MASTER NEGATIVE NO. 91-80211 MICROFILMED 1992 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK as part of the "Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project" Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without permission from Columbia University Library COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The copyright law of the United States ~ Title 17, United States Code ~ concerns the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material... Columbia University Library reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. AUTHOR: ADAMS, W.H. DAVENPORT TITLE: MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER... PL A CE : LONDON DA TE : 1885 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARGET Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record Master Negative # 1942 Adl •066 Adams, William Henry Davenport, 1828-1891. The merry monarch; or, England under Charles n. Its art, literature, and society. By W. H. Davenport Adams. In two volumes ... London, Remington & co., 1885. 2 V. illus. (music) 22J Bibliography : p. ii-iii. cm Restrictions on Use: 1. Cl. Brit.— History— Charles ir, 1660-1685. 2. Gt. Brit.— Social life and customs. 3. Gt. Brit. — Intellectual life. i. Title. Title from Y.M.C.A.,N.Y. "V^ A 23-959 Railroad Br. Printed by L. C. TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA REDUCTION RATIO: []. IB IIB FILM SlZE:2S_r^_y^ IMAGE PLACEMENT: lA __ _._ DATE FILMED:_*3r_iZl_^ INITIALS_7}li_^. HLMEDBY: RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS. 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[^All Rights Reserved.'] "iilH /\cll ^.l ^r-/7/^ 3 Cl^Uu.^ ERRATA. * . • .• • . • • • . t » • ' • • • • • • a < . t tf )» )> >» M >» Page 12, line 13, read " seventeenth" for "nineteenth." 22, „ 16, for " glad " read " gold.'* 38, last line, for " masts " read " coasts." 58, line 17, read " 1st of January, 1660." „ „ 29, for " Bunche" read " Buncle." 64, note, for " Palngamio " read " Palla-maglio.'* 91, line 1, for " ware " read " were." • 94, „ 4, for " SchoUing " read " Schelling." 124, „ 13, for « Cicli " read " Caeli." 144, last line, for " their " read " thin." 148, line 17, for "Clarendon Falkland" read " Clarendon's Falkland." 165, line 11, for " The Evening's " read " An Evening's." 213, „ 28, f or " Ather " read " Uther." 237, „ 25, for " force " read " farce." 243, last line but four, " Leonard" is also given as " Leanerd." ,, „ „ for " Counterf eite " read " Counterfeits." 259, line 20, for " worthy " read " woolly." 272, „ 26, for "if "read "of." 282, „ 9, for "Menandu" read " Menander.*' • • PREFACE. These volumes are designed to furnish the reader with a comprehensive and readable sketch of Society and Literature in the reign of Charles the Second. They will be found to deal with its diarists and poets, its dramatists and actors, its courtiers and musicians, its theologians and essayists, not, indeed, with any attempt at exhaustive criticism, but with a view to present their salient characteristics, and, at the same time, to indicate and illustrate the fertile intellectual activity of the period. It has been no part of my plan to intrude upon the pro- vince of the historian, and therefore these pages contain few references to statesmen or soldiers, diplomatists or politicians — the men who make history— or to historical events, except (in one or two instances) as regards their social aspects. Something, however, is said about the Court of Charles the Second ; about the Beauties and the Wits to whom it owes its dubious reputation. I am conscious that in this branch of my subject a writer must necessarily " skate upon thin ice ; '^ but I have been care- ful, I hope, to respect the just susceptibilities of the PREFACE. PREFACE. Ill f I reader, and to introduce no particulars with which the most fastidious can reasonably iind fault. Originally it was my object to have included within my survey the social condition of the English people generally, and of the squire and the citizen, the parish priest and the peasant particularly-to have offered some illustrations of manners and customs and of domestic life ; but a serious illness compelled me to forego this intention, and, so far, my book is incomplete. But I trust it contains in itself enough to interest and entertain the reader, and to render it acceptable as an introduction to the study of a very re- markable period of our national life. It is the result of the labour of many months ; and the occasional critical expressions which it embodies are at least the product of independent judgment and careful examination, though, as I have hinted, they do not pretend to be exhaustive. A work of this kind, however limited in scope or unpre- tending in execution, must necessarily be based upon a large number of authorities. But from many, perhaps, only a suggestion has been caught or an illustration bor- rowed, and it is not possible to make these the subject of particular reference. To others I have been more liberally indebted, and I hope I have included them in the foUowing Ust :— Samuel Pepys, Diary, edit, by Bright ; John Evkltn, Memoirs, comprising his Diary, from 1641 to 1706, ed. by Bray; Sir J. Eeeesby, Travels and Memoirs; Geeard Lanqbaine, Account of the English Dramatic Poets ; Bakee, Biographia Dramatica, ed. by Reed and Jones; Downes, Roseius Analicanus ; Collet Cibbee, Apohgy for His Ovm Life, ed, 1740; Jeeemy Collier, Immorality and Profaneness of tke English Stage; Life of Betterton; Peter Cunningham, Nell Gwynn ; Dr. Doran, Their Majesties' Servants; P. Geneste, Account of the English Stage, 1660-1820, ed. ten vols., 1832 ; Jesse, Memoirs of the Court of England during the Reigns of the Stuarts ; Count Hamilton, Memoirs of Count de Grammont ; Mrs. Jameson, Beauties of the Court of Charles II. ; Dr. Bueney, History of Music, 4to ed. ; Hawkins, History of Music ; Life of Purcell ; Henri Taine, History of English Literature; Dr. Johnson, Lives of the Poets; T. Arnold, The English Poets; Sir Walter Scott, Life of Dryden and Biographies of Novel- ists ; G. Saintsbury, Dryden' s Works, with Life and Notes ; Professor Masson, lyt/e of John Milton; B. H. E. Cape- FiGUE, La Duchesse de Portsmouth; Clarendon; Lin- gard; Macaulay; J. R. Green; Herrick, Poetical Worhs, edit, by Maitland ; Abraham Cowley, Works, ed. 1707; Samuel Butler, Hudibras, edit, by Gray; Sir Thomas Browne, Works, edit, by S. Wilkin; Principal TuLLocH, History of Rational Theology ; Dr. Henry More, Philosophical Writings, 4th edit., 1712; Rev. J. Hunt, History of Religious Thought; Bishop Burnett, History of My Own Time ; Life of Jeremy Taylor, by Keble ; Life of Bishop Ken, by a Layman; Richard Baxter, Narrative of the Most Memorable Passage of my Life and Times ; Life of William Penn, by Hefworth Dixon ; &c., &c. W. H. D. A. ■^*! I f !■ I»! #■ CONTENTS. Chapter I.— The Diarists. Chapter II. — The Musicians. # Chapter III. — The Dramatic Authors. *■* Chapter IV.— The Duchesses. Chapter V.— -John Dryden. Appendix A. — The Siege op Rhodes. Appendix B.— The Man op Mode. Appendix. — Chapter III. J THE DIAEISTS. John Evelyn. Samuel Pepts. I ! I III III CHAPTER I. THE DIABIBTS. Not a little valuable and interesting information respect- ing the inner life of England during the Restoration period, and many important particulars in illustration of current events and historical personages, we owe to the diary of Mr. John Evelyn. It has its significance also as a revelation of character. It shows its author to have been a man of sound judgment and cpnsiderable powers of obser- vation and analysis ; a man honest and truthful to the core, and with many generous sympathies, though not exempt from narrow partialities and prejudices; a man with some pretensions to culture, with a love of scholarship and scientific inquiry, and, at the same time, a man of sincere devotional temper and unaffected piety. In painting a picture of the England of Charles II., we are apt to crowd the canvas with the glittering figures of courtiers and beauties, wits, gaUants, and frail nymphs, to the ex- clusion of those soberer persons who constituted the real bulk of the English people. But it is important to remem- ber that the age and country which produced and toler- VOL. I. ^ i 4 THE MEEET MONAECH ; ated a Eocliester and a BucMngliam, also produced a Jolin Evelyn, and that lie may fairly be taken as a type of the English gentry of that quiet, orderly, but influential class, who, in the next reign, so successfully won the victory of religious and civU Uberty against the subtle and insidious efforts of the Crown. John Evelyn was bom at his father's seat, Wotton, in Surrey, on the 31st of October, 1620. He received his earlier education at Lewes Grammar School, and com- pleted it at BalHol College, Oxford. Thence he removed to London to learn a little law as a student in the Middle Temple, and soon afterwards served as a volunteer in an EngUsh regiment during a brief campaign in Flanders. Like many other young men of good birth and estate, he inclined towards the Eoyal party at the outbreak of the Civil War, but failing to overtake the King's army on its maxch to Gloucester, after the battle of Brentford, he re- tired to Wotton, where, safe from the tumult and disorder of public albiis, he devoted himself to his favourite pur- Biiits. He had two strong tastes, which influenced his wlmie life, for books and flowers. To enjoy the former, he built himself a study ; to grmtiiy the latter, he e mb e lH ii iift A Ms grounds with blooming paiierres and leafy grovea. Meanwhile, the great straggle between the King and tlie P^iiiament increased in intensity and widened its area. Evelyn, happy in his rural retirement, was fain to let the stress and storm pass unheeded, for he was unable to side exclusively with either party, and he felt unfitted to make any conspicuous figure in the noisy theatre of public life. But the Parliament put a strong pressure upon him to declare himself, and to escape from it he withdrew to the Continent. OB, ENGLAND UNDER CHAELES II. 5 During his travels in France and Italy, he found numerous opportunities of prosecuting his researches in natural philosophy, a branch of scientific inquiry which greatly interested him. At Paris he was hospitably re- ceived by Sir Richard Browne, Charles II.'s ambassador to the French Court ; and to his daughter, a maiden of con- siderable personal gifts and rare accomplishments, he was married on the 24th of June, 1647, when she was scarcely fifteen years of age. In the following September he was compelled to return to England to settle his aff'airs, which, during his five years' absence, had become somewhat in- volved, and he left his young wife under the care of an excellent lady and prudent mother. It was not until the early days of August, 1849, that he was able to rejoin her in Paris. In the spring of 1652 he returned to England, which had settled down quietly under the Commonwealth Govern- ment, and prepared to take up his residence at Sayes Court, near Deptford, which had come to him by right of his wife. " I went to Deptford," he writes, '' where I made preparation lor my settlement, no more i nt e n d in g to pi out of England, but endeavour a settled lifi^ eiOier in this or HHiie other place, there being now so little ap- pearance 4rf any change for the better, all being entirety in the rebels' hands, and tins pajlicular habitation and the estate contiguous to it (belonging to my father-in- law, actuaUy in His Majesty's service) very much suffiar- ing for want of some friend to rescue it out of the power of the usurpers, so as to preserve an interest, and take some care of my other concerns.'' He was joined by his wife in the following June, and on the 24th of August was born their first child, a son. 4 THE MIEET MOH ABCH ; ated a Rocliester and a Buckingliam, also produced a John E?eljii, and tbat he may fairly be taken as a type of the English gentry of that quiet, orderly, but inEuential okti, who, in the next reign, so successfully won the victory of religious and civil liberty against the subtle and insidious efforts of the Crown. John Evelyn was bom at his father's seat, Wotton, in Surrey, on the 31 st of October, 1620. lie received his ®«rlier education at Lewes Grammar School, and com- pleted it at Balliol College, Oxford. Thence he removed ta London to learn a little law as a student in the Middle Temple, and soon afterwards served as a volunteer in an English regiment during a brief campaign in Flanders. Like many other young men of good birth and estate, he inclined towards the Royal party at the outbreak of the Civil War, but failing to overtake the King's army on its march to Gloucester, after the battle of Brentford, he re- tired to Wotton, where, safe from the tumult and disorder of public affairs, he devoted himself to his favourite pur- suits. He had two strong tastes, which influenced his whole life, for books and flowers. To enjoy the former, be built himself a study ; to gratify the latter, he embellished his grounds with blooming parterres and leafy groves. Meanwhile, the great struggle between the King and the Parliament increased in intensity and widened its area.. Evelyn, happy in his rural retirement, was fain to let the stress and storm pass unheeded, for he was unable to side exclusively with either party, and he felt unfitted to make any conspicuous figure in the noisy theatre of public life. But the Parliament put a strong pressure upon him to declare himself, and to escape from it he withdrew to the Continent. During his travels in Prance and Italy, he found numerous opportunities of prosecuting his researches in natural philosophy, a branch of scientific inquiry which greatly interested him. At Paris he was hospitably re- ceived by Sir Richard Browne, Charles II.^s ambassador to the French Court ; and to his daughter, a maiden of con- siderable personal gifts and rare accomplishments, he was married on the 24th of June, 1647, when she was scarcely fifteen years of age. In the following September he was compelled to return to England to settle his affairs, which, during his ^ve years' absence, had become somewhat in- volved, and he left his young wife under the care of an excellent lady and prudent mother. It was not until the early days of August, 1849, that he was able to rejoin her in Paris. In the spring of 1652 he returned to England, which had settled down quietly under the Commonwealth Govern- ment, and prepared to take up his residence at Sayes Court, near Deptford, which had come to him by right of his wife. " I went to Deptford/' he writes, " where I made preparation for my settlement, no more intending to go out of England, but endeavour a settled life, either in this or some other place, there being now so little ap- pearance of any change for the better, all being entirely in the rebels' hands, and this particular habitation and the estate contiguous to it (belonging to my father-in- law, actually in His Majesty's service) very much suffer- ing for want of some friend to rescue it out of the power of the usurpers, so as to preserve an interest, and take some care of my other concerns." He was joined by his wife in the following June, and on the 24th of August was born their first child, a son. « THE MEERY MONARCH; When the Parliament confiscated the estates of Sir Richard Browne as those of a Koyalist and " malignant," Evelyn obtained permission to purchase Sayes Court. His cnltivatL'd mind so recoiled from the turmoil and conten- tion which then vexed the public life of England that he suggested to his friend, Eobert Boyle, the establishment of a " college," or retreat, within twenty-five miles of London, where the friends of science and the votaries of philosophy might find an asylum in the fallentis semita viiw from the evil influences of the time and the rude pressure of hostile circumstances. These, however, did but little afFecfc himself, for his moderation of character and equability of temper had secured him friends in the Court of Cromwell. The worst that befell him he notes in his diary, under the date of December 25th, 1657 : — " I went to London with my wife," he writes, " to cele- brate Christmas Day, Mr. Gunning preaching in Exeter Chapel on Micah vii., 2. Sermon ended, as he was giving TLB the Holy Sacrament, the chapel was surrounded with soldiers, and all the communicants and assembly surprised and kept prisoners by them — some in the house, others carried away. It fell to my share to be confined to a room in the house, where yet I was permitted to dine with the master of it, the Countess of Dorset, Lady Hatton, and some others of quality who invited me. In the afternoon came Colonel Whalley, Goffe, and others from Whitehall, to examine us one by one ; some they committed to the Marshal, some to prison. When I came before them, they took my name and abode, examined me why, con- trary to the ordinance made, that none should any longer observe the superstitious time of the Nativity (so esteemed by them), I durst offend, and particularly be at Common I i OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 7 Prayers, which they told me was but the Mass in English, and particularly pray for Charles Stuart, for which we had no Scripture. I told them we did not pray for Charles Stuart, but for all Christian kings, princes, and governors. They replied, in so doing we prayed for the King of Spain too, who was their enemy and a Papist, with other frivo- lous and ensnaring questions, and much threatening ; and, finding no colour to detain me, they dismissed me with much pity of my ignorance. These were men of high flight, and above ordinances, and spake spiteful things of our Lord's Nativity. As we went up to receive the Sacrament, the miscreants held their muskets against us, as if they would have shot us at the altar, but yet suffer- ino- us to finish the office of communion, as, perhaps, not having instructions what to do in case they found us m that action. So I got home late the next day. Blessed be God ! " A month later, and Evelyn experienced his first great domestic sorrow in the loss of his eldest son, Eichard, a boy of five years old, of whose remarkable parts and many childish graces he has drawn a beautiful portrait. It is difficult, perhaps, to believe that at so tender an age the child could have been such a prodigy for wiii and ■understanding, such a very angel for beauty of body, and such a wonder for mental endowments as his father repre- sents him. Allowance must be made, no doubt, for the warmth of colouring natural to parental affection ; but even then it is clear enough that he was signally worthy of the love which was poured out upon him so lavishly. "To give but a taste of his quality," says Evelyn, " and thereby glory to God, who ' out of the mouths of babes and infants does sometimes perfect His praises,' he 1 i 8 THE MEERY MONARCH; had learned all his Catechism ; at two years and a half old he could perfectly read any of the English, Latin, French, or Gothic letters, pronouncing the three first languages exactly. In grammar, both English and Latin, he had, by his fifth year, made great progress, could write legibly, and had a strong passion for Greek. The number of verses he could recite was prodigious, and he was ac- customed to act the parts of such plays as he remembered. On one occasion, observing a copy of Plautus in a friend's hand, he asked what book it was, and when told it was too difficult for him, bui'st into tears. Strange was his apt and ingenious application of fables and their morals, for he had read JEsop to good purpose. His mathematical capacity was wonderful; he had by heart several of Euclid's propositions which had simply been read to him in play, and would 'make lines' and demonstrate them. But the most pleasing feature of his character was his earnest and unaffected piety ; he had a lively sense of the power and goodness and mercy of God, and of the re- deeming work of Christ. Astonishing were his applica- tions of Scripture upon occasion ; he had learned all his Catechism early, and acquired an intelligent knowledge of the Bible. Nor did he fail to understand his own re- sponsibility ; that, knowing what he did, he must take upon himself the promises which his godfathers had made on his behalf at his baptism." During his illness he behaved with a composure and a sweetness of temper and a patience which would have done honour to an aged Christian. He would of himself select the most pathetic psalms and chapters out of Job to read to the maid who waited on him ; and when she used any expressions of pity, he would reply, that all OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. ^ God's children must suffer affliction. "He declaimed against the vanities of the world before he had seen any," says his father, so that the declamation must have been somewhat unreal and superfluous. He would ask those who came to see him to pray by him. The day before his death he called his father to his side, and, with much seriousness, told him that he must give house and land and all his possessions to his younger son, John, for that he, Richard, would have none of them. Next morn- ino- beino- very ill, he was persuaded to keep his hands under the bedclothes, whereupon he asked, with a natural touch of childish simplicity, whether he might pray to God with his hands unfolded. Shortly afterwards, as his sufferings became severer, he inquired whether he should not offend God by using His holy name so often in calling for ease. His parents, watching by his bedside, were moved to tears by his frequent pathetic ejaculations. And so he passed away from a world in which he could not have tarried longer without receiving some stain or blot on the whiteness of his childish soul. Deep and strong as was Evelyn's sorrow, he did not permit it to interrupt his literary pursuits or to deaden his interest in the welfare of his country. He published translations from Lucretius and St. Chrysostom, and his horticultural tastes found expression in "The French Gardener." In 1659 he issued what he himself calls his « bold " " Apology for the Eoyal Party," and a vigorous reply to an attack upon Charles II., which he entitled, " The Late News, or Message from Brussels Unmasked." It is a signal tribute to his high character, and a proof of the respect it commanded, that, though well-known to be a Eoyahst, he was left unmolested during the Common- 1 10 THE MERRY MONARCH ; OB, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 11 wealth period. His long life covered the stirring and chequered times of the Civil War, the Eestoration, and the Bevolution ; yet, though he never abandoned a con- scientious opinion, nor stooped to adulation of the ruling powers, he sustained no injury in person or property. This fact may also be accepted as evidence of the com- paratively slight social dislocation occasioned by the changes in the government of the country. Evelyn's friendships, we may add, included men of all parties in Church and State, who were prompt to admire the honourable consistency with which he adhered to his own principles, while extending an enlightened and a liberal tolerance to those of others. On the whole, it may fairly be said that a young Englishman cannot do better than bear in his mind the example of Evelyn, as containing nothing but what is imitable, and nothing but what is good. All persons, indeed, may find in his char- acter something worthy of imitation ; but for an English gentleman he is, as Southey says, the perfect model. In one of his letters to the poet Cowley, who had made for himself, at Chertsey, a retreat from the busy world, whence he professed to regard, in the Lucretian spirit, the magnum mare of its passions and ambitions, Evelyn writes : " I pronounce it to you from my heart as oft as I consider it, that I look on your fruitions with inexpres- sible emulation, and should think myself more happy than crowned heads were I, as you, the arbiter of mine own life, and could break from those gilded toys to taste your well-described joys with such a wife and such a friend, whose conversation exceeds all that the mistaken world calls happiness." Such may, at times, have been Evelyn's private aspiration, but he fully recognized it to be the duty of every citizen to undertake such service as the commonwealth may impose upon him ; and, indeed, in his '' Public Employment, and an Active Life, Pre- ferred to Solitude and All Its Appendages," a reply to Sir George Mackenzie's well-known panegyric on Solitude, he very forcibly presses the argument in favour of active intercourse with the world as a means of doing good. As he taught, so he practised. He held a succession of re- sponsible and laborious posts which did not carry with them any great distinction or considerable emoluments ; those posts in which an honest man may serve his country unobtrusively, but eflPectively. In 1662, we find him appointed a Commissioner for reforming the ways, streets, and buildings of London. In 1664, he was on a Commis- sion for reorganizing and regulating the Mint ; and in the same year was chosen one of the Commissioners for the care of the sick and wounded in the Dutch Wars. He was also on the Commission for the repair of St. Paul's Cathedral, whose labours were rendered unnecessary by the destruction of the Cathedral in the Great Eire of 1666. In the same year we find him engaged on a Commission for regulating the manufacture of saltpetre ; and in 1671, he appears as a Commissioner of Plantations on the establishment of that Board, to which, in 1672, was added the Council of Trade. In 1685, the last year of Charles II.'s reign, he acted as one of the Commissioners of the Privy Seal during the absence of the Earl of Clarendon in Ireland. On the foundation of Greenwich Hospital, in 1695, he was appointed a Commissioner ; and on the 30th of June, 1696, laid the first stone of the stately pile which commemorates Queen Mary's patriotic interest in the mariners of England. He was also ap- 12 THE MEERY MONAECH ; OE, ENGLAND TTNDER CHAELES II. 13 pointed to tlie Treasurerstip, worth £200 a year, but lie tells us that a long time elapsed before he received any portion of his salary. There can be no doubt that in these various pubhc capacities he did the State good service, not only by the industrious exercise of his administrative talents, but by the splendid example he set of disinterestedness and integrity, and the true patriotic spirit. Still more valuable, however, was the result of his literary labours ; especially that '' Diary '' of his, which has not only an historical importance, but is deeply interesting as a vivid picture of certain phases of the social life of England in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is in connection with this '' Diary " that his name is chiefly celebrated. It differs greatly from that of garrulous Pepys— it is graver, more earnest, is less crowded with personal details ; has in it more of the judicious historian, and less of the scandalous gossiper. Naturally, the two Diaries differ exactly in those points in which the characters of the two writers differed. Much that Evelyn revered Pepys despised or io-nored ; and what interested Pepys had no attraction for the serious Evelyn. The latter had no curiosity ; the former was the Paul Pry of diarists, going everywhere, seeing everything, and inquiring about everybody. He was as graphic as a modern reporter, as inquisitive as an American interviewer. But Evelyn is always the sedate and scholarly gentleman, who regards men and manners from an elevated standpoint. He wrote his '' Diary," as it were, in full dress, in the leisure and lettered seclusion of his library ; Pepys jotted down his ciphers in the privacy of his chamber, with his wig thrown off, and his hose down at heel. The two resemble each other only in their zeal for the public service. Upon his literary work, as a whole, we may adopt the criticism of the elder Disraeli : " His manner of arranging his materials, and his mode of composition, appear excel- lent. Having chosen a subject, he analysed it into his various parts, under certain heads, or titles, to be filled up at leisure. Under these heads he set down his own thoughts as they occurred, occasionally inserting whatever was useful from his reading. When his collections were thus formed, he digested his own thoughts regularly, and strengthened them by authorities from ancient and modern authors, or alleged his reasons for dissenting from them. His collections in time became voluminous, but he then exercised that judgment which the framers of such collections are usually deficit in. With Hesiod he knew that ' half is better than the whole,' and it was his aim to express the quintessence of his reading, but not to give it in a crude state to the world, and when his treatises were sent to the press, they were not half the size of his collections." Next to his '' Diary," his most valuable composition is the famous " Sylva ; or, a Discourse of Forest Trees, and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesty's Dominions," in which an enormous number of useful details and valuable facts have been felicitously arranged and admir- ably condensed. It was written in consequence of an application to the Eoyal Society, of which Evelyn was one of the founders, by the Commissioners of the Navy, who dreaded a scarcity of timber in the country. Its effect was immediate, and a national benefit. In the dedication to Charles H., prefixed to one of the later editions, its author says : " I need not acquaint your Majesty how many millions of timber-trees, besides infinite others, have been propagated and planted 14 THE MEERY MONAECH ; througliout your vast dominions, at the instigation and by the sole direction of this work, because your Majesty has been pleased to own it pubUcly for my encourage- ment." This was a service to his country of which Evelyn might justly have been proud. His other writings include : " Fumifugium ; or, The Air and Smoke of London Dissipated" (1661), treating of an evil which still exists, and in an aggravated form ; " Sculptura ; or, The History and Art of Chalcography and Engraving on Copper" (1662); « Kalendarium Hortense; or, The Gardener's Almanac" (1664); *' Terra," printed for the Eoyal Society in 1675 ; « Navigation and Commerce : their History and Pro- gress "—an introduction to a History of the Dutch War, written at the request of Charles II., but not completed, probably because the author insisted on a straightforward statement of facts disagreeable to the King ; " Numismata : a Learned Discourse on Medals " (1697); and ''Aretaria: a Discourse of Sallets " (1699). Of a lighter character was his gentle satire on ladies' frippery (in the composition of which he was assisted by Ms daughter Mary), the "Mundus Muliebris ; or. The Ladies' Dressing-Eoom Unlocked, and her Toilette Spread. In Burlesque. Together with the Fop Dictionary, Com- piled for the Use of the Fair Sex." At Sayes Court, which had long been famous for its graceful and gracious hospitality to men of science and of letters from all parts of Europe, Evelyn, in 1698, accommodated Peter the Great, with results which were far from satisfactory. It was natural enough that he should be disgusted by the filthy habits of the Czar and his courtiers, who filled the house with people " right OK, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 15 nasty," and indulged in loud noises and bowls of brandy. The beautiful and " most bocaresque gardens " they injured grievously ; and it was a favourite amusement with the Czar to drive his wheelbarrow right through the holly-hedge which was Evelyn's joy and pride, and over the lawns and flower-beds in which he took so Innocent and great a pleasure. Of this hedge he speaks in his 'i 4a THE MEEEY MONAECH ; " 1670-1671, January lOth.— This day I first acquainted His Majesty with that incomparable young man [Grin- ling] Gibbons, whom I had lately met with in an obscure place by mere accident, as I was walking near a poor, solitary, thatched house, in a field in our parish, near Sayes Court. I found him shut in ; but looking in at the window, I perceived him carving that large cartoon or crucifix of Tintoretto, a copy of which I had myself brought from Venice, where the original painting remains. I asked if I might enter ; he opened the door civilly to me, and I saw him about such a work as for the curiosity of handling, drawing, and studious exactness I never had before seen in all my travels. I questioned him why he worked in such an obscure and lonesome place ; he told me it was that he might apply himself to his profession without interruption, and wondered not a little how I found him out. I asked if he was unwilling to be made known to some great man, for that I believed it might turn to his profit. He answered he was yet but a beginner, but would not be sorry to sell off that piece. On demand- ing the price, he said £100. In good earnest, the very frame was worth the money, there being nothing in Nature so tender and delicate as the flowers and festoons about it, and yet the work was very strong. In the piece was more than one hundred figures of men, &c. I found he was likewise musical, and very civil, sober, and dis- creet in his discourses." This rare and exquisite genius, Grinling Gibbons, was a native of Eotterdam, where he was born on the 4th of April, 1648. He came to London in 1667, after the Great Fire, and was first brought into notice by Evelyn, who, as we have seen, introduced OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 43 him to Charles II. Evelyn calls him ^'without contro- versy, the greatest master both for invention and rare- ness of work, that the world had in any age ; nor doubt I at all," he adds, " that he wiU prove as great a master in the statuary art.'