has since had, nor will ever have, distinct view of him. Milton's soul was the soul of a recluse. He was in, but not of, the seventeenth century. In moral and in intellectual power he was a giant, beside whom contemporaries were pigmies. The robustness, beauty, dignity of his life were such as might be looked for in a man chosen from some lofty and bracing epoch of history; and we are surprised at finding him in the sickliest age, breathing the miasma that brought disease to other men. He was miraculously kept from the religious fever that made some men insane, and from the taint of the moral plague that made others loathsome. This charm makes his life somewhat a mystery, and the effect of the mystery is heightened by the purity and elevation of his thought, and by the glittering and inimitable magnificence of his style.

Although we know much about Milton, we do not know him. We do not hope to commune closely with him. He seems to us a little more than human. When we have read the loftiest praises of him we feel that the critic has failed of reaching the elevation which a just criticism of Milton should attain unto. The rhetoric, the enthusiasm of Macaulay, do not cast as intense a light as we could wish for in viewing "the genius and virtues of John Milton, the poet, the statesman, the philosopher, the glory of English literature, the champion and the martyr of English liberty." There is a grandeur in the man that cannot be fitly described by the flushed fancy and the lavish strength of the grandest periods of the rhetorician. There is something about him that crowds our capacity for admiring, and yet forbids the familiar acquaintance that would give us rapturous love for him. Our ideal of him is less satisfactory than our ideal of any other of the great men in our literature; and the cause of his eluding us is found in the fact that he was a recluse. As Wordsworth said of him,

"Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart."

The mystery that is about him, the haughtiness that some detect in him, the grandeur that evades the critic's analysis, and the strange reverence felt by all who study him,-all are traceable to an awe-inspiring peculiarity that may be described as the loneliness of Milton. The companionships of other historic characters help the student; but Milton seems to have been without intimacies: the social temptations to which they yielded or over which they were victorious, the constancy or inconstancy of their friendships, the influences that they exerted over those who loved them, give us an idea of what our attitude would have been towards them, had we been of their company. But where shall we find the men who had intimate friendship with Milton. His loneliness was recognized and respected. His fellow-students at the university detected something peculiarly unlike themselves in him, and named him "The Lady of the College." The gentle woman who came to his house to be his wife soon found that she could not intrude upon his solitude. Amid the excitement of the Civil War he seems to have been companionless; and when victory had brought joy to all other men of his political party he was found in the seclusion of his quiet study, and was summoned to the public service of the state. During the years of the Commonwealth two men are superior to all other Englishmen, the man of action, Cromwell; and the man of thought, Milton. Although mutually dependent, they were not intimate companions, for Milton stood in intellectual isolation. When the days of blindness and poverty and threatenings came to him and he was in his hiding-place, he was not withdrawn further than he had ever been from the world. His whole career was separate from the intimate acquaintance of men. His religious opinions would have been acceptable to neither party. Although he was a Puritan in politics, his theology would have been criminal heresy to the Puritans. In forming his political opinions he was not

influenced by the same reasons which swayed the men of his party; they beheaded Charles I. because he was the leader of a hated church; Milton justified the regicide because the unconstitutional exercise of regal power is insulting to nationality. It is this lack of affinity between Milton and other men, this want of contact between him and the world, this independence in political, poetical, and religious thinking—this loneliness of the man—that gives a peculiar dignity to his character, that overawes our love, and forbids our intimate acquaintance with him.

The student is referred to Masson's Life of Milton,-Dr. Johnson's Life of Milton,-De Quincey's Life of Milton,-Hallam's History of Literature, Vol. IV.,— Macaulay's Essay on Milton,- Lamartine's Celebrated Characters,- Channing's Essay on Milton,-Reed's Lectures on the British Poets, Vol. I.,-Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Poets,-Lowell's Essay on Milton and Shakespeare, North American Review, April, 1868,-the article on Milton in the Encyclopedia Britannica,— Campbell's Specimens of the British Poets,-Taine's English Literature,—Landor's Works,-Masson's Essays on the English Poets,-and Addison's criticisms on Paradise Lost in The Spectator, Nos. 267, 273, 279, 285, 291, 297, 303, 309, 315, 321, 327, 333, 339, 345, 351, 357, 363, 369.

CHAPTER XV.

THE LITERATURE OF THE RESTORATION.

FOR worthlessness of character and for the shamefulness of his

public life, Charles II., the prince to whom the crown of the

Stuarts was restored, stands without a rival in the line of 1660.] English kings. During the time of the Commonwealth he

had found refuge on the Continent. His good-nature and his rank had won him hosts of friends; but as he was wanting in dignity of character, his friendships were not with the good. When he ascended the throne he inaugurated an age of debauchery and shame. The dissipated companions of his exile, and foreign adventurers who had fastened themselves upon him, were the favorites of his Court. His ambition was to ensure these worthless courtiers a good time. The gambler, the drunkard, and the libertine, found him ever ready to give them the royal smile and to join them in their criminal pleasures. Patriotism made no successful appeal to him. Decency fled from his presence. His halls of state were lavishly furnished, the doors were thrown open, and the rollicking king welcomed his subjects to his presence, where they could hear the profanity, could see the drunkenness and could suspect the baser infamies of the highest circle of English life. Under Cromwell's government severe restraints had been thrown about the people. Public amusements had been forbidden. Many innocent pleasures had been denounced. And now the Court laughed loudest at the unreasonable severity of the Puritans, and went to the farthest reach in a reckless pursuit of pleasure. The effect of such a revolution at court was immediate and fearful. The nation plunged madly into excesses.

Popular literature in any generation is but the reflection of that generation's thought, and so we must expect to find that the applauded writers of the time of Charles II. are men who laugh at

seriousness and apologize for vice. The drama of the time, as it appealed most directly to popular attention, was most outrageously vicious; but whatever writings came from other than the pens of Puritans were tainted with the disease of the Court.

The most illustrious literary representative of the party of the Cavaliers is Samuel Butler (1612-1680). When more than fifty years of age, after witnessing the success and the failure of the Puritans, he wrote a satire upon their follies in which he condemned them to a ridicule so keen that his work still holds the pre-eminent place in our literature of satire. His early life was

passed in obscurity. He was of lowly parentage. Lack of funds cut short his stay at the University of Cambridge; still he was there long enough to acquire some of the learning displayed in his works. For several years he was clerk in the office of a country justice, and afterwards became a secretary in the service of the Countess of Kent. In these positions he found opportunities for study and for intercourse with scholarly and accomplished men. Next we find him a tutor, or clerk, in the family of Sir Samuel Luke, a wealthy gentleman of Bedfordshire, who, as a violent republican member of Parliament, and as one of Cromwell's satraps, took an active part in the agitations of the Commonwealth. In the person of this dignitary Butler probably saw the most radical type of Puritan character. With the convictions of a Royalist and with the temperament of a satirist, he must have found his situation uncongenial. It is possible that personal feeling quickened his powers of ridicule and suggested the plan of a sweeping satire on the republican party, and that he began his Hudibras (141) while yet in the service of the gentleman whom he has so mercilessly lampooned.

The Restoration brought Butler no special reward for his loyalty. He became Secretary to Lord Carbury, and for some time acted

as Steward of Ludlow Castle; but this situation was nei1663] ther permanent nor lucrative. It was in 1663 that he

published the first part of Hudibras; and the second part followed in 1664. The poem soon became the popular book of the day; for its wit and ingenuity won the praise of the critics, while its tone and subject flattered the vindictive triumph of the royalists. Charles II. carried it about in his pocket, and was constantly quoting and admiring it; but all efforts to secure