Spectator_. I happen to be the owner of a very old -edition of these latter essays, in whose “Table of Contents” some staid -critic of the last generation has written his (or her) comments on the -various topics discussed; and I find against the papers of Addison, such -notes as--“_instructive_, _sound_, _judicious_;” and against those of -Steele, I am sorry to say, such words as “_flighty_, _light_, _witty_, -_graceful_, _worthless_;” and I am inclined to think the criticisms are -pretty well borne out by the papers; but if _flighty_ and _light_, he was -not unwholesome; and he did not always carry the rollicking ways of the -tavern into the little piquant journalism, where the grave and excellent -Mr. Addison presided with him. Nay, there are better things yet to be said -of him. He argued against the sin and folly of duelling with a force and -pungency that went largely to stay that evil; and he never touches a -religious topic that his manner does not take on an awe and a respect -which belongs to the early pages of the _Christian Hero_. There are -touches of pathos, too, in his writing, quite unmatchable; but straight -and quick upon these you are apt to catch sound of the jingling spurs of -the captain of dragoons. Thus, in that often quoted allusion to his -father’s death (which happened in his boyhood), he says: - - “I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping - alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a beating the - coffin, and calling ‘Papa.’… My mother catched me in her arms, and - almost smothered me in her embraces, and told me, in a flood of - tears, ‘Papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more.’” - -This is on page 364 of the _Tatler_, and on page 365 he says: “A large -train of disasters were coming into my memory, when my servant knocked at -my closet door, and interrupted me with a letter, attended with a hamper -of wine, of the same sort with that which is to be put to sale on Thursday -next, at Garraway’s coffee-house.” And he sends for three of his -friends--which was so like him! - -So he goes through life--a kindly, good-hearted, tender, intractable, -winning fellow; talking, odd-whiles, piously--spending freely--drinking -fearlessly--loving widely--writing archly, wittily, charmingly. - -We have a characteristic glimpse of him in his later years--for he lived -far down into the days of the Georges (one of whom gave him his knighthood -and title)--when he is palsied, at his charming country home in Wales, and -totters out to see the village girls dance upon the green, and insists -upon sending off to buy a new gown for the best dancer; this was so like -him! And it would have been like him to carry his palsied steps straight -thereafter to the grave where his Prue and the memory of all his married -joys and hopes lay sleeping. - - -_Joseph Addison._ - -Addison’s character was, in a measure, the complement of Steele’s. He was -coy, dignified, reticent--not given to easy familiarities at sight--nor -greatly prone to over-fondling. He was the son of an English rector down -in Wiltshire; was born in a cottage still standing in Milston--a few miles -north of Salisbury. He was a Charter-house boy and Oxford man; had great -repute there as scholar--specially as Latinist--became a Fellow--had great -Whig friends, who, somehow, secured him a pension, with which he set out -upon European travel; and he wrote about what he saw in Italy, and other -parts, in a way that is fresh and readable now. He was a year or two -younger than Congreve, and a few weeks[101] only younger than Steele; -nine years younger than De Foe, of whom it is probable he never knew or -cared to know. - -Very early in his career Addison had the aid of Government friends: his -dignity of carriage gave them assurance; his reticence forbade fear of -babbling; his elegant pen gave hope of good service; and he came to high -political task-work--first, in those famous verses where he likens the -fighting hero, Marlborough--then fresh from Blenheim--to the angel, who, - - “----by Divine command, - With rising tempests shakes a guilty land, - … - And pleased th’ Almighty’s orders to perform, - Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.” - -That poem took him out from scholarly obscurity, and set him well afoot in -the waiting-rooms of statesmen. Poetry, however, was not to be his office; -though, some years after, he did win the town by the academic beauties of -his tragedy of “Cato”--the memory of which has come bobbing down over -school-benches, by the “Speech of Sempronius,” to days some of us -remember-- - - “----My voice is still for war! - Gods, can a Roman Senate long debate - Which of the two to choose--slavery or death!” - -I suppose that speech may have slipped out of modern reader-books; but it -used to make one of the stock declamations, on which ambitious school-boys -of my time spent great floods of fervid elocution. - -Addison wrote somewhat, as I have said, for Steele’s first periodic -venture in the _Tatler_, attracted by its opportunities and the graces of -it; and they together plotted and carried into execution the publication -of the _Spectator_. I trust that its quiet elegance has not altogether -fallen away from the knowledge of this generation of young people. Dr. -Johnson, you know, said of its Addison papers, that whoever would write -English well should give his days and nights to their perusal. Yet such a -journal could and would never succeed now: it does not deal with questions -of large and vital interest; its sentences do not crackle and blaze with -the heat we look for in the preachments of our time. Its leisurely -discourse--placid as summer brooks--would beguile us to sleep. A ream of -old _Spectators_ discussing proprieties and modesties would not put one of -our daring ball-room belles to the blush. The talk of these old gentlemen -about the minor morals were too mild, perhaps too merciful; yet it is well -to know of them; and one can go to a great many worse quarters than the -_Spectator_, even now, for proper hints about etiquette, manners, and -social proprieties. - - -_Sir Roger De Coverley._ - -Whatever other writings of these gallant gentlemen and teachers of Queen -Anne’s time the reader may have upon his shelves, he cannot do better than -equip them with that little story (excerpted from the _Spectator_) of “Sir -Roger De Coverley.” No truer or more winning picture of worthy old English -knighthood can you find anywhere in literature; nowhere such a tender -twilight color falling through books upon old English country homes. Those -papers made the scaffolding by which our own Irving built up his best -stories about English country homesteads, and English revels of Christmas; -and the De Coverley echoes sound sweetly and surely all up and down the -pages of _Bracebridge Hall_. - -The character of Sir Roger will live forever--so gracious--so -courteous--so dignified--so gentle: his servants love him, and his dogs, -and his white gelding. - - “It being a cold day,” says his old butler, “when he made his will, - he left for mourning to every man in the parish a great frieze coat, - and to every woman a black riding-hood. Captain Sentry showed great - kindnesses to the old house-dog my master was so fond of. It would - have gone to your heart to have heard the moans the dumb creature - made on the day of my master’s death. He has never joyed himself - since--no more has any of us.” - -Yet there were plenty of folks who sneered at these papers even then--as -small--not worthy of notice. That great, bustling, slashing, literary -giant, Dean Swift, says to Mistress Hester Johnson, “Do you read the -_Spectators_? I never do; they never come in my way. They say abundance of -them are very pretty.” “Very pretty!” a vast many satiric shots have been -fired off to that tune. And yet Swift and Addison had been as friendly as -two men so utterly unlike could be. - -To complete the De Coverley picture, and give it relish in the boudoirs of -the time, the authors paint the old knight in love--delicately, but deeply -and wofully in love--with a certain unnamed widow living near him, and -whose country house overlooks the park of the De Coverley estate. - - “Oh, the many moonlight nights that I have walked by myself, and - thought on the widow, by the music of the nightingales!” - -This sounds like Steele. And the old knight leaves to her - - “Whom he has loved for forty years, a pearl necklace that was his - mother’s, and a couple of silver bracelets set with jewels.” - -This episode has an added interest, because about those times the -dignified and coy Mr. Addison was very much bent upon marrying the elegant -Lady Warwick, whose son had been correspondent--perhaps pupil of his. He -did not bounce into marriage--like Steele--with his whole heart in his -eyes and his speech; it was a long pursuit, and had its doubtful stages; -six years before the affair really came about, he used to write to the -Warwick lad about the tom-tits, and the robin-redbreasts, and their pretty -nests, and the nightingales. But Addison, more or less fortunate than Sir -Roger, does win the widow’s hand, and has a sorry time of it with her. She -never forgets to look a little down upon him, and he never forgets a keen -knowledge of it. - -He has the liberty, however, after his marriage--with certain -limitations--of a great fine home at Holland House, which is one of the -few old country houses still standing in London, in the midst of the -gardens, where Addison used to walk, in preference to my Lady’s chamber. -His habits were to study of a morning--dine at a tavern; then to Button’s -coffee-house, near to Covent Garden, for a meet with his cronies; and -afterward--when the spectre of marriage was real to him--to the tavern -again, and to heavier draughts than he was wont to take in his young days. - -Pope said he was charming in his talk; but never so in mixed company; -never when the auditors were so new or so many as to rouse his -self-consciousness; this tied his tongue; but with one or two he knew -well, the stream of the _Spectator’s_ talk flowed as limpidly as from his -pen. - -He was not a great student; Bentley would have laughed at hearing him -called so. But he could use the learning he had with rare deftness, and -make more out of a page of the ancients than Bentley could make out of a -volume. His graces of speech, and aptitude for using a chance nugget of -knowledge, made him subject of sneer from those who studied hard and long. -A man who beats his brains against books everlastingly, without great -conquests, is apt to think lightly of the gifts of one like Addison, who -by mere impact gets a gracious send-off into elegant talk. - -If one has read nothing else of Addison’s, I think he may read with profit -the “Vision of Mirza.” That, too, used to be one of the jewels in the -ancient reader-books, and had so many of the graces of a story, that the -book--my book at least--used to fall open of itself on those pages where -began the wonderful vision in the Valley of Bagdad. - -Though more years have passed since my reading of it than I dare tell, yet -at the bare mention of the name I seem to see the great clouds of mist -which gather on the hither and the thither sides of the valley: I see the -haunting Genius in the costume of a shepherd, who from his little musical -instrument makes sounds that are exceeding sweet. - -Then I seem to see the prodigious tide of water rolling through the -valley, and the long bridge with the crumbling arches stretching athwart -the stream, and the throngs of people crowding over, and falling and -slipping into the angry tide--which is the tide of death; I see that the -larger number fall through into the waters, when they have scarce passed -over a single arch of the bridge. But whatever may befall, always the -throng is pressing on, and always the thousands are dropping away and -disappearing in the gulf that sweeps below. I see that, though some few -hobble along painfully upon the furthermost and half-broken arches that -stand in the flood, not one of all the myriads passes over in safety; and -I behold again (with Mirza) that beyond--far beyond, where the clouds of -mist have lifted--lies a stretch of placid water, with islands covered -with fruits and flowers, and a thousand little shining seas run in and -out among these Islands of the Blessed. And when I look the other way, to -see what may lie under the other and darker clouds of mist, lo! the -shepherd who has conjured the Vision is gone; and instead of the rolling -tide, the arched bridge, the crowding myriads, I see nothing but the long, -hollow Valley of Bagdad, with oxen, sheep, and camels grazing upon the -sides of it. It seemed to me, fifty years ago, that a man who could make -such visions appear, ought to keep on making them appear, all his life -long. - -I have said nothing of the political life of Addison; there are no high -lights in it that send their flashes down to us. He held places, indeed, -of much consideration; his aptitudes, his courtesies, his discretion, his -sagacities always won respect; but he was never a force in politics; the -only time he attempted parliamentary speaking he broke down; but with a -pen in his hand he never broke down until failing health and latter-day -anxieties of many sorts shook his power. I have already hinted at the -probable infelicities of his late and distinguished marriage; whatever -else may be true of it (and authorities are conflicting), it certainly -did not bring access of youth or ambition or joyousness. - -In his later years, too, there came a quarrel with his old friend -Steele--cutting more deeply into the heart of this reticent man than it -could cut into the much-scarified heart of that impressionist, the author -of the _Tatler_; there were stories, too, pretty well supported, that -Addison in those last weary days of his--feeble and asthmatic--drank -over-freely, to spur his jaded mind up to a level with the talk of -sympathizing friends. - -Pope, too, in those times, had possibly aggravated the quiet, calm -essayist, with the sting of his splendid but scorpion pen;[102] and all -accounts assure us that Addison (though under fifty) did give a most -kindly welcome to death. The story told by Young, and repeated by Dr. -Johnson, of his summoning young Warwick to see how a Christian could die, -is very likely apocryphal. It was not like him; this modest philosopher -never made himself an exemplar of the virtues. We know, however, that he -died calmly and tranquilly. Who can hope for more? - -Not many legacies have come down to us from those days of Queen Anne which -are worthier than his; and all owe gratitude to him for at least one -shining page in all our hymnals: it will keep the name of Addison among -the stars. - - “The spacious firmament on high, - With all the blue ethereal sky, - And spangled heavens, a shining frame, - Their great Original proclaim. - Th’ unwearied sun, from day to day, - Does his Creator’s power display, - And publishes to every land - The work of an Almighty hand. - - “Soon as the evening shades prevail, - The moon takes up the wondrous tale; - And, nightly, to the listening earth, - Repeats the story of her birth; - Whilst all the stars that round her burn, - And all the planets in their turn, - Confirm the tidings as they roll, - And spread the truth from pole to pole.” - - - - -CHAPTER VIII. - - -In our last talk we had an opening skirmish with a group of royal people; -we saw James II. flitting away ignominiously from a throne he could not -fill or hold; we saw that rough fighter, the opinionated William III., -coming to his honors--holding hard, and with gauntleted hand, his amiable -consort, Queen Mary. I spoke of the relationship of these two; also had -some fore-words about Mary’s sister, the future Queen Anne, and about the -death of her boy, the little Duke of Gloucester. - -I had something to say of that easy and artful poet, Matthew Prior, who -smartly wrote his way, by judicious panegyrics and well-metred song, from -humble station to that of ambassador at the court of France. We had a -taste of the elegant Congreve, and said much of that bouncer of a man -Daniel De Foe; the character of this latter we cannot greatly esteem--but -when can we cease to admire the talent that gave to us the story of -_Robinson Crusoe_? - -Then I spoke to you of Sir Richard Steele--poor Steele! poor Prue! And I -spoke also of his friend Addison, the courtly, the reticent, the graceful, -and the good. All of these men outlived William and Mary; all of them -shone--in their several ways--through the days of Queen Anne. - - -_Royal Griefs and Friends._ - -Mary, consort of William III., died some six years before the close of the -century; she was honestly mourned for by the nation; and I cited some of -the tender music which belonged to certain poetic lamentations at the -going off of the gentle Queen. The little boy prince, Gloucester, -presumptive heir to the throne, died in 1700 (so did John Dryden and Sir -William Temple). Scarce two years thereafter and William III.--who was -invalided in his latter days, and took frequent out-of-door exercise--was -thrown from his horse in passing over the roads--not so smooth as -now--between Hampton Court and Kensington. There was some bone-breakage -and bruises, which, like a good soldier, he made light of. In the enforced -confinement that followed, he struggled bravely to fulfil royal duties; -but within a fortnight, as he listened to Albemarle, who brought news -about affairs in Holland, it was observed that his eyes wandered, and his -only comment--whose comments had always been like hammer-strokes--was, -“I’m drawing to the end.”[103] Two days after he died. - -Then the palace doors opened for that “good,” and certainly weak, Queen -Anne, whose name is so intimately associated with what is called “the -Augustan age” of English letters, and whose personal characteristics have -already been subjects of mention. She was hardly recovered from her grief -at the death of her prince-boy, and was supported at her advent upon -royalty by that conspicuous friend of her girl years and constant -associate, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. It would be hard to reach any -proper understanding of social and court influences in Anne’s time, -without bringing into view the sharp qualities of this First Lady of her -Chamber. Very few historians have a good word to say for her. She was the -wife of that illustrious general, John of Marlborough, whom we all -associate with his important victories of Blenheim and of Ramillies; and -in whose honor was erected the great memorial column in the Park of -Woodstock, where every American traveller should go to see remnants of an -old royal forest, and to see also the brilliant palace of Blenheim, with -its splendid trophies, all given by the nation--at the warm urgence of -Queen Anne--in honor of the conquering general. - -You know the character of Marlborough--elegant, selfish, politic, -treacherous betimes, brave, greedy, sagacious, and avaricious to the last -degree. He made a great figure in William’s time, and still greater in -Anne’s reign; his Duchess, too, figured conspicuously in her court. She -was as enterprising as the Duke, and as money-loving--having smiles and -frowns and tears at command, by which she wheedled or swayed whom she -would. She did not believe in charities that went beyond the house of -Marlborough; in fact, this ancestress of the Churchills was reckoned by -most as a harpy and an elegant vampire. Never a Queen was so beleaguered -with such a friend; she was keeper of the privy purse, and Anne found it -hard (as current stories ran) to get money from her for her private -charities; hard, indeed, to dispose of her cast-off silken robes as she -desired. Why, you ask, did she not blaze up into a flame of anger and of -resolve, and bid the Duchess, once for all, begone? Why are some women -born weak and patient of the chains that bind them? And why are others -born with a cold, imperious disdain and power that tells on weaklings, and -makes the space all round them glitter with their sovereignty? - -When this Sarah of Marlborough was first in waiting upon the Princess -Anne, neither Duke nor Duchess (without titles then) could count enough -moneys between them to keep a private carriage for their service; and -before the Duke died their joint revenues amounted to £94,000 per annum. - -Then the great park at Woodstock became ducal property. I have said it was -richly worth visiting; its encircling wall is twelve miles in length; the -oaks are magnificent; the artificial waters skirt gardens and shrubberies -that extend over three hundred acres; the grass is velvety; the fallow -deer are in troops of hundreds. And one must remember, in visiting the -locality, that there stood the ancient and renowned royal mansion of Henry -II.--that there was born the Black Prince--and, very probably, Chaucer may -have wandered thereabout, and studied the “daisies white,” and listened to -the whirring of the pheasants--a wood-music one may hear now in all the -remoter alleys. - -How many hundred thousands were expended upon the new Blenheim palace, -built in Anne’s time, I will not undertake to compute. The paintings -gathered in it--spoils of the great Duke’s military marches--interest -everyone; but the palace is as cold and stately and unhome-like and -unloveable as was the Duchess herself. - - -_Builders and Streets._ - -Sir John Vanbrugh[104] was the architect of Blenheim, and you will -recognize his name as that of one of the popular comedy writers of Queen -Anne’s time, who not only wrote plays, but ran a theatre which he built at -the Haymarket. It was not so successful as the more famous one which -stands thereabout now; the poor architect, too, had a good many buffets -from the stinging Duchess of Marlborough; and some stings besides from -Swift’s waspish pen, which the amiable Duchess did not allow him to -forget. - -Another architect of these times, better worth our remembering--for his -constructive abilities--was Sir Christopher Wren, who designed some forty -of the church-spires now standing in London; and he also superintended the -construction of the Cathedral of St. Paul’s, which had been steadily -growing since a date not long after the great fire--thirty-five years -intervening between the laying of the foundations and the lifting of the -cross to the top of the lantern. It is even said that, when he was well -upon ninety, Wren supervised some of the last touches upon this noble -monument to his fame.[105] - -There was not so much smoke in London in those days--the consumption of -coal being much more limited--and the great cross could be seen from -Notting Hill, and from the palace windows at Kensington. The Queen never -abandoned this royal residence; and from the gravel road by which -immediate entrance was made, stretched away the waste hunting ground, -afterward converted into the grassy slopes of Hyde Park--stagnant pools -and marshy thickets lying in place of what is now the Serpentine. People -living at Reading in that day--whence ladies now come in for a morning’s -shopping and back to lunch--did then, in seasons of heaviest travelling, -put two days to the journey; and joined teams, and joined forces and -outriders, to make good security against the highwaymen that infested the -great roads leading from that direction into the town. Queen Anne herself -was beset and robbed near to Kew shortly before she came to the throne; -and along Edgeware Road, where are now long lines of haberdasher shops, -and miles of gas-lamps, were gibbets, on which the captured and executed -highwaymen were hung up in warning. - - -_John Gay._ - -Some of these highwaymen were hung up in literature too, and made a figure -there; but not, I suspect, in way of warning. It was the witty Dean Swift -who suggested to the brisk and frolicsome poet, John Gay, that these -gentlemen of the high-road would come well into a pastoral or a comedy; -and out of that suggestion came, some years later, “The Beggar’s Opera,” -with Captain Macheath for a hero, that took the town by storm--ran for -sixty and more successive nights, and put its musical, saucy songlets -afloat in all the purlieus of London. It was, indeed, the great forerunner -of our ballad operas; much fuller, indeed, of grime and foul strokes than -Mr. Gilbert’s contagious sing-song; but possessing very much of his -briskness and quaint turns of thought, and of that pretty shimmer of -language which lends itself to melody as easily as the thrushes do. - -This John Gay[106]--whose name literary-mongers will come upon in their -anthologies--was an alert, well-looking young fellow, who had come out of -Devonshire to make his way in a silk-mercer’s shop in London. He speedily -left the silk-mercer’s; but he had that about him of joyousness and -amiability, added to a clever but small literary faculty, which won the -consideration of helpful friends; and he never lost friends by his -antagonisms or his moodiness. Everybody seemed to love to say a good word -for John Gay. Swift was almost kind to him; and said he was born to be -always twenty-two, and no older. Pope befriended and commended him; great -ladies petted him; and neither Swift nor Pope were jealous of a petting to -such as Gay; his range was amongst the daisies--and theirs--above the -tree-tops. A little descriptive poem of his, called _Trivia_, brings -before us the London streets of that day--the coaches, the boot-blacks, -the red-heeled cavaliers, the book-stalls, the markets, the school-boys, -the mud, the swinging sign-boards, and the tavern-doors. In the course of -it he gives a score or more of lines to a description of the phenomena of -the solidly frozen Thames--sharply remembered by a good many living in his -time[107]--with booths all along the river, and bullocks cooked upon the -frozen roads which bridged the water; and he tells of an old apple-woman, -who somehow had her head lopped off when the break-up came, and the -ice-cakes piled above the level--tells it, too, in a very Gilbert-like -way, as you shall see: - - “She now a basket bore; - That head alas! shall basket bear no more! - Each booth she frequent past, in quest of gain, - And boys with pleasure heard her thrilling strain. - Ah, Doll! all mortals must resign their breath, - And industry itself submit to Death; - The cracking crystal yields; she sinks; she dies, - Her head chopt off, from her lost shoulder flies; - _Pippins!_ she cry’d; but death her voice confounds; - And--_Pip_--_Pip_--_Pip_--along the ice resounds!” - -Then there is the ballad, always quoted when critics would show what John -Gay could do, and which the Duchess of Queensberry (who greatly befriended -him) thought charming; I give the two final verselets only: - - “How can they say that nature - Has nothing made in vain; - Why then beneath the water - Should hideous rocks remain? - No eyes the rocks discover, - That lurk beneath the deep, - To wreck the wandering lover, - And leave the maid to weep? - - “All melancholy lying, - Thus wailed she for her dear; - Repaid each blast with sighing, - Each billow with a tear; - When o’er the white wave stooping, - His floating corpse she spied; - Then, like a lily drooping, - She bowed her head, and died!” - -I think I have shown the best side of him; and it is not very imposing. A -man to be petted; one for confections and for valentines, rather than for -those lifts of poetic thought which buoy us into the regions of enduring -song. - -Yet Swift says in a letter, “‘The Beggar’s Opera’ hath knocked down -Gulliver!” This joyous poet lies in Westminster Abbey, with an epitaph by -Alexander Pope. How, then, can we pass him by? - - -_Jonathan Swift._ - -But Dean Swift[108] does not lie in Westminster Abbey. We must go to St. -Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, to find his tomb, and that bust of him which -looks out upon the main aisle of the old church. - -He was born in Dublin, at a house that might have been seen only a few -years ago, in Hoey’s Court. His father, however, was English, dying -before Swift was born; his mother, too, was English, and so poor that it -was only through the charity of an uncle the lad came to have schooling -and a place at Trinity College--the charity being so doled out that Swift -groaned under it; and groaned under the memory of it all his life. He took -his degree there, under difficulties; squabbling with the teachers of -logic and metaphysics, and turning his back upon them and upon what they -taught. - -After some brief stay with his mother in Leicestershire, he goes, at her -instance, and in recognition of certain remote kinship with the family of -Sir William Temple, to seek that diplomat’s patronage. He was received -charitably--to be cordial was not Temple’s manner--at the beautiful home -of Sheen;[109] and thereafter, on Temple’s change of residence, was for -many years an inmate of the house at Moor Park. There he eats the bread of -dependence--sulkily at times, and grudgingly always. Another _protégée_ of -the house was a sparkling-eyed little girl, Hester Johnson--she scarce ten -when he was twenty-three--and who, doubtless, looked admiringly upon the -keen, growling, masculine graduate of Dublin, who taught her to write. - -Swift becomes secretary to Sir William; through his influence secures a -degree at Oxford (1692); pushes forward his studies, with the Moor Park -library at his hand; takes his own measure--we may be sure--of the -stately, fine diplomat; measures King William too--who, odd times, visits -Temple at his country home, telling him how to cut his asparagus--measures -him admiringly, yet scornfully; as hard-working, subtle-thoughted, -ambitious, dependent students are apt to measure those whose consequence -is inherited and factitious. - -Then, with the bread of this Temple charity irking his lusty manhood, he -swears (he is overfond of swearing) that he will do for himself. So he -tempestuously quits Moor Park and goes back to Ireland, where he takes -orders, and has a little parish with a stipend of £100 a year. It is in a -dismal country--looking east on the turbid Irish Sea, and west on -bog-lands--no friends, no scholars, no poets, no diplomats, no Moor-Park -gardens. Tired of this waste, and with new and better proposals from -Temple--who misses his labors--Swift throws up his curacy (or whatever it -may be) and turns again toward England. - -There is record of a certain early flurry of feeling at date of this -departure from his first Irish parish--a tender, yet incisive, and -tumultuous letter to one “Varina,”[110] for whom he promises to “forego -all;” Varina, it would seem, discounted his imperious rapture, without -wishing to cut off ulterior hopes. But ulteriors were never in the lexicon -of Swift; and he broke away for his old cover at Moor Park. Sir William -welcomes, almost with warmth, the returned secretary, who resumes old -studies and duties, putting a fiercer appetite to his work, and a greater -genius. Miss Hester is there to be guided, too; she sixteen, and he fairly -turned among the thirties; she of an age to love moonlight in the Moor -Park gardens, and he of an age--when do we have any other?--to love tender -worship. - -But _The Battle of the Books_[111] and _The Tale of a Tub_, are even then -seething and sweltering in his thought. They are wonderful products both; -young people cannot warm to them as they do to the men of Liliput and of -Brobdingnag; but there are old folk who love yet, in odd hours, to get -their faculties stirred by contact with the flashing wit and tremendous -satire of the books named. - -The _Battle_--rather a pamphlet than a book--deals with the antagonism, -then noisy, between advocates of ancient and modern learning, to which -Bentley, Wotton, and Temple were parties. Swift strikes off heads all -round the arena, but inclines to the side of his patron, Temple; and in a -wonderful figure, of wonderful pertinence, and with witty appointments, -he likens the moderns to noisome spiders, spinning out of their own -entrails the viscous “mathematical” net-work, which catches the vermin on -which they feed; and contrasting these with the bees (ancients), who seek -natural and purer sources of nutriment--storing “wax and honey,” which are -the sources of the “light and sweetness of life.” There are horribly -coarse streaks in this satire, as there are in _The Tale of a Tub_; but -the wit is effulgent and trenchant. - -In this latter book there is war on all pedantries again; but mostly on -shams in ecclesiastic teachings and habitudes; Swift finding (as so many -of us do) all the shams, in practices which are not his own. It is a mad, -strange, often foul-mouthed book, with thrusts in it that go to the very -marrow of all monstrous practices in all ecclesiasticisms; showing a love -for what is honest and of good report, perhaps; but showing stronger love -for thwacking the skulls of all sinners in high places; and the higher the -place the harder is the thwack. - -Not long after these things were a-brewing, Sir William Temple died -(1699), bequeathing his papers to his secretary. Swift looked for more. -So many wasted years! Want of money always irked him. But he goes to -London to see after the publication of Temple’s papers. He has an -interview with King William--then in his last days--to whom Temple had -commended him, but no good comes of that. He does, however, get place as -chaplain for Lord Berkeley; goes to Ireland with him; reads good books to -Lady Berkeley--among them the _Occasional Reflections of the Hon. Robert -Boyle_, of whose long sentences I gave a taste in an earlier chapter. - -Some of these Boyle meditations were on the drollest of topics--as, for -instance, “Upon the Sight of a Windmill Standing Still,” and again, “Upon -the Paring of a rare Summer Apple.” - -Swift had no great appetite for such “parings;” but Lady Berkeley being -insatiate, he slips a meditation of his own, in manuscript, between the -leaves of the great folio of the Hon. Mr. Boyle; and opening to the very -place begins reading, for her edification, “Meditations on a Broomstick.” -“Dear me!” says her ladyship, “what a strange subject! But there is no -knowing what useful instructions this wonderful man may draw from topics -the most trivial. Pray, read on, Mr. Swift.” - -And he did. He was not a man given to smiles when a joke was smouldering; -and he went through his meditation with as much unction as if the Hon. -Robert had written it. The good lady kept her eyes reverently turned up, -and never smacked the joke until it came out in full family conclave. - -I have told this old story (which, like most good stories, some critics -count apocryphal) because it is so like Swift; he had such keen sense of -the ridiculous, that he ran like a hound in quest of it--having not only a -hound’s scent but a hound’s teeth. - -At Laracor, the little Irish parish which he came by shortly after, he had -a glebe and a horse, and became in a way domesticated there, so far as -such a man could be domesticated anywhere. He duplicated, after a fashion, -some features of the Moor-Park gardens; he wrote sermons there which are -surprisingly good. - -One wonders, as he comes from toiling through the sweat and muck and -irreverent satire of _The Tale of a Tub_, what could have possessed the -man to write so piously. He was used to open his sermons with a little -prayer that was devout enough and all-embracing enough for the -prayer-book. Then there is a letter of his to a young clergyman, giving -advice about the make-up of his sermons, which would serve for an -excellent week-day discourse at Marquand Chapel. - -Indeed he has somewhat to say against the use of “hard words--called by -the better sort of vulgar, fine language”--that is worth repeating: - - “I will appeal to any man of letters whether at least nineteen or - twenty of these perplexing words might not be changed into easy - ones, such as naturally first occur to ordinary men; … the fault is - nine times in ten owing to affectation, and not want of - understanding. When a man’s thoughts are clear, the properest words - will generally offer themselves first, and his own judgment will - direct him in what order to place them, so as they may be best - understood. In short, that simplicity, without which no human - performance can arrive to any great perfection, is nowhere more - eminently useful than in this.” - -But let us not suppose from all this that Swift has settled down tamely, -and month by month, into the jog-trot duties of a small Irish vicar; no, -no! there is no quiet element in his nature. He has gone back and forth -from Dublin to London--sometimes on a Berkeley errand--sometimes on his -own. He has met Congreve, an old school-fellow, and Prior and Gay; he has -found the way to Will’s Coffee-house and to Button’s;[112] has some day -seen Dryden--just tottering to the grave; has certainly dined with -Addison, and finished a bottle with Steele. They call him the mad parson -at Button’s; they have seen _The Tale of a Tub_; his epigrams are floating -from mouth to mouth; his irony cuts like a tiger’s claw; he feels the -power of his genius tingling to his fingertips--_he_, a poor Irish parson! -why, the whole atmosphere around him, whether at London or at Dublin, is -charged and surcharged with Satan’s own lightning of worldly promises. - -And Hester Johnson, and Moor Park? Well, she has not forgotten him; ah! -no; and he has by no means forgotten her. For she, with a good womanly -friend, Mrs. Dingley, has gone to live in Ireland; Swift thinks they can -live more economically there. These two ladies set up their homestead near -to Swift’s vicarage; he goes to see them; they come to see him. He is -thirty-three, and past; and she twenty, and described as beautiful. Is -there any scandalous talking? Scarce one word, it would seem. He is as -considerate as ice; and she as coy as summer clouds. - -It does not appear that Swift had literary ambition, as commonly reckoned. -That _Tale of a Tub_ lay by him six or seven years before it came to -print. He wrote for Steele’s _Tatler_, and for the _Spectator_--not with -any understanding that his name was to appear, or that he was to be spoken -admiringly of. Many of his best things were addressed to friends or -acquaintances, and never saw the light through any instigation or privity -of his own. - -When there was some purpose to effect--some wrong to lash--some puppet to -knock down--some tow-head to set on fire--some public drowsiness to -wake--he rushed into print with a vengeance. Was it benevolence that -provoked him to this? was it public spirit? Who can tell? I think there -were many times when he thought as much; but I believe that never a man -more often deceived himself than did Swift; and that over and over he -mistook the incentives of his own fiery and smarting spirit for the -leadings of an angel of light. - -When we think of the infrequency and awkwardness of travel in that day, we -are not a little amazed to find him going back and forth as he did from -Ireland to London. The journey was not, as now, a mere skip over to -Holyhead, and then a five hours’ whirl to town, but a long, uncertain sail -in some lugger of a vessel--blown as the winds blew--till a landing was -made at Bristol or Swansea; and then the four to seven days of coaching -(as the roads might be) through Bath to London. Sometimes it is some -interest of the poor Irish Church that takes him over, for which we must -give him due credit; but oftener it is his own unrest. His energies and -his unsatisfied mind starve if not roused and bolstered and chafed by -contact with minds as keen and hard, from which will come the fiery -disputation that he loves. Great cities, where great interests are astir -and great schemes fomenting, are magnets whose drawing power such -intellects cannot resist. He is in London five or six months in 1701, six -or eight the next year, six or eight the next, and so on. - - -_Swift’s Politics._ - -He is in politics, too, which ran at high tide all through Anne’s time and -the previous reign; you will read no history or biography stretching into -that period but you may be confounded (at least I am) with talk of Whigs -and Tories; and of what Somers did, and of what Harley did, and of what -Ormond might do; and it is worth sparing a few moments to say something of -the great parties. In a large way Whiggism represented progress and the -new impulses which had come in with William III., and Toryism represented -what we call conservatism. Thus, in _Old Mortality_, young Henry Morton is -the Whig, and her ladyship of Tillietudlem is a starched embodiment of -Toryism. Those who favored the Stuart family, and made a martyr of Charles -I.--those who leaned to Romanism and rituals, or faith in tradition, were, -in general, Tories; and those who brought over William of Orange, or who -were dissenters or freethinkers, were apt to be Whigs. So the scars which -came of sword-cuts by Cromwellian soldiers were apt to mark an excellent -Tory; and the cropped ears of Puritans, that told of the savageness of -Prince Rupert’s dragoons, were pretty sure to brand a man a Whig for life. -But these distinctions were not steady and constant; thus, the elegant and -fastidious Sir William Temple was a Whig; and old Dryden, clinking mugs -with good fellows at Will’s coffee-house, was a Tory. Again, the courtly -and quiet Mr. Addison, with his De Coverley reverences, was a good Whig; -and Pope, with his _Essay on Man_, and fellowship with freethinkers, was -Toryish. Swift began with being a Whig, to which side his slapdash -wilfulness, his fellowship with Temple, and his scorn of tradition drew -him; but he ended with veering over to the Tory ranks, where his hate of -Presbyterianism and his eager thrusts at canting radicals gave him credit -and vogue. - -Addison and others counted him a turncoat, and grew cold to him; for party -hates were most hot in those days; Swift himself says--the politicians -wrangle like cats. He was tired, too, of waiting on Whig promises; -perhaps he had larger hope of preferment with the Tories; Steele alleged -this with bitterness; and there can be no doubt that Swift had an eye on -preferment. Why not? Can he, so alert in mind, so loving of dignity, so -conscious of power, see Mr. Addison coming to place as Secretary of State, -and Steele with his fat commissions, without a tingling and irritating -sense of dissatisfaction? Can he see good, amiable, pious dunces getting -planted year after year in fat bishoprics, without a torturing remembrance -of that poor little parish of Laracor, with a following so feeble that he -is fain to open service some days (his factotum being the only auditor) -with--“My dearly beloved Roger, the Scripture moveth you and me in sundry -places----” - -How these contrasts must have grated on the mind of a man who looked down -on all their lordships; who looked down on Steele; and who could count on -his finger-ends the personages whom he scanned eye to eye--and who were -upon a level with his commanding height. - -He did service, too--this master of the pen and master of causticity--that -to most would have brought quick reward; but he was too strong and too -proud and too independent to come by reward easily. Such a man is bowed to -reverently; is invited to dine hither and yon; is flattered, is humored, -is conciliated; but as for office--ah! that is another matter. He is -unsafe; he will kick over the traces; he will take the bit in his mouth; -he will be his own man and not our man. What court, what cabinet, what -clique could trust to the moderation, to the docility, to the reticence of -a person capable of writing _Gulliver’s Travels_, and of turning all court -scandals, all political intrigues, all ecclesiastic decorum, into a -penny-show? - -He is, indeed, urged for Bishop of Hereford--seems to have excellent -chance there; but some brother Bishop (I think ’tis the Archbishop of -York), who is much afraid, as he deserves to be, of _The Tale of a -Tub_--says to the hesitating Queen,--“Better inquire first if this man be -really a Christian;” and this frights the good Queen and the rest. So -Swift is let off with the poor sop of the Deanery of St. Patrick’s. - - -_His London Journal._ - -We know all about those days of his in London--days of expectancy. He has -told us: - - “The ministry are good hearty fellows. I use them like dogs, because - I expect they will use me so. They call me nothing but Jonathan. I - said I believed they would leave me Jonathan, as they found me; and - that I never knew a minister do anything for those whom they make - companions of their pleasures; and I believe you will find it so, - but _I_ care not.” - -And to whom does he talk so confidentially, and tell all the story of -those days? Why, to Hester Johnson. It is all down in Stella’s -journal--written for her eye only; and we have it by purest accident. It -was begun in 1710--he then in his forty-third year, and she in her -thirtieth. - -She has kept her home over in Ireland with Mrs. Dingley--seeing him on -every visit there, and on every day, almost, of such visits; and, as her -sweetest pasturage, feeding on letters he writes other times, and lastly -on this Stella journal, “for her dear eyes,” at the rate of a page, or -even two pages a day, for some three years. - -All his London day’s life comes into it. Let us listen: - - “Dined at the chop-house with Will Pate, the learned woollen draper, - then we sauntered at china-shops and book-sellers; went to the - tavern; drank 2 pints of white wine; never parted till ten. Have a - care of those eyes--pray--pray, pretty Stella! - - “So you have a fire now, and are at cards at home; I think of dining - in my lodgings to-day on a chop and a pot of ale. - - “Shall I? Well, then, I will try to please M. D. [‘M. D.’ is ‘my - dear;’ or ‘my dears,’ when it includes, as it often does, Mrs. - Dingley]. I was to-night at Lord Masham’s; Lord Dupplin took out my - little pamphlet, the Secretary read a good deal of it to Lord - Treasurer; they all commended it to the skies; so did I. - - “I’ll answer your letter to-morrow; good night, M. D. Sleep well.” - -Again: - - “I have no gilt paper left, so you must be content with plain. I - dined with Lord Treasurer. - - “A poem is out to-day inscribed to me: a Whiggish poem and good for - nothing. They teased me with it.” - - “I am not yet rid of my cold. No news to tell you: went to dine with - Mrs. Vanhomrigh, a neighbor. [Then a long political tale, and] Good - night, my dear little rogues.” - -’Tis a strange journal; such a mingling of court gossip, sharp political -thrusts, lover-like, childish prattle, and personal details. If he is -sick, he scores down symptoms and curatives as boldly as a hospital nurse; -if he lunches at a chop-house, he tells cost; if he takes in his -waistcoat, he tells Stella of it; if he dines with Addison, he tells how -much wine they drank; if a street beggar or the Queen shed tears, they -slop down into that Stella journal; if she wants eggs and bacon, he tells -where to buy and what to give; if Lady Dalkeith paints, he sees it with -those great, protuberant eyes of his, and tells Stella. - -There is coarseness in it, homeliness, indelicacies, wit, sharp hits, -dreary twaddle, and repeated good-nights to his beloved M. D.’s, and--to -take care of themselves, and eat the apples at Laracor, and wait for him. -No--I mistake; I don’t think he ever says with definiteness Stella must -wait for him. I should say (without looking critically over the journal to -that end) that he cautiously avoided so positive a committal. And -she?--ah! she, poor girl, waits without the asking. And those indelicacies -and that coarseness? Well, this strange, great man can do nothing wrong -in her eyes. - -But she does see that those dinings at a certain Mrs. Vanhomrigh’s come in -oftener and oftener. ’Tis a delightfully near neighbor, and her instinct -scents something in the wind. She ventures a question, and gets a stormy -frown glowering over a page of the journal that puts her to silence. The -truth is, Mrs. Vanhomrigh[113] has a daughter--young, clever, romantic, -not without personal charms, who is captivated by the intellect of Mr. -Swift; all the more when he volunteers direction of her studies, and leads -her down the flowery walks of poetry under his stalwart guidance. - -Then the suspicious entries appear more thickly in the journal. “Dined -with Mrs. Vanhomrigh”--and again: “Stormy, dined with a -neighbor”--“couldn’t go to court, so went to the Vans.” And thus this -romance went on ripening to the proportions that are set down in the poem -of “Cadenus and Vanessa.” He is old, she is young. - - “Vanessa, not in years a score, - Dreams of a gown of forty-four; - Imaginary charms can find - In eyes with reading almost blind. - … - Cadenus, common forms apart, - In every scene had kept his heart; - Had sigh’d and languished, vowed and writ, - For pastime or to show his wit.” - -But this wit has made conquest of her; she - - “----called for his poetic works: - [Cupid] meantime in secret lurks; - And, while the book was in her hand, - The urchin from his private stand - Took aim, and shot with all his strength - A dart of such prodigious length, - It pierced the feeble volume through, - And deep transfixed her bosom too.” - -This is part of his story of it, which he put in her hands for her -reading;[114] and which, like the Stella journal, only saw the light -after the woman most interested in it was in the ground. - - -_In Ireland Again._ - -Well, Swift at last goes back to Ireland--all his larger designs having -miscarried--a saddened and disappointed man; full of growlings and -impatience; taking with him from that wreck of London life and political -forgatherings, only the poor flotsam of an Irish deanery. - -He has some few friends to welcome him there: Miss Hester and Mrs. Dingley -among the rest. How gladly would Stella have put all her woman’s art and -her womanly affection to the work of cheering and making glad the -embittered and disappointed Dean: but no; he has no notion of being -handicapped by marriage; he is sterner, narrower, more misanthropic than -ever. All the old severe proprieties and distance govern their -intercourse. He visits them betimes and listens to their adulatory -prattle; they, too, come up to the deanery when there are friends to -entertain; often take possession when the Dean is away. - -The church dignitaries are not open-handed in their advances; the _Tale of -a Tub_, and stories of that London life (not much of it amongst churches) -have put a wall between them and the Dean. But he interests himself in -certain questions of taxation and of currency, which seem of vital -importance to the common people; and he wins, by an influence due to his -sharp pamphleteering, what they count a great relief from their dangers or -burdens. Thus he becomes a street idol, and crowds throw up their caps for -this doctor militant, whom they call the good Dean. He has his private -large charities, too; there are old women, decrepit and infirm, whom he -supports year after year; does this--Swift-like--when he will haggle a -half hour about the difference of a few pennies in the price for a bottle -of wine, and will serve his clerical friends with the lees of the last -dinner: strange, and only himself in everything. - -Then Miss Vanhomrigh--after the death of her mother--must needs come -over--to the great perplexity of the Doctor--to a little country place -which she has inherited in the pretty valley of the Liffey--a short drive -away from Dublin; she has a fine house there, and beautiful gardens -(Swift never outgrew his old Moor-Park love for gardens); there she -receives him, and honors his visits. An old gardener, who was alive in -Scott’s time, told how they planted a laurel bush whenever the Dean came. -Perhaps the Dean was too blinded for fine reading in the garden alleys -then; certainly his fierce headaches were shaking him year by year nearer -to the grave. - -Miss Hester comes to a knowledge of these visits, and is tortured, but -silent. Has she a right to nurse torture? Some biographers say that at her -urgence a form of marriage was solemnized between them (1716); but if so, -it was undeclared and unregarded. Vanessa, too, has her tortures; she has -knowledge of Stella and her friend, and of their attitude with respect to -the deanery; so, in a moment of high, impetuous daring, she writes off to -Mistress Hester Johnson asking what rights she has over her friend the -Dean? Poor Stella wilts at this blow; but is stirred to an angry woman’s -reply, making (it is said) avowal of the secret marriage. To the Dean, who -is away, she encloses Vanessa’s letter; and the Dean comes storming back; -rages across the country, carrying to Miss Vanhomrigh her own -letter--flings it upon the table before her, with that look of blackness -that has made duchesses tremble--turns upon his heel, and sees her no -more. - -In a fortnight, or thereabout, Poor Vanessa was dead. It was a fever they -said; may be; certainly, if a fever, there were no hopes in her life now -which could make great head against it. She changed her will before her -death, cutting off Swift, who was sole legatee, and leaving one-half to -Bishop Berkeley; through whom, strangely enough, Yale College may be said -to inherit a part of poor Vanessa’s fortune.[115] - -Such a blow, by its side bruises, must needs scathe somewhat the wretched -Hester Johnson; but time brought a little healing in its wings. The old -kindliness and friendship that dated from the pleasant walks in Moor Park, -came back--as rosy twilights will sometimes shoot kindly gleams between -stormy days, and the blackness of night. And Swift, I think, never came -nearer to insupportable grief than when he heard--on an absence in London, -a few years thereafter--that Stella was dying week by week. - -“Poor Stella,” “dear Stella,” “poor soul,” break into his letters--break, -doubtless, into his speech on solitary walks; but in others’ presence his -dignity and coldness are all assured. There is rarely breakdown where man -or woman can see him. Old Dr. Sheridan[116] says that at the last she -appealed to him to declare and make public their private marriage; whereat -he “turned short away.” A more probable story is that in those last days -Swift himself proposed public declaration, to which the dying woman could -only wave a reply--“too late!” - -She died in 1728: he in the sixty-second year of his age, and she -forty-eight. - -He would have written about her the night she died; had the curtains drawn -that he might not see the light where her body lay; but he broke down in -the writing. They brought a lock of her hair to him. It was found many -years after in an old envelope, worn with handling, with this inscription -on it--in his hand--_Only a woman’s hair_. - -I have not much more to say of Dean Swift, whose long story has kept us -away from gentler characters, and from verses more shining than his. -Indeed, I do not think the poems of Swift are much read nowadays; surely -none but a strong man and a witty one could have written them; but they do -not allure us. Everybody, however, remembers with interest the little -people that Lemuel Gulliver saw, and will always associate them with the -name of Swift. But if the stormy Dean had known that his Gulliver book -would be mostly relished by young folks, only for its story, and that its -tremendous satire--which he intended should cut and draw blood--would have -only rarest appreciation, how he would have raved and sworn! - -They tell us he had private prayers for his household, and in secluded -places; and there are those who sneer at this--“as if a Dean should say -prayers in a crypt!” But shall we utterly condemn the poor Publican -who--though he sells drams and keeps selling them--smites his bosom _afar -off_ and cries, God be merciful!--as if there were a bottom somewhere that -might be reached, and stirred, and sparkle up with effervescence of hope -and truth and purity? He was a man, I think, who would have infinitely -scorned and revolted at many of the apologies that have been made for him. -To most of these he would have said, in his stentorian way, “I am what I -am; no rosy after-lights can alter this shape of imperfect manhood; wrong, -God knows; who is not? But a prevaricator--pretending feeling that is not -real--offering friendship that means nothing--proffering gentle words, for -hire; never, never!” - -And in that great Court of Justice--which I am old-fashioned enough to -believe will one day be held--where juries will not be packed, and where -truth will shine by its own light, withstanding all perversion--and where -opportunities and accomplishment will be weighed in even scales against -possible hindrances of moral or of physical make-up--there will show, I am -inclined to think, in the strange individuality of Swift, a glimmer of -some finer and higher traits of Character than we are accustomed to -assign him. - -After Stella’s death he wrote little:[117] perhaps he furbished up the -closing parts of _Gulliver_; there were letters to John Gay, light and -gossipy; and to Pope, weightier and spicier. - -But the great tree was dying at the top. He grew stingier and sterner, and -broke into wild spasms of impatience, such as only a diseased brain could -excuse and explain. His loneliness became a more and more fearful thing to -be borne; but who shall live with this half-mad man of gloom? - -At length it is only a hired keeper who can abide with him: yet still he -is reckless, proud, defiant, merciless, with no words coming to his fagged -brain whereby he may express his thought; having thoughts, but they were -bitter ones; having penitences maybe, but very vain ones; having -remorses--ah, what abounding ones! - -Finally he has no longer the power, if the grace were in him, to ask -pardon of the humanity he has wronged; or to tell of the laments--if at -that stage he entertained them--over the grave of thwarted purposes and of -shattered hopes; condemned to that imbecile silence which overtook him at -last, and held him four weary years in fool’s grasp, suffering and making -blundering unintelligible moans. - -He died in 1745--twenty-two years after Vanessa’s death--seventeen years -after the death of Stella. - - - - -FOOTNOTES - - -[1] Sir Walter Raleigh, b. 1552; executed 1618. - -[2] Unless we except _The Ocean to Cynthia_, piquant fragments of which -exist, extending to some five hundred lines; the poem, by the estimate of -Mr. Gosse, may have reached in its entirety a length of ten thousand -lines. See _Athenæum_ for January 2, 1886; also, _Raleigh_ (pp. 44-48) by -Edmund Gosse. London, 1886. - -[3] William Harrison, b. 1534; d. 1593. It is interesting to know that -much has come to light respecting the personal history of William -Harrison, through the investigations of that indefatigable American -genealogist, the late Colonel J. L. Chester. - -[4] _Speeches of Gratulation_ on King’s Entertainment. - -[5] Rawdon Brown. - -[6] _Judith Shakespeare_, by William Black. The story of the royal letter -appears to rest mainly on the evidence of William Oldys (not a strong -authority), who says it originated with Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, who -had it from Sir William D’Avenant. Dr. Drake, however, as well as Farmer, -fully accredit the anecdote. - -[7] The Globe was the summer theatre, the Blackfriars the winter -theatre--the same company playing much at both. The hour for opening in -Elizabeth’s time was usually one o’clock. Dekker (_Horne Booke_, 1609) -names three as the hour; and doubtless there were occasions when--in the -private theatres--plays began after nightfall. Fletcher and Shakespeare -were at the head of what was called the Lord Chamberlain’s Company. By -license of James I. (1603) this virtually became the King’s Company. - -[8] Gosson was an Oxford man; b. 1555: d. 1624. - -[9] Among the more important names were those of Bishop Andrewes (of -Winchester, friend of Herbert, and Dr. Donne)--famous for his oriental -knowledges: Bedwell (of Tottingham), a distinguished Arabic scholar: Sir -Henry Savile, a very learned layman, and warden of Merton College: -Rainolds, representing the Puritan wing of the Church, and President of -Corpus Christi, Oxford; and Chaderton, Master of Emmanuel, and -representing the same wing of the Church from Cambridge. - -[10] John Donne, son of a London merchant, b. 1573, and d. 1631. There is -a charming life of him by Izaak Walton. The Grosart edition of his -writings is fullest and best. - -[11] From his poem of _Nosce Teipsum_, published in 1599. John Davies b. -in Wiltshire about 1570, and d. 1626. - -[12] Dr. Shedd (_Addenda_ to Lange’s _Matthew_) says--“Probably it was the -prevailing custom of the Christians _in the East_, from the beginning to -pray the Lord’s Prayer, with the Doxology.” It certainly appears in -earliest Syriac version (_Peschito_, so called, of second century). It -does not appear in the Wyclif of 1380. It will be found, however, in the -Tyndale of 1534--which I am led to believe is its first appearance in an -accredited English translation. - -[13] The allusion is to the Harts, whose ancestress was Shakespeare’s -sister Joan. A monumental record in Trinity Church, Stratford, reads thus: -“In memory of Thomas Hart, who was the fifth descendant in a direct line -from Joan, eldest daughter of John Shakespeare. He died May 23, 1793.” - -A son of the above Thomas Hart “followed the business of a butcher at -Stratford, where he was living in 1794.” Still another Thomas Hart (eighth -in descent from Joan) is said to be now living in Australia--the only male -representive of that branch of the family. - -[14] Susanna, the eldest, baptized 1583; Hamnet and Judith (twins), -baptized 1585. In 1596 Hamnet died; in 1607 Susanna married Dr. Hall; and -in 1616 (year of Shakespeare’s death) Judith married Quiney, vintner. - -[15] His father died in 1601, and his mother in 1608. - -[16] The dedication of _Venus and Adonis_ (and subsequently of _Tarquin -and Lucrece_) to the Earl of Southampton is undoubted; nor are intimate -friendly relations doubted; but the further supposition--long -accredited--that the major part of the Sonnets were addressed to the same -Earl--is now generally abandoned--entirely so by the new Shakespearean -scholars. William Herbert (Earl of Pembroke)--to whom is dedicated the -1623 folio--is counted by many the “begetter” of these, and the rival of -the poet in loves of the “dark-eyed” frail one, whose identity has so -provoked inquiry. - -A late theory favors a Miss Fitton, of whom a descendant, the Rev. Fred. -Fitton, has latterly made himself advocate. See _Athenæum_ for February -20, 1886. - -[17] A very good exhibit of best opinions on such points may be found -briefly summarized in Stopford Brooke’s little _Primer of English -Literature_; see also Mr. Fleay’s recent _Chronical History of -Shakespeare_; and fuller discussion (though somewhat antiquated) in Dr. -Drake’s interesting discussion of _Shakespeare and his Times_. I name this -book, not as wholly authoritative, or comparable with the mass of newer -criticism which has been developed under the auspices of the different -Shakespeare societies, but as massing together a great budget of -information from cotemporaneous authors and full of entertaining reading. -In America, the Shakespearean labors of Hudson, Grant White, and Dr. Rolfe -are to be noted; and also--with larger emphasis--the beginnings of the -monumental work of Mr. Furniss. - -[18] Seven editions of this poem were published between 1593 and 1602. - -[19] The _Nation_ (N. Y.), of March 7, 1884, has this: - -“In an indenture between the R^t Hon. Sir Rich^d Saltonstall, Knt., Lord -Mayor of London, and 2 others, Commissioners of her Majesty (fortieth yr -of Queen Elizabeth), and the parties deputed to collect the first of these -subsidies granted by Parliament the yr preceding--(bearing date Oct. -1598), for the _rate of S^t Helen’s Parish_, Bishopsgate ward--the name of -_Wm. Shakespeare_ is found as liable, with others, to that rate.” - -This, if it be indeed our William who is named, would serve to show -residence in “S^t Helen’s Parish”--in which is the venerable Crosby Hall. - -[20] See Halliwell-Phillips (vol. i., p. 130; 7th ed.). - -[21] Edmond Shakespeare was buried in St. Saviour’s in 1607. - -[22] I append table from French’s _Shakespeareana Genealogica_: - - W^m Shakespeare, b. Apr. 23, 1564; - m. Anne Hathaway, b. 1556, dau. of Rich^d - and Joan Hathaway, of Shottery. - | - +----------------------+--------+-------------------+ - | | | - Susanna, b. May, Hamnet, twin with Judith, bapt. Feb. - 1583, d. July 2, Judith, bapt. Feb. 2, 2, 1585, d. 1661; - 1649; m. Jno. Hall, 1585, d. s. p. 1596. m. Thos Quiney. - physician, b. 1575. | - | | - | +--------------------+--------------+--+ - | | | | - | Shakespeare Quiney, Rich^d. Quiney, Thos. Quiney. - Elizabeth Hall, b. 1616. b. 1618. b. 1619. - b. 1608; d. - s. p. 1669. - -Elizabeth Hall was twice married: 1st to Thomas Nash--2d to Jno. Bernard -(knighted by Charles II.), and had no issue by either marriage. - -Of the Quiney children, above named, the 1st (Shakespeare), d. in infancy; -the 2d (Richard Quiney), d. without issue, in 1638; the 3d (Thomas -Quiney), died the same year, 1638--also without issue. - -[23] The extreme limits of his life and career would probably lie between -1575 and 1635; _Strahan’s Biographical Dictionary_ of the last century -makes no mention of him; nor does the _Biographie Universelle_ of as early -date. - -[24] Works of John Webster; with some account of the Author, and Notes, by -Rev. A. Dyce (original edition, 1830). - -[25] Ford, b. about 1586, and d. 1640. Works edited by Gifford; revised, -with Dyce’s notes, 1869. - -[26] John Marston, b. 1565 (?); d. about 1634; believed to have been a -Shropshire man, and one while of Brasenose College, Oxford. - -[27] Philip Massinger, b. 1584; d. 1640. His works were edited by Gifford, -and on this edition is based the later one of Col. Cunningham (1870). - -[28] “The Duke of Milan.” - -[29] John Fletcher, b. 1579; d. 1625. Francis Beaumont, son of Sir Francis -Beaumont, b. (probably) 1585; d. 1616. - -[30] Aubrey, who died in 1697, and who is often cited, was an -antiquary--not always to be relied upon--an Oxford man, friend of Thomas -Hobbes, was heir to sundry country estates, which, through defective -titles, involved him in suits, that brought him to grief. He was a -diligent collector of “whim-whams”--very credulous; supplied Anthony à -Wood (1632-1695) with much of his questionable material; and kept up -friendly relations with a great many cultivated and literary people. - -[31] From the “Nice Valour or the Passionate Madman.” By Seward this -comedy is ascribed to Beaumont. - -[32] John Taylor, b. 1580; d. 1654. Various papers and poems (so called) -of his are printed in vol. ii. of Hindley’s _Old Book Collector’s -Miscellany_, London, 1872. The Spenser Society has also printed an edition -of his works, in 5 vols., 1870-78. - -[33] London was not over-large at this day; its population counted about -175,000. - -[34] James Howell, b. 1594; d. 1666. He was son of a minister in -Carmarthenshire, and took his degree at Oxford in 1613. - -[35] Of an ancient county family in Mid-Kent: b. 1568; d. 1639. - -[36] In his will he suggested this epitaph to be put over his grave: “_Hic -jacet hujus sententiæ primus auctor, Disputandi Pruritus Ecclesiæ -Scabies_.” - -[37] Izaak Walton, b. 1593; d. 1683. - -[38] Statements about George Herbert, in the matter of the Melville -controversy, are specially to be doubted. Of Ben Jonson he says: “He lived -with a woman that governed him, near Westminster Abbey, and neither he nor -she took much care for next week, and would be sure not to want wine; of -which he usually took too much before he went to bed, if _not oftener and -sooner_”--all which shows a pretty accessibility to gossip. - -[39] Overbury, b. 1581; d. 1613 (poisoned in London Tower). Rimbault’s -_Life_, 1856; also Strahan’s _Biographical Dictionary_, 1784. - -[40] George Herbert, b. 1593; d. 1633. The edition of his poems referred -to is that of Bell & Daldy, London, 1861. Walton’s _Life_ of him is -delightful; but one who desires the whole story should not fail of reading -Dr. Grosart’s essay, prefatory to the works of George Herbert, in the -_Fuller Worthies’ Library_, London, 1874. - -[41] Robert Herrick b. (or at least baptized) 1591; d. 1674. The fullest -edition of his works is that edited by Dr. Grosart, and published by -Chatto & Windus, London, 1876. - -[42] Dr. Grosart objects that most portraits are too gross: I am content -if comparison be made only with the engraving authorized by Dr. Grosart, -and authenticated by his careful investigation and a warm admiration for -his subject. - -[43] Herrick is not an example of this; but Herbert is; so is Overbury -with his “Wife;” so is Vaughan; so is Browne. - -[44] - - “Religion stands on tiptoe in our land - Ready to pass to the American strand. - My God, Thou dost prepare for them a way, - By carrying first their gold from them away; - For gold and grace did never yet agree; - Religion always sides with Poverty.” - - --HERBERT’S _The Church Militant_. - -[45] John Selden, b. 1584; d. 1654. His _Table-Talk_, by which he is best -known, was published in 1689. Coleridge said, “It contains more weighty -bullion sense than I have ever found in the same number of pages of any -uninspired writer.” - -[46] John Milton: written 1629. - -[47] Specially instanced in his final desertion of Strafford. - -[48] “The Rehearsal.” Complete edition of his works published in 1775. -George Villiers, b. 1627; d. 1688. - -[49] Jeremy Taylor, b. 1613; d. 1667. First collected edition of his works -issued in 1822 (Bishop Heber); reissued, with revision (C. P. Eden), -1852-61. - -[50] John Evelyn, b. 1620; d. 1706. His best known books are his _Diary_, -and _Sylva_--a treatise on arboriculture. - -[51] I have not been careful to give the _ipsissima verba_ of Taylor’s -version of this old Oriental legend, which has been often cited, but never -more happily transplanted into the British gardens of doctrine than by -Jeremy Taylor. - -[52] John Suckling, b. 1609; d. 1642. An edition of his poems, edited by -W. C. Hazlitt, was published in 1874. - -[53] William Prynne, b. 1600; d. 1669. He was a Somersetshire man, -severely Calvinistic, and before he was thirty had written about the -_Unloveliness of Love Locks_. - -[54] Robert Burton, b. 1576; d. 1639, was too remarkable a man to get his -only mention in a note; but we cannot always govern our spaces. His -best-known work, _The Anatomy of Melancholy_, is an excellent book to -steal from--whether quotations or crusty notions of the author’s own. - -[55] Abraham Cowley, b. 1618; d. 1667. Edmund Waller, b. 1605; d. 1687. - -[56] I give a taste of these young verses, first published in the -_Poetical Blossoms_ of 1633; also sampled approvingly by the mature Cowley -in his essay _On Myself_: - - “This only grant me, that my means may lie - Too low for envy, for contempt too high. - Some honor I would have - Not from great deeds, but good alone. - The unknown are better than ill known; - Rumour can ope the grave. - - “Thus would I double my life’s fading space, - For he that runs it well, twice runs his race. - And in this true delight, - These unbought sports, this happy state, - I would not fear nor wish my fate. - But boldly say each night - To-morrow let my sun his beams display, - Or in clouds hide them;--I have liv’d to-day!” - -[57] John Milton, b. 1608; d. 1674. Editions of his works are numberless; -but Dr. Masson is the fullest and best accredited contributor to Miltonian -literature. - -[58] John and Edward Phillips both with him; the latter only as pupil. - -[59] More probably, perhaps, sulking for lack of her old gayeties of life -in the range of Royal Oxford. Aubrey’s accounts would favor this -interpretation. - -[60] _Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, composed at -several Times._ London, 1645. - -[61] In that day Whitehall Street was separated from Charing Cross by the -famous gate of Holbein’s; and in the other direction it was crossed, near -Old Palace Yard, by the King’s-Street Gate--thus forming a vast court. - -[62] Salmasius, a Leyden professor, had been commissioned by Royalists to -write a defence of Charles I., and vindicate his memory. Milton was -commissioned to reply; and the result was--a Latin battle in Billingsgate. - -Milton calls his antagonist “a grammatical louse, whose only treasure of -merit and hope of fame consisted in a glossary.” - -[63] His blindness dating from the year 1652. - -[64] This marriage took place on February 24, 1662-63, the age of the -bride being twenty-five, and Milton in his fifty-fifth year. - -[65] Vondel, b. 1587 (at Cologne); d. 1679. He was the author of many -dramatic pieces, among which were “Jephtha,” “Marie Stuart,” “Lucifer” -(_Luisevaar_). Vondel also wrote “Adam in Exile,” and “Samson, or Divine -Vengeance.” This latter, according to a writer in _The Athenæum_ of -November 7, 1885, has suspicious points of resemblance with “Samson -Agonistes.” - -Other allied topics of interest are discussed in same journal’s notice of -George Edmundson’s book on the Milton and Vondel question (Trübner & Co., -London, 