tion. It was, instead, written, he says, "for my private exercise and satisfaction; . . . and being a private exercise directed to myself, what is delivered therein was rather a memorial unto me than an example or rule unto any other." Circulated in manuscript, it was copied by many; and finally got into print "in a most depraved copy." In order to justify himself he published in the following year an authorized edition. 66 a belief How Religio Medici could have been a rule" to many is Idifficult to see. It contains a curious mixture of so-called orthodoxy and heresy, of the most conventional thinking and the most progressive. He accepts the doctrine of eternal punishment, but rejects the doctrine of a hell of fire: "I feel sometimes a hell within myself; Lucifer keeps his Court in my breast." His belief in miracles would satisfy the extremest Puritan; but he also believed that " many are saved who to men seem reprobated, and many are reprobated who in the opinion and sentence of man stand elected to which scarcely a follower of Cromwell would assent. The second part of the book is devoted to the “virtue of charity," with which the author's contemporaries were so slightly blessed, and the author himself so richly. Nothing could show better than does this section Browne's lack of sympathy with his time "I am of a constitution so general," he says, "that it consorts and sympathiseth with all things." And again: "In all disputes, so much as there is of passion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose; for then reason, like a bad hound, spends upon a false scent, and forsakes the question first started." What a commentary on this sentiment is the action of Parliament in conferring virtually absolute power on Cromwell just seven years after it had executed Charles for exercising power no more absolute ! A typical passage, showing the characteristics of his vocabulary and his sentence-structure, is a fine one on music, which in DeQuincey's opinion is one of the two things "said adequately on the subject of music in all literature." 991 "It is my temper, and I like it the better, to affect all harmony; and sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is music wherever there is a harmony, order, or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres; for those wellordered motions and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. Whosoever is harmonically composed delights in harmony; which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against all church music. For myself, not only from my obedience, but my particular genius, I do embrace it; for even that vulgar and tavern music, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the First Composer." 1 The other cited by DeQuincey is in Twelfth Night, I, i. CHAPTER VI FROM THE RESTORATION OF CHARLES II TO THE DEATH OF DRYDEN (1660-1700) - Puritan Repression. It will be readily inferred from what has been said in the preceding chapter that life under Puritan government was not happy. A certain sort of people will perhaps always derive a certain sort of pleasure from a life of repression, self-denial, and prohibition of all forms of amusement; but the class is never numerous, and it is likely to decrease when the period of repression is too long extended. It must be kept in mind that in this instance the prohibitions arose not because of the effect on the amusers, but because of that on the amused. The Puritans prohibited bear baiting, not because it gave pain to the bears but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. The Change in Government. The great majority of Englishmen had doubtless wearied of the Puritan régime long before the end came. Cromwell, however, by his overmastering personality, became autocrat in fact if not in name in 1653; and he forced the distasteful life on the people for five years longer. At his death his son Richard succeeded to the title of Lord Protector; but having no ability or taste for leadership, he resigned in six months. After about nine months of a pretence of government by the military leaders, General Monk gained control of London, and brought about the election of a "free Parliament," which immediately invited Charles II to return and take his kingdom. The Change in Life. - Charles and his followers had been in exile on the Continent, chiefly in France, during the Commonwealth. They were a pleasure-loving, extravagant lot, who had been entertained almost to satiety by the gay nation. On reaching England they set to work to make over the nation on a French pattern; and it was not long before French standards pervaded the life of the City, and the literature. of England. The literature most in demand was drama, and a host of writers appeared to give the Court and the City what was demanded. Life at least that of the theatregoing circles was on an exceedingly low moral plane, and it was accurately reflected in Restoration drama, especially comedy. - Restoration Comedy. Of the comic writers of this period it is difficult to speak too severely, and unnecessary here to speak at length. They not only made no effort at originality they did not even travel far for their models and materials. They worked over the greatest of French dramas, chiefly the comedies of Molière, according to French dramatic theory. They remade Shakspere and other Elizabethans to suit the taste of an age not so barbarous." Worse, however, than lack of originality, is the unblushing immorality of Restoration drama, which constantly pictures vice triumphant, which "laughs not merely indulgently at vice, but harshly at the semblance of virtue." 1 66 The Swing of the Pendulum. That this standard was allowed to remain for forty years recalls the fact that a pendulum swings as far in one direction as the other. An enforced seriousness, morality, restraint, gave way to a deliberately sought levity, immorality, licence. If people thought of sin 1 Nettleton, English Drama of the Restoration, page 7. at all, they took the position expressed by one of the Cavalier poets, that sin consists, not in doing wrong, but in being found out. Not that the entire nation fell to this low level: there were many exceptions. But the upper class in state and society was morally down, and this class determined the literature of the period. Before studying the greatest writer of the day it will be well to look briefly at a work which admirably supplements Restoration comedy in picturing the life of the time. This work is the Diary of Samuel Pepys.1 Life. SAMUEL PEPYS, 1633-1703 Pepys was born in London, the son of a tailor. He attended St. Paul's School in the City, and Magdalene College, Cambridge, being graduated in 1650. At the age of twenty-two, without occupation or prospects, he married; and of his life for the succeeding four or five years we have no information. Having, however, secured the favor and patronage of his distant kinsman, Sir Edward Montagu, an influential man in the Restoration, Pepys became in 1660 Clerk of the Acts of the Navy Board. Soon afterward he became Secretary of the Admiralty; and to him, it is said, much credit is due for improvements in administration of the navy. The Diary, begun in 1660, Pepys was compelled to discontinue in 1669 because of the weakness of his eyes. He was an early member of the Royal Society and became its presi 1 According to H. B. Wheatley, authority on Pepys, the most usual pronunciation of the name to-day is Peps, though most bearers of the name say Peeps, and one branch of the family has said Pep-pis for at least a hundred years. Mr. Wheatley thinks the pronunciation of the diarist's own day was undoubtedly Peeps. See Samuel Pepys and the World He Lived In, second edition, preface. |