^ He executed the base of Charles I.^s statue at Charing Cross, and also the bronze statue of James VI. in the Privy Garden, Whitehall, for which, it is said, he received £300. Not for his statuary, however, but for his carving in wood, which for fidelity, grace, and delicacy has never been surpassed, is he most highly es- teemed. His industry must have been little inferior to his ability — so many of our great houses and churches contain specimens of his skill. At Petworth is a very elaborate series of carvings, for some of the panels of which Turner, two centuries later, painted landscapes. At Fawley Church, Bucks, is a finely-carved pulpit, which formerly belonged to the private chapel at Canons, the seat of Pope's Duke of Chandos, and the satirist's "Timon's Villa. ^* Some beautiful carvings of fruit, flowers, and dead game, are extant at Cassiobury. The carved monument to Dorothv Clarke, in Fulham Church came from his patient chisel ; and the Londoner will find much of his best wo rk at Hampton Court. At Cranbrook House, Ilford, and at Burleigh, in Northamptonshire, further proofs of his genius may be obtained ; and at Bush Hill Park (near Winchmore Hill) is preserved his famous " large carving in wood of St. Stephen Stoned." Of course his art is illustrated at Windsor, and some of its finest specimens may be seen in the State Ante-Room. The tomb of Viscount Camden, in Exton Church, Rutlandshire, con- tains both statuary and ornament, and is a masterpiece of faithful execution. 44 THE MERRY MONARCH; Gibbons died at his house in Bow Street, in 17—. Horace Walpole describes him as " an original genius, a citizen of nature. There is no instance before him," he adds, " of a man who gave to wood the loose and airj light- ness of flowers, and chained together the various produc- tions of the elements with the free disorder natural to each species. ... It is said that he lived in Belle Sauvage Court, Ludgate Hill, and was employed by Betterton in decorating the theatre in Dorset Gardens. He lived afterwards at Deptford with a musician, where the beneficent and curious Mr. Evelyn found and patro- nized both. This gentleman, Sir Peter Lely, and Baptiste May, who was something of an architect himself, recom- mended Gibbons to Charles II., who was too indolent to search for genius, and too indiscriminate in his bounty to confine it to merit; but was always pleased when it was brought home to him. He gave the artist a place in the Board of Works, and employed his hand on ornaments of most taste in his palaces, particularly at Windsor." We continue our quotations from Evelyn : — " 1 683, December 6th. — The Thames frozen. "1683-4, January 1st. — The weather continuing intoler- ably severe, streets of booths were set up on the Thames ; the air was so very cold and thick, as of many years there had not been the like. January 6th. — The river quite frozen. January 9th. — I went across the Thames on the ice, now become so thick as to bear not only streets of booths, in which they roasted meat, and had divers shops of wares, quite across as in a town, bnt coaches, carts, and horses passed over. U €C OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 45 "January 16th. — The Thames was filled with people and tents, selling all sorts of wares as in the city. " January 24th. — The frost continuing more and more severe, the Thames before London was still planted with booths in formal streets, all sorts of trades and shops furnished, and full of commodities, even to a printing press, where the people and ladies took a fancy to have their names printed, and the day and year set down when printed on the Thames. This humour took so universally^ that it was estimated the printer gained £5 a day for printing a line only, at sixpence a name, besides what he got by ballads, &c. Coaches plied from Westminster to the Temple, and from several other stairs to and fro, as in the streets, sheds, sliding with skates, a bull-baiting, horse and coach races, puppet-plays and interludes, casks, tipp- ling, and other lewd plans, so that it seemed to be a Baccha- nalian triumph, a carnival on the water, whilst it was a severe judgment on the land, the trees not only splitting as if lightning-struck, but men and cattle perishing in divers places, and the very seas so locked up with ice, that no vessels could stir out or come in. The fowls, fish, and birds, and all our exotic plants and greens, universally perishing. Many packs of deer were destroyed, and all sorts of food so dear, that there were great contributions made to preserve the poor alive. Nor was this severe weather much less intense in most parts of Europe, even as far as Spain and the most southern tracts. London, by reason of the excessive coldness of the air hindering the ascent of the smoke, was so filled with the fuliginous steam of the sea coal, that hardly could one see across the streets, and this filling the lungs with its gross particles, -411 THE MEEUT MONAECH ; exceedingly obstructed the breast, so as one could scarcely breathe. Here was no water to be had from the pipes and engines, nor could the bearers and divers other tradesmen work, and every moment was full of disastrous accidents." The frost lasted for seven weeks, producing ice eighteen inches thick. The pastimes on the river were visited by King Charles, accompanied by his Queen, the Princesses Mary and Anne, and Prince George of Denmark, on the 31st of January. The Thames had previously been frozen over in 1564 ; and the same thing has since occurred in 1715-16, 1740, 1788-9, and 1814. " 1685, January 25.— Dr. Dove preached before the King. I saw this evening such a scene of profuse gaming, and the King in the midst of his three concubines,^ as I had never before seen — ^luxurious dallying and profaneness." " February 4th.— I went to London, hearing His Majesty had been the Monday before (February 2), surprised in his bed-chamber with an apoplectic fit, so that if, by God's providence. Dr. King (that excellent chirurgeon as well as physician) had not been accidentally present to let him bleed (having his lancet in his pocket) f His Majesty had certainly died that moment ; which might have been of direful consequence, there being nobody else present with the King save this doctor and one more, as I am assured. It was a mark of the extraordinary dexterity, resolution, and presence of mind in the doctor to let him blood in the very paroxysm, without staying the coming of other physi- cians, which regularly should have been done, and for want * Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland; Loaise de la Qaerouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth ; and llortensia Mancini, Duchess of Mazariu. \ Others say a penknife was used. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 47 of which he must have a regular pardon, as they tell me.* This rescued His Majesty for the instant, but it was only a short reprieve. Ee still complained, and was relapsing, often fainting, with sometimes epileptic symptoms till Wednesday, for which he was cupped, let bleed in both jugulars, had both vomit and purges, which so relieved him that on Thursday hopes of recovery were signified in the public Gazettes ; but that day, about noon, the physicians thought him feverish. This they seemed glad of, as being more easily allayed and methodically dealt with than his former fits ; so they prescribed the famous Jesuit's powder. But it made him worse, and some very able doctors who were present did not think it a fever, but the effect of his frequent bleeding and other sharp operations used by them about his head, so that probably the powder might stop the circulation and renew his former fits, which now made him very weak. Thus he passed Thursday night with great difficulty ; when, complaining of a pain in his side, they drew twelve ounces more of blood from him. This was by six in the morning on Friday, and it gave him relief ; but it did not continue, for being now in much pain, and struggling for breath, he lay dying, and, after some con- flicts, the physicians despairing of him, he gave up the ghost at half an hour after eleven in the morning, being the 6th of February, 1685." Evelyn adds an inevitable moral reflection : — " I can never forget the inexpressible luxury and pro- f.ineness, gaming and all dissoluteness, and, as it were, total forgetfulness of God (it being Sunday evening), which this day se'nnight I was witness ^of, the King sitting and * The Privy Council approved of his action, and ordered him a gift of i;ljOOO, but it was never paid. 48 THE MEEEY MONAECH ; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 49 toying witli liis concubines, Portsmoutli, Cleveland, and Mazarin, etc., a French boy singing love-songs in that glorious gallery, whilst about twenty of the great courtiers and other dissolute persons were at basset round a large gallery-table, a bank of at least £2,000 in gold before them ; upon which two gentlemen who were with me made reflec- tions with astonishment. Six days after, all was in the dust ! " To Evelyn's narrative it is necessary to add a few details. On the Thursday, when the King's illness was understood to be mortal, two Enghsh bishops presented themselves at his bedside. He said he was sorry for all he had done amiss, accepted absolution from Bishop Ken, but steadily refused the Communion. The Duchess of Portsmouth, whose grief seems to have been sincere, informed the French Ambassador, Barillon, that the King was really a Catholic, and urged him to tell the Duke of "York that, if any time were lost, his brother would die out of the pale of the Church. James hastened to ask the King whether he should send for a priest. '' For God's sake, brother, do," said the King, " and lose no time." But then, considering the possiblepoliticalconsequences, he added: "Will you not expose yourself too much by doing it?''^ "Sir, though it cost me my life," answered the Duke, " I will bring one to you." Not without some difficulty he found Father Huddleston, a Benedictine monk, whom he conveyed secretly up a back staircase, disguised by a flowing wig and a large cloak, and introduced into the royal bed- chamber, where the Earls of Bath and Feversham were in attendance. Charles, it is said, received the priest with great joy and satisfaction, assuring him of his desire to die in the faith and communion of the Church Catholic ;. that he was most heartily sorry for the sins of his past life, and particularly for having deferred his conversion so lon^r : that he trusted, nevertheless, in the merits of Christ ; that he died in charity with all the world ; that he forgave his enemies, and asked forgiveness of those whom he had in any way offended ; and, lastly, declaring his resolve, if it pleased God that he should recover, with His assistance to amend his hfe. He then made confession of his whole life with exceeding tenderness of heart, and pronounced an act of contrition with great piety and compunction. He continued to malje pious ejaculations, and frequently lift- ing up his hands, exclaimed, " Mercy, sweet Jesus, mercy," until the priest was ready to give him extreme unction. Afterwards, he raised himself up to receive the Sacrament, saying : " Let me meet my heavenly Lord in a better posture than lying on my bed." Having communicated, he remarked to Huddleston, who had assisted him in his escape after the Battle of Worcester, " You have saved me twice, first my body, and now my soul." The Queen sent to ask the dying man's pardon for any offence she might have committed. '* Alas, poor woman ! " he said. " She beg my pardon ! I beg hers with all my heart." She had been present during the earlier stages of his illness. With the graceful urbanity that was natural to him, he apologised to his attendants for being so uncon- scionably long in dying. To the Duke of York he recom- mended the care of his natural children. He begged him also to be kind to the Duchess of Cleveland, and added, "Take care of Querouaille, and do not let poor Nelly starve.'' A minute account of his last hours is given by the Rev. Francis Eoper, chaplain to the Bishop of Ely, who was allowed to be present :— VOL. I. E 60 THE MERRY MONARCH ; "Tlie King showed himself," he says, "throughout his illness, one of the best-natured men that ever lived ; and, by abundance of fine things he said in reference to his soul, he showed he died as good a Christian : and the phjsicians, who have seen so many leave this world, do say they never saw the like as to his courage ; so uncon- cerned he was as to death, though sensible to all degrees imaginable, to the very last. He every now and then would seem to wish for death, and beg the pardon of the standers by, and those that were employed about him, that he gave them so much trouble ; that he hoped the work was almost over : he was weary of this world : he had had enough of it, and was going to a better. There was so much affection and tenderness expressed between the two royal brothers, the one upon the bed, the other almost drowned in tears upon his knees, and kissing of his dying brother's hand, as could not but extremely move the standers by. He thanked our present King for having always been the best of brothers and of friends, and begged his pardon for the several risks of fortune he had run on his account. He told him now he had freely left him all, and begged of God to bless him with a pros- perous reign. . . . He blessed all his children one by one (except the Duke of Monmouth), pulling them to him on the bed. And then the bishops moved him, as he was the Lord's Anointed, and the father of his country, to bless them also, and all that were there present, and in them the whole body of his subjects. Whereupon, the room being full, all fell down upon their knees, and he raised himself on his bed and very solemnly blessed them all." On the morning of his death he asked the hour, and, being told it was six o'clock, " Open the cui'tains," he OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 51 said, " that I may once more see day." His sufferings were very severe, and at half-past eight it was with the utmost difficulty he could speak. As long as the power of speech remained he could be heard uttering the name of God, and begging pardon for his offences. Even when speechless, he showed by lifting up his hands, and by the expression of his countenance, the great thought that oc- cupied his mind. " He disposed himself to die," says one authority, "with the piety and unconcernedness becoming a Christian, and the resolution becoming a King." Bishop Burnet admits that "he went through the agonies of death with a calm and constancy that amazed all who were about him." And Lord Chesterfield says that " he died as a good Christian, asking and praying often for God's and Christ's mercy; as a man of great and un- daunted courage, in never repining at the loss of life, or for that of three kingdoms." Charles II., when he died, was in the fifty-fifth year of his age, and the twenty-fifth year of his reign. Samuel Pepys, the author of the well-known Diary, was descended from a younger branch of the ancient family of that name, who, early in the sixteenth century, settled at Cottenham, in Cambridgeshire. His father, John PejDys, was a citizen of London, and followed the trade of a tailor until IGCO, when, having inherited from an elder brother a small estate at Brampton, near Huntingdon, he retired thither, and in this rural seclusion ended his days in 1680. Samuel Pepys was born on the 23rd of February, 1633, either at Brampton or in London. It is certain that he received his early education at Huntingdon, and was 62 THE MERRY MONARCH J thence remoTed to St. Paul's School. In 1650 he en- tered Trinity College, Cambridge, as a sizar ; but, before the period of academical residence began, was transferred to Magdalene, where, in 1651, he obtained a scholarship on Dr. Smith's foundation. There is no evidence in his later life that he profited to any great extent by the University teaching, while the Registrar's book of the College contains an entry which seems to show that he loved wine and " good company " over-much. On the 21st of October, 1653, Mr. John Wood, Registrar, records "that Pepys and Hind were solemnly admonished by myself and Mr. Hill for having been scandalously over- served with drink the night before. This was done in the presence of all the Fellows then resident, in Mr. Hill's Chamber." It is to be hoped that the admonition did Mr. Pepys good ! At the age of twenty-three Mr. Pepys fell in love with a beautiful Somersetshire girl, named Elizabeth St. Michel, and, though without occupation or vocation, married her. She was only fifteen, and had no other dowry than her charming face and figure. The penniless but susceptible young couple were generously received into the household of the enamoured bridegroom's cousin. Sir Edward Montague (afterwards Earl of Sandwich), who, throughout his public career, continued to be a firm and liberal friend and patron. Pepys accompanied the gallant seaman on his expedition to the Sound, and, on his return, was appointed, through his kinsman's in- fluence, to a clerkship in the Exchequer. In 1660, as secretary to the two Generals of the Elect, he went to Scheveling on board Sir Edward's flag-ship to bring home Charles II. At the Restoration, Montague was rewarded OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 53 for his services with the Earldom of Sandwich, and was made Keeper of the Great Wardrobe and Clerk of the Privy Seal. The sunshine of his prosperity embraced his young cousin, who, in June, 1660, was promoted to the Clerkship of the Acts of the Navy. The business capa- city which he developed in this position secured him the confidence and favour of his superiors, and among them of the Lord High Admiral, the Duke of York. Though by no means averse to pleasure — with a strong liking for plays and music, and a still stronger liking for pretty women — he discharged his official duties with praise- worthy conscientiousness, and an industry that was then regarded as exceptional. The interests of the "N'avy he had deeply at heart, and strove earnestly to protect them against the peculation and jobbery by which he was sur- rounded. He endeavoured to check the wastefulness that was rampant in the dockyards ; fought bravely against the dishonesty of the contractors ; unceasingly advocated the promotion of the older officers ; and did not fail to protest against the influence so injuriously exercised by the courtiers and royal favourites. It must always be re- membered to his honour that he remained at his post when London was stricken with the Plague, and, as every branch of the service was then deserted, undertook the res|)onsibility of the whole naval administration. " The sickness in general thickens round us," he wrote to Sir "William Coventry, "and particularly upon our neigh- bourhood. You, sir, took your turn of the sword; I must not, therefore, grudge to take mine of the pesti- lence." Soon afterwards he was appointed Treasurer to the Tangiers Commissioners and Surveyor-General of the 54 THE MERRY MONARCH ; Victualling Department, resigning tte latter office on the conclusion of peace with Holland. After the shameful event of the appearance of a victo- rious Dutch fleet in the Medwaj, the House of Commons ordered an inquiry into the causes of the breakdown of the naval defences of the country. On March 5th, 1668, the officers of the Navy Board were summoned to the bar of the House, and attended in the full expectation of censure and dismissal, though, in the face of overwhelm- ing difficulties, they had done their best. The debts of the office exceeded £900,000 ; its credit was forfeited ; the sailors and dockyardsmen had mutinied for want of wages ; no money could be procured either from the Treasui-y or the Bankers; and the equipment of the fleet had been suspended when its services were most required. Everything had conspired to embitter the Commons against the unfortunate officials; but Pepys, appointed their spokesman, in a vigorous and conclusive speech of three hours' duration, made so complete a defence that the House dropped the proposed investi- gation. Pepys made no similar oratorical effort, though he sat in the House for many years, first as member for Castle Eising, and afterwards as member for Harwich. In 1669 the prosperous career, on which he dilates with so much complacency in his Diary, was interrupted by an opthalmic affection, which rendered necessary a long holiday on the Continent ; and this was followed, on his return home, by the unexpected death of his wife, on the 10th of Novem- ber, at the early age of 29. In the opening weeks of 1673, an attempt, originating with the Earl of Shaftesbury, was made to discredit him OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 55 as a Papist ; but it failed. And, in the summer, when the Duke of York was compelled by the passing of the Test Act to resign all his employments, he was appointed Secretary to the Navy. He found ample scope for his administrative ability in this important office, until, in 1679, he was falsely accused of being implicated in the Popish plot, and thrown into the Tower. The favour always shown to him by the Duke of York seems to have been the motive of this attack, from which he did not get entirely free until February, 1680. In Sej)tember, 1683, Pepys, by order of the King, accompanied Lord Dartmouth on the expedition against Tangiers; and in the following year, when Charles assumed the office of Lord High Admiral, he appointed him to the Secretaryship of the Admiralty, with a salary of £500 per annum. He continued to hold this employment until the close of the reign of James II. ; and the reorganization of the Navy, which is sometimes carried to the credit of the Sovereign, was unquestionably due to the Secretary's laborious and sagacious initiative. At the Restoration, Pepys was dismissed from all his offices, and the electors of Harwich, suspecting him of favoui'ing the cause of James II., refused to re-elect him as their representative. After a brief confinement in the Gatehouse, he was allowed to retire into private life, where he amused himself with the literary pursuits for which he had always an inclination. Part of his time he devoted to the arrangement of the extensive collections he had made for a general history of the Navalia of England. During 1684 and 1685 he presided over the Eoyal Society, and for some years was in the habit of entertaining, on Saturday evenings, in York Buildings, 56 THE MEERY MONAECH ; several of its most distinguislied members, who « across the walnuts and the wine," held high discourse on literary and scientific subjects. He took an active interest in the management of Christ's Hospital; he was also a consider- able benefactor to St. Paul's School, and men of letters found in him a generous and enlightened patron. The naturalist Ray characterizes him as " ingenuarum artium et eruditorum fautor et patronus ezimius.^* His failing healtli compelled him, in 1700, to give up his residence in York Buildings, and he retired to the house of his old friend and servant, Mr. William Hewer, at Clapbam Common,* where, after a lingering illness, he expired on the 26th of May, 1703, aged seventy. Dean Hickes, who attended him on his death-bed, writes : "The greatness of his behaviour, in liis long and sharp trial before his death, was in every respect answerable to his great life ; and I believe no man ever went out of this world with greater contempt of it, or a more lively faith in everything that was revealed of the world to come. I administered the Holy Sacrament twice in his illness to him, and had administered it a third time but for a sudden fit of illness that happened at the appointed time of administering of it. Twice I gave him the absolution of the Church, which he desired, and received with all reverence and comfort ; and I never attended any sick or dying person that died with so much Christian greatness of mind, or a more lively sense of immortality, or so much ♦ Evelyn writes on the 23rd Sept., 1700 : "Went to visit Mr. Pepys at Clapham, where he has a very noble and wonderfully well -furnished house, especially with Indian and Chinese curiosities.'' He afterwards refers toit as "Your Paradisian Clapham." The house had belonged to Dr. John Gauden, Bishop of Exeter, author of the " Eikon Basilike," and after his death to his brother, Sir Denis, who collected a fine library and art-gallery, and died in 1688. It was then purchased by Mr. William Hewer, who died here in 1715. The house was pulled down in 1760. OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHAELES II. 67 fortitude and patience, in so long and sharp a trial, or greater resignation to the v^ill, which he most devoutly acknowledged to be the wisdom of God ; and I doubt not he is now but a very blessed spirit, according to his motto, Mens cujusque is est quisqueJ' One of Pepys^ most attached and oldest friends was his brother Diarist, John Evelyn. Differing widely in character, they were linked together by their literary and scientific tastes. An anonymous contemporary, in the Supplenient to Collier's Dictionary, draws a portrait of Pepys, which must be regarded as painted in too llatteiing colours : '^It may be affirmed of this gentleman," he says, "that he was, without exception, the greatest and most useful Minister that ever filled the same situations in England ; the Acts and Registers of the Admiralty proving this fact beyond contradiction. The principal rules and establish- ments in present use in these offices are well-known to have been of his introducing, and most of the officers serving therein, since the Eestoration, of his bringing up. He was a most studious promoter and strenuous assertor of order and discipline through all their dependencies. Sobriety, diligence, capacity, loyalty, and subjection to command were essentials required in all whom he advanced. Where any of these were found wanting, no interest or authority were capable of moving him in favour of the highest pretending; the Eoyal command only excepted, of which he was also very watchful, to prevent any undue procurements. Discharging his duty to his Prince and Country with a religious application and perfect integrity, he feared no one, courted no one, and neglected his own fortune. Besides this, he was a person 58 THE MEREY MONARCH of universal wortli, and in great estimation among tlie Literati, for liis unbounded reading, his sound judgment, his great elocution, his mastery in method, his singular curiosity, and his uncommon munificence towards the advancement of learning, arts, and industry, in all degrees : to which were joined the severest morality of a philosopher, and all the polite accomplishments of a gentleman, particularly those of music, languages, con- versation, and address. He assisted, as one of the Barons of the Cinque Ports, at the Coronation of James II., and was a standing Governor of all the principal houses of charity in and about London, and sat at the head of many other honourable bodies, in divers of which, as he deemed their constitution and methods deserving, he left lasting monuments of his bounty and patronage." The remarkable Diary which constitutes his best claim to remembrance he begun to keep on the 1st of Januaiy, and he continued it for upwards of nine years, when his failing eyesight compelled him to abandon his daily task. It is written in shorthand, the cipher used bearing a close resemblance to that which was long in vogue as Eich's system. Forming six manuscript volumes, the Diary was included among the books and papers which Pepys bequeathed to Magdalene College ; but its valuable con- tents were not made public until Lord Braybrooke's edition appeared in 1825. A fuller edition has since been pub- lished by the Eev. Mynors Bright. The Diary is as unique of its kind as the " Autobiography of Thomas Bunche," by Amory, or Hazlitt's " Liber Amoiis.'* In its frank self-revelations, it stands un- equalled. Probably regarding his secrets as safe in their cipher embodiment, Pepys jotted down his most private OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 59 thoughts and the minutest details of his household economy. He put on record his egotism, his love of flattery, his likings and dislikings, his petty disagree- ments with his wife (of whom, however, he was exceed- ingly fond), and his not very creditable flirtations with the pretty women whom his large circle of acquaintanceship embraced. He hides nothing of himself, nor from himself ; and writes down his selfish and crafty little deeds of wicked- ness as candidly as he does the great public events of his day. We must grant that he was a man of wide and liberal sympathies. His vivacity was inexhaustible, and it was with an interest ever fresh he turned to the last new play, the last new song, the last new beauty, or the last new discovery in science. He puts down, with equal gravity, his assumption of " a false taby wastecoate with gold lace," and the progress of the Plague in London. He preserves at almost equal length his discourses on high affairs of State, and his junketings with Mrs. Pierce and Mrs. Knip. Unlike Evelyn, he has no sense of dignity — he does not think it beneath him to make formal entry that " I dined with my wife upon a most excellent dish of tripes of my own directing, covered with mustard, as I have heretofore seen them done at my Lord Crewe's, of which I made a very great meal, and sent for a glass of wine for myself." The fact is, everything in which Samuel Pepys was concerned was to Samuel Pepys, for the time being, an event of engrossing importance, than which the whole world presented nothing greater. It was fortunate for posterity that this egotistical, gossiping, self-seeking, yet shrewd observer, was led to keep the detailed record of the early years of Charles II.'s reign which his Diary presents. Its audaciously candid 60 THE MEREY MONARCH; talk makes it invaluable. It is the very minuteness of its details which renders it so precious, for it enables us to fill uj) the outlines in which historians love to deal. "Pepjs/' says Lord Jeffrey, ^' seems to have been possessed of the most extraordinary activity, and the most indiscriminating, insatiable, and miscellaneous curiosity that ever prompted the researches or supplied the pen of a daily chronicler. He finds time to go to every play, to every execution, to every procession, fire, concert, riot, trial, review, city feast, or picture-gallery that he can hear of. Nay, there seems scarcely to have been a school examination, a wedding, christening, charity sermon, bull-baiting, philosophical meeting, or private merry-making in his neighbourhood at which he is not sure to make his appearance, and mindful to record all the particulars. He is the first to hear all the Court scandal, and all the public news — to observe the changes of fashion and the downfall of parties — to pick up family gossip, and to detail philosophical intelligence — to criti- cize every new house or carriage that is built — every new book or new beauty that appears — every measure the King adopts, and every mistress he discards." The interest and importance of the Diary, in the number and closeness of its photographic touches, will best be shown by a few extracts from its crowded pages. We have said that he went with Sir Edward Montague to bring back Charles II. to his recovered kingdom. Here is his description, characteristic in every touch, of the King's landing : — '^1660, May 25th. — By the morning we were come close to the land, and everybody made ready to get on shore. The King and the two Dukes did eat their breakfast OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 61 before they went; and there being set some ship's diet before them, only to show them the manner of the ship's diet, they eat of nothing else but pease and pork and boiled beef. ... I spoke to the Duke of York about business, who called me Pepys hy name [ah, what an honour !], and upon my desire did promise me his future favour. Great expectation of the King's making some Knights, but there was none. About noon (though the brigantine that Beale made was then ready to carry him) yet he would go in my Lord's barge with the two Dukes. Our captain steered, and my Lord went along bare with him. I went, and Mr Mansell, and one of the King's footmen, and a dog that the King loved, in a boat by ourselves, and so got on shore when the King did, who was received by General Monk* with all imaginable love and respect at his entrance upon the land at Dover. Infinite the crowd of people and the gallantry of the horsemen, citizens, and noblemen of all sorts. The Mayor of the town came and give him his white staff, the badge of his place, which the King did give him again. The Mayor also presented him from the town a very rich Bible, which he took, and said it was the thing that he loved above all things in the world, A canopy was provided for him to stand under, which he did, and talked awhile with General Monk and others, and so into a stately coach there set for him, and so away through the town towards Canterbury, without making any stay at Dover. The shouting and joy expressed by all is past imagination. Seeing that my Lord did not stir out of his barge, I got into a boat, and so into his barge, and we back to the ship, seeing a man * " To receive His Majesty as a malefactor would his pardon," b&jb Monk's biographer. 