1885). - -Vondel survived the production of his “Lucifer” by a quarter of a century, -and died five years after Milton. - -[66] Avitus was Bishop of Vienne (succeeding his father and grandfather) -about 490. His poem, “De Initio Mundi,” was in Latin hexameters. See -interesting account of same in _The Atlantic Monthly_ for January, 1890. - -[67] The cottage is a half-timber, gable fronted building, and has -Milton’s name inscribed over the door. The village is reached by a branch -of the L. & N. W. R. R. American visitors will also look with interest at -the burial place of William Penn, who lies in a “place of graves” behind -the Friends’ Meeting House--a mile and a half only from Chalfont Church. - -[68] The terms were £5 down; another £5 after sale of 1,300 copies, and -two equal sums on further sale of two other editions of same number. The -family actually compounded for £18, before the third edition was entirely -sold. - -[69] Carew, b. about 1589; d. 1639; full of lyrical arts and of brazen -sensuality. Lovelace, b. 1618; d. 1658; a careless master of song, whom -wealth and royal favor did not save from a death of want and despair. - -[70] George Villiers, b. 1627; d. 1688. - -[71] Earl of Rochester (John Wilmot), b. 1647; d. 1680. - -[72] Sir Peter Lely, b. (in Westphalia) 1617; d. 1680. - -[73] Richard Baxter, b. 1615; d. 1691. His _Saints’ Rest_ published in -1653 (Lowndes). - -[74] Andrew Marvell, b. 1620; d. 1678. Early edition of _Life and Works_ -by Cooke, 1726. (Later reprints.) Dr. Grosart also a laborer in this -field. - -[75] Aubrey. - -[76] Samuel Butler, b. 1612; d. 1680. Editions of _Hudibras_ (his chief -book) are many and multiform; that of Bohn perhaps as good as any. His -posthumous works, not much known, were published in 1715. No scholarly -editing of his works or life has been done. - -[77] _Paradise Lost_ appeared 1667; first part of _Hudibras_, 1663; third -part not till 1678. - -[78] Some of the couplets in the two ran so nearly together as almost to -collide. Thus, Butler says: - - “He that runs may fight again, - Which he can never do that’s slain.” - -While Trumbull’s couplet _runs_ thus: - - “He that fights and runs away - May live to fight another day.” - -[79] This was Sir Samuel Luke of Cople-Wood-End, a Parliamentary leader -and a man of probity and distinction, supposed to have been the particular -subject of Butler’s lampoon. His own letter-book, however (_Egerton -Magazine_, cited by John Brown in his recent _Life of Bunyan_, p. 45) -shows him to have been much more a man of the world than was Butler’s -caricature of a “Colonel.” - -[80] Samuel Pepys--whom those well up in cockney ways of speech persist in -calling “Mr. Peps”--was born 1633; died 1703. His _Diary_, running from -1660 to 1669, did not see the light until 1825. Since that date numerous -editions have been published; that of Bright, the best. See also Wheatley, -_Samuel Pepys and the World he lived in_. - -[81] Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, b. 1609; d. 1674. He was a man of -large literary qualities, and his _History_ is chiefly prized for its -portraits. - -[82] John Evelyn, b. 1620; d. 1706. - -[83] B. 1628; d. 1688. Editions of the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ are -innumerable. Southey and Macaulay have dealt with his biography, and in -later times Mr. Froude (“English Men of Letters”) and John Brown (8vo, -London, 1885). - -[84] Mr. Froude (“English Men of Letters”) entertains an opposite -opinion--as do Offor (1862) and Copner (1883). Mr. Brown, however, who is -conscientious to a fault, and seems to have been indefatigable in his -research, confirms the general opinion entertained by most accredited -biographers. See _John Bunyan; his Life, Times, and Work_, by John Brown, -chap. iii., p. 45. - -[85] Reference is again made to _Life, Etc._, by John Brown, Minister of -the Church at Bunyan Meeting, Bedford. The old popular belief was strong -that Bunyan’s entire prisonship was served in the jail of the bridge. -Well-authenticated accounts, however, of the number of his -fellow-prisoners forbid acceptance of this belief. - -Froude alludes to the question without settling it; Mr. Brown ingeniously -sets forth a theory that explains the traditions, and seems to meet all -the facts of the case. - -[86] There was a _quasi_ charge of plagiarism against Bunyan at one time -current, and particulars respecting it came to the light some sixty years -ago in a correspondence of Robert Southey (who edited the _Major_ edition -of _Pilgrim’s Progress_) with George Offor, Esq., which appears in the -_Reminiscences_ of Joseph Cottle of Bristol. The allegation was, that -Bunyan had taken hints for his allegory from an old Dutch book, _Duyfkens -ande Willemynkyns Pilgrimagee_ (with five cuts by Bolswert), published at -Antwerp in the year 1627. Dr. Southey dismissed the allegation with -disdain, after examination of the _Dutch Pilgrimage_; nor do recent -editors appear to have counted the charge worthy of refutation. - -[87] Thomas Fuller, b. 1608; d. 1661. _The Worthies of England_ is his -best-known book--a reservoir of anecdote and witty comments upon “men and -manners.” - -[88] Thomas Browne, b. 1605; d. 1682. Full collection of his works (with -Johnson’s _Life_), Bohn, 1851. A very charming edition of the _Religio -Medici_--so good in print--so full in notes--so convenient to the hand--is -that of the “Golden Treasury Series,” Macmillan. Nor can I forbear -reference to that keen, sympathetic essay on this writer which appears in -Walter Pater’s _Appreciations_, Macmillan, 1889. - -[89] William Temple, b. 1628; d. 1699. His works, mainly political -writings, were published in two volumes folio, 1720; a later edition, -1731, including the Letters of Temple (edited, and as title-page -says--published by Jonathan Swift), was dedicated to his Majesty William -III. - -[90] This old country home, very charming with its antique air, its mossy -terraces, its giant cedars, is still held by a Sir Henry Dryden. - -[91] Otway, b. 1631; d. 1685, son of a Sussex clergyman, was author of -many poor plays, and of two--“The Orphan” and “Venice Preserved”--sure to -live. With much native refinement and extraordinary pathetic power, he -went to the bad; was crazed by hopeless love for an actress (Mrs. Barry) -in his own plays; plunged thereafter into wildest dissipation, and died -destitute and neglected. - -[92] Shall I except his re-telling of the tale of Cymon and “Iphigene the -Fair?” - -[93] John Locke, b. 1632; d. 1704. The best edition of Locke’s works is -said to be that by Bishop Law, four volumes, 4to, 1777. For Life, Fox -Bourne (1876) is latest authority. - -[94] This was a weak scion of the house, “born a shapeless lump, like -anarchy,” as Dryden savagely says; but--by this very match--he became the -father of the brilliant author of the _Characteristics_ (1711). - -[95] February 6, 1685. - -[96] Matthew Prior, b. 1664; d. 1721. - -[97] William Congreve, b. 1670; d. 1729. See edition of his dramatic -works, with pleasant introduction by Leigh Hunt (1840). - -[98] Daniel Defoe, b. 1661; d. 1731. Little is known of his very early -life. Of _Robinson Crusoe_ there have been editions innumerable. Of his -complete works no full edition has ever been published--probably never -will be. - -[99] Richard Steele, b. 1672; d. 1729. He was born in Dublin, and died on -his wife’s estate at Llanngunnor, near Caermarthen, in Wales. - -[100] The _Christian Hero_ appeared in 1701; and it was in the same year -that Steele’s first play of “The Funeral” was acted at Drury Lane. “The -Lying Lover” appeared in 1703, and “The Tender Husband” in 1705. - -[101] I take the careful reckoning of Mr. Dobson in his _Life of Steele_, -1886. - -[102] It is, however, seriously to be doubted if Addison ever saw the -“Atticus” satire. - -[103] “_Je tire vers ma fin._” Smollett (Book I., chap. vi.); not a strong -authority in most matters, but--from his profession of medicine--an apt -one to ferret out actual details in respect to royal illness. - -[104] Sir John Vanbrugh, b. (about) 1666; d. 1726. His comedies were -better thought of than his buildings, both in his own day and in ours. - -[105] Sir Christopher Wren, b. 1631; d. 1723. The cathedral was begun in -1675, and virtually finished in 1710, though there may have been many -“last touches” for the aged architect. - -[106] John Gay, b. 1685; d. 1732. - -[107] - - “O roving muse! recall that wondrous year, - When hoary Thames, with frosted osiers crown’d, - Was three long moons in icy fetters bound.” - -The allusion is doubtless to the year 1684, famous for its exceeding cold. - -[108] Jonathan Swift, b. 1667; d. 1745. Most noticeable biographies are -those by Scott, Craik, and Stephen; the latter not minute, but having -judicial repose, and quite delightful. Scott’s edition of his works -(originally published in 1814) is still the fullest and best. - -[109] Sir William Temple did not finally abandon his home at Sheen--where -he had beautiful gardens--until the year 1689. A stretch of Richmond Park, -with its deer-fed turf, now covers all traces of Temple’s old home; the -name however is kept most pleasantly alive by the pretty Sheen cottage -(Professor Owen’s home), with its carp-pond in front, and its charming, -sequestered bit of wild garden in the rear. - -[110] “Varina” was a Miss Waring, sister of a college mate. Years after, -when Swift came by better church appointments, Varina wrote to him a -letter calculated to fan the flame of a constant lover; but she received -such reply--at once disdainful and acquiescent--as was met only with -contemptuous silence. - -[111] Both of these satires written between 1696-1698, but not published -till six years later. - -[112] Button’s was another favorite Coffee-house in Russell Street--on the -opposite side from Will’s--and nearer Covent Garden. I must express my -frequent obligations, in respect of London Topography, to the interesting -_Literary Landmarks_ of Mr. Laurence Hutton. - -[113] Acquaintance with Miss Vanhomrigh probably first made in winter of -1708, but no family intimacy till year 1710. See _Athenæum_, January 16, -1886, in notice of Lane-Poole’s _Letters and Journals of Swift_. - -[114] Henry Morley, in the recent editing of his Carrisbrooke _Swift_, -lays stress upon the sufficient warning which Miss Vanhomrigh should have -found in this poem. It appears to me that he sees too much in Swift’s -favor and too little in Vanessa’s. - -[115] Miss Vanhomrigh died in May, 1723; and the final renewal of Bishop -Berkeley’s deed of gift (of the Whitehall farm, Newport) to Yale College, -is dated August 17, 1733. - -[116] Thomas Sheridan, D.D., father of “Dictionary” Sheridan, and -grandfather of Richard Brinsley. He was a great friend of Swift, and -_Gulliver’s Travels_ was prepared for the press at his cottage in Cavan -(Quilca). - -[117] _The Drapier Letters_ were published in 1724. When the successive -parts of _Gulliver_ were written it is impossible to determine. A portion -was certainly in existence as early as 1722. The whole was not published -until 1726-27. - - - - -_INDEX._ - - - Addison, Joseph, 259, 280; - early life of, 288 _et seq._; - his “Cato,” 289; - _The Spectator_, 290; - “Sir Roger De Coverley,” 291; - Swift’s opinion of the _Spectator_, 292; - his marriage, 294; - “The Vision of Mirza,” 295; - his political life, 297; - his death, 298. - - Anne, Princess, daughter of James II., 262; - Queen, 267; - her characteristics, 278; - her accession to the throne, 302. - - Aubrey, 94, 141. - - - Baxter, Richard, his _Saints’ Rest_, 187. - - Beaumont and Fletcher, 38, 93; - a quotation from “Philaster,” 97; - “The Faithful Shepherdess,” 98. - - Bible, King James’, 44 _et seq._; - dedication of, 45; - the revisers of, 47 _et seq._; - its literary value, 51 _et seq._; - early English, 54; - the Genevan, 55; - the Bishops’, 55; - the first American, 56. - - Blackfriars Theatre, 34. - - Blenheim Palace, 305. - - Bodley, John, 55. - - Boyle, Robert, 207. - - Boyne, battle of the, 264. - - Browne, Sir Thomas, 222. - - Buchanan, George, 7. - - Buckingham, Duke of, and Charles I., 133; - his son, author of “The Rehearsal,” 134. - - Buckingham, the Second Villiers, 184. - - Bunyan, John, 209; - his birthplace, 210; - his early life and marriage, 211; - a preacher, 212; - imprisoned, 213; - his _Pilgrim’s Progress_, 215. - - Burnet’s _History of his Own Times_, 202, 258. - - Burton, Robert, author of _Anatomy of Melancholy_, 144. - - Busino, his account of the representation of Jonson’s “Pleasure is - Reconciled to Virtue,” at Whitehall, 29 _et seq._ - - Butler, Samuel, author of _Hudibras_, 193. - - - Cary, Sir Robert, carries to Edinburgh the news of the Queen’s death, 8. - - Charlecote House, 66. - - Charles I., 105, 132; - influence of the Duke of Buckingham on, 133; - execution of, 162 _et seq._ - - Charles II., restoration of, 182; - death of, 255. - - Charter House, the, 11. - - Clarendon, Earl of, his _History of the Rebellion_, 201. - - Compton, Lord, 24. - - Congreve, William, 269; - visited by Voltaire, 270. - - _Counterblast to Tobacco_, the, of James I., 7, 104. - - Cowley, Abraham, 145; - an extract from his “Hymn to Light,” 146; - compared with Tennyson, 147. - - Cromwell, 163. - - - Davies, Sir John, his lines on the _Immortality of the Soul_, 49. - - Defoe, Daniel, 258, 272; - a pamphleteer, 273; - his _Advice to English Tradesmen_, 274; - his _Robinson Crusoe_, 276; - on the Commission in Edinburgh, 277. - - Diodati, Charles, the friend of Milton, 156. - - Donne, John, 49, note. - - Dorset, 186. - - Doxology, of the Lord’s Prayer, the, 52. - - Drummond of Hawthornden, 28; - entertains Jonson, 28 _et seq._ - - Dryden, John, 227; - his fertility, 228; - his eulogies of Cromwell and Charles II., 230 _et seq._; - Mr. Saintsbury’s opinion of his consistency, 232; - his _Annus Mirabilis_, 233; - the London of, 234; - his plays, 238; - his _Hind and Panther_, 241; - his Virgil, 243; - his “All for Love,” 244; - estimate of him, 246, 259, 261. - - - Ellwood, Milton’s friend, 175. - - Elizabeth, Queen, and the English Bible, 55. - - Elizabeth, daughter of James I., 100. - - England at the death of Elizabeth, 1 _et seq._ - - Etherege, 186. - - Evelyn, John, 137; - his diary, 201. - - - Ford, John, 91. - - _Fortunes of Nigel_, Scott’s, its picture of James I., 19, 35. - - Freeman, Mr., his misleading averment as to the errors in _Ivanhoe_, 20. - - Fuller, Thomas, his _English Worthies_, 221. - - - Gay, John, 308; - his “Beggar’s Opera,” 308; - his _Trivia_, 310. - - Globe Theatre in Shakespeare’s time, 33, 36. - - Gosson, Stephen, a representation of the Puritan feeling, 42. - - Greenwich Hospital, 265. - - - Hampton Court Conference, 44 _et seq._ - - Harrison, William, 20 _et seq._ - - Herbert, George, the poet, 7; - poems of, 115; - his marriage, 118, 128. - - Herbert, Lord, of Cherbury, 7. - - Herbert, William, Earl of Pembroke, 74, note. - - Herrick, Robert, 120; - specimens of his verse, 122; - character of, 124; - his _Hesperides_, 125. - - Howell, James, 107. - - _Hudibras_, 193. - - - James I., his pedigree, 4 _et seq._; - his person and character, 6 _et seq._; - his journey to London to be crowned, 9 _et seq._; - his family, 100; - tastes and characteristics of, 101 _et seq._; - his _Counterblast to the Use of Tobacco_, 36, 104. - - James II., 256. - - Johnson, Hester (“Stella”), 314, 321; - Swift’s letters to, 328; - “Stella’s Journal,” 329; - her secret marriage with Swift, 335; - and Vanessa, 335; - death of, 337. - - Jonson, Ben, his adulation of the King, 26; - his literary versatility, 27; - his masque at Whitehall, 29 _et seq._, 106. - - _Judith Shakespeare_, William Black’s novel, 33. - - - Kenilworth, Walter Scott’s, 201. - - Kensington in Queen Anne’s time, 308. - - Kingsley’s pictures of Elizabethan characters and times, 18 _et seq._ - - - Lamb, Charles, influence of Sir Thomas Browne upon, 224; - his essay, “The Genteel Style in Writing,” 227. - - Laud, Archbishop, 134, 136. - - Lily, Milton’s schoolmaster, 152, 186. - - Locke, John, his treatise on the _Human Understanding_, 249; - his life, 250; - on education, 252. - - - “McFingal,” the, of John Trumbull, 196. - - Marlborough, Duke of, 303. - - Marlborough, Duchess of, 302; - her influence over Queen Anne, 304. - - Marston, John, specimen of his satire, 92. - - Marvell, Andrew, Milton’s assistant, 170; - story of his good fortune, 189; - his “Garden,” etc., 191. - - Mary, Queen, daughter of James II., 262; - death of, 301. - - Massinger’s “A New Way to Pay Old Debts,” 60, 93, 94. - - Masson’s _Life and Times of Milton_, 151. - - Mermaid Tavern, the, 34, 151. - - Milton, John, 150; - Masson’s Life of, 151; - his father, 151; - at school, 152; - his early verse, 153 _et seq._; - at Cambridge, 153; - his travels, 156; - his marriage to Mary Powell, 157; - his daughters, 160; - his first published poems, 160; - his pamphlets, 161; - his defence of regicide, 164; - in peril, 167; - domestic life, 169; - Munkacsy’s picture of, 169; - his third marriage, 171; - _The Paradise Lost_, 171; - his use of other books, 173; - his last days, 174; - payments for his _Paradise_, 176; - deserted by his daughters, 177; - _Paradise Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_, 177, 188; - his death, 179. - - _Mortality, Old_, Scott’s novel, 264. - - - Newton, Isaac, 207, 258. - - “New Way to Pay Old Debts, A,” 60, 94. - - _Nigel_, Scott’s novel, 19, 35. - - - _Old Mortality_, Scott’s novel, 324. - - Otway, Thomas, 237. - - Overbury, Sir Thomas, 114, his _Characters_. - - “Overreach, Sir Giles,” 60, 94. - - - Penn, William, 258. - - Pepys, Mr., his purchase of _Hudibras_, 194, 198; - his diary, 199; - extracts from, 202. - - _Peveril of the Peak_, Scott’s, 184. - - Primer, the Old New England, 54. - - Prior, Matthew, 258, 268. - - Prynne, William, 142; - his _Histriomastix_, 143. - - - Raleigh, Walter, 11 _et seq._; - in the Tower, 13; - his _History of the World_, 13; - his expedition to Guiana, 13; - executed, 15; - specimens of his writings, 15 _et seq._; - his _Ocean to Cynthia_, 17, note; - his life an epitome of Elizabethan times, 18. - - Rochester, Earl of, 185. - - - Selden, John, his _Table-Talk_, 129. - - Shakespeare, 32 _et seq._; - 56 _et seq._; - his characters real, 58; - his personality, 61; - his family relations, 67; - his children, 68, 84; - in London, 73 _et seq._; - early poetry, 75; - “Love’s Labor’s Lost,” 76, 77; - his “Venus and Adonis,” and “Lucrece,” 77; - like Chaucer in taking his material, 79; - his closing years, 81 _et seq._; - his son-in-law, Dr. Hall, 83. - - Sheridan, Thomas, 337. - - Sidney, Lady Dorothy, pursued by Waller, 149. - - Southampton, Earl of, 74. - - Spencer, Sir John, his dwelling, Crosby Hall, 23; - a letter of his daughter, 24 _et seq._ - - Steele, Richard, 259; - author of the _Tatler_, 280; - his _Christian Hero_, 281; - his marriages, 281 _et seq._; - his literary qualities, 285. - - Stratford, the town of, and surrounding country, 63; - a walk to, from Windsor, 70. - - Stuart, house of, 4. - - Suckling, Sir John, 140; - his tragic death, 142. - - Swift, Jonathan, 226, 259; - early life of, 312; - his life at Sir William Temple’s, 313; - goes back to Ireland, 314; - his _Battle of the Books_ and _Tale of a Tub_, 316; - appointed chaplain to Lord Berkeley, 318; - his politics, 324; - his London life, 328; - _Stella’s Journal_, 328; - “Cadenus and Vanessa,” 332; - back in Ireland, 333; - his secret marriage with Stella, 335; - his _Gulliver’s Travels_, 340; - his madness and death, 340. - - Swinburne, his estimate of Webster, 89. - - - Taine, his overdrawn picture of the Restoration, 186. - - Taylor, Jeremy, 135; - his career, 136; - his _Holy Living and Dying_, 139. - - Taylor, John, “the Water Poet,” a favorite of James I., 102. - - Temple, Sir William, 224, 313; - death of, 317. - - Theobalds, King James’ palace, 10, 105. - - Tillotson, John, 188. - - Tobacco in literature, 103 _et seq._ - - Trumbull, John, his _McFingal_, 196. - - “Two Noble Kinsmen,” 95. - - - Vanbrugh, Sir John, 306. - - “Vanessa,” Swift’s letter to, 315. - - Vanhomrigh, Miss (“Vanessa”), 331; - death of, 336. - - - Waller, Edmund, 145; - his literary importance, 149. - - Walton, Izaak, 111; - his _Angler_, 112; - his biographic sketches, 113. - - Webster, John, 88; - Dyce’s edition of his works, 89; - character of his plays, 90; - Swinburne’s estimate of, 89. - - _Westward, Ho!_ Kingsley’s, 18. - - William and Mary, 256. - - William of Orange, 263 _et seq._ - - William III., 263; - his death, 301. - - Will’s Coffee-house, 236. - - _Woodstock_, Scott’s novel, 168. - - Woodstock, the park at, 305. - - Wotton, Sir Henry, 109. - - Wren, Sir Christopher, 306. - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS: -FROM ELIZABETH TO ANNE*** - - -******* This file should be named 54142-0.txt or 54142-0.zip ******* - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/5/4/1/4/54142 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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charset=UTF-8" /> -<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of English Lands Letters and Kings: From Elizabeth to Anne, by Donald Grant Mitchell</title> -<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> -<style type="text/css"> - -a { - text-decoration: none; -} - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - -h1,h2,h4 { - text-align: center; - clear: both; -} - -h3 { - text-align: center; - clear: both; - font-style: italic; -} - -hr { - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - clear: both; - width: 65%; - margin-left: 17.5%; - margin-right: 17.5%; -} - -ul { - list-style-type: none; -} - -li.indx { - margin-top: .5em; - padding-left: 2em; - text-indent: -2em; -} - -li.ifrst { - margin-top: 2em; - padding-left: 2em; - text-indent: -2em; -} - -li.isub1 { - padding-left: 4em; - text-indent: -2em; -} - -p { - margin-top: 0.5em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: 0.5em; - text-indent: 1em; -} - -p.dropcap { - text-indent: 0em; -} - -p.dropcap:first-letter { - float: left; - margin: 0.1em 0.1em 0em 0em; 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it -under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this -eBook or online at <a -href="http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you are not -located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this ebook.</p> -<p>Title: English Lands Letters and Kings: From Elizabeth to Anne</p> -<p>Author: Donald Grant Mitchell</p> -<p>Release Date: February 9, 2017 [eBook #54142]</p> -<p>Language: English</p> -<p>Character set encoding: UTF-8</p> -<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS: FROM ELIZABETH TO ANNE***</p> -<p> </p> -<h4>E-text prepared by MWS<br /> - and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> - (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br /> - from page images generously made available by<br /> - Internet Archive<br /> - (<a href="https://archive.org">https://archive.org</a>)</h4> -<p> </p> -<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto; max-width: 100%;" cellpadding="10"> - <tr> - <td valign="top"> - Note: - </td> - <td> - Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - <a href="https://archive.org/details/englishlandslett02mitc"> - https://archive.org/details/englishlandslett02mitc</a><br /> - <br /> - Project Gutenberg has the other three volumes of this work.<br /> - <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54168/54168-h/54168-h.htm">I: From Celt to Tudor</a>: see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54168/54168-h/54168-h.htm<br /> - <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37226/37226-h/37226-h.htm">III: Queen Anne and the Georges</a>: see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37226/37226-h/37226-h.htm<br /> - <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54143/54143-h/54143-h.htm">IV: The Later Georges to Victoria</a>: see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54143/54143-h/54143-h.htm - </td> - </tr> -</table> -<p> </p> -<hr class="full" /> -<p> </p> -<p> </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[i]</a></span></p> -<p class="titlepage larger">ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS<br /> -AND KINGS</p> - -<p class="titlepage gothic larger">From Elizabeth to Anne</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[ii]</a></span></p> - -<p class="center">ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS</p> - -<p class="center"><i>By Donald G. Mitchell</i></p> - -<table summary="Books in this series"> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">I.</td> - <td class="gothic">From Celt to Tudor</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">II.</td> - <td class="gothic">From Elizabeth to Anne</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">III.</td> - <td class="gothic">Queen Anne and the Georges</td> - </tr> -</table> - -<p class="center"><i>Each one volume, 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.50</i></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[iii]</a></span></p> - -<p class="titlepage larger">ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS<br /> -AND KINGS</p> - -<p class="titlepage gothic larger">From Elizabeth to Anne</p> - -<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br /> -<span class="smcap">Donald G. Mitchell</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 100px;"> -<img src="images/titlepage.jpg" width="100" height="120" alt="Three heads in profile" /> -</div> - -<p class="titlepage">NEW YORK<br /> -<span class="gothic">Charles Scribner’s Sons</span><br /> -MDCCCXCVI</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span></p> - -<p class="titlepage smaller"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1890, by</span><br /> -CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS</p> - -<p class="titlepage smaller">TROW’S<br /> -PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY,<br /> -NEW YORK.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p> - -<h2><i>PREFATORY LETTER.</i></h2> - -<p class="center">[<span class="smcap">To Mrs. J. C. G. Piatt, of Utica School, N. Y.</span>]</p> - -<p><span class="smcap">My Dear Julia</span>,—<i>We have both known, in the past, a -certain delightsome country home; you—in earliest childhood, -and I—in latest youth-time: and I think we both relish those -reminders—perhaps a Kodak view, or an autumn gentian -plucked by the road-side, or actual glimpse of its woods, or -brook, on some summer’s drive—which have brought back the -old homestead, with its great stretch of undulating meadow—its -elms—its shady lanes—its singing birds—its leisurely going -big-eyed oxen—its long, tranquil days, when the large heart of -June was pulsing in all the leaves and all the air:</i></p> - -<p><i>Well, even so, and by these light tracings of Lands and Kings, -and little whiffs of metric music, I seek to bring back to you, -and to your pupils and associates (who have so kindly received -previous and kindred reminders) the rich memories of that great -current of English letters setting steadily forward amongst -these British lands, and these sovereigns, from Elizabeth to -Anne. But slight as these glimpses are, and as this synopsis -may be, they will together serve, I hope, to fasten attention -where I wish to fasten it, and to quicken appetite for those -fuller and larger studies of English Literature and History, -which shall make even these sketchy outlines valued—as one -values little flowerets plucked from old fields—for bringing -again to mind the summers of youth-time, and a world of summer -days, with their birds and abounding bloom.</i></p> - -<p class="right"><i>Affectionately yours,<br /> -D. G. M.</i></p> - -<p><i>EDGEWOOD; MARCH, 1890.</i></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p> - -<h2><i>CONTENTS.</i></h2> - -<table summary="Contents"> - <tr> - <td></td> - <td class="tdr smaller">PAGE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Preliminary</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">The Stuart Line</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_4">4</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">James I.</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_6">6</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Walter Raleigh</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Nigel and Harrison</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">A London Bride</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Ben Jonson Again</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">An Italian Reporter</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Shakespeare and the Globe</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Gosson and Other Puritans</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">King James’ Bible</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Shakespeare</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Shakespeare’s Youth</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_61">61</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Family Relations</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_67">67</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Shakespeare in London</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Work and Reputation</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_77">77</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span><span class="smcap">His Thrift and Closing Years</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_81">81</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Webster, Ford, and Others</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Massinger, Beaumont, and Fletcher</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">King James and Family</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_99">99</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">A New King and some Literary Survivors</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Wotton and Walton</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">George Herbert</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_115">115</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Robert Herrick</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_120">120</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Revolutionary Times</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">King Charles and his Friends</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_132">132</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Jeremy Taylor</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">A Royalist and a Puritan</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_140">140</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Cowley and Waller</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_144">144</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">John Milton</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_150">150</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Milton’s Marriage</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">The Royal Tragedy</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Change of Kings</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_167">167</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Last Days</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_174">174</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Charles II. and his Friends</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_182">182</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Andrew Marvell</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_189">189</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Author of Hudibras</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_193">193</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Samuel Pepys</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_198">198</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">A Scientist</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span><span class="smcap">John Bunyan</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_209">209</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Three Good Prosers</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_221">221</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">John Dryden</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_227">227</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">The London of Dryden</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_234">234</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Later Poems and Purpose</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_240">240</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">John Locke</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_248">248</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">End of the King and Others</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_255">255</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Kings Charles, James, and William</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_261">261</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Some Literary Fellows</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_268">268</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">A Pamphleteer</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_272">272</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Of Queen Anne</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_277">277</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">An Irish Dragoon</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_280">280</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Steele’s Literary Qualities</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_285">285</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Joseph Addison</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_288">288</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Sir Roger De Coverley</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_291">291</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Royal Griefs and Friends</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_301">301</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Builders and Streets</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_306">306</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">John Gay</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_308">308</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Jonathan Swift</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_312">312</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Swift’s Politics</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_324">324</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">His London Journal</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_328">328</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">In Ireland Again</span>,</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_333">333</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[x]</a></span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> - -<h1><i>ENGLISH LANDS, LETTERS, -& KINGS.</i></h1> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</h2> - -<p class="dropcap">We take outlook to-day from the threshold of -the seventeenth century. Elizabeth is dead -(1603), but not England. The powers it had grown -to under her quickening offices are all alive. The -great Spanish dragon has its teeth drawn; Cadiz -has been despoiled, and huge galleons, gold-laden, -have come trailing into Devon ports. France is -courteously friendly. Holland and England are in -leash, as against the fainter-growing blasts of Popedom. -In Ireland, Tyrone has been whipped into -bloody quietude. A syndicate of London merchants, -dealing in pepper and spices, has made the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span> -beginnings of that East-Indian empire which gives -to the present British sovereign her proudest title. -London is growing apace in riches and in houses; -though her shipping counts for less than the Dutch -shipping, great cargoes come and go through the -Thames—spices from the East, velvets and glass -from the Mediterranean, cloths from the Baltic. -Cheapside is glittering with the great array of goldsmiths’ -shops four stories high, and new painted -and new gilded (in 1594) by Sir Richard Martin, -Mayor. The dudes of that time walk and “publish” -their silken suits there, and thence through all -the lanes leading to Paul’s Walk—which is, effectively, -the aisle of the great church. There are noblemen -who have tall houses in the city and others -who have built along the Strand, with fine grounds -reaching to the river and looking out upon the -woods which skirt the bear-gardens of Bankside -in Southwark. The river is all alive with boats—wherries, -barges, skiffs. There are no hackney -carriages as yet for hire; but rich folks here and -there rumble along the highways in heavy Flemish -coaches.</p> - -<p>Some of the great lights we have seen in the intellectual<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> -firmament of England have set. Burleigh -is gone; Hooker is gone, in the prime of his -years; Spenser gone, Marlowe gone, Sidney gone. -But enough are left at the opening of the century -and at the advent of James (1603) to keep the great -trail of Elizabethan literary splendors all aglow. -George Chapman (of the Homer) is alive and active; -and so are Raleigh, and Francis Bacon, and -Heywood, and Dekker, and Lodge. Shakespeare is -at his best, and is acting in his own plays at the -newly built Globe Theatre. Michael Drayton is in -full vigor, plotting and working at the tremendous -poem from which we culled—in advance—a pageful -of old English posies. Ben Jonson, too, is all -himself, whom we found a giant and a swaggerer, -yet a man of great learning and capable of the delicious -bits of poesy which I cited. You will further -remember how we set right the story of poor -Amy Robsart—told of the great Queen’s vanities—of -her visitings—of her days of illness—and of the -death of the last sovereign of the name of Tudor.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p> - -<h3>The Stuart Line.</h3> - -<p>Henceforth, for much time to come, we shall -meet—when we encounter British royalty at all—with -men of the house of Stuart. But how comes -about this shifting of the thrones from the family -of Tudor to the family of Stuart? I explained in -a recent chapter how the name of Tudor became -connected with the crown, by the marriage of a -Welsh knight—Owen Tudor—with Katharine, -widow of Henry V. Now let us trace, if we can, -this name of Stuart. Henry VII. was a Tudor, -and so was Henry VIII.; so were his three children -who succeeded him—Edward, the bigot Mary, and -Elizabeth; no one of these, however, left direct -heirs; but Henry VIII. had a sister, Margaret, who -married James IV. of Scotland. This James was a -lineal descendant of a daughter of Robert Bruce, -who had married Walter Stuart, the chief of a -powerful Scotch family. That James I. of whom I -have spoken, who was a delicate poet, and so long a -prisoner in Windsor Tower, was great-grandson of -this Stuart-daughter of Robert Bruce. And from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> -him—that is from James I.—was directly descended -James IV., who married the sister of -Henry VIII. James IV. had a son, succeeding -him, called James V. who by a French marriage, -became the father of that Frenchy queen, poor -Marie of Scotland, who suffered at Fotheringay, -and who had married her cousin, Henry Darnley -(he also having Stuart blood), by whom she had a -son, James Stuart—being James VI. of Scotland -and James I. of England, who now succeeds Elizabeth.</p> - -<p>This strong Scotch strain in the Stuart line of -royalty will explain, in a certain degree, how ready -so clannish a people as the Scotch were to join insurrection -in favor of the exiled Stuarts; a readiness -you will surely remember if you have read -<cite>Waverley</cite> and <cite>Redgauntlet</cite>. And in further confirmation -of this clannish love, you will recall the -ever-renewed and gossipy boastfulness with which -the old Scotch gentlewoman, Lady Margaret Bellenden, -in <cite>Old Mortality</cite>, tells over and over of the -morning when his most gracious majesty Charles -II. partook of his <i lang="enm">disjune</i> at Tillietudlem Castle.</p> - -<p>But we have nothing to do with so late affairs<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> -now, and I have only made this diversion into Scotland -to emphasize the facts about the Stuart affiliation -to the throne of England, and the reasons -for Scotch readiness to fling caps in the air for King -Charlie or for the Pretender.</p> - -<h3>James I.</h3> - -<p>And now what sort of person was this James -Stuart, successor to Elizabeth? He was a man in -his thirty-eighth year, who had been a king—or -called a king, of Scotland—ever since he was a -baby of twelve months old; and in many matters he -was a baby still. He loved bawbles as a child loves -its rattle; loved bright feathers too—to dress his -cap withal; was afraid of a drawn sword and of -hobgoblins. He walked, from some constitutional -infirmity, with the uncertain step of a child—swaying -about in a ram-shackle way—steadying himself -with a staff or a hold upon the shoulder of some -attendant. He slobbered when he ate, so that his -silken doublet—quilted to be proof against daggers—was -never of the cleanest. He had a big -head and protruding eyes, and would laugh and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> -talk broad Scotch with a blundering and halting -tongue, and crack unsavory jokes with his groom -or his barber.</p> - -<p>Yet he had a certain kindness of heart; he hated -to see suffering, though he had no objection to suffering -he did not see; the sight of blood almost -made him faint; his affection for favorites sometimes -broke out into love-sick drivel. Withal he -had an acute mind; he had written bad poems, -before he left Scotland, calling himself modestly a -royal apprentice at that craft. He had a certain -knack at logical fence and loved to argue a man to -death; he had power of invective, as he showed in -his <cite>Counterblast to Tobacco</cite>—of which I will give -a whiff by and by. He had languages at command, -and loved to show it; for he had studied long and -hard in his young days, under that first and best -of Scotch scholars and pedagogues—George Buchanan. -He had, in general, a great respect for -sacred things, and for religious observances—which -did not prevent him, in his moments of petulant -wrath or of wine-y exaltation, from swearing -with a noisy vehemence. Lord Herbert of Cherbury—elder -brother of the poet Herbert, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> -English ambassador to France—wittily excused -this habit of his sovereign, by saying he was too -kind to anathematize men himself, and therefore -asked God to do so.</p> - -<p>This was the man who was to succeed the great -and courtly Elizabeth; this was the man toward -whom all the place-hunters of the court now directed -their thoughts, and (many of them) their -steps too, eager to be among the foremost to bow -in obsequience before him; besieging him, as every -United States President is besieged, and will be -besieged, until the disgraceful hunt for spoils is -checked by some nobler purpose on the part of political -victors than the rewarding of the partisans.</p> - -<p>There was Sir Robert Cary—a far-away cousin -of Elizabeth’s—who was so bewitched to be foremost -in this agreeable business that he dashes -away at a headlong gallop, night and day—before -the royal couriers have started—gets thrown from -his horse, who gave him a vicious blow with his -heels, which he says “made me shed much blood.” -But he pushes on and carries first to Edinburgh the -tidings of the Queen’s death. Three days of the -sharpest riding would only carry the news in those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> -days; and the court messenger took a week or so -to get over the heavy roads between the Scotch -capital and London.</p> - -<p>It does not appear that James made a show of -much sorrow; he must have remembered keenly, -through all his stolidity, how his mother, Mary -Queen of Scots, had suffered at Fotheringay; and -remembered through whose <i lang="la">fiat</i> this dismal tragedy -had come about. He hints that perhaps the -funeral services had better not tarry for his coming;—writes -that he would be glad of the crown -jewels (which they do not send, however) for the -new Queen’s wearing.</p> - -<p>Then he sets off at leisure; travels at leisure; -receiving deputations at leisure, and all manner -of prostrations; stopping at Berwick; stopping at -Belvoir Castle; stopping at York; stopping wherever -was good eating or lodging or hunting; flatterers -coming in shoals to be knighted by him; -even the great Bacon, wanting to be Sir Francised—as -he was presently: and I am afraid the poets -of the time might have appeared, if they had possessed -the wherewithal to make the journey, and -were as hopeful of fat things.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p> - -<p>Curiously enough, the King is grandly entertained -in Huntingdonshire by one Oliver Cromwell, -to whom James takes a great liking; not, of -course, the great Cromwell; but this was the uncle -and the godfather of the famous Oliver, who was to -be chief instrument in bringing James’ royal son, -Charles, to the scaffold. Thence the King goes for -four or five days of princely entertainment to Theobalds, -a magnificent seat of old Burleigh’s, where -Elizabeth had gone often; and where his son, Cecil, -now plies the King with flatteries, and poisons -his mind perhaps against Raleigh—for whom Cecil -has no liking;—perhaps representing that Raleigh, -being in Parliament at the time, might have -stayed the execution of Queen Mary, if he had -chosen. The King is delighted with Theobalds; so -far delighted that a few years after he exchanges for -it his royal home of Hatfield House, which magnificent -place is still held by a descendant of Cecil, in -the person of the present Earl of Salisbury.</p> - -<p>That place of Theobalds became afterward a pet -home of the King; he made great gardens there, -stocked with all manner of trees and fruits: every -great stranger in England must needs go to see<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> -the curious knots and mazes of flowers, and the -vineries and shrubbery; but the palace and gardens -are now gone. At last King Jamie gets to -London, quartering at the <em>Charter-house</em>—where is -now a school and a home of worn-out old pensioners -(dear old Colonel Newcome died there!) within -gunshot of the great markets by Smithfield;—and -James is as vain as a boy of sleeping and lording -it, at last, in a great capital of two realms that call -him master.</p> - -<h3>Walter Raleigh.</h3> - -<p>I said that his mind had been poisoned against -Raleigh;<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> that poison begins speedily to work. -There are only too many at the King’s elbow who -are jealous of the grave and courtly gentleman, -now just turned of fifty, and who has packed -into those years so much of high adventure; who -has written brave poems; who has fought gallantly -and on many fields; who has voyaged widely -in Southern and Western seas; who has made -discovery of the Guianas; who has, on a time, befriended -Spenser, and was mate-fellow with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> -gallant Sidney; who was a favorite of the great -Queen; and whose fine speech, and lordly bearing, -and princely dress made him envied everywhere, -and hated by less successful courtiers. Possibly, -too, Raleigh had made unsafe speeches about the -chances of other succession to the throne. Surely -he who wore his heart upon his sleeve, and loved -brave deeds, could have no admiration for the -poltroon of a King who had gone a hunting when -the stains upon the scaffold on which his mother -suffered were hardly dry. So it happened that Sir -Walter Raleigh was accused of conspiring for the -dethronement of the new King, and was brought to -trial, with Cobham and others. The street people -jeered at him as he passed, for he was not popular; -he had borne himself so proudly with his exploits, -and gold, and his eagle eye. But he made so noble -a defence—so full—so clear—so eloquent—so impassioned, -that the same street people cheered him -as he passed out of court—but not to freedom. -The sentence was death: the King, however, feared -to put it to immediate execution. There was a -show, indeed, of a scaffold, and the order issued. -Cobham and Gray were haled out, and given last<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> -talks with an officiating priest, when the King ordered -stay of proceedings: he loved such mummery. -Raleigh went to the Tower, where for thirteen -years he lay a prisoner; and they show now -in the Tower of London the vaulted chamber that -was his reputed (but doubtful) home, where he -compiled, in conjunction with some outside friends—Ben -Jonson among the rest—that ponderous -<cite>History of the World</cite>, which is a great reservoir -of facts, stated with all grace and dignity, but -which, like a great many heavy, excellent books, is -never read. The matter-of-fact young man remembers -that Sir Walter Raleigh first brought potatoes -and (possibly) tobacco into England; but forgets -his ponderous <cite>History</cite>.</p> - -<p>I may as well finish his story here and now, -though I must jump forward thirteen and more -years to accomplish it. At the end of that time the -King’s exchequer being low (as it nearly always -was), and there being rumors afloat of possible gold -findings in Raleigh’s rich country of Guiana, the old -knight, now in his sixty-seventh year, felt the spirit -of adventure stirred in him by the west wind that -crept through the gratings of his prison bringing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> -tropical odors; and he volunteered to equip a fleet -in company with friends, and with the King’s permission -to go in quest of mines, to which he -believed, or professed to believe, he had the clew. -The permission was reluctantly granted; and poor -Lady Raleigh sold her estate, as well as their -beloved country home of Sherborne (in Dorset) -to vest in the new enterprise.</p> - -<p>But the fates were against it: winds blew the -ships astray; tempests beat upon them; mutinies -threatened; and in Guiana, at last, there came disastrous -fights with the Spaniards.</p> - -<p>Keymis, the second in command, and an old -friend of Raleigh’s, being reproached by this latter -in a moment of frenzy, withdraws and shoots himself; -Raleigh’s own son, too, is sacrificed, and the -crippled squadron sets out homeward, with no gold, -and shattered ships and maddened crews. Storm -overtakes them; there is mutiny; there is wreck; -only a few forlorn and battered hulks bring back -this disheartened knight. He lands in his old -home of Devon—is warned to flee the wrath that -will fall upon him in London; but as of old he lifts -his gray head proudly, and pushes for the capital<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> -to meet his accusers. Arrived there, he is made to -know by those strong at court that there is no -hope, for he has brought no gold; and yielding to -friendly entreaties he makes a final effort at escape. -He does outwit his immediate guards and takes to -a little wherry that bears him down the Thames: a -half-day more and he would have taken wings for -France. But the sleuth-hounds are on his track; -he is seized, imprisoned, and in virtue of his old -sentence—the cold-hearted Bacon making the law -for it—is brought to the block.</p> - -<p>He walks to the scaffold with serene dignity—greets -old friends cheerfully—dies cheerfully, and -so enters on the pilgrimage he had set forth in his -cumbrous verse:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“There the blessed paths we’ll travel,</div> -<div class="verse">Strow’d with rubies thick as gravel;</div> -<div class="verse">Ceilings of diamonds, sapphire floors,</div> -<div class="verse">High walls of coral and pearly bowers.</div> -<div class="verse">From thence to Heaven’s bribeless hall,</div> -<div class="verse">Where no corrupted voices brawl;</div> -<div class="verse">No conscience molten into gold,</div> -<div class="verse">No forg’d accuser bought or sold,</div> -<div class="verse">No cause deferr’d, no vain-spent Journey,</div> -<div class="verse">For there Christ is the King’s Attorney,</div> -<div class="verse">Who pleads for all without degrees,</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> -<div class="verse">And He hath angels, but no fees.</div> -<div class="verse">And when the grand twelve-million jury</div> -<div class="verse">Of our sins, with direful fury,</div> -<div class="verse">Against our souls black verdicts give,</div> -<div class="verse">Christ pleads his death and then we live.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Again to his wife, in a last letter from his prison, -he writes:—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“You shall receive, my dear wife, my last words in these -my last lines: my love I send you, that you may keep when -I am dead; and my counsel, that you may remember -when I am no more. I would not with my will, present you -sorrows, my dear Bess: let them go to the grave with me -and be buried in the dust. And seeing that it is not the will -of God that I shall meet you any more, bear my destruction -patiently, and with a heart like yourself.</p> - -<p>“I beseech you for the love that you bear me living, that -you do not hide yourself many days; but, by your labors -seek to help my miserable fortunes, and the rights of your -poor child. Your mourning cannot avail me, that am but -dust. I sued for my life, but, God knows, it was for you and -yours that I desired it: for, know it, my dear wife, your -child is the child of a true man, who in his own respect, despiseth -Death and his misshapen and ugly forms. I cannot -write much (God knows how hardly I steal this time when -all sleep), and it is also time for me to separate my thoughts -from the world. Beg my dead body, which living was denied -you, and either lay it in Sherborne or Exeter church, -by my father and mother.</p> - -<p>“My dear wife, farewell; bless my boy; pray for me; -and let my true God hold you both in his arms.”</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p> - -<p>It is not as a literary man proper that I have -spoken of Raleigh; the poems that he wrote were -very few, nor were they overfine; but they did have -the glimmer in them of his great courage and of his -clear thought. They were never collected in book -shape in his own day, nor, indeed, till long after he -had gone: they were only occasional pieces,<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> coming -to the light fitfully under stress of mind—a trail of -fire-sparks, as we may say, flying off from under -the trip-hammer of royal wrath or of desperate -fortunes.</p> - -<p>Even his <cite>History</cite> was due to his captivity; his -enthusiasms, when he lived them in freedom, were -too sharp and quick for words. They spent themselves -in the blaze of battles—in breasting stormy -seas that washed shores where southern cypresses -grew, and golden promises opened with every sunrise.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p> - -<p>And when I consider his busy and brilliant and -perturbed life, with its wonderful adventures, its -strange friendships, its toils, its quiet hours with -Spenser upon the Mulla shore, its other hours -amidst the jungles of the Orinoco, its lawless gallantries -in the court of Elizabeth, its booty snatched -from Spanish galleons he has set ablaze, its perils, -its long captivities—it is the life itself that seems -to me a great Elizabethan epic, with all its fires, its -mated couples of rhythmic sentiment, its poetic -splendors, its shortened beat and broken pauses and -blind turns, and its noble climacteric in a bloody -death that is without shame and full of the largest -pathos.</p> - -<p>When you read Charles Kingsley’s story of <cite>Westward, -Ho!</cite> (which you surely should read, as well as -such other matter as the same author has written -relating to Raleigh) you will get a live glimpse of -this noble knight of letters, and of those other -brave and adventurous sailors of Devonshire, who -in those times took the keels of Plymouth over -great wastes of water. Kingsley writes of the -heroes of his native Devon, in the true Elizabethan -humor—putting fiery love and life into his writing;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> -the roar of Atlantic gales breaks into his -pages, and they show, up and down, splashes of -storm-driven brine.</p> - -<h3>Nigel and Harrison.</h3> - -<p>In going back now to the earlier years of King -James’ reign, I shall make no apology for calling -attention to that engaging old story of the <cite>Fortunes -of Nigel</cite>. I know it is the fashion with many of the -astute critics of the day to pick flaws in Sir Walter, -and to expatiate on his blunders and shortcomings; -nevertheless, I do not think my readers can do better—in -aiming to acquaint themselves with this -epoch of English history—than to read over again -Scott’s representation of the personality and the -surroundings of the pedant King. There may be -errors in minor dates, errors of detail; but the -larger truths respecting the awkwardness and the pedantries -of the first Stuart King, and respecting the -Scotch adventurers who hung pressingly upon his -skirts, and the lawless street scenes which in those -days did really disturb the quietude of the great -metropolis, are pictured with a liveliness which will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> -make them unforgetable. Macaulay says that out -of the gleanings left by historic harvesters Scott has -made “a history scarce less valuable than theirs.” -Nor do I think there is in the <cite>Fortunes of Nigel</cite> a deviation -from the truth (of which many must be admitted) -so extravagant and misleading as Mr. Freeman’s -averment, that in <cite>Ivanhoe</cite> “there is a mistake -in every line.” There are small truths and large -truths; and the competent artist knows which to -seize upon. Titian committed some fearful anachronisms, -and put Venetian stuffs upon Judean -women; Balthasar Denner, on the other hand, -painted with minute truthfulness every stubby hair -in a man’s beard, and no tailor could have excepted -to his button-holes: nobody knows Denner; -Titian reigns.</p> - -<p>Among those whom Scott placed under tribute -for much of his local coloring was a gossipy, kindly -clergyman, William Harrison<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> by name, who was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> -born close by Bow Lane, in London, who studied -at Westminster, at Oxford, and Cambridge (as he -himself tells us), and who had a parish in Radwinter, -on the northern borders of Essex; who came -to be a canon, finally, at Windsor; and who died -ten years before James came to power. He tells -us, in a delightfully quaint way, of all the simples -which he grew in his little garden—of the manner -in which country houses were builded, and their -walls white-washed—of the open chimney vents, -and the smoke-burnished rafters. “And yet see -the change,” he says, “for when our houses were -builded of willow, then had we oken men; but now -that our houses are come to be made of oke, our -men are not onlie become willow, but a great -manie, through Persian delicacie crept in among -us, altogether of straw, which is a sore alteration.”</p> - -<p>When the old parson gets upon the subject of -dress he waxes eloquent; nor was he without fullest -opportunities for observation, having been for -much time private chaplain to the Earl of Cobham.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Oh, how much cost,” he says, “is bestowed now-a-daies -upon our bodies, and how little upon our soules! How many -sutes of apparel hath the one, and how little furniture hath<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> -the other! How curious, how nice are the men and women, -and how hardlie can the tailer please them in making things -fit for their bodies. How many times must they be sent -back againe to him that made it. I will say nothing of our -heads, which sometimes are polled, sometimes curled, or suffered -to grow at length like woman’s locks, manie times cut -off above or under the ears, round, as by a wooden dish. -Neither will I meddle with our varieties of beards, of which -some are shaven from the chin like those of the Turks, not -a few cut like to the beard of Marquess Otto; some made -round, like a rubbing brush, others with a <i lang="fr">pique devant</i> (O -fine fashion!).</p> - -<p>“In women, too, it is much to be lamented that they doo -now far exceed the lightness of our men, and such staring -attire as in times past was supposed meet for none but -light housewives onelie, is now become an habit for chaste -and sober matrons. What should I say of their doublets with -pendant pieces on the brest, full of jags and cuts, and sleeves -of sundrie colors, I have met with some of these <em>trulles</em> in -London, so disguised, that it hath passed my skill to discerne -whether they were men or women.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>If this discerning old gentleman had shot his -quill along our sidewalks, I think it would have -punctured a good deal of bloat, and stirred up no -little bustle. The King himself had a great liking -for fine dress in others, though he was himself a -sloven. Lord Howard, a courtier, writes to a -friend who is hopeful of preferment:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“I would wish you to be well trimmed; get a new Jerkin -well bordered, and not too short: the King liketh it flowing. -Your ruff should be well stiffened and bushy. The King is -nicely heedful of such points. Eighteen servants were lately -discharged, and many more will be discarded who are not to -his liking in these matters.” And again, speaking of a favorite, -he says:—“Carr hath changed his tailors, and tiremen -many times, and all to please the Prince, who laugheth -at the long-grown fashion of our young courtiers, and wisheth -for change everie day.”</p> - -</div> - -<h3>A London Bride.</h3> - -<p>One other little bit of high light upon the every-day -ways of London living, in the early years of -King James, we are tempted to give. It comes out -in the private letter of a new-married lady, who was -daughter and heiress of that enormously rich merchant, -Sir John Spencer, who was Lord Mayor of -London; and who, in Elizabeth’s time (as well as -James’), lived in Crosby Hall, still standing in the -thick of London city, near to where Thread and -Needle Street, at its eastern end, abuts upon Bishopsgate. -Every voyaging American should go to -see this best type of domestic architecture of the -fifteenth century now existing in London; and it -will quicken his interest in the picturesque old pile<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> -to know that Richard III., while Duke of Gloucester, -passed some critical days and nights there, and -that for some years it was the home of Sir Thomas -More. The Spencer heiress, however—of whom -we began to make mention—brightened its interior -at a later day; there were many suitors for -her hand; among them a son of Lord Compton—not -looked upon with favor by the rich merchant—and -concealing his advances under the disguise of -a baker’s boy, through which he came to many -stolen interviews, and at last (as tradition tells) -was successful enough to trundle away the heiress, -covertly, in his baker’s barrow. Through the good -offices of Queen Elizabeth, who stood god-mother -to the first child, difficulties between father and -son-in-law were healed; and when, later, by the -death of Sir John Spencer, the bridegroom was -assured of the enormous wealth inherited by his -bride, he was—poor man—nearly crazed.</p> - -<p>Among the curative processes for his relief may -be reckoned the letter from his wife to which I have -made allusion, and which runs thus:—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“My sweet Life, I pray and beseech you to grant me the -sum of £2,600 [equivalent to some $30,000 now] quarterly:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> -also, besides, £600 quarterly for charities, of which I will -give no account. Also, I would have 3 horses for my own -saddle, that none shall dare to lend or borrow. Also; 2 gentlewomen -(lest one should be sick)—seeing it is an indecent -thing for a gentlewoman to stand mumping alone, -when God hath blessed the Lord and Lady with a great -Estate: Also, when I ride, a hunting or a hawking, I would -have them attend: so, for either of those said women there -must be a horse.</p> - -<p>“Also, I would have 6 or 8 gentlemen; I will have my -two coaches—one lined with velvet to myself, with four -very fair horses, and a coach for my women lined with -cloth, and laced with gold;—otherwise with scarlet and -laced with silver, with four good horses. Thereafter, my -desire is that you defray all charges for me, and beside my -allowance, I would have 20 gowns of apparel a year—six of -them excellent good ones. Also, I would have to put in my -purse £2,000 or so—you to pay my debts. And seeing I -have been so reasonable, I pray you do find my children apparel, -and their schooling, and all my servants, men and -women, with wages. Also, I must have £6,000 to buy me -jewels, and £4,000 to buy me a gold chain. Also, my desire -is, that you would pay your debts—build up Ashley House, -and lend no money as you love God! When you be an Earl -[as he was afterward in Charles I.’s time] I pray you to allow -£2,000 more than I now desire and double attendance.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Happy husband!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p> - -<h3>Ben Jonson again.</h3> - -<p>We must not forget our literature; and what -has become of our friend Ben Jonson in these -times? He is hearty and thriving; he has written -gratulatory and fulsome verses to the new sovereign. -He is better placed with James than even -with Elizabeth. If his tragedy of “Sejanus” has -not found a great success, he has more than made -up the failing by the brilliant masques he has written. -The pedantic King loves their pretty show of -classicism, which he can interpret better than his -courtiers. He battens, too, upon the flattery that -is strown with a lavish hand:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Never came man more longed for, more desired,</div> -<div class="verse">And being come, more reverenced, lov’d, admired.”<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>This is the strain; no wonder that the poet comes -by pension; no wonder he has “commands,” with -goodly fees, to all the fêtes in the royal honor. Yet -he is too strong and robust and learned to be called -a mere sycophant. The more I read of the literary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> -history of those days the more impressed I am -by the predominance of Ben Jonson;—a great, -careless, hard-living, hard-drinking, not ill-natured -literary monarch. His strength is evidenced by the -deference shown him—by his versatility; now some -musical masque sparkling with little dainty bits -which a sentimental miss might copy in her album -or chant in her boudoir; and this, matched or -followed by some labored drama full of classic -knowledge, full of largest wordcraft, snapping with -fire-crackers of wit, loaded with ponderous nuggets -of strong sense, and the whole capped and booted -with prologue and epilogue where poetic graces -shine through proudest averments of indifference—of -scorn of applause—of audacious self-sufficiency.</p> - -<p>It was some fifteen years after James’ coming -to power that Ben Jonson made his memorable -Scotch journey—perhaps out of respect for his -forebears, who had gone, two generations before, -out of Annandale—perhaps out of some lighter -caprice. In any event it would have been only a -commonplace foot-journey of a middle-aged man, -well known over all Britain as poet and dramatist,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> -with no special record of its own, except for a visit -of a fortnight which he made, in the north country, -to Drummond of Hawthornden:—this made it -memorable. For this Drummond was a note-taker; -he was a smooth but not strong poet; was -something proud of his Scotch lairdship; lived in a -beautiful home seated upon a crag that lifts above -the beautiful valley of Eskdale; its picturesque irregularities -of tower and turret are still very charming, -and Eskdale is charming with its wooded walks, -cliffs, pools, and bridges; Roslin Castle is near by, -and Roslin Chapel, and so is Dalkeith.</p> - -<p>The tourist of our time can pass no pleasanter -summer’s day than in loiterings there and thereabout. -Echoes of Scott’s border minstrelsy beat -from bank to bank. Poet Drummond was proud to -have poet Jonson as a guest, and hospitably plied -him with “strong waters;” under the effusion Jonson -dilated, and Drummond, eagerly attentive, -made notes. These jottings down, which were not -voluminous, and which were not published until -after both parties were in their graves, have been -subject of much and bitter discussion, and relate to -topics lying widely apart. There is talk of Petrarch<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> -and of Queen Elizabeth—of Marston and of Overbury—of -Drayton and Donne—of Shakespeare -(all too little)—of King James and Petronius—of -Jonson’s “shrew of a wife” and of Sir Francis -Bacon; and there are more or less authentic stories -of Spenser and Raleigh and Sidney. Throughout -we find the burly British poet very aggressive, very -outspoken, very penetrative and fearless: and we -find his Scotch interviewer a little overawed by the -other’s audacities, and not a little resentful of his -advice to him—to study Quintillian.</p> - -<h3>An Italian Reporter.</h3> - -<p>It was in the very year of Ben Jonson’s return -from the north that a masque of his—“Pleasure is -Reconciled to Virtue”—was represented at Whitehall; -and it so happens that we have a lively glimpse -of this representation from the note-book of an -Italian gentleman who was chaplain to Pietro Contarini, -then ambassador from Venice, and who was -living at Sir Pindar’s home in Bishopsgate Street -(a locality still kept in mind by a little tavern now -standing thereabout called “Sir Pindar’s Head”).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p> - -<p>This report of Busino, the Italian gentleman of -whom I spoke, about his life in London, was buried -in the archives of Venice, until unearthed about -twenty years since by an exploring Englishman.<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> -So it happens, that in this old Venetian document -we seem to look directly through those foreign eyes, -closed for two hundred and seventy years, upon the -play at Whitehall.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“For two hours,” he says, “we were forced to wait in the -Venetian box, very hot and very crowded. Then the Lord -Chamberlain came up, and wanted to add another, who was -a greasy Spaniard.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>This puts Busino in an ill humor (there was no -good-will between Italy and Spain in those days); -but he admires the women—“all so many queens.”</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“There were some very lovely faces, and at every moment -my companions kept exclaiming: ‘Oh, do look at this -one!’ ‘Oh, do see that other!’ ‘Whose wife is this?’ ‘And -that pretty one near her, whose daughter is she?’ [Curious -people!] Then the King came in and took the ambassador -to his royal box, directly opposite the stage, and the play -began at 10 <span class="smcapuc">P.M.</span>”</p> - -</div> - -<p>There was Bacchus on a car, followed by Silenus -on a barrel, and twelve wicker-flasks representing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> -very lively beer bottles, who performed numerous -antics; then a moving Mount Atlas, as big as the -stage would permit; scores of classic affectations -and astonishing mythologic mechanism; and at -last, with a great bevy of pages, twelve cavaliers in -masques—the Prince Charles (afterward Charles I.) -being chief of the revellers.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“These all choose partners and dance every kind of -dance—every cavalier selecting his lady. After an hour or -two of this, they, being tired, began to flag;” whereat—says -the chaplain—“the choleric King James got impatient -and shouted out from his box, ‘Why don’t they dance? -What did you make me come here for? Devil take you all—dance!’”</p> - -</div> - -<p>What a light this little touch of the old gentleman’s -choleric spirit throws upon the court manners -of that time!