CHAPTER XV THE RESTORATION: THE POETS OF THE COURT DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM: EARL OF ROCHESTER: SIR CHARLES SEDLEY: EARL OF DORSET: EARL OF MULGRAVE: EARL OF ROSCOMMON. WHEN Charles II., on his thirtieth birthday, made his triumphant entry into London, men of reflection must have asked themselves what it was that was being restored in his person. The old medieval monarchy, with all its traditions, had fallen in the Civil War like the feudal castles demolished by Cromwell; but during the interregnum nothing permanent had risen in the place of the ruins. Would any attempt be made to rebuild the ancient fabric of morals, manners, and taste? or would the return from exile of the legitimate line of kings mark the beginning of a new social era? The influence likely to be exercised by the character of the King himself was for the present doubtful. Men remembered the gallantry Charles had shown on the field of Worcester, and his perseverance in maintaining his cause in the midst of great discouragement during the rule of the Protector. If they had heard reports of his loose behaviour in the days of his wanderings, they might fairly hope that experience and suffering would have taught him to exercise his recovered power with a due sense of responsibility. None could foresee how far in the direction of absolutism that soft and self-indulgent nature would be led in its eagerness to compensate the privations of exile by a reign of pleasure. "The King," says Burnet," said once to the Earl of Essex, as he told me, that he did not wish to be like a grand signior, with some mutes about him, and bags of bowstrings to strangle men as he had a mind to it: but he did not think he was a king as long as a company of fellows were looking into all his actions and examining his ministers as well as his accounts. Every one knew that, whatever happened, an end had come to the old Puritan régime. When Grammont visited England under the Protectorate in search of amusement, he was soon forced to retreat by the atmosphere of austere and sullen Puritanism surrounding the person of Cromwell. With the restoration of the monarchy, however, and under the auspices of a king, gay, witty, and a lover of art and letters, it was certain that, in one form or another, there would be a brilliant revival of Court life, and Dryden, after Charles's death, in a passage of glowing imagery, described the advent of the new spring:As when the new-born phoenix takes his way, His rich paternal regions to survey, Of airy choristers a numerous train Attend his wonderous progress o'er the plain; So, rising from his father's urn, So, glorious did our Charles return; The officious Muses came along, A gay harmonious quire, like angels ever young; The Muse that mourns him now his happy triumph sung. And such a plenteous crop they bore Of purest and well-winnowed grain, As Britain never knew before. Though little was their hire, and light their gain, Fed from his hand they sung and flew, Like birds of paradise that lived on morning dew. Live blest above, almost invoked below, 1 Burnet, History of His Own Times, p. 345. If any of the elder courtiers imagined that they would witness under Charles II. a restoration of the old ideals of taste, they were soon undeceived. In the first place, Buckingham, who had established a complete influence over the King's mind, infected him with a dislike of the stiff ceremony of his father's Court. Moreover, Charles had himself no reverence for the ancient scholastic and chivalrous order. For dogmatic religion he scarcely affected a show of respect. He said that he was "of no Church." Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, describes him as a Deist;1 but in external matters he inclined to the religion which seemed most favourable to the promotion of absolutism. At the same time he had the curiosity of an intellectual epicure, and often embarrassed himself by talking too freely about points of doctrine with the serious leaders of the religious sects." He was, however, much too indolent to study theology as a science, or to discipline his intellect with the logic of formal disputation. Hence he had a natural distaste for all poetry having its source in theological wit, whether it took the shape of allegory or metaphysical conceit; and his courtiers would have shunned like poison the sentiment and style of such writers as George Herbert, Vaughan, or Quarles. Equally repulsive to him was the Provençal tradition of chivalrous poetry. With very loose notions of honour, he disliked the punctilios of old-fashioned knighthood, and in matters of love his gross and sensual tastes made him impatient of the elaborate etiquette imposed on the intercourse of men and women by the Cours d'Amour. The love-sonnet, which had passed in unbroken succession through Surrey to Constable, Drummond, and Habington, altogether disappeared as an instrument of gallantry from his Court. To the other rites and ceremonies of chivalry he was also an enemy. His clear perception showed him the incongruity of keeping alive the reflection of feudalism in an age which had buried what remained of the system in the Acts for 1 A Short Character of Charles II. of England (1725). 2 Continuation of the Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, p. 40. the abolition of knight's service and the Court of Wards.1 He read Hudibras with delight, not more as a satire upon the Puritans than for its witty ridicule of chivalrous customs. As for encyclopædic learning, Catholic or pagan, the scholarship which had sprung out of the humanism of the Renaissance, and which embodied itself in a work like Paradise Lost, was naturally regarded by the volatile King and his companions as a species of ponderous pedantry. Thus, like Constantine, removing his capital to a spot as far as possible removed from the memories and traditions of old Rome, Charles, in leading the new fashions of his Court, endeavoured to obliterate all trace of the medieval ideal. The model to which he and his courtiers looked for the standard of manners was the Court of France. In France, as in England, the development of society had been determined by general causes operating throughout Europe, but owing to the different character and institutions of the two peoples, the political results in each case had been widely different. Absolute monarchy in the former country had, to a far greater extent than in England, swallowed up local life. On the other hand, the more the power of the French aristocracy dwindled in the provinces before that of the Crown, the more did the nobility flock to Court, where chivalrous manners, constantly carried to a higher pitch of refinement in the presence of the monarch, shone with unrivalled brilliancy. As regards religion, France had felt strongly the influence of the Reformation, but, as the separate worship of the Huguenots was perceived to be a hindrance to the unification of the State, this sect had been already deprived of its political privileges, and the suppression of its religious liberties was soon to follow. No religious quarrels at present disturbed the outward calm of French society. Even in the sphere of taste the prevailing force of absolutism made itself felt. The supposed Aristotelian doctrine of the dramatic unities, originated in Italy by Scaliger and Castelvetro, had travelled across the Alps 1 Hallam, Constitutional History of England, chap. xi. and had prepared the way for the dictatorial system of criticism that was being elaborated by Boileau. The splendid appearance caused by the union of all these accomplishments in a single society, turned the admiring gaze of the world to the Court of Louis XIV. To transplant such a highly centralised institution to the soil of England was obviously impossible: an imitation of it was certain to end in caricature. But the ground was clear for the experiment. The English Court was for the moment a perfectly self-contained society, and whatever manner of life the King chose to establish there would be copied by all the vulgar followers of vogue and fashion. It is true that the immediate influence of the Court did not extend far beyond a small district in London, of which St. James's was the centre, and the various parks and gardens where the polite world assembled the extreme boundaries. It is true, too, that the intellectual interests of those who depended on the Court were as limited as their local habitation. Drinking, card-playing, and love-making were their principal amusements, and in the latter diversion only a few chance phrases showed that the courtier was the lineal descendant of the ancient knight. The fops of the period still kept up the Provençal jargon of "servants," "cruelty," "danger," killing eyes," "the unpardonable sin of talking.' But, in spite of their chedreux perruques, their clothes scented with pulvilio, orange, and jasmine, their French phrases, introduced at every tenth word-in their often clownish conception of courtly manners, they fell almost as far short of the still chivalrous aristocracy of France as did their country dances of the stately minuet. "He has been ". says Bellair in The Man of Mode, describing Sir Fopling Flutter" as the sparkish word is, brisk upon the ladies already; he was yesterday at my aunt Townley's, and gave Mrs. Loveit a catalogue of his good qualities under the character of a complete gentleman, who, according to Sir Fopling, ought to dress well, dance well, fence well, have a genius for love-letters, an agreeable voice for a chamber, be very amorous, something discreet, but not " |