and never looked upon literature save as a means for converting sinners. He became what we should call an evangelist, and in time a famous preacher of great influence throughout England. Many years of his life were spent in jail, for in those days dissenting preachers were considered law-breakers, and while in jail he composed many of his works. His masterpiece, The Pilgrim's Progress, stands alone, the greatest allegory in all English literature and, next to the Bible, the one book that has most greatly influenced the moral life of the English people. It should be noted that Paradise Lost and Pilgrim's Progress, the only great Puritan masterpieces, belong chronologically to the next period, for they were not published till after the Restoration The Puritans in 1660. As a class, the Puritans were not art-loving; to many of them music and poetry and art were vanities, or worse. Literature, save that of great genius which no unfavorable conditions can ever suppress, could not be expected from people holding such views. Yet to think that these two masterpieces are the only products of Puritanism would be as great an error as to think that Puritanism came to an abrupt end when the banished Stuarts returned to England. The political supremacy of the Puritans was brief, but their influence upon national character was lasting; and the character of a nation is sure to be reflected in its literature. CHAPTER XXVII RESTORATION PERIOD: 1660-1700 John Dryden 1631-1700 Plays, satires, translations, critical essays; †Alexander's Feast Rebound from When Charles II and his followers returned to England after their long banishment, there was a notable rebound from the straight-laced Puritan rule of Commonwealth days. The theatres, closed since 1642, were reopened, and for the first time the French custom of permitting women to act was followed. Few of the older dramatists remained, but new playwrights straightway appeared whose clever, witty comedies picturing the follies of polite society delighted the town. We should like to believe these pictures overdrawn, so shamelessly dissolute are they; but we have only to read the diary of Samuel Pepys, a London tailor's son who rose to be secretary to the admiralty, to be convinced that fashionable London was as immoral as it was gay. This gossipy diary in which Pepys recorded, in cipher, the minutest details of his life, was intended for his eye alone. Its testimony is therefore reliable. The French influence Many have attributed this state of affairs to the King's long stay in France. Certain it is that writers of tragedy were influenced by French models in which rhyme took the place of blank verse, and the classical unities of time, place, and action were observed. How inferior Restoration tragedy is to Elizabethan may be seen by comparing Dryden's All for Love with Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, two plays based upon the same historic events. Although the dramatists constructed their plays after French rules, they recognized Shakespeare's genius. He was considered somewhat barbarous and antiquated, however, and a number of his plays were rewritten, the plot construction changed, the language modernized, and rhyme substituted for blank verse! Satirical poetry Of the non-dramatic literature of this period, it is noticeable that a large part is satirical poetry. One of the most popular books of the day was Samuel Butler's Hudibras, a burlesque romance ridiculing the Puritans. It was an age of criticism and satire, and poetry was made to do much of the mean work of political warfare now carried on by our newspapers. But the political wrangles of those early times when the Whig and Tory parties were newly formed are so far away from us that the long, clever, biting satires of the day are no longer read save by students. As for prose, the Restoration period was preeminently one of prose, most of which lies without the pale of pure literature, if we except the comedies already A period of mentioned. Sermons, histories, scientific prose preworks, and the like, we may disregard, eminently though pieces of much less excellence have received notice in earlier periods. When in 1662 the Royal Society (for the cultivation of the natural sciences) was founded, one of its regulations urged the members to strive after clearness, directness, and conversational ease in their writings rather than after cleverness and ornamentation. Purity, clearness, combined with ease and polish, formed the ideal which chastened Restoration prose generally. No attempt was made to render it poetical, after the manner of the Elizabethans. Although it was a time of unusual intellectual brilliancy, the period produced but one great writer, John Dryden, a lifelong man of letters, lacking in the creaDryden tive imagination which lifts Shakespeare and Milton above their times, lacking too in moral and emotional qualities, but a man of great intellect and a master craftsman able to use his pen along many lines of composition. Twenty or more plays stand to his credit. His non-dramatic poetry fills eight hundred pages or more, closely packed, and his critical essays, most of which are found as prefaces to his plays, are models of clear, vigorous, rapid English. His best tragedies out-top all contemporary drama. He is the first great English satirist. His translation of the Æneid remains a standard today. His songs are perhaps the best-which is poor praiseamong the inferior ones of his time. He wrote heroic verse (rhyming pentameter couplets) with greater skill than any of his contemporaries. That his works are now but seldom read is due to the fact that he was, after all, merely a craftsman, not a genius, no greater than the times for which he wrote. The whim of fortune is well illustrated by the fact that to the great body of readers he is best known today not by any of his more ambitious pieces but by Alexander's Feast, a song written to order for a musical society, in honor of St. Cecilia. CHAPTER XXVIII QUEEN ANNE PERIOD: 1700-1744 Daniel Defoe 1661 (?)-1731 Robinson Crusoe °Gulliver's Travels The Spectator The Spectator †Rape of the Lock, †Transl. of the Iliad General characteristics This period extends from the death of Dryden to the death of his successor, Pope, yet it most commonly bears the name of the queen during whose brief reign (1702-1714) the important writers came into prominence. It is also called the Classical or Augustan Age, for Latin models were followed as in Dryden's day, and the authors who flourished under the Roman emperor Augustus were reverenced as masters. Another of its names is the Age of Prose. Of the five writers whose names appear in the table, the first four are prose writers, and not a little of Queen Anne poetry is of the satirical or didactic order, which in spirit most nearly approaches prose. Finally, it might well be called the Age of Political Controversy. Party feeling ran high, and the weapon used in political warfare was the pamphlet. Party leaders were glad to secure the services of bright young university graduates of literary ability. At no other time in England's history have men of letters been so closely connected with public affairs and never so richly rewarded for party service. Of the four prose writers whom we are to consider, three were among the most prominent of political partisans; |