62 THE MEERT MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 63 almost drowned tliat fell into the sea. My Lord almost transported with joy that he had done all this without any the least blur or obstruction in the world, that could give offence to any, and with the great honour he thought it would be to him." On the next day but one, May 27th, Montague was made a Knight of the Garter. Other honours followed, as the wary seaman had calculated. "June 23rd. — To my Lord's lodgings, where Tom Guy came to me, and there stayed to see the King touch people for the King's Evil. But he did not come at all, it rained so ; and the poor people were forced to stand all the morning in the rain in the garden. Afterwards he touched them in the Banqueting-House." This superstitious ceremony was of great antiquity, dat- ing back as far, perhaps, as the reign of Edward the Con- fessor. It had fallen into disuse during the Civil War, but revived at the Restoration with increased popularity, so that in the first four years of Charles's reign he *' touched " nearly 24,000 persons. It ex[)ired in the reign of George I. Here is a quaint little personal touch : — " July 1st (Lord's Day). — Infinite of business, my heart and head full. Met with Purser Washington, with whom and a lady, a friend of his, I dined at the Bell Tavern in King Street, but the rogue had no more manners than to invite me, and to let me pay my club. This morning came home my fine camlet cloak, with gold buttons, and a silk suit, which cost me much money, and I pray God to make me able to pay for it." '' July 8th (Lord's Day). To White Hall Chapel, where I got in with ease by going before the Lord Chancellor with Mr. Kipps. Here I heard very good musique, the first time that ever I remember to have heard the organs, and singing-men in surplices in my life." " July 25th.— I did send for a cup of tee (a China drink), of which I never had drank before." Tea was sold in almost every street at this time, but was so valuable that the infusion of it in water was taxed by the gallon, in common with chocolate and sherbet. " Dec. 1st.— This morning, observing some things to be laid up not as they should be by my girl, I took a broom and basted her till she cried extremely, which made me vexed ; but, before I went out, I left her appeased." "Dec. 2nd (Lord's Day).— To church, and Mr. Mills made a good sermon ; so home to dinner. My wife and I all alone to a leg of mutton, the sauce of which being made sweet, I was angry at it, and eat none, but only dined upon the marrow-bone that we had beside." " March 23rd.— To the Eed Bull ^ (where I had not been since plays came up again) up to the tireing-room ; where strange the confusion and disorder that there is among them in fitting themselves, especially here, where the clothes are very poor, and the actors but common fellows. At last into the pit, where I think there was not above ten more than myself, and not one hundred in the whole house. And the play, which is called '' All's Lost but Lust," poorly done ; and with so much disorder, among others, in the music-room, the boy that was to sing a song, not singing it right, his master fell about his ears and beat him so, that it put the whole house into an uproar." t A minor theatre in St. John's Street, Clerkenwell, described as :— *' That degenerate stage, Where none of the untamed kennel can rehearse A line of serioas sense." IBBpr 64 THE MEERT MONARCH ; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 65 €€ April 2nd.— To St. James's Park, where I saw the Duke of York playing at Pele Mele, the first time that ever I saw the sport." Pele Mele, from the French faille maille* the name of a popular game, and of the place where it was practised. A round box bowl had to be struck with a mallet through a high arch of iron or raised ring, standing at either end of an alley; and he who did this at the fewest blows, or at the number agreed on, won. Charles II., who was fond ol the game, caused a Pele Mele to be made "at the further end of St. James's Park," what is now called the Mall ; but one had formerly existed on the site of the present Pall Mall. Says Waller : — " Here a well-polished mall gives ua the joy To Bee our Prioce his matchless force employ ; Hia manly posture and his graceful mien ; Yigour and youth in all his motions seen; No sooner has he touched the flying ball, But 'tis already more than half the mall. And such a fury from his arm has got, As from a smoking culver in 'twere shot.'* " November 11th. — Captain Ferrars carried me the Qrst time that ever I saw any gaming-house, to one, entering into Lincoln's Inn Fields at the end of Bell Yard, where strange the folly of men to lay and lose so much money, and very glad I was to see the manner of a gamester's life, which I see is very miserable, and poor, and unmanly. And thence he took me to a dancing-school in Fleet Street, where we saw a company of pretty girls dance, but I do not in myself like to have young girls exposed to so much vanity. So to the Wardrobe, where I found my lady had agreed upon a lace for my wife at £6, which I seemed much glad of that it was no more, though in my mind I • Which was derived from the Italian Palagamio. think it too much, and I pray God to keep me so to order myself and my wife's expenses, that no inconvenience in purse or honour follow this my prodigality." "May 21st.— My wife and I to my Lord's lodging; where she and I stayed walking in Whitehall Garden. And in the Privy-garden saw the finest smocks and linen petticoats of my Lady Castlemaine's laced with rich lace at the bottom that ever I saw ; and did me good to look at them. Sarah [Lord Sandwich's housekeeper] told me how the King dined at my Lady Castlemaine's, and supped, every day and night last week ; and that the night that the bonfires were made for joy of the Queen's arrival, the King was there ; but there was no fire at her door, though at all the rest of the doors almost in the street, which was much observed : and that the King and she did send for a pair of scales and weighed one another ; and she, being with child,^ was said to be heaviest. But she is now a most disconsolate creature, and comes not out of door, since the King's going. But we went to the Theatre, to the French Dancing Mistress (Master), and there with much pleasure we saw and gazed upon Lady Castlemaine ; but it troubles us to see her look dejectedly, and slighted by people already. The play pleased us very well ; but Lacy's part, the dancing mistress, the best in the world.'* « May 23rd.— My wife and I to the puppet play in Covent Garden, which I saw the other day, and indeed it is very pleasant." Puppet-shows were greatly in vogue at the Eestoration, and also in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. The reader will remember the farcical denouement of Ben Jon- * The Duke of Southampton, born in the following May. VOL. I. y 66 THE MERRY MONARCH; son^s '^ Bartholomew Fair," wliicli is connected witli a performance of the drama of " Hero and Leander," by pnppets in one of the booths there. " Cokes.— These he players, minors indeed. Do you call these players ?" " Leatherhead. — They are actors, sir, and as good as any, none dispraised, for dumb shows : indeed, I am the mouth of them all. . . ." " Cokes.— Well, they are civil company, I like 'em for that ; they offer not to pun, nor jeer, nor break jests, as the great players do : and then, there goes not much charge to the feasting of them, or making them drunk, as to the other, by reason of their littleness." In the early part of the eighteenth century "Paul's Puppet-Show" was one of the sights of London. It was much helped to its celebrity, no doubt, by Steele's notices of it in The Tatler (No. 16, May 15th, 1709). " May 27th. — With my wife and the two maids and the boy took boat and to Fox-hall, where I had not been a great while. To the old Spring Garden ; and then walked long, and the wenches gathered pinks. Here we stayed, and seeing that we could not have anything to eat but very dear, and with long stay, we went forth again without any notice taken of us, and so we might have done if we had had anything. Thence to the New one, where I never was before, which much exceeds the other ; and here we also walked, and the boy crept through the hedge, and gathered abundance of roses, and after a long walk, passed out of doors as we did in the other place, and so to another house that was an ordinary house, and here we had cakes and powdered beef and ale, and so home again by water, with much pleasure." On the 28th of May, 1667, Pepya writes :— " By water to Fox-hall, and then walked in the Spring Gardens. A great deal of company, and the weather and ^ OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 67 garden pleasant ; and it is very cheap going thither, for a man may spend what he will, or nothing at all, all as one. But to hear the nightingale and the birds, and here fiddles and there a banjo, and here a Jew's trump and there laughing, and there fine people walking, is mighty divertising.^' Spring Garden derived its name from an ingenious bit of mechanism, which, on being touched by the foot, sent a shower of water over the bystanders. It was a favourite resort of the Londoners in the reign of Charles I., but during the Commonwealth the preference seems to have been given to the Mulberry Garden, on the site of the present Buckingham Palace. At the Eestoration a strip of land, on the Lambeth bank of the Thames, was laid out as a public garden, and soon acquired a reputation which it retained down to our own time. From a manor called Fulke's Hall, which had belonged to Fulke de Breaute,King John's minister, came the name of Fox-hall, afterwards modified into Vauxhall. '' September 7th.— Meeting Mr. Pierce, the chirurgeon, he took me into Somerset House ; and then carried me into the Queen-Mother's presence-chamber, where she was, with our Queen sitting on her left hand, whom I never did see before ; and though she be not very charming, yet she hath a good, modest, and innocent look, which is pleas- ing. Here I also saw Madame Castlemaine, and, which pleased me most, Mr. Crofts [afterwards Duke of Mon- mouth], the King's bastard, a most pretty spark of about fifteen years old, who, I perceive, do hang much upon my Lady Castlemaine, and is always with her ; and, I hear, the Queens both are mighty kind to him. By and by in 68 THE MEEET MONARCH; OE, ENGLAND UNDEE CHARLES II. 69 li comes in the King, and anon the Duke and his Duchess ; so that, they being altogether, was such a sight as I never could almost have happened to see with so much ease and leisure. They staid till it was dusk, and then went away ; the King and his Queen, and my Lady Castlemaine, and young Crofts in one coach, and the rest in other coaches. Here were great store of great ladies, but very few hand- some. The King and Queen were very merry; and he would have made the Queen-Mother believe that his Queen was with child, and said that she said so. And the young Queen answered, ' You lie,' which was the first English word that I ever heard her say: which made the King good sport; and he would have made her say in English, ^Confess and be hanged/ '' " December 26th. — Hither came Mr. Battersby ; and we falling into discourse of a new book of drollery in use, called Hudihras, I would needs go find it out, and met with it at the Temple : cost me 2s. 6d. But when I came to read it, it is so silly an abuse of the Presbiter knight going to the wars, that I am ashamed of it; and, by and by, meeting at Mr. Townsend's at dinner, I sold it to him for 18d." [Mr. Pepys afterwards bought another copy, " it being certainly some ill-humour to be so against that which all the world cries up to be the example of wit ; " and resolved to read it again, and see whether he could find the wit or no. But in this he did not succeed.] "April 4th.-This being my feast-rery merry at, before, and after dinner, and the course for that very dinner was great, and most neatly dressed by our own only maid. We had a fricassee of rabbits and chickens, a leg of mutton boiled, three carps in a dish, a great dish •of a side of lamb, a dish of roasted pigeons, a dish of fine lobsters, three tarts, a lamprey pie, a most rare pie, a dish of anchovies, good wine of several sorts, and all things mighty noble, and to my great content." "November 3rd.— By and by comes Chapman, the periwig-maker, and upon my liking it, without more ado I went up, and then he cut off my hair, which went a little to my heart at present to part with it ; but, it being over, and my periwig on, I paid him £3 for it ; and away went he, with my own hair, to make up another of; and I, by and by." *^ November 28th.— To St. Paul's Church Yard, and there looked upon the second part of Hudibras, which I buy not, but borrow to read, to see if it be as good as the first, which the world cried so mightily up, though it hath not a good liking in me, though I had tried but twice or three times reading to bring myself to think it witty. To-day, for certain, I am told how in Holland publicly they have pictured our King with reproach : one way, is with his pockets turned the wrong side outward, hanging out empty ; another, with two courtiers, picking of his pockets; and a third, leading of two ladies, while others abuse him ; which amounts to great contempt." « December 10th.— To St. Paul's Church Yard, to my bookseller's, and, having gained this day in the office by my stationer's bill to the King, about 40s. or £3, calling for twenty books to lay this money out upon, and found myself at a great loss where to choose, and do see how my nature would gladly return to the laying out of money in this trade. Could not tell whether to lay out my money for books of pleasure, as plays, which my nature was most earnest in ; but at last, after seeing Chaucer, Dugdale's 70 ,g:HE MEKRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 71 History of Paul's, Stow's London, Gesner, History of Trent, besides Shakespeare, Jonson, and Beaumont's plays, I ' at last chose Dr. Fuller's Worthies, the Cabbala, or a Collection of Letters of State, and a little book, ' Delices de Hollande,' with another little book or two, cj;ll of good use or serious pleasure ; and Hudibras, both parts, the book now in greatest fashion for drollery, though I cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies. My mind being thus settled, I went by link home and so to my office, and to read in Rushworth ; and so home to supper and to bed." Another side-light into the social condition of the Court : — "January 20th, 1664.— Mr. Pierce tells me, that my Lady Castlemaine is not at all set by, by the King, but that he do doat upon Mrs. Stewart only, and, that, to the leaving of all business in the world, and to the open slighting of the Queen ; that he values not who sees him, or stands by him while he dallies with her openly : and then privately in her chamber below, where the very sentries observe him going in and out; and that so commonly, that the Duke, or any of the nobles, when they would ask where the King is, they would ordinarily say, ^ Is the king above or below ? ' meaning with Mrs. Stewart; that the King do not openly disown my Lady Castlemaine, but that she comes to Court. . . . That the Duke of Monmouth the King do still doat on beyond measure, insomuch that the King only, the Duke of York, and Prince Rupert, and the Duke of Monmouth, do now wear deep mourning, that is, by cloaks, for the Duchess of Savoy: so that he mourns as a Prince of the Blood, while the Duke of York do no more, and all the nobles of the land not so much ; which gives great offence. But that the Duke of York do give himself up to business, and is like to prove a noble prince ; and so indeed I do from my heart think he will. He says that it is believed, as well as hoped, that care is taken to lay up a hidden treasure of money by the King against a bad day. I pray God it be so ! but I should be more glad that the King himself would look after business, which it seems he do not in the least." " February 3rd. — In Covent Garden to-night, going to fetch home my wife, I stopped at the great coffee-house there, where I never was before : where Dryden, the poet, I knew at Cambridge, and all the wits of the town, and Harris the player, and Mr. Hook of our College. And had I had time then, or could at other times, it will be good coming thither, for there, 1 perceive, is very witty and pleasant discourse." This coffee-house was Will's, so called from William Urwin, the landlord, and was situated at the comer of Eussell Street and Bow Street. There a chair was re- served for Dryden, near the fireplace in winter, and in the balcony in summer. The first coffee-house in London, Pasque Rosee's, had been opened only seven years before ; but the new beverage had grown rapidly into popularity, and the coffee-house itself was at once recognised as a pleasant rendezvous by the wits, scholars, and other gregarious classes of the day. They afforded, more- over, an indirect channel for the expression of public opinion. "March 27th. (Lord's day). — It being church time, walked to St. James's, to try if I could see the belle Butler, but could not ; only saw her sister, who indeed is 72 THE MEEBT MONARCH; pretty, with a fine Roman nose. Thence walked through the ducking-pond fields ; but they are so altered since my father used to carry us to Islington, to the old man's, at the King's Head, to eat cakes and ale, that I did not know which was the ducking-pond, nor where I was. [The site of the ducking-pond, where the Londoners assembled to see the ducks hunted by dogs, is now oc- cupied by the Back Eoad.] So home ; and in Cheapside, both coming and going, it was full of apprentices, who have been here all this day, and have done violence, I think, to the master of the boys that were put in the pillory yesterday. But, Lord! to see how the trained bands are raised upon this: the drums beating every- where as if an enemy were upon them : so much is this city subject to be put into a disarray upon very small occasions. But it was pleasant to hear the boys, and particularly one little one, that I demanded the business of. He told me that, that had never been done in the city since it was a city — two 'prentices put in the pillory ! and that it ought not to be so." "July 11th.— Betimes up this morning, and, getting ready, we by coach to Holborne, when, at nine o'clock, they set out, and I and my man Will on horseback by my wife to Barnet ; a very pleasant day ; and there dined with her company, which was very good— a pretty gentlewoman with her, that goes but to Huntingdon, and a neighbour to us in town. Here we stayed two hours, and then parted for all together, and my poor wife I shall soon want, I am sure. Thence I and Will to see the Wells, half a mile off, and there I drink three glasses, and walked, and come back and drunk two more : and so we rode home, round by Kingsland, Hackney, and Mile End, OK, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 73 till we were quite weary; and, not being very well, I betimes to bed.** The qualities of the Barnet Wells were discovered in 1652, and rose into repute with such rapidity that "Fuller, only ten years afterwards, speaks of " the catalogue of the cures done by them as amounting to a great number : insomuch,^' he adds, "that there is hope, in process of time, the water rising here will repair the blood shed hard by, and save as many lives as were lost in the fatal battle at Barnet." Pepys went thither a second time on the 11th of August, 1667. He arrived by seven o'clock, and found many people a drinking ; but as it was a cold morn- ing, he contented himself with drinking three glasses, and then, returning to his inn (the Eed Lion), "did eat some of the best cheese cakes that ever I eat in my life." The well is still at the disposal of the public ; it is a chaly- beate water, and described as " an excellent safe purger." "July 26th. — Great discourse of the fray yesterday in Moorfields, how the butchers at first did beat the weavers, between whom there hath been ever an old competition for mastery, but at last the weavers rallied and beat them. At first, the butchers knocked down all the weavers that had green or blue aprons, till they were fain to pull them off and put them in their breeches. At last the butchers were fain to pull off their sleeves, that they might not be known, and were soundly beaten out of the field, and some deeply wounded and bruised ; till at last the weavers went out triumphing, calling £100 for a butcher." " August 10th. — Abroad to find out one to engrave my tables upon my new sliding rule with silver plates, it being :S0 small, that Browne, that made it, cannot get one to do it. So I got Cocker, the famous writing-master, to do it. 74 THE MERRY MONARCH; and I set an hour by him to see him design it all ; and strange it is to see him, with his natural eyes, to cut so small at his first designing it, and read it all over, without any missing, when for my life I could not, with my best skill, read one word or letter of it ; but it is use. He says, that the best light for his life to do a very small thing by, contrary to Chaucer's words to the sun,"*^ ^ that he should lend his light to them that small seals grave,' it should be hj an artificial light of a candle, set to advantage, as he could do it. I find the fellow, by his discourse, very in- genious : and, among other things, a great admirer of, and well read in, the English poets, and undertakes to judge of them all, and that not impertinently." It would be unpardonable to omit from our record of the celebrities of Charles II. 's. reign a name which has be- come proverbial, " according to Cocker." Edward Cocker, though known to posterity as the author of the once cele- brated book of *' Aiithmetick, being a Plain and Familiar Method suitable to the meanest capacity, for understand- ing that admirable Art," was held in repute in his own time chiefly as a caligraphist, a writer and engraver of "letters, knots, and flourishes." He was born in 1631, and died in 1677. His "Arithmetic" was a posthumous work (licensed on the 2nd of September, 1677), edited from the original manuscript by a Mr. John Hawkins. A portrait of the author is prefixed to it, and under the portrait are inscribed the following lines : — " Ingenious Cocker, now to rest thou'rt gone, No art can show thee fully, but thine own ; Thy rare Arithmetic alone can show Th' vast sum of thanks we for thy labours owe." * In Troilus and Cressida, bk. iii., lines 1466, 1467 : — ** What profE'rst thou thy light here for to sell ? Go sell it them that snaall seals grave." OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES IL. 75 The completeness and lucidity of Cocker's treatise se- cured it so lasting a popularity that it ran through fifty editions in less than seventy years. Here is a brief but curious reference to William Penn, the Quaker-founder of Pennsylvania :— "August 26th.— Mr. Penn, Sir William^s son, is come back from Prance, and come to visit my wife ; a most modest person, grown, she says, a fine gentleman." William Penn, at this time, was just upon twenty years old. He had already showed signs of an attachment to Quakerism, which his father had endeavoured to combat, and he was finally converted to it in 1666. At least he ac- cepted its principles, but not its practices ; for he was fond of good horses, handsome furniture, and bravery of dress. The Crown owing his father a sum of £16,000, Penn, at his father's death, compounded the debt for a tract of countiy in North America, nearly 300 miles long and 160 miles wide, which soon grew into a prosperous colony under the name of Pennsylvania. He provided it with a Con- stitution of a genuinely democratic character, and or- ganised its government on the basis of toleration, respect for the fights of all, and justice towards the Indians. He lived to see the good fruits of his sagacious policy, and was seventy-four years old when he died (July 30th, 1718). Mr. Pepys confesses his weakness for a pretty woman: " September 6th.— Called upon Doll, our pretty 'Change woman, for a pair of gloves trimmed with yellow ribbon, to [match] the petticoat my wife bought yesterday, which cost me 20s. ; but she is so pretty that, God forgive me ! I could not think it too much, which is a strange slavery that I stand in to beauty, that I value nothing near it." 76 THE MERRY MONARCH ; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 11 He notes, on the 2nd of October following that his wife was angry with him for not coming home, and for gadding abroad to look after beauties. ^' January 9th, 1665.— Walked to White Hall. I saw the Eoyal Society bring their new book, wherein is nobly writ their charter and laws, and comes to be signed by the Duke as a Fellow ; and all the Fellows are to be entered there, and lie as a monument ; and the King hath put his with the word Founder." This book is still extant, and contains the autograph of every Fellow down to the present time. The Eoyal Society grew out of that vision of an ideal institution which Lord Bacon conceived in his ''New Atlantis." The first who attempted to realize it were Evelyn, Bishop Sprat, Aubrey, Dr. Wilkins, and others, who met for the purposes of scientific inquiry and dis- cussion in "the parlour" of Gresham College. To this philosophical conference Evelyn gave the felicitous desig- nation of " The Eoyal Society."* A charter was granted to them ; the King declared himself their founder ; and Lord Brounker acted as their first President. "January 20 th. — ^Tomybookseller's, and then took home Hook'st book of Microscopy, a most excellent piece, and of which I am very proud. Homeward, in my way buying a hare, and taking it home, which arose upon my dis- course to-day with Mr. Batten, in Westminster Hall, who showed me my mistake that my hare's foot hath not the * Drjden, in Ma Anrms MirdbilU apostrophizes it as— ** O truly royal ! who behold the law And rule of beings in your Maker's mind : And thence, like limbers, rich ideas draw, To fit the levelled use of human kind.** t Dr. Robert Hooke, Rector of Freshwater, born 1635, died 1702. Was the author of ** Micrographia " and other scientific works. joint to it ; and assures me he never had his cholic since he carried it about him : and it is a strange thing how fancy works, for I no sooner handled his [hare's] foot, but I became very well, and so continue." [On the 26th of March Pepys notes that though the pre- ceding winter had been exceptionally severe, yet had he never been better in all his life, " nor had not, these ten years, gone colder in the summer than he had done all this winter, wearing only a doublet, and a waistcoat cut open on the back ; abroad, a cloak, and within doors a coat he slipped on." He adds : " Now I am at a loss to know whether it be my hare's foot which is my preserva- tion ; for I never had a fit of the colic since I wore it, or whether it be my taking a pill of terpentine every morn- ing."] A gleam of light is thrown in the following passage on the elementary dabblings to which inquiring minds were prone in ,those infant days of Science : — "March 22nd.— To Mr. Houblon's, the merchant, where Sir William Petty, and abundance of most ingenious men, owners and freighters of 'The Experiment,' now going with the two bodies [hulls] to sea. Most excellent discourse. Sir William Petty did tell me, that in good earnest, he bath in his will left some parts of his estate to him that could invent such and such things. As among others, that could discover truly the way of milk coming into the breasts of a woman ; and he that could invent proper characters to express to another the mixture of relishes and tastes. And says, that to him that in- vents gold, he gives nothing for the philosopher's stone ; for, says be, they that find out that, will be able to pay 78 THE MEERY MONARCH; themselves. But, says he, by this means it is better than to go to a lecture ; for here my executors, that must part with this, will be sure to be well convinced of the inven- tion before they do part w ith their money. . . . Thence to Gresham College, and there did see a kitling killed almost quite, but that we could not quite kill her, with such a way : the air out of a receiver, wherein she was put, and then the air being let in upon her, revives her immediately— nay, and this air is to be made by putting together a liquor and some body that ferments — the steam of that do do the work." Another illustration of social manners : — "April 12th.— Going to my Lady Batten's, there found a great many women with her, in her chamber merry— my Lady Penn and her daughter, among others, where my Lady Penn flung me down upon the bed, and herself and others, one after another, upon me, and very merry we were.'' " May 28th. — To see my Lady Penn, where my wife and I were shown a fine rarity : of fishes kept in a glass of water, that will live so for ever; and finely marked they are, being foreign." [They were gold fish, brought from China — the species, Cyfrinus auratus,"] Of the first appearance of the dreaded Plague in London we find the following graphic record : — ^' June 7th.— The hottest day that ever I felt in my life. This day, much against my will, I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and ' Lord have mercy upon us ! ' writ there ; which was a sad sight to me, being the first of the kind that, to my remembrance, I ever saw. It put me OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 79 into an ill conception of myself and my smell, so that I was forced to buy some roll-tobacco to smell to and chew, which took away the apprehension." The patriotism which elevated the character of Pepys, and more than counterbalanced his vanity and love of money, glows in the following brief but telling account of the great but fruitless victory over the Dutch on the 3rd of June, 1665 : — " This day they engaged: the Dutch neglecting greatly the opportunity of the wind they had of us ; by which they lost the benefit of their fireships. The Earl of Falmouth,^ Muskerry, and Mr. Eichard Boyle killed on board the Duke's ship, the Eoyal Charles, with one shot : their blood and brains flying in the Duke's face ; and the head of Mr. Boyle striking down the Duke, as some say. Earl of Marlborough, Portland, Eear Admiral Sansum,to Prince Eupert, killed, and Captains Kir by and Allison. Sir John Lawson wounded on the knee : t hath had some bones taken out, and is likely to be well again. Upon receiving the hurt, he sent to the Duke for another to command the Eoyal Oak. The Duke sent Jordan out of the St. George, who did brave things to her. Captain Jeremiah Smith, of the Mary, was second to the Duke, * Sir John Denham, in his savagely satirical "Advice to a Painter' says: — x^ulci, " His shattered head the feariess Duke distains, And gave the last first proof that he had brains." t When the flag-ship of the Dutch Admiral Opdam blew up, a shot from It liiortally wounded Sir John Lawson :— " Destiny allowed Him his revenge, to make his death more proud. A fatal bullet from his side did range, And battered Lawson ; oh, too dear exchange f He led our fleet that day too short a space, But lost his knee : since died, in glorious race : Lawson, whose valour beyond Fate did go, And Btill fights Opdam in the lake below." 80 THE MERRT MONARCH; and stepped between him and Captain Seaton, of tlie Urania, 76 guns and 400 men, who had sworn to board the Duke, killed him 200 men, and took the ship ; himself losing 99 men, and never an officer saved, but himself and lieutenant. His master indeed is saved, with his leg cut off. Admiral Opdam blown up, Tromp killed, and [it is] said, by Holmes [Sir Eobert] ; all the rest of their Admirals, as they say, Mr. Everson, whom they dare not trust for his affection to the Prince of Orange, are killed: we have taken and sunk, as is believed, about twenty- four of their best ships ; killed and taken near 8,000 or 10,000 men, and lost, we think, not above 700. A greater victory never known in the world. They are all fled; some 43 got into the Texel, and others elsewhere, and we in pursuit of the rest. Thence, with my heart full of joy, home ; then to my Lady Penn's, where they are all joyed, and not a little puffed up at the good success of their father ; and good service indeed is said to have been done by him. Had a great bonfire at the gate ; and I, with my Lady Penn's people, and others, to Mrs. Turner's great room, and then down into the street. I did give the boys 4s. aniODg them, and mighty merry : so home to bed, with my heart at great rest and quiet, saving that the con- sideration of the victory is too great for me presently to comprehend.'* It was a great victory, and might have been made a complete one. When the Dutch fled from off Lowestoft to their own shore, the English fleet pursued; but, during the night, the Roijal Charles, the Duke of York's lag-ship, slackened sail and brought-to. In a Council of War, Admiral Sir William Penn bade his colleagues pre- pare for hotter work in the next engagement, knowing OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 81 that the courage of the Dutch always reached its highest point when their fortunes were most desperate. The courtiers protested that the Duke had won honour enough, and why should he venture himself a second time. His Eoyal Highness retired to his cabin ; and in the night Brounker, one of his servants, delivered an order to the master, apparently in the Duke's handwriting, to slacken sail. To the intense mortification of the seamen, the pursuit was then abandoned, and the Dutch fleet spared to fight again. It was afterwards alleged that Brouncker forged the order ; if so, he never received the punishment his treachery or cowardice deserved. " July 26th.