Part 15 (2/2)
”That that is Forced is not Forcible.”
”No Man loveth his Fetters though they be of Gold.”
”Clear and Round Dealing is the Honour of Man's Nature.”
”The Arch-flatterer, with whom all the petty Flatterers have intelligence, is a Man's Self.”
”If Things be not tossed upon the Arguments of Counsell, they will be tossed upon the Waves of Fortune.”
The following are a few striking sentences from his +Essays+:--
”Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.”
”A man's nature runs either to herbs or weeds; therefore, let him seasonably water the one, and destroy the other.”
”A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, when there is no love.”
No man could say wiser things in pithier words; and we may well say of his thoughts, in the words of Tennyson, that they are--
”Jewels, five words long, That on the stretched forefinger of all time Sparkle for ever.”
5. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (+1564-1616+) has been already treated of in the chapter on the sixteenth century. But it may be noted here that his first two periods-- as they are called-- fall within the sixteenth, and his last two periods within the seventeenth century. His first period lies between 1591 and 1596; and to it are ascribed his early poems, his play of +Richard II.+, and some other historical plays. His second period, which stretches from 1596 to 1601 holds the Sonnets, the +Merchant of Venice+, the +Merry Wives of Windsor+, and a few historical dramas. But his third and fourth periods were richer in production, and in greater productions. The third period, which belongs to the years 1601 to 1608, produced the play of +Julius Caesar+, the great tragedies of +Hamlet+, +Oth.e.l.lo+, +Lear+, +Macbeth+, and some others. To the fourth period, which lies between 1608 and 1613, belong the calmer and wiser dramas,-- +Winter's Tale+, +The Tempest+, and +Henry VIII+. Three years after-- in 1616-- he died.
6. +The Second Half.+-- The second half of the great and unique seventeenth century was of a character very different indeed from that of the first half. The Englishmen born into it had to face a new world!
New thoughts in religion, new forces in politics, new powers in social matters had been slowly, steadily, and irresistibly rising into supremacy ever since the Scottish King James came to take his seat upon the throne of England in 1603. These new forces had, in fact, become so strong that they led a king to the scaffold, and handed over the government of England to a section of Republicans. Charles I. was executed in 1649; and, though his son came back to the throne in 1660, the face, the manners, the thoughts of England and of Englishmen had undergone a complete internal and external change. The Puritan party was everywhere the ruling party; and its views and convictions, in religion, in politics, and in literature, held unquestioned sway in almost every part of England. In the Puritan party, the strongest section was formed by the Independents-- the ”root and branch men”-- as they were called; and the greatest man among the Independents was Oliver Cromwell, in whose government +John Milton+ was Foreign Secretary. Milton was certainly by far the greatest and most powerful writer, both in prose and in verse, on the side of the Puritan party. The ablest verse-writer on the Royalist or Court side was +Samuel Butler+, the unrivalled satirist-- the Hogarth of language,-- the author of +Hudibras+. The greatest prose-writer on the Royalist and Church side was +Jeremy Taylor+, Bishop of Down, in Ireland, and the author of +Holy Living+, +Holy Dying+, and many other works written with a wonderful eloquence.
The greatest philosophical writer was +Thomas Hobbes+, the author of the +Leviathan+. The most powerful writer for the people was +John Bunyan+, the immortal author of +The Pilgrim's Progress+. When, however, we come to the reigns of Charles II. and James II., and the new influences which their rule and presence imparted, we find the greatest poet to be +John Dryden+, and the most important prose-writer, +John Locke+.
7. +The Poetry of the Second Half.+-- The poetry of the second half of the seventeenth century was not an outgrowth or lineal descendant of the poetry of the first half. No trace of the strong Elizabethan poetical emotion remained; no writer of this half-century can claim kins.h.i.+p with the great authors of the Elizabethan period. The three most remarkable poets in the latter half of this century are +John Milton+, +Samuel Butler+, and +John Dryden+. But Milton's culture was derived chiefly from the great Greek and Latin writers; and his poems show few or no signs of belonging to any age or generation in particular of English literature. Butler's poem, the +Hudibras+, is the only one of its kind; and if its author owes anything to other writers, it is to France and not to England that we must look for its sources. Dryden, again, shows no sign of being related to Shakespeare or the dramatic writers of the early part of the century; he is separated from them by a great gulf; he owes most, when he owes anything, to the French school of poetry.
