CHAPTER IX

THE AGE OF MILTON (1625-1660)

We have observed during the reign of James I the decline of those forces and influences which grew out of the Renaissance, and have seen how the temper of the age was affected by the growing intellectuality and the Decline of growing melancholy. Men felt that they had Renaissance dreamed a glorious dream and had at length seen it "die away, and fade into the light of common day." The power and the glory were not yet quite gone; for they were still to touch the lighter poetry of the coming generation with an afterglow of beauty and to shed their magic charm around the young steps of Milton. The Renaissance was still a power to be reckoned with in English literature. Nevertheless, its old strength could never be quite renewed, and literature had need of something to supplant or to supplement its influence. The time was not yet fully ripe for an entirely different age with other men and other manners. Such new power as came was due to the quickening and intensifying of a force which had been long in existence- that religious spirit Religious which had entered into English life with the Influence Reformation and which had never ceased to exert a strong though quiet influence. As we have had already many occasions to see, it had been operative during the whole of the sixteenth century and the early part of the seventeenth; but up to this time it had been subordinate to the Renaissance as a literary force. It had served to exalt beauty and to deepen thought and feeling; it had enriched poetry and had restrained the excesses of the drama by a sense

of moral law; but it had never quite ranked as the su preme guiding impulse to literary creation. Now it was to take the chief place and to be the dominating influence in life and in literature. The Renaissance influence was henceforth to sink into the place of secondary importance until the time should come for its complete extinction.

Renaissance and Reformation

The relation between the Renaissance and the Reformation is an interesting one. There had always been more or less of opposition between them. The one was essentially intellectual, the other essentially spiritual; the one found its delight in the lust of the eye and the pride of life, while the other had set its affections on the things that are above; the one rejoiced in all human powers and dreamed of man's dominion over the empire of this world, while the other counted the nations of the earth but as the small dust of the balance and looked for a city which hath foundations. Yet on the whole these two great forces had moved in the same direction. At first they had worked toward the common end of freedom and expansion in thought, the one asserting liberty of intelligence, the other asserting liberty of conscience. Later and within the field of literature, they had attained to a splendid harmony in the best work of Spenser and of Shakespeare. During the reign of James I, they had drawn apart and had more and more emphasized their growing differences. Now, during the Age of Milton, they were to stand in an attitude of open mutual hostility. In the large nature of Milton himself there was a certain reconcilement of their conflicting claims; but even the genius of Milton found it impossible permanently to maintain the double allegiance. This hostility is accounted for by the steady decline in influence and aggressiveness of Renaissance forces on the one side, and by the increasing narrowness, severity, and intolerance of religion on the other. The religious type now coming to its full develop

ment was that which we know as Puritanism; and the very word is a synonym for harshness, austerity, and sternness, as it is also for loftiness of spirit, devotion to duty, and purity of life. The conflict that arose manifested itself in fierce religious controversy, in bloody civil war, and in two widely divergent types of literary production. We call it the Age of Puritanism, but in reality the age was divided between the Puritan and the Cavalier. Puritan and In many respects it is a very different age from Cavalier that which immediately preceded it. The guiding impulses of literature are still the same; but they have changed their relation to each other and have in a measure modified their original character. As a consequence, the temper of life and of literature is seriously affected. The Age of Shakespeare had been an age of joyous and abundant life modified by serious religious feeling; the Age of Milton is an age of religious austerity mitigated by a halfdefiant gayety. It is "merry England" no longer, but there are still heard some echoes of the old laughter.

Later Drama

We have already seen the great drama of the Age of Shakespeare verging toward its decline. The Puritan period saw its utter decay. It was chiefly a product of the Renaissance, and naturally lost its power with the failure of the old forces. In addition to this, however, it had to contend with the active hostility of the Puritan temper. The Puritans hated "stage plays," and did all they could to discourage this "ungodly" form of amusement. A considerable number of dramatists, however, still continued their work, and a considerable body of plays was produced. The two greatest dramatists of this later time are Philip Massinger and John Ford. Massinger still displays the skill of a good Philip Masdramatic craftsman and has no small ability in singer the treatment of character. There is, however, a manifest decrease of poetic power and of those flashes of inspiration

which characterize so many of the older dramatists, from Marlowe to Webster. Massinger's principal work is a comedy entitled A New Way to Pay Old Debts. In it occurs the famous character of Sir Giles Overreach. This comedy is very much superior to any other of Massinger's plays; but apart from it, his most effective work is in tragedy. Ford is a better poet than Massinger, though an inferior playwright. His Broken John Ford

Heart is typical of his powers and of his defects. It has an intensity of tragic power that makes it extremely affecting; but it is too horrible, too bloody, and too chaotic. His most powerful situations seem forced and unnatural. There is a certain morbidness in his genius that is itself a symptom of decay. Great as are his powers of terror and pathos, the drama in his hands is visibly approaching the end of its splendid career. It is carried on still by a number of inferior dramatists; but at last, in 1648, the Puritans order the closing of the theatres, and the career of the great romantic drama is run. As a whole, it is probably unequalled by any other single body of work in the world's literature.

The leading men of this age poured forth a flood of prose writing in many kinds. Much of it was inspired by the religious and political conflicts of the time, Prose-writers but philosophy and history were also well represented. Among such writings we are, of course, chiefly concerned with those that have a literary flavor in the substance or in the style. Apart from Milton, whose prose work will be best considered in connection with his poetry, four leading writers will serve to give us an idea of what was being accomplished.

Jeremy Taylor was one of the greatest pulpit orators and one of the greatest prose-writers of the seventeenth century. Saintsbury characterizes him as "in almost all ways the chief of English orators on

Jeremy
Taylor

sacred subjects"; and Emerson names him "the Shakespeare of divines." Taylor was not so much a great theologian, a great thinker, or a great scholar, as he was a great orator and rhetorician. His supreme gift is that of imagination, and his style is rich with imagery and picturesque description. He has also a poet's delight in beautiful things, and answers to our ordinary conception of what is meant by a prose poet. Grace, tenderness, persuasiveness, are also his. Next to his picturesqueness, his style is chiefly remarkable for its music. His faults are those of looseness, discursiveness, lack of simplicity, and lack of logic. Such works as his Holy Living, his Holy Dying, his Liberty of Prophesying, and his volume of sermons entitled The Golden Grove become literary masterpieces by virtue of his inimitable richness and beauty of expression. The following is one of Taylor's most famous and most characteristic sentences:

For so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, singing as he rises and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest, than it could recover by the libration and frequent weighing of his wings: till the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm was over; and then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing, as if it had learned music and motion from an angel, as he passed sometimes through the air, about his ministries here below.

Thomas Fuller was also a divine, but one of very different type from Taylor. Among other works he wrote The Holy State, The Profane State, and a Thomas History of the Worthies of England. The latter Fuller is his best known and most characteristic production. Fuller was a man entirely serious and reverent in his main purpose; but he had a unique turn of mind, and his style is everywhere characterized by a humorous quaintness. He has been thought frivolous, but he is rather odd and