A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

A History of English Literature

R >> Robert Huntington Fletcher >> A History of English Literature




SUMMARY. The chief dramatists of the whole sixty years of the great period
may be conveniently grouped as follows: I. Shakspere's early
contemporaries, about 1580 to about 1593: Lyly, Peele, Greene, Kyd,
Marlowe. II. Shakspere. III. Shakspere's later contemporaries, under
Elizabeth and James I: Jonson, Chapman, Dekker, Heywood, Middleton,
Marston, Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster. IV. The last group, under James I
and Charles I, to 1642: Ford, Massinger, and Shirley.




CHAPTER VII

PERIOD V. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, 1603-1660. PROSE AND POETRY


(_For political and social facts and conditions, see above, page 141._
[Footnote: One of the best works of fiction dealing with the period is J.
H. Shorthouse's 'John Inglesant.'])

The first half of the seventeenth century as a whole, compared with the
Elizabethan age, was a period of relaxing vigor. The Renaissance enthusiasm
had spent itself, and in place of the danger and glory which had long
united the nation there followed increasing dissension in religion and
politics and uncertainty as to the future of England and, indeed, as to the
whole purpose of life. Through increased experience men were certainly
wiser and more sophisticated than before, but they were also more
self-conscious and sadder or more pensive. The output of literature did not
diminish, but it spread itself over wider fields, in general fields of
somewhat recondite scholarship rather than of creation. Nevertheless this
period includes in prose one writer greater than any prose writer of the
previous century, namely Francis Bacon, and, further, the book which
unquestionably occupies the highest place in English literature, that is
the King James version of the Bible; and in poetry it includes one of the
very greatest figures, John Milton, together with a varied and highly
interesting assemblage of lesser lyrists.

FRANCIS BACON, VISCOUNT ST. ALBANS, 1561-1626. [Footnote: Macaulay's
well-known essay on Bacon is marred by Macaulay's besetting faults of
superficiality and dogmatism and is best left unread.] Francis Bacon,
intellectually one of the most eminent Englishmen of all times, and chief
formulator of the methods of modern science, was born in 1561 (three years
before Shakspere), the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great
Seal under Queen Elizabeth and one of her most trusted earlier advisers.
The boy's precocity led the queen to call him her 'little Lord Keeper.' At
the age of twelve he, like Wyatt, was sent to Cambridge, where his chief
impression was of disgust at the unfruitful scholastic application of
Aristotle's ideas, still supreme in spite of a century of Renaissance
enlightenment. A very much more satisfactory three years' residence in
France in the household of the English ambassador was terminated in 1579
(the year of Spenser's 'Shepherd's Calendar') by the death of Sir Nicholas.
Bacon was now ready to enter on the great career for which his talents
fitted him, but his uncle by marriage, Lord Burghley, though all-powerful
with the queen, systematically thwarted his progress, from jealous
consciousness of his superiority to his own son. Bacon therefore studied
law, and was soon chosen a member of Parliament, where he quickly became a
leader. He continued, however, throughout his life to devote much of his
time to study and scholarly scientific writing.

On the interpretation of Bacon's public actions depends the answer to the
complex and much-debated question of his character. The most reasonable
conclusions seem to be: that Bacon was sincerely devoted to the public good
and in his earlier life was sometimes ready to risk his own interests in
its behalf; that he had a perfectly clear theoretical insight into the
principles of moral conduct; that he lacked the moral force of character to
live on the level of his convictions, so that after the first, at least,
his personal ambition was often stronger than his conscience; that he
believed that public success could be gained only by conformity to the low
standards of the age; that he fell into the fatal error of supposing that
his own preëminent endowments and the services which they might enable him
to render justified him in the use of unworthy means; that his sense of
real as distinguished from apparent personal dignity was distressingly
inadequate; and that, in general, like many men of great intellect, he was
deficient in greatness of character, emotion, fine feeling, sympathy, and
even in comprehension of the highest spiritual principles. He certainly
shared to the full in the usual courtier's ambition for great place and
wealth, and in the worldling's inclination to ostentatious display.