— Down to Woolwich, and there I first saw and kissed my wife, and saw some of her painting, which is very curious ; and away again to the King, and back again with him in the barge, hearing him and the Duke talk, and seeing and observing their manner of discourse. And, God forgive me ! though I admire them with aU the duty possible, yet the more a man considers and observes them, the less he finds of difference between them and other men, though, blessed be God ! they are both princes of great nobleness and spirit.'' Mr. Pepys attends the marriage of Lord Sandwich's daughter with young Carteret, the son of Sir George Car- teret. "July 31sfc.— When we come, though we drove hard with six horses, yet we found them gone from home ; and, going towards the church, met them coming from church, which troubled us. But, however, that trouble was soon over ; hearing it was well done : they being both in their old clothes ; my Lord Crewe giving her, there being three coachfulls of them. The young lady, mighty sad, which VOL. I. a 82 THE MERET MONARCH ; troubled me ; but yet I think it Wcas only lier gravity in a little greater degree than usual. All saluted her, but I did not, till my Lady Sandwich did ask me whether I saluted her or no. So to dinner, and very merry we were ; but in such a sober way as never almost anything was in so ffreat families : but it was much better. After dinner, company divided, some to cards, others to talk. My Lady Sandwich and I up to settle accounts, and pay her some money. ... At night to supper, and so to talk; and which, methought, was the most extraordinary thing, all of us to prayers as usual, and the young bride and bride- groom too : and so, after prayers, soberly to bed ; only I got into the bridegroom's chamber while he undressed himself, and there was very merry, till he was called to the bride's chamber, and into bed they went. But the modesty and gravity of this business was so decent, that it was to me indeed ten times more delightful than if it had been twenty times more merry and jovial" " December 6th.— I spent the afternoon upon a song of Solyman's words to Eoxalana [in D'Avenant's Siege of Rhodes] that I have set, and so with my wife and Mercer [her maid] walked to Mrs. Pierce's, where Captain Eolt and Mrs. Knipp, Mr. Coleman and his wife, and Laneari, Mrs. Worshipp and her singing daughter, met ; and, by and by, unexpectedly comes Mr. Pierce from Oxford. Here the best company for music I ever was in, in my life, and wish I could live and die in it, both for music and the face of Mrs. Pierce, and my wife, and Knipp, who is pretty enough; but the most excellent, mad-humoured thing, and sings the noblest that ever I heard in my life, and Eolt with her, some things together, most excellently. I spent the night in an ecstasy almost." OE, ENGLAND UNDEE CHARLES II. 83 " 1C6C, January 6th.— To a great dinner and much company. Mr. Cuttle and his lady and I went, hoping to get Mrs. Knipp to us, having wrote a letter to her in the morning, calHng myself ' Dapper Dicky,^ in answer to hers of ' Barbary Allen,' but could not, and am told by the boy that carried my letter, that he found her crying; and I fear she lives a sad life with that ill-natured fellow her husband : so we had a great, but I a melancholy dinner. After dinner to cards, and then comes notice that my wife is come unexpectedly to me to town : so I to her. It is only to see what I do, and why I come not home; and she is in the right ^Aa^ I would have a little more of Mrs. Kni])p's company before I go away. My wife to fetch away my things from Woolwich, and I back to cards, and after cards to choose King and Queen, and a good cake there was, but no marks found ; but I privately found the clove, the mark of the Knave, and privately put it into Captain Cocke's piece, which made some mirth, because of his lately being known by his buying of clove and mace of the East Lidia prizes. At night home to my lodging, where I find my wife returned with my things. It being Twelfth Night, they had got the fiddler, and mighty merry they were ; and I above, come not to them, leaving them dancing, and choosing King and Queen." In the Twelfth Night cake a bean was inserted for the King, a pea for the Queen, a clove for the Knave, and so on. Here are two or three passages in illustration of the well-known weakness of Mr. Pepys for a pretty face :— "January 15th.— This afternoon, after sermon, comes my dear fair beauty of the Exchange, Mrs. Batelier, brought by her sister, an acquaintance of Mercer's, to 84 THE MEREY MONARCH ; see mj wife. I saluted her with as much pleasure as I had done any a great while. We sat and talked together an hour, with infinite pleasure to me, and so the fair creature went away, and proves one of the modestest women and pretty, that ever I saw in my life, and my wife judges her so too." " January 15th. — To Mrs. Pierce, to her new house in Covent Garden, a very fine place and fine house. Took her thence home to my house, and so by water to Bore- man^s by night, where the greatest disappointment that ever I saw in my life — much company, a good supper pro- vided, and all come with expectation of excess of mirth, but all blank through the waywardness of Mrs. Knipp, who, though she had appointed the night, could not be got to come. Not so much as her husband could get her to come ; but, which was a pleasant thing in all my anger, I asking him, while we were in expectation what answer one of our many messengers would bring, what he thought, whether she would come or no, he answered that, for his part, he could not so much as think. At last, very late, and supper done, she came undressed, but it brought me no mirth at all ; only, after all being done, without singing, or very little, and no dancing. Pierce and I to bed together, and he and I very merry to find how little and thin clothes they give us to cover us, so that we were fain to lie in our stockings and drawers, and lay all our coats and clothes upon the bed." "January 18th.— To Captain Cocke's, where Mrs. Williams was and Mrs. Knipp. I was not heartily merry, though a glass of wine did a little cheer me. After dinner to the office. Anon comes to me thither my Lord Brounker, Mrs. Williams, and Knipp. I brought OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 85 down my wife in her night-gown, she not being indeed Tery well, to the office to them. My wife and I anon and Mercer, by coach, to Pierce's, where mighty merry, and sing and dance with great pleasure ; and 1 danced, who never did in company in my life." Here is a note of the Great Storm :— "January 24th.— My Lord and I, the wind being again very furious, so as we durst not go by water, walked to London quite round the bridge, no boat being able to stir ; and. Lord ! what a dirty walk we had, and so strong the wind, that in the fields we many times could not carry our bodies against it, but were driven backwards. We went through Horsleydown. ... It was dangerous to walk the streets, the bricks and tiles falling from the houses, that the whole streets were covered with them • and whole chimneys, nay, whole houses, in two or three places. Mowed down. But, above all, the pales of London Bridge, on both sides, were blown away, so that we were fain to stoop very low for fear of blowing off of the bridge. We could see no boats in the Thames afloat, but what were broke loose, and carried through the bridge, it being ebbing water. And the greatest sight of all was, among other parcels of ships driven here and there in clusters together; one was quite overset, and lay with her masts all along in the water, and keel above water." The King praises Mr. Pepys : — " January 28th.— I went down into one of the Courts [at Hampton Court] , and there met the King and Duke : and the Duke called me to him. And the King come to me of himself, and told me, ' Mr. Pepys,' says he, ' I do give you thanks for your good service all this year, and I .assure you I am very sensible of it.' And the Duke of 86 THE MEERY MONARCH; York did tell me with pleasure, that he had read over my discourse about pursers, and would have ordered it in my way, and so fell from one discourse to another. I walked with ibmn quite out of the Court into the fields." Valentines : — • " February 14th, 1666.— This morning called up by Mr. Hill, who, my wife thought, had come to be her Valentine —she, it seems, having drawn him, but it proved not. However, calling him up to our bedside, my wife chal- lenged him. ... By and by conies Mrs. Pierce, with my name in her bosom for her Valentine, which will cost me money." To this custom Pepys has several allusions. The Valen- tines were drawn in a kind of lottery, and the choosing party invariably expected a present from his or her Valen- tine. On the 16th of February, 1667, Pepys writes : " I find that Mrs. Pierce's little girl is my Valentine, she having drawn me ; which I was not sorry for, it easing me of something more that I must have given to others. But here I do first observe the fashion of drawing mottoes as well as names, so that Pierce, who drew my wife, did draw also a motto, and this girl drew another for me. What mine was, I forget ; but my wife's was ' IMost cour- teous and most fair,' which, as it may be used, or an anagram upon each name, might be very pretty." The presents given varied in value according to the rank and means of the giver, and, naturally, also according to the degree of estimation in which the Valentine held the person by whom he or she was chosen. For example, Pepys records that the Duke of York, when chosen by Mrs. Frances Stewart, gave her a jewel worth £800 ; and, in another year, Lord MandeviUe gave her a ring valued OR^ ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 87 at £300. Drayton, in his lyrical address to Ids Valentine, ridicules this Valentine-lottery. He says : — Let's langli at them tliat choose Their Valentines by lot ; To wear their names that use, Whom idly they have got, Such poor choice we refuse, Saint Valentine befriend : We thus this morn may spend, Else, Muse, awake her not. Mr. Pepys entertains good company : — "March 7th.— In the evening, being at Sir William Batten's, I find my Lord Brounker and Mrs. Williams, and they would of their own accord, though I had never obliged them, nor my wife neither, with one visit for many of theirs, go see my house and my wife ; which I showed them and made them welcome with wine and China oranges, now a great rarity since the war, none to be had. My house happened to be mighty clean, and did me great honour, and they mightily pleased with it." " March 19th.— After dinner, we walked to the King's playhouse, all in dirt, they being altering of the stage to make it wider. But God knows when they will begin to act again ; but my business here was to see the inside of the stage and all the tiring-rooms and machines; and, indeed, it was a sight worthy seeing. But to see their clothes, and the various sorts, and what a mixture of things there was 5 here a wooden leg, there a ruff, here a hobby-horse, there a crown, would make a man split himself to see with laughing; and particularly Lacy's wardrobe, and Shotrell's.-^ But then again to think how fine they show on the stage by candle-light, and how ♦Robert Shotterel, an actor in the King's company, mentioned by Downes. He was living as late as 1684, but httle is known of him. 88 THE MEEEY MONAECH ; poor tilings they are to look at too near hand, is not pleasant at all. The machines are fine, and the paint- ings very pretty/^ We have here a reference to the principal seamen of the Restoration : — "AprillSth.— To Mr. Lilly's, the painter's [Sir Peter Lely] ; and there saw the heads, some finished, and all begun, of the Flagmen [i.e.. Admirals] in the late great fight [June lst-3rd] with the Duke of York against the Dutch. The Duke of York hath them done to hang in his chamber, and very finely they are done indeed. Here are the Prince's, Sir G. Ascue's, Sir Thomas Teddiman's, Sir Christopher Mings's, Sir Joseph Jordan's, Sir William Berkeley's, Sir Thomas Allen's, and Captain [Sir John] Barman's, as also the Duke of Albemarle's ; and will be my Lord Sandwich's, Sir W. Penn's, and Sir Jeremy Smith's. I was very well satisfied with this sight, and other good pictures hanging in the house." With the omission of Prince Rupert's, and the addition of Sir John Lawson's, this gallery of sea-captains may now be seen in the Naval Hall at Greenwich. There is also a copy of Prince Rupert's, but the original is at Windsor Castle. Prince Rupert's is a whole-length; the others are half-lengths. Mr. Pepys will be master in his own house :— " May 4th.— Home to dinner, and had a great fray with my wife about Browne's coming to teach her to paint, and sitting with me at table, which I will not yield to. I do thoroughly believe she means no hurt in it ; but very angry we were, and I resolved aU into my having my will done, without disputing, be the reason what it wiU ; and so I will have it." OE, ENGLAITD UNDEE CHAELES II. 89 Mr. Pepys enjoys himself :— "May 29th. — King's birth-day and Restoration Day. Waked with the ringing of bells all over the town : so up .before five o'clock, and to the office. At noon I did, upon . a small invitation of Sir William Penn's, go and dine with .Sir William Coventry at his office, where great good cheer, and many pleasant stories of Sir William Coventry. After dinner, to the Victualling Office ; and there, beyond belief, did acquit myself very well to full content ; so that, beyond expectation, I got over that second rub in this business ; and if ever I fall on it again, I deserve to be undone. My wife comes to me, to tell me, that if I would see the handsomest woman in England, I shall come home presently; and who should it be but the pretty lady of our parish, that did heretofore sit on the other side of our church, over against our gallery, that is since married — she with Mrs. Anne Jones, one of this parish, that dances finely. And so I home ; and she is a pretty black woman — her name Mrs. Horsely. But, Lord ! to see how my nature could not refrain from the temptation; but I must invite them to go to Foxhall, to Spring Gardens, though T had freshly received minutes of a great deal of extraordinary business. However, I sent them before with Creed, and I did some of my business ; and so after them, and find them there, in an arbour, and had met with Mrs. Pierce, and some company with her. So here I spent 20s. upon them, and were pretty merry. Among other things, had a fellow that imitated all manner of birds, and dogs, and hogs, with his voice,* which was mighty pleasant. Staid here till * This seems to have been one of the permanent attractions of Vauxhall. Many of our older readers will probably remember the ever-notorious " Herr . Joel," whose boast it was that he mimicked all the sounds of a farm-yai-d. 90 THE MERRY MONARCH; nifflit, tlien set Mrs. Pierce in at tlie New Exchange ; and ourselves took coacli, and so set Mrs. Horsely liome, and then home ourselves, hut with great trouhle in the streets, hy honfires, it being the King's birthday and day of Restoration." We gather from the Diary some curious particulars of the great sea battle on the 2nd and 3rd of June, 1666— the battle which Dryden has celebrated in his Amms Mirahilis with such elaborate word-painting. Pepys tells us how, walking in Greenwich Park on the 2nd of June, he " could hear the guns from the fleet most plainly/' He hastens to the water-side, and sees Charles II. and the Duke of York come down in their barge to Greenwich House, attracted by the same ominous sound. It is known that Monk was lying at the Nore, waiting for Prince Rupert to join him with his division, and bring up his force to an equality with the Dutch. The ap- prehension in everybody's mind is, that the junction may not have been efiPected, as was indeed the case, and Monk may therefore be exposed to the overwhelming attack of the whole Dutch fleet. " All our hopes now," says Pepys, " are, that Prince Rupert with his fleet is coming back, and will be with the fleet this even : a message being sent to him for that purpose, on Wednesday last ; and a return is come- from him this morning, that he did intend to sail from St. Helen's point [in the Isle of Wight] about four in the afternoon yesterday ; which gives us great hopes, the wind being very fair, that he is with them this even, and the fresh going off of the guns makes us believe the same. i> Pepys hurries down to Black wall, and there sees the soldiers embarked, who are intended to reinforce Monk. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 01 He notes that most of them ware drunk. " But, lord ! " he says, "to see how the poor fellows kissed their wives and sweethearts in that simple manner at their going off, and shouted, and let off their guns, was strange sport." Next day, Whit- Sunday, he receives the good news that the Dutch ships have suffered severely, and he hastens to church in the sermon-time, and with great joy tells it to his fellows in the pew, who, we may be sure, listened to no more of the sermon. Later in the day, the tables are turned ; the ill-tidings arrive that the Prince, with his fleet, did not reach Dover " until ten of the clock at night '' yesterday, having delayed, with his characteristic obstinacy, to act on the orders he had received. " This is hard to answer," writes Pepys, " if it be true. This puts great astonishment into the King, and Duke, and Court, everybody being out of countenance." He goes home by the Exchange, which is still full of people, all of whom are commenting bitterly on the failure of the Prince " in not makina* more haste after his instructions did come, and of our managements here in not giving it sooner, and with more care, and oftener." On the following day, while he is sitting in his room at home, he is informed that two men from the fleet desire to speak with him, and going downstairs, encounters " Mr. Daniel, all muffled up, and his face as black as the chimney, and covered with dirt, pitch, and tar, and powder, and muffled with dirty clouts, and his right eye stopped with oakum." He left the fleet at five o'clock last night, with a wounded comrade ; they were set on shore at Harwich at two this morning ; and, riding fast, arrived in London between eleven and twelve. Pepys calls a coach, and carries the two wounded men to ^2 THE MEEET MONARCH; Somerset House Stairs, where he takes boat, and with mingled feelings of exultant patriotism and gratified vanity, for " all the world was gazing upon us, and con- xjluding it to be news from the fleet,'' proceeds to the royal presence at Whitehall. The King is mighty pleased with the information Pepys brings, takes him by the hand, and talks a little about it. Afterwards the two seamen are in- troduced, and tell their story simply enough, as follows : — " How we found the Dutch fleet at anchor on Friday, half-seas over, between Dunkirk and Ostend, and made them let slip their anchors. They were about ninety, and we less than sixty. We fought them, and put them to the run, till they met with about sixteen sails of fresh ships, and so bore up again. The fight continued till night, and then again the next morning, from five till seven at night. And so, too, yesterday morning they began again, and continued till about four o'clock ; they chasing us for the most part of Saturday, and yesterday we flying from them. The Duke himself by and by spied the Prince's fleet coming, upon which De Euyter called a little council, being in chase at this time, of us, and thereupon their fleet divided into two squadrons, forty in one, and about thirty in the other, the fleet being at first about ninety, but, by one accident or another, supposed to be lessened to about seventy; the bigger to follow the Duke, the less to meet the Prince. But the Prince came up with the General's fleet, and the Dutch came together again, and bore towards their own coast, and we with them ; and now what the consequence of this day will be, we know not. The Duke was forced to come to anchor on Friday, having lost his sails and rigging. 1^0 particular person spoken of to be hurt but Sir W. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. oa Clarke, who hath lost his leg, and bore it bravely. The Duke himself had a little hurt in his thigh, but signified little." When the sailors have made an end of their story, King Charles pulls out of his pocket about twenty pieces in gold, and gives them to Daniel for himself and his com- panion, and then dismisses them. Of the many bloody and desperate battles which marked the long struggle between England and Holland for naval and commercial supremacy, this, perhaps, was the bloodiest and most desperate. It extended over four days, and its result was not so glorious as the Court and Dry den would have had the people believe. *^ Lord ! to see how melancholy the Court is, under the thoughts of this last overthrow, for so it is, instead of a victory," writes Mr. Pepys, in the frank privacy of his ciphered record. There were no daily newspapers in 1666 to blurt out in- convenient truths. The London Gazette and Eoger L'Estrange's Neios and Intelligencer , *' published for the satisfaction and information of the People," "^ told only what the Government wished to be told ; but the nation could not but see that there were no prizes in the Thames, and disabled seamen, returning to their homes, soon spread abroad unwelcome details of the disastrous fight. On the 15th of June Evelyn went to Sheerness, and there ob- tained convincing evidence of its calamitous character. " I beheld," he says, ^' a sad spectacle, more than half that gallant bulwark of the nation miserably shattered ; hardly a vessel entire, but appearing so many wrecks and hulls, so cruelly had the Dutch mangled us." Something was ♦ The News and Intelligencer were first published in 1663 ; The Gazette oa Is^ov. 7th, 1665. 94 THE MEEEY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 95 done to retrieve the renown of the Bed Cross on the 25th of July, when Monk and Enpert chased the Hollanders into the Texel; but soon afterwards the English admirals set an evil example by entering the channel at SchoUing, and burning to the ground the unfortified town of Brandaris— an outrage which the Dutch so signally avenged with the thunder of their guns in the Medway and the Nore. Yet it was in the face of such facts as these that Dryden wrote — Already we have conquered half the war, And the less dangerous part is left behind ; Our trouble now is but to make them dare, And not bo great to vanquish aa to find — an insult to a brave people unworthy of a generous foe ! We must bring our quotations to a close, from sheer want of space, not from lack of interest, for there is scarcely a page in Pepys which does not throw some light on persons, or events, or manners. The undignified rela- tion in which the King stood to his imperious mistress. Lady Castlemaine, is vividly exposed in the following curious passage under the date of June 10th — that is, at the very time when the honour and security of the king- dom were reeling under the heavy shock of the recent naval disaster . — " He [Mr. Penn, the royal chirurgeon] tells me further, how the Duke of York is wholly given up to his new mistress, my Lady Denham, going at noon-day with all his gentlemen with him to visit her in Scotland Yard ; she declaring she will not be his mistress, as Mrs. Price, to go up and down the Privy-stairs, but will be owned publicly ; and so she is. Mr. Brounker,^ it seems, was * Brounker was gentleman of the chanaber to the Duke of York, and brother to Lord Brounker, president of the Royal Society. He was a person of infamous character, and to his treachery or cowardice was due the the pimp to bring it about ; and my Lady Castlemaine, who designs thereby to fortify herself by the Duke ; there being a falling-out the other day between the King and her : on this occasion, the Queen, in ordinary talk before the ladies in her dressing-room, did say to my Lady Castlemaine that she feared the King did take cold in staying so late abroad at her house. She answered, before them all, tluit he did not stay so late abroad with her, for lie went betimes thence, though he do not before one, two, or three in the morning, but must stay somewhere else. The King then coming in, and overhearing, did whisper in the ear aside, and told her she was a bold, impertinent woman, and bid her to be gone out of the Court, and not come again till he sent for her ; which she did presently, and went to a lodging in the Pall Mall, and kei3t there two or three days, and then sent to the King to know whether she might send for her things away out of her house. The King sent to her, she must first come and view them : and so she come, and the King went to her, and all friends again. He tells me she did, in her anger, say she would be even with the King, and print his letters to her ; so, putting all together, we are, and are like to be, in a sad condition." Pepys had a keen eye, and suffered nothing to escape him, even to the last new fashion in ladies' dress : — indecisive result of the great naval battle of 1665. Pepys, in his Diary, August 29th, 16G7, notca : '* I hear to-night that Mr. 15rounker is turned away yesterday by the Duke of York, for some bold words he was heard by Colonel Warden to say in the garden the day the Chancellor was with the King — that he believed the King would be hectored out of anything. For this, the Duke of York, who all say hath been very strong for his father-in- law at this trial, hath turned him away ; and everybody, I think, is glad of it ; for he was a peetileut rogue, an atheist, that would have sold his King and country for sixpence almost, so corrupt and wicked a rogue he is by all men's report. But one observed to me, that there never was the occasion of men's holding their tongues at Court, and everywhere else, as there is afc this day, for nobody knows which side will be uppermost." 96 THE MERRY MONARCH; ** June 11th.— Walking in the galleries at White Hall,- I find the Ladies of Honour dressed in their riding garbs, with coats and doublets with deep skirts, just, for all the world, like mine; and buttoned their doublets up the breast, with periwigs and with hats ; so that, only for a long petticoat dragging under their men's coats, nobody could take them for women in any point whatever ; which was an odd sight, and a sight did not please me. It was Mrs. Wells and another fine lady that I saw thus." Let us take a passing glance at two fine gardens : — « June 25th.— Mrs. Penn carried us to two gardens at Hackney, which I every day grew more and more in love with, Mr. Drake's one, where the garden is good, and house and the prospect admirable ; the other my Lord Brooke's, where the gardens are much better, but the house not so good, nor the prospect good at all. But the gardens are excellent ; and here I first saw oranges grow, some green, some half, some a quarter, and some full ripe, on the same tree ; and one fruit of the same tree do come a year or two after the other. I pulled off a little one by stealth, the man being mightily curious of them, and eat it, and it was just as other little green small oranges are ; as big as half the end of my Uttle finger. There were also great variety of other exotique plants, and several laby- rinths, and a pretty aviary." In connection with this subject may be quoted the fol- lowing : — "July 22nd.— Walked to White Hall, where we saw nobody almost, but walked up and down with Hugh May,"*^ who is a very ingenious man. Among other things, dis- * Hugb May, the architect, and friend of Evelyn. He built Cassiobury for the first Earl of Essex of the Capel family, in 1667-1679. His brother. Bob May, made some figure in the Court, and had lodgings at Whitehall. OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 97 coursing of the present fashion of gardens to make them plain, that we have the best walks of gravel in the world, France having none, nor Italy; and our green of our bowling alleys is better than any they have. So our busi- ness here being air, this is the best way, only with a little mixture of statues, or pots, which may be handsome, and so filled with another pot of such or such a flower or green, as the season of the year will bear. And then for flowers, they are best seen in a little plat by themselves : besides, their borders spoil the walks of another garden : and then for fruit, the best way is to have walls built circularly one within another, to the south, on pui-pose for fruit, and leave the walking garden only for that use.^' The pleasures of our forefathers were too often of a coarse description, though it may be doubted by those who have seen " the lower orders " disporting themselves on Bank Holidays whether we are jet in a position to cast stones at them. Mr. Pepjs records, on the 14th of August, that, after dinner, he went, with his wife and her maid, Mercer to the Bear Gardens (situated on Bankside, in the im- mediate vicinity of the street that now approaches South- wark Bridge), and saw "some good sport of the bulPs tossing the dogs— one into the very boxes.'' But to Mr. Pepys's credit, he thought it "a very rude and nasty ^ pleasure." He continues: " We had a great many Hectors' in the same box with us, and one very fine went into the pit, and played his dog for a wager ; which was a stranc^e sport for a gentleman ; where they drank wine, and drank Mercer's health first ; which I pledged with my hat off. We supped at home, and very merry." The merriment, as we shall see, was sufficiently rough. "And then about VOL. I. H 98 THE MEERT MONARCH; nine to Mrs. Mercer's gate, wLere the girl and boys expected ns, and her son had provided abundance of serpents and rockets ; and then mighty merry, my Lady Perm and Pegg going thither with us, and Nan Wright, till about twelve at night, flinging our fireworks, and burning one another, and the people over the way. And, at last, onr business being most spent, we went into Mrs. Mercer's, and there mighty merry, smutting one another with candle grease and soot, till most of us were like devils. And that being done, then we broke up, and to my house ; and there I made them drink, and upstairs we went, and then fell into dancing, W. Batelier dancing well; and dressing, him and 1, and one Mr. Banister, who, with my wife, came over also with us, like women ; and Mercer put on a suit of Tom's, like a boy, and mighty mirth we had, and Mercer danced a jig ; and Nan Wright and my wife and Pegg Penn put on periwigs. Thus we spent tiU three or four in the morning, mighty merry ; and then parted, and to bed." The bull and bear-baiting continued in vogue for more than a century later ; but as the refinements of culture and education extended, the higher classes withdrew their support, and at length, in 1835, it was finally abolished by Act of Parliament. Under the Tudor and Stuart monarchs, however, it throve apace. Old Burton speaks of it as a pastime '' in which our countrymen and citizens greatly delight and frequently use." A quaint descrip- tion of it occurs in the travels of Misson, the French advocate, who lived in Engrland about five-and-twenty years after Pepys saw the sport in the Bear Garden. " They tie a rope," he says, " to the root of the horns of the bull, and fasten the other end of the cord to an iron OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 99 ring fixed to a stake driven into the ground ; so that this cord, being about fifteen feet long, the bull is confined to a space of about thirty feet diameter. Several butchers, or other gentlemen, that are desirous to exercise their dogs, stand round about, each holding his own by the ears ; and when the sport begins, they let loose one of the dogs. The dog runs at the bull ; the bull, immovable, looks down upon the dog with an eye of scorn, and only turns a horn to him, to hinder him from coming near. The dog is not daunted at this, he runs round him, and tries to get beneath his belly. The bull then puts himself into a posture of defence ; he beats the ground with his feet, which he joins together as closely as possible, and his chief aim is not to gore the dog with the point of his horn (which, when too sharp, is put into a kind of wooden sheath), but to slide one of them under the dog's belly, who creeps close to the ground to hinder it, and to throw him so high in the air that he may break his neck in the fall. To avoid this danger, the dog's friends are ready beneath him, some with their backs, to give him a soft reception ; and others with long poles, which they offer him slantways, to the intent that, sliding down them, it may break the force of his fall. Notwithstanding all this care, a toss generally makes him sing to a very noisy tune, and draw his phiz into a pitiful grimace. But unless he is totally stunned with the fall, he is sure to crawl again towards the bull, come on't what will. Some- times a second frisk into the air disables him for ever ; but, sometimes, too, he fastens upon his enemy, and when once he has seized him with his eye-teeth, he sticks to him like a leech, and would sooner die than leave his hold. Then the bull bellows, and bounds, and kicks, all to shake 100 THE MEEEY MONAECH. off the dog. In the end, either the dog tears out the piece he has laid hold on, and falls, or else remains fixed to him mth an obstinacy that would never end, did they not pull him off. To call him away, would be in vain ; to give him a hundred blows, would be as much so ; you might cut him to pieces, joint by joint, before he would let him loose. What is to be done then ? While some hold the bull, others thrust staves into the dog's mouth, and open it by main force." THE MUSICIANS. Progress of the Art. The Protectorate. The Restoration. Instrumental Music. Lowe. Clifford. Birchenshaw. Dr. Child. Henry Lawes, Dr. Wilson. Dr. Eogers. John Jenkins. Dr. Colman. Matthew Lock. Pelham Humfry. Banister. Dr. Blow. Henry Purcell. CHAPTEE II. the musicians. Progress of the Art— The Protectorate— The Re- storation—Instrumental Music— Lowe— Clifford ^ Birchenshaw— Dr. Child— Henry Lawes— Dr. Wilson— Dr. Rogers— John Jenkins— Dr. Col- man— Matthew Lock— Pelham Humfry— Banister — Dr. Blow— Henry Purcell. A REMARKABLE impulse was given to the progress of music in England, in the latter half of the sixteenth and the early years of the seventeenth centuries, by the production of those musical dramas and masques which " so did take Elizabeth and our James." In these precursors of the modern opera the influence of the Italian composers made itself felt. The " stylo recitative," which has undergone but little alteration to the present day, was first intro- duced in 1617, in " The Masque of Lethe," written by Ben Jonson for the Lord Hay. The poet was so pleased with its success that he immediately wrote another masque of the same kind, though with larger opportunities for the composer, " The Vision of Delight," acted at Court in the Christmas of 1617. It consisted of recitative, air (" Break, Phantasie, from thy cave of cloud"), chorus, and baUet. The music for both these pieces was composed by Nicholas Laniere. CHAPTEE II. the musicians, Progress of the Art— The Protectorate— The Re- storation—Instrumental Music— Lowe— Clifford — BiRCHENSHAW— Dr. Child— Henry Lawes— Dr. Wilson— Dr. Rogers— John Jenkins— Dr. Col- man— Matthew Lock— Pelham Humfry— Banister — Dr. Blow — Henry Purcell. A REMARKABLE impulse was given to the progress of music in England, in the latter half of the sixteenth and the early years of the seventeenth centuries, by the production of those musical dramas and masques which " so did take Elizabeth and our James." In these precursors of the modern opera the influence of the Italian composers made itself felt. The " stylo recitative," which has undergone but little alteration to the present day, was first intro- duced in 1617, in " The Masque of Lethe," written by Ben Jonson for the Lord Hay. The poet was so pleased with its success that he immediately wrote another masque of the same kind, though with larger opportunities for the composer, " The Vision of Delight," acted at Court in the Christmas of 1617. It consisted of recitative, air (" Break, Phantasie, from thy cave of cloud"), chorus, and baUet. The music for both these pieces was composed by Nicholas Laniere. 