English Literature Part 49

Footnote 148: In 1709, nearly a century after the poet's death.

Footnote 149: Robert Greene, one of the popular playwrights of the time, who attacked Shakespeare in a pamphlet called "A Groat's Worth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance." The pamphlet, aside from its jealousy of Shakespeare, is a sad picture of a man of genius dying of dissipation, and contains a warning to other playwrights of the time, whose lives were apparently almost as bad as that of Greene.

Footnote 150: _Love's Labour's Lost, Comedy of Errors, Two Gentlemen of Verona_.

Footnote 151: _Henry VI, Richard III, Richard II, King John_. Prior to 1588 only three true Chronicle plays are known to have been acted. The defeat of the Armada in that year led to an outburst of national feeling which found one outlet in the theaters, and in the next ten years over eighty Chronicle plays appeared. Of these Shakespeare furnished nine or ten. It was the great popular success of _Henry VI_, a revision of an old play, in 1592 that probably led to Greene's jealous attack.

Footnote 152: See Lee's _Life of William Shakespeare_, pp. 188-196.

Footnote 153: Like _Henry VIII_, and possibly the lost _Cardenio_.

Footnote 154: A name given to the privilege--claimed by the mediaeval Church for its clergy--of being exempt from trial by the regular law courts. After the Reformation the custom survived for a long time, and special privileges were allowed to ministers and their families. Jonson claimed the privilege as a minister's son.

Footnote 155: A similar story of quackery is found in Chaucer, "The Canon's Yeoman's Tale."

Footnote 156: In this and in _A Fair Quarrel_ Middleton collaborated with William Rowley, of whom little is known except that he was an actor from _c_. 1607-1627.

Footnote 157: The reader will find wholesome criticism of these writers, and selections from their works, in Charles Lamb's _Specimens of English Dramatic Poets_, an excellent book, which helps us to a better knowledge and appreciation of the lesser Elizabethan dramatists.

Footnote 158: The first five books were published 1594-1597, and are as Hooker wrote them. The last three books, published after his death, are of doubtful authors.h.i.+p, but they are thought to have been completed from Hooker's notes.

Footnote 159: For t.i.tles and publishers of reference works see General Bibliography at the end of this book.

Footnote 160: See, for instance, the "Hymn to St. Theresa" and "The Flaming Heart."

Footnote 161: So called from Pindar, the greatest lyric poet of Greece.

Footnote 162: See, for instance, "Childhood," "The Retreat,"

"Corruption," "The Bird," "The Hidden Flower," for Vaughan's mystic interpretation of childhood and nature.

Footnote 163: There is some doubt as to whether he was born at the Castle, or at Black Hall. Recent opinion inclines to the latter view.

Footnote 164: "On his being arrived to the Age of Twenty-three."

Footnote 165: "It is remarkable," says Lamartine, "how often in the libraries of Italian princes and in the correspondence of great Italian writers of this period you find mentioned the name and fame of this young Englishman."

Footnote 166: In Milton's work we see plainly the progressive influence of the Puritan Age. Thus his Horton poems are joyous, almost Elizabethan in character; his prose is stern, militant, unyielding, like the Puritan in his struggle for liberty; his later poetry, following the apparent failure of Puritanism in the Restoration, has a note of sadness, yet proclaims the eternal principles of liberty and justice for which he had lived.

Footnote 167: Of these sixty were taken from the Bible, thirty-three from English and five from Scotch history.

Footnote 168: The latter was by Lewis Bayly, bishop of Bangor. It is interesting to note that this book, whose very t.i.tle is unfamiliar to us, was speedily translated into five different languages. It had an enormous sale, and ran through fifty editions soon after publication.

Footnote 169: Abridged from _Grace Abounding_, Part 3; _Works_ (ed.

1873), p. 71.

Footnote 170: For t.i.tles and publishers of reference works, see General Bibliography at the end of this book.

Footnote 171: Guizot's _History of the Revolution in England_.

Footnote 172: Jeremy Collier (1650-1726), a clergyman and author, noted for his scholarly _Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain_ (1708-1714) and his _Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage_ (1698). The latter was largely instrumental in correcting the low tendency of the Restoration drama.

Footnote 173: The Royal Society, for the investigation and discussion of scientific questions, was founded in 1662, and soon included practically all of the literary and scientific men of the age. It encouraged the work of Isaac Newton, who was one of its members; and its influence for truth--at a time when men were still trying to compound the philosopher's stone, calculating men's actions from the stars, and hanging harmless old women for witches--can hardly be overestimated.

Footnote 174: If the reader would see this in concrete form, let him read a paragraph of Milton's prose, or a stanza of his poetry, and compare its exuberant, melodious diction with Dryden's concise method of writing.

