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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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