to the Church of Rome. Hence, after it became known that the heir-presumptive to the crown, James Duke of York, had changed his religion, the Whigs formed the design of excluding him on that ground from the throne, and placing the crown upon the head of the next Protestant heir. The party of the court and the cavaliers (who began about this time to be called Tories) vigorously opposed the scheme, and with success. James II. succeeded in 1685, and immediately began to take measures for the relief of Catholics from the many disabilities under which they laboured. But he pursued his object with all the indiscretion and unfairness habitual to his family. Though the Whigs had been defeated and cowed,—though the great majority of the nation desired to be loyal,—though the Anglican clergy in particular had committed themselves irrevocably to the position that a king ought to be obeyed, no matter to what lengths he might go in tyranny,-James so managed matters as almost to compel the divines to eat their own words, and, by forfeiting the affection and confidence of the people, to throw the game into the hands of the Whigs. The Revolution came; James II. was expelled; the Act of Settlement was passed; and the Catholics of England again became an obscure and persecuted minority, which for a hundred years almost disappears from the public gaze and from the page of history. Under William III., from 1688 to 1700, there was a lull, comparatively speaking, in political affairs. The Toleration Act, passed in 1689, amounted to a formal renunciation of the claim of the state-on account of which so much blood had been shed in this and the previous century-to impose religious uniformity upon its subjects. Towards the middle of William's reign the Tories began to recover from the stunning effects of the moral shock which they had sustained at the Revolution; and the modern system of parliamentary government, though complicated for a time by the question of Jacobitism, began to develope its outlines out of the strife of the opposing parties. Having thus reviewed the course of events, we proceed to describe the development of ideas, as expressed in literature, during the same period. Poetry before the Restoration; Jonson: The Fantastic School; Cowley, Crashaw, &c.; Milton, Marvell. 4. Under the Stuarts the court still, as in the days of Elizabeth, opened its gates gladly to the poets and playwrights. Jonson's chief literary employment during his later years was the composition of masques for the entertainment of the king troubled the advance of learning and refinement amongst mankind. The revival of learning, and the discredit fallen on the 'lazy cells where superstition bred,' promised a halcyon period; but the enemy of mankind, inspiring Loyola, Luther, and Calvin with an infernal spirit of bigotry, had dashed those hopes to the ground. Fanaticism, dislodged from the monasteries, had taken possession of the printing press. Authority had fallen only to give place to sectaries and schismatics of a hundred types, all quarrelling with one another, and inflated with spiritual pride and a boundless presumption :— But seven wise men the ancient world did know, We scarce know seven who think themselves not so. In a poem on Lord Strafford, Denham calls him 'Three kingdoms' wonder, and three kingdoms' fear.' He also wrote some interesting memorial verses On Mr. Abraham Cowley's death, and burial amongst the ancient poets.' 19. William Habington, the representative of an old Catholic family settled at Hindlip in Worcestershire, is known as the author of the collection of pretty love-poems and quaint paraphrases on verses in the Psalms published in 1635 under the title of Castara. This was the name which he gave to the fair and noble maiden who had won his heart, Lucy Herbert, a daughter of the first Lord Powis. The poetry of Habington is sweet, pleasing, and pure; this last characteristic distinguishes it favourably from nearly all the love-verses of the period. The tender pacific nature of the man is well shown in the following lines, which come at the end of a poem 'To the Honble. Mr. Wm. G.' And tho' my fate conducts me to the shade To greatnesse, you must sleep among the dead. 20. Only three poets took the Puritan side; but quality made up for quantity. John Milton was born in London in the year 1608. At sixteen he was sent to Cambridge, where he speedily gave proofs of an astonishing vigour and versatility of intellect by the Latin and English compositions, chiefly the former, which he produced in his college years. In spite of the Look how the father's face Lives in his offspring; even so the race Of Shakspeare's mind and manners brightly shines In each of which he seems to shake a lance As brandished at the eyes of ignorance. Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were To see thee in our water yet appear, And make those flights upon the banks of Thames 5. The younger race of poets belonged nearly all to what has been termed by Dryden and Dr. Johnson the Metaphysical school, the founder of which in England was Donne. ~But in fact this style of writing was of Italian parentage, and was brought in by the Neapolitan Marini. Tired of the endless imitations of the ancients, which, except when a great genius like that of Tasso broke through all conventional rules, had ever since the revival of learning fettered the poetic taste of Italy, Marini resolved to launch out boldly in a new career of invention, and to give to the world whatever his keen wit and lively fancy might prompt to him. He is described by Sismondi 2 as 'the celebrated innovator on classic Italian taste, who first seduced the poets of the seventeenth century into that laboured and affected style which his own richness and vivacity of imagination were so well calculated to recommend. The most whimsical comparisons, pompous and overwrought descriptions, with