Ascend to every part to make it green, And pay your love with fruit when harvest comes. Sel. Then you confess your love is cold as yet, And winter's in your heart. Inf. Mistake me not, Selina, for I say My heart is cold, not love. Sel. And yet your love is from your heart, I'll warrant. My heart is cold in your displeasures only, And yet my love is fervent; for your eye, Casting out beams, maintains the flame it burns in. My heart is not mine own, 'tis yours, you have it. CALCHAS HYMN AT THE FUNERAL OF AJAX, from The glories of our blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things ; 66 THE Couldst thou spare one, and think the blemish recompensed To see me safe with the other? or a hand This white hand, that hath so often With admiration trembled on the lute, Till we have pray'd thee leave the strings awhile, And laid our ears close to thy ivory fingers, Suspecting all the harmony proceeded THE EXTINCTION OF DRAMA Thy other hand will miss a white companion, And owe my life to thee, so 'twere not bought 363 The declining art of drama suffered an abrupt and complete extinction at The Drama the breaking out of the Civil War. In March 1639, Davenant had had letters extinguished patent granted him for building a new theatre, but the site chosen was not found convenient, and he resigned his right. Sir Henry Herbert was still licensing plays early in 1642. Shirley's Sisters passed him in April of that year. In June he licensed a "new play called The Irish Rebellion," now not known to exist, and he noted "Here ended my allowance of plays, for the war began in August 1642." In September 1642, the Houses of Parliament published an ordinance that "whereas public sports do not well agree with public calamities, nor public stage-plays with the seasons of humiliation," all performances of the drama should cease. The law was carried out with great severity, and in February 1648 it was further enacted that all theatres should be dismantled, and all actors of plays, even in private, publicly whipped, the audiences being individually fined. This was actually carried out, for while some unfortunate players were giving a performance of Fletcher's Bloody Brother, a party of soldiers burst in and carried them off to punishment. It was not until May 1656, and then with great timidity and vigilance, that Davenant, who had been the last adventurer of the old school, came forward as the pioneer of the new, with an operatic entertainment at Rutland House, and drama arose again in England after a complete eclipse of fifteen years. CHAPTER IX JACOBEAN PROSE WHILE the condition of poetry and drama in the age which we are now considering was in a very high degree satisfactory and healthy, that of prose was singularly the reverse. The reign of James I. is one of the most discouraging in our history so far as the advance of prose style is concerned. Two English works of great importance, The Advancement of Learning, in 1605, and The History of the World, in 1614, have been described in an earlier chapter, for they belong to the maturity of those characteristically Elizabethan authors, Bacon and Raleigh. The English Bible, in its final form, is the glory of James I., but in like manner it has been discussed on previous pages, as representing, in its essential character, the revised and completed labours of many sixteenthcentury divines from Tyndale and Coverdale down to Parker and his bishops. The Bible belongs in its glory to no one man or set of men; it grew, in the eighty years of its evolution, like a cathedral. When these features, at all events, are removed from our field of vision, we are struck by the poverty of what remains. The reign of James I. was a period of verse; it was not a period of prose; and we do not discover one other masterpiece to chronicle. In the ordinary Jacobean prose which we have now to examine we observe a very singular lack of the qualities which belong to growth and encourage to hope. In the very days of Shakespeare, prose, without having reached maturity, is already in decay. The current divinity and history and romance of the early seventeenth century are on the downward, not the upward grade. The mass of them is ponderous, involved, pedantic in a degree not found in the imperfect but vigorous prose-writers of the sixteenth century. If we compare, in the matter of style, Samuel Purchas with Hakluyt, or Morton with Hooker, the decline in lucidity and strength is very remarkable. The whole manner has become complicated and loquacious, with a certain softness which is absolutely decadent. But the parlous state into which English prose was falling is still more surely and more instructively seen by a comparison of it with contemporary French prose. In the mere construction and arrangement of sentences, for instance, it is instructive to compare a page of one of Donne's sermons—and we have nothing better to produce of its kind—with one of Donne's immediate contemporary, St. Francis de Sales. The comparison is between a spirited barbarian and a finished man of the world. It may be said, however, that the literature of England had for centuries been at least fifty years behind that of France, and that English prose of the early seventeenth century ought to be weighed against French prose of the middle of the sixteenth. But in that case the advantage is none the less on the side of France. It is not that England did not happen to produce a Rabelais or a Montaigne, because the styles of