Halleck's New English Literature · Chapter 54Chapter VI: From the Restoration, 1660, to the Publication of Pamela, 1740
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History of the Period.—This chapter opens with the Restoration of Charles II. (1660-1685) in 1660 and ends before the appearance, in 1740, of a new literary creation, Richardson's Pamela, the novel of domestic life and character. This period is often called the age of Dryden and Pope, the two chief poets of the time. When Oliver Cromwell died, the restoration of the monarchy was inevitable. The protest against the Puritanic view of life had become strong. Reaction always results when excessive restraint in any direction is removed.
During his exile, Charles had lived much in France and had become accustomed to the dissolute habits of the French court. The court of Charles II. was the most corrupt ever known in England. The Puritan virtues were laughed to scorn by the ribald courtiers who attended Charles II. John Evelyn (1620-1706) and Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) left diaries, which give interesting pictures of the times. The one by Pepys is especially vivid.
In 1663 Samuel Butler (1612-1680) published a famous satire, entitled Hudibras. Its object was to ridicule everything that savored of Puritanism. This satire became extremely popular in court circles, and was the favorite reading of the king.
[Illustration: SAMUEL BUTLER.]
Charles II. excluded all but Episcopalians from holding office, either in towns or in Parliament. Only those who sanctioned the Episcopal prayer book were allowed to preach. In order to keep England's friendship and to be able to look to her for assistance in time of war, Louis XIV. of France paid Charles II. £100,000 a year to act as a French agent. In this capacity, Charles II. began against Holland. From a position of commanding importance under Cromwell, England had become a third-rate power, a tail to a French kite.
James II. (1685-1688), who succeeded his brother, Charles II., undertook to suspend laws and to govern like a despot. He was driven out in the bloodless revolution of 1688 by his son-in-law, William (1689-1702), and his daughter Mary. William of Orange, who thus became king of England, was a prince of Holland. This revolution led to the Bill of Rights (1689), the "third pillar of the British Constitution," the two previous being Magna Charta and the Petition of Right. The foundations were now firmly laid for a strictly constitutional monarchy in England. From this time the king has been less important, sometimes only a mere figure-head.
This revolution, coupled with the increasing rivalry of France in trade and colonial expansion, altered the foreign policy of England. Holland was the head of the European coalition against France; and William III. was influential in having England join it. For the larger part of the eighteenth century there was intermittent war with France.
Under Anne (1702-1714) the Duke of Marlborough won many remarkable victories against France. The most worthy goal of French antagonism, expansion of trade, and displacement of the French in America and India, was not at this time clearly apparent.
Anne's successor was the Hanoverian Elector, George I. (1714-1727), a descendant of the daughter of James I., who had married a German prince. At the time of his accession, George I. was fifty-four years old and could speak no English. He seldom attended the meetings of his cabinet, since he could not understand the deliberations. This circumstance led to further decline of royal power, so that his successor, George II. (1727-1760), said: "Ministers are the king in this country."
The history of the rest of this period centers around the great prime minister, Robert Walpole, whose ministry lasted from 1715-1717 and from 1721-1742. His motto was, "Let sleeping dogs lie"; and he took good care to offend no one by proposing any reforms, either political or religious. "Every man has his price" was the succinct statement of his political philosophy; and he did not hesitate to secure by bribery the adoption of his measures in Parliament. He succeeded in three aims: (1) in making the house of Hanover so secure on the throne that it has not since been displaced, (2) in giving fresh impetus to trade and industry at home by reducing taxation, and (3) in strengthening the navy and encouraging colonial commerce.
Change in Foreign Influence.—Of all foreign influences from the beginning of the Renaissance to the Restoration, the literature of Italy had been the most important. French influence now gained the ascendancy.