104 THE MERRY MONARCH ; But the aid and embellishment of music was not con- fined to the masques ; songs and instrumental interludes were introduced into every form of dramatic composition, and the plays of Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson and Massinger, were frequently enriched with lyrical ornament. Thus it happened that the vocal music of the stage came to be very various, and included airs, duets, trios, dialogues, and choruses. On the other hand, the music of the chamber continued monotonous, being confined almost exclusively to the madrigal. About 1620, however, we meet with " Ayres in four and more parts,^' and with solos, to be accompanied by lute or viol. Among the most popular of these were Ferrabosco^s com- positions. Eounds, catches, and canons were invented at this time ; the first printed collection, Eavenscroft's "Pam- melia. Musick's, Miscellanie : or Mixed Varieties of Plea- sant Eoundelayes and delightful Catches, of 3, 4, 5, C, 7, 8, 9, 10 Parts in one," ^ being published in 1609. We extract a specimen of a Eound for Four Voices : — i e; -<&- zz -- ' rO ' . t=t JEz^zzi 2^=1^ Love, love, sweet love, for e - vermore fare -well to i t j^: 2± -Gh ^ -id- ^ "C^ ^ -^ thee, for For . tune hath de - ceiv-ed me, 5e - ceiv-ed me; w~Y~^T ^ -iS»- — H tL T- -^ — g - P* I - :^ i^i^ip; 23t zx - ry;butyetmylove,my8weetlove,farewell to thee, fare-well to thee. * *' None so ordinarie as musicall," says the title page, " none so musical as not to all very pleasing and acceptable." OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 105 In his desire to promote the best interests of the art which he passionately loved, Charles T., in 1636, granted to Laniere and other eminent musicians a charter, based upon one of Edward IV., incorporating them under the style of " The Marshal, Wardens, and Cominality of the Arte and Science of Musicke in Westminster," and author- ising them to control and regulate all matters connected with music throughout the kingdom (the county palatine of Chester alone excepted). This corporation seems to have been suspended during the Protectorate, but at the Eestoration it was revived. In the seventeenth century instrumental music, in parts, found its way from the theatre into the chamber. At first it was used to accompany and reinforce the voice in the per- formance of madrigals, but its capabilities apart from the voice were soon discovered, and composers entered gladly upon a new and wide field of musical effort. Pieces of three to six parts, written for viols and other instruments, were composed under the general name of " fantasies," or "fan- cies," which abounded, says Hawkins, in fugues, and little responsible passages, and all those other elegancies ob- servable in the structure and contrivance of the madrigal. Many madrigals and motets were, as a matter of fact, converted into " fantasies." So popular grew this species of composition, that almost every musical family rejoiced in the possession of two tenors, two trebles, and two basses, constituting what was called - a chest ; " and for this combination, or even for " five cornets," several composi- tions were written, as well as for the "Virginals," by Bird and Orlando Gibbons in the " Parthenia." * These * " Parthenia • or, The Maydenhead of the first mnsicke that ever was printer?ftre Virginal!^ ConjpLed by t^^ ^^^^^^^^^^ Dr. John Bull, and Orlando Gibbons, Gentilmen ot ms ma m trious Chappell," 1611. 106 THE MERRY MONARCH ; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 107 were neither very tuneful nor very elaborate ; the narrow range of the '^fantasie" preventing the composer from giving free rein to his faculties of grace and expression. During the Civil War music was necessarily at a stand- still ; there was no time for its cultivation when the nation was arrayed in two hostile camps, and men's minds were filled with apprehensions of the issue of the struggle. It revived under the care of the Protector, who, like his secretary, Milton, had a passion for the art. In 1653 was published the first book of " Ayres and Dialogues," by Henry Lawes, and a variety of other works by Colman, Simpson, Webb, Child, Cook, and Kogers met with a cordial welcome from the public. In 1657 appeared the " Lessons for the Virginals,^' by Bull, Gibbous, and other masters of repute. In the same year Matthew Lock produced his first work, a " Little Consort of three Parts, for Viols." Plays, as we have seen, were prohibited, but as early as 1656 Sir William Davenant obtained a license for the performance of operas at Eutland House, in Charter- house Square, under the title of " Entertainments in De- clamation and Music, after the Manner of the Ancients.'' At the Eestoration the Arts sprang up into a new life, favoured by the encouragement of a luxurious and accom- plished Court. The Eoyal Chapel nurtured a school of excellent composers, and great advances were made in composition by Humphrey, Blow, and Wise, by Tudway and Turner, all to be eclipsed in their turn by the genius of Purcell, the greatest of English musicians, who, had he lived longer, would probably have given to English music a distinct and original character. It was he who first transformed the masque into the opera ; or rather, anni- hilated the one, and substituted the other in its place. "and this," says Eockstro, "he did so satisfactorily, that, measuring his success by the then condition of Art in France and Italy, he left nothing more to be desired. His recitative, no less rhetorically perfect than Lulli's, was infinitely more natural, and frequently impassioned to the last degree ; and his airs, despite his self-confessed ad- miration for the Italian style, show little trace of the forms then most in vogue, but breathing rather the spirit of unfettered National Melody, stand forth as models of refinement and freedom." Towards the end of Charles's reign the true capacity and character of the violin began to be appreciated, and that noble instrument rose into its right position in the public favour. At Court a band of violins, tenors, and basses happily supplied the place of viols, lutes, and cornets^- a step in advance of which the musician will recognise the full importance. For accompanying the voice, however, the lute and guitar were still in request. Nor, while composition and execution were undergoing a gradual process of development, was theory neglected. In the year after the Eestoration Edward Lowe pubhshed his " Short Directions for the Performance of Cathedral Service," in which, to the notation of the preces, versicles, and responses, he added chants for the Psalms and Te Deum, with Tallis's Litany in counter- point, Parsons's Burial Service, and the Te Deum, all in four parts. Three years later the Eev. James Clifford gave to the ^orld " A Collection of the Divine Services and Anthems usually sung in the Cathedrals and CoUegiate Choirs of * An ins trument eomewliat resembling the modern « serpent/* 108 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 109 the Church of England/' to which are prefixed, '' Brief Directions for the understanding of that part of the Divine Service performed with the Organ in St. Paul's Cathedral on Sundays and Holydays." In the same year a certain John Birchenshaw^ translated the " Templum Musicum : or, the Musical Synopsis of the learned and famous Johannes Henricus Alstedius ; being a Compendium of the Eudiments both of the Mathematical and practical part of Music ; of which subject not any book is extant in the English tongue." The dry and ponderous " Theatrum " failed to supply the want ; and its place was taken, in 1667, by Christopher Simpson's clear and intelligent *^ Compendium, or Introduction to Practical Music." We now proceed to sketch the careers of the imncipal Musicians of the Eestoration period. One of the chamber-musicians to the King, and a chanter of the Eoyal Chapel, was Dr. William Child. Born at Bristol in 1606, he received his musical educa- tion at the Cathedral there, under Elway Bevin, the organist. In 1631, being then of Christ Church, Oxford, he took his degree of Bachelor of Music. In 1636 he was appointed one of the royal organists of St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and subsequently to a similar post in the chapel at Whitehall. In 1663 he obtained his Doctor's degree. His blameless and industrious life was prolonged far beyond "the glorious Eevolution;" and he was 90 years old when he died at Windsor, in March, 1697. * In Evelyn's Diary, under the date of August 3rd, 1664, wo read : " A concert of excellent musicians, especially one Mr. Berkenshaw, that rare artist, who invented a mathematical way of composure [composition] very extraordinary, true as to the exact notes of art, but without much har- mony." Birchenshaw was music-master to Pepys, who gave him £5 for five weeks' instruction. His grave-stone in tlie Chapel Eoyal bears tlie f ollomng inscription : — " Go, happy soul, and in the seats above Sing endless hymns of thy great Maker's love. How fit in heavenly songs to bear thy part; Before well-practised in the sacred art ; Whilst hearing us, sometimes the choir divine Will snre descend, and in our consort join ; So much the music thou to us hast given ^ Hast made oar earth to represent thine heaven.' It is said of him that, his salary as organist having fallen largely into arrear, he promised the Dean and Chapter, if the amount due were paid up, to repave the body of the choir of the Chapel. The bribe was accepted; the Dean and Chapter discharged the arrears ; and Child then carried out his liberal undertaking. As a composer. Child's merits are very considerable. His style is remarkable for its simplicity ; so much so that it would sometimes offend the performers. " When at Windsor, on one occasion, he called the choir to^ a practice of an anthem he had just composed, the choir- men found the composition so plain and easy, that they treated it with derision." At times, however, he indulged in rich and well-wrought harmonies, which satisfy the ear by their fulness and gratify the imagination by their colouring. This is especially the case in his Service in D. His works consist of " Psalms for Three Voices," '; Divine Anthems and Vocal Compositions to several pieces of Poetry " and various catches and canons. The name of Henry Lawes will always be held in respect from its association with that of Milton. He was born in the last days of 1695-the son of Thomas Lawes a native of Salisbury, and a vicar-choral of its Cathedral. His 110 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND TINDER CHARLES II. Ill musical education he received under John Cooper (or Giovanni Copreario, as lie preferred to style himself), and on January 6th, 1625, was sworn in as epistler of the Chapel Eoyal. A few months later, and he became one of the gentlemen of the Chapel-— also clerk of the cheque— and afterwards a member of Charles I.'s private band. In conjunction with his brother William and Simon Ives, he composed the music for Shirley's masque, "The Triumphs of Peace,'' performed at Whitehall, on Candlemas-night, before the King and his Court ; and in the same year set to music Thomas Carew's " Coeluni Britannicum," in which Charles I. and Henrietta Maria, the Duke of Lennox, the Earls of Devonshire, Holland, and other nobles took part. In 1634, he composed the music for Milton's '^Comus," which originated, as everybody knows, in the following circumstances :— The Earl of Bridgewater, as Lord President of Wales, desiring to give a large entertainment to the Welsh gentry, resolved that one feature of it should be a masque, and desired Milton to write one for him. The poet founded his work on a real incident -, the Earl's children, Lord Brackley and Mr. Egerton, and Lady Alice Egerton, having recently been benighted in passing through Hay- wood Forest, and the young lady for some time separated from her brothers. A beautiful allegory was woven round this incident, and '^Comus" was the result. With infinite skill, Milton adapted it to the conditions under which it would be presented. The " rout," or following of Comus, disguised with the heads of various animals, supplied the necessary masking. Local feeling was gratified by the introduction of Sabrina, the nymph of the Severn ; and suitable parts were provided for the Earl's three youngest children, the Lady Alice, and her brothers John and Thomas, aged from twelve to fifteen. These children-actors Milton was careful to present in their own characters. A mimic wood was built up on the stage, through which the children passed on their way to the Earl and his Countess, who sat in front, and to whom at the close they addressed themselves. The wood typified the world, and the adventures they encountered m it the temptations to which youth and purity are exposed, and over which they triumph. Lawes, as already a popular composer, and as music- teacher to the Lady Alice, was naturally engaged to furnish music for the masque, which was produced m the great hall of Ludlow Castle on the 29th of September, 1634, Lawes himself taking the part of Thyrsis, or the Attendant Spirit. The musical P-^^f^r^ '/tt Echo," "Sabrina fair," "Back, Shepherds, ^^ To the Ocean wed," " Now my task is smoothly done, and the Dance of the attendants of Comus, all of -l^-l^ -- /- served in the British Museum, while " Sweet Echo has been printed both by Hawkins and Burney. We subjom it, for the convenience of the reader, to whom their woiks may not be accessible :— Am 11!^ CoMUS. As originally set ly Henry Laives. —m '__J — 5- — '- Sweet E.cho, sweet -est nymph, that liv'st un - seen . . ^T:;;^:^^^ ^^^^^' ^y slow..Me.an-de.s„.ar..ent 112 THE MERRY MONARCH; I XZ iXz^ ^ r rJ- I ^ S {^ I : ziiz:*: green, And in the vi - o - let embroider'd vale, Where the love-lorn tr i -^: n: 4-3- P night -in -gale night -ly to thee her sad song mourn-eth :^ well, Canst thou not tell me of a gen - tie pair, that ^^ >_>-J^k -c?- -€3- £: :t2=;^ci;2: Uke - est thy Narciasus are ? Oh, if thou have hid them in some i ^ -€>- r rj 5:^ ict l*^ flow-'ry cave, Tell me but where, sweet queen of fan.cy,daugli- -"iJI— -— ^^ ^: 5 - ter of the sphere. So may'st thou be trans-plant-ed to the ^Ides, ir p^^^^^m^^ ^^^ HS>- I And hold a coun-ter-ix)int to all heav'n's bar - mo - nies. It is worth noting that Milton's poem was edited and published bj Lawes. It appeared in 1637 without the author's name. In his dedication to Lord Brackley, Lawes says that "although not openly acknowledged by the author, yet it is legitimate offspring, so lovely and so much to be desired, that the often copying of it hath tired my pen to give my several friends satisfaction, and brought me to the necessity of producing it to the public view.'^ The poet has introduced a graceful reference to the musical genius of his friend in the speech of Thyrsis : — ♦' But I moBt put off These my sky robes, spun out of Iris' woof, And take the weeds and likeness of a swain. That to the service of this house belongs, Who with his soft pipe and smooth-dittied song. Well knows to still the wild winds when they roar, And hush the waving woods." OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 113 Milton paid him another tribute of admiration in the commendatory sonnet, beginning — " Harry ! whose tuneful and well-measured song First taught our English music how to span Words with just note and accent, not to scan With Midas' ears, committing short and long. Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng," — prefixed, in 1645, to "Choice Psalms put into Music for Three Voices, composed by Henry and William Lawes, Brothers and Servants to His Majesty," &c. This was preceded, in 1635, by "A Paraphrase upon the Psalms of David. By G [eorge] S [andy s] . Set to new Tunes for private Devotion. And a thorough Base for Voice or Instrument. By Henry Lawes." The songs in the plays and poems of Cartwright were set by Lawes, and the Christmas music in Herrick's " Hesperides." His genius was exercised also upon the lyrics of Waller, who con- trived in the following couplets to combine a com- pliment to the composer with an ingenious touch of self- laudation : — *' Let those who only warble long, And gargle in their throat a song. Content themselves with JJt, Be, Mi ; Let words of sense be set by thee.'' These and other melodies will be found in the three books of " Ayres and Dialogues for One, Two, and Three Voices," which he published in 1653, 1655, and 1658. During the Commonwealth period he supported himself chiefly by his exertions as a teacher ; but he was employed in 1656 with Colman, Hudson, and Cooke in providing music for Sir William Davenant's " First Day's Enter- tainment of Music at Eutland House." At the Eestora- tion he was reinstated in his various offices, and for the coronation of Charles II. he composed the anthem of VOL. I. I 114 THE MEERY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 115 '^Zadok tlie Priest." He died on the 21st of October, 1662, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. In spite of Hawkins, wlio criticizes Ms music as wanting in melody^ as neither recitative nor air, *'but in so precise a medium between both that a name is wanting for it " of Dr. Burney, who finds his compositions languid and insipid, and equally devoid of learning and genius, Lawes, by impartial judges, will be elevated to a high place among our early English composers. He chose the best words to set to music, and in setting them consulted carefully their shades of meaning, their accent, and cadence, always anxious that the poet should not be forgotten in the musician, and writing always with taste and feeling. Hence it was that the best poets of the age, as Fenton says, were ambitious of having their verses composed by this " incomparable artist." Lawes belonged to a musical family. His uncle, the Eev. Thomas Lawes, was a vicar-choral of Salisbury Cathedral. His brother John, who died in 1655 was a lay. vicar of Westminster Abbey ; while his elder brother, William, killed by a stray shot during the siege of Chester, 1G45, almost rivalled himself in public estima- tion. Another musician who flourished in the reigns of the first and second Charles, was Dr. John Wilson, a native of Faversham, in Kent, whose extraordinary skill as a lutenist procured him the royal fiivour in a marked degree. After the capture of Oxford by the army of the Parliament in 1646, he found an asylum in the family of Sir William Waller. At the Kestoration he was appointed chamber-musician to Charles II., and sub- ' sequently, chanter in the Chapel Eoyal. He died in 1679 at the age of 78. Besides his published compositions, he- bequeathed to the University a manuscript volume " curiously bound in blue Turkey leather, with silver clasps," with the injunction that it was not to be opened until after his death. When examined, the contents proved to consist of musical settings of some of the odes of Horace, and of passages selected from Ausonius, Claudian, Pet- ronius Arbiter, and Statins. Dr. Benjamin Eogers was born in 1614 at Windsor, where his father was a lay-clerk in St. George's Chapel. He himself, in his youth, obtained a similar post, then became organist of Christ Church, Dublin ; but in 1641 at the opening of the Civil War, returned to Windsor. ::^t the breaking up of the choir in 1644 he received,. fin annual allowance as some compensation for the loss of his appointment, and on this and on his industry as a teacher he supported his family. He was fortunate, also, iu the friendship of Dr. Nathaniel Ingelo, a Fellow of Eton College, who recommended him to the University of Cambridge ; where, in 1658, pursuant to a mandate from the Lord Protector, he was admitted to the degree of Bachelor of Music. When, at the Restoration, the Corporation of London entertained the King, the Du]j5es of York and Gloucester, and the two Houses of Parlia- ment, at a grand Guildhall banquet,"^ he composed for it a " Hymnus Eucharisticus," in four parts, to words by Dr. Nathaniel Ingelo. In 1662 he regained his post in * " July 5th.— I saw his Majesty go with as much -pomp and splendour as any earthly prince could do to the great City feast, the tirst they liad invited hiui to since his return ; but the exceeding rain which fell all that day much eclipsed its lustres. This was at Guildhall, and there was also all the Parliament-men, both Lords and Commons. The streets were adorned with pageants, at immense cost." — Evelyn. I 116 THE MERRY MONARCH; St. George's Cliapel, tis stipend being augmented by half the usual amount, and a consideration of twelve pounds a year being paid liim for assisting as organist ; soon after- wards he was appointed organist of Eton College. These employments he gave up in July, 1664, on accepting the office of Informator Choristarum and Organist of Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1669 he proceeded to the degree of Doctor of Music, on the opening of the new theatre. He continued to enjoy his position at Oxford until 1685, when, together with the Fellows, he was rejected from Magdalen by James II., but the Society assured him a yearly pension of £30, which kept him out of the reach of want until his death in 1698, at the ripe old age of 84, Eogers composed a variety of sacred and secular music. His Service in D and some of his anthems are still popular, and the first stanza of his " Hymnus Eucharisticus," beginning " Te Deura colimus," is daily sung at Magdalen by way of " grace after dinner." The whole hymn is chanted on the top of the College tower every Sunday at five in the morning. Anthony Wood says of this master that " his compositions for instru- mental music, whether in two, three, or four parts, have been highly valued, and thirty years ago, or more, were always first called for, taken out and played, as well in the public music school as in private chambers ; and Dr. Wilson, the professor, the greatest and most curious judge of music that ever was, usually wept when he heard them well performed, as being wrapt up in an ecstasy ; or, if you will, melted down, while others smiled, or had their hands and eyes lifted up at the excellency of them." Such enthusiasm they would fail to provoke in our own day, though we may acknowledge the sweet simplicity of their OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 117 melodies, and the " clearness and correctness " of their counterpoint. Both as a composer and an executant, John Jenkins claims respectful notice. He was born at Maidstone in 1592. His chief patrons were two Norfolk cavaliers, Dering and Hermon L'Estrange, and in the family of the latter he resided during a considerable portion of his life. On the lute and viol he performed with great manipulative facility, and for the viol composed a number of fantasies, which won admiration, not only in England, but in foreign countries. He also wrote some lighter pieces, which he called "rants," and sonatas for the organ. His vocal productions include rounds, and songs, and anthems, and a setting of parts of " Theophila ; or Love's Sacrifice," a sacred poem written by Edward Barkam (1G51). In 1660 he published "Twelve Sonatas for two Yiohns and a Base, with a Thorough Base for the Organ or Theorbo," the first of the kind produced by an English composer. During the latter years of his life Jenkins resided in the family of Sir Philip Wodehouse, at Kim- berley, Norfolk, where he died on the 27th of October, 1678. He is remembered by his attempt at imitative music in his " Five Bell Consorte." Four years after the llestoration died Dr. Charles Colman, a composer of some merit, who, during the Commonwealth, taught music in London, and was uni- versally allowed to be " a great improver of the lyra-way " on the viol. He was one of the composers engaged by Sir William Davenant for his Musical Entertainments at Eutland House. Some of his songs are given in the three editions of " Select Musicale Ayres and Dialogues," 1652, 1653, and 1659, and some of his instrumental com- 118 THE MEERY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 119 positions in '^ Court bj Masquing Ayres," 1G62. He died in Fetter Lane, London, in 1664. In these early times of English Music an honoured name is that of Matthew Lock, from whose brow we see no just reason to strip the garland that belongs to the composer of the music for " Macbeth." Lock was born at Exeter about 1630, and as a chorister in the cathedral there studied tinder Edward Gibbons. In partnership with Christopher Gibbons, he composed, in 1653, the music for Shirley's masque, ''Cupid and Death," re- presented before the Portuguese Ambassador. Three years later, he published his "Little Consort of Three Parts" for viols or violins, composed at the request of 'his old master and friend, William Wake, for his scholars. Such was his eminence as a musician that he was commissioned to compose the music (for " sagbutts and cornets") for the public prayers of Charles II. through London (April 22nd, 1661), from the Tower to Whitehall; and so well did he acquit himself that he received the appointment of Composer in Ordinary to the King. He composed several anthems for the Chapel Royal, and on April 12th, 1666, produced a Kyrie and Credo, in which he provided each response with different music, an innovation that called forth much hostile criticism. Locke replied with asperity in a preface to his com- position, which he entitled ''Modern Church Music; Pre-Accused, Censured, and Obstructed in its Perfor- mance before His Majesty, Vindicated by the Author, Matt. Lock, Composer in Ordinary to His Majesty." Shortly afterwards, having, it is said, embraced the Catholic religion, he was made organist to the Queen. In 1669, Lock had composed '' the instrumental, vocal, and recitative music " for Sir Eobert Stapylton's tragi- comedy, " The Step-mother," and in 1670 he was engaged to furnish the instrumental music for Dryden and Daven- ant's audacious adaptation of « The Tempest." In 1672 he wrote the music for Davenant's alteration of « Macbeth," in which were introduced the songs and choruses from Middleton's "Witch." That bhe music was Lock's is expressly stated by Downes in his " Roscius Anglicanus," and under his name it was printed by Dr. Boyce, about 1750-1760. It has, however, been claimed for Purcell, on the single ground that a manuscript score of it exists in his handwriting; but against this must be set the fact that when the " Macbeth " music was produced Purcell was a boy of thirteen, and had had no dramatic experience. In 1073, Lock composed the music (with the exception of the act tunes by Draghi) for Shadwell's « Psyche," and published it in 1675, together with the "Tempest" music, under the title of " The English Opera." In a sharply-worded preface he explained his views of the ri^^ht method of operatic construction, which were based evidently on his study of Lulli. About 1672 he was engaged in a singular controversy with Thomas Salmon, of "Trinity College, Oxford, who, in " An Essay to the Advancement of Music," had proposed to abolish the different clefs, and substitute the letter B for the bass, M for the mean or tenor part, and Tr for the treble. Lock replied in a style of much vehemence in his "Observations upon a late book, entitled « An Essay, &c.," to which Salmon rejoined, with equal acrimony in his "Vindication of an Essay to the Advancement of Music, from Mr. Matthew Lock's Observations, inquiring into the real 120 THE MERRY MONARCH ; Nature and most convenient Practice of tliat Science." Lock terminated the controversy in 1673, by liis " Present Practice of Music Vindicated. ... To wliicli is added Duellum Musicum, by John Phillips [the nephew of Milton]. Together with a Letter from John Playford to Mr. T. Salmon in Confutation of his Essay." Thus assailed by a threefold band of critics, the unfortunate Salmon wisely relapsed into silence. His proposed innova- tion had nothing to recommend it, and has never been accepted. Lock, in attacking it, was tilting at a wind- mill. In 1G73 this industrious, if hot-tempered, musician gave to the world his " Melothesia, or Certain General Eules for Playing upon a Continued Base, with a Choice Collection of Lessons for the Harpsichord or Organ of all Sorts "—the first work of the kind published in England. And in the same year appeared his '' Little Consort of Four Parts" for viols, consisting of pavan, ayre, cornet, and saraband. He died in 1677, and Purcell composed an elegy on his death. One of the first set of children in the Chapel Eoyal, after the Kestoration, wasPelham Humfry, or Humphrey. He was born in 1647, and was the nephew, it is said, of Colonel John Humphrey, a noted Cromwellian, and President Bradshaw's sword-bearer. His musical faculty was displayed at a comparatively early age; for in Clifford's *' Divine Services and Anthems," 1663-1, are given the words of five anthems, " composed by Pelham Humfrey, one of the Children of His Majesties Chappel.'' While still a chorister he joined his companions, Blow and Turner, in composing as a memorial of their common friendship " The Club- Anthem," the first portion being OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 121 written by Humfry, the latter portion by Blow, and Turner supplying a connecting bass solo. In 1664 Charles II. sent him abroad to study music, defraying his ex- penses, which amounted in 1664-1667 to £450. He spent his time chiefly in Paris, under the illustrious Lulli. In October, 1667, he returned to England, and was sworn in as a Gentleman of the Chapel Eoyal ; and in July, 1672, on the death of Captain Henry Cook, which Wood absurdly ascribes to his jealousy of Humfry,"^ was appointed Master of the Children. On the 8th of August following he and Purcell were favoured with a patent as joint " Composers in Ordinary for the Violins to His Majesty ; " but he enjoyed tlie honour and profit of these offices only for a couple of years, dying, at the early age of 27, on the 14th of July, 1674. In his short life Humfry gave a distinct impulse to English music, embodying in his compositions the fine effects he had learned under Lulli. Some of his anthems are still in voo-ue; and musicians are well acquainted with the beauty of not a few of his songs. Pepys, in his Diary, notes, under the date of February 20th, 1667, that "they talk how the King's violin, Banister, is mad, that a Frenchman [Louis Grabu] is come to be chief of some part of the King^s music." This Banister was the son of one of the " waitts " of St. Giles's- in-the-Fields, London; was born in 1630, educated by his father, and attained to remarkable facility of execution as a violinist. His talent attracted the notice of Charles IL, who sent him abroad to study, and on his return ap- pointed him leader of his private band. He lost his post * Wood says that Cook was esteemed "the best musician «f^i;*;°Jf *^ .Bin- to the lute, till Pelham Humfrey, his scholar, c^me up, after which he •died of grief." 