8. JOHN MILTON (+1608-1674+), the second greatest name in English poetry, and the greatest of all our epic poets, was born in Bread Street, Cheapside, London, in the year 1608-- five years after the accession of James I. to the throne, and eight years before the death of Shakespeare. He was educated at St Paul's School, and then at Christ's College, Cambridge. He was so handsome-- with a delicate complexion, clear blue eyes, and light-brown hair flowing down his shoulders-- that he was known as the ”Lady of Christ's.” He was destined for the Church; but, being early seized with a strong desire to compose a great poetical work which should bring honour to his country and to the English tongue, he gave up all idea of becoming a clergyman. Filled with his secret purpose, he retired to Horton, in Buckinghams.h.i.+re, where his father had bought a small country seat. Between the years 1632 and 1638 he studied all the best Greek and Latin authors, mathematics, and science; and he also wrote +L'Allegro+ and +Il Penseroso+, +Comus+, +Lycidas+, and some shorter poems. These were preludes, or exercises, towards the great poetical work which it was the mission of his life to produce. In 1638-39 he took a journey to the Continent. Most of his time was spent in Italy; and, when in Florence, he paid a visit to Galileo in prison.
It had been his intention to go on to Greece; but the troubled state of politics at home brought him back sooner than he wished. The next ten years of his life were engaged in teaching and in writing his prose works. His ideas on teaching are to be found in his +Tractate on Education+. The most eloquent of his prose-works is his +Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing+ (1644)-- a plea for the freedom of the press, for relieving all writings from the criticism of censors. In 1649-- the year of the execution of Charles I.-- Milton was appointed Latin or Foreign Secretary to the Government of Oliver Cromwell; and for the next ten years his time was taken up with official work, and with writing prose-volumes in defence of the action of the Republic. In 1660 the Restoration took place; and Milton was at length free, in his fifty-third year, to carry out his long-cherished scheme of writing a great Epic poem. He chose the subject of the fall and the restoration of man. +Paradise Lost+ was completed in 1665; but, owing to the Plague and the Fire of London, it was not published till the year 1667. Milton's young Quaker friend, Ellwood, said to him one day: ”Thou hast said much of Paradise Lost, what hast thou to say of Paradise Found?” +Paradise Regained+ was the result-- a work which was written in 1666, and appeared, along with +Samson Agonistes+, in the year 1671.
Milton died in the year 1674-- about the middle of the reign of Charles II. He had been three times married.
9. +L'Allegro+ (or ”The Cheerful Man”) is a companion poem to +Il Penseroso+ (or ”The Meditative Man”). The poems present two contrasted views of the life of the student. They are written in an irregular kind of octosyllabic verse. The +Comus+-- mostly in blank verse-- is a lyrical drama; and Milton's work was accompanied by a musical composition by the then famous musician Henry Lawes. +Lycidas+-- a poem in irregular rhymed verse-- is a threnody on the death of Milton's young friend, Edward King, who was drowned in sailing from Chester to Dublin.
This poem has been called ”the touchstone of taste;” the man who cannot admire it has no feeling for true poetry. The +Paradise Lost+ is the story of how Satan was allowed to plot against the happiness of man; and how Adam and Eve fell through his designs. The style is the n.o.blest in the English language; the music of the rhythm is lofty, involved, sustained, and sublime. ”In reading 'Paradise Lost,'” says Mr Lowell, ”one has a feeling of s.p.a.ciousness such as no other poet gives.”
+Paradise Regained+ is, in fact, the story of the Temptation, and of Christ's triumph over the wiles of Satan. Wordsworth says: ”'Paradise Regained' is most perfect in execution of any written by Milton;” and Coleridge remarks that ”it is in its kind the most perfect poem extant, though its kind may be inferior in interest.” +Samson Agonistes+ (”Samson in Struggle”) is a drama, in highly irregular unrhymed verse, in which the poet sets forth his own unhappy fate--
”Eyeless, in Gaza, at the mill with slaves.”
It is, indeed, an autobiographical poem-- it is the story of the last years of the poet's life.
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