disguised as master and servant. Whole scenes are filled with a rich humor which recalls the spirit of the older drama. In several of the other plays there are passages worked up into brilliant comic effect.

"The one feature which above all others forces itself upon our notice in every work of the whole school, is the absolute shamelessness of every person portrayed, male or female. Not one of their leading characters is represented with the slightest conception that the grossest vices are things to be concealed; chastity is derided by the ladies as unblushingly as by the gentlemen, and vice is not only rampant but triumphant." *

Such glaring shamelessness did not go on unrebuked. A sturdy clergyman, Jeremy Collier (1650-1726), faced the scorn of playgoers, and presented himself as the champion of decency. He published A Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage, in which he defiantly attacked Wycherley, Congreve and Dryden. The pamphlet was written with fiery energy and with wit, and rallied the sympathies of all moral and thoughtful men in the nation. Dryden himself sincerely and gracefully acknowledged the justice of Collier's strictures.t A defence was undertaken by Wycherley, Congreve and Vanbrugh; but the assault had been so vigorous, and was pushed with such resoluteness, that victory remained with the assailant. The controversy resulted in giving a better tone to the drama and to lighter literature in general, and from that time there has been a gradual improvement which has given to the readers of English the purest modern literature. Collier was the author of An Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, and an industrious writer in various lines of thought; but as his grandest triumph was won in his battle with the corrupt dramatists, we have placed his name in connection with theirs.

Among the exclusively tragic dramatists of this epoch the first

* C. D. Yonge.

"I shall say less of Mr. Collier, because in many things he has taxed me justly; and I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and expressions of mine which can be truly argued of obscenity, profaneness or immorality, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance."-Dryden,-Preface to Fables.

place belongs to Thomas Otway (1651-1685), who died at the early age of thirty-four, after a life of wretchedness and irregularity. He received a regular education at Oxford, but very early embraced the profession of the actor. During this part of his career he produced three tragedies,-Alcibiades, Don Carlos, and Titus and Berenice. After a brief service in the army he returned to the stage; and in the years extending from 1680 to his death he wrote four more tragedies,— Caius Marcius, The Orphan, The Soldier's Fortune, and Venice Preserved. These works, with the exception of The Orphan and Venice Preserved, are now nearly forgotten; but the glory of Otway is so firmly established upon these two plays, that it will probably endure as long as the language itself. As a tragic dramatist, his most striking merit is his pathos; and he possesses in a high degree the power of uniting pathetic emotion with the expression of the darker passions. The distress in his poems reaches a pitch of terrible intensity. His style is vigorous and racy. In reading his best passages we may continually notice a flavor of Ford, Beaumont and other masters of the Elizabethan

era.

Nathaniel Lee (1657 ?-1692), in spite of protracted attacks of insanity, was able to acquire a high reputation for dramatic genius. In all his plays there is a wild and exaggerated imagery, sometimes reminding the reader of Marlowe. He assisted Dryden in the composition of several of his pieces, and wrote eleven original tragedies.

The career of Nicholas Rowe (1674–1718), like that of Congreve, furnishes a happy contrast to the wretched lives of many dramatists who were by no means his inferiors in talent. He was an admired member of the fashionable society of his day, and belonged to Pope's circle of wits and scholars. Secured against want by the possession of an independent fortune, he was also splendidly rewarded for his literary work, and enjoyed many lucrative offices. Rowe was the first who undertook the critical editing of Shakespeare; and to this work he owes his celebrity as a literary man. His own dramatic works comprise seven tragedies, of which Jane Shore, The Fair Penitent and Lady Jane Grey are the most noteworthy.

From the time of Dryden until the end of the first quarter of

66

the eighteenth century, English poetry exhibits a character equally remote from the splendid imagery of the Elizabethan era, and from the picturesque intensity of the modern school. Correctness and an affected regard for what was called sense were the qualities chiefly cultivated. The abuse of ingenuity which disfigures the poetry of Cowley, Donne and Quarles was avoided; but there was likewise a want of feeling. It is remarkable how many of the non-dramatic poets of this time were men of rank and fashion, whose literary efforts were simply the accomplishments of amateurs.