</p> - -<p>Then Buckingham, the favorite, whom Scott introduces -in <cite>Nigel</cite> as Steenie—comes forward to -placate the King, and cuts a score of lofty capers -with so much grace and agility as not only to quiet -the wrathy monarch but to delight everybody. -Afterward comes the banquet, at which his most sacred -majesty gets tipsy, and amid a general smashing -of Venetian glass, continues the Italian gentleman,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> -“I went home, very tired, at two o’clock in -the morning.”</p> - -<p>Ah, if we could only unearth some good old -play-going chaplain’s account of how Shakespeare -appeared—of his dress—of his voice—and with -what unction of manner he set before the little -audience at the Globe, or Blackfriars, his part of -Old Adam (which there is reason to believe he -took), in his own delightful play of “As You Like -It.” What would we not give to know the very -attitude, and the wonderful pity in his look, with -which he spoke to his young master, Orlando:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Oh, my sweet master, what make you here?</div> -<div class="verse">Why are you virtuous? Why do people love you?</div> -<div class="verse">Oh, what a world is this, when what is comely</div> -<div class="verse">Envenoms him, that bears it!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<h3>Shakespeare and the Globe.</h3> - -<p>Neither our Italian friend, however, nor Ben -Jonson have given us any such glimpse as we -would like to have of that keen-witted Warwickshire -actor and playwright who, in the early years -of James’ reign, is living off and on in London; -having bought, within a few years—as the records<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> -tell us—a fine New Place in Stratford, and has -won great favor with that King Jamie, who with all -his pedantry knows a good thing when he sees it, -or hears it. Indeed, there is some warrant for believing -that the King wrote a commendatory letter -to the great dramatist, of which Mr. Black, in our -time, makes shadowy use in that Shakespearean romance -of his,<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> you may have encountered. The -novelist gives us some very charming pictures of -the Warwickshire landscape, and he has made Miss -Judith Shakespeare very arch and engaging; but it -was perilous ground for any novelist to venture -upon; and I think the author felt it, and has shown -a timidity and doubt that have hampered him; I -do not recognize in it the breezy freedom that belonged -to his treatment of things among the Hebrides. -But to return to “Judith’s father”—he is -part proprietor of the Globe Theatre, taking in lots<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> -of money (old cronies say) in that way; was honored -by the Queen, too, before her death, and had -written that “Merry Wives of Windsor,” tradition -says, to show Queen Bess how the Fat Falstaff -would carry his great hulk as a lover.</p> - -<p>We might meet this Shakespeare at that Mermaid -Tavern we spoke of; but should look out for him -more hopefully about one of the playhouses. Going -from the Mermaid, supposing we were putting -up there in those days, we should strike across -St. Paul’s Churchyard, and possibly taking Paul’s -Walk, and so down Ludgate Hill; and thence on, -bearing southerly to Blackfriars; which locality has -now its commemoration in the name of Playhouse -Yard, and is in a dingy quarter, with dingy great -warehouses round it. Arrived there we should -learn, perhaps by a poster on the door, that the -theatre would not open till some later hour. Blackfriars<a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> -was a private theatre, roofed over entirely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> -and lighted with candles; also, through Elizabeth’s -time, opening generally on Sundays—that being -a popular day—hours being chosen outside of -prayer or church-time; and this public dramatic -observance of Sunday was only forbidden by express -enactment after James came to the throne. -At her palace, and with her child-players, Sunday -was always Queen Elizabeth’s favorite day.</p> - -<p>This Blackfriars was at only a little remove -down the Thames from that famous Whitefriars -region of which there is such melodramatic account -in Scott’s story of <cite>Nigel</cite>, where Old Trapbois -comes to his wild death. If we went to the Globe -Theatre, we should push on down to the river—near -to a point where Blackfriars Bridge now spans -it—then, a clear stream free from all bridges, save -only London Bridge, which would have loomed, -with its piles of houses, out of the water on our -left. At the water-side we should take wherry (fare -only one penny) and be sculled over to Southwark,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> -landing at an open place—Bankside—near which -was Paris Garden, where bear-baiting was still carried -on with high kingly approval; and thereabout, -on a spot now swallowed in a gulf of smoked and -blackened houses—just about the locality where at -a later day stood Richard Baxter’s Chapel, rose the -octagonal walls of the Globe Theatre, in which -Mr. Shakespeare was concerned as player and part -proprietor. There should be a flag flying aloft and -people lounging in, paying their two-pence, their -sixpences, their shillings, or even their half-crowns—as -they chose the commoner or the better -places. Only the stage is roofed over; perhaps -also a narrow space all round the walls; from all -otherwheres within, one could look up straight into -the murky sky of London. There is apple-eating, -nut-cracking, and some vender of pamphlets bawling -“Buy a new booke;” such a one perhaps as -that <cite>Horne Booke of Gulls</cite>—which I told you of, -written by Dekker—would have been a favorite for -such venders. Or, possibly through urgence of the -Court Chamberlain, King James’ <cite>Counterblaste to -Tobacco</cite> may be put on sale there, to mend manners; -or Joshua Sylvester’s little poem to the same<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> -end, entitled <cite>Tobacco battered and the Pipes shattered -about their Eares that idly idolize so base and barbarous -a Weed, by a Volley of hot shot, thundered from -Mount Helicon</cite>.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“How juster will the Heavenly God,</div> -<div class="verse">Th’ Eternal, punish with infernal rod</div> -<div class="verse">In Hell’s dark furnace, with black fumes to choak</div> -<div class="verse">Those that on Earth will still offend in Smoak.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>But hot as this sort of shot might have been, we -may be sure that some fast fellows, the critics and -<i lang="el">æsthetes</i> of those days, will have their place on the -stage, sprawling there upon the edge, before the -actors appear; criticising players and audience and -smoking their long pipes; may be taking a hand -at cards, and if very “swell,” tossing the cards over -to people in the pit when once their game is over—a -showy and arrogant largess.</p> - -<p>Perhaps Ben Jonson will come swaggering in, -having taken a glass, or two, very likely, or even -three, in the tap-room of the Tabard Tavern—the -famous Tabard of Chaucer’s tales—which is -within practicable drinking distance; and Will -Shakespeare, if indeed there, may greet him across -two benches with, “Ah, Ben,” and he—tipsily in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> -reply, with “Ah, my good fellow, Will.” Those -prim young men, Beaumont and Fletcher, who are -just now pluming their wings for such dramatic -flights as these two older men have made, may -also be there. And the play will open with three -little bursts of warning music; always a prologue -with a first representation; and it may chance -that the very one we have lighted upon, is some -special exhibit of that great military spectacle -of “Henry V.” which we know, and all the -times between have known; and it may be that -this Shakespeare, being himself author and in a -sense manager of these boards, may come forward -to speak the prologue himself; how closely we -would have eyed him, and listened:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent6">“Pardon, gentles all;</div> -<div class="verse">The flat, unraiséd spirit, that hath dared</div> -<div class="verse">On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth</div> -<div class="verse">So great an object: Can this cockpit hold</div> -<div class="verse">The vasty fields of France? or may we cram</div> -<div class="verse">Within this wooden O, the very casques</div> -<div class="verse">That did affright the air at Agincourt?</div> -<div class="verse">Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts,</div> -<div class="verse">Into a thousand parts divide one man;</div> -<div class="verse">Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth,</div> -<div class="verse">For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,</div> -<div class="verse">Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times;</div> -<div class="verse">Turning the accomplishment of many years</div> -<div class="verse">Into an hour-glass.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>And then the play begins and we see them all: -Gloucester and the brave king, and Bedford, and -Fluellen, and the pretty Kate of France (by some -boy-player), and Nym, and Pistol, and Dame -Quickly; and the drums beat, and the roar of battle -breaks and rolls away—as only Shakespeare’s -words can make battles rage; and the French Kate -is made Queen, and so the end comes.</p> - -<p>All this might have happened; I have tried to -offend against no historic data of places, or men, or -dates in this summing up. And from the doors of -the Globe, where we are assailed by a clamor of -watermen and linkboys, we go down to the river’s -edge—scarce a stone’s-throw distant—and take -our wherry, on the bow of which a light is now -flaming, and float away in the murky twilight upon -that great historic river—watching the red torch-fires, -kindling one by one along the Strand shores, -and catching the dim outline of London houses—the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> -London of King James I.—looming through -the mists behind them.</p> - -<p>In our next chapter I shall have somewhat more -to say of the Stratford man—specially of his personality; -and more to say of King James, and of his -English Bible.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</h2> - -<p class="dropcap">We have had our glimpse of the first (English) -Stuart King, as he made his shambling -way to the throne—beset by spoilsmen; we -had our glimpse, too, of that haughty, high-souled, -unfortunate Sir Walter Raleigh, whose memory all -Americans should hold in honor. We had our little -look through the magic-lantern of Scott at the toilet -and the draggled feathers of the pedant King -James, and upon all that hurly-burly of London -where the Scotch Nigel adventured; and through -the gossipy Harrison we set before ourselves a -great many quaint figures of the time. We saw a -bride whose silken dresses whisked along those balusters -of Crosby Hall, which brides of our day may -touch reverently now; we followed Ben Jonson, -afoot, into Scotland, and among the pretty scenes -of Eskdale; and thereafter we sauntered down<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> -Ludgate Hill, and so, by wherry, to Bankside and -the Globe, where we paid our shilling, and passed -the time o’ day with Ben Jonson; and saw young -Francis Beaumont, and smelt the pipes; and had a -glimpse of Shakespeare. But we must not, for this -reason, think that all the world of London smoked, -or all the world of London went to the Globe Theatre.</p> - -<h3>Gosson and Other Puritans.</h3> - -<p>There was at this very time, living and preaching, -in the great city, a certain Stephen Gosson<a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a>—well-known, -doubtless, to Ben Jonson and his fellows—who -had received a university education, -who had written delicate pastorals and other verse, -which—with many people—ranked him with -Spenser and Sidney; who had written plays too, but -who, somehow conscience-smitten, and having gone -over from all dalliance with the muses to extremest -Puritanism, did thereafter so inveigh against -“<cite>Poets, Players, Jesters, and such like Caterpillars of -the Commonwealth</cite>”—as he called them—as made -him rank, for fierce invective, with that Stubbes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> -whose onslaught upon the wickedness of the day I -cited. He had called his discourse, “<cite>pleasant for -Gentlemen that favor Learning, and profitable for all -that will follow Vertue</cite>.” He represented the Puritan -feeling—which was growing in force—in respect -to poetry and the drama; and, I have no -doubt, regarded Mr. William Shakespeare as one of -the best loved and trusted emissaries of Satan.</p> - -<p>But between the rigid sectarians and those of -easy-going faith who were wont to meet at the Mermaid -Tavern, there was a third range of thinking -and of thinkers;—not believing all poetry and poets -Satanic, and yet not neglectful of the offices of -Christianity. The King himself would have ranked -with these; and so also would the dignitaries of -that English Church of which he counted himself, -in some sense, the head. It was in the first year of -his reign, 1603—he having passed a good part of -the summer in hunting up and down through the -near counties—partly from his old love of such -things, partly to be out of reach of the plague -which ravaged London that year (carrying off over -thirty thousand people); it was, I say, in that first -year that, at the instance of some good Anglicans,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> -he issued a proclamation—“<cite>Touching a meeting for -the hearing and for the determining things pretended -to be amiss in the Church.</cite>”</p> - -<p>Out of this grew a conference at Hampton Court, -in January, 1604. Twenty-five were called to that -gathering, of whom nine were Bishops. On no one -day were they all present; nor did there seem -promise of any great outcome from this assemblage, -till one Rainolds, a famous Greek scholar of -Oxford, “moved his Majesty that there might be a -new translation of the Bible, because previous ones -were not answerable altogether to the truth of the -Original.”</p> - -<h3>King James’ Bible.</h3> - -<p>There was discussion of this; my Lord Bancroft, -Bishop of London, venturing the sage remark that -if every man’s humor should be followed, there -would be no end of translating. In the course of -the talk we may well believe that King James nodded -approval of anything that would flatter his -kingly vanities, and shook his big unkempt head at -what would make call for a loosening of his purse-strings. -But out of this slumberous conference,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> -and out of these initial steps, did come the scriptural -revision; and did come that noble monument -of the English language, and of the Christian faith, -sometimes called “King James’ Bible,” though—for -anything that the old gentleman had to do vitally -or specifically with the revision—it might as -well have been called the Bible of King James’ tailor, -or the Bible of King James’ cat.</p> - -<p>It must be said, however, for the King, that he -did press for a prompt completion of the work, and -that “it should be done by the best learned in both -universities.” Indeed, if the final dedication of the -translators to the “most High, and Mighty Prince -James” (which many a New England boy of fifty -years ago wrestled with in the weary lapses of too -long a sermon) were to be taken in its literal -significance, the obligations to him were immense; -after thanking him as “principal mover and author -of the work,” the dedication exuberantly declares -that “the hearts of all your loyal and religious people -are so bound and firmly knit unto you, that -your very name is precious among them: Their -eye doth behold you with comfort, and they bless -you in their hearts, as that sanctified person, who,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> -under God, is the immediate author of their true -Happiness.” The King’s great reverence for the -Scriptures is abundantly evidenced by that little -tractate of his—the <cite>Basilikon Doron</cite>—not written -for publication (though surreptitiously laid hold of -by the book-makers) but intended for the private -guidance of his eldest son, Prince Henry, in that -time heir to the throne. The little book shows -large theologic discretions; and—saving some -scornings of the “vaine, Pharisaicall Puritaines”—is -written in a spirit which might be safely commended -to later British Princes.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“When yee reade the Scripture [says the King] reade it -with a sanctified and chast hart; admire reverentlie such -obscure places as ye understand not, blaming only your own -capacitie; reade with delight the plaine places, and study -carefully to understand those that are somewhat difficile: -preasse to be a good textuare; for the Scripture is ever the -best interpreter of itselfe.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Some forty odd competent men were set out -from the universities and elsewheres for the work -of the Bible revision. Yet they saw none of King -James’ money, none from the royal exchequer; -which indeed from the King’s disorderly extravagances,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> -that helped nobody, was always lamentably -low. The revisers got their rations, when they -came together in conference, in Commons Hall, or -where and when they could; and only at the last -did some few of them who were engaged in the -final work of proof-reading, get a stipend of some -thirty shillings a week from that fraternity of book-makers -who were concerned with the printing and -selling of the new Bible.</p> - -<p>When the business of revision actually commenced -it is hard to determine accurately; but it -was not till the year 1611—eight years after the -Hampton Conference—that an edition was published -by printer Barker (who, or whose company, -was very zealous about the matter, it being a fat -job for him) and so presently, under name of King -James’ version “appointed (by assemblage of Bishops) -to be read in churches,” it came to be the -great Bible of the English-speaking world—then, -and thence-forward. And now, who were the forty -men who dealt so wisely and sparingly with the -old translators; who came to their offices of revision -with so tender a reverence, and who put such -nervous, masculine, clear-cut English into their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> -own emendations of this book as to leave it a monument -of Literature? Their names are all of record: -and yet if I were to print them, the average -reader would not recognize, I think, a single one -out of the twoscore.<a name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> You would not find Bacon’s -name, who, not far from this time was writing some -of his noblest essays, and also writing (on the -King’s suggestion) about preaching and Church -management. You would not find the name of -William Camden, who was then at the mellow age -of sixty, and of a rare reputation for learning and -for dignity of character. You would not find the -name of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who though -writing much of religious intention, was deistically -inclined; nor of Robert Burton, churchman, and -author of that famous book <cite>The Anatomy of Melancholy</cite>—then<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> -in his early prime; nor of Sir Walter -Raleigh, nor of Sir Thomas Overbury—both now -at the date of their best powers; nor yet would one -find mention of John Donne,<a name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> though he came to -be Dean of St. Paul’s and wrote poems the reader -may—and ought to know; nor, yet again, is there -any hearing of Sir John Davies, who had commended -himself specially to King James, and who -had written poetically and reverently on the <cite>Immortality -of the Soul</cite><a name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> in strains that warrant our citing -a few quatrains:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“At first, her mother Earth she holdeth dear,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And doth embrace the world and worldly things:</div> -<div class="verse">She flies close by the ground, and hovers here,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And mounts not up with her celestial wings.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Yet under heaven she cannot light on aught</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That with her heavenly nature doth agree;</div> -<div class="verse">She cannot rest, she cannot fix her thought,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">She cannot in this world contented be:</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“For who, did ever yet, in honor, wealth,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Or pleasure of the sense, contentment find?</div> -<div class="verse">Who ever ceased to wish, when he had health?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Or, having wisdom, was not vexed in mind?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Then, as a bee which among weeds doth fall,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Which seem sweet flowers, with lustre fresh and gay;</div> -<div class="verse">She lights on that and this, and tasteth all,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But, pleased with none, doth rise and soar away!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>This is a long aside; but it gives us good breath -to go back to our translators, who if not known to -the general reader, were educators or churchmen of -rank; men of trained minds who put system and -conscience and scholarship into their work. And -their success in it, from a literary aspect only, shows -how interfused in all cultivated minds of that day -was a keen apprehension and warm appreciation of -the prodigious range, and the structural niceties, -and rhythmic forces of that now well-compacted -English language which Chaucer and Spenser and -Shakespeare, each in his turn, had published to the -world, with brilliant illustration.</p> - -<p>And will this old Bible of King James’ version -continue to be held in highest reverence? Speaking -from a literary point of view—which is our<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> -stand-point to-day—there can be no doubt that it -will; nor is there good reason to believe that—on -literary lines—any other will ever supplant it. -There may be versions that will be truer to the -Greek; there may be versions that will be far -truer to the Hebrew; there may be versions that -will mend its science—that will mend its archæology—that -will mend its history; but never one, -I think, which, as a whole, will greatly mend that -orderly and musical and forceful flow of language -springing from early English sources, chastened by -Elizabethan culture and flowing out—freighted -with Christian doctrine—over all lands where -Saxon speech is uttered. Nor in saying this, do -I yield a jot to any one—in respect for that -modern scholarship which has shown bad renderings -from the Greek, and possibly far worse ones -from the Hebrew. No one—it is reasonably to be -presumed—can safely interpret doctrines of the -Bible without the aid of this scholarship and of -the “higher criticism;” and no one will be henceforth -fully trusted in such interpretation who is -ignorant of, or who scorns the recent revisions.</p> - -<p>And yet the old book, by reason of its strong,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> -sweet, literary quality, will keep its hold in most -hearts and most minds. Prove to the utmost that -the Doxology,<a name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> at the end of the Lord’s Prayer, is -an interpolation—that it is nowhere in the earlier -Greek texts (and I believe it is abundantly proven), -and yet hundreds, and thousands, and tens of thousands -who use that invocation, will keep on saying, -in the rhythmic gush of praise, which is due maybe -to some old worthy of the times of the Henrys (perhaps -Tyndale himself)—“For thine is the Kingdom, -and the Power, and the Glory, for ever and -ever, Amen!”</p> - -<p>And so with respect to that splendid Hebraic -poem of Job, or that mooted book of Ecclesiastes; -no matter what critical scholarship may do in amplification -or curtailment, it can never safely or -surely refine away the marvellous graces of their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> -strong, old English current—burdened with tender -memories—murmurous with hopes drifting -toward days to come—“or ever the silver cord be -loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher -be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at -the cistern.”</p> - -<p>The scientists may demonstrate that this ancient -oak—whose cooling shadows have for so many -ages given comfort and delight—is overgrown, unshapely, -with needless nodules, and corky rind, -and splotches of moss, and seams that show stress -of gone-by belaboring tempests; they may make -it clear that these things are needless for its support—that -they cover and cloak its normal organic -structure; but who shall hew them clean away, and -yet leave in fulness of stature and of sheltering -power the majestic growth we venerate? I know -the reader may say that this is a sentimental view; -so it is; but science cannot measure the highest -beauty of a poem; and with whose, or what fine -scales shall we weigh the sanctities of religious -awe?</p> - -<p>It must be understood, however, that the charms -of the “King James’ Version” do not lie altogether<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> -in Elizabethan beauties of phrase, or in Jacobean -felicities; there are quaint archaisms in it which -we are sure have brought their pleasant reverberations -of lingual sound all the way down from the -days of Coverdale, of Tyndale, and of Wyclif.</p> - -<p>A few facts about the printing and publishing -of the early English Bibles it may be well to -call to mind. In a previous chapter I spoke of the -fatherly edicts against Bible-reading and Bible-owning -in the time of Henry VIII.; but the reign -of his son, Edward VI., was a golden epoch for the -Bible printers. During the six years when this -boy-king held the throne, fifty editions—principally -Coverdale’s and Tyndale’s versions—were -issued, and no less than fifty-seven printers were -engaged in their manufacture.</p> - -<p>Queen Mary made difficulties again, of which a -familiar and brilliant illustration may be found in -that old New England Primer which sets forth in -ghastly wood-cut “the burning of Mr. John Rogers -at the Stake, in Smithfield.” Elizabeth was -coy; she set a great many prison-doors open; and -when a courtier said, “May it please your Majesty, -there be sundry other prisoners held in durance,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> -and it would much comfort God’s people that they -be set free.” She asked, “Whom?” And the good -Protestant said, “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.” -But she—young as she was—showed her monarch -habit. “Let us first find,” said she, “if they wish -enlargement.”</p> - -<p>But she had accepted the gift of a Bible on first -passing through Cheapside—had pressed it to her -bosom in sight of the street people, and said she -should “oft read that holy book”—which was easy -to say, and becoming.</p> - -<p>In the early days of her reign the Genevan Bible, -always a popular one in England, was completed, -and printed mostly in Geneva; but a privilege for -printing it in England was assigned to John Bodley—that -John Bodley whose more eminent son, -Sir Thomas, afterward founded and endowed the -well-known Bodleian Library at Oxford.</p> - -<p>In the early part of Elizabeth’s reign appeared, -too, the so-called Bishops’ Bible (now a rare book), -under charge of Archbishop Parker, fifteen dignitaries -of the Church being joined with him in its -supervision. There were engravings on copper -and wood—of Elizabeth, on the title-page—of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> -gay Earl of Leicester at the head of the Book of -Joshua, and of old, nodding Lord Burleigh in the -Book of Psalms. But the Bishops’ Bible was never -so popular as the Geneva one. During the reign -of Elizabeth there were no less than one hundred -and thirty distinct issues of Bibles and Testaments, -an average of three a year.</p> - -<p>It may interest our special parish to know further -that the first American (English) Bible was printed -at Philadelphia, by a Scotchman named Aitkin, in -the year 1782; but the first Bible printed in America -was in the German language, issued by Christopher -Sauer, at Germantown, in 1743.</p> - -<p>But I will not encroach any further upon biblical -teachings: we will come back to our secular poets, -and to that bravest and finest figure of them all, -who was born upon the Avon.</p> - -<h3>Shakespeare.</h3> - -<p>I have tried—I will confess it now—to pique -the reader’s curiosity, by giving him stolen glimpses -from time to time of the great dramatist, and by -putting off, in chapter after chapter, any full or -detailed mention of him, or of his work. Indeed,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> -when I first entered upon these talks respecting -English worthies—whether places, or writers, or -sovereigns—I said to myself—when we come up -with that famous Shakespeare, whom all the world -knows so well, and about whom so much has been -said and written—we will make our obeisance, lift -our hat, and pass on to the lesser men beyond. So -large a space did the great dramatist fill in the delightsome -journey we were to make together, down -through the pleasant country of English letters, -that he seemed not so much a personality as some -great British stronghold, with outworks, and with -pennons flying—standing all athwart the Elizabethan -Valley, down which our track was to lead us. -From far away back of Chaucer, when the first Romances -of King Arthur were told, when glimpses of -a King Lear and a Macbeth appeared in old chronicles—this -great monument of Elizabethan times -loomed high in our front; and go far as we may -down the current of English letters, it will not be -out of sight, but loom up grandly behind us. And -now that we are fairly abreast of it, my fancy still -clings to that figure of a great castle—brimful of -life—with which the lesser poets of the age contrast<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> -like so many outlying towers, that we can -walk all round about, and measure, and scale, and -tell of their age, and forces, and style; but this -Shakespearean hulk is so vast, so wondrous, so peopled -with creatures, who are real, yet unreal—that -measure and scale count for nothing. We hear -around it the tramp of armies and the blare of -trumpets; yet these do not drown the sick voice of -poor distraught Ophelia. We see the white banner -of France flung to the breeze, and the English columbine -nodding in clefts of the wall; we hear the -ravens croak from turrets that lift above the -chamber of Macbeth, and the howling of the rain-storms -that drenched poor Lear; and we see Jessica -at her casement, and the Jew Shylock whetting -his greedy knife, and the humpbacked Richard -raging in battle, and the Prince boy—apart in his -dim tower—piteously questioning the jailer Hubert, -who has brought “hot-irons” with him. -Then there is Falstaff, and Dame Quickly, and the -pretty Juliet sighing herself away from her moonlit -balcony.</p> - -<p>These are all live people to us; we know them; -and we know Hamlet, and Brutus, and Mark Antony,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> -and the witty, coquettish Rosalind; even the -poor Mariana of the moated grange. We do not -see enough of this latter, to be sure, to give stereoscopic -roundness; but the mere glimpse—allusion—is -of such weight—has such hue of realness, -that it buoys the dim figure over the literary -currents and drifts of two hundred and odd years, -till it gets itself planted anew in the fine lines of -Tennyson;—not as an illusion only, a figment of -the elder imagination chased down and poetically -adopted—but as an historic actuality we have met, -and so, greet with the grace and the knowingness -of old acquaintanceship.</p> - -<p>If you tell me of twenty historic names in these -reigns of Elizabeth and James—names of men or -women whose lives and characters you know best—I -will name to you twenty out of the dramas -of Shakespeare whose lives and characters you -know better.</p> - -<p>And herein lies the difference between this man -Shakespeare, and most that went before him, or -who have succeeded him; he has supplied real -characters to count up among the characters we -know. Chaucer did indeed in that Canterbury Pilgrimage<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> -which he told us of in such winning numbers, -make us know by a mere touch, in some unforgetable -way, all the outer aspects of the Knight, -and the Squire, and the Prioress, and the shrewish -Wife of Bath; but we do not see them insidedly; -and as for the Una, and Gloriana, and Britomart, -of the “Faërie Queene,” they are phantasmic; we -may admire them, but we admire them as we admire -fine bird-plumes tossing airily, delightsomely—they -have no flesh and blood texture: and if I -were to name to you a whole catalogue of the best-drawn -characters out of Jonson, and Fletcher, and -Massinger, and the rest, you would hardly know -them. Will you try? You may know indeed the -Sir Giles Overreach of Massinger, because “A New -Way to Pay Old Debts” has always a certain relish; -and because Sir Giles is a dreadful type of the unnatural, -selfish greed that maddens us everywhere; -but do you know well—Sejanus, or Tamburlaine, -or Bellisant, or Boadicea, or Bellario, or Bobadil, or -Calantha? You do not even know them to bow to. -And this, not alone because we are unused to read -or to hear the plays in which these characters appear, -but because none of them have that vital<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> -roundness, completeness, and individuality which -makes their memory stick in the mind, when once -they have shown their qualities.</p> - -<p>We are, all of us, in the way of meeting people -in respect of whom a week, or even a day of intercourse, -will so fasten upon us—maybe their pungency, -their alertness, or some one of their decided, -fixed, fine attributes, that they thenceforth people -our imagination; not obtrusively there indeed, but -a look, a name, an allusion, calls back their special -significance, as in a photographic blaze. Others -there are, in shoals, whom we may meet, day by -day, month by month, who have such washed-out -color of mind, who do so take hues from all surroundings, -without any strong hue of their own, -that in parting from them we forget, straightway, -what manner of folk they were. You cannot part -so from the people Shakespeare makes you know.</p> - -<h3>Shakespeare’s Youth.</h3> - -<p>And now what was the personality of this man, -who, out of his imagination, has presented to us -such a host of acquaintances? Who was he, where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> -did he live, how did he live, and what about his -father, or his children, or his family retinue?</p> - -<p>And here we are at once confronted by the -awkward fact, that we have less positive knowledge -of him, and of his habits of life than of many smaller -men—poets and dramatists—who belonged to his -time, and who—with a pleasant egoism—let drop -little tidbits of information about their personal -history. But Shakespeare did not write letters that -we know of; he did not prate of himself in his -books; he did not entertain such quarrels with -brother authors as provoked reckless exposure of -the family “wash.” Of Greene, of Nashe, of Dekker, -of Jonson, of Beaumont and Fletcher, we have -personal particulars about their modes of living, -their associates, their dress even, which we seek for -vainly in connection with Shakespeare. This is -largely due, doubtless—aside from the pleasant -egoism at which I have hinted—to the circumstance -that most of these were university men, and -had very many acquaintances among those of culture -who kept partial record of their old associates. -But no school associate of Shakespeare ever kept -track of <em>him</em>; he ran out of sight of them all.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p> - -<p>He did study, however, in his young days, at that -old town of Stratford, where he was born—his -father being fairly placed there among the honest -tradespeople who lived around. The ancient timber-and-plaster -shop is still standing in Henley Street, -where his father served his customers—whether -in wool, meats, or gloves—and in the upper -front chamber of which Shakespeare first saw the -light. Forty odd years ago, when I first visited it, -the butcher’s fixtures were not wholly taken down -which had served some descendant of the family—in -the female line<a name="FNanchor_13" id="FNanchor_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a>—toward the close of the -eighteenth century, for the cutting of meats. Into -what Pimlico order it may be put to-day, under the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> -hands of the Shakespeare Society, I do not know; -but it is understood that its most characteristic -features are religiously guarded; and house, and -town, and church are all worthy of a visit. The -town does not lie, indeed, on either of those great -thoroughfares which Americans are wont to take on -their quick rush from Liverpool to London, and -the Continent; but it is easily approachable on the -north from Warwick, in whose immediate vicinity -are Kenilworth and Guy’s Cliff; and from the south -through Oxford, whose scores of storied towers and -turrets beguile the student traveller. The country -around Stratford has not, indeed, the varied picturesqueness -of Derbyshire or of Devon; but it -has in full the quiet rural charm that belongs to so -many townships of Middle-England;—hawthorn -hedges, smooth roads, embowered side lanes, great -swells of greensward where sheep are quietly feeding; -clumps of gray old trees, with rookeries planted -in them, and tall chimneys of country houses lifting -over them and puffing out little wavelets of blue -smoke; meadows with cattle browsing on them; -wayside stiles; a river and canals, slumberous in -their tides, with barges of coal and lumber swaying<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> -with the idle currents that swish among the sedges -at the banks.</p> - -<p>On the north, toward Warwick, are the Welcombe -hills, here and there tufted with great trees, -which may have mingled their boughs, in some -early time, with the skirts of the forest of Arden; -and from these heights, looking southwest, one -can see the packed gray and red roofs of the town, -the lines of lime-trees, the elms and the willows of -the river’s margin, out of which rises the dainty -steeple of Stratford church; while beyond, the eye -leaps over the hazy hollows of the Red-horse valley, -and lights upon the blue rim of hills in Gloucestershire, -known as the Cotswolds (which have given -name to one of the famous breeds of English -sheep). More to the left, and nearer to a south -line of view, crops up Edgehill (near to Pilot-Marston), -an historic battle-field—wherefrom Shakespeare, -on his way to London may have looked -back—on spire, and alder copse, and river—with -more or less of yearning. To the right, again, and -more westerly than before, and on the hither side of -the Red-horse valley and plain, one can catch sight -of the rounded thickets of elms and of orcharding<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> -where nestles the hamlet of Shottery. Thence -Shakespeare brought away his bride, Anne Hathaway, -she being well toward the thirties, and he at -that date a prankish young fellow not yet nineteen. -What means he may have had of supporting a family -at this time, we cannot now say; nor could his -father-in-law tell then; on which score there was—as -certain traditions run—some vain demurral. He -may have been associated with his father in trade, -whether as wool-dealer or glover; doubtless was; -doubtless, too, had abandoned all schooling; doubtless -was at all the wakes, and May festivals, and -entertainments of strolling players, and had many -a bout of heavy ale-drinking. There are stories too—of -lesser authenticity—that he was over-familiar -with the game in the near Park of Charlecote, -whereby he came to ugly issue with its owner. We -shall probably never know the truth about these -stories. Charlecote House is still standing, a few -miles out of the town (northeasterly), and its delightful -park, and picturesque mossy walls—dappled -with patches of shadow and with ivy leaves—look -charmingly innocent of any harm their master -could have done to William Shakespeare; but certain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> -it is that the neighborhood grew too warm for -him; and that he set off one day (being then about -twenty-three years old) for London, to seek his -fortune.</p> - -<h3>Family Relations.</h3> - -<p>His wife and three children<a name="FNanchor_14" id="FNanchor_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> stayed behind. In -fact—and it may as well be said here—they always -stayed behind. It does not appear that throughout -the twenty or more succeeding years, during which -Shakespeare was mostly in London, that either wife -or child was ever domiciled with him there for ever -so little time. Indeed, for the nine years immediately -following Shakespeare’s departure from Stratford, -traces of his special whereabouts are very dim; -we know that rising from humblest work in connection -with companies of players, he was blazing -a great and most noticeable path for himself; but -whether through those nine years he was tied to -the shadow of London houses, or was booked for -up-country expeditions, or (as some reckon) made<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> -brief continental journeyings, we cannot surely -tell. In 1596, however, on the occasion of his son -Hamnet’s death, he appears in Stratford again, in -the prime of his powers then, a well-to-do man -(buying New Place the year following), his London -fame very likely blazoning his path amid old towns-people—grieving -over his lost boy, whom he can -have seen but little—perhaps putting some of the -color of his private sorrow upon the palette where -he was then mingling the tints for his play of “Romeo -and Juliet.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Oh, my love,</div> -<div class="verse">Death that hath sucked the honey of thy breath</div> -<div class="verse">Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.</div> -<div class="verse">Thou art not conquered; Beauty’s ensign yet</div> -<div class="verse">Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks,</div> -<div class="verse">And death’s pale flag is not advanced there.</div> -<div class="verse">Why art thou yet so fair?”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>His two daughters lived to maturity—both -marrying; the favorite and elder daughter, Susanna, -becoming the wife of Dr. Hall, a well-established -physician in Stratford, who attended the -poet in his last illness, and who became his executor. -Shakespeare was—so far as known—watchful -and tender of his children’s interest: nor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> -is there positive evidence that he was otherwise to -his wife, save such inferences as may be drawn -from the tenor of some of his sonnets, and from -those long London absences, over which it does not -appear that either party greatly repined. Long absences -are not <i lang="la">prima-facie</i> evidence of a lack of domestic -harmonies; do indeed often promote them -in a limited degree; and at worst, may possibly -show only a sagacious disposition to give pleasant -noiselessness to bickerings that would be inevitable.</p> - -<p>It is further to be borne in mind, in partial -vindication of Shakespeare’s marital loyalty, that -this period of long exile from the family roof entailed -not only absence from his wife, but also from -father and mother—both of whom were living -down to a date long subsequent,<a name="FNanchor_15" id="FNanchor_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> and with whom—specially -the mother—most affectionate relations -are undoubted. A disloyalty that would have -made him coy of wifely visitings could hardly -harden him to filial duties, while the phlegmatic -indifference of a very busy London man, which -made him chary of home visitings, would go far to -explain the seeming family estrangement.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p> - -<p>But we must not, and cannot reckon the Stratford -poet as a paragon of all the virtues; his long -London absences, for cause or for want of cause—or -both—may have given many twinges of pain -to his own mother (of Arden blood), and to the -mother of his children. Yet after the date of his -boy’s death, up to the time of his final return to -Stratford there are evidences of very frequent -home visits, and of large interest in what concerned -his family and towns-people.</p> - -<p>His journeyings to and fro, probably on horseback, -may have taken him by way of Edgehill, and -into Banbury (of “Banbury-Cross” buns); or, more -likely, he would have followed the valley of the -Stour by Shipston, and thence up the hills to -Chipping-Norton, and skirting Whichwood Forest, -which still darkens a twelve-mile stretch of land -upon the right, and so by Ditchley and the great -Woodstock Park, into Oxford. I recall these names -and the succession of scenes the more distinctly, -for the reason that some forty years ago I went -over the whole stretch of road from Windsor to -Stratford on foot, staying the nights at wayside -inns, and lunching at little, mossy hostelries, some of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> -which the poet may possibly have known, and looking -out wonderingly and reverently for glimpses of -wood, or field, or flood, that may have caught the -embalmment of his verse. It was worth getting up -betimes to verify such lines as these:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Full many a glorious morning have I seen</div> -<div class="verse">Kissing with golden face the meadows green,</div> -<div class="verse">Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">or those others, telling how the gentle day</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Dapples the drowsy East with spots of gray.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Again, there was delightful outlook for</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">“——a bank whereon the wild thyme blows</div> -<div class="verse">Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows;”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">or, perhaps it was the</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Summer’s green, all girded up in sheaves”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">that caught the eye; or, yet again, the picturesque -hedge-rows, which,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Like prisoners overgrown with hair</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Put forth disordered twigs;</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">and these flanked by some</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">“——even mead, which erst brought sweetly forth</div> -<div class="verse">The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p> -<p>What a wondrous light upon all the landscape -along all the courses of his country journeyings! -Nor can I forbear to tell how such illumination -once made gay for me all the long foot-tramp from -Chipping-Norton to Stratford—past Long Compton, -and past Shipston (with lunch at the “Royal -George”)—past Atherton Church, and thence -along the lovely Stour banks, and some weary miles -of grassy level, till the spire of Trinity rose shimmering -in the late sunlight; afterward copses of -elms, and willows clearly distinguishable, and throwing -afternoon shadows on the silvery stretch of the -Avon; then came sight of lazy boats, and of Clopton -bridge, over which I strolled foot-weary, into streets -growing dim in the twilight; coming thus, by a traveller’s -chance, into the court of the Red-Horse Tavern, -and into its little back-parlor, where after dinner -one was served by the gracious hostess with a copy -of Irving’s “Sketch Book” (its Stratford chapter all -tattered and thumb-worn). In short, I had the rare -good fortune to stumble upon the very inn where -Geoffrey Crayon was quartered twenty odd years before, -and was occupying, for the nonce, the very -parlor where he had thrust his feet into slippers,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> -made a sceptre of the poker, and enjoyed the royalties -of “mine inn.”</p> - -<h3>Shakespeare in London.</h3> - -<p>But how fares our runaway Shakespeare in -London? What is he to do there? We do not -positively know that he had a solitary acquaintance -established in the city; certainly not one of a high -and helping position. He was not introduced, as -Spenser had been, by Sir Philip Sidney and by -Raleigh to the favor of the Queen. He has no literary -backing of the colleges, or of degrees, or of -learned associates; nay, not being so high placed, -or so well placed, but that his townsmen of most -respectability shook their heads at mention of him.</p> - -<p>But he has heard the strolling players; perhaps -has journeyed up in their trail; he has read broadsides, -very likely, from London; we may be sure -that he has tried his hand at verses, too, in those -days when he went courting to the Hathaway cottage. -So he drifts to the theatres, of which there -were three at least established, when he first -trudged along the Strand toward Blackfriars. He -gets somewhat to do in connection with them;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> -precisely what that is, we do not know. But he -comes presently to be enrolled as player, taking old -men’s parts that demand feeling and dignity. We -know, too, that he takes to the work of mending -plays, and splicing good parts together. Sneered at -very likely, by the young fellows from the universities -who are doing the same thing, and may be, -writing plays of their own; but lacking Shakespeare’s -instinct as to what will take hold of the -popular appetite, or rather—let us say—what will -touch the human heart.</p> - -<p>There are poems, too, that he writes early in this -town life of his, dedicated to that Earl of Southampton<a name="FNanchor_16" id="FNanchor_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> -of whom I have already spoken, and into -whose good graces he has somehow fallen. But -the Earl is eight or ten years his junior, a mere boy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> -in fact, just from Cambridge, strangely attracted by -this high-browed, blue-eyed, sandy-haired young -fellow from Stratford, who has shown such keenness -and wondrous insight.</p> - -<p>Would you hear a little bit of what he wrote in -what he calls the “first heir of my invention?” It -is wonderfully descriptive of a poor hare who is -hunted by hounds; which he had surely seen over -and again on the Oxfordshire or Cotswold downs:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Sometimes he runs among a flock of sheep,</div> -<div class="verse">To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell,</div> -<div class="verse">And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer;</div> -<div class="verse">Danger deviseth shifts; wit waits on fear.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“For there, his smell, with others being mingled,</div> -<div class="verse">The hot-scent snuffing hounds are driven to doubt,</div> -<div class="verse">Ceasing their clamorous cry, till they have singled</div> -<div class="verse">With much ado, the cold fault clearly out;</div> -<div class="verse">Then do they spend their mouths: Echo replies</div> -<div class="verse">As if another chase were in the skies.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“By this poor Wat, far off upon a hill,</div> -<div class="verse">Stands on his hinder legs with listening fear,</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> -<div class="verse">To hearken if his foes pursue him still;</div> -<div class="verse">Anon, their loud alarums he doth hear;</div> -<div class="verse">And now his grief may be comparéd well</div> -<div class="verse">To one sore-sick, that hears the passing bell.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>It must have been close upon this that his first -play was written and played, though not published -until some years after. It may have been “Love’s -Labor’s Lost,” it may have been the “Two Gentlemen -of Verona;” no matter what: I shall not enter -into the question of probable succession of his -plays, as to which critics will very likely be never -wholly agreed.<a name="FNanchor_17" id="FNanchor_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> It is enough that he wrote them; -the merry ones when his heart was light, and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> -tragic ones when grief lay heavily upon him. And -yet this is only partially true; he had such amazing -power of subordinating his feeling to his thought.</p> - -<p>I wonder how much of his own hopes and possible -foretaste he did put into the opening lines -of what, by most perhaps, is reckoned his first -play:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Let Fame, that all hunt after in their lives,</div> -<div class="verse">Live registered upon our brazen tombs,</div> -<div class="verse">And then grace us in the disgrace of Death;</div> -<div class="verse">When, spite of cormorant-devouring Time,</div> -<div class="verse">The endeavor of this present breath may buy</div> -<div class="verse">That honor, which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge</div> -<div class="verse">And make us heirs of all Eternity!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<h3>Work and Reputation.</h3> - -<p>And what was thought of him in those first days? -Not overmuch; none looked upon him as largely -overtopping his compeers of that day. His <cite>Venus -and Adonis</cite><a name="FNanchor_18" id="FNanchor_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> was widely and admiringly known: so -was his <cite>Lucrece</cite>; but Marlowe’s “sound and fury” -in “Tamburlaine” would have very possibly drawn -twice the house of “Love’s Labor’s Lost.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></p> - -<p>He had no coterie behind him; he was hail-fellow -with Jonson; probably knew Peele and Marlowe -well; undoubtedly knew Drayton; he went to -the Falcon and the Mermaid; but there is, I believe, -no certain evidence that he ever saw much of Raleigh, -or of Spenser, who was living some years -after he came to London. It is doubtful, indeed, -if the poet of the <cite>Faery Queene</cite> knew him at all. -Sidney he probably never saw; nor did he ever go, -so far as appears, to dine with the great Francis -Bacon, as Jonson without doubt sometimes did, or -with Burleigh, or with Cecil.</p> - -<p>His lack of precise learning may have made him -inapt for encounter with school-men. But he had -a faculty of apprehension that transcended mere -scholastic learning—apprehending everywhere, in -places where studious ones were blind. I can imagine -that Oxford men—just up in town or those -who had written theses for university purposes, -would sneer at such show of learning as he made;—call -it cheap erudition—call it result of cramming—as -many university men do nowadays when -they find a layman and outsider hitting anything -that respects learning in the eye. But, ah, what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> -a gift of cramming! What a gift of apprehension! -What a swift march over the hedges that -cramp schools! What a flight, where other men -walked, and were dazed and discomfited by this -unheard-of progress into the ways of knowledge -and of wisdom!</p> - -<p>Again, these Shakespeare plays do sometimes -show crude things, vulgar things, coarse things—things -we want to skip and do skip—things that -make us wonder if he ever wrote them; perhaps -some which in the mendings and tinkerings of -those and later days have no business there; and -yet he was capable of saying coarse things; he did -have a shrewd eye for the appetites of the groundlings; -he did look on all sides, and into all depths -of the moral Cosmos he was rounding out; and -even his commonest utterances, have, after all, a certain -harmony, though in lowest key, with the general -drift. He is not always, as some of his dramatic -compeers were, on tragic stilts. He is never -under strain to float high.</p> - -<p>Then, too, like Chaucer—his noblest twin-fellow -of English poesy—he steals, plagiarizes, takes tales -of passion, and love, and wreck, wherever in human<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> -history he can find them, to work into his purposes. -But even the authors could scarce recognize the -thefts in either case, so glorified are they by the -changes they undergo under these wonder-making -hands.</p> - -<p>As with story, so it is with sentiment. This he -steals out of men’s brains and hearts by wholesale. -What smallest poet, whether in print or talk, could -have failed to speak of man’s journey to his last -home? Shakespeare talks of</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“That undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns,”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">and the sentiment is so imaged, and carries such a -trail of agreeing and caressing thoughts, that it -supplants all kindred speech.</p> - -<p>“This life,” says Shakespeare, “is but a stage;” -and the commentators can point you out scores of -like similes in older writers—Erasmus among the -rest, whose utterance seems almost duplicated; -duplicated, indeed, but with a tender music, and a -point, and a breadth, that make all previous related -similes forgotten. Such utterances grow out of -instincts common to us all; but this man, in whom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> -the common instinct is a masterful alembic, fuses -all old teachings, and white-hot they run out of the -crucible of his soul in such beauteous shapes that -they are sought for and gloried in forever after. -Many a Hamlet has soliloquized—you and I perhaps; -but never a Hamlet in such way as did Shakespeare’s; -so crisp—so full—so suggestive—so marrowy—so -keen—so poignant—so enthralling.</p> - -<p>No, no; this man did not go about in quest of -newnesses; only little geniuses do that; but the -great genius goes along every commonest road-side, -looking on every commonest sight of tree or flower, -of bud, of death, of birth, of flight, of labor, of -song; leads in old tracks; deals in old truths, but -with such illuminating power that they all come -home to men’s souls with new penetrative force and -new life in them. He catches by intuition your -commonest thought, and my commonest thought, -and puts them into new and glorified shape.</p> - -<h3>His Thrift and Closing Years.</h3> - -<p>Again, this Shakespeare of ours, singing among -the stars, is a shrewd, thrifty man; he comes to -have an interest in all those shillings and sixpences<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> -that go into the till of the Globe Theatre; he makes -money. Where he lived in London,<a name="FNanchor_19" id="FNanchor_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> we do not -definitely know; at one time, it is believed, on the -Southwark side, near to the old Bear-garden,<a name="FNanchor_20" id="FNanchor_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> but -never ostentatiously; very likely sharing chambers -with his brother Edmond, who was much time an -actor there;<a name="FNanchor_21" id="FNanchor_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> he buys a house and haberdasher’s -shop somewhere near Blackfriars; and he had previously -bought, with his savings—even before -Queen Elizabeth was dead—a great house in -Stratford. This he afterwards equips by purchase -of outlying lands—a hundred acres at one time,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> -and twenty and more at another. He has never -forgotten and never forgotten to love, country sights -and sounds. These journeyings to and fro along -the Oxford and Uxbridge road (on horseback probably), -from which he can see sheer over hedges, and -note every fieldfare, every lark rising to its morning -carol, every gleam of brook, have kept alive his old -fondnesses, and he counts surely on a return to -these scenes in his great New Place of Stratford. -He does break away for that Stratford cover, while -the game of life seems still at its best promise; -while Hamlet is still comparatively a new man upon -the boards; does settle himself in that country -home, to gather his pippins, to pet his dogs, to -wander at will upon greensward that is his own.</p> - -<p>I wish we had record of only one of his days in -that retirement. I wish we could find even a two-page -letter which he may have written to Ben Jonson, -in London, telling how his time passed; but -there is nothing—positively nothing. We do not -know how, or by what exposure or neglect his last -illness came upon him and carried him to his final -home, only two years or so after his return to Stratford. -Even that Dr. Hall, who had married his favorite<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> -daughter, and who attended him, and who -published a medical book containing accounts of a -thousand and more cases which he thought of consequence -for the world to know about, has no word -to say concerning this grandest patient that his eye -ever fell upon.</p> - -<p>He died at the age of fifty-three. No descendant -of his daughter Susanna is alive; no descendant -of his daughter Judith is alive.<a name="FNanchor_22" id="FNanchor_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> The great new -home which he had built up in Stratford is torn<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> -down; scarce a vestige of it remains. The famous -mulberry-tree he planted upon that greensward, -where, in after years, Garrick and the rest held high -commemorative festival, is gone, root and branch.</p> - -<p>Shakespeare—an old county guide-book tells -us stolidly—is a name unknown in that region. -Unknown! Every leaf of every tree whispers it; -every soaring skylark makes a carol of it; and -the memory of it flows out thence—as flows the -Stratford river—down through all the green valley -of the Avon, down through all the green valley -of the Severn, and so on, out to farthest seas, whose -“multitudinous waves” carry it to every shore.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</h2> - -<p class="dropcap">We were venturing upon almost sacred ground -when—in our last chapter—we had somewhat -to say of the so-called King James’ Bible; of -how it came to bear that name; of those men who -were concerned in its translation, and of certain -literary qualities belonging to it, which—however -excellent other and possible future Bibles may be—will -be pretty sure to keep it alive for a very long -time to come. Next, I spoke of that king of the -dramatists who was born at Stratford. We followed -him up to London; tracked him awhile there; talked -of a few familiar aspects of his life and character; -spared you the recital of a world of things—conjectural -or eulogistic—which might be said of him; -and finally saw him go back to his old home upon -the Avon, to play the retired gentleman—last of all -his plays—and to die.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span></p> - -<p>This made a great coupling of topics for one -chapter—Shakespeare and the English Bible! No -two titles in our whole range of talks can or should -so interest those who are alive to the felicities of -English forms of speech, and who are eager to compass -and enjoy its largest and keenest and simplest -forces of phrase. No other vocabulary of -words, and no other exemplar of the aptitudes of -language, than can be found in Shakespeare and in -the English Bible are needed by those who would -equip their English speech for its widest reach, -and with its subtlest or sharpest powers. Out of -those twin treasuries the student may dredge all -the words he wants, and all the turns of expression -that will be helpful, in the writing of a two-page -letter or in the unfolding of an epic. Other books -may make needful reservoir of facts, or record of -theories, or of literary experimentation; but these -twain furnish sufficient lingual armament for all -new conquests in letters.</p> - -<p>We find ourselves to-day amid a great hurly-burly -of dramatists, poets, prose-writers, among whom -we have to pick our way—making a descriptive -dash at some few of them—seeing the old pedant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> -of a king growing more slipshod and more shaky, -till at last he yields the throne to that unfortunate -son of his, Charles I., in whose time we shall find -some new singing-birds in the fields of British -poesy, and birds of a different strain.</p> - -<h3>Webster, Ford, and Others.</h3> - -<p>All those lesser dramatists going immediately before -Shakespeare, and coming immediately after or -with him, may be counted in literary significance -only as the trail to that grander figure which swung -so high in the Elizabethan heavens; many a one -among the lesser men has written something which -has the true poetic ring in it, and is to be treasured; -but ring however loudly it may, and however -musically it may, it will very likely have a -larger and richer echo somewhere in Shakespeare.</p> - -<p>Among the names of those contemporaries whose -names are sure of long survival may be mentioned -John Webster; a Londoner in all probability; working -at plays early in the seventeenth century; his -name appearing on various title-pages up to 1624 -certainly—one time as “merchant tailor;” and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> -there are other intimations that he may have held -some church “clerkship;” but we know positively -very little of him. Throughout the eighteenth century -his name and fame<a name="FNanchor_23" id="FNanchor_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> had slipped away from -people’s knowledge; somewhere about the year -1800 Charles Lamb gave forth his mellow piping -of the dramatist’s deservings; a quarter of a century -later Mr. Dyce<a name="FNanchor_24" id="FNanchor_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> wrote and published what -was virtually a resurrection work for Webster; and -in our time the swift-spoken Swinburne transcends -all the old conventionalities of encyclopædic writing -in declaring this dramatist to be “hardly excelled -for unflagging energy of impression and of -pathos in all the poetic literature of the world.”</p> - -<p>Webster was not a jocund man; he seems to -have taken life in a hard way; he swears at fate. -Humane and pathetic touches there may be in his -plays; but he has a dolorous way of putting all the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> -humanities to simmer in a great broth of crime. -At least this may not be unfairly said of his chiefest -works, and those by which he is best known—the -“Vittoria Corombona” and the “Duchess of Malfi.” -There are blood-curdling scenes in them through -which one is led by a guidance that is as strenuous -as it is fascinating. The drapery is in awful keeping -with the trend of the story; the easy murders -hardly appal one, and the breezes that fan the air -seem to come from the flutter of bat-like, leaden -wings, hiding the blue. There are, indeed, wondrous -flashes of dramatic power; by whiles, too, -there are refreshing openings-out to the light or sinlessness -of common day—a lifting of thought and -consciousness up from the great welter of crime -and crime’s entanglements; but there is little -brightness, sparse sunshine, rare panoply of green -or blooming things; even the flowers are put to -sad offices, and</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent13">“do cover</div> -<div class="verse">The friendless bodies of unburied men.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">When a man’s flower culture gets reduced to such -narrow margin as this it does not carry exhilarating -odors with it.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p> - -<p>John Ford<a name="FNanchor_25" id="FNanchor_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> was another name much coupled in -those and succeeding days with that of Webster; -he was indeed associated with him in some of his -work, as also with Dekker. He was a man of -Devonshire birth, of good family;—a little over-boastful -of being above any “want for money;” -showing traces, indeed, of coarse arrogance, and -swaying dramatically into coarse brutalities. He, -too, was borne down by enslavement to the red -splendors of crime; his very titles carry such foretaste -of foulness we do not name them. There are -bloody horrors and moral ones. Few read him for -love. Murder makes room for incest, and incest -sharpens knives for murder. Animal passions run -riot; the riot is often splendid, but never—to my -mind—making head in such grand dramatic utterance -as crowns the gory numbers of Webster. -There are strong passages, indeed, gleaming out of -the red riotings like blades of steel; now and then -some fine touch of pathos—of quiet contemplative -brooding—lying amid the fiery wrack, like a -violet on banks drenched with turbid floods; but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> -they are rare, and do not compensate—at least -do not compensate me—for the wadings through -bloody, foul quagmires to reach them.</p> - -<p>Marston—another John<a name="FNanchor_26" id="FNanchor_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a>—if not up to the -tragic level of the two last named, had various -talent; wrote satires, parodies; his <cite>Image of Pygmalion</cite> -had the honor of being publicly burned; he -wrought with Jonson on <cite>Eastward Hoe!</cite> won the -piping praises of Charles Lamb in our century, also -of Hazlitt, and the eulogies of later and lesser critics. -But he is coarse, unequal, little read now. I -steal a piquant bit of his satire on metaphysic study -from <cite>What you Will</cite>; it reminds of the frolic moods -of Browning:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent4">“I wasted lamp oil, bated my flesh,</div> -<div class="verse">Shrunk up my veins, and still my spaniel slept;</div> -<div class="verse">And still I held converse with Zabarell,</div> -<div class="verse">Aquinas, Scotus, and the musty saws</div> -<div class="verse">Of antique Donate:—still my spaniel slept.</div> -<div class="verse">Still on went I: first, <i lang="la">an sit anima</i>,</div> -<div class="verse">Then, an’ ’twere mortal. O hold, hold!</div> -<div class="verse">At that they are at brain buffets, fell by the ears</div> -<div class="verse">Amain [pell-mell] together—still my spaniel slept.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Then, whether ’twere corporeal, local, fixed,</div> -<div class="verse"><i lang="la">Ex traduce</i>; but whether’t had free will</div> -<div class="verse">Or no, hot philosophers</div> -<div class="verse">Stood banding factions, all so strongly propped,</div> -<div class="verse">I staggered, knew not which was firmer part;</div> -<div class="verse">But thought, quoted, read, observed, and pried,</div> -<div class="verse">Stuffed noting books,—and still my spaniel slept.</div> -<div class="verse">At length he waked, and yawned, and by yon sky,</div> -<div class="verse">For aught I know, he knew as much as I.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<h3>Massinger, Beaumont, and Fletcher.</h3> - -<p>Some dozen or more existing plays are attributed -to Philip Massinger,<a name="FNanchor_27" id="FNanchor_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> and he was doubtless -the author of many others now unknown save by -name. Of Wiltshire birth, his father had been dependant, -or <i lang="fr">protégé</i> of the Pembroke family, and -the Christian name of Philip very likely kept alive -the paternal reverence for the great Philip Sidney. -Though Massinger was an industrious writer, and -was well accredited in his time, it is certain that he -had many hard struggles, and passed through many -a pinching day; and at the last it would appear that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> -he found burial, only as an outsider and stranger, -in that old church of St. Saviours, near to London -Bridge, where we found John Gower laid to rest -with his books for pillow. If Massinger did not -lift his lines into such gleams of tragic intensity as -we spoke of in Webster and in Ford, he gave good, -workman-like finish to his dramas; and for bloody -apparelling of his plots, I think there are murderous -zealots, in his Sforza<a name="FNanchor_28" id="FNanchor_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> story at least, who -could fairly have clashed swords with the assassins -of “Vittoria Corombona.” It is a large honor to -Massinger that of all the dramas I have named—outside -some few of Shakespeare’s—no one is so -well known to modern play-goers as the “New Way -to Pay Old Debts.” The character of Sir Giles -Overreach does not lose its terrible significance. -In our times, as in the old times,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent8">“He frights men out of their estates,</div> -<div class="verse">And breaks through all law-nets—made to curb ill men—</div> -<div class="verse">As they were cobwebs.