Having offended Queen Elizabeth by his boldness in successfully opposing an
encroachment on the rights of the House of Commons, Bacon connected himself
with the Earl of Essex and received from him many favors; but when Essex
attempted a treasonable insurrection in 1601, Bacon, as one of the Queen's
lawyers, displayed against him a subservient zeal which on theoretical
grounds of patriotism might appear praiseworthy, but which in view of his
personal obligations was grossly indecent. For the worldly prosperity which
he sought, however, Bacon was obliged to wait until the accession of King
James, after which his rise was rapid. The King appreciated his ability and
often consulted him, and he frequently gave the wisest advice, whose
acceptance might perhaps have averted the worst national disasters of the
next fifty years. The advice was above the courage of both the King and the
age; but Bacon was advanced through various legal offices, until in 1613 he
was made Attorney-General and in 1618 (two years after Shakspere's death)
Lord High Chancellor of England, at the same time being raised to the
peerage as Baron Verulam. During all this period, in spite of his better
knowledge, he truckled with sorry servility to the King and his unworthy
favorites and lent himself as an agent in their most arbitrary acts.
Retribution overtook him in 1621, within a few days after his elevation to
the dignity of Viscount St. Albans. The House of Commons, balked in an
attack on the King and the Duke of Buckingham, suddenly turned on Bacon and
impeached him for having received bribes in connection with his legal
decisions as Lord Chancellor. Bacon admitted the taking of presents
(against which in one of his essays he had directly cautioned judges), and
threw himself on the mercy of the House of Lords, with whom the sentence
lay. He appears to have been sincere in protesting later that the presents
had not influenced his decisions and that he was the justest judge whom
England had had for fifty years; it seems that the giving of presents by
the parties to a suit was a customary abuse. But he had technically laid
himself open to the malice of his enemies and was condemned to very heavy
penalties, of which two were enforced, namely, perpetual incapacitation
from holding public office, and banishment from Court. Even after this he
continued, with an astonishing lack of good taste, to live extravagantly
and beyond his means (again in disregard of his own precepts), so that
Prince Charles observed that he 'scorned to go out in a snuff.' He died in
1626 from a cold caught in the prosecution of his scientific researches,
namely in an experiment on the power of snow to preserve meat.

Bacon's splendid mind and unique intellectual vision produced, perhaps
inevitably, considering his public activity, only fragmentary concrete
achievements. The only one of his books still commonly read is the series
of 'Essays,' which consist of brief and comparatively informal jottings on
various subjects. In their earliest form, in 1597, the essays were ten in
number, but by additions from time to time they had increased at last in
1625 to fifty-eight. They deal with a great variety of topics, whatever
Bacon happened to be interested in, from friendship to the arrangement of a
house, and in their condensation they are more like bare synopses than
complete discussions. But their comprehensiveness of view, sureness of
ideas and phrasing, suggestiveness, and apt illustrations reveal the
pregnancy and practical force of Bacon's thought (though, on the other
hand, he is not altogether free from the superstitions of his time and
after the lapse of three hundred years sometimes seems commonplace). The
whole general tone of the essays, also, shows the man, keen and worldly,
not at all a poet or idealist. How to succeed and make the most of
prosperity might be called the pervading theme of the essays, and subjects
which in themselves suggest spiritual treatment are actually considered in
accordance with a coldly intellectual calculation of worldly advantage.

The essays are scarcely less notable for style than for ideas. With
characteristic intellectual independence Bacon strikes out for himself an
extremely terse and clear manner of expression, doubtless influenced by
such Latin authors as Tacitus, which stands in marked contrast to the
formless diffuseness or artificial elaborateness of most Elizabethan and
Jacobean prose. His unit of structure is always a short clause. The
sentences are sometimes short, sometimes consist of a number of connected
clauses; but they are always essentially loose rather than periodic; so
that the thought is perfectly simple and its movement clear and systematic.
The very numerous allusions to classical history and life are not the
result of affectation, but merely indicate the natural furnishing of the
mind of the educated Renaissance gentleman. The essays, it should be added,
were evidently suggested and more or less influenced by those of the great
French thinker, Montaigne, an earlier contemporary of Bacon. The hold of
medieval scholarly tradition, it is further interesting to note, was still
so strong that in order to insure their permanent preservation Bacon
translated them into Latin--he took for granted that the English in which
he first composed them and in which they will always be known was only a
temporary vulgar tongue.

