including The Destruction of Jerusalem (1677), Thyestes (1681), and Caligula (1698). Elkanah Settle (1648-1724), Dryden's 'Doeg', wrote a number of heroic plays, the least despicable of which, The Empress of Morocco, was cried up for a while against Dryden's triumphs in this kind. A better playwright than either of the foregoing was Nathaniel Lee (1653 ?-1692), who wrote rhyming heroic plays, blank verse tragedies, and one tragi-comedy. Best in the first kind are Nero (1675) and Sophonisba (1676); in the second, The Rival Queens (1677), Mithridates (1678), and Theodosius (1680). Lee's style is wild and ranting: he has been over-praised by certain modern critics; but he did not lack poetry, and sometimes shows dramatic power. He The greatest tragic playwright of the period is undoubtedly Otway Thomas Otway (1651-1685). Otway was an Oxford man, had failed as an actor, and was for some time in the Army. His first play was an unsuccessful tragedy, Alcibiades (1675), in which appeared the celebrated actress Mrs. Barry, for whom he entertained an unrewarded and life-long passion. subsequently adapted two plays from the French, and in 1678 wrote his first comedy, Friendship in Fashion. He had little comic talent: his Soldier's Fortune (1681) is mediocre, and its sequel, The Atheist (1684), far below mediocrity. In tragedy his work is very uneven few would praise his Caius Marius (1680); and his rhymed Don Carlos (1676), though it contains spirited passages, inevitably suffers by comparison with the masterpieces on the same theme by Schiller and Alfieri. His fame depends ultimately on two plays, The Orphan (1680) and Venice Preserved (1682). In The Orphan, Polydore impersonates his twin-brother Castalio, and thus wins the last favour from Castalio's loving bride, Monimia. This cruel situation and its tragic sequel are developed with psychological insight and tragic force. But Otway's greatest and most famous play is Venice Preserved. Here, the tragic conflict is waged in the soul of Jaffier, who is distracted between the claims of his beloved fellow-conspirators and the plea of his passionately worshipped wife, Belvidera, whose father's life is threatened by their schemes. The scenes between Jaffier, Belvidera, and Pierre, Belvidera's rival for Jaffier's soul, are developed with moving power. It is difficult to share Taine's enthusiasm for the comic scenes in this play on the other hand, the criticism 1 is surely mistaken which denies poetry to him who gave to the distracted Belvidera the lines beginning, Come, come, come', or inspired Pierre to say, in the course of two consecutive speeches : Burn! First burn, and level Venice to thy ruin. : What, starve like beggars' brats in frosty weather Under a hedge, and whine ourselves to death! 1 Cf. Professor Saintsbury, Short History of English Literature, p. 501. and Revenge! the attribute of gods: they stamped it It is true, on the other hand, that Otway's prose style is far Southerne Thomas Southerne (1660-1746), during his long life, wrote and Rowe. many plays. His comedies have little merit. The best of his tragedies are The Fatal Marriage (1694) and Oronooko, or The Royal Slave (1696), adapted from Aphra Behn's novel of the same name. Southerne was coupled with Nicholas Rowe by Pope as being sure for the passions'. The best scenes of his best plays are effective, though far from great. Like Southerne, Nicholas Rowe (1674-1718) wrote many plays, and, like him, he owes what dramatic fame he possesses to two tragedies, The Fair Penitent (1703) and Jane Shore (1714). The first is partly adapted from Massinger's Fatal Dowry, and is written in glossy pseudo-Fletcherian blank verse, which is as easy to read as it is difficult to remember or to like. Its situations are developed with a certain skill, but are utterly lacking in tragic depth. In this play, as in others, Rowe freely tags his scenes with homilies of this kind: Restora By such examples are we taught to prove Death, or some worse misfortunes, soon divide Jane Shore is a much better play. Rowe tells us that it was The spirit and tendency of Dryden's age may be best illustion trated by the fact that of its three greatest poems, two were Poetry satires. The Hudibras (1663-78) of Samuel Butler (1612Butler's 1680) is far more loose in form than Absalom and Achitophel, Hudibras. but its looseness, like that of Don Juan, is deliberate, and a distinctive literary virtue. It is of great length, and is written in the rhyming octosyllabic couplet, which Butler handles with rollicking ease and vigour. Mock-heroic in form, it describes the manifold adventures of the knight Hudibras and his squire Rollo, in whom, as in their rapscallion opponents, Butler satirizes the puritanical foes of royalty. His sneers at their hypocrisy and folly are unceasing, and are enhanced by the imposing classical precedents devised for the deeds of Crowdero the fiddler, Talgol the butcher, and many another undistinguished worthy. The brilliant humour of the poem is greatly helped, again as in Don Juan, by its author's skill and zest in the use of fantastic rhymes. Hudibras had a vast popularity, largely due to the eager popular reaction against Puritanism. The best known of Butler's shorter poems is The Elephant in the Moon, directed against a member of the Royal Society who had mistaken for an elephant a fly in the lens of a telescope through which he was viewing the moon. Of far less importance as a satirist is John Oldham (1653- Oldham 1683), whose fiercely vituperative Satires upon the Jesuits and are an instructive contrast to the calm and lofty scorn of others. Dryden. The satirical work of Marvell and Denham has been already noticed. There is much minor satire during the period, and it is interesting to notice that writer after writer published poems entitled Instructions to a Painter, after Waller's poem of this title. Outside satire, a peculiar variety of verse was being developed in the critical poem. This kind, which was to reach its height in Pope's Essay on Criticism, has for its chief contemporary examples An Essay_upon Poetry by John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, and An Essay on Translated Verse by Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon. Though neither production has much value for ourselves, both had great contemporary vogue. Mulgrave's verse was praised by Johnson for its correctness', Roscommon's by Pope for its respectability. Considerably more important is the work of certain lyric Rochester poets of the period. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1648- and Sed1680), wrote a satirical masterpiece, A Satire against Mankind; ley. but he is best known by his songs, the most exquisite of which are perhaps Absent from thee I languish still' and ' I cannot change as others do'. The beautiful poem once considered his masterpiece Why dost thou shade thy lovely face? '—is now known to be by another hand. A great deal of Rochester's verse is licentious, even beyond the standard of the time. The finest lyric of Sir Charles Sedley (1639-1701) is that beginning, Love still has something of the sea but hardly less perfect in their lighter kind are the two Phyllis Why then should I seek further store When change itself can give no more Sedley had been represented as 'Lisideius' in Dryden's Essay Restora tion Prose. 6 1 satirist and lyrist. For ourselves he lives chiefly by his spirited ballad, or song, To all you ladies now on land', said on more than doubtful authority to have been written at sea during the First Dutch War (1665), the night before an engagement. Others who have left one fine lyric or more to posterity are Thomas Flatman, Aphra Behn, and the playwrights Etherege and Otway. General qualities of Restoration prose-Cowley, Temple, Bunyan, Halifax others Religious writers Diarists Evelyn, Pepys, and others THE trend of prose after the Restoration, as we have seen, was increasingly toward clearness, simplicity, and ease; and here, as elsewhere, Dryden illustrates and heads the new movement. The reasons for the change are many and complicated. The example of France certainly counts for much; and the models she supplied were various. Montaigne, familiar for a full half-century in Florio's translation, strongly affected the prose of Cowley and Dryden and Temple, and, through Cotton's more recent version (1685), in some degree influenced the style of Halifax. The result was a gain in intimacy, simplicity, and ease. But more recent French writers, such as Pascal and La Bruyère, were eagerly read by Dryden and his contemporaries, and the beauty of their style naturally had a strong influence upon men already bent on giving their language classic form. Furthermore, the writings of such critics as Boileau, Le Bossu, Rapin, and Dacier, had greatly quickened the interest of English writers in all matters making for correct' expression. It is possible, however, here, as in drama, to exaggerate the foreign influence and neglect the native. The plain style had existed in English from and before the day of Latimer, had been carried on by Hooker, and revived by Clarendon and Hobbes. It had often been practised in conscious reaction against ornate extravagance, and though it had never yet attained the suppleness and ease which might qualify it to become a universal medium, the tendency which it embodies must not be under-rated. A further native factor must be sought in the attempt of the newlyfounded Royal Society to evolve and fix a style of writing which should be apt for scientific demonstration. This effort is described in a notable passage of Bishop Sprat's history of the Society 2 (1667). Though all of these influences may 1 For more about this matter, see 'The Court Poets', by Charles Whibley, Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. viii, p. 218. 2 "They have therefore been most vigorous in putting in execution the only remedy that can be found for this extravagance, and that has been be traced in the making of the new prose, it is difficult to disengage any one of them from the general result, or to say that it predominated. A good deal of the literary striving towards order probably had its counterpart in the social forces which were working up toward the Revolution and the refounding of English life on a sounder and stronger basis; but whatever be its origins, the new tendency is unmistakable, and is seen in the style of many men. The prose writings of Tillotson have been discussed elsewhere. Dryden professed to have used him as a model, but the debt cannot have been a great one. More important is the prose of Abraham Cowley, which Cowley. chiefly consists of essays, and bridges the gulf between the old way of writing and the new. The transition may be clearly seen from a comparison of his Discourse concerning Oliver Cromwell (1661) with his later essays Of Solitude and Of Greatness. In the Discourse Cowley's periods are often unwieldy : in the essays they have admirable ease and balance. Throughout his later writings there is something of the intimacy and quietism which go to make the charm of Lamb. The prose of Sir William Temple (1628-1699) received the Temple. highest praise from Swift and Johnson, and was undoubtedly regarded as a model by the eighteenth century. To our own age it seems to achieve greatness only at moments, and for the rest, to be polished and agreeable. His works consist of essays (Miscellanea, 1680-1701), memoirs, and of the letters published after his death by Swift, who had at one time lived with him at Moor Park as his secretary. The letters are interesting, not only for their personal charm, but for the light they throw on contemporary politics and diplomacy. The essays deal with a multitude of subjects, including political science, literary criticism, gout, and gardening. The best known, though not the most charming, are those Upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1690) and Upon Poetry. 6 All the writers just mentioned ensued simplicity; but their Bunyan. simplicity was the result of much craft and striving. John Bunyan was simple after another fashion. I could', he says, have stepped into a style much higher than this in which I have here discoursed, and could have adorned all things more than here I have seemed to do but I dare not. God did not play in tempting of me; neither did I play when I sunk as into a bottomless pit, when the pangs of hell caught hold upon me; wherefore I may not play in relating of them, a constant resolution to reject all amplification, digressions, and swellings of style to return back to the primitive purity and shortness, when men delivered so many things almost in an equal number of words. They have exacted from all their members a close naked natural way of speaking, positive expressions, clear senses, a native easiness, bringing all things as near the mathematical plainness as they can, and preferring the language of artizans, countrymen, and merchants before that of poets or scholars.' |