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>When Massinger died tradition says that he was -thrust into the same grave which had been opened<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> -shortly before for John Fletcher; if not joined -there, these two had certainly been fellows in literary -work; and there are those who think that the -name of Massinger should have recognition in that -great dramatic copartnery under style of Beaumont -and Fletcher.<a name="FNanchor_29" id="FNanchor_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> Certain it is that other -writers had share in the work; among them—in -at least one instance (that of “Two Noble Kinsmen”)—the -fine hand of Shakespeare.</p> - -<p>But whatever helping touches or of outside -journey-work may have been contributed to that -mass of plays which bears name of Beaumont and -Fletcher, it is certain that they hold of right that -brilliant reputation for deft and lively and winning -dramatic work which put their popularity before -Jonson’s, if not before Shakespeare’s. The coupling -together of this pair of authors at their work -has the air of romance; both were well born; -Fletcher, son of a bishop; Beaumont, son of Sir -Francis Beaumont, of Grace-Dieu (not far away -from Ashby-de-la-Zouch); both were university -men, and though differing in age by eight or nine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> -years, yet coming—very likely through the good -offices of Ben Jonson—to that sharing of home and -work and wardrobe which the old gossip Aubrey<a name="FNanchor_30" id="FNanchor_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> -has delighted in picturing. They wrought charmingly -together, and with such a nice welding of -jointures, that literary craftsmen, of whatever astuteness, -are puzzled to say where the joinings -lie. In agreement, however, with opinions of best -critics, it may be said that Beaumont (the younger, -who died nine years before his mate) was possessed -of the deeper poetic fervors, while Fletcher -was wider in fertilities and larger in affluence of -diction.</p> - -<p>The dramatic horrors of Ford and Webster are -softened in the lines of these later playwrights. -These are debonair; they are lively; they are jocund;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> -they tell stories that have a beginning and -an end; they pique attention; there are delicacies, -too, and—it must be said—a good many indelicacies; -there are light-virtued women, and marital -infelicities get an easy ripening toward the over-ripeness -and rottenness that is to come in Restoration -times. These twain were handsome fellows, -by Aubrey’s and all other accounts; Beaumont most -noticeably so; and Fletcher—brightly swarthy, -red-haired, full-blooded—dying a bachelor and of -the plague, down in the time of Charles I., and -thrust hastily into the grave at St. Saviours, where -Massinger presently followed him.</p> - -<p>I must give at least one taste of the dramatic -manner for which both of these men were sponsors. -It is from the well-known play of “Philaster” that -I quote, where Euphrasia tells of the tender discovery -of what stirred her heart:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent4">“My father oft would speak</div> -<div class="verse">Your worth and virtue: And as I did grow</div> -<div class="verse">More and more apprehensive, I did thirst</div> -<div class="verse">To see the man so praised; but yet all this</div> -<div class="verse">Was but a maiden longing, to be lost</div> -<div class="verse">As soon as found; till, sitting in my window</div> -<div class="verse">Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a god</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> -<div class="verse">I thought (but it was you) enter our gates.</div> -<div class="verse">My blood flew out, and back again as fast</div> -<div class="verse">As I had puffed it forth and sucked it in</div> -<div class="verse">Like breath. Then was I called away in haste</div> -<div class="verse">To entertain you. Never was a man</div> -<div class="verse">Heaved from a sheep-cote to a sceptre, raised</div> -<div class="verse">So high in thoughts as I:</div> -<div class="verse indent8">I did hear you talk</div> -<div class="verse">Far above singing! After you were gone,</div> -<div class="verse">I grew acquainted with my heart, and searched</div> -<div class="verse">What stirred it so. Alas, I found it Love!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Nothing better in its way can be found in all -their plays. One mentioning word, however, should -be given to those delightful lyrical aptitudes, by -virtue of which the blithe and easy metric felicities -of Elizabethan days were overlaid in tendrils -of song upon the Carolan times. I wish, too, that -I had space for excerpts from that jolly pastoral of -<cite>The Faithful Shepherdess</cite>—bewildering in its easy -gaieties, and its cumulated classicisms—and which -lends somewhat of its deft caroling, and of its arch -conceits to the later music of Milton’s “Comus.” -Another foretaste of Milton comes to us in these -words of Fletcher:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Hence, all you vain delights,</div> -<div class="verse">As short as are the nights</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> -<div class="verse indent2">Wherein you spend your folly!</div> -<div class="verse">There’s nought in this life, sweet,</div> -<div class="verse">If man were wise to see’t,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">But only melancholy,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">O sweetest melancholy!</div> -<div class="verse">Welcome folded arms and fixèd eyes,</div> -<div class="verse">A sigh that piercing mortifies,</div> -<div class="verse">A look that’s fastened to the ground,</div> -<div class="verse">A tongue chain’d up without a sound!</div> -<div class="verse">Fountain heads and pathless groves,</div> -<div class="verse">Places which pale passion loves!</div> -<div class="verse">Moonlight walks, when all the fowls</div> -<div class="verse">Are warmly hous’d save bats and owls!</div> -<div class="verse">A midnight bell, a parting groan,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">These are the sounds we feed upon;</div> -<div class="verse">Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley;</div> -<div class="verse">Nothing’s so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.”<a name="FNanchor_31" id="FNanchor_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<h3>King James and Family.</h3> - -<p>Meanwhile, how are London and England getting -on with their ram-shackle dotard of a King? Not -well; not proudly. Englishmen were not as boastful -of being Englishmen as in the days when the -virgin Elizabeth queened it, and shattered the Spanish -Armada, and made her will and England’s power<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> -respected everywhere. James, indeed, had a son, -Prince Henry, who promised far better things for -England, and for the Stuart name, than his pedant -of a father.</p> - -<p>This son was a friend of Raleigh’s (would, maybe, -have saved that great man from the scaffold, if he -had lived), a friend, too, of all the high-minded, -far-seeing ones who best represented Elizabethan -enterprise; but he died, poor fellow, at nineteen, -leaving the heirship to that Charles I. whose dismal -history you know. James had also a daughter—Elizabeth—a -high-spirited maiden, who, -amid brilliant fêtes made in her honor, married that -Frederic, Elector Palatine, who received his bride -in the magnificent old castle, you will remember -at Heidelberg. There they show still the great -gateway of the Princess Elizabeth, clad in ivy, and -the Elizabeth gardens. ’Twas said that her ambition -and high spirit pushed the poor Elector into -political complications that ruined him, and that -made the once owner of that princely château an -outcast, and almost a beggar. The King, too, by -his vanities, his indifference, and cowardice, helped -largely the discomfiture of this branch of his family,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> -as he did by his wretched bringing up of -Charles pave the way for that monarch’s march into -the gulf of ruin.</p> - -<p>In foreign politics this weak king coquetted in a -childish way—sometimes with the Catholic powers; -sometimes with the Protestant powers of Middle -Europe; and at home, with a ridiculous sense of -his own importance, he angered the Presbyterians -of Scotland and the Puritans of England by his -perpetual interferences. He provoked the emigration -that was planting, year by year, a New England -west of the Atlantic; he harried the House of Commons -into an antagonism which, by its growth -and earnestness was, by and by, to upset his throne -and family together. His power was the power of -a blister that keeps irritating—and not like Elizabeth’s—the -power of a bludgeon that thwacks and -makes an end.</p> - -<p>And in losing respect this King gained no love. -Courtiers could depend on his promises as little as -kingdoms. He chose his favorites for a fine coat, -or a fine face, and thereafter, from sheer indolence -yielded to them in everything. In personal habits, -too, he grew more and more unbearable; his doublets<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> -were all dirtier; his wigs shabbier; his coarse -jokes coarser; his tipsiness frequenter. A foulness -grew up in the court which tempted such men as -Fletcher and Massinger to fouler ways of speech, -and which lured such creatures as Lady Essex to -ruin. A pretty sort of King was this to preach -against tobacco!</p> - -<p>James had given up poetry-writing, in which he -occasionally indulged before coming to England; -yet he had poetical tastes; he enjoyed greatly -many of Shakespeare’s plays; Ben Jonson, too, was -a pet of his, and had easy access to royalty, certainly -until his quarrel with the great court architect, -Inigo Jones. But, as in all else, the King’s -taste in poetry grew coarser as he grew older, and -he showed a great liking for a certain John Taylor,<a name="FNanchor_32" id="FNanchor_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> -called “the Water-Poet,” a rough, coarse creature, -who sculled boats across the Thames for hire; who -made a foot-trip into Scotland in rivalry of Ben<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> -Jonson, and who wrote a <cite>Very merry wherry -Voyage from London to York</cite>, and a <cite>Kecksy-Winsey, -or a Lerry-cum-twang</cite>, which you will not -find in your treasures of literature, but which the -leering King loved to laugh over in his cups. Taylor -afterward was keeper of a rollicking, Royalist -tavern in Oxford, and of another in London, where -he died at the age of seventy-four.</p> - -<p>Tobacco, first introduced in Raleigh’s early voyaging -times, came to have a little fund of literature -crystallizing about it—what with histories of its introduction -and properties, and onslaughts upon it. -Bobadil, the braggart, in “Every Man in his -Humor,” says: “I have been in the Indies (where -this herbe growes), where neither myself nor a -dozen gentlemen more (of my knowledge) have -received the taste of any other nutriment, in the -world, for the space of one and twenty weeks, but -Tobacco only. Therefore it cannot be, but ’tis most -Divine.”</p> - -<p>There were many curious stories afloat too—taking -different shapes—of the great apprehension -ignorant ones felt on seeing people walking -about, as first happened in these times, with smoke<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> -pouring from their mouths and noses. In an old -book called <cite>The English Hue and Crie</cite> (printed about -1610), it takes something like this form:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“A certain Welchman, coming newly to London, and beholding -one to take Tobacco, never seeing the like before, -and not knowing the manner of it, but perceiving him vent -smoak so fast, and supposing his inward parts to be on fire, -screamed an alarm, and dashed over him a big pot of -Beer.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>King James’ <cite>Counterblaste to the Use of Tobacco</cite>, -had about the same efficacy with the Welshman’s -beer-pot. But to show the King’s method of arguing, -I give one little whiff of it. Tobacco-lovers of -that day alleged that it cleared the head and body -of ugly rheums and distillations;</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“But,” says the King, “the fallacy of this argument may -easily appeare, by my late preceding description of the skyey -meteors. For even as the smoaky Vapors sucked up by the -sunne and stay’d in the lowest and colde region of the Ayre, -are there contracted into clouds, and turned into Raine, and -such other watery meteors: so this nasty smoke sucked up -by the Nose, and imprisoned in the cold and moist braines, -is by their colde and wet faculty, turned and cast forth -againe in watery distillations, and so are you made free and -purged of nothing, but <em>that</em> wherewith you wilfully burdened -yourselves.”</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p> - -<p>Is it any wonder people kept on smoking? He -reasoned in much the same way about church matters; -is it any wonder the Scotch would not have -Anglicanism thrust upon them?</p> - -<p>The King died at last (1625), aged fifty-nine, at -his palace of Theobalds, a little out of London, and -very famous, as I have said, for its fine gardens; -and these gardens this prematurely old and shattered -man did greatly love; loved perhaps more -than his children. I do not think Charles mourned -for him very grievously; but, of a surety there was -no warrant for the half-hinted allegation of Milton’s -(at a later day) that the royal son was concerned in -some parricidal scheme. There was, however, nowhere -great mourning for James.</p> - -<h3>A New King and some Literary Survivors.</h3> - -<p>The new King, his son, was a well-built young -fellow of twenty-five, of fine appearance, well taught, -and just on the eve of his marriage to Henrietta of -France. He had a better taste than his father, and -lived a more orderly life; indeed, he was every way -decorous save in an obstinate temper and in absurd<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> -notions about his kingly prerogative. He loved -play-going and he loved poetry, though not so accessible -as his father had been to the buffoonery of -the water-poet Taylor, or the tipsy obeisance of old -Ben Jonson. For Ben Jonson was still living, not -yet much over fifty, though with his great bulk and -reeling gait seeming nearer seventy; now, too, since -Shakespeare is gone, easily at the head of all the literary -workers in London; indeed, in some sense -always at the head by reason of his dogged self-insistence -and his braggadocio. All the street world<a name="FNanchor_33" id="FNanchor_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> -knows him, as he swaggers along the Strand to his -new jolly rendezvous at the Devil Tavern, near St. -Dunstan’s, in Fleet Street—not far off from the -Temple Church—where he and his fellows meet in -the Apollo Chamber, over whose door Ben has written:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Welcome, all who lead or follow</div> -<div class="verse">To the oracle of Apollo!</div> -<div class="verse">Here he speaks out of his pottle</div> -<div class="verse">On the tripos—his tower-bottle,” etc.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Of all we have named hitherto among the Elizabethan -poets, the only ones who would be likely to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> -appear there in Charles I.’s time would be George -Chapman, of the Homer translation; staid and very -old now, with snowy hair; and Dekker—what time -he was out of prison for debt; possibly, too, John -Marston. Poor Ben Jonson wrote about this time -his last play, which did not take either with courtiers -or the public; whereupon the old grumbler -was more rough than ever, and died a few years -thereafter, wretchedly poor, and was put into the -ground—upright, tradition says, as into a well—in -Westminster Abbey. There one may walk over his -name and his crown; and this is the last we shall -see of him, whose swagger has belonged to three -reigns.</p> - -<p>Among other writers known to these times and -who went somewhiles to these suppers at the Apollo -was James Howell,<a name="FNanchor_34" id="FNanchor_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> notable because he wrote so -much; and I specially name him because he was the -earliest and best type of what we should call a hack-writer; -ready for anything; a shrewd salesman, -too, of all he did write; travelling largely—having<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> -modern instincts, I think; making small capital—whether -of learning or money—reach enormously. -He was immensely popular, too, in his day; a -Welshman by birth, and never wrote at all till past -forty; but afterward he kept at it with a terrible -pertinacity. He gives quaint advice about foreign -travel, with some shrewdness cropping out in it. -Thus of languages he says:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Whereas, for other Tongues one may attaine to speak -them to very good purpose, and get their good will at any -age; the French tongue, by reason of the huge difference -’twixt their writing and speaking, will put one often into fits -of despaire and passion; but the Learner must not be daunted -a whit at that, but after a little intermission hee must come -on more strongly, and with a pertinacity of resolution set -upon her againe and againe, and woo her as one would do a -coy mistress, with a kind of importunity, until he over-master -her: She will be very plyable at last.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Then he says, for improvement, it is well to have -the acquaintance of some ancient nun, with whom -one may talk through the grated windows—for they -have all the news, and “they will entertain discourse -till one be weary, if one bestow on them now and -then some small bagatells—as English Gloves, or -Knives, or Ribands—and before hee go over,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> -hee must furnish himself with such small curiosities.”</p> - -<p>The expenses of travel in that day on the Continent, -he says, for a young fellow who has his “Riding -and Dancing and Fencing, and Racket, and -Coach-hire, with apparel and other casual charges -will be about £300 per annum”—which sum (allowing -for differences in moneyed values) may have -been a matter of $6,000. He says with great aptness, -too, that the traveller must not neglect letter-writing, -which</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">“he should do exactly and not carelessly: For letters are -the ideas and truest mirrors of the mind; they show the inside -of a man and how he improveth himself.”</p> - -</div> - -<h3>Wotton and Walton.</h3> - -<p>Another great traveller of these times—but one -whose dignities would, I suspect have kept him away -from the Devil Tavern—was Sir Henry Wotton.<a name="FNanchor_35" id="FNanchor_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> -He was a man who had supplemented his university -training by long residence abroad; who had been of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> -service to King James (before the King had yet left -Scotland) by divulging to him and defeating some -purposed scheme of poisoning. Wotton was, later, -English ambassador at the brilliant court of Venice, -whence he wrote to the King many suggestions -respecting the improvement of his garden, detailing -Italian methods, and forwarding grafts and rare -seedlings; he was familiar with most European -courts—hobnobbed with Doges and with Kings, -was a scholar of elegant and various accomplishments, -and the reputed maker of that old and well-worn -witticism about ambassadors—that “they -were honest men, sent to lie abroad for the good of -their country.” He was, furthermore, himself boastful -of the authorship of this prickly saying, “The -itch of disputation is the scab of the church.”<a name="FNanchor_36" id="FNanchor_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> -There is also a charming little poem of his—which -gets place in the anthologies—addressed to that -Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, whom we encountered -as a bride at the Castle of Heidelberg, and -who became the mother of the accomplished and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> -daring Prince Rupert. Such a man as Wotton, -full of anecdote, bristling with wit, familiar with -courts, and one who could match phrases with -James, or Charles, or Buckingham, in Latin, or -French, or Italian, must have been a god-send for -a dinner-party at Theobalds, or at Whitehall. To -crown his graces, Walton<a name="FNanchor_37" id="FNanchor_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> tells us that he was an -excellent fisherman.</p> - -<p>And this mention of the quiet Angler tempts me -to enroll him here, a little before his time; yet he -was well past thirty when James died, and must -have been busy in the ordering of his draper’s shop -in Fleet Street when Charles I. came to power. -He was of Staffordshire birth, and no millinery of -the city could have driven out of his mind the -pretty ruralities of his Staffordshire home, and the -lovely far-off views of the Welsh hills. His first -wife was grandniece of Bishop Cranmer; he was -himself friend of Dr. Donne, to whom he listened -from Sunday to Sunday; a second wife was sister of -that Thomas Ken who came to be Bishop of Bath -and Wells; so he was hemmed in by ecclesiasticisms, -and loved them as he loved trout. He was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> -warm Royalist always, and lived by old traditions in -Church and State—not easily overset by Reformers. -No fine floral triumphs of any new gardeners, however -accredited, could blind him to the old glories -of the eglantine or of a damask rose. A good and -quiet friend, a placid book, a walk under trees, -made sufficient regalement for him. These, with a -fishing bout (by way of exceptional entertainment), -and a Sunday in a village church, with the Litany -well intoned, were all in all to him. His book -holds spicy place among ranks of books, as lavender -keeps fresh odor among stores of linen. It is -worth any man’s dalliance with the fishing-craft to -make him receptive to the simplicities and limpidities -of Walton’s <cite>Angler</cite>. I am tempted to say of -him again, what I have said of him before in other -connection:—very few fine writers of our time -could make a better book on such a subject to-day, -with all the added information and all the practice -of the newspaper columns. What Walton wants to -say, he says. You can make no mistake about his -meaning; all is as lucid as the water of a spring. -He does not play upon your wonderment with -tropes. There is no chicane of the pen; he has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> -some pleasant matters to tell of, and he tells of -them—straight.</p> - -<p>Another great charm about Walton is his childlike -truthfulness. I think he is almost the only -earnest trout-fisher (unless Sir Humphry Davy be -excepted) whose report could be relied upon for -the weight of a trout. I have many excellent -friends—capital fishermen—whose word is good -upon most concerns of life, but in this one thing -they cannot be religiously confided in. I excuse -it; I take off twenty per cent. from their estimates -without either hesitation, anger, or reluctance.</p> - -<p>I must not omit to mention his charming biographic -sketches (rather than “lives”) of Hooker, -of Wotton, of Herbert, of Donne—the letterpress of -all these flowing easily and limpidly as the brooks -he loved to picture. He puts in very much pretty -embroidery too, for which tradition or street -gossip supplied him with his needs, in figure and -in color; this is not always of best authenticity, it -is true;<a name="FNanchor_38" id="FNanchor_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> but who wishes to question when it is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> -the simple-souled and always honest Walton who is -talking? And as for his great pastoral of <cite>The Complete -Angler</cite>—to read it, in whatever season, is like -plunging into country air, and sauntering through -lovely country solitudes.</p> - -<p>I name Sir Thomas Overbury<a name="FNanchor_39" id="FNanchor_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a>—who was the -first, I think, to make that often-repeated joke respecting -people who boasted of their ancestry, saying -“they were like potatoes, with the best part -below ground”—because he belonged to this period, -and was a man of elegant culture and literary -promise. He was poisoned in the Tower at the instance -of some great people about the court of -James, who feared damaging testimony of his upon -a trial that was just then to come off; and this trial -and poisoning business, in which (Carr) Somerset -and Lady Essex were deeply concerned, made one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> -of the greatest scandals of the scandalous court of -King James. Overbury’s <cite>Characters</cite> are the best -known of his writings, but they are slight; quaint -metaphors and tricksy English are in them, with -a good many tiresome affectations of speech. What -he said of the Dairymaid is best of all.</p> - -<h3>George Herbert.</h3> - -<p>This is a name which will be more familiar to the -reader, and if he has never encountered the little -olive-green, gilt-edged budget of Herbert’s<a name="FNanchor_40" id="FNanchor_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> poems, -he can hardly have failed to have met, on some -page of the anthologies, such excerpt as this about -Virtue:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,</div> -<div class="verse">The bridal of the earth and sky,</div> -<div class="verse">The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;</div> -<div class="verse indent4">For thou must die.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave,</div> -<div class="verse">Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,</div> -<div class="verse">Thy root is ever in its grave,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">And thou must die.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Only a sweet and virtuous soul,</div> -<div class="verse">Like season’d timber, never gives;</div> -<div class="verse">But though the whole world turn to coal,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Then chiefly lives.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>And now, that I have quoted this, I wish that I -had quoted another; and so it would be, I suppose, -were I to go through the little book. One cannot -go amiss of lines that will show his tenderness, his -strong religious feeling, his gloomy coloring, his -quaint conceits—with not overmuch rhythmic grace, -but a certain spiritual unction that commends him -to hosts of devout-minded people everywhere. Yet -I cannot help thinking that he would have been lost -sight of earlier in the swarm of seventeenth-century -poets, had it not been for a certain romantic glow -attaching to his short life. And first, he was a scion -from the old Pembroke stock, born in a great castle -on the Welsh borders, and bred in luxury. He -went to Cambridge for study at a time when he -may have encountered there the grim boy-student,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> -Oliver Cromwell, or possibly that other fair-faced -Cambridge student, John Milton, who was upon the -rolls eight years later. He was a young fellow of -rare scholarship, winning many honors; was tall, -spare, with an eagle eye; and so he wins upon old -James I., when he comes down on a visit to the -University (the Mother Herbert managing to have -the King see his best points, even to his silken -doublets and his jewelled buckles, of which the lad -was fond). And he is taken into favor, bandies -compliments with the monarch, goes again and again -to London and to court; sees Chancellor Bacon -familiarly—corrects proofs for him—and has hopes -of high preferment. But his chief patron dies; the -King dies; and that bubble of royal inflation is at -an end.</p> - -<p>It was after long mental struggle, it would seem, -that George Herbert, whom we know as the saintly -poet, let the hopes of court consequence die out of -his heart. But once wedded to the Church his religious -activities and sanctities knew no hesitations. -His marriage even was an incident that had no -worldly or amorous delays. A Mr. Danvers, kinsman -of Herbert’s step-father, thought all the world<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> -of the poet, and declared his utter willingness that -Herbert “should marry any one of his nine daughters -[for he had so many], but rather Jane, because -Jane was his beloved daughter.” And to such good -effect did the father talk to Jane, that she, as old -Walton significantly tells us, was in love with the -poet before yet she had seen him. Only four days -after their first meeting these twain were married; -nor did this sudden union bring such disastrous -result as so swift an engineering of similar contracts -is apt to show.</p> - -<p>At Bemerton vicarage, almost under the shadow -of Salisbury cathedral, he began, shortly thereafter, -that saintly and poetic life which his verse illustrates -and which every memory of him ennobles. His -charities were beautiful and constant; his love of -the flesh, his early “choler,” and all courtly leanings -crucified. Even the peasants thereabout stayed the -plough and listened reverently (another Angelus!) -when the sounds of his “Praise-bells” broke upon -the air. It is a delightful picture the old Angler -biographer gives of him there in his quiet vicarage -of Bemerton, or footing it away over Salisbury -Plain, to lift up his orison in symphony with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> -organ notes that pealed from underneath the arches -of Salisbury’s wondrous cathedral.</p> - -<p>Yet over all the music and the poems of this -Church poet, and over his life, a tender gloom lay -constantly; the grave and death were always in his -eye—always in his best verses. And after some -half-dozen years of poetic battling with the great -problems of life and of death, and a further battling -with the chills and fogs of Wiltshire, that smote him -sorely, he died.</p> - -<p>He was buried at Bemerton, where a new church -has been built in his honor. It may be found on -the high-road leading west from Salisbury, and only -a mile and a half away; and at Wilton—the carpet -town—which is only a fifteen minutes’ walk beyond, -may be found that gorgeous church, built not -long ago by another son of the Pembroke stock (the -late Lord Herbert of Lea), who perhaps may have -had in mind the churchly honors due to his poetic -kinsman; and yet all the marbles which are lavished -upon this Wilton shrine are poorer, and will sooner -fade than the mosaic of verse builded into <cite>The Temple</cite> -of George Herbert.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p> - -<h3>Robert Herrick.</h3> - -<p>I deal with a clergyman again; but there are -clergymen—and clergymen.</p> - -<p>Robert Herrick<a name="FNanchor_41" id="FNanchor_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> was the son of a London goldsmith, -born on Cheapside, not far away from that -Mermaid Tavern of which mention has been made; -and it is very likely that the young Robert, as a -boy, may have stood before the Tavern windows -on tiptoe, listening to the drinking songs that -came pealing forth when Ben Jonson and the rest -were in their first lusty manhood. He studied at -Cambridge, receiving, may be, some scant help from -his rich uncle, Sir William Herrick, who had won -his title by giving good jewel bargains to King -James. He would seem to have made a long stay -in Cambridge; and only in 1620, when our Pilgrims -were beating toward Plymouth shores, do -we hear of him domiciled in London—learning the -town, favored by Ben Jonson and his fellows, perhaps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> -apprenticed to the goldsmith craft, certainly -putting jewels into fine settings of verse even then; -some of them with coarse flaws in them, but full of -a glitter and sparkle that have not left them yet. -Nine years later, after such town experiences as we -cannot trace, he gets, somehow, appointment to a -church living down in Devonshire at Dean Prior. -His parish was on the southeastern edge of that -great heathery stretch of wilderness called Dartmoor -Forest: out of this, and from under cool -shadows of the Tors, ran brooks which in the -cleared valleys were caught by rude weirs and -shot out in irrigating skeins of water upon the -grassland. Yet it was far away from any echo of -the Mermaid; old traditions were cherished there; -old ways were reckoned good ways; and the ploughs -of that region are still the clumsiest to be found in -England. There Robert Herrick lived, preaching -and writing poems, through those eighteen troublous -years which went before the execution of -Charles I. What the goldsmith-vicar’s sermons -were we can only conjecture: what the poems -were he writ, we can easily guess from the flowers -that enjewel them, or the rarer “noble numbers”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> -which take hold on religious sanctities. This -preacher-poet twists the lilies and roses into bright -little garlands, that blush and droop in his pretty -couplets, as they did in the vicar’s garden of Devon. -The daffodils and the violets give out their -odors to him, if he only writes their names.</p> - -<p>Hear what he says to Phyllis, and how the numbers -flow:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“The soft, sweet moss shall be thy bed,</div> -<div class="verse">With crawling woodbine overspread:</div> -<div class="verse">By which the silver-shedding streams</div> -<div class="verse">Shall gently melt thee into dreams.</div> -<div class="verse">Thy clothing next, shall be a gown</div> -<div class="verse">Made of the fleeces’ purest down.</div> -<div class="verse">The tongues of kids shall be thy meat;</div> -<div class="verse">Their milk thy drink; and thou shalt eat</div> -<div class="verse">The paste of filberts for thy bread,</div> -<div class="verse">With cream of cowslips butterèd:</div> -<div class="verse">Thy feasting table shall be hills</div> -<div class="verse">With daisies spread and daffodils;</div> -<div class="verse">Where thou shalt sit, and Red-breast by,</div> -<div class="verse">For meat, shall give thee melody.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Then again, see how in his soberer and meditative -moods, he can turn the rich and resonant -Litany of the Anglican Church into measures of -sweet sound:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“In the hour of my distress,</div> -<div class="verse">When temptations me oppress,</div> -<div class="verse">And when I my sins confess,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Sweet Spirit, comfort me!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“When I lie within my bed,</div> -<div class="verse">Sick in heart, and sick in head,</div> -<div class="verse">And with doubts discomforted,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Sweet Spirit, comfort me!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“When the house doth sigh and weep,</div> -<div class="verse">And the world is drown’d in sleep,</div> -<div class="verse">Yet mine eyes the watch do keep,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Sweet Spirit, comfort me!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“When the passing bell doth toll,</div> -<div class="verse">And the furies in a shoal</div> -<div class="verse">Come, to fright a parting soul,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Sweet Spirit, comfort me!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“When the judgment is reveal’d,</div> -<div class="verse">And that opened which was seal’d,</div> -<div class="verse">When to thee I have appeal’d,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Sweet Spirit, comfort me!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Now, in reading these two poems of such opposite -tone, and yet of agreeing verbal harmonies, -one would say—here is a singer, serene, devout, of -delicate mould, loving all beautiful things in heaven -and on earth. One would look for a man saintly of -aspect, deep-eyed, tranquil, too ethereal for earth.</p> - -<p>Well, I must tell the truth in these talks, so far<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> -as I can find it, no matter what cherished images -may break down. This Robert Herrick was a ponderous, -earthy-looking man, with huge double chin, -drooping cheeks, a great Roman nose, prominent -glassy eyes, that showed around them the red lines -begotten of strong potions of Canary, and the whole -set upon a massive neck which might have been -that of Heliogabalus.<a name="FNanchor_42" id="FNanchor_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> It was such a figure as the -artists would make typical of a man who loves the -grossest pleasures.</p> - -<p>The poet kept a pet goose at the vicarage, and -also a pet pig, which he taught to drink beer out -of his own tankard; and an old parishioner, for -whose story Anthony à Wood is sponsor, tells us -that on one occasion when his little Devon congregation -would not listen to him as he thought they -ought to listen, he dashed his sermon on the floor, -and marched with tremendous stride out of church—home -to fondle his pet pig.</p> - -<p>When Charles I. came to grief, and when the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> -Puritans began to sift the churches, this Royalist -poet proved a clinker that was caught in the -meshes and thrown aside. This is not surprising. -It was after his enforced return to London, and -in the year 1648 (one year before Charles’ execution -at Whitehall), that the first authoritative publication -was made of the <cite>Hesperides, or Works, both -Humane and Divine, of Robert Herrick, Esq.</cite>—his -clerical title dropped.</p> - -<p>There were those critics and admirers who saw in -Herrick an allegiance to the methods of Catullus; -others who smacked in his epigrams the verbal felicities -of Martial; but surely there is no need, in that -fresh spontaneity of the Devon poet, to hunt for -classic parallels; nature made him one of her own -singers, and by instincts born with him he fashioned -words and fancies into jewelled shapes. The -“more’s the pity” for those gross indelicacies which -smirch so many pages; things unreadable; things -which should have been unthinkable and unwritable -by a clergyman of the Church of England. To what -period of his life belonged his looser verses it is -hard to say; perhaps to those early days when, -fresh from Cambridge, Ben Jonson patted him on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> -the shoulder approvingly; perhaps to those later -years when, soured by his ejection from the Church, -he dropped his Reverend, and may have capped -verses with such as Davenant or Lovelace, and -others, whose antagonism of Puritanism provoked -wantonness of speech.</p> - -<p>At the restoration of Charles II., Herrick was reinstated -in his old parish in Devonshire, and died -there, among the meadows and the daffodils, at the -ripe age of eighty-four. And as we part with this -charming singer, we cannot forbear giving place to -this bit of his penitential verse:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“For these my unbaptizèd rhymes</div> -<div class="verse">Writ in my wild unhallowed times,</div> -<div class="verse">For every sentence, clause, and word</div> -<div class="verse">That’s not inlaid with thee, O Lord;</div> -<div class="verse">Forgive me, God, and blot each line</div> -<div class="verse">Out of my book, that is not thine!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<h3>Revolutionary Times.</h3> - -<p>I have given the reader a great many names to -remember to-day; they are many, because we have -found no engrossing one whose life and genius -have held us to a long story. But we should never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> -enjoy the great memories except they were set in -the foil of lesser ones, to emphasize their glories.</p> - -<p>The writers of this particular period—some of -whom I have named—fairly typify and illustrate -the drift of letters away from the outspoken ardors -and full-toned high exuberance of Elizabethan -days, to something more coy, more schooled, -more reticent, more measured, more tame.<a name="FNanchor_43" id="FNanchor_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> The -cunning of word arrangement comes into the -place of spontaneous, maybe vulgar wit; humor -is saddled with school-craftiness; melodious echoes -take the place of fresh bursts of sound. Poetry, -that gurgled out by its own wilful laws of -progression, now runs more in channels that old -laws have marked. Words and language that had -been used to tell straightforwardly stories of love -and passion and suffering are now put to uses of -pomp and decoration.</p> - -<p>Moreover, in Elizabethan times, when a great -monarch and great ministers held the reins of -power undisturbed and with a knightly hand, minstrelsy,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> -wherever it might lift its voice, had the -backing and the fostering support of great tranquillity -and great national pride. In the days when the -Armada was crushed, when British ships and British -navigators brought every year tales of gold, -tales of marvellous new shores, when princes of the -proudest courts came flocking to pay suit to England’s -great Virgin Queen, what poet should not -sing at his loudest and his bravest? But in the -times into which we have now drifted, there is no -tranquillity; the fever of Puritans against Anglicans, -of Independents against Monarchy Men, is -raging through all the land; pride in the kingship -of such as James I. had broken down; pride in the -kingship of the decorous Charles I. has broken -down again. All intellectual ardors run into the -channels of the new strifes. Only through little -rifts in the stormy sky do the sunny gleams of -poesy break in.</p> - -<p>There are colonies, too, planted over seas, and -growing apace in these days, whither the eyes and -thoughts of many of the bravest and clearest thinkers -are turning. Even George Herbert, warmest of -Anglicans, and of the noble house of Pembroke, was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> -used to say, “Religion<a name="FNanchor_44" id="FNanchor_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> is going over seas.” They -were earnest, hard workers, to be sure, who went—keen-thoughted—far-seeing—most -diligent—not -up to poems indeed, save some little occasional -burst of melodious thanksgiving. But they carried -memories of the best and of the strongest that belonged -to the intellectual life of England. The -ponderous periods of Richard Hooker, and the -harshly worded wise things of John Selden,<a name="FNanchor_45" id="FNanchor_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> found -lodgement in souls that were battling with the -snows and pine-woods where Andover and Salem -and Newburyport were being planted. And over -there, maybe, first of all, would hope kindle and -faith brighten at sound of that fair young Puritan<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> -poet, who has just now, in Cambridge, sung his -“Hymn of the Nativity.”<a name="FNanchor_46" id="FNanchor_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></p> - -<p>But the storm and the wreck were coming. -There were forewarnings of it in the air; forewarnings -of it in the court and in Parliament; forewarnings -of it in every household. City was to be -pitted against city; brother against brother; and -in that “sea of trouble,” down went the King and -the leaders of old, and up rose the Commonwealth -and the leaders of the new faith.</p> - -<p>In our next talk we shall find all England rocking -on that red wave of war. You would think poets -should be silent, and the eloquent dumb; but we -shall hear, lifting above the uproar, the golden language -of Jeremy Taylor—the measured cadences -of Waller—the mellifluous jingle of Suckling and -of his Royalist brothers, and drowning all these -with its grand sweep of sound, the majestic organ-music -of Milton.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</h2> - -<p class="dropcap">I did not hold the reader’s attention long to -the nightmare tragedies of Webster and Ford, -though they show shining passages of amazing -dramatic power. Marston was touched upon, and -that satiric vein of his, better known perhaps than -his more ambitious work. We spoke of Massinger, -whose money-monster, Giles Overreach, makes one -think of the railway wreckers of our time; then -came the gracious and popular Beaumont and -Fletcher, twins in work and in friendship; the former -dying in the same year with Shakespeare, and -Fletcher dying the same year with King James -(1625). I spoke of that Prince Harry who promised -well, but died young, and of Charles, whose sad -story will come to ampler mention in our present -talk. We made record of the death of Ben Jonson—of -the hack-writing service of James Howell—of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> -the dilettante qualities of Sir Henry Wotton, and of -the ever-delightful work and enduring fame of the -old angler, Izaak Walton. And last we closed our -talk with sketches of two poets: the one, George -Herbert, to whom his priestly work and his saintly -verse were “all in all;” and the other, Robert Herrick, -born to a goldsmith’s craft, but making verses -that glittered more than all the jewels of Cheapside.</p> - -<h3>King Charles and his Friends.</h3> - -<p>We open this morning upon times when New-England -towns were being planted among the -pine-woods, and the decorous, courtly, unfortunate -Charles I. had newly come to the throne. Had the -King been only plain Charles Stuart, he would -doubtless have gone through life with the reputation -of an amiable, courteous gentleman, not over-sturdy -in his friendships<a name="FNanchor_47" id="FNanchor_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a>—a fond father and -good husband, with a pretty taste in art and in -books, but strongly marked with some obstinacies -about the ways of wearing his rapier, or of tying -his cravat, or of overdrawing his bank account.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></p> - -<p>In the station that really fell to him those obstinacies -took hold upon matters which brought him -to grief. The man who stood next to Charles, and -who virtually governed him, was that George Villiers, -Duke of Buckingham, who by his fine doublets, fine -dancing, and fine presence, had very early commended -himself to the old King James, and now -lorded it with the son. He was that Steenie who -in Scott’s <cite>Fortunes of Nigel</cite> plays the braggadocio of -the court: he had attended Prince Charles upon that -Quixotic errand of his, incognito, across Europe, -to play the wooer at the feet of the Infanta of Spain; -and when nothing came of all that show of gallantry -and the lavishment of jewels upon the dusky heiress -of Castile, the same Buckingham had negotiated the -marriage with the French princess, Henrietta. He -was a brazen courtier, a shrewd man of the world; -full of all accomplishments; full of all profligacy. -He made and unmade bishops and judges, and bolstered -the King in that antagonism to the Commons -of England which was rousing the dangerous indignation -of such men as Eliot and Hampden and -Pym. Private assassination, however, took him off -before the coming of the great day of wrath. You<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> -must not confound this Duke of Buckingham with -another George Villiers, also Duke of Buckingham, -who was his son, and who figured largely in the -days of Charles II.—being even more witty, and -more graceful, and more profligate—if possible—than -his father; a literary man withal, and the author -of a play<a name="FNanchor_48" id="FNanchor_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> which had great vogue.</p> - -<p>Another striking figure about the court of -Charles was a small, red-faced man, keen-eyed, -sanctimonious, who had risen from the humble -ranks (his father having been a clothier in a small -town of Berkshire) to the position of Archbishop -of Canterbury. So starched was he in his High-Church -views that the Pope had offered him the hat -of a cardinal. He made the times hard for Non-conformists; -your ancestors and mine, if they emigrated -in those days, may very likely have been -pushed over seas by the edicts of Archbishop Laud. -His monstrous intolerance was provoking, and intensifying -that agitation in the religious world of -England which Buckingham had already provoked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> -in the political world; and the days of wrath were -coming.</p> - -<p>This Archbishop Laud is not only keen-sighted -but he is bountiful and helpful within the lines of -his own policy. He endowed Oxford with great, -fine buildings. Some friend has told him that a -young preacher of wonderful attractions has made -his appearance at St. Paul’s—down on a visit from -Cambridge—a young fellow, wonderfully handsome, -with curling locks and great eyes full of expression, -and a marvellous gift of language; and the -Archbishop takes occasion to see him or hear him; -and finding that beneath such exterior there is -real vigor and learning, he makes place for him as -Fellow at Oxford; appoints him presently his own -chaplain, and gives him a living down in Rutland.</p> - -<h3>Jeremy Taylor.</h3> - -<p>This priest, of such eloquence and beauty, was -Jeremy Taylor,<a name="FNanchor_49" id="FNanchor_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> who was the son of a barber at -Cambridge, was entered at Caius College as sizar,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> -or charity scholar, just one year after Milton was -entered at Christ College, and from the door of his -father’s shop may have looked admiringly many a -time upon the</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent6">“rosy cheeks</div> -<div class="verse">Angelical, keen eye, courageous look,</div> -<div class="verse">And conscious step of purity and pride,”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">which belonged even then to the young Puritan -poet. But Jeremy Taylor was not a Puritan; never -came to know Milton personally. One became the -great advocate and the purest illustration of the -tenets of Episcopacy in England; and the other—eventually—their -most effective and weighty opponent. -In 1640, only one year after Jeremy Taylor -was established in his pleasant Rutland rectory, -Archbishop Laud went to the Tower, not to come -forth till he should go to the scaffold; and in the -Civil War, breaking out presently, Jeremy Taylor -joined the Royalists, was made chaplain to the King, -saw battle and siege and wounds; but in the top of -the strife he is known by his silvery voice and his -exuberant piety, and by the rare eloquence which -colors prayer and sermon with the bloody tinge of -war and the pure light of heaven. He is wounded<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> -(as I said), he is imprisoned, and finally, by the -chances of battle, he is stranded in a small country -town near to Caermarthen, in South Wales.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“In the great storm,” he says, “which dashed the vessel -of the Church all in pieces, I was cast on the coast of -Wales, and in a little boat thought to have enjoyed that rest -and quietness which in England I could not hope for.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>The little boat he speaks of was the obscure -mountain home where he taught school, and where -he received, some time, visits from the famous John -Evelyn,<a name="FNanchor_50" id="FNanchor_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> who wrote charming books in these days -about woods and gardens, and who befriended the -poor stranded chaplain. Here, too, he wrote that -monument of toleration, <cite>The Liberty of Prophesying</cite>, -a work which would be counted broad in its -teachings even now, and which alienated a great -many of his more starched fellows in the Church. -A little fragment from the closing pages of this -book will show at once his method of illustration -and his extreme liberality:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“When Abraham sat at his tent door, waiting to entertain -strangers, he espied an old man stopping by the way, leaning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> -on his staff, weary with much travel, and who was a -hundred years of age.</p> - -<p>“He received him kindly, provided supper, caused him -to sit down; but observing that the old man ate, and prayed -not, neither begged for a blessing on his meat, he asked -him why he did not worship the God of Heaven?</p> - -<p>“The old man told him he had been used to worship the -sun only.</p> - -<p>“Whereupon Abraham in anger thrust him from his tent. -When he was gone into the evils of the night, God called to -Abraham, and said, ‘I have suffered this man, whom thou -hast cast out, these hundred years, and couldest thou not -endure him one night, when he gave thee no trouble?’ -Upon this Abraham fetched the man back and gave him entertainment: -‘Go thou and do likewise,’ said the preacher, -‘and thy charity will be rewarded by the God of Abraham.’”<a name="FNanchor_51" id="FNanchor_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p> - -</div> - -<p>Jeremy Taylor did not learn this teaching from -Archbishop Laud, but from the <i lang="fr">droiture</i> of his own -conscience, and the kindness of his own heart. -He wrote much other and most delectable matter -in his years of Welsh retirement, when a royal -chaplain was a bugbear in England. He lost sons,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> -too—who had gone to the bad under the influences -of that young Duke of Buckingham I mentioned; -but at last, when the restoration of Charles II. -came, he was given a bishopric in the wilds of -Ireland, in a sour, gloomy country, with sour and -gloomy looks all around him, which together, -broke him down at the age of fifty-five. I have -spoken thus much of him, because he is a man to -be remembered as the most eloquent, and the most -kindly, and the most tolerant of all the Church of -England people in that day; and because his treatises -on <cite>Holy Living</cite> and <cite>Holy Dying</cite> will doubtless -give consolation to thousands of desponding souls, -in the years to come, as they have in the years -that are past. He was saturated through and -through with learning and with piety; and they -gurgled from him together in a great tide of mellifluous -language. The ardors and fervors of Elizabethan -days seem to have lapped over upon him in -that welter of the Commonwealth wars. He has -been called the Shakespeare of the pulpit; I should -rather say the Spenser—there is such unchecked, -and uncheckable, affluence of language and illustration; -thought and speech struggling together<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> -for precedence, and stretching on and on, in ever -so sweet and harmonious jangle of silvery sounds.</p> - -<h3>A Royalist and a Puritan.</h3> - -<p>Another Royalist of these times, of a different -temper, was Sir John Suckling:<a name="FNanchor_52" id="FNanchor_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> a poet too, very -rich, bred in luxury, a man of the world, who had -seen every court in Europe worth seeing, who -dashed off songlets and ballads between dinners -and orgies; which songlets often hobbled on their -feet by reason of those multiplied days of high living; -but yet they had prettinesses in them which -have kept them steadily alive all down to these -prosaic times. I give a sample from his “Ballad -upon a Wedding,” though it may be over-well -known:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Her cheeks so rare a white was on</div> -<div class="verse">No daisy makes comparison</div> -<div class="verse indent2">(Who sees them is undone):</div> -<div class="verse">For streaks of red were mingled there</div> -<div class="verse">Such as are on a Catharine pear,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The side that’s next the sun.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Her feet beneath her petticoat</div> -<div class="verse">Like little mice stole in and out</div> -<div class="verse indent2">As if they feared the light.</div> -<div class="verse">But O, she dances such a way!</div> -<div class="verse">No sun upon an Easter day</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Is half so fine a sight!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>He was a frequenter of a tavern which stood at -the Southwark end of London Bridge. Aubrey -says he was one of the best bowlers of his time. -He played at cards, too, rarely well, and “did use -to practise by himself abed.” He was rich; he was -liberal; he was accomplished—almost an “Admirable -Crichton.” His first military service was in -support of Gustavus Adolphus, in Germany. At -the time of trouble with the Scots (1639) he raised -a troop for the King’s service that bristled with -gilded spurs and trappings; but he never did much -serious fighting on British soil; and in 1641—owing -to what was counted treasonable action in -behalf of Strafford, he was compelled to leave England.</p> - -<p>He crossed over to the Continent, wandered into -Spain, and somehow became (as a current tradition -reported) a victim of the Inquisition there, and was -put to cruel torture; a strange subject surely to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> -put to the torture—in this life. He was said to -be broken by this experience, and strayed away, -after his escape from those priest-fangs, to Paris, -where, not yet thirty-five, and with such promise in -him of better things, he came to his death in some -mysterious way: some said by a knife-blade which -a renegade servant had fastened in his boot; but -most probably by suicide. There is, however, great -obscurity in regard to his life abroad.</p> - -<p>He wrote some plays, which had more notice -than they should have had; possibly owing to a revival -of dramatic interests very strangely brought -about in Charles I.’s time—a revival which was -due to the over-eagerness and exaggeration of -attacks made upon it by the Puritans: noticeable -among these was that of William Prynne<a name="FNanchor_53" id="FNanchor_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a>—“utter -barrister” of Lincoln’s Inn. “Utter barrister” -does not mean æsthetic barrister, but one -not yet come to full range of privilege.</p> - -<p>This Prynne was a man of dreadful insistence -and severities; he would have made a terrific<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> -schoolmaster. He was the author, in the course of -his life, of no less than one hundred and eighty -distinct works; many of them, it is true, were pamphlets, -but others terribly bulky—an inextinguishable -man; that onslaught on the drama and -dramatic people, and play-goers, including people -of the Court, called <cite>Histriomastix</cite>, was a foul-mouthed, -close-printed, big quarto of a thousand -pages. One would think such a book could do little -harm; but he was tried for it, was heavily -fined, and sentenced to stand in the pillory and -lose his ears. He pleaded strongly against the -sentence, and for its remission upon “divers passages -[as he says in his petition] fallen inconsiderately -from my pen in a book called <cite>Histriomastix</cite>.”</p> - -<p>But he pleaded in vain; there was no sympathy -for him. Ought there to be for a man who writes -a book of a thousand quarto pages—on any subject? -The violence of this diatribe made a reaction -in favor of the theatre; his fellow-barristers of Lincoln’s -Inn hustled him out of their companionship, -and got up straightway a gay masque to demonstrate -their scorn of his reproof.</p> - -<p>They say he bore his punishment sturdily,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> -though the fumes of his book, which was burned -just below his nose, came near to suffocate him. -Later still, he underwent another sentence for offences -growing out of his unrelenting and imperious -Puritanism—this time in company with one -Burton (not Robert Burton,<a name="FNanchor_54" id="FNanchor_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> of the <cite>Anatomy of -Melancholy</cite>), who was a favorite with the people and -had flowers strown before him as he walked to the -pillory. But Prynne had no flowers, and his ears -having been once cropt, the hangman had a rough -time (a very rough time for Prynne) in getting at -his task. Thereafter he was sent to prison in the -isle of Jersey; but he kept writing, ears or no ears, -and we may hear his strident voice again—hear it -in Parliament, too.</p> - -<h3>Cowley and Waller.</h3> - -<p>Two other poets of these times I name, because -of the great reputation they once had; a reputation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> -far greater than they maintain now. These -are Abraham Cowley and Edmund Waller.<a name="FNanchor_55" id="FNanchor_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> The -former of these (Cowley) was the son of a London -grocer, whose shop was not far from the home -of Izaak Walton; he was taught at Westminster -School, and at Cambridge, and blazed up precociously -at the age of fifteen in shining verses.<a name="FNanchor_56" id="FNanchor_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> Indeed -his aptitude, his ingenuities, his scholarship, -kept him in the first rank of men of letters all -through his day, and gave him burial between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> -Spenser and Chaucer in Westminster Abbey. He -would take a humbler place if he were disentombed -now; yet, in Cromwell’s time, or in that of Charles -II., the average reading man knew Cowley better -than he knew Milton, and admired him more. I -give you a fragment of what is counted his best; -it is from his “Hymn to Light:”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“When, Goddess, thou lift’st up thy waken’d head</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Out of the morning’s purple bed,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Thy quire of birds about thee play,</div> -<div class="verse">And all the joyful world salutes the rising day.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“All the world’s bravery, that delights our eyes,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Is but thy sev’ral liveries,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Thou the rich dye on them bestowest,</div> -<div class="verse">Thy nimble pencil paints this landscape as thou goest.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“A crimson garment in the Rose thou wear’st;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">A crown of studded gold thou bear’st,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The virgin lilies in their white,</div> -<div class="verse">Are clad but with the lawn of almost naked light!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>If I were to read a fragment from Tennyson in -contrast with Cowley’s treatment of a similar theme -I think you might wonder less why his reputation -has suffered gradual eclipse. Shall we try? Cowley -wrote a poem in memory of a dear friend, and -I take one of the pleasantest of its verses:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say,</div> -<div class="verse">Have ye not seen us walking every day?</div> -<div class="verse">Was there a tree about, which did not know</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The love betwixt us two?</div> -<div class="verse">Henceforth, ye gentle trees, for ever fade,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Or your sad branches thicker join,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And into darksome shades combine,</div> -<div class="verse">Dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Tennyson wrote of <em>his</em> dead friend, and here is a -verse of it:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“The path by which we twain did go,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Which led by tracts that pleased us well</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thro’ four sweet years, arose and fell</div> -<div class="verse">From flower to flower, from snow to snow;</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But where the path we walk’d began</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To slant the fifth autumnal slope,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">As we descended, following hope,</div> -<div class="verse"><em>There</em> sat the shadow feared of man,</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Who broke our fair companionship,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And spread his mantle dark and cold,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And wrapped thee formless in the fold,</div> -<div class="verse">And dulled the murmur on thy lip,</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And bore thee where I could not see</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Nor follow—though I walk in haste;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And think—that somewhere in the waste,</div> -<div class="verse">The shadow sits, and waits for me!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span></p> -<p>Can I be wrong in thinking that under the solemn -lights of these stanzas the earlier poet’s verse grows -dim?</p> - -<p>Cowley was a good Kingsman; and in the days -of the Commonwealth held position of secretary to -the exiled Queen Henrietta, in Paris; he did, at -one time, think of establishing himself in one of -the American colonies; returned, however, to his -old London haunts, and, wearying of the city, -sought retirement at Chertsey, on the Thames’ -banks (where his old house is still to be seen), and -where he wrote, in graceful prose and cumbrous -verse, on subjects related to country life—which he -loved overmuch—and died there among his trees -and the meadows.</p> - -<p>Waller was both Kingsman and Republican—steering -deftly between extremes, so as to keep -himself and his estates free from harm. This will -weaken your sympathy for him at once—as it -should do. He lived in a grand way—affected the -philosopher; <em>was</em> such a philosopher as quick-witted -selfishness makes; yet he surely had wonderful -aptitudes in dealing with language, and -could make its harmonious numbers flow where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> -and how he would. Waller has come to a casual -literary importance in these days under the deft -talking and writing of those dilettante critics who -would make this author the pivot (as it were) on -which British poesy swung away from the “hysterical -riot of the Jacobeans” into measured and -orderly classic cadence. It is a large influence to -attribute to a single writer, though his grace and -felicities go far to justify it. And it is further to -be remembered that such critics are largely given -to the discussion of <em>technique</em> only; they write as -distinct art-masters; while we, who are taking our -paths along English Letters for many other things -besides art and rhythm, will, I trust, be pardoned -for thinking that there is very little pith or weighty -matter in this great master of the juggleries of -sound.</p> - -<p>Waller married early in life, but lost his wife -while still very young; thenceforth, for many years—a -gay and coquettish widower—he pursued the -Lady Dorothy Sidney with a storm of love verses, of -which the best (and it is really amazingly clever in -its neatness and point) is this:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Go, lovely Rose,</div> -<div class="verse">Tell her, that wastes her time and me,</div> -<div class="verse">That now she knows</div> -<div class="verse">When I resemble her to thee</div> -<div class="verse">How sweet and fair she seems to be.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Tell her that’s young,</div> -<div class="verse">And shuns to have her graces spied,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That hadst thou sprung</div> -<div class="verse">In deserts where no men abide,</div> -<div class="verse">Thou must have, uncommended, died.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>But neither this, nor a hundred others, brought -the Lady Dorothy to terms: she married—like a -wise woman—somebody else. And he? He went -on singing as chirpingly as ever—sang till he was -over eighty.</p> - -<h3>John Milton.</h3> - -<p>And now we come to a poet of a larger build—a -weightier music—and of a more indomitable spirit; -a poet who wooed the world with his songs; -and the world has never said him “Nay.” I mean -John Milton.<a name="FNanchor_57" id="FNanchor_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span></p> - -<p>He is the first great poet we have encountered, -in respect to whom we can find in contemporary -records full details of family, lodgement, and birth. -A great many of these details have been swooped -together in Dr. Masson’s recently completed <cite>Life -and Times of Milton</cite>, which I would more earnestly -commend to your reading were it not so utterly -long—six fat volumes of big octavo—in the which -the pith and kernel about Milton, the man, floats -around like force meat-balls in a great sea of historic -soup. Our poet was born in Bread Street, -just out of Cheapside, in London, in the year 1608.</p> - -<p>In Cheapside—it may be well to recall—stood -the Mermaid Tavern; and it stood not more than -half a block away from the corner where Milton’s -father lived. And on that corner—who -knows?—the boy, eight years old, or thereby, -when Shakespeare died, may have lingered to see -the stalwart Ben Jonson go tavern-ward for his -cups, or may be, John Marston, or Dekker, or -Philip Massinger—all these being comfortably inclined -to taverns.</p> - -<p>The father of this Bread Street lad was a scrivener -by profession; that is, one who drafted legal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> -papers; a well-to-do man as times went; able to -give his boy some private schooling; proud of him, -too; proud of his clear white and red face, and his -curly auburn hair carefully parted—almost a girl’s -face; so well-looking, indeed, that the father employed -a good Dutch painter of those days to take -his portrait; the portrait is still in existence—dating -from 1618, when the poet was ten, showing him -in a banded velvet doublet and a stiff vandyke collar, -trimmed about with lace. In those times, or -presently after, he used to go to St. Paul’s Grammar -School; of which Lily, of Lily’s <cite>Latin Grammar</cite>, -was the first master years before. It was only a -little walk for him, through Cheapside, and then, -perhaps, Paternoster Row—the school being under -the shadow of that great cathedral, which was -burned fifty years after. He studied hard there; -studied at home, too; often, he says himself, when -only fourteen, studying till twelve at night. He -loved books, and he loved better to be foremost.</p> - -<p>He turns his hand to poetry even then. Would -you like to see a bit of what he wrote at fifteen? -Well, here it is, in a scrap of psalmody:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Let us blaze his name abroad,</div> -<div class="verse">For of gods, he is the God,</div> -<div class="verse center">…</div> -<div class="verse">Who by his wisdom did create</div> -<div class="verse">The painted heavens so full of state,</div> -<div class="verse center">…</div> -<div class="verse">And caused the golden tressèd sun</div> -<div class="verse">All the day long his course to run,</div> -<div class="verse">The hornèd moon to hang by night</div> -<div class="verse">Amongst her spangled sisters bright;</div> -<div class="verse">For his mercies aye endure,</div> -<div class="verse">Ever faithful, ever sure.