Consult Macaulay's Essay on The Comic Dramatists of the Restoration, The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh and Farquhar, edited by Leigh Hunt, Hallam's Literature of Europe, Vol. IV., Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Comic Writers, Lect. IV.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE PHILOSOPHERS AND THEOLOGIANS OF LOCKE'S TIME.

JOHN LOCKE.

"The most elegant of prose writers."-W. S. Landor.

"All his contemporaries, and, what is better, all the known actions of his life, testify that no one was more sincerely and constantly attached to truth, virtue, and the cause of human liberty."- Victor Cousin.

"He gave the first example in the English language of writing on abstract subjects with a remarkable degree of simplicity and perspicuity."-Thomas Reid.

"We who find some things to censure in Locke, have perhaps learned how to censure them from himself; we have thrown off so many false notions and films of prejudice by his help that we are become capable of judging our master."— Henry Hallam.

.

"If Bacon first discovered the rules by which knowledge is improved, Locke has most contributed to make mankind at large observe them. His writings have diffused throughout the civilized world the love of civil liberty; the spirit of toleration and charity in religious differences; the disposition to reject whatever is obscure, fantastic, or hypothetical in speculation; to reduce verbal disputes to their proper value; to abandon problems which admit of no solution; to distrust whatever cannot be clearly expressed; to render theory the simple expression of facts; and to prefer those studies which most directly contribute to human happiness."-Sir James Mackintosh.

"Few among the great names in philosophy have met with a harder measure of justice from the present generation than Locke, the unquestioned founder of the analytical philosophy of mind."-John Stuart Mill.

THE English Revolution of 1688 secured constitutional free

dom for the state, and gave a powerful impulse to practical progress in science and philosophy. The period displays the names of Newton and Locke, the former famous in physical, the other in intellectual science.

The history of John Locke (1632-1704) epitomizes the most revolutionary influences of the English Age of Revolution. When the battle of Edgehill announced the final rupture between King

and Parliament, Locke was ten years old. As the son of an officer in the Puritan army, he was reared in the Puritan atmosphere of political independence and devout enthusiasm. A tendency to metaphysical speculation seems native to the followers of Calvinistic theology; and, doubtless, the natural bent of Locke's mind was encouraged by his early associations. When he entered Oxford, at the age of nineteen, he had already developed a taste for psychological study, and a habit of independent thinking. Independent thinking was not encouraged in a university which "piqued itself on being behind the spirit of the age." Locke soon discovered Oxford to be the citadel of the outworn scholasticism of the Middle Ages. He became filled with disgust at the empty subtleties which sheltered themselves under the name of Aristotle. In after years he frequently regretted that his early manhood had been passed under such adverse influences. However, there can be no doubt that the necessity of standing in constant antagonism to the conservative spirit of the university training was powerful in forming his intellectual character. During the thirteen years which he spent at Oxford-first as bachelor, then as master-much of his time was devoted to preparation for the practice of medicine. He thus came into contact with the vigorous and progressive spirit which was transfusing physical science. Meanwhile his interest in metaphysics was stimulated by attentive and independent study of Bacon and Descartes, and by familiar discussions with his friends. Locke possessed fine conversational powers; and his associates were chosen from among the brilliant and entertaining rather than from among the studious and profound. In its bearing upon the circumstances of his later life, and the tendency of his works, this fact is worthy of note. It indicates his remarkable union of the talents of the student with such tastes and practical abilities as make the man of the world.

In 1664 Locke assumed the secretaryship of a diplomatic mission, and remained on the Continent for a year. After his return to Oxford, he was for a time in doubt whether to continue in diplomatic service, or to begin the practice of medicine. The latter alternative seemed inexpedient on account of his delicate health. Conscientious motives prompted him also to reject a flattering offer of preferment in the Irish Church. At this juncture, a chance acquaintance with Lord Ashley, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury,