VII. TO LUCASTA, ON GOING TO THE WARS TELL me not, Sweet, I am unkind Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind, True, a new mistress now I chase, And with a stronger faith embrace Yet this inconstancy is such As you too shall adore; I could not love thee, Dear, so much, Loved I not Honor more. RICHARD LOVELACE NOTABLE CONTEMPORARY WRITERS Sir Walter Raleigh, 1552–1618, soldier and courtier; author of "A History of the World.” Richard Hooker, 1553-1598, Anglican divine; author of "A Treatise on the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity." Sir Philip Sidney, 1554–1586, courtier, soldier, and scholar; author of “The Arcadia,” “A Defense of Poesy," and several beautiful sonnets. Samuel Daniel, 1562–1619, author of a poetical "History of the Civil Wars," and of many minor poems. Michael Drayton, 1563–1631, poet; author of "The Shepherd's Garland,” “England's Heroical Epistles," and other works. Christopher Marlowe, 1563-1593, dramatic poet; important plays were Faustus," "Tamburlaine," and "Edward II." 66 Sir Henry Wotton, 1568-1639, diplomatist and poet; wrote many lyrics of a high order of merit. See "The Happy Life," page 52. John Donne, 1573-1631; distinguished Anglican divine; numerous satires, epistles, and short poems. Robert Burton, 1578-1640, a retired and laborious scholar; famous for his "Anatomy of Melancholy." Lord Herbert of Cherbury, 1581-1648, theologian and historian ; 'History of Henry VIII." and "de Veritate" are his most important works. Philip Massinger, 1584-1640, playwright; "A New Way to Pay Old Francis Beaumont, 1586-1615, joint author, with John Fletcher, 1576-1625, of more than fifty tragedies and comedies. pages 54, 55. See poems, John Ford, 1586-1639, dramatist; two of his plays of a high order of excellence are "The Broken Heart" and "Love's Sacrifice." Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679, metaphysician and logician; his "Treatise on Human Nature" and his "Letter on Liberty and Necessity" are his chief productions. Robert Herrick, 1591-1674, author of many beautiful lyrics. See "To Dianeme," page 55. George Herbert, 1593-1632, Anglican clergyman, and author of many sacred songs. See "The Gifts of God," page 52. James Shirley, 1594-1666, the last of the Elizabethan dramatists; author of many comedies. See "Death, the Leveler," page 53. Edmund Waller, 1605-1687, politician and poet; wrote an Ode to Cromwell, and many love-songs. III THE LITERATURE OF THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE RESTORATION THE MILTON - DRYDEN HE last seventy-five years of the seventeenth century witnessed the execution of Charles I., the rise and fall of the Commonwealth, the Restoration, and the Revolution of 1688,- a series of upheavals and changes that were not dynastic merely, but accompanied by equally radical alterations in the manners and thought of the English people. The literature of that time bears internal evidence of changes in intellectual and spiritual habitudes quite as great as those other changes that affected the fortunes of the State. Milton, a reformer in religion and in politics, gave voice in both prose and verse to the spirit that animated the Puritans; Dryden, a satirist and critic of literature, conformed to and reflected the spirit of the Restoration. Each in his sphere was pre-eminent. Milton, as Matthew Arnold well expresses it, was "the last of the Immortals." He was filled with the poetic ardor and imaginative power of the Elizabethan classics, though representing a later and very different school of thought. His prose is little read. It consists mainly of controversial tracts incentive to reform in church and state. The style of these is archaic, and to the modern sense more difficult than the earlier prose of Bacon. These pamphlets were put forth before the Civil War; his great poems did not appear until after the Restoration, in 1660. In Dryden this order seems to have been reversed; he was a poet first, an essayist afterwards. It is interesting to note that Dryden had some acquaintance with his great predecessor, but he was little influenced by Milton. There could not, indeed, have been much community of sentiment between the two. By general consent of competent judges, English prose as we know it had its beginnings at the time of the Restoration. There is to be discovered in the essays of Dryden a structure of the sentence and a use of terms which, as modified by Swift and Addison, and developed after them by Johnson and the group of writers who surrounded him, became finally our own literary form. Other prose writers of note were few in the time we are considering. Baxter and Bunyan, each in his peculiar field of religious work, Locke in metaphysics, and Newton in science, were the principal figures. Far greater influence upon the speech of the English people was exercised by the pulpit in the finished and powerful sermons of such divines as Burnet, Fuller, and Jeremy Taylor. Isaac Newton The seventeenth century marks the close of our early poetical style, of which we see the consummation in Milton, and the opening of the modern period, whose herald was Dryden. Herbert, Marvell, and Cowley had naturalness and simplicity of thought; but the style of Dryden and his followers was a distinct advance in clearness of expression. English letters were, in these two or three generations, in a transitional state, the old was passing away, the new was gradually but surely superseding it. |