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>It is not of the best, but I think will compare -favorably with most that is written by young -people of fifteen. At Christ’s College, Cambridge, -whither he went shortly afterward—his father being -hopeful that he would take orders in the -Church—he was easily among the first; he wrote -Latin hexameters, quarrelled with his tutor (notwithstanding -his handsome face had given to him -the mocking title of “The Lady”), had his season -of <em>rustication</em> up in London, sees all that is doing -in theatrics thereabout, but goes back to study -more closely than ever.</p> - -<p>The little Christmas song,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent4">“It was the winter wild,</div> -<div class="verse">While the heaven-born Child,” etc.,</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span></p> -<p class="noindent">belongs to his Cambridge life; though his first -public appearance as an author was in the “Ode to -Shakespeare,” attaching with other and various -commendatory verses to the second folio edition -of that author’s dramas, published in the year 1632.</p> - -<p>Milton was then twenty-four, had been six or -seven at Cambridge; did not accept kindly his -father’s notion of taking orders in the Church, but -had exaggerated views of a grandiose life of study -and literary work; in which views his father—sensible -man that he was—did not share; but—kind -man that he was—he did not strongly combat them. -So we find father and son living together presently, -some twenty miles away from London, in a little -country hamlet called Horton, where the old gentleman -had purchased a cottage for a final home -when his London business was closed up.</p> - -<p>Here, too, our young poet studies—not books -only, borrowed where he can, and bought if he can; -but studies also fields and trees and skies and -rivers, and all the natural objects that are to take -embalmment sooner or later in his finished verse. -Here he wrote, almost within sight of Windsor -towers, “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso.” You know<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> -them; but they are always new and always fresh; -freshest when you go out from London on a summer’s -day to where the old tower of Horton Church -still points the road, and trace there (if you can)</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“The russet lawns and fallows gray</div> -<div class="verse">Where the nibbling flocks do stray,</div> -<div class="verse center">…</div> -<div class="verse">Meadows trim with daisies pied,</div> -<div class="verse">Shallow brooks and rivers wide.</div> -<div class="verse center">…</div> -<div class="verse">Sometimes with secure delight</div> -<div class="verse">The upland hamlets will invite,</div> -<div class="verse">When the merry bells ring round</div> -<div class="verse">And the jocund rebecks sound</div> -<div class="verse">To many a youth and many a maid</div> -<div class="verse">Dancing in the chequered shade;</div> -<div class="verse">And young and old come forth to play</div> -<div class="verse">On a sunshine holiday.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>In reading such verse we do not know where to -stop—at least, I do not. He writes, too, in that -country quietude, within sight of Windsor forest, -his charming “Lycidas,” one of the loveliest of memorial -poems, and the “Comus,” which alone of all -the masques of that time, and preceding times, has -gone in its entirety into the body of living English -literature.</p> - -<p>In 1638, then thirty years old, equipped in all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> -needed languages and scholarship, he goes for further -study and observation to the Continent; he -carries letters from Sir Henry Wotton; he sees the -great Hugo Grotius at Paris; sees the sunny country -of olives in Provence; sees the superb front of -Genoa piling out from the blue waters of the Mediterranean; -sees Galileo at Florence—the old philosopher -too blind to study the face of the studious -young Englishman that has come so far to greet -him. He sees, too, what is best and bravest at -Rome; among the rest St. Peter’s, just then brought -to completion, and in the first freshness of its great -tufa masonry. He is fêted by studious young Italians; -has the freedom of the Accademia della -Crusca; blazes out in love sonnets to some dark-eyed -signorina of Bologna; returns by Venice, and -by Geneva where he hobnobs with the Diodati -friends of his old school-fellow, Charles Diodati; -and comes home to England to find changes brewing—the -Scotch marching over the border with -battle-drums—the Long Parliament portending—Strafford -and Laud in way of impeachment—his -old father drawing near to his end—and bloody -war tainting all the air.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></p> - -<p>The father’s fortune, never large, is found crippled -at his death; and Milton, now thirty-two, must -look out for his own earnings. He takes a house; -first in Fleet Street, then near Aldersgate, with -garden attached, where he has three or four -pupils; his nephew Phillips<a name="FNanchor_58" id="FNanchor_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> among them.</p> - -<h3>Milton’s Marriage.</h3> - -<p>It was while living there that he brought back, -one day, a bride—Mary Powell; she was a young -maiden in her teens, daughter of a well-established -loyalist family near to Oxford. The young bride is -at the quiet student’s house in Aldersgate a month, -perhaps two, when she goes down for a visit to her -mother; she is to come back at Michaelmas; but -Michaelmas comes, and she stays; Milton writes, -and she stays; Milton writes again, and she stays; -he sends a messenger—and she stays.</p> - -<p>What is up, then, in this new household? Milton, -the scholar and poet, is up, straightway, to a -treatise on divorce, whereby he would make it easy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> -to undo yokes where parties are unevenly yoked. -There is much scriptural support and much shrewd -reasoning brought by his acuteness to the overthrow -of those rulings which the common-sense of -mankind has established; even now those who contend -for easy divorce get their best weapons out of -this old Miltonian armory.</p> - -<p>Meantime the poet went on teaching, I suspect -rapping his boys over the knuckles in these days -for slight cause. But what does it all mean? It -means incongruity; not the first case, nor will it -be the last. He—abstracted, austere, bookish, with -his head in the clouds; she—with her head in ribbons, -and possibly loving orderly housewifery:<a name="FNanchor_59" id="FNanchor_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> -intellectual affinities and sympathies are certainly -missing.</p> - -<p>Fancy the poet just launched into the moulding -of such verse as this:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire</div> -<div class="verse">Mirth and youth, and warm desire!</div> -<div class="verse">Woods and groves are of thy dressing——”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span></p> - -<p class="noindent">when a servant gives sharp rat-tat at the door, -“Please, sir, missus says, ‘Dinner’s waiting!’” -But the poet sweeps on—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“O nightingale, that on yon blooming spray</div> -<div class="verse">Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still,</div> -<div class="verse">Thou, with fresh heat, the lover’s heart dost fill,</div> -<div class="verse">Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate——”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">And there is another rat-tat!—“Please, sir, missus -says, ‘Dinner is all getting cold.’” Still the poet -ranges in fairyland—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent8">“——ere the rude bird of hate</div> -<div class="verse">Foretell my hopeless doom, in some grove nigh,</div> -<div class="verse">As thou from year to year hast sung too late</div> -<div class="verse">For my relief, yet hadst no reason why——”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">And now, maybe, it is the pretty mistress who -comes with a bounce—“Mr. Milton, are you <em>ever</em> -coming?”—and a quick bang of the door, which is -a way some excellent petulant young women have -of—not breaking the commandments.</p> - -<p>There is a little prosaic half-line in the “Paradise -Lost” (I don’t think it was ever quoted before), -which in this connection seems to me to have a -very pathetic twang in it; ’tis about Paradise and -its charms—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“No fear lest dinner cool!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span></p> -<p>However, it happens that through the advocacy -of friends on both sides this great family breach is -healed, or seems to be; and two years after, Milton -and his recreant, penitent, and restored wife -are living again together; lived together till her -death; and she became the mother of his three -daughters: Anne, who was crippled, never even -learned to write, and used to be occupied with -her needle; Mary, who was his amanuensis and -reader most times, and Deborah, the youngest, -who came to perform similar offices for him afterward.</p> - -<p>Meantime the Royalist cause had suffered everywhere. -The Powells (his wife’s family having come -to disaster) did—with more or less children—go -to live with Milton. Whether the presence of -the mother-in-law mended the poet’s domesticity I -doubt; doubt, indeed, if ever there was absolute -harmony there.</p> - -<p>On the year of the battle of Naseby appeared -Milton’s first unpretending booklet of poems,<a name="FNanchor_60" id="FNanchor_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> -containing with others, those already named, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> -not before printed. Earlier, however, in the lifetime -of the poet had begun the issue of those -thunderbolts of pamphlets which he wrote on -church discipline, education, on the liberty of unlicensed -printing, and many another topic—cumbrous -with great trails of intricate sentences, wondrous -word-heaps, sparkling with learning, flaming -with anger—with convolutions like a serpent’s, -and as biting as serpents.</p> - -<p>A show is kept up of his school-keeping, but -with doubtful success; for in 1647 we learn that -“he left his great house in Barbican, and betook -himself to a smaller in High Holborn, among those -that open back into Lincoln’s Inn Fields;” but -there is no poem-making of importance (save one -or two wondrous Sonnets) now, or again, until he -is virtually an old man.</p> - -<h3>The Royal Tragedy.</h3> - -<p>Meantime the tide of war is flowing back and -forth over England and engrossing all hopes and -fears. The poor King is one while a captive of the -Scots, and again a captive of the Parliamentary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> -forces, and is hustled from palace to castle. What -shall be done with the royal prisoner? There are -thousands who have fought against him who would -have been most glad of his escape; but there are -others—weary of his doublings—who have vowed -that this son of Baal shall go to his doom and bite -the dust.</p> - -<p>Finally, and quickly too (for events move with -railroad speed), his trial comes—the trial of a -King. A strange event for these English, who -have venerated and feared and idolized so many -kings and queens of so many royal lines. How the -Royalist verse-makers must have fumed and raved! -Milton, then just turned of forty, was, as I have -said, living near High Holborn; the King was eight -years his senior—was in custody at St. James’s, a -short way above Piccadilly. He brought to the -trial all his kingly dignity, and wore it unflinchingly—refusing -to recognize the jurisdiction of -the Parliament, cuddling always obstinately that -poor figment of the divine right of kings—which -even then Milton, down in his Holborn garden, was -sharpening his pen to undermine and destroy.</p> - -<p>The sentence was death—a sentence that gave<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> -pause to many. Fairfax, and others such, would -have declared against it; even crop-eared Prynne, -who had suffered so much for his truculent Puritanism, -protested against it; two-thirds of the population -of England would have done the same; but -London and England and the army were all in the -grip of an iron man whose name was Cromwell. -Time sped; the King had only two days to live; -his son Charles was over seas, never believing -such catastrophe could happen; only two royal -children—a princess of thirteen and a boy of eight—came -to say adieu to the royal prisoner. “He -sat with them some time at the window, taking -them on his knees, and kissing them, and talking -with them of their duty to their mother, and to -their elder brother, the Prince of Wales.” He carried -his habitual dignity and calmness with him on -the very morning, going between files of soldiers -through St. James’s Park—pointing out a tree -which his brother Henry had planted—and on, -across to Whitehall, where had come off many a -gay, rollicking masque of Ben Jonson’s, in presence -of his father, James I. He was led through the -window of the banqueting-hall—the guides show<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> -it now—where he had danced many a night, -and so to the scaffold, just without the window, -whence he could see up and down the vast court -of Whitehall, from gate to gate,<a name="FNanchor_61" id="FNanchor_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> paved with a -great throng of heads. Even then and there -rested on him the same kingly composure; the fine -oval face, pale but unmoved; the peaked beard -carefully trimmed, as you see it in the well-known -pictures by Vandyke, at Windsor or at Blenheim.</p> - -<p>He has a word with old Bishop Juxon, who -totters beside him; a few words for others who -are within hearing; examines the block, the axe; -gives some brief cautions to the executioner; -then, laying down his head, lifts his own hand -for signal, and with a crunching thud of sound -it is over.</p> - -<p>And poet Milton—has he shown any relenting? -Not one whit; he is austere among the most austere; -in this very week he is engaged upon his -defence of regicide, with its stinging, biting sentences.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> -He is a friend and party to the new Commonwealth; -two months only after the execution -of the King, he is appointed Secretary to the State -Council, and under it is conducting the Latin correspondence. -He demolishes, by order of the same -Council, the <cite>Eikon Basilike</cite> (supposed in that day -to be the king’s work) with his fierce onslaught of -the <cite>Eikonoklastes</cite>. His words are bitter as gall; he -even alludes, in no amiable tone—with acrid emphasis, -indeed—to the absurd rumor, current with -some, that the King, through his confidential instrument, -Buckingham, had poisoned his own father.</p> - -<p>He is further appointed to the answering of Salmasius,<a name="FNanchor_62" id="FNanchor_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> -an answer with which all Europe presently -rings. It was in these days, and with such -work crowding him, that his vision fails; and to -these days, doubtless belongs that noble sonnet on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> -his blindness, which is worth our staying for, here -and now:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“When I consider how my light is spent</div> -<div class="verse">Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,</div> -<div class="verse">And that one talent, which is death to hide,</div> -<div class="verse">Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent</div> -<div class="verse">To serve therewith my Maker, and present</div> -<div class="verse">My true account, lest he, returning, chide;</div> -<div class="verse">‘Dost God exact day-labor, light denied?’</div> -<div class="verse">I fondly ask: But Patience, to prevent</div> -<div class="verse">That murmur, soon replies—‘God doth not need</div> -<div class="verse">Either man’s work, or his own gifts; who best</div> -<div class="verse">Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state</div> -<div class="verse">Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed</div> -<div class="verse">And post o’er land and ocean without rest;</div> -<div class="verse">They also serve, who only stand and wait.’”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Wonderful, is it not, that such a sonnet—so full -of rare eloquence and rare philosophy—so full of -all that most hallows our infirm humanity could be -written by one—pouring out his execrations on -the head of Salmasius—at strife in his own household—at -strife (as we shall find) with his own -daughters? Wonderful, is it not, that Carlyle -could write as he did about the heroism of the -humblest as well as bravest, and yet grow into a -rage—over his wife’s shoulders and at her cost—with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> -a rooster crowing in his neighbor’s yard? -Ah, well, the perfect ones have not yet come upon -our earth, whatever perfect poems they may write.</p> - -<h3>Change of Kings.</h3> - -<p>But at last comes a new turn of the wheel to -English fortunes. Cromwell is dead; the Commonwealth -is ended; all London is throwing its cap in -the air over the restoration of Charles II. Poor -blind Milton<a name="FNanchor_63" id="FNanchor_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> is in hiding and in peril. His name -is down among those accessory to the murder of -the King. The ear-cropped Prynne—who is now -in Parliament, and who hates Milton as Milton -scorned Prynne—is very likely hounding on those -who would bring the great poet to judgment. ’Tis -long matter of doubt. Past his house near Red -Lion Square the howling mob drag the bodies of -Cromwell and Ireton, and hang them in their dead -ghastliness.</p> - -<p>Milton, however, makes lucky escape, with only a -short term of prison; but for some time thereafter -he was in fear of assassination. Such a rollicking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> -daredevil, as Scott in his story of <cite>Woodstock</cite>, has -painted for us in Roger Wildrake (of whom there -were many afloat in those times) would have liked -no better fun than to run his rapier through such a -man as John Milton; and in those days he would -have been pardoned for it.</p> - -<p>That capital story of <cite>Woodstock</cite> one should read -when they are upon these times of the Commonwealth. -There are, indeed, anachronisms in it; -kings escaping too early or too late, or dying a little -out of time to accommodate the exigencies of the -plot; but the characterization is marvellously -spirited; and you see the rakehelly cavaliers, and -the fine old king-ridden knights, and the sour-mouthed -Independents, and the glare and fumes -and madness of the civil war, as you find them in -few history pages.</p> - -<p>Milton, meanwhile, in his quiet home again, revolves -his old project of a great sacred poem. He -taxes every visitor who can, to read to him in -Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Dutch. His bookly appetite -is omnivorous. His daughters have large share of -this toil. Poor girls, they have been little taught, -and not wisely. They read what they read only by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> -rote, and count it severe task-work. Their mother -is long since dead, and a second wife, who lived -only for a short time, dead too. We know very -little of that second wife; but she is embalmed -forever in a sonnet, from which I steal this fragment:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Methought I saw my late espousèd saint</div> -<div class="verse">Brought to me, like Alcestis from the grave;</div> -<div class="verse center">…</div> -<div class="verse">Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight</div> -<div class="verse">Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shin’d</div> -<div class="verse">So clear as in no face with more delight.</div> -<div class="verse">But oh, as to embrace me she inclined</div> -<div class="verse">I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>The Miltonian reading and the work goes on, -but affection, I fear, does not dominate the household; -the daughters overtasked, with few indulgences, -make little rebellions; and the blind, -exacting old man is as unforgiving as the law. -Americans should take occasion to see the great -picture by Munkacsy, in the Lenox Gallery, New -York, of Milton dictating <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>; it is in itself -a poem; a dim Puritan interior; light coming -through a latticed window and striking on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> -pale, something cadaverous face of the old poet, -who sits braced in his great armchair, with lips set -together, and the daughters, in awed attention, listening -or seeming to listen.</p> - -<p>I am sorry there is so large room to doubt of -the intellectual and affectionate sympathy existing -between them; nevertheless—that it did not is -soberly true; his own harsh speeches, which are -of record, show it; their petulant innuendoes, -which are also of record, show it.</p> - -<p>Into this clouded household—over which love -does not brood so fondly as we would choose to -think—there comes sometimes, with helpfulness -and sympathy, a certain Andrew Marvell, who had -been sometime assistant to Milton in his official -duties, and who takes his turn at the readings, and -sees only the higher and better lights that shine -there; and he had written sweet poems of his -own, (to which I shall return) that have kept his -name alive, and that will keep it alive, I think, -forever.</p> - -<p>There comes also into this home, in these days, -very much to the surprise and angerment of the -three daughters, a third wife to the old poet, after<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> -some incredibly short courtship.<a name="FNanchor_64" id="FNanchor_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> She is only -seven years the senior of the daughter Anne; but -she seems to have been a sensible young person, -not bookishly given, and looking after the household, -while Anne and Mary and Deborah still wait, -after a fashion, upon the student-wants of the poet. -In fits of high abstraction he is now bringing the -“Paradise” to a close—not knowing, or not caring, -maybe, for the little bickerings which rise and -rage and die away in the one-sided home.</p> - -<p>I cannot stay to characterize his great poem; nor -is there need; immortal in more senses than one; -humanity counts for little in it; one pair of human -creatures only, and these looked at, as it were, -through the big end of the telescope; with gigantic, -Godlike figures around one, or colossal demons -prone on fiery floods. It is not a child’s book; to -place it in schools as a parsing-book is an atrocity -that I hope is ended. Not, I think, till we have -had some fifty years to view the everlasting fight -between good and evil in this world, can we see in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> -proper perspective the vaster battle which, under -Milton’s imagination, was pictured in Paradise between -the same foes. Years only can so widen -one’s horizon as to give room for the reverberations -of that mighty combat of the powers of light and -darkness.</p> - -<p>We talk of the organ-music of Milton. The -term has its special significance; it gives hint of -that large quality which opens heavenly spaces with -its billows of sound; which translates us; which -gives us a lookout from supreme heights, and so -lifts one to the level of his “Argument.” There is -large learning in his great poem—weighty and -recondite; but this spoils no music; great, cumbrous -names catch sonorous vibrations under his -modulating touch, and colossal shields and spears -clash together like cymbals. The whole burden -of his knowledges—Pagan, Christian, or Hebraic, -lift up and sink away upon the undulations of his -sublime verse, as heavy-laden ships rise and fall -upon some great ground-swell making in from -outer seas.</p> - -<p>A bookish color is pervading; if he does not -steal flowers from books, he does what is better—he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> -shows the fruit of them. There are stories of -his debt to Cædmon, and still more authentic, of -his debt to the Dutch poet Vondel,<a name="FNanchor_65" id="FNanchor_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> and the old -Provençal Bishop of Vienne,<a name="FNanchor_66" id="FNanchor_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> who as early as the -beginning of the sixth century wrote on kindred -themes. There is hardly room for doubt that -Milton not only knew, but literally translated some -of the old Bishop’s fine Latin lines, and put to his -larger usage some of his epithets.</p> - -<p>Must we not admit that—in the light of such<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> -developments—when the Puritan poet boasts of -discoursing on</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme,”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">that it is due to a little lurking stimulant of that -Original Sin which put bitterness into his Salmasian -papers, and an ugly arrogance into his domestic -discipline? But, after all, he was every way -greater than his forerunners, and can afford to admit -Cædmon and Vondel and Avitus, and all other -claimants, as supporting columns in the underlying -crypt upon which was builded the great temple of -his song.</p> - -<h3>Last Days.</h3> - -<p>The home of Milton in these latter days of his -life was often changed. Now, it was Holborn -again; then Jewin Street; then Bunhill Row; and—one -while—for a year or more, when the great -plague of 1665 desolated the city, he fled before it -to the little village of Chalfont, some twenty miles -distant from London on the Aylesbury road. -There the cottage<a name="FNanchor_67" id="FNanchor_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> may still be seen in which he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> -lived, and the garden in which he walked—but -never saw. There, too, is the latticed window looking -on the garden, at which he sat hour by hour, -with the summer winds blowing on him from over -honeysuckle beds, while he brooded, with sightless -eyes turned to the sky, upon the mysteries of fate -and foreknowledge.</p> - -<p>A young Quaker, Ellwood, perhaps his dearest -friend, comes to see him there, to read to him and -to give a helping hand to the old man’s study; his -daughters, too, are at their helpful service; grateful, -maybe, that even the desolation of the plague -has given a short relief from the dingy house in -the town and its treadmill labors, and put the joy -of blooming flowers and of singing birds into their -withered hearts.</p> - -<p>The year after, which finds them in Bunhill Row -again, brings that great London fire which the -Monument now commemorates; they passing three -days and nights upon the edge of that huge tempest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> -of flame and smoke which devoured nearly -two-thirds of London; the old poet hearing the din -and roar and crackle, and feeling upon his forehead -the waves of fierce heat and the showers of cinders—a -scene and an experience which might have -given, perhaps, other color to his pictures of Pandemonium, -if his great poem had not been just now, -in these fateful years, completed—completed and -bargained for; £20 were to be paid for it conditionally,<a name="FNanchor_68" id="FNanchor_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> -in four payments of £5 each, at a day -when London had been decimated by the plague, -and half the city was a waste of ruin and ashes. -And to give an added tint of blackness to the picture, -we have to fancy his three daughters leaving -him, as they did, tired of tasks, tired of wrangling. -Anne, the infirm one, who neither read nor wrote, -and Mary, so overworked, and Deborah, the youngest -(latterly being very helpful)—all desert him. -They never return. “Undutiful daughters,” he -says to Ellwood; but I think he does not soften<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> -toward them, even when gone. Poor, stern, old -man! He would have cut them off by will from -their small shares of inheritance in his estate; but -the courts wisely overruled this. Anne, strangely -enough, married—dying shortly after; Mary died -years later, a spinster; and Deborah, who became -Mrs. Clark, had some notice, thirty years later, -when it was discovered that a quiet woman of that -name was Milton’s daughter. But she seems to -have been of a stolid make; no poetry, no high -sense of dignity belonging to her; a woman like -ten thousand, whose descendants are now said -(doubtfully) to be living somewhere in India.</p> - -<p>But Milton wrought on; his wife Betty, of whom -he spoke more affectionately than ever once of his -daughters, humored his poor fagged appetites of the -table. <cite>Paradise Regained</cite> was in hand; and later -the “Samson Agonistes.” His habits were regular; -up at five o’clock; a chapter of the Hebrew Bible -read to him by his daughter Mary—what time she -stayed; an early breakfast, and quiet lonely contemplation -after it (his nephew tells us) till seven. -Then work came, putting Quaker Ellwood to helpful -service, or whoever happened in, and could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> -fathom the reading—this lasting till mid-day dinner; -afterward a walk in his garden (when he had -one) for two hours, in his old gray suit, in which -many a time passers-by saw him sitting at his door. -There was singing in later afternoon, when there -was a voice to sing for him; and instrumental -music, when his, or a friendly hand touched the -old organ. After supper, a pipe and a glass of -water; always persistently temperate; and then, -night and rest.</p> - -<p>He attended no church in his later years, finding -none in absolute agreement with his beliefs; -sympathizing with the Quakers to a certain degree, -with the orthodox Independents too; but flaming -up at any procrustean laws for faith; never giving -over a certain tender love, I think, for the organ-music -and storied splendors of the Anglican -Church; but with a wild, broad freedom of thought -chafing at any ecclesiastic law made by man, -that galled him or checked his longings. His -clear, clean intellect—not without its satiric jostlings -and wrestlings—its petulancies and caprices—sought -and maintained, independently, its own -relation with God and the mysterious future.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span></p> - -<p>Our amiable Dr. Channing, with excellent data -before him, demonstrated his good Unitarian faith; -but though Milton might have approved his nice -reasonings, I doubt if he would have gone to church -with him. He loved liberty; he could not travel -well in double harness, not even in his household -or with the elders. His exalted range of vision -made light of the little aids and lorgnettes which -the conventional teachers held out to him. Creeds -and dogmas and vestments and canons, and all humanly -consecrated helps, were but Jack-o’-lanterns -to him, who was swathed all about with the glowing -clouds of glory that rolled in upon his soul from -the infinite depths.</p> - -<p>In the year 1674—he being then sixty-five years -old—on a Sunday, late at night, he died; and with -so little pain that those who were with him did not -know when the end came. He was buried—not -in the great cemetery of Bunhill Fields, close by his -house—but beside his father, in the old parish -church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, where he had been -used to go as a boy, and where he had been used to -hear the old burial Office for the Dead—now intoned -over his grave—“<cite>Ashes to ashes, dust to dust</cite>.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> -There was no need for the monument erected to -him there in recent years. His poems make a monument -that is read of all the world, and will be read -in all times of the world.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</h2> - -<p class="dropcap">As we launched upon the days of Charles I., in -our last talk, we had somewhat to say of the -King’s advisers, lay and ecclesiastic; we came to -quick sense of the war-clouds, fast gathering, -through which Jeremy Taylor shot his flashes of -pious eloquence; we heard a strain of Suckling’s -verse, to which might have been added other, and -may be better, from such Royalist singers as Carew -or Lovelace;<a name="FNanchor_69" id="FNanchor_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> but we cannot swoop all the birds -into our net. We had glimpse of the crop-eared -Prynne of the <cite>Histriomastix</cite>; and from Cowley, that -sincere friend of both King and Queen in the days -of their misfortunes, we plucked some “Poetical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> -Blossoms;” also a charming “Rose,” from the orderly -parterres of that great gardener, and pompous, -time-serving man, Edmund Waller.</p> - -<p>Then came Milton with the fairy melodies, -always sweet, of “Comus”—the cantankerous pamphleteering—the -soured home-life—the bloody -thrusts at the image of the King, and the grander -flight of his diviner music into the courts of Paradise.</p> - -<h3>Charles II. and his Friends.</h3> - -<p>Some fourteen years or so before the death of -Milton, the restoration of Charles II. had come -about. He had drifted back upon the traces of -the stout Oliver Cromwell, and of the feebler Richard -Cromwell, on a great tide of British enthusiasm. -Independents, Presbyterians, Church of England -men, and Papists were all by the ears; and it -did seem to many among the shrewdest of even the -Puritan workers that some balance-wheel (of whatever -metal), though weighted with royal traditions -and hereditary privileges, might keep the governmental -machinery to the steady working of old days.</p> - -<p>So the Second Charles had come back, with a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> -great throwing up of caps all through the London -streets; Presbyterians giving him welcome because -he was sure to snub the Independents; the Independents -giving him welcome because he was sure -to snub the Presbyterians; the Church of England -men giving him welcome because he was sure to -snub both (as he did); and finally, the Papists giving -him high welcome because all other ways their -hopes were lean and few.</p> - -<p>You know, or should know, what manner of man -he was: accomplished—in his way; an expert -swordsman; an easy talker—capable of setting a -tableful of gentlemen in a roar; telling stories -inimitably, and a great many of them; full of grimaces -that would have made his fortune on the stage; -saying sweetest things, and meaning the worst -things; a daredevil who feared neither God nor -man; generous, too—most of all in his cups; and -liberal—with other people’s money; hating business -with all his soul; loving pleasure with all his -heart; ready always to do kindness that cost him -nothing; laughing at all Puritans and purity; yet -winning the maudlin affection of a great many people, -and the respect of none.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span></p> - -<p>Notwithstanding all this, the country gentlemen -of England, of good blood, who had sniffed scornfully -at the scent of the beer-vats which hung about -the name of Cromwell, welcomed this clever, -swarthy, black-haired, dissolute Prince, who had a -pedigree which ran back on the father’s side to the -royal Bruce of Scotland, and on the mother’s side -to the great Clovis, and to the greater Charlemagne.</p> - -<p>You will find a good glimpse of this scion of -royalty in Scott’s story of <cite>Peveril of the Peak</cite>. -The novel is by no means one of the great romancer’s -best; but it is well worth reading for the clear -and vivid idea it will give one of the social clashings -between the reserves of old Puritanism and the incontinencies -of new monarchism; you will find in -it an excellent sample of the gruff, stalwart Cromwellian; -and another of the hot-tempered, swearing -cavalier; and still others of the mincing, scheming, -gambling, roystering crew which overran all the -purlieus of the court of Charles. Buckingham -was there—that second Villiers,<a name="FNanchor_70" id="FNanchor_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> of whom I had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> -somewhat to say when the elder Buckingham came -up for mention in the days of Charles I.; this -younger Villiers running before the elder in all -accomplishments and all villainies; courtly; of -noble bearing; with daintiest of speeches; a pattern -of manly graces; capable of a tender French song, -with all his tones in exultant accord with best of -court singers, and of a comedy that drew all the -play-goers of London to the “Rehearsal;” capable -too, of the wickedest of plots and of the foulest of -lies. And yet this Buckingham was one of the best -accredited advisers of the Crown.</p> - -<p>To the same court belonged Rochester,<a name="FNanchor_71" id="FNanchor_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> his great, -fine wig covering a great, fine brain; he writing -harmonious verses about—“Nothing”—or worse -than nothing; and at the last wheedling Bishop -Burnet into the belief that he had changed his -courses, and that if he might rise from that ugly -deathbed where the good-natured, pompous bishop -sought him, he would be enrolled among the moralists. -I think it was lucky that he died with such -good impulse flashing at the top of his badnesses.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span></p> - -<p>Dorset belonged to this court, with his pretty -verselets, and Sedley and Etherege; also the Portsmouth -and Lady Castelmaine, and the rest of those -venturesome ladies who show their colors of cheek -and bosom, even now, in the well-handled paintings -of Sir Peter Lely. When you go to Hampton Court -you can see these fair and frail beauties by the -dozen on the walls of the King William room. -Sir Peter Lely<a name="FNanchor_72" id="FNanchor_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> was a rare painter, belonging to -these times; a great favorite of Charles; and he -loved such subjects for his brush; he drew the -delicatest hands that were ever put on canvas—too -delicate and too small, unfortunately, to cover the -undress of his figures.</p> - -<p>But, at the worst, England was not altogether a -Pandemonium in those days following upon the -Restoration. I think, perhaps, the majority of historians -and commentators are disposed to over-color -the orgies; it is so easy to make prodigious effects -with strong sulphurous tints and blazing vermilions. -Certain it is that Taine, in writing of these -times, has put an almost malignant touch into his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> -story, blinking the fact that the trail which shows -most of corrupting phosphorescence came over the -Channel with the new King; forgetting that French -breeding was at the bottom of the new tastes, and -that French gold made the blazonry of the chariots -in which the Jezebels rode on their triumphal way -through London to—perdition.</p> - -<p>Then, again, English vice is more outspoken and -less secretive than that of the over-Channel neighbors. -It is now, and has always been true, that -when his Satanic majesty takes possession of a man -(or a woman), he can cover himself in sweeter and -more impenetrable disguise under the pretty perukes -and charming millinery of French art than -in a homely British body, out of which the demon -horns stick stark through all the wigs and cosmetics -that art can put upon a man.</p> - -<p>It is worth while for us to remember that in this -London, when the elegant Duke of Rochester was -beating time with his jewelled hand to a French -gallop, Richard Baxter’s<a name="FNanchor_73" id="FNanchor_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> ever-living <cite>Saints’ Rest</cite> -was an accredited book, giving consolation to many<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span> -a poor soul wrestling with the fears of death and of -future judgment. It was published, indeed, somewhat -earlier; but its author was still wakeful and -earnest; and many a time his thin, stooping figure -might be seen threading a way through the street -crowds to his chapel in Southwark, where delighted -listeners came to hear him, almost upon the very -spot where Shakespeare, eighty years before, had -played in the Globe Theatre.</p> - -<p>The eloquent Tillotson, too, in these times—more -liberal than Baxter or Doddridge—was writing -upon <cite>The Wisdom of Being Religious</cite> and the -right <cite>Rule of Faith</cite>, and by his catholicity and clear-headedness -winning such favor and renown as to -bring him later to the see of Canterbury.</p> - -<p>I would have you keep in mind, too, that John -Milton was still alive—his “Samson Agonistes” -not being published until Charles II. had been -some twelve years upon the throne—and in quiet -seclusion was cultivating and cherishing that serene -philosophy which glows along the closing line of his -greatest sonnet,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“They also serve who only stand and wait!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span></p> - -<h3>Andrew Marvell.</h3> - -<p>When upon the subject of Milton, I made mention -of a certain poet who used to go and see him in -his country retirement, and who was also assistant -to him in his duties as Latin Secretary to the -Council. This was Andrew Marvell,<a name="FNanchor_74" id="FNanchor_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> a poet of so -true a stamp, and so true a man, that it is needful -to know something more of him.</p> - -<p>He was son of a preacher at Kingston-upon-Hull -(or, by metonomy, Hull) in the north of England. -In a very singular way, the occasion of his father’s -sudden death by drowning (if current tradition -may be trusted) was also the occasion of the young -poet’s entrance upon greatly improved worldly fortune.</p> - -<p>The story of it is this, which I tell to fix his -memory better in mind. Opposite his father’s home, -on the other bank of the Humber, lived a lady with -an only daughter, the idol of her mother. This<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> -daughter chanced to visit Hull, that she might be -present at the baptism of one of Mr. Marvell’s children. -A tempest came up before night, and the -boatmen declared the crossing of the river to be -dangerous; but the young lady, with girlish wilfulness -insisted, notwithstanding the urgence of Mr. -Marvell; who, finding her resolved, went with her; -and the sea breaking over the boat both were lost. -The despairing mother found what consolation she -could in virtually adopting the young Andrew Marvell, -and eventually bestowing upon him her whole -fortune.</p> - -<p>This opened a career to him which he was not -slow to follow upon with diligence and steadiness. -Well-taught, well-travelled, well-mannered, he went -up to London, and was there befriended by those -whose friendship insured success. He was liberal -in his politics, beautifully tolerant in religious -matters, kept a level head through the years of -Parliamentary rule, and was esteemed and admired -by both Puritans and Royalists. He used a sharp -pen in controversy and wrote many pamphlets, -some of which even now might serve as models for -incisive speech; he was witty with the wittiest; was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> -caustic, humorous; his pages adrip with classicisms; -and he had a delicacy of raillery that amused, and -a power of logic that smote heavily, where blows -were in order. He was for a long time member of -Parliament for Hull, and by his honesties of speech -and pen, made himself so obnoxious to the political -jackals about Charles’s court—that he was said to -be in danger again and again of assassination; he -finally died under strong (but unfounded) suspicion -of poisoning.</p> - -<p>Those who knew him described him as “of middling -stature, strong set, roundish face, cherry-cheeked, -hazel-eyed, brown-haired.”<a name="FNanchor_75" id="FNanchor_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a></p> - -<p>There are dainty poems of his, which should be -read, and which are worth remembering. Take -this, for instance, from his <cite>Garden</cite>, which was written -by him first in Latin, and then rendered thus:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“What wondrous life is this I lead!</div> -<div class="verse">Ripe apples drop about my head;</div> -<div class="verse">The luscious clusters of a vine</div> -<div class="verse">Upon my mouth do crush their wine;</div> -<div class="verse">The nectarine and curious peach</div> -<div class="verse">Into my hands themselves do reach;</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Stumbling on melons, as I pass,</div> -<div class="verse">Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Here at the fountain’s sliding foot</div> -<div class="verse">Or at some fruit-tree’s mossy root,</div> -<div class="verse">Casting the body’s vest aside</div> -<div class="verse">My soul into the boughs does glide:</div> -<div class="verse">There, like a bird, it sits and sings,</div> -<div class="verse">Then whets and claps its silver wings,</div> -<div class="verse">And, till prepared for longer flight,</div> -<div class="verse">Waves in its plumes the various light.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>And this other bit, from his “Appleton House” -(Nuneaton), still more full of rural spirit:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“How safe, methinks, and strong behind</div> -<div class="verse">These trees, have I encamped my mind,</div> -<div class="verse">Where beauty aiming at the heart</div> -<div class="verse">Bends in some tree its useless dart,</div> -<div class="verse">And where the world no certain shot</div> -<div class="verse">Can make, or me it toucheth not.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines,</div> -<div class="verse">Curl me about, ye gadding vines,</div> -<div class="verse">And, oh, so close your circles lace</div> -<div class="verse">That I may never leave this place!</div> -<div class="verse">But, lest your fetters prove too weak</div> -<div class="verse">Ere I your silken bondage break,</div> -<div class="verse">Do you, O brambles, chain me too,</div> -<div class="verse">And, courteous briars, nail me through!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>This is better than Rochester’s “Nothing,” and -has no smack of Nell Gwynne or of Charles’s court.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span></p> - -<h3>Author of Hudibras.</h3> - -<p>It is altogether a different, and a far less worthy -character that I now bring to the notice of the -reader. The man is Samuel Butler,<a name="FNanchor_76" id="FNanchor_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> and the book -<cite>Hudibras</cite>—a jingling, doggerel poem, which at the -time of its publication had very great vogue in London, -and was the literary sensation of the hour in -a court which in those same years<a name="FNanchor_77" id="FNanchor_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> had received -the great epic of Milton without any noticeable -ripple of applause.</p> - -<p>For myself, I have no great admiration for <cite>Hudibras</cite>, -or for Mr. Samuel Butler. He was witty, and -wise in a way, and coarse, and had humor; but he -was of a bar-room stamp, and although he could -make a great gathering of the court people stretch -their sides with laughter, it does not appear that he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> -had any high sense of honor, or much dignity of -character.</p> - -<p>Mr. Pepys (whose memoirs you have heard of, -and of whom we shall have more to tell) says that -he bought the book one day in the Strand because -everybody was talking of it—which is the only reason -a good many people have for buying books; -and, he continues—that having dipped into it, -without finding much benefit, he sold it next day in -the Strand for half-price. But poor Mr. Pepys, in -another and later entry, says, “I have bought <cite>Hudibras</cite> -again; everybody does talk so much of it;” -which is very like Mr. Pepys, and very like a good -many other buyers of books.</p> - -<p><cite>Hudibras</cite> is, in fact, a great, coarse, rattling, witty -lunge at the stiff-neckedness and the cropped -heads of the Puritans, which the roistering fellows -about the palace naturally enjoyed immensely. He -calls the Presbyterians,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Such, as do build their faith upon</div> -<div class="verse">The holy text of pike and gun;</div> -<div class="verse">Decide all controversies</div> -<div class="verse">By infallible artillery;</div> -<div class="verse">And prove their doctrines orthodox</div> -<div class="verse">By apostolic blows and knocks;</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Call fire and sword and desolation</div> -<div class="verse">A godly, thorough reformation,</div> -<div class="verse">Which always must be going on</div> -<div class="verse">And still be doing—never done;</div> -<div class="verse">As if Religion were intended</div> -<div class="verse">For nothing else but to be mended.</div> -<div class="verse">A sect whose chief devotion lies</div> -<div class="verse">In odd, perverse antipathies,</div> -<div class="verse">In falling out with that or this,</div> -<div class="verse">And finding somewhat still amiss.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">That with more care keep holyday,</div> -<div class="verse">The wrong—than others the right way;</div> -<div class="verse">Compound for sins they are inclined to</div> -<div class="verse">By damning those they have no mind to.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The self same thing they will abhor</div> -<div class="verse">One way, and long another—for:</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Quarrel with mince-pies and disparage</div> -<div class="verse">Their best and dearest friend plum-porridge;</div> -<div class="verse">Fat pig and goose itself oppose,</div> -<div class="verse">And blaspheme custard thro’ the nose.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>It is not worth while to tell the story of the poem—which, -indeed, its author did not live to complete. -Its fable was undoubtedly suggested by the -far larger and worthier work of Cervantes; Hudibras -and Ralpho standing in the place of the -doughty Knight of La Mancha, and Sancho Panza; -but there is a world between the two.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span></p> - -<p><cite>Hudibras</cite> had also the like honor of suggesting -its scheme and measure and jingle to an early -American poem—that of <cite>McFingal</cite>, by John Trumbull—in -which our compatriot with less of wit and -ribaldry, but equal smoothness, and rhythmic zest, -did so catch the humor of the Butler work in -many of his couplets that even now they pass muster -as veritable parts of <cite>Hudibras</cite>.<a name="FNanchor_78" id="FNanchor_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a></p> - -<p>Samuel Butler was the son of a farmer, over in the -pretty Worcestershire region of England; but there -was in him little sense of charming ruralities; -they never put their treasures into his verse. For -sometime he was in the household of one of Cromwell’s -generals,<a name="FNanchor_79" id="FNanchor_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> who lived in a stately country-hall<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span> -a little way out of Bedford; again, he filled some dependency -at that stately Ludlow Castle on the borders -of Wales—forever associated with the music -of Milton’s “Comus.” It was after the Restoration -that he budded out in his anti-Puritan lampoon; -but though he pandered to the ruling prejudices of -the time, he was not successful in his search for -place and emoluments; he quarrelled with those -who laughed loudest at his buffoonery and died -neglected. His name is to be remembered as -that of one of the noticeable men of this epoch, who -wrote a poem bristling all through with coarse wit, -and whose memory is kept alive more by the stinging -couplets which have passed from his pen into -common speech than by any high literary merit or -true poetic savor. His chief work in verse must be -regarded as a happy, witty extravaganza, which -caused so riotous a mirth as to be mistaken for -valid fame. The poem is a curio of letters—a specimen -of literary bric-à-brac—an old, ingeniously<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> -enamelled snuff-box, with dirty pictures within the -lid.</p> - -<h3>Samuel Pepys.</h3> - -<p>I had occasion just now to speak of the <cite>Pepys -Diary</cite>, and promised later and further talk about -its author, whom we now put in focus, and shall -pour what light we can upon him.<a name="FNanchor_80" id="FNanchor_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a></p> - -<p>He was a man of fair personal appearance and -great self-approval, the son of a well-to-do London -tailor, and fairly educated; but the most piquant -memorial of his life at Cambridge University is the -“admonition”—which is of record—of his having -been on one occasion “scandalously over-served -with drink.” In his after life in London he escaped -the admonitions; but not wholly the “over-service” -in ways of eating and drinking.</p> - -<p>Pepys was a not far-off kinsman of Lord Sandwich -(whom he strongly resembled), and it was through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> -that dignitary’s influence that he ultimately came -into a very good position in connection with the -Admiralty, where he was most intrepid in his examination -of tar and cordage, and brought such close -scrutiny to his duties as to make him an admirable -official in the Naval Department under Charles II. -For this service, however, he would never have been -heard of, any more than another straightforward, -plodding clerk; nor would he have been heard of -for his book about naval matters, which you will -hardly find in any library in the country. But he -did write a <cite>Diary</cite>, which you will find everywhere.</p> - -<p>It is a <cite>Diary</cite> which, beginning in 1660, the first -of Charles’ reign, covers the ten important succeeding -years; within which he saw regicides hung -and quartered, and heard the guns of terrific naval -battles with the Dutch, and braved all the horrors of -the Great Plague from the day when he first saw -house-doors with a red cross marked on them, and -the words “Lord, have mercy on us!” to the time -when ten thousand died in a week, and “little noise -was heard, day or night, but tolling of bells.” Page -after page of his <cite>Diary</cite> is also given to the great fire -of the following year—from the Sunday night<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> -when he was waked by his maid to see a big light -on the back side of Mark Lane, to the following -Thursday when two-thirds of the houses and of the -churches of London were in ashes.</p> - -<p>But Pepys’ <cite>Diary</cite> is not so valued for its story of -great events as for its daily setting down of little -unimportant things—of the plays which he saw -acted—of the dust that fell on the theatre-goers -from the galleries—of what he bought, and what -he conjectured, and what his wife said to him, -and what new dresses she had, and how he slept -comfortably through the sermon of Dr. So-and-So—just -as you and I might have done—never -having a thought either that his <cite>Diary</cite> would -ever be printed. He wrote it, in fact, in a blind -short-hand, which made it lie unnoticed and undetected -for a great many years, until at last -some prying Cambridge man unriddled his cipher -and wrote out and published <cite>Pepys’ Diary</cite> to the -world. And it is delightful; it is so true and -honest, and straightforward, and gossipy; and it -throws more light upon the every-day life in London -in those days of the Restoration than all the -other books ever written.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span></p> - -<p>There have been other diaries which have historic -value; there was Hyde, Earl of Clarendon,<a name="FNanchor_81" id="FNanchor_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> with -some humor and a lordly grace, who wrote a <cite>History -of the Rebellion</cite>—more than half diary—with -sentences as long as his pages; but it does not compare -with Pepys’ for flashes of light upon the -accidents of life. There was good, earnest, well-meaning -John Evelyn,<a name="FNanchor_82" id="FNanchor_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> who had a pretty place -called Says-Court (inherited through his wife) down -at Deptford—which Scott introduces as the residence -of Essex in his story of <cite>Kenilworth</cite>—who -had beautiful trees and flowers there which he -greatly loved. Well, John Evelyn wrote a diary, -and a very good one; with perhaps a better description -of the great London fire of 1666 in it -than you will find anywhere else; he gives us, too, -a delightful memorial of his young daughter Mary—who -read the Ancients, who spoke French and -Italian, who sang like an angel, who was as gentle -and loving as she was wise and beautiful—whose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> -death “left him desolate;” but John Evelyn is -silent upon a thousand points in respect to which -Pepys bristles all over like a gooseberry bush. Dr. -Burnet, too, wrote a <cite>History of his Own Times</cite>, -bringing great scholarly attainments to its execution, -and a tremendous dignity of authorship; and -he would certainly have turned up his bishop’s -nose at mention of Samuel Pepys; yet Pepys is -worth a dozen of him for showing the life of that -day. He is so simple; he is so true; he is so unthinking; -he is the veriest photographer. Hear -him for a little—and I take the passages almost at -random:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“<i>November 9, 1660.</i>—Lay long in bed this morning.</p> - -<p>“To the office, and thence to dinner at the Hoope Tavern, -given us by Mr. Ady and Mr. Wine the King’s fishmonger. -Good sport with Mr. Talbot, who eats no sort of fish, and -there was nothing else till we sent for a neat’s tongue.</p> - -<p>“Thence I went to Sir Harry Wright’s, where my Lord -was busy at cards, and so I staid below with Mrs. Carter -and Evans, who did give me a lesson upon the lute, till he -came down, and having talked with him at the door about -his late business of money, I went to my father’s, and staid -late talking with my father about my sister Poll’s coming to -live with me—if she would come and be as a servant (which -my wife did seem to be pretty willing to do to-day); and he -seems to take it very well, and intends to consider of it.”</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span></p> - -<p>And again:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Home by coach, notwithstanding this was the first day -of the King’s proclamation against hackney coaches coming -into the streets to stand to be hired; yet I got one to carry -me home.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Again:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“<i>11th November, Lord’s Day.</i>—To church into our -new gallery, the first time it was used. There being no -woman this day, we sat in the foremost pew, and behind -us our servants, and I hope it will not always be so, it -not being handsome for our servants to sit so equal with -us. Afterward went to my father’s, where I found my -wife, and there supped; and after supper we walked home, -my little boy carrying a link [torch], and Will leading my -wife. So home and to prayers and to bed.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Another day, having been to court, he says:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“The Queene, a very little plain old woman, and nothing -more in any respect than any ordinary woman. The Princess -Henrietta is very pretty, but much below my expectation; -and her dressing of herself with her haire frizzed -short up to her eares did make her seem so much the less to -me. But my wife, standing near her, with two or three -black patches on, and well dressed, did seem to me much -handsomer than she. Lady Castelmaine not so handsome -as once, and begins to decay; which is also my wife’s -opinion.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>One more little extract and I have done:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“<i>Lord’s Day, May 26.</i> After dinner I, by water, alone -to Westminster to the Parish Church, by which I had the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> -great pleasure of seeing and gazing at a great many very -fine women; and what with that, and sleeping, I passed -away the time till sermon was done.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Was there ever anything more ingenuous than -that? How delightfully sure we are that such writing -was never intended for publication!</p> - -<p>The great charm of Mr. Pepys and all such diary -writing is, that it gives us, by a hundred little gossipy -touches, the actual complexion of the times. We -have no conventional speech to wrestle with, in -order to get at its meaning. The plain white lights -of honesty and common-sense—so much better -than all the rhetorical prismatic hues—put the actual -situation before us; and we have an approach -to that realism which the highest art is always -struggling to reach. The courtiers in their great, -fresh-curled wigs, strut and ogle and prattle before -us. We scent the perfumed locks of Peter Lely’s -ladies, and the eels frying in the kitchen. We see -Mr. Samuel Pepys bowing to the Princess Henrietta, -and know we shall hear of it if he makes a -misstep in backing out of her august presence. -How he gloats over that new plush, or moire-antique, -that has just come home for his wife—cost<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> -four guineas—which price shocks him a little, and -sends him to bed vexed, and makes him think he -had better have kept by the old woollen stuff; but, -next Lord’s day being bright, and she wearing it -to St. Margaret’s or St. Giles’, where he watches -her as she sits under the dull fire of the sermon—her -face beaming with gratitude, and radiant with -red ribbons—he relents, and softens, and is proud -and glad, and goes to sleep! This Pepys stands a -good chance to outlive Butler, and to outlive Burnet, -and to outlive Clarendon, and to outlive John -Evelyn.</p> - -<p>I may add further to this mention of the old -diarist, that at a certain period of his life he became -suspected—and without reason—of complicity -with the Popish plots (of whose intricacies you will -get curious and graphic illustration in <cite>Peveril of -the Peak</cite>); and poor Pepys had his period of prisonship -like so many others in that day. He also became, -at a later time, singularly enough, the President -of the Royal Society of England—a Society -formed in the course of Charles II.s’ reign, and -which enrolled such men as Robert Boyle and Sir -Isaac Newton in its early days; and which now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> -enrols the best and worthiest of England’s scientists.</p> - -<p>I do not think they would elect such a man as -Samuel Pepys for President now; yet it would appear -that the old gentleman in his long wig and -his new coat made a good figure in the chair, and -looked wise, and used to have the members down -informally at his rooms in York Building, where he -made good cheer for them, and broached his best -bin of claret. Nor should it be forgotten that -Pepys had an appreciative ear for the melodies of -Chaucer (like very few in his day), and spurred -Dryden to the making of some of his best imitations.</p> - -<p>When he died—it was in the early years of -the eighteenth century—he left his books, manuscripts, -and engravings, which were valuable, to -Magdalen College, Cambridge; and there, as I said -when we first came upon his name, his famous -<cite>Diary</cite>, in short-hand, lay unheard of and unriddled -for more than a hundred years.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span></p> - -<h3>A Scientist.</h3> - -<p>Science was making a push for itself in these -times. Newton had discovered the law of gravitation -before Charles II. died; the King himself was -no bad dabbler in chemistry.</p> - -<p>Robert Boyle, the son of an Earl, and with all -moneyed appliances to help him, was one of the early -promoters and founders of the Royal Society I spoke -of; a noticeable man every way in that epoch of the -Ethereges and the Buckinghams and the Gwynnes—devoting -his fortune to worthy works; estimable -in private life; dignified and serene; tall in person -and spare—wearing, like every other well-born Londoner, -the curled, long-bottomed wig of France, and -making sentences in exposition of his thought which -were longer and stiffer than his wigs. I give you a -sample. He is discussing the eye, and wants to say -that it is wonderfully constructed; and this is the -way he says it:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“To be told that an eye is the organ of sight, and that -this is performed by that faculty of the mind which, from -its function, is called visive, will give a man but a sorry account<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> -of the instruments and manner of vision itself, or of -the knowledge of that Opificer who, as the Scripture speaks, -formed the eye; and he that can take up with this easy -theory of Vision, will not think it necessary to take the pains -to dissect the eyes of animals, nor study the books of mathematicians -to understand Vision; and accordingly will have -but mean thoughts of the contrivance of the Organ, and the -skill of the Artificer, in comparison of the ideas that will be -suggested of both of them to him, that being profoundly -skilled in anatomy and optics, by their help takes asunder -the several coats, humors, muscles, of which that exquisite -dioptrical instrument consists; and having separately considered -the size, figure, consistence, texture, diaphaneity or -opacity, situation, and connection of each of them, and their -coaptation in the whole eye, shall discover, by the help of -the laws of optics, how admirably this little organ is fitted to -receive the incident beams of light and dispose them in the -best manner possible for completing the lively representation -of the almost infinitely various objects of sight.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>What do you think of that for a sentence? If -the Fellows of the Royal Society wrote much in -that way (and the Honorable Boyle did a good -deal), is it any wonder that they should have an -exaggerated respect for a man who could express -himself in the short, straight fashion in which Samuel -Pepys wrote his <cite>Diary</cite>?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span></p> - -<h3>John Bunyan.</h3> - -<p>I have a new personage to bring before you out -of this hurly-burly of the Restoration days, and -what I have to say of him will close up our talk for -this morning.</p> - -<p>I think he did never wear a wig. Buckingham, -who courted almost all orders of men, would not -have honored him with a nod of recognition; nor -would Bishop Burnet. I think even the amiable Dr. -Tillotson, or the very liberal Dr. South, would have -jostled away from him in a crowd, rather than toward -him. Yet he was more pious than they; had -more humor than Buckingham; and for imaginative -power would outrank every man living in that -day, unless we except the blind old poet Milton. -You will guess easily the name I have in mind: it is -John Bunyan.<a name="FNanchor_83" id="FNanchor_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> Not a great name then; so vulgar -a one indeed that—a good many years later—the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> -amiable poet Cowper spoke of it charily. But it -is known now and honored wherever English is -spoken.</p> - -<p>He was born at Elstow, a mile away from Bedford, -amid fat green meadows, beside which in early -May long lines of hawthorn hedges are all abloom. -You will go straight through that pleasant country -in passing from Liverpool to London, if you take, -as I counsel you to do, the Midland Railway; and -you will see the lovely rural pictures which fell -under Bunyan’s eye as he strolled along beside the -hedge-rows, from Elstow—a mile-long road—to -the grammar-school at Bedford.</p> - -<p>The trees are beautiful thereabout; the grass is -as green as emerald; old cottages are mossy and -picturesque; gray towers of churches hang out a -great wealth of ivy boughs; sleek Durham cattle -and trim sheep feed contentedly on the Bedford -meadows, and rooks, cawing, gather into flocks and -disperse, and glide down singly, or by pairs, into -the tops of trees that shade country houses.</p> - -<p>The aspects have not changed much in all these -years; even the cottage of Bunyan’s tinker father is -still there, with only a new front upon it. The boy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> -received but little schooling, and that at hap-hazard; -but he got much religious teaching from the -elders of the Baptist chapel, or from this or that old -Puritan villager. A stern doctrinal theology overshadowed -all his boyish years, full of threatening, -fiery darts, and full of golden streaks of promise.</p> - -<p>He was a badish boy—as most boys are; a goodly -<i lang="la">quantum</i> of original sin in him; he says, with his -tender conscience, that he was “very bad;” a child -of the devil; swearing, sometimes; playing “three -old cat” very often; picking flowers, I dare say, or -idly looking at the rooks of a Sunday. Yet I would -engage that the Newhaven High School would -furnish thirty or forty as bad ones as John Bunyan -any day in the year. But he makes good resolves; -breaks them again; finally is convicted, but falters; -marries young (and, as would seem, foolishly, neither -bride nor groom being turned of twenty), and she -bringing for sole dower not so much as one dish -or spoon, but only two good books—<cite>The Plain -Man’s Pathway to Heaven</cite> and <cite>The Practice of Piety</cite>.</p> - -<p>Even before this he had been drafted for service -in the battles which were aflame in England—doubtless -fighting for the Commonwealth, as most<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> -of his biographers<a name="FNanchor_84" id="FNanchor_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> allege. Very probably, too, he -was under orders of that Sir Samuel Luke, who lived -near by, and who—as I have mentioned—was the -butt of much of Samuel Butler’s Hudibrastic satire.</p> - -<p>Next we hear of him as preacher—not properly -sanctioned even by the non-conforming authorities—but -opening that intense religious talk of his -upon whatever and whomsoever would come to -hear. Even his friendly Baptist brothers look -doubtfully upon his irregularities; but he sees only -the great golden cross before him in the skies, and -hears only the crackle of the flames in the nethermost -depths below. He is bound to save, in what -way he can, those who will be saved, and to warn, -in fearfullest way, those who will be damned.</p> - -<p>Hundreds came to hear this working-man who -was so dreadfully in earnest, and who had no more -respect for pulpits or liturgies than for preaching-places<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> -in the woods. It was not strange that he offended -against non-conformist acts, nor strange -that, after accession of Charles II. he came to imprisonment -for his illegal pieties. This prison-life -lasted for some twelve years, in the which he still -preached to those who would listen within prison -walls, and read his Bible, and wrought at tagged -laces (still a great industry of that district) for the -support of his family, a separation from whom—most -of all from his poor blind daughter Mary—was, -he says, like “pulling the flesh from his -bones.” Over and over in that reach of prison-life -he might have been free if he would have promised -to abstain from his irregular preachments, or if he -would go over seas to America. But he would not; -he could not forbear to warn whomsoever might -hear, of the fiery pit, and of the days when the -heavens should be opened. He loved not the -thought of over-ocean crossing; his duties lay near; -and with all his radicalism he never outlived a gracious -liking for British kingly traditions, and for -such ranking of men and powers as belonged to -Levitical story.