But Bacon's most important work, as we have already implied, was not in the
field of pure literature but in the general advancement of knowledge,
particularly knowledge of natural science; and of this great service we
must speak briefly. His avowal to Burghley, made as early as 1592, is
famous: 'I have taken all knowledge to be my province.' Briefly stated, his
purposes, constituting an absorbing and noble ambition, were to survey all
the learning of his time, in all lines of thought, natural science, morals,
politics, and the rest, to overthrow the current method of _a priori_
deduction, deduction resting, moreover, on very insufficient and
long-antiquated bases of observation, and to substitute for it as the
method of the future, unlimited fresh observation and experiment and
inductive reasoning. This enormous task was to be mapped out and its
results summarized in a Latin work called 'Magna Instauratio Scientiarum'
(The Great Renewal of Knowledge); but parts of this survey were necessarily
to be left for posterity to formulate, and of the rest Bacon actually
composed only a fraction. What may be called the first part appeared
originally in English in 1605 and is known by the abbreviated title, 'The
Advancement of Learning'; the expanded Latin form has the title, 'De
Augmentis Scientiarum.' Its exhaustive enumeration of the branches of
thought and knowledge, what has been accomplished in each and what may be
hoped for it in the future, is thoroughly fascinating, though even here
Bacon was not capable of passionate enthusiasm. However, the second part of
the work, 'Novum Organum' (The New Method), written in Latin and published
in 1620, is the most important. Most interesting here, perhaps, is the
classification (contrasting with Plato's doctrine of divinely perfect
controlling ideas) of the 'idols' (phantoms) which mislead the human mind.
Of these Bacon finds four sorts: idols of the tribe, which are inherent in
human nature; idols of the cave, the errors of the individual; idols of the
market-place, due to mistaken reliance on words; and idols of the theater
(that is, of the schools), resulting from false reasoning.

In the details of all his scholarly work Bacon's knowledge and point of
view were inevitably imperfect. Even in natural science he was not
altogether abreast of his time--he refused to accept Harvey's discovery of
the manner of the circulation of the blood and the Copernican system of
astronomy. Neither was he, as is sometimes supposed, the _inventor_ of
the inductive method of observation and reasoning, which in some degree is
fundamental in all study. But he did, much more fully and clearly than any
one before him, demonstrate the importance and possibilities of that
method; modern experimental science and thought have proceeded directly in
the path which he pointed out; and he is fully entitled to the great honor
of being called their father, which certainly places him high among the
great figures in the history of human thought.

THE KING JAMES BIBLE, 1611. It was during the reign of James I that the
long series of sixteenth century translations of the Bible reached its
culmination in what we have already called the greatest of all English
books (or rather, collections of books), the King James ('Authorized')
version. In 1604 an ecclesiastical conference accepted a suggestion,
approved by the king, that a new and more accurate rendering of the Bible
should be made. The work was entrusted to a body of about fifty scholars,
who divided themselves into six groups, among which the various books of
the Bible were apportioned. The resulting translation, proceeding with the
inevitable slowness, was completed in 1611, and then rather rapidly
superseded all other English versions for both public and private use. This
King James Bible is universally accepted as the chief masterpiece of
English prose style. The translators followed previous versions so far as
possible, checking them by comparison with the original Hebrew and Greek,
so that while attaining the greater correctness at which they aimed they
preserved the accumulated stylistic excellences of three generations of
their predecessors; and their language, properly varying according to the
nature of the different books, possesses an imaginative grandeur and rhythm
not unworthy--and no higher praise could be awarded--of the themes which it
expresses. The still more accurate scholarship of a later century demanded
the Revised Version of 1881, but the superior literary quality of the King
James version remains undisputed. Its style, by the nature of the case, was
somewhat archaic from the outset, and of course has become much more so
with the passage of time. This entails the practical disadvantage of making
the Bible--events, characters, and ideas--seem less real and living; but on
the other hand it helps inestimably to create the finer imaginative
atmosphere which is so essential for the genuine religious spirit.

MINOR PROSE WRITERS. Among the prose authors of the period who hold an
assured secondary position in the history of English literature three or
four may be mentioned: Robert Burton, Oxford scholar, minister, and
recluse, whose 'Anatomy of Melancholy' (1621), a vast and quaint compendium
of information both scientific and literary, has largely influenced
numerous later writers; Jeremy Taylor, royalist clergyman and bishop, one
of the most eloquent and spiritual of English preachers, author of 'Holy
Living' (1650) and 'Holy Dying' (1651); Izaak Walton, London tradesman and
student, best known for his 'Compleat Angler' (1653), but author also of
charming brief lives of Donne, George Herbert, and others of his
contemporaries; and Sir Thomas Browne, a scholarly physician of Norwich,
who elaborated a fastidiously poetic Latinized prose style for his
pensively delightful 'Religio Medici' (A Physician's Religion--1643) and
other works.

LYRIC POETRY. Apart from the drama and the King James Bible, the most
enduring literary achievement of the period was in poetry.
Milton--distinctly, after Shakspere, the greatest writer of the
century--must receive separate consideration; the more purely lyric poets
may be grouped together.