122 THE MERRY MONARCH : OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 123 in 1667 for asserting, in tlie King's hearing, that the- English violinists were superior to those of France. Banister was the founder of that important institution, the weekly concert^ and the first musician who appealed to the public througli the medium of advertisements. Whether in either capacity he merits the gratitude of the profession we leave tbe reader to determine. His announce- ments appeared in tlie London Gazette, As for example : " These are to give notice that at Mr. John Banister's house, now called the Musick-School, over against the George Tavern in White Friars, this present Monday, will be musick performed by excellent masters, beginning precisely at four of the clock in the afternoon, and every afternoon for the future, precisely at the same hour." This appeared on December 30th, 1G72, and from similar notices, occurring in a long series, it is evident that Banister carried on his concerts until his labours were terminated by his death on the 3rd of October, 1679. Banister was a sound musician : he joined Pelham Hum- fry in composing music for " The Tempest," on its revival in 1676, and in the same year he wrote the' incidental music for Charles Davenant's tragedy of " Circe." Endish Church music owes not a little to the genius of Dr. John Blow, whose services and anthems exhibit a really majestic style of treatment. Severe critics find fault with his " crudities," and it may be admitted that his contrapuntal arrangements sometimes eiT on the side of freedom, but in the general elevation and excellence of his work this may be forgiven. We hold it discreditable to our music publishers that so much of his music still remains in manuscript ; and are convinced that the public •would gladly welcome a complete edition of his composi- tions for the Church. Many of his sacred songs, duets, catches, organs, secular songs, and odes "^ have been pub- lished, either separately or in "collections," but some seventy or eighty anthems are still in manuscript. We transcribe one of his lighter efforts— a smooth and graceful Pastoral Ballad: — Since the spring comes on, and the teem - ing earth Gives ±z plants and flow'rs a kind - ly birth; Since all things in one -WZi^. :;^ ga - ie - ty and mirth com - bine. J c-»: — G> i John Blow, a native of North Collingham, in Notting- hamshire, where he was born in 1648, was a fellow-pupil with Humfry under Captain Cook; but he had also the advantage of being instructed by Hingeston and Dr. Christopher Gibbons. When a lad of fifteen he gave * Such as the " Ode for St. Cecilia's Day," and Dryden's " Ode on the Death of Furcell." ill. 124 THE MERRY MONARCH: evidence of his ability as a composer : the words of three anthems composed by John Blow, "one of the Childrea of His Majesty's Chapel," appear in Clifford's " Dmne Hymns and Anthems," 16G3, and he joined Humfry and Turner in the " Club-Anthem," to which we have already referred In 1673 he became one of the gentlemen of the Chapel, and in the following year succeeded Humfry as Master of the Children. He was already organist ot Westminster Abbey (16C9), a post which he held until 1C80, being reappointed in 1695. His talents were appreciated by Charles II., who asked him, on one occasion, if he could imitate Carissimi's duet '' Dite, o Cieli." Blow modestly answered that he would try ; ana the result was his fine song, " Go, perjured man." _ In 1685 James II. appointed him one of his private musicians, and in 1699 he was made " Composer to the Kin.^," an office created under the following circum- stances :-" After the Kevolution," says Hawkins, " and while King William was in Flanders, the sumnaer residence of Queen Mary was at Hampton Court. Vr Tillotson was then Dean of St. Paul's, and the Reverend Mr. Gostling, Sub-dean, and also a gentleman of the Chapel The Dean would frequently take Mr. Gostling in his chariot thither to attend the chapel duty ; and in one of those journeys, talking of Church-music, he mentioned it as a common observation, that it then tell short of what it had been in the preceding reign, which the Queen herself had noticed. Gostling observed that Dr Blow and Mr. Purcell were capable of producing, at least, as good anthems as most of those which had been so much admired, which a proper management would soon prove This the Dean mentioned to her Majesty, who OE, ENGLAND TJUDKR CHARLES II. 125 profited by the hint, and, for eighty pounds per annum, purchased the exertions of two of the greatest musical composers that England ever produced. Their attendance was limited to alternate months ; and, on the first Sunday of his month each was required to produce a new anthem. The salaries of the Chapel composers have since been augmented to £73 each." His great merits as a musician were recognized by Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, who bestowed on him the degree of Doctor of Music by diploma. In 1700 Blow published a collection of his songs (in imitation of Purcell's " Orpheus Brittannicus ") under the title of "Amphion Anglicus," containing composi- tions for one, two, three, and four voices, with accompani- ments of instrumental music, and a thorough base figured for the organ, harpsichord, or theorbo-lute. A critic says : " The harmony of these polyphonic songs is pure, the contrivance always ingenious, and the melody, for the most part, excellent, the time considered in which it was produced; a time when, in composition, grace and eloquence were such scarce features." This able and industrious musician died on the 1st of October, 1708, in the sixtieth year of his age. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument is erected to his memory. The inscription runs as follows :- " Here lies the body of John Blow, Doctor in Music, who was organist, composer, and Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal for the space of 33 years, m the reigns of K. Cha. 2, K. Ja. 2, Z. Wm. and Q. Mary, and He" present Majesty Q. Anne, and also organist of this collegiate church, about 15 years. He was scholar to the excellent musician. Dr. Christopher Gibbons, and master 126 THE MEERY MONARCH; Of the famous Mr. Purcell, and most of the eminent masters in music since. He died October 1, 1708, m the 60th year of his age. His own musical compositions especially his church music, are a far nobler monument to his memory than any other." Michael Wise, another church composer of eminence, .as a native of Wiltshire. He received his musical education in the Chapel Eoyal ; in 16G8 was appointed master of the choristers in Salisbury Cathedral ; succeeded Eaphael Cantville, in 1673, as a gentleman of the Chapel Koyal; and in the following year was preferred to the post of almoner and master of the choristers of St. PauFs. Charles II. esteemed him highly, and in a progress which he once made selected him as one of his suite. For a time he enjoyed the exclusive privilege of playing at whatever church the King visited. Besides several excellent anthems, Wise composed a number of catches, and two or three part-songs. His duet, " Old Chiron thus sang to his pupil Achilles," was long and deservedly popular. Our survey now brings us to the greatest of the musicians of the Eestoration, perhaps the greatest of English musicians, if we consider only the question of natural genius, and remember what he accomplished when the art was still in a state of imperfect develop- ment-^Henry Purcell. The son of Henry, and the nephew of Thomas Purcell, both musicians and gentle- men of the Chapel Koyal, he was born in 1658. His father died when he was only six years old. He seems to have received his early education under Captain John Cook, but completed his studies under an abler master. Dr. Blow. However great his endowments by nature. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 127 he owed much to his persistency of application and fixity of purpose, which were inspired by an earnest ambition. While a boy he produced several anthems, full of high promise of future excellence ; and it is a remark- able testimony to his precocious powers and their sedulous cultivation that, in 1676, at the age of eighteen, he was appointed organist of Westminster Abbey. In the pre- vious year he had been commissioned by Josiah Priest, who reminds us of Colman's three single gentlemen rolled into one, being a fashionable dancing-master, a composer of stage dances, and master of " a boarding- school for young gentlemen " in Lincoln's Inn Fields, to supply the music for a little drama, by Nahum Tate, en- titled " Dido and ^neas," intended for representation by his pupils. This task ho executed with so much liveliness of fancy and fertility of invention— especially in the spirited chorus, "To the hills and the vales"— that the attention of theatrical managers was drawn to the rising genius; and in 1676 he composed the music for Dryden's tragedy of '' Aureug-Zebe," and Shad well's comedy of " Epsom Wells." To Shadwell's tragedy of " The Libertine " he contributed part of the music, including the beautiful air "Nymphs and Shepherds," and the chorus, "In those delightful pleasant groves." With indefatigable energy and inexhaustible wealth of resource, he provided, in 1677, the overture, instrumental music, and vocal melodies for Aphra Behn's " Abdelazor," and composed an elegy on the death of Matthew Lock. The variety and freshness of his melodic powers are seen to great advantage in the music to the masque in Shadwell's adaptation of '^ Timon of Athens," produced in 1678. Bringing together all his compositions for the stage, we 228 THE MEEEY MONARCH ; find that, in 1680, lie wrote the music for Nathaniel Lee's "Theodosius;" and the overture and entr'acte music for D'Urfey's "Virtuous Wife ;» in 1686 (after an interval of six years, devoted chiefly to church and chamber music, in which his versatile genius was equally successful), the music including the fine air, " Ah, how sweet it is to love!" for Dryden's "Tyrannic Love;" in 1688, the son-s for Mountford, the actor, in D'Urfey's comedy, " A Fool's Preferment;" in 1690, the glorious music for Shadwell's version of « The Tempest," so fluent in its strength, so rich and varied in its melody, that to this day it remains unsurpassed ;* and in the same year for Betterton's adaptation of Beaumont and Fletcher's " The Prophetess ; or the History of Dioclesian," which con- tains the tenderly beautiful air, " What shall I do to show how much I love her ? " and the bold and strenuous « Sound, Fame, thy brazen trumpet." In his preface to this "opera," published by subscription in 1691, he indicates his view of the then position of the art in England, and his belief in its future expansion and elevation. « Music and Poetry," lie says, " have ever been acknow- ledged sisters, wliich, walking hand in hand, support each other ; as Poetry is the harmony of words so Music is that of notes ; and as Poetry is a rise above Prose and Oratory, so is Music the exaltation of Poetry. Both of them may excel apart, but surely they are most excellent when they are joined, because nothing is then wanting to either of their proportions ; for thus they appear like wit and beauty in the same person. Poetry and Painting have arrived to per- * What can excel the beauty of Ariel's flowing and quaintly rhythmical air, " Come unto these yellow sands' ? OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 129 fection in our own country ; Music is yet but in its nonage a forward child, which gives hope of what it may be here- after in England when the masters of it shall find more encouragement. 'Tis now learning Itahan, which is its best master, and studying a little of the French air, to give it somewhat more of gaiety and fashion. Thus being further from the sun we are of later growth than our neio-hbour countries, and must be content to shake off our barbarity by degrees. The present age seems already dis- posed to be refined, and to distinguish between wild fancy and a just, numerous composition." In 1690 Purcell composed^ his great work, ''King Arthur," which may rightly be designated the first com- plete English opera. The drama, by Dryden, was evidently constructed with a view to the musician's requirements, and supplies that variety in the measure and that interest in the scenes which are essential to musical effect. It should not be overlooked that the music is not only original, vigorous, various, and beautiful, but imbued with a fine spirit of patriotism, as if the composer's genius had been specially inspired by association with the story of England's legendary hero. Two of the choicest num- bers are the grand war-song of the Britons, " Come if you dare," and the lively lyric in praise of the fatherland, " Fairest isle, all isles excelling." The resources of the master are exhibited triumphantly in the sacrificial scene of the Saxons, the scene with the spirits, the choric dances and songs of the shepherds, the frost scene, the duet of the Syrens, and the concluding masque. By this one com- * In 1690 his work for the theatre was confined to overture, act-tunes and songs for Dryden's comedy of " Amphitryon," and the bass solo, " Thy genius, lo, from his sweet bed of rest," in Nat. Lee's " The Massacre in. Paris." VOL, I. K 130 THE MEREY MONARCH ; position Parcell lias placed himself at the head of English musicians; and we can imagine what he would have accomplished had he known the combinations and con- trasts of which the modern orchestra is capable. Yet this noble work did not satisfy the activity of his genius in 1691. He also wrote the overture and act-tunes for Elkanah Settle's tragedies, " Distressed Innocence," and " The Gordian Knot Untied," and some songs for Southerners comedy, " Sir Anthony Love." In the year 1692 he composed the music for Sir Robert Howard and Dryden's "The Indian Queen," including the masterly recitative, " Ye twice ten hundred deities," the air, " By the croaking of the toad," and the charming rondo, "I attempt from Love's sickness to fly." Also songs for Dryden's " Indian Emperor," and " Cleomenes " (which Southerne finished). Dry den and Lee's '' (Edi- pus," Southerne's comedy, "The Wife's Excuse," and D'Urfey's comedy, " The Marriage State Matched ; " and further, the opera of " The Faiiy Queen " (adapted from Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream"), which seems to have been put upon the stage in a very costly and brilliant manner. It is unfortunate that a considerable portion of the score has been lost; but some of the numbers were printed in the " Orpheus Britannicus," and others separately. In 1693 Purcell composed the music for Congreve's comedy, " The Old Bachelor," D'Urfey's " The Eichmond Heiress," Southerne's "The Maid's Last Prayer," and Bancroft's tragedy, " Henry the Second ; " in 1 694, por- tions of the music for Parts 1 and 2 of D'Urfey's " Don Quixote," songs for Southerne's tragedy, "The Fatal Marriage/' Dryden's play of "Love Triumphant," and OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 131 Crowne's comedy, " The Married Beau ; " and the over- ture, act-tunes and songs for Congrove's "Double Dealer." The famous war-song, "Britons, strike home," and the four-part chorus, " To arms," were among the gems with which, in 1695, he enriched Purcell's adaptation of Beau- mont and Fletcher's " Boadicea." In the same year he composed songs for Southerne's tragedy, " Oroonoko," Ravenscroft's comedy, " The Canterbury Guests," Gould's tragedy, "The Rival Sisters," Scott's comedy, "The Mock Marriage," Beaumont and Fletcher's play, "The Knight of Malta," and the third part of D'Urfey's " Don Quixote." The "Don Quixote" contains Purcell's swan- song, his last composition, "From rosy hours," which, though written in his dying hours, presents no trace of weakness or decay. From this review of his dramatic compositions we pro- ceed to a survey of what he accomplished in church and chamber music. Perhaps it is in the service of the temple that his genius is most fully developed.* Certain it is that his church music is characterized by a wonderful power of devotion and solemnity of feeling. Exact and well- defined in its scientific development, it attains, by the rich- ness of its harmonic combinations and the purity of its melodic strains, a strength and fulness of efiect which every heart acknowledges. Let us glance at a few of his more memorable compositions. There is the anthem for six voices : " Oh God, Thou hast cast us out,'^ with its felicitous "commixture of spirit, sweetness, and elaborated counterpoint ;" the anthem for bass solo and chorus, " The Lord is King ; " the coronation anthems for James * The reader is advised to study Vincent Novello's edition (1829-1832) of " Purcell's Sacred Music," if he would understand the full scope and chaiacter of the composer's powers. 132 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 133 n., and his Queen '^I was glad/^ and "Mj heart is in- diting ;" the anthem, " They that go down to the sea in ships/' composed on the occasion of the King^s narrow escape from a great storm when at sea in the Fubbs yacht, and remarkable for its expression of the mingled sensa- tion of awe, agitation, wonder, and thanksgiving ; and the noble and majestic eight-part anthem, " Lord God of hosts ! " The anthem for four voices, with instrumental accompaniments, '* Blessed are they that fear the Lord," was produced on the 29th of January, 1687, as a thanks- giving for the pregnancy of the Queen, Mary of Modena. To enumerate all his anthems, or services, or settings of the Jubilate and Be^iedidus, would be unprofitable. Something must be said, however, respecting his fa- mous Te Deum and Jubilate in D, with orchestral accompaniments, the first of the kind composed in England, which he wrote for the Cecilian celebration in 1694. "In this composition,'^ says Busby, " the science and genius of a great and superior master are conspicu- ously displayed. To hear the chorus, * All, all the earth, Lord, worship Thee, the Father Everlasting,' is to feel the utmost richness of sonorous combination, and to be im- pressed with the fullest sense of devotional duty. The duet, given to the Cherubim and Seraphim, broken and thundered upon by the chorus, with the awfully impressive word, ' Holy,' is divinely conceived ; and both the har- mony and the melody of ' Also the Holy Ghost the Com- forter,' exhibit Purcell as a musician inspired. In the double fugue of ' Thou art the King of Glory,' the noble and elevated feelings of the author are expressed with a degree of science and decision which manifest the con- trivance of a real and great master, animated and em- boldened by the divine majesty of the object before him. From the words, ' Thou sittest at the right hand of God,' to ' ever world without end,' we find in the music a con- tinued and unremitting echo to the sense of the language, and are everywhere reminded of the import and the gran- deur of the subject treated." This noble and majestic masterpiece was composed for the Cecilian festival of the Sons of the Clergy, and was per- formed every year until the production of Handel's Te Deum, in 1713, for the peace of Utrecht. Thenceforward, until 1743, they were alternately used. In 1743 Handel composed his Dettingen Te Deum, to which his know- ledge of the powers and combinations of the instruments of the orchestra enabled him to give such a colossal character that it has, to a great extent, superseded Purcell's beautiful composition. Why does not some English musician arrange the latter with orchestral ac- companiments in the modern fashion ? To present a brief chronological resume:^ The first of Purcell's numerous odes, a form of com- position in which he seems to have taken much delight, appeared in 1680—" An Ode or Welcome Song for his Koyal Highness (the Duke of York) on his return from Scotland." In 1681 he wrote another Ode or Welcome Song for the King, " Swifter, Isis, swifter flow ; " and in 1682, one on the King's return from Newmarket, " The summer's absence unconcerned we bear." He also wrote some inauguration songs for the Lord Mayor, October 29th. In 1683 he essayed a new branch of composi- tion, instrumental chamber music, and published his twelve " Sonnata s of III. parts, two Yiollins and Basse to the Organ or Harpsichord." Each consists of an adagio. 134 THE MERRY MONARCH; fugue, slow movement, and air. In his preface Purcell states that he has aimed at a just imitation of the most famed Italian masters, " principally to bring," he says, "the seriousness and gravity of that sort of music into vogue and reputation among our countrymen, whose humour 'tis time now should begin to loath the levity and balladry of our neighbours." The attempt he con- fesses to be bold and daring; there being pens and artists of more eminent abilities, much better qualified for the employment than his or himself, which he well hopes these his weak endeavours will in due time provoke and influence to a more accurate undertaking. He is not ashamed to own his unskilfulness in the Italian language, but that is the unhappiness of his education, which cannot justly be counted his fault ; however, he thinks he may warrantably affirm that he is not mistaken in the power of the Italian notes, or elegancy of their composition. In the same year (1683) he produced another Ode for the King, "Fly, bold Eebellion," and one Ode, "From hardy climes," in celebration of the marriage of Prince George of Denmark to the Princess Anne. Also, a St. Cecilia's Day Ode, " Welcome to all the pleasures." In 1684 he composed an Ode, the last he was to lay at the feet of Charles II., on the King's return to White- hall after his Summer's Progress — ^'From those serene and rapturous joys.'^ " Why are all the Muses mute ? " was the title of the Ode or Welcome Song which he addressed to James II. in 1685. "Ye tuneful Muses " was produced in 1686. In 1687 he composed another Ode, "Sound the trumpet, beat the drum," in which occurs the duet for I I OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 135 altos, "Let Csesar and Urania live." This enjoyed so extensive a popularity that succeeding composers of Eoyal Birthday Odes were wont to introduce it into their own productions until late into the 18th century. In 1688 he composed his last Welcome Song for James II., and in 1689, an Ode, " Celestial Music," and a " Welcome Song at the Prince of Denmark's Coming Home." In this year he wrote the celebrated " York- shire Feast Song" in praise of the county and its worthies, for the annual gathering in London of natives of Yorkshire— one of his most vigorous and varied com- positions. It was performed at an expense of £100 at the annual Feast held in Merchant Taylor's Hall, on the 27th of March, 1690. In this year a sharp con- tention arose between the composer and the Dean and Chapter of the Abbey. Purcell, considering the organ loft as his pecuUum, in virtue of his office, had received the admission fees of persons desirous of viewing the coronation of William and Mary. The Dean and Chapter claimed them, and when Purcell refused to acknowledge the claim, made an order that unless he handed over the moneys his place should be declared vacant, and his salary detained by the Treasurer. As he held his appointment, however, until his death, we may assume that the dispute was amicably arranged. In 1690 the inexhaustible genius of Purcell produced a Birthday Ode for the Queen, "Arise, my Muse," and an ode for King William, " Sound the trumpet." Another Birthday Ode for the Queen, "Welcome, glorious Morn " appeared in 1691. A curious anecdote is related of the one which he composed in the following year to Sir Charles Sedley's words, " Love's Goddess sure was blind." i »■ ■■ !■■■ 136 THE MERRY MONARCH; The bass to one of its airs, "May her blest example chase," is simplj the tenor of the old song, " Cold and raw." It seems that Queen Mary one day was entertained by the singing of Gostling and Mistress Arabella Hunt, with Parcell as accompanist. After they had sung some admirable songs by Purcell and others. Queen Mary asked Arabella Hunt for the ballad of " Cold and raw." In his indignation that the Queen should prefer a common ballad to his own excellent compositions, Purcell resolved that she should hear it again when she little expected it, and accordingly introduced it, as we have seen, into the Birthday Ode. In the same year he set to music Dr. Brady's Ode, "Hail, great Cecilia," which was performed at the annual celebration on St. Cecilia's Day,* the composer himself singing the alto solo, " ^Tis Nature's voice." In 1693 he set Nahum Tate's Ode for the Queen's birthday, " Celebrate this festival ; " and the same versifier's Ode commemorative of the centenary of Trinity College, Dublin. In 1694 he wrote another Birthday Ode for the Queen, " Come, come, ye Sons of Art ! " and at the close of the year composed for her funeral the anthem, "Thou knowest. Lord, the secrets of our hearts," in so deeply impressive and majestic a style that Dr. Croft, when he set the funeral service, wisely refrained from resetting this passage, and adopted Purcell's music. Purcell also wrote for this occasion his anthem, " Blessed * These annual concerta were established in 1683 by "The Musical Society," whose members on St. Cecilia's Day (Nov. 22nd) first attended choral service at St. Bride's Church, and afterwards at the concert (generally given in Stationer's Hall), where an ode in praise of music was always the piice de resistance. For these occasions Dryden wrote his famous Odes in 1687 and 1697. OR, ENGLAND XTNDEK CHARLES II. 137 is the man ; " and early in the following year composed two elegies on the Queen^s death. Irregularities of living, and, doubtless, the excessive mental labour of which the foregoing list affords so signal an illustration, shattered the composer's constitution while he was still in the prime of manhood'; and, to the great loss of English music, he died of some lingering disease, prob- ably consumption, at his house in Dean's Yard, West- minster, on the 21st of November, 1695, aged 37."^ He was buried in Westminster Abbey. On a tablet affixed to a pillar is the following well-known inscription, ascribed, though on doubtful evidence, to Dryden : — " Here lyes Henry Purcell, Esq., Who left this life, And is gone to that blessed place, Where only his harmony can be exceeded. Obiit. 21 mo die Novembris, Anno ^tatis suas, 37™°' Annuq ; Domini, 1695." On a flat stone over his grave was inscribed the following epitaph, renewed, a few years ago, through the agency of Turle, then organist of the Abbey : — ** Plandite, felices snperi, tanto hospite ; nostris, Praefuerat, vestris additur ille choris : Invidia nee vobis Purcellum terra reposcat, Questa decus secli, deliciasqne breves. Turn cito decessisse, modos cui singula debit Mnsa, prophana snos religiosa sues. Vivit lo et vivat, dum vicina organa spirant, Damque colet nnmeris tnrba canora Deum." * The old story that his fatal illness was due to a cold, caught one night when his wife kept him waiting outside his own door, in punishment for his late hours, may be dismissed as without foundation. By his will he be- queathed his whole property to his " loving wife," and appointed her sole executrix. I 138 THE MERKY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 139 Which has been thus Englished: — " Applaud so great a gaest, celestial Powers ! Who now resides with you, but once was ours ; Yet let invidious earth no more reclaim Her short-liv'd fav'rito and her chiefest fame ; Complaining that so prematurely dy'd, Good-nature's pleasure and devotion's pride. Dy'd ? no, he lives while yonder organs sound. And sacred echoes to tho choir rebound.*' The finest tribute to the great musician's memory is the sonorous verse of Dry den (set to music by Dr. Blow), in which he speaks of him as " the godlike man," and adds : — " The heavenly choir, who heard hia notes from high, Let down the scale of music from the sky ; They handed him along, And all the way he taught, and all tho way they sung, Ye brethren of the lyre, and tuneful voice, Lament his lot, but at your own rejoice ; Now live secure, and linger out your days ; The gods are pleased alone with Purcell's lays. Nor know to mend their choice." Elsewhere the poet writes : — " Sometimes a hero in an age appears, But scarce a Purcell in a thousand years." One or two anecdotes of the composer may here be in- troduced. According to Sir John Hawkins, he had a strong dislike to the tones of the viol da gamba, on which his friend, the Rev. Mr. Sub-dean Gostling, was an enthusiastic performer. '''The composer, to gratify- some little pique, engaged a certain poetaster to write the following mock eulogium on the viol, which he set in the form of a round, for three voices :— " Of all the instruments that are, None with the viol can compare; Mark how the strings their order keep, With a whet, whet, whet, and a sweep, sweep, sweep, But above all this abounds, With a zingle, zingle, zing, and a zit, zan, zounds." It is said that Dryden wrote his Ode of " Alexander's Feast" with a view to its musical illustration by the genius of his friend; but for some unexplained reason Purcell declined the task. Of his skill as an organist little is now known; but that it was highly esteemed we infer from the curious rebus, in rhyming Latin, written by Tomlinson, a trans- lation of which was set to music by one Lenton,* in the form of a catch : — " Galli marita, par tritico seges, Prajnomen est ejus, dat chromati leges ; Intrat cognomen blanditiis Cati, Exit eremi in jEdibus stati, Expertum effectum omnes admirentur. Quid merent PoetiB ? ut bene calcentur." The translation, as set by Lenton ran thus :— " A mate to a cock, and corn tall as wheat, Is his Christian name who in music's complete ; His surname begins with the grace of a cat, And concludes with the house of a hermit; note that. His skill and performance each auditor wins, But the poet deserves a good kick on the shins." PurcelFs widow, in 1698, with the aid of a liberal sub- scription, reared an endearing monument to her husband's memory in the Orpheus Britannicus, a collection of his vocal compositions, to which a second volume was added in 1702, and a third in 1705. It was dedicated to that able and accomplished statesman, Charles Montague, Lord Halifax, and contains songs from "The Fairy Queen,'' and " The Indian Queen," the Birthday Odes, that noble song, '' Genius of England," and numerous other occasional productions. " The Genius of England " has an accompaniment for a trumpet, and it may here be * John Lenton was a member of the private band of King William and Queen Anne; he wrote the overtures and act-tunes to several plays; and, in 1702, published *' The Useful Instructor on the Violin." 140 THE MEREY MONAECH. noted that Purcell was the first English musician who wrote songs with symphonies and accompaniments for that instrument. Among the most popuhxr and successful of PurcelPs compositions for the voice may be named : "Come, if you dare!" "Fairest isle, all isles excelling/' "Come unto these yellow sands/' "Celia has a thousand charms/' "Ye twice ten hundred deities/' "Tell me why, my charming fair?" "Mad Bess/' "Blow, Boreas, blow," " Thus the gloomy world," " May the god of wit inspire/' " Two daughters of this aged stream," " I attempt from love's sickness to fly," "Let the dreadful engines," " Crown the altar/' " Ah ! cruel nymph," " From rosy bowers," "I'll sail upon the Day-star," "Lost is my quiet," "When Mira sings," "Celebrate this festival," and " What shall I do to show how much I love her ? " In most of these the words are admirably expressed; the melody and modulation always aim at more than the gratification of the external sense, are uniformly impreg- nated with sentiment, and never fail to be either elegant, or pathetic, or both. Whenever the subject demands fire and animation, his native spirit bursts forth with an energy, and kindles to a glow, that no apathy in the hearer can resist. In his duets and trios we find a con- texture and contrivance in the ]parts only conceivable by real genius, and not to be fabricated, or accomplished, but by profound science. DEAMATIC AUTHOES. Aeeowsmith. Banks. Bancroft. Betterton. Buckingham, Duke of Beome. Lord Beoghill. Lucius Caey, Lord Falk- land. Caeyll. COEYE. Cowley. Ceowne, John. Davenant. Deyden. D'Urfey. Etherege, Sie George. Fane. Edward Howaed. James Howaed. Sir Egbert Howard. Xilligrew. Lacy. Lee, Nat. Leonard. Maidwell. Medbouene. Newcastle, Duke op Otway. Payne. Portee and Pordage. Eawlins. Eevet. Ry3IEE. Saundees. Settle. Shadwell. Shirley. Southern. Stapleton, Sie E. Tate. TUKE. Wycherley. Behn, Mrs. Afhra. i CHAPTEE III. DRAMATIC AUTHORS IN THE REIGN OF CHARLES II. Arrowsmith — Banks — ^Bancroft — Betterton — Bucking- ham, Duke of — Brome — Lord Broghill — Lucius Gary, Lord Falkland — Caryll — Corye — Cowley — Crowne, John — Davenant — Dryden — D'Urfey Etherege, Sir George — Fane — Edward Howard James Howard — Sir Robert Howard — Killigrew Lee, Nat — Lacy — Leonard — Maid well — Med- BOURNE— Newcastle, Duke of — Otway — Payne — Porter and Pordage — Rawlins — Revet — Rymer — Saunders — Settle — Shadwell — Shirley — Southern — Stapleton^ Sir R. — Tate— Tuke— Wycherley — Behn, Mrs. Aphra. At the sixty or seventy Dramatic Authors who contri- buted to the English Stage between 1660 and 1685 we purpose to glance in alphabetical order : an arrangement which has at least the merit of simplicity, and will pro- bably prove more convenient to the reader than one based upon chronological data. The first place will be taken, therefore, by Arrowsmith, the author of a dull comedy, called " The Reformation " (the title alone was enough to kill it), which did not hit the taste of the town, and soon passed, with its writer^ into oblivion. As late as 1682 the indefatigable John Banks produced his tragedy of ^' The Unhappy Favourite : or. The Earl of 144 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 145 Essex," concerning wliicli Steele, in The Taller, remarks, tliat it does not contain one good line, and yet it was " never seen without drawing tears from some part of the audience." Banks also composed "The Eival Kings," 1677; "The Destruction of Troy," 1679; "Virtue Be- trayed," 1682; "The Island Queens," 1684; "The In- nocent Usurper," 1694; and "Cyrus the Great," 1696. " His style," it is said, " gives alternate specimens of meanness and bombast. But even his dialogue is not destitute of occasional nature and pathos, and the value of his works as acting plays is very considerable."'