</p> - -<p>Finally, under Charles’ Declaration of Indulgence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> -(1672), which was intended more for the benefit of -ill-used Romanists than for Non-conformists, Bunyan’s -prison-doors were laid open, and he went to -his old work of preaching in public places. There -may have been, as his more recent biographers -intimate, a later (1675) short imprisonment;<a name="FNanchor_85" id="FNanchor_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a> and -this, or some portion of the previous prison-life, was -certainly passed in that ancient Bedford jail, which, -only a few years since, was standing on Bedford -bridge, hanging over the waters of the river Ouse—whose -slow current we shall find flowing again in -our story of William Cowper.</p> - -<p>And if the whole weight of tradition is not to be -distrusted, it was in this little prison over the -river, where passers-by might shout a greeting -to him—that John Bunyan fell into the dreamy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span> -fashioning of that book which has made his name -known everywhere, and which has as fixed a place -in the great body of English literature as Shakespeare’s -“Hamlet,” or Spenser’s <cite>Faery Queen</cite>—I -mean the <cite>Pilgrim’s Progress</cite>.</p> - -<p>But how is it, the reader may ask, that this -tinker’s son, who had so far forgotten his school -learning that his wife had to teach him over again -to read and write—how is it that he makes a -book which takes hold on the sympathies of all -Christendom, and has a literary quality that ranks -it with the first of allegories?<a name="FNanchor_86" id="FNanchor_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a></p> - -<p>Mr. Pepys told plainly what we wanted him to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> -tell; but he had nothing but those trifles which -give a color to every-day life to tell of. If he had -undertaken to make a story of a page long, involving -imaginative powers, he would have made a -failure of it; and if he had tried to be eloquent he -would have given himself away deplorably. But -this poor <em>brazier</em> (as he calls himself in his last -will), with not one-fourth of his knowledge of -the world, with not one-twentieth of his learning -(bald as the old diarist was in this line), with -not one-hundredth part of his self-confidence, makes -this wonderful and charming book of which we are -talking. How was it?</p> - -<p>Well, there was, first, the great compelling and -informing Christian purpose in him: he was of the -Bible all compact; every utterance of it was a vital -truth to him; the fire and the brimstone were real; -the Almighty fatherhood was real; the cross and -the passion were real; the teeming thousands were -real, who hustled him on either side and who -were pressing on, rank by rank, in the broad road -that leads to the City of Destruction. The man -who believes such things in the way in which -John Bunyan believed them has a tremendous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> -motive power, which will make itself felt in some -shape.</p> - -<p>Then that limited schooling of his had kept -him to a short vocabulary of the sharpest and -keenest and most telling words. Rhetoric did -not lead him astray after flowers; learning did -not tempt him into far-fetched allusions; literary -habit had not spoiled his simplicities. And again, -and chiefest of all, there was a great imaginative -power, coming—not from schools, nor from -grammar teachings—but coming as June days -come, and which, breathing over his pages with an -almost divine afflatus, lifted their sayings into the -regions of Poetry.</p> - -<p>Therefore and thereby it is that he has fused -his thought into such shape as takes hold on -human sympathies everywhere, and his characters -are all live creatures. All these two hundred and -twenty years last past the noble Great-heart has -been thwacking away at Giant Grim and thundering -on the walls of Doubting Castle with blows -we hear; and poor, timid Christian has been just -as many years, in the sight of all of us, making -his way through pitfalls and quagmires and Vanity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span> -Fairs—hard pressed by Apollyon, and belabored -by Giant Despair—on his steady march -toward the Delectable Mountains and the river -of Death, and the shining shores which lie Beyond.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</h2> - -<p class="dropcap">There were some unsavory names which crept -into the opening of our last chapter; but -they were sweet in the nostrils of Charles II. Of -such were Buckingham, Rochester, Etherege, Dorset, -and the Castelmaine. And we made a little -moral counterpoise by the naming of Baxter’s -<cite>Saints’ Rest</cite>, and of Tillotson, and of the healthful, -noble verse of Andrew Marvell, by which we -wished to impress upon our readers the fact that the -whole world of England in that day was not given -over to French court-dances and to foul-mouthed -poets; but that the Puritan leaven was still working, -even in literary ways, and that there were men -of dignity, knowledge, culture, and rank, who never -bowed down to such as the pretty Duchess of -Portsmouth.</p> - -<p>We had our glimpse of that witty buffoon Samuel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> -Butler, who made clever antics in rhyme; and I -think, we listened with a curious eagerness to what -Samuel Pepys had to say of his play-going, and of -the black patches with which his pretty wife set -forth her beauty. Then came Bunyan, with his -great sermonizing in barns and woods, and that far -finer sermonizing which in the days of his jailhood -took shape in the immortal story of Christian and -Great-heart. He died over a grocer’s shop, in -Snow Hill, London (its site now all effaced by the -great Holborn Viaduct), whither he had gone on -a preaching bout in the year 1688, only a few -months before James II. was driven from his -throne. It is worth going out by the City Road—only -a short walk from Finsbury Square—to the -cemetery of Bunhill Fields, where Bunyan was -buried—to see the marble figure of the tinker -preacher stretched upon the monument modern -admirers have built, and to see Christian toiling -below, with his burden strapped to his back.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span></p> - -<h3>Three Good Prosers.</h3> - -<p>In the course of that old <cite>Pepys’ Diary</cite>—out of -which we had our regalement—there is several -times mention of Thomas Fuller;<a name="FNanchor_87" id="FNanchor_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> among others -this:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“I sat down reading in Fuller’s <cite>English Worthies</cite>; being -much troubled that (though he had some discourse with -me about my family and armes) he says nothing at all. But -I believe, indeed, our family were never considerable.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Honest Pepys! Shrewd Dr. Fuller, and a man -not to be forgotten! He was a “Cavalier parson” -through the Civil-War days; was born down in -Northamptonshire in the same town where John -Dryden, twenty-three years later, first saw the -light. He was full of wit, and full of knowledges; -people called him—as so many have been and are -called—“a walking library;” and his stout figure -was to be seen many a time, in the Commonwealth -days, striding through Fleet Street, and by Paul’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> -Walk, to Cheapside. There is quaint humor in his -books, and quaintness and aptness of language. -Coleridge says he was “the most sensible and least -prejudiced great man of his time.”</p> - -<p>Sir Thomas Browne,<a name="FNanchor_88" id="FNanchor_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> a doctor, and the author of -the <cite>Religio Medici</cite> and <cite>Urn-Burial</cite>, was another delightful -author of the Civil-War times, whose life -reached almost through the reign of Charles II.; -yet he was not a war man—in matter of kings or -of churches. Serenities hung over him in all those -times wherein cannon thundered, and traitors (so -called) were quartered, and cathedrals despoiled. -He loved not great cities. London never magnetized -him; but after his thorough continental travel -and his doctorate at Leyden, he planted himself in -that old, crooked-streeted city of Norwich, in Norfolk; -and there, under the shadow of the stupendous -mound and Keep (which date from the early<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span> -Henrys) he built up a home, of which he made a -museum—served the sick—reared a family of ten -children, and followed those meditative ways of -thought which led him through sepulchral urns, -and the miracles of growth, and the Holy Scriptures, -away from all the “decrees of councils and the -niceties of the schools” to the altitudes he reaches -in the <cite>Religio Medici</cite>.</p> - -<p>I must excerpt something to show the humors of -this Norwich doctor, and it shall be this:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Light that makes things seen makes some things invisible. -Were it not for darkness, and the shadow of the -earth, the noblest part of Creation had remained unseen, -and the stars in Heaven as invisible as on the Fourth day -when they were created above the horizon with the Sun, -and there was not an eye to behold them. The greatest -mystery of Religion is expressed by adumbration, and in the -noblest part of Jewish types we find the Cherubim <em>shadowing</em> -the Mercy Seat. Life itself is but the Shadow of Death, -and souls departed but the Shadows of the Living. The -sun itself is but the dark <em>Simulacrum</em>, and light but the -shadow of God.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>If there were no other reason for our love of the -best writings of Sir Thomas Browne, it would be -for this—that in some scarce distinguishable way -he has inoculated our “Elia” of a later day with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> -something very like his own quaint egoisms and -as quaint garniture of speech. How Charles Lamb -must have enjoyed him, and joyed in the meditation—of -a twilight—on the far-reaching, mystic -skeins of thought which so keen a reader would -ravel out from the stores of the <cite>Urn-Burial</cite>! And -with what delighted sanction the later writer permits, -here and there, the tender solemnities of the -elder to shine through and qualify his own periods; -not through imitativeness, conscious or unconscious, -but because the juices from the mellow -fruitage of the old physician have been quietly assimilated -by the stuttering clerk of the India -House, and so his thought burgeons—by very necessity—into -that kindred leafage of phrase which -lifts and sways in the gentle breezes of his always -gentle purpose.</p> - -<p>Another name, of a man far less lovable, but perhaps -more widely known, is that of Sir William -Temple.<a name="FNanchor_89" id="FNanchor_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a> He was of excellent family, born in London,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span> -highly cultivated, and lived all through the -reign of Charles II., and much beyond. He represented -England, in diplomatic ways, often upon -the Continent, and with great success; he negotiated -the so-called Triple Alliance; he also brought -about that royal marriage of the daughter of the -Duke of York (afterward James II.), with William of -Orange, and so gave to England that royal couple, -William and Mary. He had great dignity; he had -wealth; a sort of earlier Edward Everett—as polished -and cold and well-meaning and fastidious; -looking rather more to the elegance of his speech -than to the burden of it; always making show of -Classicism—nothing if not correct; cautious; -keeping well out of harm’s way, and all pugnacious -expressions of opinion; courteous to strong -Churchmen; courteous to Papists; bowing low to -my Lady Castelmaine; very considerate of Cromwellians -who had power; moulding his habit and -speech so as to show no ugly angles of opinion -anywhere, but only such convenient roundness as -would roll along life’s level easily to the very end. -You will not be in the way of encountering much -that he wrote, though he had the reputation in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span> -those days, and long after, of writing excellently -well. “He was the first writer,” said Johnson, -“who gave cadence to English prose.”</p> - -<p>Among his essays is one on “Ancient and Modern -Learning,” showing the pretensions of a scholastic -man, whose assumptions brought about a -controversy into which Richard Bentley, a rare -young critic, entered, and out of which grew eventually -Swift’s famous <cite>Battle of the Books</cite>.</p> - -<p>Temple also wrote on gardens, with a safer swing -for his learning and his taste; traces of what his -taste was in such matters are still discernible about -his old home of Moor Park, in Surrey. It lies some -forty miles from London, on the way to Southampton -and the Isle of Wight, near the old town of -Farnham, where there is a venerable bishop’s palace -worth the seeing; a mile away one may find the -terraces of Sir William’s old garden, and the mossy -dial under which he ordered his heart to be buried. -Another interest, moreover, attaches to these Moor -Park gardens, which will make them doubly worth -a visit. On their terraces and under their trees -used to pace and meditate that strange creature -Jonathan Swift, who was in his young days a <i lang="fr">protégé</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span> -or secretary of Sir William Temple; and there, -too, in the same shade, and along the same terraces, -used to stroll and meditate in different mood, poor -Mistress Hester Johnson, the “Stella” of Swift’s -life-long love-dream.</p> - -<p>We shall meet these people again. But I leave -Sir William Temple, commending to your attention -a delightful little essay of Charles Lamb, in -his volume of Elia, upon “The Genteel Style in -Writing.” It gives a fair though flattering notion -of the ways of Sir William’s life, and of the way of -his work.</p> - -<h3>John Dryden.</h3> - -<p>Of course we know John Dryden’s name a great -deal better than we know Sir William Temple’s; -better, perhaps, than we know any other name of -that period. And yet do we know his poems -well? Are there any that you specially cherish -and doat upon? any that kindle your sympathies -easily into blaze? any that give electric expression -to your own poetic yearnings, and put you upon -quick and enchanting drift into that empyrean of -song whereto the great poets decoy us? I doubt if<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span> -there is much of Dryden which has this subtle influence -upon you; certainly it has not upon me.</p> - -<p>There are the great Cecilia odes, which hold their -places in the reading-books, with their</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Double—double—double beat</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of the thundering drum;”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">and the royal</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">“Philip’s warlike son,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Aloft in awful state;</div> -<div class="verse">The lovely Thais by his side,</div> -<div class="verse">—Like a blooming Eastern bride</div> -<div class="verse">In flower of youth and beauty’s pride;”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">all which we read over and over, always with an -ambitious vocalism which the language invites, but, -I think, with not much hearty unction.</p> - -<p>And yet, notwithstanding the little that we recall -of this man’s work, he did write an enormous -amount of verse, in all metres, and of all lengths. -All the poems that Milton ever published would -hardly fill the space necessary for a full synopsis of -what John Dryden wrote. But let us begin at the -beginning.</p> - -<p>This poet, and important man of letters, was born -only a year or two later than John Bunyan, and in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span> -the same range of country—a little to the northward, -in an old rectory of Aldwinckle (Northamptonshire), -upon the banks of the river Nen. And -this river flows thence northerly, in great loops, -where sedges grow, past the tall spire of Oundle—past -the grassy ruins of Fotheringay; and thence -easterly, in other great loops, through flat lands, under -the huge towers of Peterborough Cathedral. -But the river singing among the sedges does not -come into Dryden’s verse; nor does Fotheringay, -with its tragic memories; nor do the noble woods of -Lilford Park, or of that Rockingham Forest which, -in the days of Dryden’s boyhood, must in many -places have brought its spurs of oak timber and its -haunts of the red-deer close down to the Nen banks. -Indeed, Wordsworth says, with a little exaggeration, -it is true, “there is not a single image from nature -in the whole body of his [Dryden’s] works.”</p> - -<p>He was a well-born boy, with titled kinsfolk, and -had money at command for good courses in books. -He was at Westminster School under Dr. Busby; -was at Cambridge, where he fell one time into difficulties, -which somehow angered him in a way that -made him somewhat irreverent of his old college in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span> -after life. There are pretty traditions that in extreme -youth he addressed some very earnest amatory -verses to a certain Helen Driden, daughter of -his baronet uncle at Canons-Ashby;<a name="FNanchor_90" id="FNanchor_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a> and there are -hints dropped by some biographers of a rebuff to -him; which, if it came about, did not pluck away -the cheerfulness and self-approval that lay in him. -It was in London, however, where he went after -his father’s death, and when he was twenty-seven, -that the first verse was written by him which made -the literary world prick up its ears at sound of a -new voice.</p> - -<p>’Tis in eulogy of Cromwell, dying just then, and -this is a bit of it:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Swift and resistless thro’ the land he past,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Like that bold Greek, who did the East subdue,</div> -<div class="verse">And made to battles such heroic haste,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">As if on wings of Victory he flew.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“He fought, secure of fortune as of fame:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Still by new maps the island might be shown,</div> -<div class="verse">Of conquests, which he strew’d where-e’er he came,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thick as the galaxy with stars is strown.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">His name, a great example stands, to show</div> -<div class="verse">How strangely high endeavors may be blest,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Where piety and valor jointly go.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>A short two years after, you will remember, and -Charles II. came to his own and was crowned; and -how does this eulogist of Cromwell treat his coronation? -In a way that is worth our listening to; for, -I think, a comparison of the Cromwellian verses -with the Carolan eulogy gives us a key to John Dryden’s -character:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“All eyes you draw, and with the eyes, the heart:</div> -<div class="verse">Of your own pomp yourself the greatest part:</div> -<div class="verse">Next to the sacred temple you are led,</div> -<div class="verse">Where waits a crown for your more sacred head:</div> -<div class="verse">The grateful choir their harmony employ,</div> -<div class="verse">Not to make greater, but more solemn joy.</div> -<div class="verse">Wrapt soft and warm your name is sent on high,</div> -<div class="verse">As flames do on the waves of incense fly:</div> -<div class="verse">Music herself is lost, in vain she brings</div> -<div class="verse">Her choicest notes to praise the best of kings;</div> -<div class="verse">Her melting strains in you a tomb have found,</div> -<div class="verse">And lie like bees in their own sweetness drown’d.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>No wonder that he came ultimately to have the -place of Poet-laureate, and thereafter an extra £100 -a year with it! No wonder that, with all his cleverness—and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span> -it was prodigious—he never did, and -never could, win an unsullied reputation for sterling -integrity and straightforward purpose.</p> - -<p>I know that his latest biographer and advocate, -Mr. Saintsbury, whose work you will be very apt to -encounter in the little series edited by John Morley, -sees poems like those I have cited with other eyes, -and fashions out of them an agreeable poetic consistency -very honorable to Dryden; but I cannot -twist myself so as to view the matter in his way. I -think rather of a conscienceless thrifty newspaper, -setting forth the average every-day drift of opinion, -with a good deal more than every-day skill.</p> - -<p>Meantime John Dryden has married, and has -married the daughter of an earl; of just how this -came about we have not very full record; but there -were a great many who wondered why she should -marry him; and a good many more, as it appeared, -who persisted in wondering why he should marry -her. Such wonderments of wondering people overtake -a good many matches. It is quite certain that -it was not a marriage which went to make a domestic -man of him; and I think you will search vainly -through his poems for any indication of those home<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span> -instincts which, like the “melting strains” he flung -about King Charles,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Lie like bees in their own sweetness drown’d.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>The only positive worldly good which seemed to -come of this marriage was an occasional home at -Charlton, in Wiltshire—an estate of the Earl of -Berkshire, his father-in-law—where Dryden wrote, -shortly after his marriage, his <cite>Annus Mirabilis</cite>, -in which he gave to all the notable events of the -year 1666 a fillip with his pen; and the odd conceits -that lie in a single one of his stanzas keep -yet alive a story of the capture by the British of a -fleet of Dutch India ships:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And now their odors armed against them fly;</div> -<div class="verse">Some preciously by shattered porcelain fall,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And some by aromatic splinters die.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>There are three hundred other stanzas in the -poem, of the same make and rhythm, telling of fire, -of plague, and of battles. I am not sure if anybody -reads it nowadays; but if you do—and it is not -fatiguing—you will find wonderful word-craft in it, -which repeats the din and crash of battle, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span> -paints the smouldering rage and the blazing power -of the Great Fire of London in a way which certain -boys, I well remember in old school days, thought -represented the grand climacteric of poetic diction.</p> - -<h3>The London of Dryden.</h3> - -<p>But let us not forget where we are in our English -story; it is London that has been all aflame in that -dreadful year of 1666. Thirteen thousand houses -have been destroyed, eighty odd churches, and -some four hundred acres of ground in the central -part of the city have been burned over. The fire -had followed swiftly upon the devastating plague of -the previous year, which Dryden had gone into -Wiltshire to avoid. It is doubtful, indeed, if he -came back soon enough to see the great blaze with -his own eyes; “chemical fire,” the poet calls it, and -it licked up the poison of the plague; but it did not -lick up the leprosy of Charles’ court. There was a -demand for plays, and for plays of a bad sort; and -Dryden met the demand. Never was there an author -more apt to divine what the public did want, -and more full of literary contrivances to meet it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span> -Dryden knew all the purveyors of this sort of intellectual -repast, and all their methods, and soon became -a king among them; and to be a king among -the playwrights was to have a very large sovereignty -in that time. Everybody talked of the plays; all -of Royalist faith went to the plays, if they had -money; and money was becoming more and more -plentiful. There had been the set-back, it is true, -of the Great Fire; but English commerce was making -enormous strides in these days. There was a -pathetic folding of the hands and dreary forecastings -directly after the disaster, as after all such -calamities. But straight upon this the city grew, -with wider streets and taller houses, and in only a -very few years the waste ground was covered again, -and the new temple of St. Paul’s rising, under the -guidance of Sir Christopher Wren, into those grand -proportions of cupola and dome, which, in their -smoked and sooty majesty, dominate the city of -London to-day.</p> - -<p>Houses of nobles and of rich merchants which -stood near to Cornhill and Lombard Street, and -private gardens which had occupied areas thereabout—now -representing millions of pounds in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span> -value—were crowded away westward by the new -demands of commerce. In Dryden’s day there -were ducal houses looking upon Lincoln’s Inn -Fields; and others, with pleasure grounds about -them, close upon Covent Garden Square. Americans -go to that neighborhood now, in early morning, -to catch sight of the immense stores of fruit -and vegetables which are on show there upon -market-days; and they are well repaid for such -visit; yet the houses are dingy, and a welter of -straw and mud and market <i lang="fr">débris</i> stretches to the -doors; but the stranger, picking his way through -this, and through Russell Street to the corner of -Bow Street, will find, close by, the site of that -famous Will’s Coffee-house, where Dryden lorded it -so many years, and whose figure there—in the -chimney-corner, with his pipe, laying down the law -between the whiffs, and conferring honors by offering -a pinch from his snuff-box—Scott has made -familiar to the whole world.</p> - -<p>It was an earlier sort of club-house, where the -news in the <cite>Gazette</cite> was talked of, and the last battle—if -there were a recent one—and the last play, -and the last scandal of the court. Its discussions<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span> -and potations made away with a good many nights, -and a good many pipes and bottles, and was not -largely provocative of domesticity. But it does not -appear that the Lady Elizabeth—Dryden’s wife—ever -made remonstrances on this score; indeed, Mr. -Green, the historian, would intimate that my lady -had distractions of her own, not altogether wise or -worthy; but we prefer to believe the best we can of -her.</p> - -<p>To this gathering-place at Covent Garden Etherege -and Wycherley found their way—all writing -men, in fact; even the great Buckingham perhaps—before -his quarrel; and Dorset, fellow-member -with Dryden, of the Royal Society; maybe Butler -too, when he found himself in London; and -poor Otway,<a name="FNanchor_91" id="FNanchor_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> hoping to meet some one generous -enough to pay his score for him; and the young -Congreve, proud in his earlier days to get a nod<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span> -from the great Dryden; and, prouder yet, when, -at a later time, he was honored by that tender and -pathetic epistle from the Laureate:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Already I am worn with cares and age,</div> -<div class="verse">And just abandoning the ungrateful stage;</div> -<div class="verse">But you, whom every muse and grace adorn,</div> -<div class="verse">Whom I foresee to better fortune born,</div> -<div class="verse">Be kind to my remains; and O defend,</div> -<div class="verse">Against your judgment, your departed friend!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>I said that he wrote plays; wrote them by the -couple—by the dozen—by the score possibly.</p> - -<p>You do not know them; and I hope you never -will know them to love them. They have fallen -away from literature—never acted, and rarely read. -He could not plot a story, and he had not the dramatic -gift. One wonders how a theatreful could -have listened to their pomposity and inflation and -exaggerations. But they did, and they filled Dryden’s -pockets. There were scenic splendors, indeed, -about many of them which delighted the pit, -and which the poet loved as accompaniments to -the roll of his sonorous verse; there were, too, -fragments here and there, with epithet and characterization -that showed his mastership; and sometimes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span> -the most graceful of lyrics budded out from -the coarse groundwork of the play, as fair in sound -as they were foul in thought.</p> - -<p>In private intercourse Dryden is represented to -have been a man of courteous speech, never low -and ribald—as were many of the royal favorites; -and when he undertook playwriting to order, to -meet the profligate tastes of the court, he could -not, like some lesser playwrights, disguise double-meanings -and vulgarities under a flimsy veil of -courtliness; but by his very sincerity he made all -his lewdness rank, and all his indelicacies brutal. -This will, and should, I think, keep his plays -away from our reading-desks.</p> - -<p>Dryden’s satires, written later, show a better -and far stronger side of his literary quality; and -Buckingham, long after his lineaments shall have -faded from a mob of histories, will stand preserved -as Zimri, in the strong pickle of Dryden’s verse; -you will have met the picture, perhaps without -knowing it, for the magnificent courtier, who wrote -“The Rehearsal:”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“A man so various that he seemed to be</div> -<div class="verse">Not one, but all mankind’s epitome:</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;</div> -<div class="verse">Was everything by starts, and nothing long,</div> -<div class="verse">But in the course of one revolving moon</div> -<div class="verse">Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;</div> -<div class="verse">Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,</div> -<div class="verse">Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>A man who writes in that way about a peer of -England was liable to write of lesser men in a -manner that would stir hot blood; and he did. -Once upon a time this great king at “Will’s” -was waylaid and sorrily cudgelled; which is an -experience that—however it may come about—is -not elevating in its effects, nor does it increase our -sense of a man’s dignity; for it is an almost universal -fact that the men most worthy of respect, in -almost any society, are the men who never do get -quietly cudgelled.</p> - -<h3>Later Poems and Purpose.</h3> - -<p>Far on in 1682, when our Dryden was waxing -oldish, and when he had given over play-going for -somewhat more of church-going, he wrote, in the -same verse with his satires, and with the same ringing -couplets of sound, a defence of the moderate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span> -liberal churchmanship that does not yield to ecclesiastic -fetters, and that thinks widely. A little later, -in 1687, he writes in a more assured vein, assuming -bold defence of Romanism—as it existed in that -day in England—to which faith he had become a -convert. This last is a curiously designed poem, -showing how little he had the arts of construction -in hand; it is a long argument between a Hind and -a Panther, in the shades of a forest. Was ever -ecclesiasticism so recommended before? Yet there -are brave and unforgetable lines in it: instance the -noble rhythm, and the noble burden of that passage -beginning—like a trumpet note—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“What weight of ancient witness can prevail,</div> -<div class="verse">If private reason hold the public scale?”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">And again the fine tribute to “the Church:”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Thus one, thus pure, behold her largely spread,</div> -<div class="verse">Like the fair ocean from her mother bed;</div> -<div class="verse">From East to West triumphantly she rides;</div> -<div class="verse">All shores are watered by her wealthy tides;</div> -<div class="verse">The Gospel-sound, diffused from pole to pole</div> -<div class="verse">Where winds can carry, and where waves can roll;</div> -<div class="verse">The self-same doctrine of the sacred page</div> -<div class="verse">Conveyed to every clime, in every age.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span></p> - -<p>I think Bishop Heber had a reverent and a -stealthy look upon these lines when he wrote a certain -stanza of his “Greenland’s icy mountains.”</p> - -<p>The enemies of Dryden did not fail to observe -that between the dates of the two professions of -faith named, Charles II. had died, summoning -a Papist priest, at the very last, to give him a -chance—and, it is feared, a small one—of reconcilement -with Heaven; furthermore, these enemies -remembered that the bigot James II. had come to -the throne, full of Papist zeal and of a poor hope to -bring all England to a great somerset of faith. Did -Dryden undergo an innocent change? Maybe; -may not be. Certainly neither Lord Macaulay, nor -Elkanah Settle, nor Saintsbury, nor you, nor I, have -the right to go behind the veil of privacy which in -such matters is every man’s privilege.</p> - -<p>How odd it seems that this Papist convert of -James II.’s time, and author of so many plays that -outranked Etherege in rankness, should have put -the <cite>Veni, Creator</cite>, of Charlemagne (if it be his) into -such reverent and trenchant English as carries it -into so many of our hymnals.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Creator Spirit, by whose aid</div> -<div class="verse">The world’s foundations first were laid,</div> -<div class="verse">Come, visit every humble mind;</div> -<div class="verse">Come, pour thy joys on humankind;</div> -<div class="verse">From sin and sorrow set us free,</div> -<div class="verse">And make thy temples worthy thee.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Nor was this all of Dryden’s translating work. -He roamed high and low among all the treasures of -the ancients. Theocritus gave his tangle of sweet -sounds to him, and Homer his hexameters; Juvenal -and Horace and Ovid were turned into his -verse; and Dryden’s <cite>Virgil</cite> is the only Virgil of -thousands of readers. He sought motive, too, in -Boccaccio and Chaucer; and within times the oldest -of us can remember his “Flower and Leaf” and -his “Palamon and Arcite” were more read and -known than the poems of like name attributed to -Chaucer. But in the newer and more popular renderings -and printings of the old English poet, -Chaucer has come to his own again, and rings out -his tales with a lark-like melody that outgoes in -richness and charm all the happy paraphrases of -Dryden.</p> - -<p>A still more dangerous task our poet undertook -in the days of his dramatic work. I have in my library<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span> -some half dozen of Dryden’s plays—yellowed -and tattered, and of the imprint of 1710 or thereabout—and -among them is one bearing this title, -<cite>The Tempest, originally written by William Shakespeare, -and altered and improved by John Dryden</cite>; -and the story of Antony and Cleopatra underwent -the same sort of improvement—dangerous work for -Dryden; dangerous for any of us. And yet this -latter, under name of “All for Love,” was one of -Dryden’s greatest successes, and reckoned by many -dramatic critics of that day far superior to Shakespeare.</p> - -<p>One more extract from this voluminous poet and -we shall leave him; it was written when he was -well toward sixty, and when his dramatic experiences -were virtually ended; it is from an ode in -memory of Mistress Killigrew, a friend and a poetess. -In the course of it he makes honest bewailment, -into which it would seem his whole heart entered:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“O gracious God! how far have we</div> -<div class="verse">Profaned thy heavenly gift of Poesy?</div> -<div class="verse">Made prostitute and profligate the muse,</div> -<div class="verse">Debased to each obscene and impious use,</div> -<div class="verse">Whose harmony was first ordained above</div> -<div class="verse">For tongues of angels, and for hymns of love?”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span></p> -<p>And again, a verselet that is full of all his most -characteristic manner:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound,</div> -<div class="verse">To raise the nations under ground;</div> -<div class="verse">When in the Valley of Jehoshaphat,</div> -<div class="verse">The judging God shall close the book of Fate;</div> -<div class="verse">And there the last assizes keep,</div> -<div class="verse">For those who wake and those who sleep:</div> -<div class="verse">When rattling bones together fly,</div> -<div class="verse">From the four corners of the sky;</div> -<div class="verse">When sinews o’er the skeletons are spread,</div> -<div class="verse">Those clothed with flesh, and life inspires the dead;</div> -<div class="verse">The sacred poets first shall hear the sound,</div> -<div class="verse">And foremost from the tomb shall bound,</div> -<div class="verse">For they are covered with the lightest ground;</div> -<div class="verse">And straight, with inborn vigor, on the wing,</div> -<div class="verse">Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing.</div> -<div class="verse">Then thou, sweet Saint, before the quire shall go,</div> -<div class="verse">As Harbinger of Heaven, the way to show,</div> -<div class="verse">The way which thou so well hast learnt below!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>We have given much space to our talk about -Dryden. Is it because we like him so well? By no -means. It is because he was the greatest master -among the literary craftsmen of his day; it is because -he wrought in so many and various forms, -and always with a steady, unflinching capacity for -toil, which knew no shake or pause; it is because<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span> -he had a marvellously keen sense for all the symphonies -of heroic language, and could always cheat -and charm the ear with his reverberant thunders; -it is because he spanned a great interval of English -letters, covering it with various accomplishment; -criticising keenly, and accepted as a critic; judging -fairly, and accepted as a judge in the great court of -language; teaching, by his example, of uses and -fashions of use, which were heeded by his contemporaries, -and which put younger men upon the -track of better and worthier achievement.</p> - -<p>Again, it is because he, more than any other of -his epoch, represented in himself and in what he -wrought, the drift and bent and actualities of the -time. There were changes of dynasties, and he put -into language, for all England, the lamentation -over the old and the glorification of the new; -there were plagues and conflagrations and upbuildings -of desolated cities—and the fumes and the -flames and the din of all these get speech of him, -and such color as put them in undying record upon -the roll of history; there were changes of faith, -and vague out-reaches for some sure ground of religious -establishment—and his poems tell of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span> -struggle, and in his own personality represent the -stress of a whole nation’s doubts; there are -battles raging round the coasts—and the echo of -them, in some shape of trumpet blare or shrill -military resonance, seems never to go out of his -poems; dissoluteness rules in the court and in -the city, infecting all—and Dryden wallows with -them through a score of his uncanny dramas.</p> - -<p>Put his poems together in the order of their -composition, and without any other historic data -whatever, they would show the changes and quavers -and sudden enthusiasms and bestialities and doubts -and growth of the National Life. But they would -most rarely show the noble impulses that kindle -hope and foretoken better things to come—rarely -the elevating purpose that commands our reverence.</p> - -<p>No fictitious character of his is a live one to-day; -you can hardly recall one if you try.<a name="FNanchor_92" id="FNanchor_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a> No couplet -or verselet of his is so freighted with a serene or -hopeful philosophy as to make our march the -blither by reason of it down the corridors of time. -No blast of all his fanfaron of trumpets sounds the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span> -opening of the gates upon any Delectable Mountains. -A great, clever, literary worker! I think -that is all we can say of him. And when you or I -pass under his monument in the corner of Westminster -Abbey, we will stand bowed respectfully, -but not with any such veneration, I think, as we -expect to carry to the tomb of Milton or of -Chaucer; and if one falls on Pope—what then? -I think we might pause—waver; more polish here—more -power there—the humanities not radiant -in either; and so we might safely sidle away to -warm ourselves before the cenotaph of Goldsmith.</p> - -<h3>John Locke.</h3> - -<p>Another man who grew up in these times in England, -and who from his study-window at Oxford -(where he had been Lecturer on Rhetoric) saw the -Great Fire of London in the shape of a vast, yellow, -sulphurous-looking cloud, of portentous aspect, rolling -toward the zenith, and covering half the sky, -was Mr. John Locke.<a name="FNanchor_93" id="FNanchor_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span></p> - -<p>We are too apt, I think, to dismiss this author -from our thoughts as a man full only of dreary -metaphysic subtleties; and support the belief with -the story that our Jonathan Edwards read his -treatise on the <cite>Human Understanding</cite> with great delight -at the age of fourteen. Yet Locke, although -a man of the keenest and rarest intellect—which -almost etherialized his looks—was possessed of a -wonderful deal of what he would have called “hard, -round-about sense;” indeed it would be quite possible -to fill a whole calendar with bits of his printed -talk that would be as pitpat and common-sensical -as anything in <cite>Poor Richard’s Almanac</cite>. Moreover, -he could, on occasions, tell a neat and droll story, -which would set the “table in a roar.”</p> - -<p>Some facts in the life of this great thinker and -writer are worth our remembering, not only by -reason of the fame of his books, but because in -all those years whose turbulent rush and corrupting -influences have shown themselves in our pages, -John Locke lived an upright, manly, self-respecting -life, though brought into intimate relations with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span> -many most prominent at court. He was born in -Western England, north of the Mendip Hills; and -after fourteen years of quiet country life, and kind -parental training, among the orchard slopes of -Somersetshire, went to Westminster School; was -many years thereafter at Oxford; studied medicine; -met Lord Ashley (afterward the great Shaftesbury—first -party-leader in English parliamentary -history), who was so taken by the pale, intellectual -face of the young Doctor that he carried him off to -London, and domiciled him in his great house upon -the Strand. There Locke directed the studies of -Ashley’s son; and presently—such was my Lord’s -confidence in him—was solicited to find a wife for -the young gentleman;<a name="FNanchor_94" id="FNanchor_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a> which he did, to the great -acceptance of all parties, by taking him off into -Rutlandshire, and introducing him to a pretty -daughter of the Earl of Rutland. Fancy the author -of an <cite>Essay Concerning the Human Understanding</cite> -setting off in a coach, with six long-tailed Flemish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span> -horses, for a four days’ journey into the north of -England—with a young scion of the Ashleys—upon -such an errand as that! Our doctors in metaphysics -do not, I believe, engage in similar service; -yet I suppose nice observation would disclose -great and curious mental activities in the evolution -of such schemes.</p> - -<p>The philosopher must have known Dryden, -both being early members of the Royal Society; -but I have a fancy that Locke was a man who did -not—save on rarest occasions—take a pipe and a -mug at such a place as Will’s Coffee-house. His -tastes led him more to banquets at Exeter House. -There was foreign travel, also, in which he accomplished -himself in continental languages and socialities; -he had offers of diplomatic preferment, but -his doubtful health (always making him what over-well -people call a fussy man) forbade acceptance; -else we might have had in him another Sir William -Temple. Shaftesbury interested him in his -scheme of new planting the Carolina colony in -America; and John Locke drew up rules for its political -guidance. Some of these sound very drolly -now. Thus—no man was to be a freeman of Carolina<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span> -unless he acknowledged a God, and agreed -that he was to be publicly and solemnly worshipped. -The members of one church were not to -molest or persecute those of another. Again, “no -one shall be permitted to plead before a court of -justice for money or reward.” What a howling desert -this would make of most of our courts!</p> - -<p>Again, he writes with great zest upon the subject -of Education, and almost with the warmth of that -old Roger Ascham, whose maxims I cited in one of -our earlier talks:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Till you can find a school wherein it is possible for the -master to look after the manners of his scholars, and can -show as great effects of his care of forming their minds to -virtue, and their carriage to good breeding, as of forming -their tongues to the learned languages, you must confess -that you have a strange value for words, to hazard your sons’ -innocence and virtue for a little Greek and Latin.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>And again:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“I know not why anyone should waste his time and beat -his head about the Latin grammar, who does not intend to -be a critic, or make speeches, and write despatches in it. If -his use of it be only to understand some books writ in it -without a critical knowledge of the tongue itself, reading -alone will attain his end, without charging his mind with -the multiplied rules and intricacies of grammar.”…</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span></p> - -<p>“If there may be any reasons against children’s making -Latin themes at school, I have much more to say and of more -weight against their making verses—verses of any sort. For -if he has no genius to poetry, ’tis the most unreasonable -thing in the world to torment a child and waste his time -about that which can never succeed: and if he have a poetic -vein—methinks the parents should labor to have it stifled: -for if he proves a successful rhymer, and get once the reputation -of a wit, I desire it may be considered what company -and places he is likely to spend his time in—nay, and his -estate too.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>By which I am more than ever convinced that -Locke did not sup often with Dryden at “Will’s,” -and that you will find no pleasant verselets—look -as hard as you may—on a single page of his discourse -on the <cite>Human Understanding</cite>.</p> - -<p>When Charles grew suspicious of Shaftesbury, -and the Earl was shorn of his power, no little of the -odium fell upon his <i lang="fr">protégé</i>; and for a time there -was an enforced—or at least a very prudent—exile -for Locke, at one time in France and at another -in Holland. It was on these absences that his pen -was busiest. In 1689 he returned to England in -the trail of William III.; came to new honors under -that monarch; published his great work, which -had been simmering in his brain for ten years or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span> -more; made a great fame at home and abroad, and -wrote wisely on many topics. Meanwhile his old -enemy, the asthma, was afflicting him sorely. London -smoke was a torture to him; but when he went -only so little distance away (twenty miles northward) -as the country home of his friends Sir Francis -and Lady Masham, a delightful calm came to -him. He was given his own apartment there; -never did hosts more enjoy a guest; and never a -guest enjoyed more the immunities and kindnesses -which Sir Francis and Lady bestowed upon him. -Twelve or fourteen years of idyllic life for the philosopher -followed, in the wooded alleys and upon -the charming lawns of the old manor-house of -Oates, in the county of Essex; there were leisurely, -coy journeys to London; there were welcoming -visits from old friends; there was music indoors, -and music—of the birds—without. Bachelors -rarely come to those quietudes and joys of a home-life -which befell the old age of Locke, and equipped -all his latter days with such serenities as were a -foretaste of heaven.</p> - -<p>He does not lie in Westminster Abbey: I think -he would have rebelled among the poets: he sleeps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span> -more quietly in the pretty church-yard of High-Lavor, -a little way off, northward, from the New -Park of Epping Forest.</p> - -<h3>End of the King and Others.</h3> - -<p>The lives of these two men—Dryden and Locke—have -brought us past the whole reach of Charles -II.’s reign. That ignoble monarch has met his fate -courageously; some days before the immediate end -he knew it was coming, and had kind words for -those about him.</p> - -<p>He died on a Friday,<a name="FNanchor_95" id="FNanchor_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> and on the Sunday before -had held great revel in the famous gallery of Whitehall; -next day came the warnings, and then the -blow—paralytic, or other such—which shrivelled -his showy powers, and brought his swarthy face to -a whiteness and a death-like pallor that shocked -those gay people who belonged in the palace. -Then came the scourging with hot iron, and the -administration of I know not what foul drugs that -belonged to the blind medication of that day—all -in vain; there were suspicions of poison; but the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span> -poison he died of was of his own making, and he -had been taking it ever since boyhood.</p> - -<p>A Catholic priest came to him stealthily and -made the last promises to him he was ever to hear. -To a courtier, who came again and again, he apologized—showing -his courtesy to the last. “I’m an -awful time in dying,” he said; and to somebody -else—his brother, perhaps—“don’t let poor Nell -Gwynne starve;” and so died.</p> - -<p>James, the successor, was not loved—scarce by -anyone; bigoted, obstinate, selfish, he ran quickly -through the short race of which the histories will -tell you. Only three years of it, or thereabout, and -then—<em>presto!</em> like the changing of the scenes at -Drury Lane Theatre in one of the splendid spectacles -of the day—James scuds away, and Cousin -William (with his wife Mary, both of the blood -royal of England) comes in, and sets up a fashion of -rule, and an assured Protestant succession of regal -names which is not ended yet.</p> - -<p>And now, in closing this talk, I will summon into -presence once again some of the notable personages -who have given intellectual flavor to the years we -have gone over, and will call the roll of a few new<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span> -names among those actors who are to take in swift -succession the places of those who disappear. At -the date where we now are—1688—the date of -the last English Revolution (who, pray, can predict -the next?), the date of John Bunyan’s death, -the date of Alexander Pope’s birth—excellent remembrancers, -these!—at this epoch, I say, of the -incoming of William and Mary, all those dramatic -writers—of whom we made mention as having put -a little tangled fringe of splendor about the great -broidery of Shakespeare’s work—were gone. So -was Herrick, with his sweet poems, and his pigs -and tankards; and Howell, and Wotton, and the -saintly George Herbert, and dear, good, old Izaak -Walton—all comfortably dead and buried. So -were Andrew Marvell, and the author of <cite>Hudibras</cite>. -Archbishop Laud was gone long since to the scaffold, -with the fullest acquiescence of all New Englanders; -Jeremy Taylor gone—if ever man had -right of way there—to heaven; Milton dead; -Cowley dead; Waller dead.</p> - -<p>Old, ear-cropped Prynne, of the <cite>Histriomastix</cite>, -was still living—close upon seventy—grim and -gray, and as pugnacious as a bull-terrier. Among<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span> -others lingering upon the downhill side of life -were Robert Boyle and that John Evelyn, whose -love of the fields and gardens and trees had put -long life in his blood and brain. Sir William -Temple, too, had still some years of elegant distinction -to coquet with; our old friend of the Pepysian -journal was yet alert—his political ambitions active, -his eye-sight failing—never thinking, we may -be sure, that his pot-luck of a <cite>Diary</cite> would keep -him more savory with us to-day than all his wigs -and his coaches, and his fine acquaintance, and his -great store of bric-à-brac.</p> - -<p>Isaac Newton was not fifty yet, but had somehow -lost that elasticity and searchingness of brain which -had untwisted the sunbeams, and solved the riddle -of gravitation. Bishop Burnet, and that William -Penn whose name ought to hold place on any American -file of England’s worthies, were in the full -vigor of middle age. Daniel De Foe was some -eight and twenty, and known only as a sharp -trader, who had written a few pamphlets, and who -was enrolled in those soldier ranks which went to -greet William III. on his arrival at Torbay.</p> - -<p>Matthew Prior was still younger, and had made<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span> -no show of those graces and that art which gave -him later an ambassador’s place, and a tomb and -monument in the “Poet’s Corner” of the Abbey. -Jonathan Swift, then scarce twenty-one, is unheard -of as yet, and is nursing quietly the power -and the bitterness with which, through two succeeding -reigns, he is to write and rave and rage.</p> - -<p>Still more youthful are those two promising lads, -Addison and Steele, listening with their sharp -young ears to the fine verses of Mr. Dryden, and -watching and waiting for the day when they, too, -shall say somewhat to be of record for ages after -them. And so, with these bright young fellows at -the front, and the excellent gray-heads I have -named at the rear, we ring down the curtain upon -our present entertainment with an “<i lang="la">Exeunt omnes!</i>”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</h2> - -<p class="dropcap">I have a fear that my readers were not overmuch -interested in what I had to say of that -witty Dr. Thomas Fuller who wrote about the -<cite>Worthies of England</cite>, and who pressed his stalwart -figure (for he was of the bigness of our own Phillips -Brooks—corporeal and mental) through many a -London crowd that came to his preachments. Yet -his worthiness is something larger than that which -comes from his story of the <cite>Worthies</cite>.</p> - -<p>Sir William Temple, too, is a name that can -hardly have provoked much enthusiasm, unless -among those who love gardens, and who recall -with rural unction his horticultural experiences at -Sheen, and at Moor Park in Surrey. But that -kindly, handsome, meditative, eccentric doctor of -Norwich—Sir Thomas Browne—was of a different -and more lovable quality, the memory of which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> -I hope may find lodgement in the reader’s heart. -His <cite>Religio Medici</cite>, if not his <cite>Hydriotaphia</cite>, should -surely find place in every well-appointed library.</p> - -<p>As for John Dryden—do what you like with his -books; but do not forget that he left behind him -writings that show all the colors and reflect all the -follies and faiths of the days in which he lived—plays -with a portentous pomp of language—lyrics -that were most melodious and most unsavory—satire -that flashed and cut like a sword, and odes -that had the roll and swell of martial music in -them.</p> - -<p>John Locke if less known, was worthier; and -we have reason, which I tried to show, for thinking -of him as a pure-hearted, level-headed, high-minded -man—an abiding honor to his race.</p> - -<h3>Kings Charles, James, and William.</h3> - -<p>It may help the reader to keep in memory the sequence -of these English sovereigns if I tell him -somewhat of their relationship. James II.—previously -and longer known as that Duke of York, in -honor of whom our metropolitan city (in those days<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span> -conquered from the Dutch) was called New York—we -know as only brother to Charles II., who -died without legitimate children. This James was -as bigoted and obstinate as Charles was profligate -and suave. We think of him as having lost his -throne in that revolution of 1688, by reason of his -popish tendencies; but it is doubtful if Protestantism -would have saved him, or made a better man of -him. He had married—and it was a marriage he -tried hard to abjure and escape from—a daughter -of that Earl of Clarendon whose <cite>History of the Rebellion</cite> -I named to you. There were two daughters -by this marriage, Mary and Anne; both of them, -through the influence of their Clarendon grandfather, -brought up as Protestants. The elder of -these, Mary, was a fine woman, tall, dignified, -graceful, cultivated—as times went—whose greatest -foible was a love for cards, at which she played -for heavy stakes, and—often. Her sister Anne -shared the same foible, and gave it cherishment all -her life; but was not reckoned the equal of her -elder sister; had none of her grace; was short, -dumpy, overfond of good dinners, and with such -limited culture as made her notelets (even when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span> -she came to be Queen) full of blunders that would -put a school-mistress of our day into spasms. We -shall meet her, and more pleasantly, again.</p> - -<p>But Mary—heir next after James to the throne—had -married William of Orange, who was a fighting -Dutch general; keen, cool, selfish, brave, calculating, -with an excellent head for business; cruel at -times, unscrupulous, too, but a good Protestant. -He was great-grandson to that famous William the -Silent, whose story everyone has read, or should -read, in the pages of Motley.</p> - -<p>But how came he, a Dutchman, and speaking -English brokenly, to share the British throne with -Mary? There were two very excellent reasons: -First, he was own cousin to Mary, his mother having -been a daughter of Charles I.; and next, he had -kingly notions of husbandship, and refused to go -to England on any throne-seeking errand, which -might involve hard fighting, without sharing to -the full the sovereignty of his wife Mary.</p> - -<p>So he did go as conqueror and king; there being -most easy march to London; the political scene -changing like the turn of a kaleidoscope; but there -came fighting in Ireland, as at Londonderry and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span> -the battle of the Boyne; and a brooding unrest in -Scotland, of which, whenever you come to read or -study, you should mate your reading with that -charming story of <cite>Old Mortality</cite>—one of the -best of Scott’s. Its scene reaches over from the -days of Charles II. to the early years of the Dutch -King William, and sets before one more vividly -than any history all those elements of unrest with -which the new sovereign had to contend on his -northern borders—the crazy fanaticism of fierce -Cameronians—the sturdy, cantankerous zeal of -Presbyterians—the workings of the old, hot, obstinate -leaven of Prelacy, and the romantic, lingering -loyalty to a Stuart king.</p> - -<p>But William ended by having all his kingdom -well in hand, and all his household too. There was -strong affection between William and Mary; he relishing -her discretion, her reserves, and her culture; -and she loving enough to forget the harsh gauntleted -hand which he put upon those who were nearest -and dearest to him. He was more military than -diplomatic, and I think believed in no Scripture -more devoutly than in that which sets forth the -mandate, “Wives, obey your husbands.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span></p> - -<p>The King was not a strong man physically, though -a capital soldier; he was short, awkward, halting in -movement, appearing best in the saddle and with -battle flaming in his front; he had asthma, too, fearfully; -was irritable—full of coughs and colds—building -a new palace upon the flank of Hampton -Court, to get outside of London smoke and fogs; -setting out trees there, and digging ponds in Dutch -style, which you may see now; building Kensington, -too, which was then out of town, and planting and -digging there—of which you may see results over -the mouldy brick wall that still hems in that old -abode of royalty. He carried his asthma, and dyspepsia, -and smoking Dutch dragoons to both places. -People thought surely that the Queen, so well made -and blessed with wonderful appetite, would outlive -him, and so give to the history of England a Mary II.; -but she did not. An attack of small-pox, not -combated in those days by vaccination, or even inoculation, -carried her off on a short illness.</p> - -<p>He grieved, as people thought so stern a master -could not grieve; but rallied and built to the -Queen’s memory that most magnificent of monuments, -Greenwich Hospital, which shows its domes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span> -and its royal façade stretching along the river bank, -to the myriad of strangers who every year sail up -or down the Thames.</p> - -<p>He made friends, too, with Princess Anne, the sister -of the dead Queen, and now heir to the throne. -This Princess Anne (afterward Queen Anne) was -married to a prince of Denmark, only notable for -doing nothing excellently well; and was mother of -a young lad, called Duke of Gloucester, whom all -England looked upon as their future king. And -this little Duke, after Queen Mary’s death, came to -be presented at court in a blue velvet costume, -blazing all over with diamonds, of which one may -get a good notion from Sir Godfrey Kneller’s painting -of him, now in Hampton Court. But the velvet -and the diamonds and best of care could not save -the weakly, blue-eyed, fair-cheeked, precocious lad; -his precocity was a fatal one, due to a big hydrocephalic -head that bent him down and carried him -to the grave while William was yet King.</p> - -<p>The Princess mother was in despair; was herself -feeble, too; small, heavy, dropsical, from all which -she rallied, however, and at the death of William, -which occurred by a fall from his horse in 1702,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span> -came to be that Queen Anne, who through no -special virtues of her own, gave a name to a great -epoch in English history, and in these latter days -has given a name to very much architecture and -furniture and crockery, which have as little to do -with her as they have with our King Benjamin of -Washington.</p> - -<p>I may have more to say of her when we shall -have brought the literary current of our story more -nearly abreast of her times.</p> - -<p>There was not much of literary patronage flowing -out from King William. I think there was -never a time when he would not have counted a -good dictionary the best of books, not excepting -the Bible; and I suspect that he had about the -same contempt for “literary fellers” which belongs -to our average Congressman. Yet there were -shoals of poets in his time who would have delighted -to burn incense under the nostrils of the -asthmatic King.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span></p> - -<h3>Some Literary Fellows.</h3> - -<p>There was Prior,<a name="FNanchor_96" id="FNanchor_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> for instance, who, from having -been the son of a taverner at Whitehall, came to be -a polished wit, and at last an ambassador, through -the influence of strong friends about the court. In -his university days he had ventured to ridicule, in -rattling verse, the utterances of the great Dryden. -You will know of him best, perhaps, if you know -him at all, by a paraphrase he made of that tender -ballad of the “Nut-brown Maid,” in which the -charming naturalness of the old verse is stuck over -with the black patches of Prior’s pretty rhetoric. -But I am tempted to give you a fairer and a more -characteristic specimen of his vivacity and grace. -Here it is:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“What I speak, my fair Chloe, and what I write, shows</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The difference there is betwixt nature and art;</div> -<div class="verse">I court <em>others</em> in verse; but I love <em>thee</em> in prose;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And <em>they</em> have my whimsies, but <em>thou</em> hast my heart.</div> -<div class="verse">So when I am wearied with wandering all day,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To thee, my delight, in the evening I come,</div> -<div class="verse">No matter what beauties I saw in my way;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">They were but my <em>visits</em>, and thou art my home.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span></p> -<p>Remember, these lines were written by a poet, -who on an important occasion represented the -Government of Queen Anne at the great court of -Louis XIV. of France. This Prior—when Queen -Mary died—had his consolatory verses for King -William. Indeed that death of Queen Mary set a -great deal of poetry upon the flow. There was -William Congreve,<a name="FNanchor_97" id="FNanchor_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a> who though a young man, not -yet turned of thirty, had won a great rank in those -days by his witty comedies. He wrote a pastoral—cleaner -than most of his writing—in honor of -William’s lost Queen:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“No more these woods shall with her sight be blest,</div> -<div class="verse">Nor with her feet these flowery plains be prest;</div> -<div class="verse">No more the winds shall with her tresses play,</div> -<div class="verse">And from her balmy breath steal sweets away.</div> -<div class="verse">Oh, she was heavenly fair, in face and mind,</div> -<div class="verse">Never in nature were such beauties joined;</div> -<div class="verse">Without—all shining, and within—all white;</div> -<div class="verse">Pure to the sense, and pleasing to the sight;</div> -<div class="verse">Like some rare flower, whose leaves all colors yield,</div> -<div class="verse">And—opening—is with sweetest odors filled.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span></p> -<p>Yet all this would have comforted the King not -half so much as a whiff of smoke from the pipe of -one of his Dutch dragoons. He never went to see -one of Mr. Congreve’s plays, though the whole town -was talking of their neatness, and their skill, and -their wit. That clever gentleman’s conquests on -the stage, and in the social world—lording it as he -did among duchesses and countesses—would have -weighed with King William not so much as the -buzzing of a blue-bottle fly.</p> - -<p>Yet Congreve was in his way an important man—immensely -admired; Voltaire said he was the -best comedy writer England had ever known; and -when he came to London this keen-witted Frenchman -(who rarely visited) went to see Mr. Congreve -at his rooms in the Strand. Nothing was too good -for Mr. Congreve; he had patronage and great -gifts; it seemed always to be raining roses on his -head. The work he did was not great work, but -it was exquisitely done; though, it must be said, -there was no preserving savor in it but the art -of it. The talk in his comedies, by its pliancy, -grace, neat turns, swiftness of repartee, compares -with the talk in most comedies as goldsmith’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span> -work compares with the heavy forgings of a blacksmith. -It matches exquisitely part to part, and -runs as delicately as a hair-spring on jewelled pinions.</p> - -<p>I gave my readers a bit of the “Pandora Lament,” -which Sir Richard Steele thought one of -the most perfect of all pastoral compositions. And -the little whimsey about Amoret, everybody knows; -certainly it is best known of all he did:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Coquet and coy at once her air,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Both studied, tho’ both seemed neglected;</div> -<div class="verse">Careless she is with artful care,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Affecting to seem unaffected.</div> -<div class="verse">With skill her eyes dart every glance,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Yet change so soon, you’d ne’er suspect ’em,</div> -<div class="verse">For she’d persuade they wound by chance,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Tho’ certain aim and art direct them.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">They are very pretty; yet are you not sure that -our wheezing, phlegmatic, business-loving, Dutch -King William would have sniffed contemptuously -at the reading of any such verselets?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span></p> - -<h3>A Pamphleteer.</h3> - -<p>A writer, however, of that time, of about the -same age with Congreve, whom King William did -favor, and did take at one period into his confidence,—and -one of whose books, at least, you all -have liked at some epoch of your life, and thought -quite wonderful and charming—I must tell you -more about. His presence counted for nothing; he -was short, wiry, hook-nosed—not anyway elegant; -Mr. Congreve would have scorned association with -him. He was the son of a small butcher in London, -and had never much schooling; but he was -quick of apprehension, always eager to inform himself; -bustling, shrewd, inquisitive, with abundance -of what we call “cheek.” He never lacked simple, -strong language to tell just what he thought, or -what he knew; and he never lacked the courage to -put his language into print or into speech, as the -case might be.</p> - -<p>By dint of his dogged perseverance and much -natural aptitude he came to know Latin and Spanish -and Italian, and could speak French, such as it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span> -was, very fluently. He was well up in geography -and history, and such science as went into the books -of those days. He wrote sharp, stinging pamphlets -about whatever struck him as wrong, or as wanting -a good slap, whether in morals, manners, or politics.</p> - -<p>He was in trade, which took him sometimes into -France, Spain, or Flanders. He could tell everyone -how to make money and how to conduct business -better than he could do either himself. He had -his bankruptcies, his hidings, his compoundings -with creditors, and his times in prison; but he -came out of all these experiences with just as much -animation and pluck and assurance as he carried -into them.</p> - -<p>There was a time when he was advertised as a -fugitive, and a reward offered for his apprehension—all -due to his sharp pamphlet-writing; and he -was apprehended and had his fines to pay, and -stood in the pillory; but the street-folk, with a -love for his pluck and for his trenchant, homely, -outspokenness, garnished the pillory with flowers -and garlands. It was this power of incisive speech, -and his capacity to win audience of the street-people,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span> -that made King William value his gifts -and put them to service.