The absence of any sharp line of separation between the literature of the
reign of Elizabeth and of those of James I and Charles I is no less marked
in the case of the lyric poetry than of the drama. Some of the poets whom
we have already discussed in Chapter V continued writing until the second
decade of the seventeenth century, or later, and some of those whom we
shall here name had commenced their career well before 1600. Just as in the
drama, therefore, something of the Elizabethan spirit remains in the lyric
poetry; yet here also before many years there is a perceptible change; the
Elizabethan spontaneous joyousness largely vanishes and is replaced by more
self-conscious artistry or thought.

The Elizabethan note is perhaps most unmodified in certain anonymous songs
and other poems of the early years of James I, such as the exquisite 'Weep
you no more, sad fountains.' It is clear also in the charming songs of
Thomas Campion, a physician who composed both words and music for several
song-books, and in Michael Drayton, a voluminous poet and dramatist who is
known to most readers only for his finely rugged patriotic ballad on the
battle of Agincourt. Sir Henry Wotton, [Footnote: The first _o_ is
pronounced as in _note_.] statesman and Provost (head) of Eton School,
displays the Elizabethan idealism in 'The Character of a Happy Life' and in
his stanzas in praise of Elizabeth, daughter of King James, wife of the
ill-starred Elector-Palatine and King of Bohemia, and ancestress of the
present English royal family. The Elizabethan spirit is present but mingled
with seventeenth century melancholy in the sonnets and other poems of the
Scotch gentleman William Drummond of Hawthornden (the name of his estate
near Edinburgh), who in quiet life-long retirement lamented the untimely
death of the lady to whom he had been betrothed or meditated on heavenly
things.

In Drummond appears the influence of Spenser, which was strong on many
poets of the period, especially on some, like William Browne, who continued
the pastoral form. Another of the main forces, in lyric poetry as in the
drama, was the beginning of the revival of the classical spirit, and in
lyric poetry also this was largely due to Ben Jonson. As we have already
said, the greater part of Jonson's non-dramatic poetry, like his dramas,
expresses chiefly the downright strength of his mind and character. It is
terse and unadorned, dealing often with commonplace things in the manner of
the Epistles and Satires of Horace, and it generally has more of the
quality of intellectual prose than of real emotional poetry. A very
favorable representative of it is the admirable, eulogy on Shakspere
included in the first folio edition of Shakspere's works. In a few
instances, however, Jonson strikes the true lyric note delightfully. Every
one knows and sings his two stanzas 'To Celia'--'Drink to me only with
thine eyes,' which would still be famous without the exquisitely
appropriate music that has come down to us from Jonson's own time, and
which are no less beautiful because they consist largely of ideas culled
from the Greek philosopher Theophrastus. In all his poems, however, Jonson
aims consistently at the classical virtues of clearness, brevity,
proportion, finish, and elimination of all excess.

These latter qualities appear also in the lyrics which abound in the plays
of John Fletcher, and yet it cannot be said that Fletcher's sweet melody is
more classical than Elizabethan. His other distinctive quality is the tone
of somewhat artificial courtliness which was soon to mark the lyrics of the
other poets of the Cavalier party. An avowed disciple of Jonson and his
classicism and a greater poet than Fletcher is Robert Herrick, who, indeed,
after Shakspere and Milton, is the finest lyric poet of these two
centuries.