Footnote 175: Edmund Waller (1606-1687), the most noted poet of the Restoration period until his pupil Dryden appeared. His works are now seldom read.

Footnote 176: From _Divine Poems_, "Old Age and Death."

Footnote 177: Following the advice of Boileau (1676-1711), a noted French critic, whom Voltaire called "the lawgiver of Parna.s.sus."

Footnote 178: By a critic we mean simply one who examines the literary works of various ages, separates the good from the bad, and gives the reasons for his cla.s.sification. It is noticeable that critical writings increase in an age, like that of the Restoration, when great creative works are wanting.

Footnote 179: Two other principles of this book should be noted: (1) that all power originates in the people; and (2) that the object of all government is the common good. Here evidently is a democratic doctrine, which abolishes the divine right of kings; but Hobbes immediately destroys democracy by another doctrine,--that the power given by the people to the ruler could not be taken away. Hence the Royalists could use the book to justify the despotism of the Stuarts on the ground that the people had chosen them. This part of the book is in direct opposition to Milton's _Defense of the English People_.

Footnote 180: Locke's _Treatises on Government_ should also be mentioned, for they are of profound interest to American students of history and political science. It was from Locke that the framers of the Declaration of Independence and of the Const.i.tution drew many of their ideas, and even some of their most striking phrases. "All men are endowed with certain inalienable rights"; "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"; "the origin and basis of government is in the consent of the governed,"--these and many more familiar and striking expressions are from Locke. It is interesting to note that he was appointed to draft a const.i.tution for the new province of Carolina; but his work was rejected,--probably because it was too democratic for the age in which he lived.

Footnote 181: A few slight changes and omissions from the original text, as given in Wheatley's edition of Pepys (London, 1892, 9 vols.), are not indicated in these brief quotations.

Footnote 182: The first daily newspaper, _The Daily Courant_, appeared in London in 1702.

Footnote 183: See Lecky, _England in the Eighteenth Century_.

Footnote 184: Addison's "Campaign" (1704), written to celebrate the battle of Blenheim.

Footnote 185: Great writers in every age, men like Shakespeare and Milton, make their own style. They are therefore not included in this summary. Among the minor writers also there are exceptions to the rule; and fine feeling is often manifest in the poetry of Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, and Herrick.

Footnote 186: We have endeavored here simply to show the meaning of terms in general use in our literature; but it must be remembered that it is impossible to cla.s.sify or to give a descriptive name to the writers of any period or century. While "cla.s.sic" or "pseudo-cla.s.sic" may apply to a part of eighteenth-century literature, every age has both its romantic and its cla.s.sic movements. In this period the revolt against cla.s.sicism is shown in the revival of romantic poetry under Gray, Collins, Burns, and Thomson, and in the beginning of the English novel under Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. These poets and novelists, who have little or no connection with cla.s.sicism, belong chronologically to the period we are studying. They are reserved for special treatment in the sections following.

Footnote 187: Pope's satires, for instance, are strongly suggested in Boileau; his _Rape of the Lock_ is much like the mock-heroic _Le Lutrin;_ and the "Essay on Criticism," which made him famous, is an English edition and improvement of _L'Art Poetique_. The last was, in turn, a combination of the _Ars Poetica_ of Horace and of many well-known rules of the cla.s.sicists.

Footnote 188: These are the four kinds of spirits inhabiting the four elements, according to the Rosicrucians,--a fantastic sect of spiritualists of that age. In the dedication of the poem Pope says he took the idea from a French book called _Le Comte de Gabalis_.

Footnote 189: Compare this with Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage,"

in _As You Like it_, II, 7.

Footnote 190: It is only fair to point out that Swift wrote this and two other pamphlets on religion at a time when he knew that they would damage, if not destroy, his own prospects of political advancement.

Footnote 191: See Tennyson's "Merlin and the Gleam."

Footnote 192: Of the _Tatler_ essays Addison contributed forty-two; thirty-six others were written in collaboration with Steele; while at least a hundred and eighty are the work of Steele alone.

Footnote 193: From "The Vanity of Human Wishes"

Footnote 194: A very lovable side of Johnson's nature is shown by his doing penance in the public market place for his unfilial conduct as a boy.

(See, in Hawthorne's _Our Old Home_, the article on "Lichfield and Johnson.") His sterling manhood is recalled in his famous letter to Lord Chesterfield, refusing the latter's patronage for the _Dictionary_. The student should read this incident entire, in Boswell's _Life of Johnson_.

Footnote 195: In Johnson's _Dictionary_ we find this definition: "Grub-street, the name of a street in London much inhabited by writers of small histories, _dictionaries_, and temporary poems; whence any mean production is called Grub-street."