^ The surgeon Bancroft, who had a large practice among fine gentlemen and actors, caught from them a touch of stage-fever, and produced a play, which the audience found more difficult to swallow than his potions. Thomas Betterton, the actor, shows a certain knowledge of stage-craft in his dramatic works : " The Woman Made a Justice," a comedy; "The Amorous Widow, or The Wanton Wife;" and an adaptation of John Webster's tragedy of " The Unjust Judge, or Appius and Virginia," wbich he entitled "The Eoman Virgin," 1679; "The Kevenge: or, A Match at Newgate," 1680; "The Pro- phetess : or, The History of Dioclesian, with a Masque," 1690; "King Henry *IV., with the Humours of Sir John FalstafiP;" and "The Bondman: or. Love and Liberty," published in 1719, after his death. To the Duke of Buckingham full reference is made in another chapter. He is included in the category of Pope speaks of Banks as Settle's rival in tragedy, '* thongh most suc- iful in one of his tragedies, the Earl of Essex, which is yet alive : Anna cessful Boleyn, The Queen cf Scots, and Cyrus the Great are dead and gone. These he dressed in a sort of beggar's velvet, or a happy mixture of the thick fustian and their prosaic." (Note to The Duuciad, bk. vi.) 1 Dramatic Authors by virtue of his immortal burlesque, " The Rehearsal," in which he is said (by those who will not believe that a Duke can be a wit) to have been assisted by Martin Clifford, Dr. Sprat, and Butler. Bat neither of these was capable of the fun which brims over in Buck- ingham's " Rehearsal " — fan so true and fresh that even a modern audience might appreciate it, while not detect- ing or understanding the parodies and contemporary allusions. From his love of wine and his lyrical gifts Alexander Brome earned the title of "The English Anacreon." Charles Cotton apostrophizes him : — ** Anacreon, come and touch thy jolly lyre, And bring in Horace to the quire ; " and Walton alludes to his vivacious lays and cavalier- ditties as " Those cheerful songs which we Have often sung with mirth and merry glee As we have marched to fight the cause Of God's anointed and His laws." He is mentioned here by right of his comedy of '' The Cunning Lovers." Born in 1620; died in 1666*. One of the aristocratic dramatists of the day was the Lord Broghill, afterwards Earl of* Orrery, who makes so distinguished a figure in its political affairs. He was the son of the great Earl of Cork, and with his precocious talents astonished the grave professors of Dublin Univer- sity. At the age of 15 he went abroad. After seeing much of men and cities, he fell in love with the daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, and crossed to Ireland to celebrate his wedding on the very day that the Great Civil War broke out. Drawing his sword in support of the royal cause, he fought bravely on many a field. After the VOL. I. L I 146 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 147 execution of Charles I. lie went into exile ; but secretly visiting London, came into contact with Cromwell, and was persuaded by him to assist in the expedition then fitting out for Ireland, with the understanding that he would be called upon to fight only against the native Irish. His military abilities were considerable, and his Irish campaigns were crowned with success. lie won the battle of Macrome, and inflicted a severe defeat on Lord Muskerry and his "Irish Papistry." At the great Protector's death he refused his services to Kichard Cromwell, and returned to his old allegiance. For his share in bringing about the Eestoration Charles II. created him Earl of Orrery. His occupation as a soldier gone, he took to writing plays, of which Pepys justly complains that tliey are all alike, though for one or two of them he seems to have had a fancy. Thus he be- stows not a few good words on Orrery's " Henry V.," in which Henry and Owen Tudor in stilted rhymes both make love to Katherine of Valois. In December, 1666, he notes : " After all staying above an hour [at Whitehall] for the players, the King and all waiting, which was absurd, saw 'Henry V.,' well done by the Duke's people, and in most excellent habits, all new vests, being put on but this night. But I sat so high, and so far off, that I missed most of the words, and sat with a wind coming into my back and neck, which did much trouble me. The play continued till twelve at night, and then up, and a most horrid cold night it was, and frosty, and moon- shine." Says Dr. Doran : " In Orrery's ' Mustapha ' and ' Try- phon,' the theme is all love and honour, without variation. Orrery's ' Mr. Anthony ' is a five-act farce, in ridicule of the manners and morals of the Puritans. Therein the noble author rolls in the mire for the gratification of the pure-minded cavaliers. Over Orrery's 'Black Prince,' even vigilant Mr. Pepys himself fell asleep, in spite of the stately dances. Perhaps he was confused by the author's illustration of genealogical history ; for in this play, Joan, the wife of the Black Prince, is described as the widow of Edmund, Earl of Kent — her father ! But what mattered it to the writer whose only teaching to the audience was, that if they did not fear God, they must take care to honour the King? Orrery's ' Altemira' was not produced till long after his death. It is a roar of passion, love (or what passed for it), jealousy, despair, and murder. In the concluding scene the slaughter is terrific. It all takes place in presence of an unobtrusive individual, who carries the doctrine of non-intervention to its extreme limit. When the persons of the drama have made an end of one another, the quietly delighted gentleman steps forward, and blandly remarks, that there was so much virtue, love, and honour in it all, that he could not find it in his heart to interfere, though his own son was one of the victims ! " John Caryl, or Caryll, appears in history as secretary to Mary of Modena, James II.'s Queen, and as for some time James's agent at the Court of Rome. Here is Macaulay's reference to him : " This gentleman was known to his contemporaries as a man of fortune and fashion, and as the author of two successful plays, a tragedy in rhyme which had been made popular by the action and recitation of Betterton, and a comedy which owes all its value to scenes borrowed from Moliere. These pieces have long been forgotten ; but what Caryl could I 148 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 149 not do for himself has been done for Mm by a more powerful genius. Half a line in tbe Eape of the Lock bas made bis name immortal." His plays are : " Tbe Enpflisb Princess, or Tbe Deatb of Eicbard III.," 1667; and "Sir Solomon Single, or The Cautious Coxcomb," 1671. James II. bestowed on bim tbe titles of Earl Caryl and Baron Dartford, which, however, proved merely nominal distinctions. He returned to England in tbe reign of Queen Anne, and was included among tbe friends of Pope, to whom, it is said, ^ he suggested tbe idea of '' Tbe Eape of the Lock " : — ** What dire offence from amorous causes springs, V^hat mighty contests rise from trivial things, I sing — This verse to Gary 11, Muse, is due." To Henry Lucius Cary, third Viscount Falkland, son of Clarendon Falkland, we owe a tragedy called " Tbe Marriage Night," published in 1664. A play called "Generous Enemies" was produced by Corye in 1667. John Crowne, who died in 1703, was a native of Nova Scotia. He received a tolerable education ; and as gentle- man usher to a wealthy old lady having obtained some knowledge of society, resolved on taking up the profession of an author. In 1671 he made his appearance as a dramatist, and produced the first of bis long list of seven- teen plays, the tragi-comedy of "Juliana/' Eocbester then befriended bim, and played him off against Dryden as a dramatic poet. Attaching himself, therefore, to the Court party, he satirised the Whigs in bis comedy of " City Politics," 1675, and in tbe same year brought out * See " Spence'a Anecdotes,'* p. 194. I at Court tbe masque of "Calisto."* In 1677 appeared his tragedy, in two parts, " The Destruction of Jerusalem." After this, be contrived to lose Eochester's patronage, and as be bad offended tbe Whigs, bis prospects were suffi- ciently dubious ; but Charles II. promised to do some- thing for him when be had written one more comedy, and suggested as a model Agustin Morato's " No Puede Ser " (" It Cannot Be "). Such was the origin of Crowne's best play, *' Sir Courtly Nice ; " but on the last day of tbe rehearsal Charles II. died, and with him poor Crowne's hopes of preferment. That be could write with terseness the following extract shows : — " These are great mazims, sir, it is confessed ; Too stately for a woman's narrow breast. Poor love is lost in men's capacious minds ; In ours, it fills up all the room it finds." f And this : — " I'll not such f aviour to rebellion show, To wear a crown the people do bestow ; Who, when their giddy violence is past, Bhall from the King, the adored, revolt at last ; And then the throne they gave they shall invade, And scorn the idol which themselves have made." Of Abraham Cowley I speak at length under the Poets; but here I may refer to bis dramatic composi- tions : " Love's Eiddle,'^ a pastoral comedy, 1638 ; " The Guardian," a comedy, 1650; and the more celebrated * Evelyn saw the representation of this masque at Whitehall. The characters in it were represented by the Princesses Mary and Anne, the Lady Henrietta Wentworth (so unhappily associated with the Duke of Mon- mouth), Sarah Jennings (afterwards Duchess of Marlborough), and Mrs. Blagg, whom Evelyn has celebrated as Mrs. Godolphin, There were other less distinguished ladies and some professional actresses, while the dancea between the acts were executed by " lords and ladies of high degree.** Mrs. Blagg, on this occasion, wore £20,000 worth of Jewels. f Which may be compared with Lord Byron's : — " Man's love is of man's life a thing apart; Tis woman's whole existence.'* i 150 THE MERRY MONARCH; "Cutter of Coleman Street" (founded on "The Guardian "), wliieh was produced in 16G3. I treat of Sir William Davenant in the same chapter. He wrote, in all, 25 dramatic pieces, includin*^ " The Tragedy of Albovine, King of the Lombards," 1629; " The Cruel Brother," 1630; ''The Just Italian," 1630; " The Temple of Love," 1634 ; " The Triumphs of the Prince d'Amour," 1G35; "The Platonick Lovers,'' 1636; "The Witts," 1636; "The Unfortunate Lovers," 1613; "The Siege of Eliodes," 1663 ; '' The Rivals," 1668; and " The Man^s a Master," 1668. It will be for the convenience of the reader that we should consider Drydeti's dramatic work as a whole, taking his plajs in the chronological order of their production. His first dramatic effort was "The Wild Gallant, a Comedy " probably produced in February, 1663, for on the 23rd of that month Mr. Pepys records that " it was ill acted, and the play so poor a thing as ever I saw in my life." Dryden himself acknowledges that it was unsuc- cessful,* and so it deserved to be, for the plot, derived from a Spanish source, is extravagant, and the characters are absurdly unreal. There is a good deal of lively incident in it ; but, as Scott remarks, few modern audiences would endure the gross deceit practised on Lord Nonsuch in the fourth act; nor is the device of Lady Constance to gain her lover, by marrying him in the disguise of a heathen divinity, more grotesque than unnatural. "Those pas- sages, in which the plot stands still, while the spectators * "It would be a great impudence in me," he says, "to say much of a comedy, which has had but indifferent success in the action. I made the town my judges, and the greater part condemned it: after which I do not think it my concernment to defend it with the ordinary zeal of a poet for Ills decried poem." OR, ENGLAND TNDER CHARLES II. 151 are entertained with flippant dialogue and repartee, are ridiculed in the scene betwixt Prince Prettyman and Tom Thimble in the Eehearsal ; the facetious Mr. Bibber being the original of the latter personage. The character of Trice, at least his whimsical humour of drinking, playing at dice by himself, and quarrelling as if engaged with a successful gamester, is imitated from the character of Carlo, in Jonson's ' Every Man out of his Humour/ who drinks with a supposed companion, quarrels about the pledge, and tosses about the cups and flasks in the imagi- nary brawl." But the best conceived and best executed character in the piece is Sir Timorous. " The Wild Gallant " was revived and published in 1669, with a new prologue and epilogue, and some alterations which showed that Dryden's Muse in the six years had gained nothing in morality. The dramatis personoe are: Lord Nonsuch, an old rich humorous lord ; Justice Trice, his neighbour ; Mr. Loveby, the Wild Gallant; Sir Timorous, a bashful knight; Failer and Burr, hangers-on of Sir Timorous ; Bibber, a tailor, and Setstone, a jeweller; Lady Constance, Lord Nonsuch's daughter; Madam Isabelle, her cousin; and Mrs. Bibber, the tailor's wife. Of the flashes of liveliness which relieve the dialogue we give a specimen or two . Loveby describes a garret in the tailor's house : — " Why, 'tis a kind of little ease,* to cramp thy rebellious prentices in ; I have seen an nsarer's iron chest would hold two on't ; a penny looking- glass cannot stand upright in the window, that and the brush tills it: the hat-case must be dis])osed under the bed, and the comb-case will hang down from the ceiling to the floor. If I chance to dine in my chamber, I must stay till I am empty before I can get out." * A prison, so called from its construction. 152 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 153 A jest quite in the modern style : — "Lovehy, — But for the fountain, madam — Consta7^ce. — The fountain's a poor excuse, it will not hold water." Jests against the clergy : — " If the Devil can send churchmen on his errands, Lord have mercy on the laity ! " Constance, — Our parson ran away too, when they cried out the Devil ! Lovthij. — He was the wiser ; for if the devil had come indeed, he has preached so long against him, it would have gone hard with him. &Y.sf^w^.— Indeed, I have always observed parsons to be more fearful of the Devil than other people. Lovely. — Oh, the Devil's the spirit, and the parson's the flesh ; and betwixt those two there must be a war ; yet, to do them both right, I think in my conscience they quarrel only like lawyers for their fees, and meet good friends in private, to laugh at their clients." Dryden's second dramatic effort was " The Eival-Ladies, a Tragi-Comedy/' first acted in 16G4. Pepys refers to it as *'a very innocent and most pretty witty play/' with which he was much pleased, and again, after reading it, he pronounces it "a most pleasant and witty fine-writ play." It is, for Dryden, commendably free from inde- cency. The dialogue is often very smart, and at times, glitters with wise and witty phrases. As for tlie plot, which is obviously borrowed from some Spanish drama of intrigue, it is so complex as almost to defy unravelling ; but the incidents are numerous and entertaining. Several of the scenes are written in rhyme, in what was then called the heroic manner. The dramatis fersonce are : Don Gonzalvo de Peralta, a young gentleman newly arrived from the Indies, in love with Julia; Don Eoderigo de Sylva, also in love with Julia ; and Don Manuel de Torres, Julia's brother ; Julia, Don ManueFs elder sister, promised to Eoderigo ; Honoria, a younger sister, disguised in a man's habit, and going by the name of Hippolito, in love with Gonzalvo; and Ange- I lina, Don Eoderigo's sister, in man's habit, likewise in love with Gonzalvo, and going by the name of Aneideo. It is not difficult to imagine the embarrassments occa- sioned by this arrangement of the characters. Eventually, however, Eoderigo and Julia are mated; Honoria wins Gonzalvo, aud we are allowed to see that an alliance will .be concluded between Angelina and Don Manuel. We quote a few happy sentences :— " I will not so much crush a budding virtue As to suspect." " One of those little prating girls, Of whom fond parents tell such tedious stories.'* " Methinks, I see Your Boul retired within her inmost chamber." " Like a Fair mourner sit in state, with all The silent pangs of sorrow round about her." " I am no more afraid of flying censures, Than heaven of being fired with mounting sparkles." " The noblest part of liberty they lose Who can but shun, and want the power to choose." " I feel death rising higher still, and higher. Within my bosom ; every breath I fetch Shuts up my life within a shorter compass, And, like the vanishing sound of bells, grows less And less each pulse, till it be lost in air." We come next to " The Indian Queen," a play in which Dryden assisted that dull dramatist. Sir Eobert Howard, youngest son of the Earl of Berkshire. In October, 1663, Dryden married Sir Eobert Howard's sister Elizabeth, and in the following month was brought out " The Indian Queen," with costly scenery and rich decorations, of which Evelyn says that " the like of them had never been seen here, or haply, except rarely, elsewhere, in a mercenary theatre." The dramatis 'persona include :— The Inca of Peru ; Montezuma, his general ; Acacis, son to Zempoalla ; 154 THE MERRY MONARCH; Traxalla, Zempoalla's general ; Garucca, a faithful servant to Aurexia; the God of Dreams ; and Ismeron, a Conjurer ; Aurexia, the lawful Queen of Mexico; Zempoalla, the usurping Indian Queen, and Orazia, daugliter to the Inca. The characters of Montezuma and Zempoalla seem clearly to belong to Drjden, and much of the third act exhibits his vigorous versification. A summary of tlie plot will show the kind of dramatic interest which tlien pleased tlie public. In Act I., Mon- tezuma is loaded with rewards by the Inca of Peru for his victories over the Mexicans, and among these receives as a prisoner Prince Acacis, son of Zempoalla, the usurp- ing Indian Queen. Montezuma releases the prince, and asks for the hand of Orazia, the Inca's daughter, a request at which the Inca is indignant. To revenge him- self Montezuma resolves to carry his sword to the aid of the Mexicans, though Acacis reminds him of his duty, and refuses to accept his liberty. He feels bound in honour to the Inca, and, moreover, he too is not insensible to the charms of Orazia. " Mont. — Yoa are my prisoner, and I set you freo. Aca. —'Twere baseness to accept such liberty. Mont. — From him that conqaered yoa, it shoaid be sought. Aca. — No, but from him, for whom my conqueror fought, il/ont.— Still you are mine, his gift has made you so. Aca. — He gave me to his general, not his foe." Montezuma betakes himself to the enemy, while Acacis remains, and is set free by the Inca, when he returns with his soldiers to find that his general has gone. Still Acacis shows no inclination to depart, but undertakes the defence of the Inca and his daughter against Montezuma's revenge. The scene then shifts to the camp of the Mexi- cans, where Zempoalla, the mothor of Acacis, receives OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 155- f Montezuma with a noble welcome, and vows to the gods that she will sacrifice a prince to them if they give her arms the victory. Act II.— The Inca and his daughter, in flying from the field of battle, are overtaken by Montezuma, who turns repentant at their sight, and when Traxalla, the Indian Queen's general, claims them as his prisoners, refuses to give them up. Acacis, who in the fight has several times saved their lives, now appears, and the Mexicans, hailing with delight their prince, leave it to him to decide the con- tention between Montezuma and Traxalla. He adjudges the prisoners to the former. The scene changes, and we see Zempoalla wrathful because the victorious Mexicans ' the audience on the first night of representation, to which Bayes alhides in "The Rehearsal," where he says that he has printed many reams to instil into the audience some conception of his plot. Dryclen simply points out that, at the conclusion of " The Indian Queen," only two considerable characters remained alive, Montezuma and Orazia, who could be in- troduced into another story. Therefore, he " thought it necessary to produce new persons from the old ones : and considering the late Indian Queen, before she loved Mon- tezuma, lived in clandestine marriage with her general Traxalla, from those two he has raised a son and two daughters, supposed to be left young orphans at their death. On the other side, he has given to Montezuma 160 THE MEERY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II, 161 and Orazia two sons and a daughter ; all now supposed to be grown up to men's and women's estate ; and their mother, Orazia (for whom there was no further use in the story), lately dead." *^The Indian Emperor" is an instance, says Scott, of the beaatif al poetry which may be united to, or rather thrown away upon, the heroic drama. " The very first scene exhibits much of those beauties, and their atten- dant deformities. A modern audience would hardly have sate in patience to hear more than the first extravagant and ludicrous supposition of Cortez : — * As if our old world modestly withdrew ; And here, in private, had brought forth a new.* But had they condemned the piece for this uncommon case of parturition, they would have lost the beautiful and melodious verses in which Cortez and his followers describe the advantages of the newly discovered world ; and they would have lost the still more exquisite account, which, immediately after, Guyomar gives of the arrival of the Spanish fleet. Of the characters little need be said ; they stalk on, in their own fairy land, in the same uniform livery, and with little peculiarity of discrimina- tion. All the men, from Montezuma down to Pizarro, are brave warriors ; and only vary, in proportion to the mitigating qualities which the poet has infused into their military ardour. The women are all beautiful, and all deeply in love; differing from each other only, as the haughty or tender predominates in their passion. But the charm of the poetry, and the ingenuity of the dialogue, render it impossible to peruse, without pleasure, a drama, the faults of which may be imputed to its struc- ture, while its beauties are peculiar to Dryden." "V I ( The dramatis personce include Moutezuma, Emperor of Mexico; his sons, Odmar and Guyomar; Orbellom, son to the late Indian Queen, by Traxalla ; Cydaria, Monte- zuma's daughter ; Almeria and Alibech, the late Indian Queen's two daughters ; Cortez, the Spanish general, and his lieutenants, Vasquez and Pizarro. We quote the passages praised by Scott : — *• Cortez. — Here nature spreads her fruitful sweetness round, Breathes on the air and broods upon the ground; Here days and nights the only seasons be ; The sun no climate does so gladly see : When forced from hence, to view our parts, he mourns. Takes little journeys and makes quick returns. Fdsquez. — Methinks, we walk in dreams on Fairyland, Where golden ore is mixt with common sand ; Each downfall of a flood, the mountains pour From their rich bowels, rolls a silver shower.** " Gwyomar. — At last, as far as I could cast my eyes Upon the sea, somewhat, methought, did rise, Like bluish mists, which, still appearing more, Took dreadful shapes, and moved towards the shore. Jj^ont. — What forms did these new wonders represent ? Cruy. — More strange than what your wonder can invent. Tho object I could first distinctly view Was tall straight trees, which on the waters flew ; Wings on their sides, instead of leaves, did grow. Which gathered all the breath the winds could blow : And at their roots grew floating palaces, Whose outblowed bellies cut the yielding seas. Mont, — What divine monsters, ye gods, were these, That float in air, and fly upon the seas ! Come they alive, or dead, upon the shore ? Guy. — Alas, they lived too sure : I heard them roar. All turned their sides, and to each other spoke ; I saw their words break out in fire and smoke. Sure 'tis their voice that thunders from on high, Or these the younger brothers of the sky." Langbaine asserts that the comedy of " Secret Love ; or, The Maiden Queen,'' is founded upon certain passages in Mademoiselle de Scuderi's " Grand Cyrus " and *' Ibrahim, the Illustrious Bassa." However this may be. VOL. I. M 162 THE MERRY MONARCH ; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 163 tte play is one of its author's liveliest and most effective compositions ; and we are not at all sure but that, with the pruning happily rendered necessary by modern taste, it mif^ht meet a favourable reception from an audience of to-day. The dialogue is always sprightly, and sometimes poetical ; and the part of Florimel offers abundant oppor- tunities to a clever actress. The dramatis personce, with the original cast, may here be given : Lysimantes, first Prince of the Blood, Mr. Burt ; Philocles, the Queen's favourite, Major Mohun ; Celadon, a courtier, Mr. Hart; Queen of Sicily, Mrs. Marshall ; Candispe, Princess of the Blood, Mrs. Quin ; Asteria, the Queen's confidante, Mrs. Knipp ; Florimel, a maid of honour, Mrs. Ellen Gwynn ; Flavia, another maid of honour, Mrs. Frances Davenport ; Olinda and Sabina, sisters, Mrs. Putter and Mrs. Elizabeth Daven- port ; Melissa, their mother, Mrs. Cory. With such a cast, almost any play must have been successful ; but the " triumphant reception '^ which " Secret Love " commanded was specially due to the inimitable acting of Nell Gwynn, for whom the part of Florimel seems to have been written. It was produced on March 2nd, 1667, both Charles II. and the Duke of Tork being present. Pepys, the invaluable, records that " the play is mightily recommended for the regularity of it and the strain and wit of Nell Gwynn's acting." He adds that " he can never hope to see the like done again by man or woman," and that " so great performance of a comical part was never, I believe, in the world before as Nell do this, both as a mad girl, then most and best of all when she comes in like a young gallant, and hath the motions and carriage of a spark the most that ever I saw !■*». i any man have. It makes me, I confess, admire her." No doubt, as Mr. Saintsbury suggests, the portrait which Celadon draws of Florimel is pretty accurately descriptive of its bewitching representative : " A turned-up nose that gives an air to your face : — Oh, I find I am more and more in love with you ! — a full nether lip, an out-mouth, that makes mine water at it ; the bottom of your cheeks a little blub, and two dimples when you smile : For your stature, 'tis well ; and for your wit, 'twas given you by one that knew it had been thrown away upon an ill face. — Come, you're handsome, there's no denying it." Here is a fine description of the Queen of Sicily : — " Doubtless she's the glory of her time : Of faultless beauty, blooming as the spring In our Sicilian groves ; matchless in virtue, And largely souled when'er her bounty gives, As, with each breath, she could create new Indies." As a brief specimen of the lively dialogue given to Celadon and Florimel, take the following : — " Flo.~l would have a lover that, if need be, should hang himself, drown himself, break his neck, poison himself, for very despair : He that will scruple this is an impudent fellow if he says he is in love. Cil. — Pray, madam, which of these four things would you have your lover to do ? For a man's but a man ; he cannot hang, and drown, and break his neck, and poison himself, all together. JYtf.— Well, then, because you are but a beginner, and I would not dis- courage you, any of these shall serve your turn, in a fair way. Cel.—l am much deceived in those eyes of yours, if a treat, a song, and the fiddles, be not a more acceptable proof of love to you, than any of those tragical ones you have mentioned." The trail of the serpent pollutes Dryden's comedy of " Sir Martin Mar-all ; or, The Feigned Innocence "—an adaptation of the Duke of Newcastle's translation of Moliere's " L'Etourdi "—in which but little of the wit, and none of the airiness, of the original, is preserved — mixed up with an excessively indelicate under-plot from THE MEEEY MONARCH ; OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 165 Quinault's ** L' Amour Indiscret/' It seems to have hit the taste of the public when produced in 1667,^ for it ran for thirty-three nights, and was four times acted at Court. Doubtlessly, much of its success was owing to the humour of the inimitable Noakes, who played Sir Martin Mar-alL It must be admitted that those portions of the play in which Sir Martin appears are sufficiently diverting ; but these would not excuse to a modern audience the singular coarseness of the scenes between Lord Dartmouth, Mrs. Christian, and Lady Dupe. There is an inconceivable grossness in the idea of a young girl coolly calculating the highest profits to be obtained by becoming the pre- tended victim of a seduction, while her aunt speculates with her on the best means of stimulating the ardour of her would-be seducer ! What are we to think of the man who could put on the stage a dramatic representa- tion of such an idea ? What are we to think of the audiences who could tolerate and even applaud such a representation ? We may inquire, with Taine, " What could the drama teach to gamesters like St. Albans, drunkards like Rochester, prostitutes like Castlemaine, old boys like Charles II. ? What spectators were those coarse epicureans, incapable even of an assumed decency, lovers of brutal pleasures, barbarious in their sports, obscene in words, void of honour, humanity, politeness, who made the Court a house of ill fame?" It was Dryden's misfortune— or shall we not rather say his gija?_that he wrote down to this lewd, coarse audience, and degraded his strong rich genius by exposing it to the rank airs of a moral cesspool. « The Tempest ; or, The Enchanted Island, a Comedy,"^ » At the Duke of York's Theatre, Aug. 16, 1667. 