Herrick, the nephew of a wealthy goldsmith, seems, after a late graduation
from Cambridge, to have spent some years about the Court and in the band of
Jonson's 'sons.' Entering the Church when he was nearly forty, he received
the small country parish of Dean Prior in the southwest (Devonshire), which
he held for nearly twenty years, until 1647, when he was dispossessed by
the victorious Puritans. After the Restoration he was reinstated, and he
continued to hold the place until his death in old age in 1674. He
published his poems (all lyrics) in 1648 in a collection which he called
'Hesperides and Noble Numbers.' The 'Hesperides' (named from the golden
apples of the classical Garden of the Daughters of the Sun) are twelve
hundred little secular pieces, the 'Noble Numbers' a much less extensive
series of religious lyrics. Both sorts are written in a great variety of
stanza forms, all equally skilful and musical. Few of the poems extend
beyond fifteen or twenty lines in length, and many are mere epigrams of
four lines or even two. The chief secular subjects are: Herrick's devotion
to various ladies, Julia, Anthea, Perilla, and sundry more, all presumably
more or less imaginary; the joy and uncertainty of life; the charming
beauty of Nature; country life, folk lore, and festivals; and similar light
or familiar themes. Herrick's characteristic quality, so far as it can be
described, is a blend of Elizabethan joyousness with classical perfection
of finish. The finish, however, really the result of painstaking labor,
such as Herrick had observed in his uncle's shop and as Jonson had
enjoined, is perfectly unobtrusive; so apparently natural are the poems
that they seem the irrepressible unmeditated outpourings of happy and idle
moments. In care-free lyric charm Herrick can certainly never be surpassed;
he is certainly one of the most captivating of all the poets of the world.
Some of the 'Noble Numbers' are almost as pleasing as the 'Hesperides,' but
not because of real religious significance. For of anything that can be
called spiritual religion Herrick was absolutely incapable; his nature was
far too deficient in depth. He himself and his philosophy of life were
purely Epicurean, Hedonistic, or pagan, in the sense in which we use those
terms to-day. His forever controlling sentiment is that to which he gives
perfect expression in his best-known song, 'Gather ye rosebuds,' namely the
Horatian 'Carpe diem'--'Snatch all possible pleasure from the
rapidly-fleeting hours and from this gloriously delightful world.' He is
said to have performed his religious duties with regularity; though
sometimes in an outburst of disgust at the stupidity of his rustic
parishioners he would throw his sermon in their faces and rush out of the
church. Put his religion is altogether conventional. He thanks God for
material blessings, prays for their continuance, and as the conclusion of
everything, in compensation for a formally orthodox life, or rather creed,
expects when he dies to be admitted to Heaven. The simple naïveté with
which he expresses this skin-deep and primitive faith is, indeed, one of
the chief sources of charm in the 'Noble Numbers.'

Herrick belongs in part to a group of poets who, being attached to the
Court, and devoting some, at least, of their verses to conventional
love-making, are called the Cavalier Poets. Among the others Thomas Carew
follows the classical principles of Jonson in lyrics which are facile,
smooth, and sometimes a little frigid. Sir John Suckling, a handsome and
capricious representative of all the extravagances of the Court set, with
whom he was enormously popular, tossed off with affected carelessness a
mass of slovenly lyrics of which a few audaciously impudent ones are worthy
to survive. From the equally chaotic product of Colonel Richard Lovelace
stand out the two well-known bits of noble idealism, 'To Lucasta, Going to
the Wars,' and 'To Althea, from Prison.' George Wither (1588-1667), a much
older man than Suckling and Lovelace, may be mentioned with them as the
writer in his youth of light-hearted love-poems. But in the Civil War he
took the side of Parliament and under Cromwell he rose to the rank of
major-general. In his later life he wrote a great quantity of Puritan
religious verse, largely prosy in spite of his fluency.

The last important group among these lyrists is that of the more distinctly
religious poets. The chief of these, George Herbert (1593-1633), the
subject of one of the most delightful of the short biographies of Izaak
Walton, belonged to a distinguished family of the Welsh Border, one branch
of which held the earldom of Pembroke, so that the poet was related to the
young noble who may have been Shakspere's patron. He was also younger
brother of Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury, an inveterate duellist and the
father of English Deism. [Footnote: See below, p. 212.] Destined by his
mother to peaceful pursuits, he wavered from the outset between two forces,
religious devotion and a passion for worldly comfort and distinction. For a
long period the latter had the upper hand, and his life has been described
by his best editor, Professor George Herbert Palmer, as twenty-seven years
of vacillation and three of consecrated service. Appointed Public Orator,
or showman, of his university, Cambridge, he spent some years in enjoying
the somewhat trifling elegancies of life and in truckling to the great.
Then, on the death of his patrons, he passed through a period of intense
crisis from which he emerged wholly spiritualized. The three remaining
years of his life he spent in the little country parish of Bemerton, just
outside of Salisbury, as a fervent High Church minister, or as he preferred
to name himself, priest, in the strictest devotion to his professional
duties and to the practices of an ascetic piety which to the usual American
mind must seem about equally admirable and conventional. His religious
poems, published after his death in a volume called 'The Temple,' show
mainly two things, first his intense and beautiful consecration to his
personal God and Saviour, which, in its earnest sincerity, renders him
distinctly the most representative poet of the Church of England, and
second the influence of Donne, who was a close friend of his mother. The
titles of most of the poems, often consisting of a single word, are
commonly fantastic and symbolical--for example, 'The Collar,' meaning the
yoke of submission to God; and his use of conceits, though not so pervasive
as with Donne, is equally contorted. To a present-day reader the apparent
affectations may seem at first to throw doubt on Herbert's genuineness; but
in reality he was aiming to dedicate to religious purposes what appeared to
him the highest style of poetry. Without question he is, in a true if
special sense, a really great poet.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.