</p> - -<p>But I cannot tell of the half he wrote. Now it -was upon management of families; again an <cite>Essay -on Projects</cite>—from which Dr. Franklin used to -say he derived a great many valuable hints—then -upon a standing army; then upon the villainies of -stock-jobbery. What he called poems, too, he -wrote, with a harsh jingle of rhymes; one specially, -showing that—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">“as the world goes, and is like to go, the best way for -Ladies is to keep unmarried, for I will ever expose,” -he says, “these infamous, impertinent, cowardly, censorious, -sauntering <em>Idle wretches</em>, called <em>Wits</em> and <em>Beaux</em>, -the <em>Plague</em> of the nation and the <em>Scandal</em> of mankind.” -But, he continues, “if Lesbia is sure she has found a -man of <em>Honor</em>, <em>Religion</em> and <em>Virtue</em>, I will never forbid -the <em>Banns</em>: Let her love him as much as she pleases, -and value him as an <em>Angel</em>, and be married to-morrow if -she will.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Again, he has a whole volume of <cite>Advice to English -Tradesmen</cite>, as to how to manage their shops -and bargainings; and it gives one a curious notion -of what was counted idle extravagance in that -day to read his description of the extraordinary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span> -and absurd expenditure of a certain insane pastry-cook:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“It will hardly be believed,” he says, “in ages to come, -that the fitting of his shop has cost 300 pounds! I have -good authority for saying that this spendthrift has sash-windows -all of looking-glass plate twelve inches by sixteen—two -large pier looking-glasses, and one very large pier-glass -seven feet high; and all the walls of the shop are -lined up with galley tiles.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>He advises a young apothecary who has not large -acquaintance to hire a stout man to pound in a -big mortar (though he may have nothing to pound) -all the early hours of the morning, and all the evening, -as if he were a man of great practice. Then, -in his <cite>Family Instructor</cite>, he advises against untruth -and all hypocrisies; and he compresses -sharp pamphlets into the shape of a leading article—is, -in fact, the first man to design “leading articles,” -which he puts into his <cite>Review</cite> or <cite>Indicator</cite>, -in which periodicals he saves a corner for well-spiced -gossip and scandal, to make—he says—the -“paper relished by housewives.” He interviews all -the cut-throats and thieves encountered in prison, -and tells stories of their lives. I think he was the -first and best of all interviewers; but not the last!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span> -Fifty of these pages of mine would scarce take in -the mere titles of the books and pamphlets he -wrote. His career stretched far down throughout -Queen Anne’s days, and was parallel with that of -many worthy men of letters, I shall have to mention; -yet he knew familiarly none of them. Swift, -who knew everybody he thought worth knowing, -speaks of him as an illiterate fellow, whose name he -has forgotten; and our pamphleteer dies at last—in -hiding—poor, embroiled with his family, and -sought by very few—unless his creditors.</p> - -<p>I do not suppose you have read much that he -wrote except one book; that, I know you have -read; and this bustling, bouncing, inconsistent, indefatigable, -unsuccessful, earnest scold of a man -was named Daniel Defoe;<a name="FNanchor_98" id="FNanchor_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> and the book you have -read is <cite>Robinson Crusoe</cite>—loved by all boys -better than any other book; and loved by all girls, -I think, better than any other book—that has no -love in it.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span></p> - -<p>You will wonder, perhaps, that a man without -academic graces of speech should have made a -book that wears so and that wins so. But it wears -and wins, because—for one thing—it is free from -any extraneous graces of rhetoric; because he was -not trying to write a fine book, but only to tell in -clearest way a plain story. And if you should ever -have any story of your own to tell, and want to tell -it well, I advise you to take <cite>Robinson Crusoe</cite> for -a model; if you ever want to make a good record -of any adventures of your own by sea, or by land, I -advise you to take <cite>Robinson Crusoe</cite> for a model; -and if you do, you will not waste words in painting -sunsets, or in decorating storms and sea-waves; -but, without your straining, and by the simple colorless -truth of your language, the sunsets will show -their glow, and the storms rise and roar, and the -waves dash and die along the beach as they do in -nature.</p> - -<h3>Of Queen Anne.</h3> - -<p>Though not in great favor with the courtiers of -Queen Anne, Defoe did serve her government effectively -upon the Commission in Edinburgh, which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span> -brought about in this Queen’s time (and to her -great honor) the legislative union of England and -Scotland. She came, you know, to be called the -“Good Queen Anne;” and we must try and get a -better glimpse of her before we push on with our -literary story. Royal duties brought more ripeness -of character than her young days promised. I -have said that she was not so attractive personally -as her sister Mary; not tall, but heavy in figure—not -unlike the present good Queen of England, but -less active by far; sometimes dropsical—gouty, -too, and never getting over a strong love for the -table. She had great waves of brown hair—ringleted -and flowing over her shoulders; and she had -an arm and hand which Sir Godfrey Kneller—who -painted her—declared to be the finest in all England; -and whoso is curious in such matters can -still see that wonderful hand and arm in her portrait -at Windsor. Another charm she possessed -was a singularly sweet and sympathetic voice; and -she read the royal messages to the high court of -Parliament with a music that has never been put -in them since. If she had written them herself, I -am afraid music would not have saved them; for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span> -she was not strong-minded, and was a shallow -student; she <em>would</em> spell phonetically, and played -havoc with the tenses. Nor was she rich in conversation, -or full. Swift—somewhere in his journal—makes -merry with her disposition to help -out—as so many of us do—by talk about the -weather; and there is a story that when, after -King William’s death, the great Marquis of Normanby -came on a visit of sympathy and gratulation -to the new sovereign, the Queen, at an awkward -pause, piped out, in her sweet voice: “It’s a -fine day, Marquis!” Whereat the courtier, who -was more full of dainty speech, said—in pretty -recognition of its being the first day of her reign—“Your -Majesty must allow me to say that it’s -the finest day I ever saw in my life!” But this -good Queen was full of charities, always beloved, -and never failed to show that best mark of real -ladyhood—the utmost courtesy and kindliness of -manner to dependants and to her servants.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span></p> - -<h3>An Irish Dragoon.</h3> - -<p>Among the writers specially identified with this -Queen’s reign was Sir Richard Steele;<a name="FNanchor_99" id="FNanchor_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a> not a -grand man, or one of large influence; and yet one -so kindly by nature, and so gracious in his speech -and writing, that the world is not yet done with pardoning, -and loving, and pitying that elegant author -of the <cite>Tatler</cite>—though he was an awful spendthrift, -and a fashionable tippler, and a creature of -always splendid, and always broken, promises.</p> - -<p>He was Irish born; was schooled at the Charter-house -in London, where he met with that other -master of delicate English, Joseph Addison—they -being not far from the same age—and knitting -a boy friendship there which withstood a great -many shocks of manhood. They were together at -Oxford, too, but not long; for Steele, somehow, -slipped College early and became a trooper, and -learned all the ways of the fast fellows of the town.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span> -With such a training—on the road to which his -Irish blood led him with great jollity—one would -hardly have looked to him for any early talk -about the life of a true <cite>Christian Hero</cite>. But he -did write a book so entitled, in those wild young -days, as a sort of kedge anchor, he says, whereby -he might haul out from the shoals of the wicked -town, and indulge in a sort of contemplative piety. -It was and is a very good little book;<a name="FNanchor_100" id="FNanchor_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> but it did -not hold a bit, as an anchor. And when he came -to be joked about his Christian Heroship, he wrote -plays (perhaps to make averages good) more moral -and cleanly than those of Etherege or Wycherley—with -bright things in them; but not enough -of such, or of orderly proprieties, to keep them -popular. Of course, this fun-loving, dusky, good-hearted, -broad-shouldered Irish trooper falls in -love easily; marries, too, of a sudden, some West -Indian lady, who dies within a year, leaving him -a Barbadoes estate—said to be large—does look<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span> -large to Captain Steele through his cups—but -which gives greater anxieties than profits, and is -a sort of castle in Spain all through his life. With -almost incredible despatch—after this affliction—he -is in love again; this time with the only daughter -of a rich Welsh lady. This is his famous -Prue, who plays the coquette with him for a while; -but writes privily to her anxious mamma that she -“can <em>never, never</em> love another;” that “he is not -high—nor rich—but so dutiful; and for his -morals and understanding [she says] I refer you -to his <cite>Christian Hero</cite>.”</p> - -<p>Steele’s marriage comes of it—a marriage whose -ups and downs, and lights and shadows have curious -and very graphic illustration in the storm of -notelets which he wrote to his wife—on bill-heads, -perfumed paper, tavern reckonings—all, singularly -enough, in existence now, and carefully kept in the -Library of the British Museum.</p> - -<p>Here is a part of one, written just before his marriage:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Madam, it is the hardest thing in the World to be in -Love, and yet attend Business. As for me all that speak to -me find me out.… A gentleman ask’d me this morning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span> -what news from Lisbon, and I answered, ‘She’s exquisitely -handsome.’” Here’s another—after marriage: -“Dear Prue, I enclose two guineas, and will come home exactly -at seven. Yrs tenderly.” And again: “Dear Prue, -I enclose five guineas, but cannot come home to dinner. -Dear little woman, take care of thyself, and eat and drink -cheerfully.” Yet again: “Dear Prue, if you do not hear -of me before three to-morrow, believe that I am too [tipsy] -to obey your orders; but, however, know me to be your -most affectionate, faithful husband.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>It is more promising for a man to speak of his -own tippling than to have others speak of it; nor -was this writer’s sinning in that way probably beyond -the average in his time. But he was of that -mercurial temperament which took wine straight -to the brain; and so was always at bad odds with -those men of better digestion (such as Swift and -Addison) who were only tickled effusively with -such bouts as lifted the hilarious Captain Steele -into a noisy effervescence.</p> - -<p>There are better and worse letters than those I -have read; but never any lack of averment that he -enjoys most of anything in life his wife’s delightful -presence—but can’t get home, really cannot; some -excellent fellows have come in, or he is at the tavern—business -is important; and she is always his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span> -charming Prue; and always he twists a little wordy -aureole of praise about her head or her curls. I -suppose she took a deal of comfort out of his tender -adjectives; but I think she learned early not to -sit up for him, and got over that married woe with -great alacrity. There is evidence that she loved -him throughout; and other evidence that she gave -him some moral fisticuffs—when he did get home—which -made his next stay at the tavern easier and -more defensible.</p> - -<p>But he loved his Prue, in his way, all her life -through, and showed a beautiful fondness for his -children. In that budget of notelets I spoke of -(and which the wife so carefully cherished), are -some charming ones to his children: thus he writes -to his daughter Elizabeth, whose younger sister, -Mary, has just begun to put her initials, M. S., to -messages of love to him:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Tell her I am delighted: tell her how many fine things -those two letters stand for when she writes them: <em>M. S.</em> -is <em>milk and sugar</em>; <em>mirth and safety</em>; <em>musick and songs</em>; -<em>meat and sauce</em>, as well as <em>Molly and Spot</em>, and <em>Mary and -Steele</em>. You see I take pleasure in conversing with you by -prattling anything to divert you.</p> - -<p class="right">Yr aff. father.”</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span></p> - -<p>But you must not think Steele was a man of no -importance save in his own family. His friends -counted by scores and hundreds; he had warm -patrons among the chiefest men of the time; had -political preferment and places of trust and profit, -far better than his old captaincy; could have lived -in handsome style and without anxieties, if his -reckless kindnesses and convivialities had not made -him improvident.</p> - -<h3>Steele’s Literary Qualities.</h3> - -<p>Nor must we forget the work by which he is -chiefly known, I mean his establishment of the -<cite>Tatler</cite>—the forerunner of all those delightful essays -which went to the making of the <cite>Spectator</cite> and -the <cite>Guardian</cite>; these latter having the more credit -for their dignity and wise reticence, but the <cite>Tatler</cite> -being more vivacious, and quite as witty. Addison -came to the help of Steele in the <cite>Tatler</cite>, and Steele, -afterward joined forces with Addison in the <cite>Spectator</cite>. -I happen to be the owner of a very old -edition of these latter essays, in whose “Table of -Contents” some staid critic of the last generation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span> -has written his (or her) comments on the various -topics discussed; and I find against the papers of -Addison, such notes as—“<em>instructive</em>, <em>sound</em>, <em>judicious</em>;” -and against those of Steele, I am sorry -to say, such words as “<em>flighty</em>, <em>light</em>, <em>witty</em>, <em>graceful</em>, -<em>worthless</em>;” and I am inclined to think the criticisms -are pretty well borne out by the papers; but if -<em>flighty</em> and <em>light</em>, he was not unwholesome; and -he did not always carry the rollicking ways of the -tavern into the little piquant journalism, where the -grave and excellent Mr. Addison presided with him. -Nay, there are better things yet to be said of him. -He argued against the sin and folly of duelling -with a force and pungency that went largely to stay -that evil; and he never touches a religious topic -that his manner does not take on an awe and a -respect which belongs to the early pages of the -<cite>Christian Hero</cite>. There are touches of pathos, too, -in his writing, quite unmatchable; but straight -and quick upon these you are apt to catch sound -of the jingling spurs of the captain of dragoons. -Thus, in that often quoted allusion to his -father’s death (which happened in his boyhood), -he says:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span></p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“I went into the room where his body lay, and my -mother sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in -my hand, and fell a beating the coffin, and calling ‘Papa.’… -My mother catched me in her arms, and almost -smothered me in her embraces, and told me, in a flood of -tears, ‘Papa could not hear me, and would play with me no -more.’”</p> - -</div> - -<p>This is on page 364 of the <cite>Tatler</cite>, and on page -365 he says: “A large train of disasters were coming -into my memory, when my servant knocked at -my closet door, and interrupted me with a letter, -attended with a hamper of wine, of the same sort -with that which is to be put to sale on Thursday -next, at Garraway’s coffee-house.” And he sends -for three of his friends—which was so like him!</p> - -<p>So he goes through life—a kindly, good-hearted, -tender, intractable, winning fellow; talking, odd-whiles, -piously—spending freely—drinking fearlessly—loving -widely—writing archly, wittily, -charmingly.</p> - -<p>We have a characteristic glimpse of him in his -later years—for he lived far down into the days of -the Georges (one of whom gave him his knighthood -and title)—when he is palsied, at his charming -country home in Wales, and totters out to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span> -see the village girls dance upon the green, and -insists upon sending off to buy a new gown for -the best dancer; this was so like him! And it -would have been like him to carry his palsied -steps straight thereafter to the grave where his -Prue and the memory of all his married joys and -hopes lay sleeping.</p> - -<h3>Joseph Addison.</h3> - -<p>Addison’s character was, in a measure, the complement -of Steele’s. He was coy, dignified, reticent—not -given to easy familiarities at sight—nor -greatly prone to over-fondling. He was the -son of an English rector down in Wiltshire; was -born in a cottage still standing in Milston—a few -miles north of Salisbury. He was a Charter-house -boy and Oxford man; had great repute there as -scholar—specially as Latinist—became a Fellow—had -great Whig friends, who, somehow, secured -him a pension, with which he set out upon European -travel; and he wrote about what he saw in -Italy, and other parts, in a way that is fresh and -readable now. He was a year or two younger than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span> -Congreve, and a few weeks<a name="FNanchor_101" id="FNanchor_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> only younger than -Steele; nine years younger than De Foe, of whom -it is probable he never knew or cared to know.</p> - -<p>Very early in his career Addison had the aid of -Government friends: his dignity of carriage gave -them assurance; his reticence forbade fear of babbling; -his elegant pen gave hope of good service; -and he came to high political task-work—first, in -those famous verses where he likens the fighting -hero, Marlborough—then fresh from Blenheim—to -the angel, who,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent6">“——by Divine command,</div> -<div class="verse">With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,</div> -<div class="verse center">…</div> -<div class="verse">And pleased th’ Almighty’s orders to perform,</div> -<div class="verse">Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>That poem took him out from scholarly obscurity, -and set him well afoot in the waiting-rooms -of statesmen. Poetry, however, was not to be his -office; though, some years after, he did win the -town by the academic beauties of his tragedy of -“Cato”—the memory of which has come bobbing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span> -down over school-benches, by the “Speech of -Sempronius,” to days some of us remember—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">“——My voice is still for war!</div> -<div class="verse">Gods, can a Roman Senate long debate</div> -<div class="verse">Which of the two to choose—slavery or death!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>I suppose that speech may have slipped out of -modern reader-books; but it used to make one of -the stock declamations, on which ambitious school-boys -of my time spent great floods of fervid elocution.</p> - -<p>Addison wrote somewhat, as I have said, for -Steele’s first periodic venture in the <cite>Tatler</cite>, attracted -by its opportunities and the graces of it; -and they together plotted and carried into execution -the publication of the <cite>Spectator</cite>. I trust that -its quiet elegance has not altogether fallen away -from the knowledge of this generation of young -people. Dr. Johnson, you know, said of its Addison -papers, that whoever would write English well -should give his days and nights to their perusal. -Yet such a journal could and would never succeed -now: it does not deal with questions of large -and vital interest; its sentences do not crackle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span> -and blaze with the heat we look for in the -preachments of our time. Its leisurely discourse—placid -as summer brooks—would beguile us to -sleep. A ream of old <cite>Spectators</cite> discussing proprieties -and modesties would not put one of our daring -ball-room belles to the blush. The talk of -these old gentlemen about the minor morals were -too mild, perhaps too merciful; yet it is well to -know of them; and one can go to a great many -worse quarters than the <cite>Spectator</cite>, even now, for -proper hints about etiquette, manners, and social -proprieties.</p> - -<h3>Sir Roger De Coverley.</h3> - -<p>Whatever other writings of these gallant gentlemen -and teachers of Queen Anne’s time the reader -may have upon his shelves, he cannot do better -than equip them with that little story (excerpted -from the <cite>Spectator</cite>) of “Sir Roger De Coverley.” -No truer or more winning picture of worthy old -English knighthood can you find anywhere in literature; -nowhere such a tender twilight color falling -through books upon old English country homes. -Those papers made the scaffolding by which our<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span> -own Irving built up his best stories about English -country homesteads, and English revels of Christmas; -and the De Coverley echoes sound sweetly -and surely all up and down the pages of <cite>Bracebridge -Hall</cite>.</p> - -<p>The character of Sir Roger will live forever—so -gracious—so courteous—so dignified—so gentle: -his servants love him, and his dogs, and his white -gelding.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“It being a cold day,” says his old butler, “when he -made his will, he left for mourning to every man in the -parish a great frieze coat, and to every woman a black riding-hood. -Captain Sentry showed great kindnesses to the -old house-dog my master was so fond of. It would have -gone to your heart to have heard the moans the dumb creature -made on the day of my master’s death. He has never -joyed himself since—no more has any of us.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Yet there were plenty of folks who sneered at -these papers even then—as small—not worthy -of notice. That great, bustling, slashing, literary -giant, Dean Swift, says to Mistress Hester Johnson, -“Do you read the <cite>Spectators</cite>? I never do; -they never come in my way. They say abundance -of them are very pretty.” “Very pretty!” -a vast many satiric shots have been fired off to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span> -that tune. And yet Swift and Addison had been -as friendly as two men so utterly unlike could be.</p> - -<p>To complete the De Coverley picture, and give it -relish in the boudoirs of the time, the authors paint -the old knight in love—delicately, but deeply and -wofully in love—with a certain unnamed widow -living near him, and whose country house overlooks -the park of the De Coverley estate.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Oh, the many moonlight nights that I have walked by -myself, and thought on the widow, by the music of the -nightingales!”</p> - -</div> - -<p>This sounds like Steele. And the old knight -leaves to her</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Whom he has loved for forty years, a pearl necklace -that was his mother’s, and a couple of silver bracelets set -with jewels.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>This episode has an added interest, because about -those times the dignified and coy Mr. Addison was -very much bent upon marrying the elegant Lady -Warwick, whose son had been correspondent—perhaps -pupil of his. He did not bounce into -marriage—like Steele—with his whole heart in -his eyes and his speech; it was a long pursuit,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span> -and had its doubtful stages; six years before the -affair really came about, he used to write to the -Warwick lad about the tom-tits, and the robin-redbreasts, -and their pretty nests, and the nightingales. -But Addison, more or less fortunate than -Sir Roger, does win the widow’s hand, and has a -sorry time of it with her. She never forgets to -look a little down upon him, and he never forgets -a keen knowledge of it.</p> - -<p>He has the liberty, however, after his marriage—with -certain limitations—of a great fine home at -Holland House, which is one of the few old country -houses still standing in London, in the midst of the -gardens, where Addison used to walk, in preference -to my Lady’s chamber. His habits were to study -of a morning—dine at a tavern; then to Button’s -coffee-house, near to Covent Garden, for a meet -with his cronies; and afterward—when the spectre -of marriage was real to him—to the tavern again, -and to heavier draughts than he was wont to take -in his young days.</p> - -<p>Pope said he was charming in his talk; but never -so in mixed company; never when the auditors -were so new or so many as to rouse his self-consciousness;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span> -this tied his tongue; but with one or -two he knew well, the stream of the <cite>Spectator’s</cite> talk -flowed as limpidly as from his pen.</p> - -<p>He was not a great student; Bentley would have -laughed at hearing him called so. But he could -use the learning he had with rare deftness, and -make more out of a page of the ancients than -Bentley could make out of a volume. His graces -of speech, and aptitude for using a chance nugget -of knowledge, made him subject of sneer from -those who studied hard and long. A man who -beats his brains against books everlastingly, without -great conquests, is apt to think lightly of the -gifts of one like Addison, who by mere impact gets -a gracious send-off into elegant talk.</p> - -<p>If one has read nothing else of Addison’s, I think -he may read with profit the “Vision of Mirza.” -That, too, used to be one of the jewels in the ancient -reader-books, and had so many of the graces -of a story, that the book—my book at least—used -to fall open of itself on those pages where began -the wonderful vision in the Valley of Bagdad.</p> - -<p>Though more years have passed since my reading -of it than I dare tell, yet at the bare mention<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span> -of the name I seem to see the great clouds of -mist which gather on the hither and the thither -sides of the valley: I see the haunting Genius in -the costume of a shepherd, who from his little musical -instrument makes sounds that are exceeding -sweet.</p> - -<p>Then I seem to see the prodigious tide of water -rolling through the valley, and the long bridge -with the crumbling arches stretching athwart the -stream, and the throngs of people crowding over, -and falling and slipping into the angry tide—which -is the tide of death; I see that the larger -number fall through into the waters, when they -have scarce passed over a single arch of the bridge. -But whatever may befall, always the throng is -pressing on, and always the thousands are dropping -away and disappearing in the gulf that -sweeps below. I see that, though some few hobble -along painfully upon the furthermost and half-broken -arches that stand in the flood, not one of -all the myriads passes over in safety; and I behold -again (with Mirza) that beyond—far beyond, -where the clouds of mist have lifted—lies a stretch -of placid water, with islands covered with fruits<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span> -and flowers, and a thousand little shining seas -run in and out among these Islands of the Blessed. -And when I look the other way, to see what may -lie under the other and darker clouds of mist, lo! -the shepherd who has conjured the Vision is gone; -and instead of the rolling tide, the arched bridge, -the crowding myriads, I see nothing but the long, -hollow Valley of Bagdad, with oxen, sheep, and -camels grazing upon the sides of it. It seemed -to me, fifty years ago, that a man who could make -such visions appear, ought to keep on making -them appear, all his life long.</p> - -<p>I have said nothing of the political life of -Addison; there are no high lights in it that send -their flashes down to us. He held places, indeed, -of much consideration; his aptitudes, his courtesies, -his discretion, his sagacities always won respect; -but he was never a force in politics; the -only time he attempted parliamentary speaking -he broke down; but with a pen in his hand -he never broke down until failing health and -latter-day anxieties of many sorts shook his power. -I have already hinted at the probable infelicities of -his late and distinguished marriage; whatever else<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span> -may be true of it (and authorities are conflicting), -it certainly did not bring access of youth or ambition -or joyousness.</p> - -<p>In his later years, too, there came a quarrel with -his old friend Steele—cutting more deeply into -the heart of this reticent man than it could cut -into the much-scarified heart of that impressionist, -the author of the <cite>Tatler</cite>; there were stories, -too, pretty well supported, that Addison in those -last weary days of his—feeble and asthmatic—drank -over-freely, to spur his jaded mind up to a -level with the talk of sympathizing friends.</p> - -<p>Pope, too, in those times, had possibly aggravated -the quiet, calm essayist, with the sting of -his splendid but scorpion pen;<a name="FNanchor_102" id="FNanchor_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a> and all accounts -assure us that Addison (though under fifty) did -give a most kindly welcome to death. The story -told by Young, and repeated by Dr. Johnson, of -his summoning young Warwick to see how a -Christian could die, is very likely apocryphal. It -was not like him; this modest philosopher never -made himself an exemplar of the virtues. We<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span> -know, however, that he died calmly and tranquilly. -Who can hope for more?</p> - -<p>Not many legacies have come down to us from -those days of Queen Anne which are worthier than -his; and all owe gratitude to him for at least one -shining page in all our hymnals: it will keep the -name of Addison among the stars.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“The spacious firmament on high,</div> -<div class="verse">With all the blue ethereal sky,</div> -<div class="verse">And spangled heavens, a shining frame,</div> -<div class="verse">Their great Original proclaim.</div> -<div class="verse">Th’ unwearied sun, from day to day,</div> -<div class="verse">Does his Creator’s power display,</div> -<div class="verse">And publishes to every land</div> -<div class="verse">The work of an Almighty hand.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Soon as the evening shades prevail,</div> -<div class="verse">The moon takes up the wondrous tale;</div> -<div class="verse">And, nightly, to the listening earth,</div> -<div class="verse">Repeats the story of her birth;</div> -<div class="verse">Whilst all the stars that round her burn,</div> -<div class="verse">And all the planets in their turn,</div> -<div class="verse">Confirm the tidings as they roll,</div> -<div class="verse">And spread the truth from pole to pole.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</h2> - -<p class="dropcap">In our last talk we had an opening skirmish with -a group of royal people; we saw James II. -flitting away ignominiously from a throne he could -not fill or hold; we saw that rough fighter, the -opinionated William III., coming to his honors—holding -hard, and with gauntleted hand, his amiable -consort, Queen Mary. I spoke of the relationship -of these two; also had some fore-words about -Mary’s sister, the future Queen Anne, and about -the death of her boy, the little Duke of Gloucester.</p> - -<p>I had something to say of that easy and artful -poet, Matthew Prior, who smartly wrote his way, -by judicious panegyrics and well-metred song, from -humble station to that of ambassador at the court -of France. We had a taste of the elegant Congreve, -and said much of that bouncer of a man -Daniel De Foe; the character of this latter we cannot<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span> -greatly esteem—but when can we cease to admire -the talent that gave to us the story of <cite>Robinson -Crusoe</cite>?</p> - -<p>Then I spoke to you of Sir Richard Steele—poor -Steele! poor Prue! And I spoke also of his -friend Addison, the courtly, the reticent, the graceful, -and the good. All of these men outlived William -and Mary; all of them shone—in their several -ways—through the days of Queen Anne.</p> - -<h3>Royal Griefs and Friends.</h3> - -<p>Mary, consort of William III., died some six -years before the close of the century; she was honestly -mourned for by the nation; and I cited some -of the tender music which belonged to certain poetic -lamentations at the going off of the gentle -Queen. The little boy prince, Gloucester, presumptive -heir to the throne, died in 1700 (so did -John Dryden and Sir William Temple). Scarce -two years thereafter and William III.—who was -invalided in his latter days, and took frequent out-of-door -exercise—was thrown from his horse in -passing over the roads—not so smooth as now—between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span> -Hampton Court and Kensington. There -was some bone-breakage and bruises, which, like a -good soldier, he made light of. In the enforced -confinement that followed, he struggled bravely to -fulfil royal duties; but within a fortnight, as he -listened to Albemarle, who brought news about affairs -in Holland, it was observed that his eyes wandered, -and his only comment—whose comments -had always been like hammer-strokes—was, “I’m -drawing to the end.”<a name="FNanchor_103" id="FNanchor_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a> Two days after he died.</p> - -<p>Then the palace doors opened for that “good,” -and certainly weak, Queen Anne, whose name is so -intimately associated with what is called “the Augustan -age” of English letters, and whose personal -characteristics have already been subjects of mention. -She was hardly recovered from her grief at -the death of her prince-boy, and was supported at -her advent upon royalty by that conspicuous friend -of her girl years and constant associate, Sarah, -Duchess of Marlborough. It would be hard to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span> -reach any proper understanding of social and court -influences in Anne’s time, without bringing into -view the sharp qualities of this First Lady of her -Chamber. Very few historians have a good word -to say for her. She was the wife of that illustrious -general, John of Marlborough, whom we all associate -with his important victories of Blenheim and -of Ramillies; and in whose honor was erected the -great memorial column in the Park of Woodstock, -where every American traveller should go to see -remnants of an old royal forest, and to see also the -brilliant palace of Blenheim, with its splendid -trophies, all given by the nation—at the warm -urgence of Queen Anne—in honor of the conquering -general.</p> - -<p>You know the character of Marlborough—elegant, -selfish, politic, treacherous betimes, brave, -greedy, sagacious, and avaricious to the last degree. -He made a great figure in William’s time, and still -greater in Anne’s reign; his Duchess, too, figured -conspicuously in her court. She was as enterprising -as the Duke, and as money-loving—having -smiles and frowns and tears at command, by -which she wheedled or swayed whom she would.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span> -She did not believe in charities that went beyond -the house of Marlborough; in fact, this ancestress -of the Churchills was reckoned by most as a harpy -and an elegant vampire. Never a Queen was so -beleaguered with such a friend; she was keeper of -the privy purse, and Anne found it hard (as current -stories ran) to get money from her for her private -charities; hard, indeed, to dispose of her cast-off -silken robes as she desired. Why, you ask, did -she not blaze up into a flame of anger and of resolve, -and bid the Duchess, once for all, begone? -Why are some women born weak and patient of the -chains that bind them? And why are others born -with a cold, imperious disdain and power that tells -on weaklings, and makes the space all round them -glitter with their sovereignty?</p> - -<p>When this Sarah of Marlborough was first in -waiting upon the Princess Anne, neither Duke nor -Duchess (without titles then) could count enough -moneys between them to keep a private carriage -for their service; and before the Duke died their -joint revenues amounted to £94,000 per annum.</p> - -<p>Then the great park at Woodstock became ducal -property. I have said it was richly worth visiting;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span> -its encircling wall is twelve miles in length; the -oaks are magnificent; the artificial waters skirt -gardens and shrubberies that extend over three -hundred acres; the grass is velvety; the fallow -deer are in troops of hundreds. And one must remember, -in visiting the locality, that there stood -the ancient and renowned royal mansion of Henry -II.—that there was born the Black Prince—and, -very probably, Chaucer may have wandered thereabout, -and studied the “daisies white,” and listened -to the whirring of the pheasants—a wood-music -one may hear now in all the remoter -alleys.</p> - -<p>How many hundred thousands were expended -upon the new Blenheim palace, built in Anne’s time, -I will not undertake to compute. The paintings -gathered in it—spoils of the great Duke’s military -marches—interest everyone; but the palace -is as cold and stately and unhome-like and unloveable -as was the Duchess herself.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span></p> - -<h3>Builders and Streets.</h3> - -<p>Sir John Vanbrugh<a name="FNanchor_104" id="FNanchor_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a> was the architect of Blenheim, -and you will recognize his name as that of -one of the popular comedy writers of Queen Anne’s -time, who not only wrote plays, but ran a theatre -which he built at the Haymarket. It was not so -successful as the more famous one which stands -thereabout now; the poor architect, too, had a -good many buffets from the stinging Duchess of -Marlborough; and some stings besides from Swift’s -waspish pen, which the amiable Duchess did not -allow him to forget.</p> - -<p>Another architect of these times, better worth -our remembering—for his constructive abilities—was -Sir Christopher Wren, who designed some -forty of the church-spires now standing in London; -and he also superintended the construction of the -Cathedral of St. Paul’s, which had been steadily -growing since a date not long after the great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span> -fire—thirty-five years intervening between the laying -of the foundations and the lifting of the cross to -the top of the lantern. It is even said that, when -he was well upon ninety, Wren supervised some of -the last touches upon this noble monument to his -fame.<a name="FNanchor_105" id="FNanchor_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a></p> - -<p>There was not so much smoke in London in -those days—the consumption of coal being much -more limited—and the great cross could be seen -from Notting Hill, and from the palace windows at -Kensington. The Queen never abandoned this -royal residence; and from the gravel road by which -immediate entrance was made, stretched away the -waste hunting ground, afterward converted into -the grassy slopes of Hyde Park—stagnant pools -and marshy thickets lying in place of what is now -the Serpentine. People living at Reading in that -day—whence ladies now come in for a morning’s -shopping and back to lunch—did then, in seasons -of heaviest travelling, put two days to the journey;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span> -and joined teams, and joined forces and outriders, -to make good security against the highwaymen -that infested the great roads leading from that -direction into the town. Queen Anne herself was -beset and robbed near to Kew shortly before she -came to the throne; and along Edgeware Road, -where are now long lines of haberdasher shops, -and miles of gas-lamps, were gibbets, on which the -captured and executed highwaymen were hung up -in warning.</p> - -<h3>John Gay.</h3> - -<p>Some of these highwaymen were hung up in literature -too, and made a figure there; but not, I -suspect, in way of warning. It was the witty Dean -Swift who suggested to the brisk and frolicsome -poet, John Gay, that these gentlemen of the high-road -would come well into a pastoral or a comedy; -and out of that suggestion came, some years later, -“The Beggar’s Opera,” with Captain Macheath for -a hero, that took the town by storm—ran for sixty -and more successive nights, and put its musical, -saucy songlets afloat in all the purlieus of London. -It was, indeed, the great forerunner of our ballad<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span> -operas; much fuller, indeed, of grime and foul -strokes than Mr. Gilbert’s contagious sing-song; -but possessing very much of his briskness and -quaint turns of thought, and of that pretty shimmer -of language which lends itself to melody as -easily as the thrushes do.</p> - -<p>This John Gay<a name="FNanchor_106" id="FNanchor_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a>—whose name literary-mongers -will come upon in their anthologies—was an -alert, well-looking young fellow, who had come out -of Devonshire to make his way in a silk-mercer’s -shop in London. He speedily left the silk-mercer’s; -but he had that about him of joyousness -and amiability, added to a clever but small literary -faculty, which won the consideration of helpful -friends; and he never lost friends by his antagonisms -or his moodiness. Everybody seemed to love -to say a good word for John Gay. Swift was almost -kind to him; and said he was born to be always -twenty-two, and no older. Pope befriended -and commended him; great ladies petted him; and -neither Swift nor Pope were jealous of a petting -to such as Gay; his range was amongst the daisies—and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span> -theirs—above the tree-tops. A little descriptive -poem of his, called <cite>Trivia</cite>, brings before -us the London streets of that day—the coaches, -the boot-blacks, the red-heeled cavaliers, the book-stalls, -the markets, the school-boys, the mud, the -swinging sign-boards, and the tavern-doors. In -the course of it he gives a score or more of lines -to a description of the phenomena of the solidly -frozen Thames—sharply remembered by a good -many living in his time<a name="FNanchor_107" id="FNanchor_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a>—with booths all along -the river, and bullocks cooked upon the frozen -roads which bridged the water; and he tells of an -old apple-woman, who somehow had her head -lopped off when the break-up came, and the ice-cakes -piled above the level—tells it, too, in a very -Gilbert-like way, as you shall see:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent6">“She now a basket bore;</div> -<div class="verse">That head alas! shall basket bear no more!</div> -<div class="verse">Each booth she frequent past, in quest of gain,</div> -<div class="verse">And boys with pleasure heard her thrilling strain.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Ah, Doll! all mortals must resign their breath,</div> -<div class="verse">And industry itself submit to Death;</div> -<div class="verse">The cracking crystal yields; she sinks; she dies,</div> -<div class="verse">Her head chopt off, from her lost shoulder flies;</div> -<div class="verse"><em>Pippins!</em> she cry’d; but death her voice confounds;</div> -<div class="verse">And—<em>Pip</em>—<em>Pip</em>—<em>Pip</em>—along the ice resounds!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Then there is the ballad, always quoted when -critics would show what John Gay could do, and -which the Duchess of Queensberry (who greatly -befriended him) thought charming; I give the -two final verselets only:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“How can they say that nature</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Has nothing made in vain;</div> -<div class="verse">Why then beneath the water</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Should hideous rocks remain?</div> -<div class="verse">No eyes the rocks discover,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That lurk beneath the deep,</div> -<div class="verse">To wreck the wandering lover,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And leave the maid to weep?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“All melancholy lying,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thus wailed she for her dear;</div> -<div class="verse">Repaid each blast with sighing,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Each billow with a tear;</div> -<div class="verse">When o’er the white wave stooping,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">His floating corpse she spied;</div> -<div class="verse">Then, like a lily drooping,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">She bowed her head, and died!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span></p> -<p>I think I have shown the best side of him; and -it is not very imposing. A man to be petted; one -for confections and for valentines, rather than for -those lifts of poetic thought which buoy us into -the regions of enduring song.</p> - -<p>Yet Swift says in a letter, “‘The Beggar’s Opera’ -hath knocked down Gulliver!” This joyous poet -lies in Westminster Abbey, with an epitaph by -Alexander Pope. How, then, can we pass him by?</p> - -<h3>Jonathan Swift.</h3> - -<p>But Dean Swift<a name="FNanchor_108" id="FNanchor_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a> does not lie in Westminster -Abbey. We must go to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, -Dublin, to find his tomb, and that bust of him -which looks out upon the main aisle of the old -church.</p> - -<p>He was born in Dublin, at a house that might -have been seen only a few years ago, in Hoey’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span> -Court. His father, however, was English, dying -before Swift was born; his mother, too, was English, -and so poor that it was only through the charity -of an uncle the lad came to have schooling and -a place at Trinity College—the charity being so -doled out that Swift groaned under it; and groaned -under the memory of it all his life. He took his -degree there, under difficulties; squabbling with -the teachers of logic and metaphysics, and turning -his back upon them and upon what they taught.</p> - -<p>After some brief stay with his mother in Leicestershire, -he goes, at her instance, and in recognition of -certain remote kinship with the family of Sir William -Temple, to seek that diplomat’s patronage. He -was received charitably—to be cordial was not -Temple’s manner—at the beautiful home of -Sheen;<a name="FNanchor_109" id="FNanchor_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a> and thereafter, on Temple’s change of residence,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span> -was for many years an inmate of the house -at Moor Park. There he eats the bread of dependence—sulkily -at times, and grudgingly always. -Another <i lang="fr">protégée</i> of the house was a sparkling-eyed -little girl, Hester Johnson—she scarce ten when -he was twenty-three—and who, doubtless, looked -admiringly upon the keen, growling, masculine -graduate of Dublin, who taught her to write.</p> - -<p>Swift becomes secretary to Sir William; through -his influence secures a degree at Oxford (1692); -pushes forward his studies, with the Moor Park -library at his hand; takes his own measure—we -may be sure—of the stately, fine diplomat; measures -King William too—who, odd times, visits -Temple at his country home, telling him how to -cut his asparagus—measures him admiringly, yet -scornfully; as hard-working, subtle-thoughted, ambitious, -dependent students are apt to measure -those whose consequence is inherited and factitious.</p> - -<p>Then, with the bread of this Temple charity irking -his lusty manhood, he swears (he is overfond of -swearing) that he will do for himself. So he tempestuously -quits Moor Park and goes back to Ireland,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span> -where he takes orders, and has a little parish -with a stipend of £100 a year. It is in a dismal -country—looking east on the turbid Irish Sea, and -west on bog-lands—no friends, no scholars, no -poets, no diplomats, no Moor-Park gardens. Tired -of this waste, and with new and better proposals -from Temple—who misses his labors—Swift throws -up his curacy (or whatever it may be) and turns -again toward England.</p> - -<p>There is record of a certain early flurry of feeling -at date of this departure from his first Irish -parish—a tender, yet incisive, and tumultuous -letter to one “Varina,”<a name="FNanchor_110" id="FNanchor_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a> for whom he promises to -“forego all;” Varina, it would seem, discounted -his imperious rapture, without wishing to cut off -ulterior hopes. But ulteriors were never in the lexicon -of Swift; and he broke away for his old -cover at Moor Park. Sir William welcomes, almost -with warmth, the returned secretary, who resumes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span> -old studies and duties, putting a fiercer appetite -to his work, and a greater genius. Miss Hester is -there to be guided, too; she sixteen, and he fairly -turned among the thirties; she of an age to love -moonlight in the Moor Park gardens, and he of -an age—when do we have any other?—to love -tender worship.</p> - -<p>But <cite>The Battle of the Books</cite><a name="FNanchor_111" id="FNanchor_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a> and <cite>The Tale of -a Tub</cite>, are even then seething and sweltering in -his thought. They are wonderful products both; -young people cannot warm to them as they do to -the men of Liliput and of Brobdingnag; but there -are old folk who love yet, in odd hours, to get -their faculties stirred by contact with the flashing -wit and tremendous satire of the books named.</p> - -<p>The <cite>Battle</cite>—rather a pamphlet than a book—deals -with the antagonism, then noisy, between -advocates of ancient and modern learning, to -which Bentley, Wotton, and Temple were parties. -Swift strikes off heads all round the arena, but inclines -to the side of his patron, Temple; and in a -wonderful figure, of wonderful pertinence, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span> -with witty appointments, he likens the moderns to -noisome spiders, spinning out of their own entrails -the viscous “mathematical” net-work, which catches -the vermin on which they feed; and contrasting -these with the bees (ancients), who seek natural and -purer sources of nutriment—storing “wax and -honey,” which are the sources of the “light and -sweetness of life.” There are horribly coarse -streaks in this satire, as there are in <cite>The Tale of a -Tub</cite>; but the wit is effulgent and trenchant.</p> - -<p>In this latter book there is war on all pedantries -again; but mostly on shams in ecclesiastic teachings -and habitudes; Swift finding (as so many of us -do) all the shams, in practices which are not his -own. It is a mad, strange, often foul-mouthed -book, with thrusts in it that go to the very marrow -of all monstrous practices in all ecclesiasticisms; -showing a love for what is honest and of -good report, perhaps; but showing stronger love -for thwacking the skulls of all sinners in high -places; and the higher the place the harder is the -thwack.</p> - -<p>Not long after these things were a-brewing, -Sir William Temple died (1699), bequeathing his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span> -papers to his secretary. Swift looked for more. -So many wasted years! Want of money always -irked him. But he goes to London to see after -the publication of Temple’s papers. He has an interview -with King William—then in his last days—to -whom Temple had commended him, but no -good comes of that. He does, however, get place -as chaplain for Lord Berkeley; goes to Ireland -with him; reads good books to Lady Berkeley—among -them the <cite>Occasional Reflections of the Hon. -Robert Boyle</cite>, of whose long sentences I gave a taste -in an earlier chapter.</p> - -<p>Some of these Boyle meditations were on the -drollest of topics—as, for instance, “Upon the -Sight of a Windmill Standing Still,” and again, -“Upon the Paring of a rare Summer Apple.”</p> - -<p>Swift had no great appetite for such “parings;” -but Lady Berkeley being insatiate, he slips a meditation -of his own, in manuscript, between the leaves -of the great folio of the Hon. Mr. Boyle; and opening -to the very place begins reading, for her edification, -“Meditations on a Broomstick.” “Dear -me!” says her ladyship, “what a strange subject! -But there is no knowing what useful instructions<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span> -this wonderful man may draw from topics the -most trivial. Pray, read on, Mr. Swift.”</p> - -<p>And he did. He was not a man given to smiles -when a joke was smouldering; and he went through -his meditation with as much unction as if the Hon. -Robert had written it. The good lady kept her -eyes reverently turned up, and never smacked the -joke until it came out in full family conclave.</p> - -<p>I have told this old story (which, like most good -stories, some critics count apocryphal) because it is -so like Swift; he had such keen sense of the ridiculous, -that he ran like a hound in quest of it—having -not only a hound’s scent but a hound’s teeth.</p> - -<p>At Laracor, the little Irish parish which he came -by shortly after, he had a glebe and a horse, and -became in a way domesticated there, so far as such -a man could be domesticated anywhere. He duplicated, -after a fashion, some features of the Moor-Park -gardens; he wrote sermons there which are -surprisingly good.</p> - -<p>One wonders, as he comes from toiling through -the sweat and muck and irreverent satire of <cite>The -Tale of a Tub</cite>, what could have possessed the man -to write so piously. He was used to open his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span> -sermons with a little prayer that was devout enough -and all-embracing enough for the prayer-book. -Then there is a letter of his to a young clergyman, -giving advice about the make-up of his sermons, -which would serve for an excellent week-day discourse -at Marquand Chapel.</p> - -<p>Indeed he has somewhat to say against the use -of “hard words—called by the better sort of vulgar, -fine language”—that is worth repeating:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“I will appeal to any man of letters whether at least -nineteen or twenty of these perplexing words might not be -changed into easy ones, such as naturally first occur to ordinary -men; … the fault is nine times in ten owing -to affectation, and not want of understanding. When a -man’s thoughts are clear, the properest words will generally -offer themselves first, and his own judgment will direct -him in what order to place them, so as they may be best -understood. In short, that simplicity, without which no -human performance can arrive to any great perfection, is -nowhere more eminently useful than in this.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>But let us not suppose from all this that Swift -has settled down tamely, and month by month, into -the jog-trot duties of a small Irish vicar; no, no! -there is no quiet element in his nature. He has -gone back and forth from Dublin to London—sometimes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span> -on a Berkeley errand—sometimes on -his own. He has met Congreve, an old school-fellow, -and Prior and Gay; he has found the way -to Will’s Coffee-house and to Button’s;<a name="FNanchor_112" id="FNanchor_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a> has some -day seen Dryden—just tottering to the grave; -has certainly dined with Addison, and finished a -bottle with Steele. They call him the mad parson -at Button’s; they have seen <cite>The Tale of a -Tub</cite>; his epigrams are floating from mouth to -mouth; his irony cuts like a tiger’s claw; he -feels the power of his genius tingling to his fingertips—<em>he</em>, -a poor Irish parson! why, the whole atmosphere -around him, whether at London or at -Dublin, is charged and surcharged with Satan’s -own lightning of worldly promises.</p> - -<p>And Hester Johnson, and Moor Park? Well, she -has not forgotten him; ah! no; and he has by no -means forgotten her. For she, with a good womanly -friend, Mrs. Dingley, has gone to live in Ireland;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span> -Swift thinks they can live more economically -there. These two ladies set up their homestead -near to Swift’s vicarage; he goes to see them; -they come to see him. He is thirty-three, and -past; and she twenty, and described as beautiful. -Is there any scandalous talking? Scarce one word, -it would seem. He is as considerate as ice; and -she as coy as summer clouds.</p> - -<p>It does not appear that Swift had literary ambition, -as commonly reckoned. That <cite>Tale of a Tub</cite> -lay by him six or seven years before it came to -print. He wrote for Steele’s <cite>Tatler</cite>, and for the -<cite>Spectator</cite>—not with any understanding that his -name was to appear, or that he was to be spoken -admiringly of. Many of his best things were addressed -to friends or acquaintances, and never saw -the light through any instigation or privity of his -own.</p> - -<p>When there was some purpose to effect—some -wrong to lash—some puppet to knock down—some -tow-head to set on fire—some public drowsiness -to wake—he rushed into print with a vengeance. -Was it benevolence that provoked him to -this? was it public spirit? Who can tell? I think<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span> -there were many times when he thought as much; -but I believe that never a man more often deceived -himself than did Swift; and that over and over he -mistook the incentives of his own fiery and smarting -spirit for the leadings of an angel of light.</p> - -<p>When we think of the infrequency and awkwardness -of travel in that day, we are not a little -amazed to find him going back and forth as he did -from Ireland to London. The journey was not, as -now, a mere skip over to Holyhead, and then a five -hours’ whirl to town, but a long, uncertain sail in -some lugger of a vessel—blown as the winds blew—till -a landing was made at Bristol or Swansea; -and then the four to seven days of coaching (as the -roads might be) through Bath to London. Sometimes -it is some interest of the poor Irish Church -that takes him over, for which we must give him -due credit; but oftener it is his own unrest. His -energies and his unsatisfied mind starve if not -roused and bolstered and chafed by contact with -minds as keen and hard, from which will come -the fiery disputation that he loves. Great cities, -where great interests are astir and great schemes -fomenting, are magnets whose drawing power such<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span> -intellects cannot resist. He is in London five or -six months in 1701, six or eight the next year, six -or eight the next, and so on.</p> - -<h3>Swift’s Politics.</h3> - -<p>He is in politics, too, which ran at high tide all -through Anne’s time and the previous reign; you -will read no history or biography stretching into -that period but you may be confounded (at least I -am) with talk of Whigs and Tories; and of what -Somers did, and of what Harley did, and of what -Ormond might do; and it is worth sparing a few -moments to say something of the great parties. -In a large way Whiggism represented progress and -the new impulses which had come in with William -III., and Toryism represented what we call conservatism. -Thus, in <cite>Old Mortality</cite>, young Henry Morton -is the Whig, and her ladyship of Tillietudlem -is a starched embodiment of Toryism. Those -who favored the Stuart family, and made a martyr -of Charles I.—those who leaned to Romanism and -rituals, or faith in tradition, were, in general, -Tories; and those who brought over William of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span> -Orange, or who were dissenters or freethinkers, -were apt to be Whigs. So the scars which came -of sword-cuts by Cromwellian soldiers were apt to -mark an excellent Tory; and the cropped ears of -Puritans, that told of the savageness of Prince Rupert’s -dragoons, were pretty sure to brand a man a -Whig for life. But these distinctions were not -steady and constant; thus, the elegant and fastidious -Sir William Temple was a Whig; and old Dryden, -clinking mugs with good fellows at Will’s -coffee-house, was a Tory. Again, the courtly and -quiet Mr. Addison, with his De Coverley reverences, -was a good Whig; and Pope, with his <cite>Essay on -Man</cite>, and fellowship with freethinkers, was Toryish. -Swift began with being a Whig, to which side his -slapdash wilfulness, his fellowship with Temple, -and his scorn of tradition drew him; but he ended -with veering over to the Tory ranks, where his -hate of Presbyterianism and his eager thrusts at -canting radicals gave him credit and vogue.</p> - -<p>Addison and others counted him a turncoat, and -grew cold to him; for party hates were most hot in -those days; Swift himself says—the politicians -wrangle like cats. He was tired, too, of waiting on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span> -Whig promises; perhaps he had larger hope of preferment -with the Tories; Steele alleged this with -bitterness; and there can be no doubt that Swift -had an eye on preferment. Why not? Can he, so -alert in mind, so loving of dignity, so conscious of -power, see Mr. Addison coming to place as Secretary -of State, and Steele with his fat commissions, -without a tingling and irritating sense of dissatisfaction? -Can he see good, amiable, pious dunces -getting planted year after year in fat bishoprics, -without a torturing remembrance of that poor little -parish of Laracor, with a following so feeble that -he is fain to open service some days (his factotum -being the only auditor) with—“My dearly beloved -Roger, the Scripture moveth you and me in sundry -places——”</p> - -<p>How these contrasts must have grated on the -mind of a man who looked down on all their lordships; -who looked down on Steele; and who could -count on his finger-ends the personages whom he -scanned eye to eye—and who were upon a level -with his commanding height.</p> - -<p>He did service, too—this master of the pen and -master of causticity—that to most would have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span> -brought quick reward; but he was too strong and -too proud and too independent to come by reward -easily. Such a man is bowed to reverently; is invited -to dine hither and yon; is flattered, is humored, -is conciliated; but as for office—ah! that -is another matter. He is unsafe; he will kick over -the traces; he will take the bit in his mouth; he -will be his own man and not our man. What -court, what cabinet, what clique could trust to the -moderation, to the docility, to the reticence of a -person capable of writing <cite>Gulliver’s Travels</cite>, and of -turning all court scandals, all political intrigues, all -ecclesiastic decorum, into a penny-show?</p> - -<p>He is, indeed, urged for Bishop of Hereford—seems -to have excellent chance there; but some -brother Bishop (I think ’tis the Archbishop of -York), who is much afraid, as he deserves to be, -of <cite>The Tale of a Tub</cite>—says to the hesitating Queen,—“Better -inquire first if this man be really a -Christian;” and this frights the good Queen and -the rest. So Swift is let off with the poor sop of -the Deanery of St. Patrick’s.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span></p> - -<h3>His London Journal.</h3> - -<p>We know all about those days of his in London—days -of expectancy. He has told us:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“The ministry are good hearty fellows. I use them like -dogs, because I expect they will use me so. They call me -nothing but Jonathan. I said I believed they would leave -me Jonathan, as they found me; and that I never knew a -minister do anything for those whom they make companions -of their pleasures; and I believe you will find it so, but <em>I</em> -care not.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>And to whom does he talk so confidentially, and -tell all the story of those days? Why, to Hester -Johnson. It is all down in Stella’s journal—written -for her eye only; and we have it by purest accident. -It was begun in 1710—he then in his -forty-third year, and she in her thirtieth.</p> - -<p>She has kept her home over in Ireland with Mrs. -Dingley—seeing him on every visit there, and on -every day, almost, of such visits; and, as her sweetest -pasturage, feeding on letters he writes other -times, and lastly on this Stella journal, “for her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span> -dear eyes,” at the rate of a page, or even two pages -a day, for some three years.</p> - -<p>All his London day’s life comes into it. Let us -listen:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Dined at the chop-house with Will Pate, the learned -woollen draper, then we sauntered at china-shops and book-sellers; -went to the tavern; drank 2 pints of white wine; -never parted till ten. Have a care of those eyes—pray—pray, -pretty Stella!</p> - -<p>“So you have a fire now, and are at cards at home; I -think of dining in my lodgings to-day on a chop and a pot -of ale.</p> - -<p>“Shall I? Well, then, I will try to please M. D. [‘M. -D.’ is ‘my dear;’ or ‘my dears,’ when it includes, as it -often does, Mrs. Dingley]. I was to-night at Lord Masham’s; -Lord Dupplin took out my little pamphlet, the Secretary -read a good deal of it to Lord Treasurer; they all -commended it to the skies; so did I.</p> - -<p>“I’ll answer your letter to-morrow; good night, M. D. -Sleep well.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Again:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“I have no gilt paper left, so you must be content with -plain. I dined with Lord Treasurer.</p> - -<p>“A poem is out to-day inscribed to me: a Whiggish -poem and good for nothing. They teased me with it.”</p> - -<p>“I am not yet rid of my cold. No news to tell you: -went to dine with Mrs. Vanhomrigh, a neighbor. [Then -a long political tale, and] Good night, my dear little -rogues.”</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span></p> - -<p>’Tis a strange journal; such a mingling of court -gossip, sharp political thrusts, lover-like, childish -prattle, and personal details. If he is sick, he -scores down symptoms and curatives as boldly as a -hospital nurse; if he lunches at a chop-house, he -tells cost; if he takes in his waistcoat, he tells -Stella of it; if he dines with Addison, he tells how -much wine they drank; if a street beggar or the -Queen shed tears, they slop down into that Stella -journal; if she wants eggs and bacon, he tells -where to buy and what to give; if Lady Dalkeith -paints, he sees it with those great, protuberant eyes -of his, and tells Stella.</p> - -<p>There is coarseness in it, homeliness, indelicacies, -wit, sharp hits, dreary twaddle, and repeated good-nights -to his beloved M. D.’s, and—to take care -of themselves, and eat the apples at Laracor, and -wait for him. No—I mistake; I don’t think he -ever says with definiteness Stella must wait for -him. I should say (without looking critically over -the journal to that end) that he cautiously -avoided so positive a committal. And she?—ah! -she, poor girl, waits without the asking. And -those indelicacies and that coarseness? Well, this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span> -strange, great man can do nothing wrong in her -eyes.</p> - -<p>But she does see that those dinings at a certain -Mrs. Vanhomrigh’s come in oftener and oftener. -’Tis a delightfully near neighbor, and her instinct -scents something in the wind. She ventures a -question, and gets a stormy frown glowering over -a page of the journal that puts her to silence. -The truth is, Mrs. Vanhomrigh<a name="FNanchor_113" id="FNanchor_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a> has a daughter—young, -clever, romantic, not without personal -charms, who is captivated by the intellect of Mr. -Swift; all the more when he volunteers direction -of her studies, and leads her down the flowery -walks of poetry under his stalwart guidance.</p> - -<p>Then the suspicious entries appear more thickly -in the journal. “Dined with Mrs. Vanhomrigh”—and -again: “Stormy, dined with a neighbor”—“couldn’t -go to court, so went to the -Vans.” And thus this romance went on ripening -to the proportions that are set down in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span> -poem of “Cadenus and Vanessa.” He is old, she -is young.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Vanessa, not in years a score,</div> -<div class="verse">Dreams of a gown of forty-four;</div> -<div class="verse">Imaginary charms can find</div> -<div class="verse">In eyes with reading almost blind.</div> -<div class="verse center">…</div> -<div class="verse">Cadenus, common forms apart,</div> -<div class="verse">In every scene had kept his heart;</div> -<div class="verse">Had sigh’d and languished, vowed and writ,</div> -<div class="verse">For pastime or to show his wit.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>But this wit has made conquest of her; she</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">“——called for his poetic works:</div> -<div class="verse">[Cupid] meantime in secret lurks;</div> -<div class="verse">And, while the book was in her hand,</div> -<div class="verse">The urchin from his private stand</div> -<div class="verse">Took aim, and shot with all his strength</div> -<div class="verse">A dart of such prodigious length,</div> -<div class="verse">It pierced the feeble volume through,</div> -<div class="verse">And deep transfixed her bosom too.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>This is part of his story of it, which he put in her -hands for her reading;<a name="FNanchor_114" id="FNanchor_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> and which, like the Stella<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span> -journal, only saw the light after the woman most -interested in it was in the ground.</p> - -<h3>In Ireland Again.</h3> - -<p>Well, Swift at last goes back to Ireland—all his -larger designs having miscarried—a saddened and -disappointed man; full of growlings and impatience; -taking with him from that wreck of London -life and political forgatherings, only the poor flotsam -of an Irish deanery.</p> - -<p>He has some few friends to welcome him there: -Miss Hester and Mrs. Dingley among the rest. How -gladly would Stella have put all her woman’s art -and her womanly affection to the work of cheering -and making glad the embittered and disappointed -Dean: but no; he has no notion of being handicapped -by marriage; he is sterner, narrower, more -misanthropic than ever. All the old severe proprieties -and distance govern their intercourse. He -visits them betimes and listens to their adulatory -prattle; they, too, come up to the deanery when -there are friends to entertain; often take possession -when the Dean is away.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span></p> - -<p>The church dignitaries are not open-handed in -their advances; the <cite>Tale of a Tub</cite>, and stories -of that London life (not much of it amongst -churches) have put a wall between them and the -Dean. But he interests himself in certain questions -of taxation and of currency, which seem of -vital importance to the common people; and he -wins, by an influence due to his sharp pamphleteering, -what they count a great relief from their dangers -or burdens. Thus he becomes a street idol, -and crowds throw up their caps for this doctor -militant, whom they call the good Dean. He has -his private large charities, too; there are old -women, decrepit and infirm, whom he supports year -after year; does this—Swift-like—when he will -haggle a half hour about the difference of a few -pennies in the price for a bottle of wine, and will -serve his clerical friends with the lees of the last -dinner: strange, and only himself in everything.