these men were so extremely personal that they may not have had a direct influence on the national manner of expression. But what was missing in English prose were the formative forces applied by great authors who were a little less individual than Montaigne and Rabelais. For instance, Calvin used the French language with such concise severity, such bitter power, that every Frenchman who read his trenchant sentences instinctively tried to emulate his vigour; while, on the other hand, the sweetness and lightness of Amyot not merely fascinated his readers by their grace, but stimulated them to be graceful themselves. In England we had no one who in any measure acted upon our style as Calvin did on the French; while in place of Amyot, with his pure simplicity, we have to point to Lyly, with his affected amenities and his perilous balance of sentences. Here, indeed, there was stimulus and an encouragement to imitation, but of the most unwholesome kind, so that in fact, while acknowledging the merits of Lyly, we must charge his Euphuism with not a little of the decadence of Jacobean prose, since what he led his unfortunate disciples to do was to strain for delicate effects upon an instrument which was simply out of tune. It is perhaps not surprising that history did not flourish in England at the The historians beginning of the seventeenth century, for it merely underwent the depression which affected this branch of literature throughout Europe. But the difference between us and our neighbours was that they had enjoyed, at the close of the Middle Ages, valuable schools of history. In Commines, particularly, France had possessed a great chronicling statesman, a man who could at once be with those who were moving about the centre of affairs and observe the movements in the spirit of a philosopher. With all the romantic charm of Raleigh, he makes no pretension to be a psychologist; he is scarcely curious as to the reasons which guide men to their actions. The French historians of the sixteenth century had in no single case equalled Commines in genius, but they had followed him with careful enthusiasm. He was their model, and we in England had no great man to follow. Even the impassioned patriotism of the best Frenchmen, although not less felt on our side of the Channel, received far poorer expression, from the lack of skill and practice which our orators enjoyed. The style of the lesser English historians was artless and casual, and Sir JOHN HAYWARD took credit to himself for giving it a classical turn. Sir Henry Craik, who has recently drawn attention to his writings, holds that Heyward was justified in his self-gratulation, and that his books "mark a distinct step forward in the historical style." He attempted to improve upon the old humdrum chroniclers by arranging his events rhetorically, in the manner of Livy, whom he followed in putting dramatic speeches into the mouths of his prominent personages. This had been done by Machiavelli and others, and although it is contrary to modern scientific methods, it was not unfavourable to the literary form of history. A humbler writer was the industrious John Speed (see p. 89), who laboured under the disadvantage of a lack of education. He was a great collector and compiler, and before he essayed his own History of Great Britain, Speed not merely spent years in making himself acquainted with what had been gathered together by his predecessors, but he called in other and more learned men than himself to help him. Among these the most eminent was "that worthy repairer of eating Time's ruins," Sir Robert Cotton (see p. 80), who revised, corrected and polished the whole work before Speed ventured upon issuing it. Cotton was the leading antiquary of the age, and his "cabinets were unlocked, and his library continually set open to the free access" of Speed and of his army of assistants. These men had much in common with the restless city chronicler of a previous generation, John Stow. Like him, they thought mainly of collecting and arranging. The accuracy of the documents affected them little, and their philosophical import not at all, but they amassed material with the energy of the coral insect. While we mention their modest services, we should not forget those of Sir HENRY SPELMAN, who had something of the spirit of Stubbs and Freeman, since he would not adopt the rhetorical paraphrases at that time fashionable, but in compiling the civil affairs of the country down to Magna Charta, whenever he could do so printed them in the exact words of his authorities. But the excellent Spelman is hardly to be included among writers of English prose. Sir John Hayward From the scarce engraved portrait by Crispin de Passe Sir John Hayward (1564-1627) was born at Felixstowe about 1564, and was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. His First Year of Henry IV. appeared in 1599, with a dedication to Essex in such glowing terms that Queen Elizabeth ordered Bacon to examine the book for treason. The reply was that the Queen need not "rack his person," but his style, as he had committed no treason, but a great deal of felony by his plagiarisms. James I. liked Hay ward, and patronised his various publications, knighting him in 1619; and he acted as a sort of historiographer to the unfortunate Prince Henry. Hayward worked with Camden at Chelsea College. Sir Henry Spelman (1564-1641), a lifelong friend and associate of each of the preceding historians, was born at |