a species of poetical punning and research, were soon esteemed, under his authority, as beauties of the very first order.' Marini resided for some years in France, and it was in that country that he produced his Adone. His influence upon French poetry was as great as upon Italian, but the vigour and freedom which it communicated were perhaps more than counterbalanced by the false taste which it encouraged. The same may be said of his influence upon our own poets. Milton alone had too much originality and inherent force to be carried away in the stream; but the most popular poets of the day,Donne, Cowley, Crashaw, Waller, Cleveland, and even Dryden in his earlier efforts gave in to the prevailing fashion, and instead of simple, natural images, studded their poems with conceits (concetti). This explains why Cowley was rated by his contemporaries as the greatest poet of his day, since every age has its favourite fashions, in literature as in costume; and those who conform to them receive more praise than those who assert 1 Born 1569, died 1625; author of the Adone and the Sospetto di Herode. 2 Literature of the South of Europe (Roscoe), vol. ii. p. 262. is sustained by his confidence in his sister's virtue and 'saintly chastity.' In the end the sister is found and the enchanter driven away; but his spells have bound her to a magic chair, from which she can only be released by the nymph of the Severn (Sabrina) rising from her watery bed and breaking the charm. The poem represents the triumph of virtue and philosophy over the power of the senses; the imagery is classical, and Christian ideas, as such, have no place. Yet none can doubt that the morality which triumphs in Comus is really the morality of Christ, and not that of the Stoics, or of the classical poets. For many turns of phrase, and even for some ideas, Milton is indebted to Fletcher's lovely pastoral drama of the Faithful Shepherdess. But there is a majesty, an austere and stately beauty, about this poem, which are all Milton's own. How noble and lovely, for instance, lines like these- or Virtue could see to do what Virtue would By her own radiant light, though sun and moon How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, fair groups of mirthful and of pensive thoughts, which the town-bred poet, intoxicated with the fresh charm of country life, gives voice to and sings to his lyre, were the fruit of his stay at Horton in Buckinghamshire, between the life at Cambridge and the journey to Italy. All the rest of the shorter poems (except the Sonnets and two or three Latin pieces) were in like manner composed before the breaking out of the civil war. 22. In 1638 Milton visited Italy, and stayed several months at Florence, Rome, and Naples, mixing familiarly in the literary society of those cities. The Italians were amazed at this prodigy of genius from the remote North, the beauty and grace of whose person recommended his intellectual gifts. The Marquis Manso, the friend of Tasso, said, referring to the well-known anecdote of Pope Gregory, that if his religion were as good as his other qualifications, he would be, 'Non Anglus verum angelus.' Selvaggi, in a Latin distich, anticipated the famous encomium of Dryden,' and Salsilli declared that the banks of 1 Three poets in three distant ages born, was dislodged from both Universities in turn by the victorious arms of the Parliament, and, attaching himself to the suite of Henrietta Maria, was employed by her at Paris for many years as a confidential secretary. After his return to England in 1656, he published his entire poems, consisting of Miscellanies, Anacreontics, Pindaric Odes, the Mistress, and the Davideis. In the preface he advised peaceful submission to the existing Government; and this tenderness to the usurpation' was maliciously remembered against him after the restoration of monarchy. He was fully included in the act of oblivion which Charles II. is said to have extended to his friends. His last years were spent in retirement at Chertsey. He died in 1667, from the effects of a cold caught by staying too long among his labourers in the hay-field. It will be more easy to assign his proper rank to Cowley, if one remembers that he had a remarkably quick and apprehensive understanding, but a feeble character. One reads a few of his minor pieces, and is struck by the penetrating power of his wit, and dazzled by the daring flights of his imagination; one conceives such a man to be capable of the greatest things. Yet it is not so; a native weakness prevents him from soaring with a sustained flight; the hue of his resolution is ever 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;' or rather his resolution is not of that tried and stable quality at the outset which would enable it to brush away subsequent and conflicting impulses from its path. He began the Davideis at Cambridge, with the idea of producing a great epic poem on a scriptural subject; but he completed no more than four cantos, and then gave up the design. It needed a more stern determination than his to carry through such a work to a successful issue. He felt this, nor doubted that the right poet would be found. He says of the Davideis, 'I shall be ambitious of no other fruit for this weak and imperfect attempt of mine, but the opening of a way to the courage and industry of some other persons, who may be better able to perform it thoroughly and successfully.' As in this preface (written in 1656) he was endeavouring to conciliate the party in power, it seems not unlikely that in this passage he actually refers to Milton, who in more than one of his prose works had spoken of his wish and intention to take up the harp some day, and sing to the Divine honour, an elaborate song for generations.' 6 There was something in Cowley of extraordinary power, both to kindle affection and to disarm malice; never was any |