</p> - -<p>Then Miss Vanhomrigh—after the death of her -mother—must needs come over—to the great -perplexity of the Doctor—to a little country place -which she has inherited in the pretty valley of the -Liffey—a short drive away from Dublin; she has a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span> -fine house there, and beautiful gardens (Swift never -outgrew his old Moor-Park love for gardens); there -she receives him, and honors his visits. An old -gardener, who was alive in Scott’s time, told how -they planted a laurel bush whenever the Dean came. -Perhaps the Dean was too blinded for fine reading -in the garden alleys then; certainly his fierce headaches -were shaking him year by year nearer to the -grave.</p> - -<p>Miss Hester comes to a knowledge of these visits, -and is tortured, but silent. Has she a right to -nurse torture? Some biographers say that at her -urgence a form of marriage was solemnized between -them (1716); but if so, it was undeclared and unregarded. -Vanessa, too, has her tortures; she has -knowledge of Stella and her friend, and of their attitude -with respect to the deanery; so, in a moment -of high, impetuous daring, she writes off to -Mistress Hester Johnson asking what rights she has -over her friend the Dean? Poor Stella wilts at this -blow; but is stirred to an angry woman’s reply, -making (it is said) avowal of the secret marriage. -To the Dean, who is away, she encloses Vanessa’s -letter; and the Dean comes storming back; rages<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span> -across the country, carrying to Miss Vanhomrigh -her own letter—flings it upon the table before -her, with that look of blackness that has made -duchesses tremble—turns upon his heel, and sees -her no more.</p> - -<p>In a fortnight, or thereabout, Poor Vanessa was -dead. It was a fever they said; may be; certainly, -if a fever, there were no hopes in her life now -which could make great head against it. She -changed her will before her death, cutting off -Swift, who was sole legatee, and leaving one-half to -Bishop Berkeley; through whom, strangely enough, -Yale College may be said to inherit a part of poor -Vanessa’s fortune.<a name="FNanchor_115" id="FNanchor_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a></p> - -<p>Such a blow, by its side bruises, must needs -scathe somewhat the wretched Hester Johnson; -but time brought a little healing in its wings. The -old kindliness and friendship that dated from the -pleasant walks in Moor Park, came back—as rosy -twilights will sometimes shoot kindly gleams between -stormy days, and the blackness of night.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span> -And Swift, I think, never came nearer to insupportable -grief than when he heard—on an absence in -London, a few years thereafter—that Stella was -dying week by week.</p> - -<p>“Poor Stella,” “dear Stella,” “poor soul,” break -into his letters—break, doubtless, into his speech -on solitary walks; but in others’ presence his dignity -and coldness are all assured. There is rarely -breakdown where man or woman can see him. -Old Dr. Sheridan<a name="FNanchor_116" id="FNanchor_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a> says that at the last she appealed -to him to declare and make public their private -marriage; whereat he “turned short away.” -A more probable story is that in those last days -Swift himself proposed public declaration, to which -the dying woman could only wave a reply—“too -late!”</p> - -<p>She died in 1728: he in the sixty-second year of -his age, and she forty-eight.</p> - -<p>He would have written about her the night she -died; had the curtains drawn that he might not see<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span> -the light where her body lay; but he broke down -in the writing. They brought a lock of her hair to -him. It was found many years after in an old envelope, -worn with handling, with this inscription on -it—in his hand—<cite>Only a woman’s hair</cite>.</p> - -<p>I have not much more to say of Dean Swift, -whose long story has kept us away from gentler -characters, and from verses more shining than his. -Indeed, I do not think the poems of Swift are much -read nowadays; surely none but a strong man -and a witty one could have written them; but they -do not allure us. Everybody, however, remembers -with interest the little people that Lemuel Gulliver -saw, and will always associate them with the name -of Swift. But if the stormy Dean had known that -his Gulliver book would be mostly relished by -young folks, only for its story, and that its tremendous -satire—which he intended should cut -and draw blood—would have only rarest appreciation, -how he would have raved and sworn!</p> - -<p>They tell us he had private prayers for his household, -and in secluded places; and there are those -who sneer at this—“as if a Dean should say -prayers in a crypt!” But shall we utterly condemn<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span> -the poor Publican who—though he sells drams -and keeps selling them—smites his bosom <em>afar -off</em> and cries, God be merciful!—as if there -were a bottom somewhere that might be reached, -and stirred, and sparkle up with effervescence of -hope and truth and purity? He was a man, I -think, who would have infinitely scorned and revolted -at many of the apologies that have been -made for him. To most of these he would have -said, in his stentorian way, “I am what I am; no -rosy after-lights can alter this shape of imperfect -manhood; wrong, God knows; who is not? But a -prevaricator—pretending feeling that is not real—offering -friendship that means nothing—proffering -gentle words, for hire; never, never!”</p> - -<p>And in that great Court of Justice—which I am -old-fashioned enough to believe will one day be -held—where juries will not be packed, and where -truth will shine by its own light, withstanding all -perversion—and where opportunities and accomplishment -will be weighed in even scales against -possible hindrances of moral or of physical make-up—there -will show, I am inclined to think, in the -strange individuality of Swift, a glimmer of some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span> -finer and higher traits of Character than we are -accustomed to assign him.</p> - -<p>After Stella’s death he wrote little:<a name="FNanchor_117" id="FNanchor_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a> perhaps he -furbished up the closing parts of <cite>Gulliver</cite>; there -were letters to John Gay, light and gossipy; and to -Pope, weightier and spicier.</p> - -<p>But the great tree was dying at the top. He -grew stingier and sterner, and broke into wild -spasms of impatience, such as only a diseased brain -could excuse and explain. His loneliness became a -more and more fearful thing to be borne; but who -shall live with this half-mad man of gloom?</p> - -<p>At length it is only a hired keeper who can abide -with him: yet still he is reckless, proud, defiant, -merciless, with no words coming to his fagged -brain whereby he may express his thought; having -thoughts, but they were bitter ones; having penitences -maybe, but very vain ones; having remorses—ah, -what abounding ones!</p> - -<p>Finally he has no longer the power, if the grace<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span> -were in him, to ask pardon of the humanity he has -wronged; or to tell of the laments—if at that stage -he entertained them—over the grave of thwarted -purposes and of shattered hopes; condemned to -that imbecile silence which overtook him at last, -and held him four weary years in fool’s grasp, -suffering and making blundering unintelligible -moans.</p> - -<p>He died in 1745—twenty-two years after Vanessa’s -death—seventeen years after the death of -Stella.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span></p> - -<div class="footnotes"> - -<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Sir Walter Raleigh, b. 1552; executed 1618.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Unless we except <cite>The Ocean to Cynthia</cite>, piquant fragments -of which exist, extending to some five hundred lines; -the poem, by the estimate of Mr. Gosse, may have reached -in its entirety a length of ten thousand lines. See <cite>Athenæum</cite> -for January 2, 1886; also, <cite>Raleigh</cite> (pp. 44-48) by -Edmund Gosse. London, 1886.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> William Harrison, b. 1534; d. 1593. It is interesting to -know that much has come to light respecting the personal -history of William Harrison, through the investigations of -that indefatigable American genealogist, the late Colonel -J. L. Chester.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <cite>Speeches of Gratulation</cite> on King’s Entertainment.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Rawdon Brown.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> <cite>Judith Shakespeare</cite>, by William Black. The story of -the royal letter appears to rest mainly on the evidence of -William Oldys (not a strong authority), who says it originated -with Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, who had it from Sir -William D’Avenant. Dr. Drake, however, as well as Farmer, -fully accredit the anecdote.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> The Globe was the summer theatre, the Blackfriars the -winter theatre—the same company playing much at both. -The hour for opening in Elizabeth’s time was usually one -o’clock. Dekker (<cite>Horne Booke</cite>, 1609) names three as the -hour; and doubtless there were occasions when—in the private -theatres—plays began after nightfall. Fletcher and -Shakespeare were at the head of what was called the Lord -Chamberlain’s Company. By license of James I. (1603) -this virtually became the King’s Company.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Gosson was an Oxford man; b. 1555: d. 1624.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_9" id="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Among the more important names were those of Bishop -Andrewes (of Winchester, friend of Herbert, and Dr. Donne)—famous -for his oriental knowledges: Bedwell (of Tottingham), -a distinguished Arabic scholar: Sir Henry Savile, a -very learned layman, and warden of Merton College: Rainolds, -representing the Puritan wing of the Church, and -President of Corpus Christi, Oxford; and Chaderton, Master -of Emmanuel, and representing the same wing of the Church -from Cambridge.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_10" id="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> John Donne, son of a London merchant, b. 1573, and -d. 1631. There is a charming life of him by Izaak Walton. -The Grosart edition of his writings is fullest and -best.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_11" id="Footnote_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> From his poem of <cite>Nosce Teipsum</cite>, published in 1599. -John Davies b. in Wiltshire about 1570, and d. 1626.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_12" id="Footnote_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Dr. Shedd (<cite>Addenda</cite> to Lange’s <cite>Matthew</cite>) says—“Probably -it was the prevailing custom of the Christians <em>in the -East</em>, from the beginning to pray the Lord’s Prayer, with the -Doxology.” It certainly appears in earliest Syriac version -(<cite>Peschito</cite>, so called, of second century). It does not appear -in the Wyclif of 1380. It will be found, however, in the -Tyndale of 1534—which I am led to believe is its first -appearance in an accredited English translation.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_13" id="Footnote_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> The allusion is to the Harts, whose ancestress was Shakespeare’s -sister Joan. A monumental record in Trinity -Church, Stratford, reads thus: “In memory of Thomas -Hart, who was the fifth descendant in a direct line from -Joan, eldest daughter of John Shakespeare. He died May -23, 1793.”</p> - -<p>A son of the above Thomas Hart “followed the business -of a butcher at Stratford, where he was living in 1794.” -Still another Thomas Hart (eighth in descent from Joan) is -said to be now living in Australia—the only male representive -of that branch of the family.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_14" id="Footnote_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Susanna, the eldest, baptized 1583; Hamnet and Judith -(twins), baptized 1585. In 1596 Hamnet died; in -1607 Susanna married Dr. Hall; and in 1616 (year of Shakespeare’s -death) Judith married Quiney, vintner.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_15" id="Footnote_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> His father died in 1601, and his mother in 1608.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_16" id="Footnote_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> The dedication of <cite>Venus and Adonis</cite> (and subsequently -of <cite>Tarquin and Lucrece</cite>) to the Earl of Southampton is -undoubted; nor are intimate friendly relations doubted; -but the further supposition—long accredited—that the major -part of the Sonnets were addressed to the same Earl—is -now generally abandoned—entirely so by the new Shakespearean -scholars. William Herbert (Earl of Pembroke)—to -whom is dedicated the 1623 folio—is counted by many -the “begetter” of these, and the rival of the poet in loves of -the “dark-eyed” frail one, whose identity has so provoked -inquiry.</p> - -<p>A late theory favors a Miss Fitton, of whom a descendant, -the Rev. Fred. Fitton, has latterly made himself advocate. -See <cite>Athenæum</cite> for February 20, 1886.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_17" id="Footnote_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> A very good exhibit of best opinions on such points may -be found briefly summarized in Stopford Brooke’s little -<cite>Primer of English Literature</cite>; see also Mr. Fleay’s recent -<cite>Chronical History of Shakespeare</cite>; and fuller discussion -(though somewhat antiquated) in Dr. Drake’s interesting discussion -of <cite>Shakespeare and his Times</cite>. I name this book, not -as wholly authoritative, or comparable with the mass of -newer criticism which has been developed under the auspices -of the different Shakespeare societies, but as massing -together a great budget of information from cotemporaneous -authors and full of entertaining reading. In America, the -Shakespearean labors of Hudson, Grant White, and Dr. -Rolfe are to be noted; and also—with larger emphasis—the -beginnings of the monumental work of Mr. Furniss.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_18" id="Footnote_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Seven editions of this poem were published between -1593 and 1602.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_19" id="Footnote_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> The <cite>Nation</cite> (N. Y.), of March 7, 1884, has this:</p> - -<p>“In an indenture between the R<sup>t</sup> Hon. Sir Rich<sup>d</sup> Saltonstall, -Knt., Lord Mayor of London, and 2 others, Commissioners -of her Majesty (fortieth yr of Queen Elizabeth), and -the parties deputed to collect the first of these subsidies -granted by Parliament the yr preceding—(bearing date Oct. -1598), for the <em>rate of S<sup>t</sup> Helen’s Parish</em>, Bishopsgate ward—the -name of <em>Wm. Shakespeare</em> is found as liable, with others, -to that rate.”</p> - -<p>This, if it be indeed our William who is named, would -serve to show residence in “S<sup>t</sup> Helen’s Parish”—in which is -the venerable Crosby Hall.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_20" id="Footnote_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> See Halliwell-Phillips (vol. i., p. 130; 7th ed.).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_21" id="Footnote_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Edmond Shakespeare was buried in St. Saviour’s in 1607.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_22" id="Footnote_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> I append table from French’s <cite>Shakespeareana Genealogica</cite>:</p> - -<p class="monospace"> - W<sup>m</sup> Shakespeare, b. Apr. 23, 1564; - m. Anne Hathaway, b. 1556, dau. of Rich<sup>d</sup> - and Joan Hathaway, of Shottery. - | - +----------------------+----------+-------------------+ - | | | -Susanna, b. May, Hamnet, twin with Judith, bapt. Feb. -1583, d. July 2, Judith, bapt. Feb. 2, 2, 1585, d. 1661; -1649; m. Jno. Hall, 1585, d. s. p. 1596. m. Thos Quiney. -physician, b. 1575. | - | | - | +--------------------+--------------+----+ - | | | | - | Shakespeare Quiney, Rich<sup>d</sup>. Quiney, Thos. Quiney. -Elizabeth Hall, b. 1616. b. 1618. b. 1619. -b. 1608; d. -s. p. 1669. -</p> - -<p>Elizabeth Hall was twice married: 1st to Thomas Nash—2d -to Jno. Bernard (knighted by Charles II.), and had no -issue by either marriage.</p> - -<p>Of the Quiney children, above named, the 1st (Shakespeare), -d. in infancy; the 2d (Richard Quiney), d. without -issue, in 1638; the 3d (Thomas Quiney), died the same year, -1638—also without issue.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_23" id="Footnote_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> The extreme limits of his life and career would probably -lie between 1575 and 1635; <cite>Strahan’s Biographical -Dictionary</cite> of the last century makes no mention of him; -nor does the <cite>Biographie Universelle</cite> of as early date.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_24" id="Footnote_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Works of John Webster; with some account of the -Author, and Notes, by Rev. A. Dyce (original edition, -1830).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_25" id="Footnote_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Ford, b. about 1586, and d. 1640. Works edited by -Gifford; revised, with Dyce’s notes, 1869.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_26" id="Footnote_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> John Marston, b. 1565 (?); d. about 1634; believed to -have been a Shropshire man, and one while of Brasenose -College, Oxford.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_27" id="Footnote_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Philip Massinger, b. 1584; d. 1640. His works were -edited by Gifford, and on this edition is based the later one -of Col. Cunningham (1870).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_28" id="Footnote_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> “The Duke of Milan.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_29" id="Footnote_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> John Fletcher, b. 1579; d. 1625. Francis Beaumont, -son of Sir Francis Beaumont, b. (probably) 1585; d. 1616.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_30" id="Footnote_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> Aubrey, who died in 1697, and who is often cited, was -an antiquary—not always to be relied upon—an Oxford -man, friend of Thomas Hobbes, was heir to sundry country -estates, which, through defective titles, involved him -in suits, that brought him to grief. He was a diligent collector -of “whim-whams”—very credulous; supplied Anthony -à Wood (1632-1695) with much of his questionable -material; and kept up friendly relations with a great many -cultivated and literary people.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_31" id="Footnote_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> From the “Nice Valour or the Passionate Madman.” -By Seward this comedy is ascribed to Beaumont.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_32" id="Footnote_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> John Taylor, b. 1580; d. 1654. Various papers and -poems (so called) of his are printed in vol. ii. of Hindley’s -<cite>Old Book Collector’s Miscellany</cite>, London, 1872. The Spenser -Society has also printed an edition of his works, in 5 vols., -1870-78.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_33" id="Footnote_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> London was not over-large at this day; its population -counted about 175,000.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_34" id="Footnote_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> James Howell, b. 1594; d. 1666. He was son of a minister -in Carmarthenshire, and took his degree at Oxford in -1613.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_35" id="Footnote_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> Of an ancient county family in Mid-Kent: b. 1568; d. -1639.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_36" id="Footnote_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> In his will he suggested this epitaph to be put over his -grave: “<i lang="la">Hic jacet hujus sententiæ primus auctor, Disputandi -Pruritus Ecclesiæ Scabies</i>.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_37" id="Footnote_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> Izaak Walton, b. 1593; d. 1683.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_38" id="Footnote_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> Statements about George Herbert, in the matter of the -Melville controversy, are specially to be doubted. Of Ben -Jonson he says: “He lived with a woman that governed -him, near Westminster Abbey, and neither he nor she took -much care for next week, and would be sure not to want -wine; of which he usually took too much before he went -to bed, if <em>not oftener and sooner</em>”—all which shows a pretty -accessibility to gossip.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_39" id="Footnote_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Overbury, b. 1581; d. 1613 (poisoned in London Tower). -Rimbault’s <cite>Life</cite>, 1856; also Strahan’s <cite>Biographical Dictionary</cite>, -1784.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_40" id="Footnote_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> George Herbert, b. 1593; d. 1633. The edition of his -poems referred to is that of Bell & Daldy, London, 1861. -Walton’s <cite>Life</cite> of him is delightful; but one who desires the -whole story should not fail of reading Dr. Grosart’s essay, -prefatory to the works of George Herbert, in the <cite>Fuller -Worthies’ Library</cite>, London, 1874.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_41" id="Footnote_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Robert Herrick b. (or at least baptized) 1591; d. 1674. -The fullest edition of his works is that edited by Dr. Grosart, -and published by Chatto & Windus, London, 1876.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_42" id="Footnote_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Dr. Grosart objects that most portraits are too gross: I -am content if comparison be made only with the engraving -authorized by Dr. Grosart, and authenticated by his careful -investigation and a warm admiration for his subject.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_43" id="Footnote_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> Herrick is not an example of this; but Herbert is; so is -Overbury with his “Wife;” so is Vaughan; so is Browne.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_44" id="Footnote_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Religion stands on tiptoe in our land</div> -<div class="verse">Ready to pass to the American strand.</div> -<div class="verse">My God, Thou dost prepare for them a way,</div> -<div class="verse">By carrying first their gold from them away;</div> -<div class="verse">For gold and grace did never yet agree;</div> -<div class="verse">Religion always sides with Poverty.”</div> -<div class="verse right">—<span class="smcap">Herbert’s</span> <cite>The Church Militant</cite>.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_45" id="Footnote_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> John Selden, b. 1584; d. 1654. His <cite>Table-Talk</cite>, by -which he is best known, was published in 1689. Coleridge -said, “It contains more weighty bullion sense than I have -ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired -writer.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_46" id="Footnote_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> John Milton: written 1629.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_47" id="Footnote_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Specially instanced in his final desertion of Strafford.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_48" id="Footnote_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> “The Rehearsal.” Complete edition of his works published -in 1775. George Villiers, b. 1627; d. 1688.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_49" id="Footnote_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> Jeremy Taylor, b. 1613; d. 1667. First collected edition -of his works issued in 1822 (Bishop Heber); reissued, with -revision (C. P. Eden), 1852-61.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_50" id="Footnote_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> John Evelyn, b. 1620; d. 1706. His best known books -are his <cite>Diary</cite>, and <cite>Sylva</cite>—a treatise on arboriculture.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_51" id="Footnote_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> I have not been careful to give the <i lang="la">ipsissima verba</i> of -Taylor’s version of this old Oriental legend, which has -been often cited, but never more happily transplanted into -the British gardens of doctrine than by Jeremy Taylor.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_52" id="Footnote_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> John Suckling, b. 1609; d. 1642. An edition of his -poems, edited by W. C. Hazlitt, was published in 1874.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_53" id="Footnote_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> William Prynne, b. 1600; d. 1669. He was a Somersetshire -man, severely Calvinistic, and before he was thirty -had written about the <cite>Unloveliness of Love Locks</cite>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_54" id="Footnote_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> Robert Burton, b. 1576; d. 1639, was too remarkable a -man to get his only mention in a note; but we cannot -always govern our spaces. His best-known work, <cite>The Anatomy -of Melancholy</cite>, is an excellent book to steal from—whether -quotations or crusty notions of the author’s own.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_55" id="Footnote_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> Abraham Cowley, b. 1618; d. 1667. Edmund Waller, -b. 1605; d. 1687.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_56" id="Footnote_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> I give a taste of these young verses, first published in -the <cite>Poetical Blossoms</cite> of 1633; also sampled approvingly by -the mature Cowley in his essay <cite>On Myself</cite>:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“This only grant me, that my means may lie</div> -<div class="verse">Too low for envy, for contempt too high.</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Some honor I would have</div> -<div class="verse">Not from great deeds, but good alone.</div> -<div class="verse">The unknown are better than ill known;</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Rumour can ope the grave.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Thus would I double my life’s fading space,</div> -<div class="verse">For he that runs it well, twice runs his race.</div> -<div class="verse indent4">And in this true delight,</div> -<div class="verse">These unbought sports, this happy state,</div> -<div class="verse">I would not fear nor wish my fate.</div> -<div class="verse indent4">But boldly say each night</div> -<div class="verse">To-morrow let my sun his beams display,</div> -<div class="verse">Or in clouds hide them;—I have liv’d to-day!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_57" id="Footnote_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> John Milton, b. 1608; d. 1674. Editions of his works -are numberless; but Dr. Masson is the fullest and best accredited -contributor to Miltonian literature.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_58" id="Footnote_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> John and Edward Phillips both with him; the latter -only as pupil.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_59" id="Footnote_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> More probably, perhaps, sulking for lack of her old -gayeties of life in the range of Royal Oxford. Aubrey’s accounts -would favor this interpretation.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_60" id="Footnote_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> <cite>Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, composed -at several Times.</cite> London, 1645.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_61" id="Footnote_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> In that day Whitehall Street was separated from Charing -Cross by the famous gate of Holbein’s; and in the other direction -it was crossed, near Old Palace Yard, by the King’s-Street -Gate—thus forming a vast court.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_62" id="Footnote_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> Salmasius, a Leyden professor, had been commissioned -by Royalists to write a defence of Charles I., and vindicate -his memory. Milton was commissioned to reply; and the -result was—a Latin battle in Billingsgate.</p> - -<p>Milton calls his antagonist “a grammatical louse, whose -only treasure of merit and hope of fame consisted in a glossary.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_63" id="Footnote_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> His blindness dating from the year 1652.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_64" id="Footnote_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> This marriage took place on February 24, 1662-63, the -age of the bride being twenty-five, and Milton in his fifty-fifth -year.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_65" id="Footnote_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> Vondel, b. 1587 (at Cologne); d. 1679. He was the -author of many dramatic pieces, among which were “Jephtha,” -“Marie Stuart,” “Lucifer” (<cite>Luisevaar</cite>). Vondel also -wrote “Adam in Exile,” and “Samson, or Divine Vengeance.” -This latter, according to a writer in <cite>The Athenæum</cite> -of November 7, 1885, has suspicious points of resemblance -with “Samson Agonistes.”</p> - -<p>Other allied topics of interest are discussed in same journal’s -notice of George Edmundson’s book on the Milton and -Vondel question (Trübner & Co., London, 1885).</p> - -<p>Vondel survived the production of his “Lucifer” by -a quarter of a century, and died five years after Milton.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_66" id="Footnote_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> Avitus was Bishop of Vienne (succeeding his father and -grandfather) about 490. His poem, “De Initio Mundi,” -was in Latin hexameters. See interesting account of same -in <cite>The Atlantic Monthly</cite> for January, 1890.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_67" id="Footnote_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> The cottage is a half-timber, gable fronted building, and -has Milton’s name inscribed over the door. The village -is reached by a branch of the L. & N. W. R. R. American -visitors will also look with interest at the burial place of -William Penn, who lies in a “place of graves” behind the -Friends’ Meeting House—a mile and a half only from -Chalfont Church.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_68" id="Footnote_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> The terms were £5 down; another £5 after sale of 1,300 -copies, and two equal sums on further sale of two other editions -of same number. The family actually compounded -for £18, before the third edition was entirely sold.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_69" id="Footnote_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> Carew, b. about 1589; d. 1639; full of lyrical arts and -of brazen sensuality. Lovelace, b. 1618; d. 1658; a careless -master of song, whom wealth and royal favor did not save -from a death of want and despair.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_70" id="Footnote_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> George Villiers, b. 1627; d. 1688.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_71" id="Footnote_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> Earl of Rochester (John Wilmot), b. 1647; d. 1680.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_72" id="Footnote_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> Sir Peter Lely, b. (in Westphalia) 1617; d. 1680.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_73" id="Footnote_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> Richard Baxter, b. 1615; d. 1691. His <cite>Saints’ Rest</cite> -published in 1653 (Lowndes).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_74" id="Footnote_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> Andrew Marvell, b. 1620; d. 1678. Early edition of -<cite>Life and Works</cite> by Cooke, 1726. (Later reprints.) Dr. Grosart -also a laborer in this field.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_75" id="Footnote_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> Aubrey.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_76" id="Footnote_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> Samuel Butler, b. 1612; d. 1680. Editions of <cite>Hudibras</cite> -(his chief book) are many and multiform; that of -Bohn perhaps as good as any. His posthumous works, not -much known, were published in 1715. No scholarly editing -of his works or life has been done.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_77" id="Footnote_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> <cite>Paradise Lost</cite> appeared 1667; first part of <cite>Hudibras</cite>, -1663; third part not till 1678.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_78" id="Footnote_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> Some of the couplets in the two ran so nearly together -as almost to collide. Thus, Butler says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“He that runs may fight again,</div> -<div class="verse">Which he can never do that’s slain.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>While Trumbull’s couplet <em>runs</em> thus:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“He that fights and runs away</div> -<div class="verse">May live to fight another day.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_79" id="Footnote_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> This was Sir Samuel Luke of Cople-Wood-End, a Parliamentary -leader and a man of probity and distinction, supposed -to have been the particular subject of Butler’s lampoon. -His own letter-book, however (<cite>Egerton Magazine</cite>, -cited by John Brown in his recent <cite>Life of Bunyan</cite>, p. 45) -shows him to have been much more a man of the world -than was Butler’s caricature of a “Colonel.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_80" id="Footnote_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> Samuel Pepys—whom those well up in cockney ways -of speech persist in calling “Mr. Peps”—was born 1633; -died 1703. His <cite>Diary</cite>, running from 1660 to 1669, did -not see the light until 1825. Since that date numerous -editions have been published; that of Bright, the best. -See also Wheatley, <cite>Samuel Pepys and the World he lived in</cite>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_81" id="Footnote_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, b. 1609; d. 1674. -He was a man of large literary qualities, and his <cite>History</cite> is -chiefly prized for its portraits.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_82" id="Footnote_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> John Evelyn, b. 1620; d. 1706.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_83" id="Footnote_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> B. 1628; d. 1688. Editions of the <cite>Pilgrim’s Progress</cite> are -innumerable. Southey and Macaulay have dealt with his -biography, and in later times Mr. Froude (“English Men -of Letters”) and John Brown (8vo, London, 1885).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_84" id="Footnote_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> Mr. Froude (“English Men of Letters”) entertains an -opposite opinion—as do Offor (1862) and Copner (1883). -Mr. Brown, however, who is conscientious to a fault, and -seems to have been indefatigable in his research, confirms -the general opinion entertained by most accredited biographers. -See <cite>John Bunyan; his Life, Times, and Work</cite>, -by John Brown, chap. iii., p. 45.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_85" id="Footnote_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> Reference is again made to <cite>Life, Etc.</cite>, by John Brown, -Minister of the Church at Bunyan Meeting, Bedford. The -old popular belief was strong that Bunyan’s entire prisonship -was served in the jail of the bridge. Well-authenticated -accounts, however, of the number of his fellow-prisoners -forbid acceptance of this belief.</p> - -<p>Froude alludes to the question without settling it; Mr. -Brown ingeniously sets forth a theory that explains the traditions, -and seems to meet all the facts of the case.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_86" id="Footnote_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> There was a <i lang="la">quasi</i> charge of plagiarism against Bunyan -at one time current, and particulars respecting it came to -the light some sixty years ago in a correspondence of Robert -Southey (who edited the <em>Major</em> edition of <cite>Pilgrim’s Progress</cite>) -with George Offor, Esq., which appears in the <cite>Reminiscences</cite> -of Joseph Cottle of Bristol. The allegation was, -that Bunyan had taken hints for his allegory from an old -Dutch book, <cite>Duyfkens ande Willemynkyns Pilgrimagee</cite> -(with five cuts by Bolswert), published at Antwerp in the -year 1627. Dr. Southey dismissed the allegation with disdain, -after examination of the <cite>Dutch Pilgrimage</cite>; nor do -recent editors appear to have counted the charge worthy of -refutation.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_87" id="Footnote_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> Thomas Fuller, b. 1608; d. 1661. <cite>The Worthies of England</cite> -is his best-known book—a reservoir of anecdote and -witty comments upon “men and manners.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_88" id="Footnote_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> Thomas Browne, b. 1605; d. 1682. Full collection of -his works (with Johnson’s <cite>Life</cite>), Bohn, 1851. A very charming -edition of the <cite>Religio Medici</cite>—so good in print—so full -in notes—so convenient to the hand—is that of the “Golden -Treasury Series,” Macmillan. Nor can I forbear reference -to that keen, sympathetic essay on this writer which appears -in Walter Pater’s <cite>Appreciations</cite>, Macmillan, 1889.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_89" id="Footnote_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> William Temple, b. 1628; d. 1699. His works, mainly -political writings, were published in two volumes folio, -1720; a later edition, 1731, including the Letters of Temple -(edited, and as title-page says—published by Jonathan -Swift), was dedicated to his Majesty William III.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_90" id="Footnote_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> This old country home, very charming with its antique -air, its mossy terraces, its giant cedars, is still held by a Sir -Henry Dryden.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_91" id="Footnote_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> Otway, b. 1631; d. 1685, son of a Sussex clergyman, -was author of many poor plays, and of two—“The Orphan” -and “Venice Preserved”—sure to live. With -much native refinement and extraordinary pathetic power, -he went to the bad; was crazed by hopeless love for an -actress (Mrs. Barry) in his own plays; plunged thereafter -into wildest dissipation, and died destitute and neglected.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_92" id="Footnote_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> Shall I except his re-telling of the tale of Cymon and -“Iphigene the Fair?”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_93" id="Footnote_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> John Locke, b. 1632; d. 1704. The best edition of -Locke’s works is said to be that by Bishop Law, four volumes, -4to, 1777. For Life, Fox Bourne (1876) is latest authority.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_94" id="Footnote_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> This was a weak scion of the house, “born a shapeless -lump, like anarchy,” as Dryden savagely says; but—by -this very match—he became the father of the brilliant author -of the <cite>Characteristics</cite> (1711).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_95" id="Footnote_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> February 6, 1685.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_96" id="Footnote_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> Matthew Prior, b. 1664; d. 1721.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_97" id="Footnote_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> William Congreve, b. 1670; d. 1729. See edition of -his dramatic works, with pleasant introduction by Leigh -Hunt (1840).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_98" id="Footnote_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> Daniel Defoe, b. 1661; d. 1731. Little is known of his -very early life. Of <cite>Robinson Crusoe</cite> there have been editions -innumerable. Of his complete works no full edition -has ever been published—probably never will be.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_99" id="Footnote_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> Richard Steele, b. 1672; d. 1729. He was born in -Dublin, and died on his wife’s estate at Llanngunnor, near -Caermarthen, in Wales.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_100" id="Footnote_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> The <cite>Christian Hero</cite> appeared in 1701; and it was in the -same year that Steele’s first play of “The Funeral” was -acted at Drury Lane. “The Lying Lover” appeared in -1703, and “The Tender Husband” in 1705.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_101" id="Footnote_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> I take the careful reckoning of Mr. Dobson in his <cite>Life -of Steele</cite>, 1886.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_102" id="Footnote_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> It is, however, seriously to be doubted if Addison ever -saw the “Atticus” satire.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_103" id="Footnote_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> “<i lang="fr">Je tire vers ma fin.</i>” Smollett (Book I., chap. vi.); -not a strong authority in most matters, but—from his profession -of medicine—an apt one to ferret out actual details -in respect to royal illness.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_104" id="Footnote_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> Sir John Vanbrugh, b. (about) 1666; d. 1726. His comedies -were better thought of than his buildings, both in -his own day and in ours.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_105" id="Footnote_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> Sir Christopher Wren, b. 1631; d. 1723. The cathedral -was begun in 1675, and virtually finished in 1710, though -there may have been many “last touches” for the aged architect.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_106" id="Footnote_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a> John Gay, b. 1685; d. 1732.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_107" id="Footnote_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“O roving muse! recall that wondrous year,</div> -<div class="verse">When hoary Thames, with frosted osiers crown’d,</div> -<div class="verse">Was three long moons in icy fetters bound.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>The allusion is doubtless to the year 1684, famous for its -exceeding cold.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_108" id="Footnote_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a> Jonathan Swift, b. 1667; d. 1745. Most noticeable biographies -are those by Scott, Craik, and Stephen; the latter -not minute, but having judicial repose, and quite delightful. -Scott’s edition of his works (originally published in 1814) is -still the fullest and best.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_109" id="Footnote_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a> Sir William Temple did not finally abandon his home -at Sheen—where he had beautiful gardens—until the -year 1689. A stretch of Richmond Park, with its deer-fed -turf, now covers all traces of Temple’s old home; the name -however is kept most pleasantly alive by the pretty Sheen -cottage (Professor Owen’s home), with its carp-pond in -front, and its charming, sequestered bit of wild garden in -the rear.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_110" id="Footnote_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a> “Varina” was a Miss Waring, sister of a college mate. -Years after, when Swift came by better church appointments, -Varina wrote to him a letter calculated to fan the flame of a -constant lover; but she received such reply—at once -disdainful and acquiescent—as was met only with contemptuous -silence.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_111" id="Footnote_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a> Both of these satires written between 1696-1698, but not -published till six years later.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_112" id="Footnote_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a> Button’s was another favorite Coffee-house in Russell -Street—on the opposite side from Will’s—and nearer Covent -Garden. I must express my frequent obligations, in -respect of London Topography, to the interesting <cite>Literary -Landmarks</cite> of Mr. Laurence Hutton.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_113" id="Footnote_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a> Acquaintance with Miss Vanhomrigh probably first -made in winter of 1708, but no family intimacy till year -1710. See <cite>Athenæum</cite>, January 16, 1886, in notice of Lane-Poole’s -<cite>Letters and Journals of Swift</cite>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_114" id="Footnote_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a> Henry Morley, in the recent editing of his Carrisbrooke -<cite>Swift</cite>, lays stress upon the sufficient warning which Miss -Vanhomrigh should have found in this poem. It appears -to me that he sees too much in Swift’s favor and too little in -Vanessa’s.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_115" id="Footnote_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a> Miss Vanhomrigh died in May, 1723; and the final renewal -of Bishop Berkeley’s deed of gift (of the Whitehall -farm, Newport) to Yale College, is dated August 17, 1733.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_116" id="Footnote_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a> Thomas Sheridan, D.D., father of “Dictionary” Sheridan, -and grandfather of Richard Brinsley. He was a great -friend of Swift, and <cite>Gulliver’s Travels</cite> was prepared for the -press at his cottage in Cavan (Quilca).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_117" id="Footnote_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a> <cite>The Drapier Letters</cite> were published in 1724. When the -successive parts of <cite>Gulliver</cite> were written it is impossible to -determine. A portion was certainly in existence as early as -1722. The whole was not published until 1726-27.</p> - -</div> - -</div> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span></p> - -<h2><i>INDEX.</i></h2> - -<ul> - -<li class="ifrst">Addison, Joseph, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">early life of, <a href="#Page_288">288 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his “Cato,” <a href="#Page_289">289</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1"><cite>The Spectator</cite>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">“Sir Roger De Coverley,” <a href="#Page_291">291</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Swift’s opinion of the <cite>Spectator</cite>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his marriage, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">“The Vision of Mirza,” <a href="#Page_295">295</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his political life, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his death, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Anne, Princess, daughter of James II., <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Queen, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">her characteristics, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">her accession to the throne, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Aubrey, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Baxter, Richard, his <cite>Saints’ Rest</cite>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Beaumont and Fletcher, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">a quotation from “Philaster,” <a href="#Page_97">97</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">“The Faithful Shepherdess,” <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Bible, King James’, <a href="#Page_44">44 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">dedication of, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">the revisers of, <a href="#Page_47">47 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">its literary value, <a href="#Page_51">51 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">early English, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">the Genevan, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">the Bishops’, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">the first American, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Blackfriars Theatre, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Blenheim Palace, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Bodley, John, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Boyle, Robert, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Boyne, battle of the, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Browne, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Buchanan, George, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Buckingham, Duke of, and Charles I., <a href="#Page_133">133</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his son, author of “The Rehearsal,” <a href="#Page_134">134</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Buckingham, the Second Villiers, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Bunyan, John, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his birthplace, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his early life and marriage, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">a preacher, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">imprisoned, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his <cite>Pilgrim’s Progress</cite>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Burnet’s <cite>History of his Own Times</cite>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Burton, Robert, author of <cite>Anatomy of Melancholy</cite>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Busino, his account of the representation of Jonson’s “Pleasure is Reconciled to Virtue,” at Whitehall, <a href="#Page_29">29 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Butler, Samuel, author of <cite>Hudibras</cite>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span>Cary, Sir Robert, carries to Edinburgh the news of the Queen’s death, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Charlecote House, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Charles I., <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">influence of the Duke of Buckingham on, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">execution of, <a href="#Page_162">162 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Charles II., restoration of, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">death of, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Charter House, the, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Clarendon, Earl of, his <cite>History of the Rebellion</cite>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Compton, Lord, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Congreve, William, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">visited by Voltaire, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Counterblast to Tobacco</cite>, the, of James I., <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Cowley, Abraham, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">an extract from his “Hymn to Light,” <a href="#Page_146">146</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">compared with Tennyson, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Cromwell, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Davies, Sir John, his lines on the <cite>Immortality of the Soul</cite>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Defoe, Daniel, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">a pamphleteer, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his <cite>Advice to English Tradesmen</cite>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his <cite>Robinson Crusoe</cite>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">on the Commission in Edinburgh, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Diodati, Charles, the friend of Milton, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Donne, John, <a href="#Footnote_10">49, note</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Dorset, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Doxology, of the Lord’s Prayer, the, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Drummond of Hawthornden, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">entertains Jonson, <a href="#Page_28">28 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dryden, John, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his fertility, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his eulogies of Cromwell and Charles II., <a href="#Page_230">230 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Mr. Saintsbury’s opinion of his consistency, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his <cite>Annus Mirabilis</cite>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">the London of, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his plays, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his <cite>Hind and Panther</cite>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his Virgil, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his “All for Love,” <a href="#Page_244">244</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">estimate of him, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Ellwood, Milton’s friend, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Elizabeth, Queen, and the English Bible, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Elizabeth, daughter of James I., <a href="#Page_100">100</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">England at the death of Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_1">1 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Etherege, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Evelyn, John, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his diary, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Ford, John, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Fortunes of Nigel</cite>, Scott’s, its picture of James I., <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Freeman, Mr., his misleading averment as to the errors in <cite>Ivanhoe</cite>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Fuller, Thomas, his <cite>English Worthies</cite>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Gay, John, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his “Beggar’s Opera,” <a href="#Page_308">308</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his <cite>Trivia</cite>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Globe Theatre in Shakespeare’s time, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Gosson, Stephen, a representation of the Puritan feeling, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Greenwich Hospital, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Hampton Court Conference, <a href="#Page_44">44 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Harrison, William, <a href="#Page_20">20 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span>Herbert, George, the poet, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">poems of, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his marriage, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Herbert, Lord, of Cherbury, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Herbert, William, Earl of Pembroke, <a href="#Footnote_16">74, note</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Herrick, Robert, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">specimens of his verse, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">character of, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his <cite>Hesperides</cite>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Howell, James, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Hudibras</cite>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">James I., his pedigree, <a href="#Page_4">4 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his person and character, <a href="#Page_6">6 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his journey to London to be crowned, <a href="#Page_9">9 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his family, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">tastes and characteristics of, <a href="#Page_101">101 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his <cite>Counterblast to the Use of Tobacco</cite>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">James II., <a href="#Page_256">256</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Johnson, Hester (“Stella”), <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Swift’s letters to, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">“Stella’s Journal,” <a href="#Page_329">329</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">her secret marriage with Swift, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">and Vanessa, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">death of, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Jonson, Ben, his adulation of the King, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his literary versatility, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his masque at Whitehall, <a href="#Page_29">29 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Judith Shakespeare</cite>, William Black’s novel, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Kenilworth, Walter Scott’s, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Kensington in Queen Anne’s time, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Kingsley’s pictures of Elizabethan characters and times, <a href="#Page_18">18 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Lamb, Charles, influence of Sir Thomas Browne upon, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his essay, “The Genteel Style in Writing,” <a href="#Page_227">227</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Laud, Archbishop, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Lily, Milton’s schoolmaster, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Locke, John, his treatise on the <cite>Human Understanding</cite>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his life, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">on education, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">“McFingal,” the, of John Trumbull, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Marlborough, Duke of, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Marlborough, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">her influence over Queen Anne, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Marston, John, specimen of his satire, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Marvell, Andrew, Milton’s assistant, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">story of his good fortune, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his “Garden,” etc., <a href="#Page_191">191</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Mary, Queen, daughter of James II., <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">death of, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Massinger’s “A New Way to Pay Old Debts,” <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Masson’s <cite>Life and Times of Milton</cite>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Mermaid Tavern, the, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Milton, John, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Masson’s Life of, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his father, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">at school, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his early verse, <a href="#Page_153">153 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">at Cambridge, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his travels, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his marriage to Mary Powell, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his daughters, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his first published poems, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his pamphlets, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his defence of regicide, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">in peril, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">domestic life, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span>Munkacsy’s picture of, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his third marriage, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1"><cite>The Paradise Lost</cite>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his use of other books, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his last days, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">payments for his <cite>Paradise</cite>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">deserted by his daughters, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1"><cite>Paradise Regained</cite> and <cite>Samson Agonistes</cite>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his death, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Mortality, Old</cite>, Scott’s novel, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Newton, Isaac, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“New Way to Pay Old Debts, A,” <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Nigel</cite>, Scott’s novel, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><cite>Old Mortality</cite>, Scott’s novel, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Otway, Thomas, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Overbury, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, his <cite>Characters</cite>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Overreach, Sir Giles,” <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Penn, William, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Pepys, Mr., his purchase of <cite>Hudibras</cite>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his diary, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">extracts from, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Peveril of the Peak</cite>, Scott’s, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Primer, the Old New England, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Prior, Matthew, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Prynne, William, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his <cite>Histriomastix</cite>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Raleigh, Walter, <a href="#Page_11">11 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">in the Tower, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his <cite>History of the World</cite>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his expedition to Guiana, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">executed, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">specimens of his writings, <a href="#Page_15">15 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his <cite>Ocean to Cynthia</cite>, <a href="#Footnote_2">17, note</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his life an epitome of Elizabethan times, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Rochester, Earl of, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Selden, John, his <cite>Table-Talk</cite>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Shakespeare, <a href="#Page_32">32 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1"><a href="#Page_56">56 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his characters real, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his personality, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his family relations, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his children, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">in London, <a href="#Page_73">73 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">early poetry, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">“Love’s Labor’s Lost,” <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his “Venus and Adonis,” and “Lucrece,” <a href="#Page_77">77</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">like Chaucer in taking his material, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his closing years, <a href="#Page_81">81 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his son-in-law, Dr. Hall, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Sheridan, Thomas, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Sidney, Lady Dorothy, pursued by Waller, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Southampton, Earl of, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Spencer, Sir John, his dwelling, Crosby Hall, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">a letter of his daughter, <a href="#Page_24">24 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Steele, Richard, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">author of the <cite>Tatler</cite>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his <cite>Christian Hero</cite>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his marriages, <a href="#Page_281">281 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his literary qualities, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Stratford, the town of, and surrounding country, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">a walk to, from Windsor, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Stuart, house of, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Suckling, Sir John, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his tragic death, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Swift, Jonathan, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">early life of, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his life at Sir William Temple’s, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span>goes back to Ireland, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his <cite>Battle of the Books</cite> and <cite>Tale of a Tub</cite>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">appointed chaplain to Lord Berkeley, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his politics, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his London life, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1"><cite>Stella’s Journal</cite>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">“Cadenus and Vanessa,” <a href="#Page_332">332</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">back in Ireland, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his secret marriage with Stella, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his <cite>Gulliver’s Travels</cite>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his madness and death, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Swinburne, his estimate of Webster, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Taine, his overdrawn picture of the Restoration, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Taylor, Jeremy, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his career, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his <cite>Holy Living and Dying</cite>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Taylor, John, “the Water Poet,” a favorite of James I., <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Temple, Sir William, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">death of, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Theobalds, King James’ palace, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Tillotson, John, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Tobacco in literature, <a href="#Page_103">103 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">Trumbull, John, his <cite>McFingal</cite>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Two Noble Kinsmen,” <a href="#Page_95">95</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Vanbrugh, Sir John, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">“Vanessa,” Swift’s letter to, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Vanhomrigh, Miss (“Vanessa”), <a href="#Page_331">331</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">death of, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Waller, Edmund, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his literary importance, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Walton, Izaak, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his <cite>Angler</cite>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his biographic sketches, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Webster, John, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Dyce’s edition of his works, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">character of his plays, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">Swinburne’s estimate of, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Westward, Ho!</cite> Kingsley’s, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">William and Mary, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">William of Orange, <a href="#Page_263">263 <i lang="la">et seq.</i></a></li> - -<li class="indx">William III., <a href="#Page_263">263</a>;</li> -<li class="isub1">his death, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Will’s Coffee-house, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Woodstock</cite>, Scott’s novel, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Woodstock, the park at, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Wotton, Sir Henry, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Wren, Sir Christopher, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>.</li> - -</ul> - -<p> </p> -<p> </p> -<hr class="full" /> -<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS: FROM ELIZABETH TO ANNE***</p> -<p>******* This file should be named 54142-h.htm or 54142-h.zip *******</p> -<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> -<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/5/4/1/4/54142">http://www.gutenberg.org/5/4/1/4/54142</a></p> -<p> -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed.</p> - 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