There were several reasons for this change. (1) France under the great Louis XIV. was increasing her political importance. (2) She now had among her writers men who were by force of genius fitted to exert wide influence. Among such, we may instance Molière (1622-1673), who stands next to Shakespeare in dramatic power. (3) Charles II. and many Cavaliers had passed the time of their exile in France. They became familiar with French literature, and when they returned to England in 1660, their taste had already been influenced by French models.
Change in the Subject Matter of Literature.—The Elizabethan age impartially held the mirror up to every type of human emotion. The writers of the Restoration and of the first half of the eighteenth century, as a class, avoided any subject that demanded a portrayal of deep and noble feeling. In this age, we catch no glimpse of a Lady Macbeth in the grasp of remorse or of a Lear bending over a dead Cordelia.
The popular subjects were those which appealed to cold intellect; and these were, for the most part, satirical, didactic, and argumentative. The two greatest poets of the period, John Dryden and his successor, Alexander Pope, usually chose such subjects. John Locke (1632-1704), a great prose writer of this age, shows in the very title of his most famous work, Of the Conduct of the Understanding, what he preferred to discuss. That book opens with the statement, "The last resort a man has recourse to in the conduct of himself is his understanding." This declaration, which is not strictly true, embodies a pronounced tendency of the age, which could not understand that the world of feeling is no less real than that of the understanding.
One good result of the ascendancy of the intellect was seen in scientific investigation. The Royal Society was founded in 1662 to study natural phenomena and to penetrate into the hidden mysteries of philosophy and life.
The Advance of Prose.—In each preceding age, the masterpieces were poetry; but before the middle of the eighteenth century we find the prose far surpassing the poetry. Dryden, almost immediately after the Restoration, shows noteworthy advance in modern prose style. He avoids a Latinized inversion, such as the following, with which Milton begins the second sentence of his Areopagitica (1644):—
"And me perhaps each of these dispositions, as the subject was whereon I entered, may have at other times variously affected …"
Here, the object "me" is eighteen words in advance of its predicate. The sentence might well have ended with the natural pause at "affected," but Milton adds fifty-one more words. We may easily understand by comparison why the term "modern" is applied to the prose of Dryden and of his successors Addison and Steele. To emphasize the precedence of these writers in the development of modern prose is no disparagement to Bunyan's style, which is almost as quaint and as excellent as that of the 1611 version of the Bible.
French influence was cumulative in changing the cumbersome style of Milton's prose to the polished, neatly-turned sentences of Addison. Matthew Arnold says: "The glory of English literature is in poetry, and in poetry the strength of the eighteenth century does not lie. Nevertheless the eighteenth century accomplished for us an immense literary progress, and its very shortcomings in poetry were an instrument to that progress, and served it. The example of Germany may show us what a nation loses from having no prose style… French prose is marked in the highest degree by the qualities of regularity, uniformity, precision, balance… The French made their poetry also conform to the law which was molding their prose… This may have been bad for French poetry, but it was good for French prose."
The same influence which gave vigor, point, and definiteness to the prose, necessary for the business of the world, helped to dwarf the poetry. If both could not have advanced together, we may be thankful that the first part of the eighteenth century produced a varied prose of such high excellence.
The Classic School.—The literary lawgivers of this age held that a rigid adherence to certain narrow rules was the prime condition of producing a masterpiece. Indeed, the belief was common that a knowledge of rules was more important than genius.
The men of this school are called classicists because they held that a study of the best works of the ancients would disclose the necessary guiding rules. No style that did not closely follow these rules was considered good. Horace, seen through French spectacles, was the classical author most copied by this school. His Epistles and Satires were considered models.
The motto of the classicists was polished regularity. Pope struck the keynote of the age when he said:—
"True wit is nature to advantage dress'd, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd."[1]
These two lines show the form of the "riming couplet," which the classical poets adopted. There is generally a pause at the end of each line; and each couplet, when detached from the context, will usually make complete sense.
Edmund Waller (1606-1687), remembered today for his single couplet:—
"The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new light through chinks that time has made,"
had used this form of verse before 1630; but it was reserved for Dryden, and especially for Pope, to bring the couplet to a high degree of perfection. A French critic advised poets to compose the second line of the couplet first. No better rule could have been devised for dwarfing poetic power and for making poetry artificial.
Voltaire, a French classicist, said, "I do not like the monstrous irregularities of Shakespeare." An eighteenth-century classicist actually endeavored to improve Hamlet's soliloquy by putting it in riming couplets. These lines from Macbeth show that Shakespeare will not tolerate such leading strings nor allow the ending of the lines to interfere with his sense:—
"…Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued against The deep damnation of his taking-off."
A later romantic poet called the riming couplet "rocking-horse meter"; and said that the reading of many couplets reminded him of round trips on a rocking-horse.
Advances are usually made by overstressing some one point. The classicists taught the saving grace of style, the need of restraint, balance, clearness, common sense. We should therefore not despise the necessary lesson which English literature learned from such teaching,—a lesson which has never been forgotten.
The Drama.—The theaters were reopened at the time of the Restoration. It is interesting to read in the vivacious Diary of Samuel Pepys how he went in 1661 to see Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, "a play of itself the worst that I ever heard." The next year he characterizes A Midsummer Night's Dream as "the most ridiculous play that I ever saw." He liked the variety in Macbeth, and calls The Tempest "the most innocent play that I ever saw."
The Restoration dramatists, who were dominated by French influence, so often sneered at morality and the virtues of the home, that they have paid the penalty of being little read in after times. The theater has not yet entirely recovered from the deep-seated prejudice which was so intensified by the coarse plays which flourished for fifty years after the Restoration.
Although John Dryden is best known among a large number of Restoration dramatists,[2] he did better work in another field. William Congreve (1670-1729) made the mast distinctive contribution to the new comedy of manners. Descended from an old landowning family in Staffordshire, he was for a while a mate of Jonathan Swift at Trinity College, Dublin. In 1691 Congreve was entered in the Middle Temple, London, to begin the study of law, but he soon turned playwright. His four comedies,—The Old Bachelor, The Double Dealer, Love for Love, The Way of the World,—and one tragedy, The Mourning Bride, were all written in the last decade of the seventeenth century. After 1700 he wrote no more plays, although he lived nearly thirty years longer. On his death, in 1729, he was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Congreve attempts to picture the manners of contemporary society, and he does not penetrate far below the surface of life. He is not read for the depth of his thought, but for his humor and for the clear, pointed style of his prose comedies. George Meredith says:—
"Where Congreve excels all his English rivals is in his literary force, and a succinctness of style peculiar to him… He is at once precise and voluble. If you have ever thought upon style, you will acknowledge it to be a signal accomplishment. In this he is a classic, and he is worthy of treading a measure with Molière."
Congreve's best comedies are Love for Love and The Way of the World. The majority of critics agree with Meredith in calling Miss Millimant, who is the heroine of the latter play, "an admirable, almost a lovable heroine." Meredith illustrates one phase of his own idea of the comic spirit, by the language which Miss Millimant uses in accepting her lover: "If I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a wife." Congreve's peculiar genius is well shown in his ability to make her manner of speech reveal her characteristics. His plays are unfortunately disfigured with the coarseness of the age.
The blemishes in the drama did not exist, however, without an emphatic contemporary protest. Jeremy Collier (1650-1729), a non-conforming bishop, in his Short View of the Immorality of the Stage (1698), complains that the unworthy hero of one of Congreve's plays "is crowned for the man of merit, has his wishes thrown into his lap, and makes the happy exit."
Such attacks had their weight and prepared the way far the more moral sentimental comedies of Richard Steele and succeeding playwrights. The sacrifice of plot to moral purpose and the deliberate introduction of scenes designed to force an appeal to sentiment caused the later drama to deteriorate in a different way. We shall see that the natural hearty humor of Goldsmith's comedy, She Stoops to Conquer(1773), afforded a welcome relief from such plays.