1 I •i a travesty of Shakespeare's immortal play in which Miranda is turned into a courtesan, and provided with a sister named Dorinda, while Caliban is furnished with a sister also, was chiefly written by Davenant. It was acted at the Duke's Theatre in 1667. A perusal of it, with its affectation, its prettiness, and its indelicacy, will convince the reader of the truth of a couplet in Dryden^s prologue :— •* Bnt Shakespeare's magic could not copied be, Within that circle none durst walk but he." The comedy of " The Evening's Love ; or, The Mock Astrologer," was produced in 1668. Evelyn refers to it as " a foolish plot, and very profane," * and expresses his regret " to see how the stage was degenerated and polluted by the licentious times." Pepys, though not very fastidious, was " troubled at it," pronouncing it "very smutty, and nothing so good as The Maiden Queen,*' He adds, on the publisher's authority, that Dry den himself thought it only " a fifth-rate play." It is founded on " Le Feint Astro- logue," by Corneille the younger, which, in its turn, owed the breath of life to Calderon's '' El Astrologo Fingido,'* of Calderon. The quarrelling scene in the fourth act is taken almost bodily from Moliere's " Le Depit Amoreux." There is liveliness enough and to spare in the comedy, but it reminds one of a man disporting in muddy water. The critical preface attached to it is in Dryden's best style. We subjoin the dramatis persona and original cast:— Wildblood and Bellamy, two young English gentlemen, Mr. Hart, and Mr. Mohun ; Maskall, their servant, Mr. Shat- * Some of the characters mpet in the dark in a chapel, whereupon Dryden puts in the mouth of one of them the following brilliant jest : — " Wild. — There's no knowing them, they are all children of darkness. Bell. — I'll be sworn they have one sign of godliness among them, there's no distinction of persons here." 166 THE MERRY MONARCH ; terel ; Don Alonzo de Eibera, an old Spanish gentleman, Mr. Wintershal ; Don Lopez de Gamboa, a young noble Spaniard, Mr. Burt ; Don Melcher de Guzman, a gentle- man of a great family, but of a decayed fortune, Mr. Lydal ; Donna Theodosia, and Donna Jacintba, daughters to Don Alonzo, Mrs. Bartell, and Mrs. Ellen Gwynn ; Donna Aurelia, their cousin, Mrs. Marshall ; Beatrix, woman and confidante to the two sisters, Mrs. Knipp ; Camilla, woman to Aurelia, Mrs. Betty Shute. In Scott^s opinion, " Tyrannic Love ; or, The Royal Martyr/' is one of Dryden's most characteristic produc- tions. "The character of Maximin, in particular, is drawn in his boldest plan, and only equalled by that of Almanzor, in ' The Conquest of Granada.' Indeed, al- though in action, the latter exhibits a larger proportion of that extravagant achievement peculiar to the heroic drama, it may be questioned whether the language of Maximin does not abound more with the flights of fancy, which hover betwixt the confines of the grand and the bombast and which our author himself has aptly termed the Dali- lahs of the theatre." To us it seems a curiously unequal play ; passages of real beauty and sublimity alternating with the wildest outbursts of extravagance. Some of the happiest strokes in Buckingham's " Eehearsal " are levelled at these tumidities. t( Tyrannic Love " was produced at the King's Theatre in the spring of 1609, with the following cast: Maximin, Tyrant of Rome, Major Mohun ; Porphyrins, Captain of the Praetorian Bands, Mr. Hart ; Charinus, the Emperor's son, Mr. Harris ; Placidius, a great officer, Mr. Kynaston ; Valerius and Albinus, Tribunes of the Army, Mr. Lydall and Mr. Littlewood ; Nigrinus, a Tribune and Conjurer, OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 167 Mr. Beeston ; Amariel, guardian -angel to S. Catherine, M. Bell; ApoUonius, a Heathen Philosopher; Berenice, wife to Maximin, Mrs. Marshall ; Valeria, daughter to Maximin, Mrs. Ellen Gwynn ; S. Catherine, Princess of Alexandria, Mrs. Hughes ; Felicia, her mother, Mrs. Knipp ; Erotion and Cydon, attendants, Mrs. Uphill and Mrs. Eastland. At the close of the play, Valeria (Nell Gwynn) is about to be carried off dead by the bearers, but revives in order to speak the epilogue. It was in this part, so runs the story, that Mistress Gwynn completed her conquest of Charles II. Here is Taine's estimate of this once celebrated play :— " The royal martyr is St. Catberine, a princess of Eoyal blood as it appears, who is brought before the tyrant Maxi- min. She confesses her faith, and a pagan philosopher, ApoUonius, is set loose against her, to refute her. Maxi- min says :— 'War is my province ? — Priest, why stand you mute ? You gain by heaven, and, therefore, should dispute.' Thus encouraged, the priest argues ; but St. Catherine replies in the following words : — * . . . . Reason with your fond religion fights, For many gods are many infinites ; This to the first philosophers was known, Who, under various names, adored but one.' ApoUonius scratches his ear a little, and then answers that there are great truths and good moral rules in paganism. The pious logician immediately replies : — 'Then let the whole dispute concluded be Betwixt these rules, and Christianity.' Being nonplussed, ApoUonius is converted on the spot. 168 THE MERRY MONARCH J insults the prince, who, finding St. Catherine very beauti- ful, becomes suddenly enamoured, and makes jokes : — • Absent, I may her martyrdom decree, But one look more will make that martyr me.' In this dilemma he sends Placidius, ' a great officer,' to St. Catherine ; the great officer quotes and praises the gods of Epicurus ; forthwith the lady propounds the doctrine of final causes, which upsets that of atoms. Maximin comes himself and says :— * Since you neglect to answer my desires, Know, princess, you shall burn in other fires.' Thereupon she beards and defies him, calls him a slave, and walks off*. Touched by these delicate manners, he wishes to marry her lawfully, and to repudiate his wife. Still, to omit no expedient, he employs a magician, who utters invocations (on the stage), summons the infernal spirits, and brings up a troop of demons who dance and sing voluptuous songs about the bed of St. Catherine. Her guardian-angel comes and drives them away. As a last resource, Maximin has a wheel brought on the stage, on which to expose St. Catherine and her mother. Whilst the executioners are going to strip the saint, a modest angel descends in the nick of time, and breaks the wheel ; after which the ladies are carried off*, and their throats are cut behind the wings. Add to these pretty inventions a two-fold intrigue, the love of Maximin's daughter, Valeria, for Porphyrius, captain of the Prsetorian bands, and that of Porphyrius for Berenice, Maximin^s wife ; then a sudden catastrophe, three deaths, and the triumph of the good people, who get married, and interchange polite phrases. Such is the tragedy, which is called French-like." But, in truth, there is little that is French-like, except OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 169 the form, in the Eestoration drama. Take away the heroic couplets, and it is the Elizabethan drama, with such modi- fications as the changes of taste in half a century neces- sitated. Dry den is not uncleaner than Beaumont and Fletcher, only he lacks their dramatic genius, and, instead of the profound pathos and strenuous passion which to so larire an extent redeemed, almost refined, their coarse- ness— instead of their graceful fancy and lyrical pro- fuseness — he assists us to bombast and extravagance, to unreal sentiment, and to excessive sensuality. The Ee- storation drama is, we repeat, the Elizabethan drama, without its finer qualities, and degraded down to the level of the rakes and fops and frail beauties who were its prin- cipal patrons. That the dramatists of Charles II.'s reign pil- fered their plots and often their dialogues from the French is, indeed, true ; but they never did so without superad- ding upon their stolen material a native layer of vehemence and waywardness. They plundered nothing else ; nothing of that order, moderation, and decorum which distin- guished a Corneille, a Racine, and a Moliere. We are compelled to agree with the French critic when he re- pudiates the judgment which would associate the heroic dramas of Dryden with the masterpieces of the French tragedy. The resemblance is superficial. Who can really compare the noble and chivalrous heroes of the French tragic poets with the swash-bucklers, the harlot-mongers, the rakes, who figure upon Dryden's stage? But Eacine wrote for the decorous, if artificial, Court of Louis XIV. ; Dryden for that of Charles II., which had neither piety nor refinement, neither generosity nor truth. '' Panders and licentious women, ruffianly or butchering courtiers, who went to see Harrison drawn, or to mutilate Coventry, 170 THE MERKY MONARCH ; 4 i maids of honour who have awkward accidents at a ball,"^ or sell to the planters the convicts presented to them, a palace full of baying dogs and bawling gamesters, a king who would bandy obscenities in public with his half-naked mistresses, --such was this illustrious society ; from French modes they took but dress, from French noble sentiments but high-sounding words." One of the most popular of Dryden's heroic dramas was "The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards," in two partsjt produced in the spring of 1670, at the Theatre Koyal, but not published until 1 072. Its hero, Almanzor, is the original of Drawcansir in Buckingham's " Rehearsal," where some of Dryden's exuberant outbursts are felici- tously parodied. The plot, which owes something to Made- moiselle de Scuderi's romances, and something to history, is without doubt interesting and ingeniously developed ; and the lamruasre, thoufjli too often bombastic and extra- vagant, is enriched with many of those purptirei jpanni which the poet had always at his free disposal. There are, as Scott says, not a few passages which convey what the poet desired to represent — the aspirations of a mind so heroic as almost to surmount the bonds of society, and even the laws of the universe, " leaving us often in doubt whether the vehemence of the wish does not even disguise the impossibiHty of its accomplishment." As thus : — " Good Heavens 1 thy book of fate before me lay, But to tear out the journal of this day, Or, if the order of the world below Will not the joys of one whole day allow, Give me that minute when she made her vow. That minute, e'en the happy from their bliss might give, And those who live in grief a shorter time would live. * The story, not a very nice one, is told by Pepys, and in the " Memoirs of the Count de Grammont." \ The second part has the separate title of " Almanzor and Almahide." OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 171 So small a link, if broke, the external chain Would, like divided waters, join again. It cannot be ; the fugitive is gone, Pressed by the crowd of following minutes on : That precious moment's out of nature fled. And in the heap of common rubbish laid, Of things that once have been, and now decayed." Again : — ** No, there is a necessity in fate, Why still the brave bold man is fortunate ; He keeps his object ever full in sight. And that assurance holds him firm and right. True, 'tis a narrow path that leads to bliss, But right before there is no precipice : Fear makes men look aside, and then their footing miss." Again : — '* Man makes his fate according to his mind.* The weak low spirit Fortune makes her slaves But she's a drudge when hectored by the brave : If fate weaves common thread, he'll change the doom, And with new purple spread a nobler loom." The following sketch of the plot and incidents of what is undoubtedly " the representative piece of heroic drama," is freely adapted from Mr. Saintsbury : — Under its last sovereign, Boabdelin, the Moorish king- dom of Granada is convulsed by the feuds of the two great rival families of the Abencerrages and the Zegrys. These break out into open tumult at a festival held in the capital. A stranger takes the part of the weaker side, and ignoring the King's commands to desist, kills one of the opposite leaders. Seized by Boabdelin's guards, and ordered for execution, he is discovered to be Almanzor, a warrior lately arrived from Africa, where he has done good service for the Moors in their struggle against the Spaniards. He is accordingly released, and addressing the factions in swelling words, compels them to desist * A distinct echo of Fletcher's " Man is his own star." 172 THE MERRY MONARCH : OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 173 ll from their strife. To the Duke of Arcos, the Spanish ambassador, who offers peace on hard conditions, he haughtily replies that " The Moors have Heaven, and me, to assist their cause," and the Duke thereupon retires. Almahide, the King's betrothed, sends a messenger to invite him to attend a zamhra, or Moorish dance ; but Almanzor insists upon a sally against the Spaniards, as a preliminary, and the act ends with the departure of the warriors. The second opens with the triumphal return of the Moors, bringing the Duke of Arcos as Almanzor's prisoner. Enter Lyndaxara, sister of Zulema, the Zegry chief, the had heroine of the play, to whom Abdalla, the King's brother, makes violent love, and is consoled with the intimation that were he king his suit would not be unsuccessful. Lyndaxara's ambition is sustained by her brother's factious hostility, and the act ends with the for- mation of a conspiracy against Boabdelin, in which it is hoped to engage the invincible Almanzor. The third act in its opening scene recalls Shakespeare's " Henry IV. /' Almanzor raging against Boabdelin for the same reason that Hotspur rages against the Lancastrian monarch. He is therefore disposed to join Abdalla, while Abdelmelech, the Abencerrage chief, is introduced in a very amorous scene as that prince's rival for the hand of Lyndaxara. The promised zamhra, or dance, takes place, and while the King and his Court are engaged by it, Almanzor, Abdalla, and the Zegry s rise in revolt, defeat the royal troops, drive back the King, and capture Alma- hide. Struck by her beauty, Almanzor claims her as his prisoner, with the view of releasing her, but as Zulema opposes, Abdalla refuses the request, and Almanzor im- mediately betakes himself to the citadel, and offers hm services to Boabdelin. They are gladly accepted, and of course the tables are at once turned, and the Zegry s defeated. Then Almanzor renews his suit to Almahide, who refers him to her father, and at the same time gently rebukes her lover's swelling arrogance :— " I do your merit all the right I can ; Admiring virtue in a private man : I only wish the King may grateful be, And that my father with my eyes may see. Might I not make it as my last request- Since humble carriage suits a suppliant best- That you would somewhat of your fierceness hide — That inborn fire —I do not call it pride." Almanzor answers in the true heroic vein :— " Bom, as I am, still to command, not sue, Yet you shall see that I can beg for you ; And if 3'our father will require a crown, Let him but name the kingdom, 'tis his own. I am, but while I please, a private man , I have that soul which empires first began. From the dull crowd, which every king does lead, I will pick out whom I will chose to head : The best and bravest souls I can select. And on their conquered necks my throne erect." In the fifth act Lyndaxara holds against both parties a fort which has been entrusted to her, and from without the walls she and they hold parley in extravagant terms. Almanzor prefers his suit to Almahide's father and to King Boabdelin, but meeting with no encouragement from either, breaks out into violence. He is overpowered and bound. His life, however, is generously spared, and the truculent hero, after a parting scene with the virtuous Almahide, retires from the city, leaving BoabdeHn and Almahide to celebrate their nuptials. The first act of the second part takes us to Granada, 174 THE MERRY MONARCH; 'where tlie unfortunate Boabdelin is vexed by tlie mutinies originating in the expulsion of Almanzor, and is com- pelled to entreat Queen Almahide to recall her lover. There is then a good deal of fighting, the object of which is far from clear, but it centres about Lyndaxara's castle, which falls eventually into the hands of the Duke of Arcos, and the renegade Abdalla, who has joined the Spaniards. Now Almanzor reappears, to repeat the pro- fessions of his violent love. Boabdelin's jealousy takes alarm, much to the indignation of Almahide, whose in- dignation provokes that of Almanzor, so that confusion becomes " worse confounded." There is more fighting around Lyndaxara's castle ; after which appears the ghost of Almanzor^s mother, apparently for no other reason than to show that the hero is no more afraid of ghosts than he is of Spaniards. More love — the drama is wholly occupied with love and fighting — and then Zulema accuses Almahide of having broken her marriage vow with Abdelmelech. Though tortured with jealous suspicions unworthy of a heroic soul, Almanzor undertakes the wager of battle on her behalf, and triumphantly vindicates her innocence. It is not unnatural that Almahide, thus proven innocent, should abandon the husband who has doubted her, and in a scene with Almanzor, which follows, she permits it to be seen that his passion is not unacceptable. The jealous King has been a spectator of the interview, and assails the Queen with fresh accusations, and goodness knows what would happen were it not that, just at the right moment, the Spaniards attack and capture the city. Boabdelin dies fighting ; Lyndaxara, as a reward for the assistance she has traitorously given the enemies of the people, is proclaimed queen ; but the dagger of Abdelmelech cuts OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 175 short her reign and her life. Strange to tell, Almanzor turns out to be the long-lost son of the Duke of Arcos, and Almahide, at the instigation of Queen Isabella, con- sents, when her year of widowhood has expired, to reward his devotion. *^ Almanzor. — Move swiftly, sun, and fly a lover's pace ; Leave weeks and months behind thee in thy race 1 King Ferd. — Meantime you bh a 11 my victories pursue, The Moors in woods and mountains to subdue. Almanzor, — The toils of war shall help to wear each day, And dreams of love shall drive my nights away. — Our banners to the Alhambra's turrets bear, Then, wave our conquering crosses in the air, And cry, with shouts of triumph — Live and reign, Great Ferdinand and Isabel of Si)aiu ! " This summary takes no account of the underplot of love between Osmyn and Benzayda, which, in its moderation and sweetness, comes as a pleasant relief to the more " heroic " portion of the drama. To the quotations already made we may add the follow- ing :— "As one who, in some frightful dream, would shun His pressing foe, labours in vain to run ; And his own slowness, in his sleep, bemoans,' With thick short sighs, weak cries, and tender groans." " Ahdal. — Reason was given to curb our headstrong will. Zul. — Reason but shows'a weak physician's skill ; Gives nothing, while the raging fit does last. But stays to cure it, when the worst is past." " A blush remains on a forgiven face. It wears the silent tokens of disgrace. Forgiveness to the injured does belong, But they ne'er pardon who have done the wrong." When first acted the principal characters were supported by Kynaston (Boabdelin), Lydall (Abdalla), Mohun, (Abdelmelech), Harris (Zulema), Cartwright (Abenamar), Euston (Osmyn), and Hart (Almanzor). The Almahide was Nell Gwynn (who spoke the prologue in a colossal I 176 THE MEERY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 177 broad-brimmed hat, in ridicule of one worn by Noakes, tlie comedian).* Mrs. Marshall was Lyndaxara, and Mrs Boutell Benzayda. The epilogue to this play was written with such bold and frank self-assertion that Dryden found it necessary to write a defence of it, which he developed into a very in- teresting " Essay on the Dramatic Art of the Last Ages/^ The epilogue, we may note, was attacked with much severity by Rochester. One of Dryden's most popular comedies was " Marriage ila Mode," acted by "His Majesty's Servants" at the Theatre Eoyal in 1673. The comic scenes are written with what seems to have been a spontaneous vivacity ; nowhere is the dramatist's humour more sprightly or less forced. Had the whole play been written in the same strain, it would have ranked with the best of the comedies of the Restoration ; but the tragic scenes are very poor. Being a comedy by Dryden, it is necessarily gross, and this grossness must always prevent the general recognition of its lively wit. We cannot but repeat our surprise that a man of Dryden's genius, a man so capable— as his heroic dramas, in spite of their extravagance, abundantly show— of sympathising with noble thoughts and aspirations, should have descended to such lewd excess. We feel that he revels in his own nastiness; he cannot make even the poor excuse that it was forced upon him by his audiences, for it is tolerably certain that they were frequently shocked by his profuse and premeditated ribaldry. The jests against marriage are so numerous and so severe as to suggest the * The prologue Fays : — . , ^ j.j • " This is that hat whose very sight did win ye_ To laugh and clap as though the devil were m ye. As then, for Noakes, so now I hope youll be So duU, to laugh once more for love of me.' idea that Dryden sought by these sharp arrows of ridicule to revenge the unhappiness of his own married condition. Was his wife a shrew ? On the whole, we agree with a recent critic,"^ that Dry- den, as a dramatist, does not present an edifying figure. " His sins against morality, against humanity, are flag- rant. In the world that he presents upon the stage 'sweetness and light ^ have no place. To say that he offends against modesty would be to say little ; but in his comedies Dryden ignores the existence of virtue. His men and women live solely for intrigue, his mirth is the hollow laughter of the brothel. Even in his heroic plays this vice exhibits itself in unexpected places, as though he could not for the life of him avoid making a palpably gross sug- gestion ; but in such comedies as -' Marriage a la Mode/ 'The Wild Gallant,' 'An Evening's Love' (which dis- gusted even Pepys), and ' Limberham,' impurity reigns triumphant. Dryden did not understand, althouf>"h he had Shakespeare to teach him, that comedy may be made a vehicle for the loveliest poetry, for the sanest and yet the most imaginative views of life ; and looking at what he has done in this way, we are not surprised that he should have written : ^ 1 think it in its own nature in- ferior to all sorts of dramatic writinfj.' " The first cast of characters is thus given : — Polydamas, Wintershal ; Leonidas, Kynaston ; Argaleon, Ly dall; Hermogenes, Cartwright ; Eubulus, Watson ; Rhodophil, Mohun ; Palamede, Hart ; Palmyra, Mrs. Coxe ; Amalthea, Mrs. James ; Doralice, Mrs. Marshall ; Melantha, Mrs. Boutell ; Philotis, Mrs. Eeeve ; Beliza, Mrs. Slade ; Arte- mis, Mrs. Uphill. * The Athenoeum, p. 342, March 15, 1884. VOL. I. N f 178 THE MEEET MONAECH ; OB, ENGLAND TJNDEE CHAELES II. 179 It is, however, generally stated that Mrs. Montfort was the original Melantha, and " Almost moved the thing the poet thought." Colley Gibber has a well-known passage in her praise :— " Melantha," he says, " is as finished an impertinent as ever fluttered in a drawing-room ; and seems to contain the most complete system of female foppery that could possibly be crowded into the tortured form of a fine lady. Her language, dress, motion, manners, soul, and body are in a continual hurry to be something more than is neces- sary or commendable. And, though I doubt it will be a vain labour to offer you a just likeness of Mrs. Montfort's action, yet the fantastic expression is still so strong in my memory, that I cannot help saying something, though fantastically, about it. The first ridiculous airs that break from her, are upon a gallant, never seen before, who de- livers her a letter from her father, recommending him to her good graces as an honourable lover. Here, now, one would think she might naturally show a little of the sex's decent reserve, though never so lightly covered. No, sir, not a tittle of it. Modesty is a poor-souled country- gentlewoman ; she is too much a court-lady to be under so vulgar a confession. She reads the letter, therefore, with a^careless, dropping lip, and an erected brow, hum- ming it hastily over, as if she were impatient to outgo her father's commands by making a complete conquest of him at once ; and that the letter might not embarrass the attack, crack ! She crumbles it at once into her palm, and poiirs down upon him her whole artillery of airs, eyes, and motion; down goes her dainty, diving body to the ground, as if she were sinking under the conscious load of her own attractions ; then launches into a flood of fine language and i compliment, still playing her chest forward in fifty falls and risings, like a swan upon waving water; and, to com- plete her impertinence, she is so rapidly fond of her own wit, that she will not give her lover leave to praise it. Silent assenting bows, and vain endeavours to speak, are all the share of the conversation he his admitted to, which, at last, he is removed from by her engagement to half-a-score of visits, which she swims from him to make, with a pro- mise to return in a twinkling." It is difficult, where all is so gross, to find a specimen of the dialogue, but the following is eminently Drydenish, and will serve : — "3fel—l declare, I had rather of the two be rallied, nay, mal traitee at court, than be deified in the town ; for, assuredly, nothing can be so ridicule as a mere town lady. Dw.— Especially at court. How I have seen them crowd and sweat in the drawing-room on a holiday-night ! For that's their time to swarm and in- vade the presence. O, how they catch at a bow, or any little salute from a courtier, to make show of their acquaintance ! and, rather than be thought to be quite unknown, tliey court'sy to one another ; but they take true pains to come near the circle, and press and peep upon the princess, to write letters into the country how she av:is dressed, while the ladies, that stand about, make their court to her with abusing them. Arte.— These are sad truths, Melantha : and therefore I would e'en advise you to quit the court, and live either wholly in the town, or, if you like not that, in the country. Dor.— In the country ! nay, that's to fall beneath the town, for they live upon our offals liere. Their entertainment of wit is only the remembrance of what they heard when they were last in town ;— they live this year upon the last year's knowledge, as their cattle do all night, by chewing the cud of what they eat in the aiternoon. Mel. — And they tell, for news, such unlikely stories 1 A letter from one of U3 is such a present to them, that the poor souls wait for the carrier's-day with such devotion, that they cannot sleep the night before. Arte.—^o more than I can, the night before I am to go a journey. Dor.— Or I, before I am to try on a new gown. Jfel.—A song, that's stale here, will be new there a twelvemonth hence ; and if a man of the town by chance come amongst them, he s reverenced for teaching them the tune. jDor.— A friend of mine who makes songs sometimes, came lately out of the west, and vowed he was so put out of countenance with a song of his ; 180 THE MERRY MONARCH; for, at the first country gentleman's he visited, he saw three tailors cross- legged upon the tahle in the hall, who were tearing out as loud as ever they could sing, 'After the pangs of a desperate lover,' * &c. And that all day he heard of nothing else, but the daughters of the housej and the maids, humming it over in every corner, and the father whistling it. ^^.^^.—Indeed, I have observed of myself, that when I am out of town but a fortnight I am so humble, that I would receive a letter from my tailor or mercer for a favour. Mel.— When I have been at grass in the summer, and am now come up again, methinks I'm to be turned into ridicule by all that see me ; but when I have been once or twice at court, I begin to value myself again, and to despise my country acquaintance. Art.— There are places where all people may be adored, and we ought to know ourselves so well as to choose them. j)or. — That's very true ; your little courtier's wife, who speaks to the King but once a month, need but go to a town lady, and there she may vapour and (»rjr^_« The King and I,' at every word. Your town lady, who is laughed at in the circle, takes her coach into the city, and there's she called Your Honour, and has a banquet from the merchant's wife, whom she laughs at for her kindness. And, as for any finical wit, she removes but to her country house, and there insults over the country gentlewoman that never comes uji, who treats her with furmity and custard, and opens her dear bottle of mirabilis beside, for a gill-glass of it at parting. Arte.— At]a.st, I see, we shall leave Melantha where we found her ; for, by your description of the town and country, they are become more dreadful to her than the court, where she was affronted. But you forget wu are to wait on the princess Amalthea. Come, Doralice. JDor. — Farewell, Melantha. jVei. — Adieu, my dear. A7ie.~Yo\i are out of charity with her, and therefore T shall not give your service. 3Iel.— Do not omit it, I l>eserch you ; for I have such a te?idre for the court, that I love it even from tlie drawing-room to the lobby, and can never be rebutee by any usage. But hark you, my dears ; one thing I had forgot, of great concernment. Dor.— Quickly, then, we are in haste. j/eZ.— Do not call it my service, tliat's too vulgar ; but do my baise-mains to the princess Amalthea ; that is ypiritwlle. Ditr, To do you service, then, we will prendre the carnssr to court, and do your base-mains to the princess Amaltliea, in your phrase spiriturlle." " The Assignation ; or, Love in a Nunnery," was pro- duced in 1672. It did not secure a favourable reception from Dryden's contemporaries, and posterity has agreed * A song of Dry den's own, in "An Evening's Love." OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 181 to forget it. Tradition hints that the actors were dis- satisfied with their parts, and did not play their best ; but no acting, however brilliant, could have redeemed the insipidity of the dialogue, the vulgarity of the motive, and the dulness of the incidents. In his prologue, Dryden dealt some lusty blows at that wretched dramatist, Francis Eavenscroft, whom the Mlure of " The Assignation " pro- vided, however, with an effective retort. In a prologue to his own play, "The Careless Lovers," 1673, Eavens- croft exclaims : — " An author did, to please you, let his wit run, Of late, much on a serving man and cittern ; And yet, you would not like the serenade- Nay, and you damned his nuns in masquerade . . . In fine, the whole by you was so much blamed, To act their parts the players were ashamed. Ah, how severe your malice was that day 1 To damn, at once, the poet and his play." Dryden never sank so far below himself in any composi- tion as in his tragedy of " Amboyna." It is, as Scott remarks, "The worst production Dryden ever wrote." The incident on which it is founded— the horrible mas- sacre of some Englishmen in the service of the East India Company at Amboyna by the Dutch authorities — was unfitted for dramatic treatment; but on a story, repulsive in itself, Dryden has laid the grimmest colour- ing. His tragedy converts the stage into a shambles 5 and the spectators must have thought they were present in a torture-chamber rather than in a theatre. The characters are monstrous caricatures, and the style is not less exaggerated. The best thing in it is the following spirited lyric : — "THE SEA-FIGHT. Who ever saw a noble sight, That never viewed a brave sea-fight ? Hang up your bloody colours in the air, Up with your fights and your nettings prepare ; THE MERRY MONARCH; Your merry mates cheer, with a lusty boldspi-ight, Now each man his brindice, and then to the fight. St. George. St. George, we cry, The shouting Turks reply. Oh, now it beghis, and the gun-room grows hot, Ply it with culverin and with small shot ; Hark, does it not thunder I no ! 'tis the guns' roar, The neighbouring billows are turned into gore; Now each man must resolve to die, For here the coward cannot tiy. Drums and trunii)ets toll the knell, And culverins tlie passing bell. Now, now, they grapple, and now board amain ; Blow up the hatches, they're off all again : Give them a broadside, the dice run at all, Down comes the mast and yard, and taeklings fall ; She grows giddy now, like blind Fortune's wheel, She sinks then, she sinks, she turns up her keel. Who ever beheld so noble a sight. As this so brave, so bloody sea-fight ? " That extraordinary production, " The State of Inno- cence and Fall of Man, an Opera/' in which Drjden has travestied "Paradise Lost,^' appeared in 1674. Of course, it was not intended for representation ; but it is difficult to understand the delusion which led Dryden to give a dramatic form to a story so ill-adapted for it. We must accept, we suppose, the excuse which Sir Walter Scott supplies : " The probable motive of this alteration,^' he thinks, "was the wish, so common to genius, to exert itself upon a subject in which another had already attained brilliant success, or, as Dryden has termed a similar attempt, the desire to shoot in (with ?) the bow of Ulysses." It is reported by Mr. Aubrey that the step was not taken without Dryden's reverence to Milton being testified by a personal application for his per- mission. The aged poet, conscious that the might of his versification could receive no addition, even from the glowing numbers of Dryden, is stated to have answered OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 183 with indifference, " Ay, you may tag my verses, if you will ! " '' The State of Innocence " is dedicated to the Duchess of York, afterwards Queen of James II., in a strain of extravagant panegyric, and prefixed to it is "The Author's Apology for Heroic Poetry and Poetic Licence," in which Dryden refers to Milton's immortal epic as "being undoubtedly one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced." A very favourable specimen of Dryden's treatment of his subject is furnished by Lucifer's soliloquy in Act iii., s, 1, 2 : — *' Fair place ! yet what is this to heaven, where I Sat next, so almost equalled the Most High ? I doubted, measuring both, who was most strong; Then, willing to forget time since so long, Scarce thought I was created : vain desire Of empire in my thoughts still shot me higher, To mount above His sacred head. Ah why. When He so kind, was so ungrateful I ? He bounteously bestowed unenvied good On me : in arbitrary grace I stood : To acknowledge this was all He did exact ; Small tribute where the will to pay was act. 1 mourn it now, unable to repent. As he, who knows my hatred to relent. Jealous of power once questioned : Hope, farewell ; And with hope, fear ; no depth below my hell Can be prepared : Then, 111, be thou my good ; And, vast destruction, bo my envy's food. Thus I, with Heaven, divided empire gain ; Seducing man, I make his project vain, And in one hour destroy his six days' pain." The last of the heroic, or rhymed verse, plays was " Aureng-Zebe, a Tragedy/' successfully produced in 1676. In the dedication to John, Earl of Mulgrave (afterwards Duke of Buckinghamshire), Dryden says: 184 THE MERRY MONARCH; " Some tMngs in it have passed your approbation, and many your amendment. You were likewise pleased to recommend it to the King's perusal, before the last hand was added to it, when I received the favour from him, to have the most considerable event of it modelled by his royal pleasure. It may be some vanity in me to add his testimony here, and which he graciously confirmed after- wards, that it was tlie best of all my tragedies ; in which he has made authentic my private opinion of it ; at least, he has given it a value by his commendation, which it had not by my writing." That it merited the royal favour may, we think, be conceded. It contains some of those just and forcible reflections which Dryden could pour out so abundantly, and embody in the aptest and most vigorous language. As thus : — "When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat, Yet, fooled with hope, men favour the deceit; Trust on, and think to-morrow Avill repay : To-morrow's falser than the former day ; Lies worse ; and, while it says, We shall be blest With some new joys, cuts off what we possest. Strange cozenage ! none would live past years again, Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain ; And from the dregs of life think to receive What the first sprightly morning could not give. I'm tired with waiting for this chemic gold, Which fools us young, and beggars us when old." Again :- " 'Tis not for nothing that we life pursue ; It pays our hopes with something still that's new : Each day's a mistress, unen joyed before ; Like travellers, we're pleased with seeing more. Did you but know what joys you may attend. You would not hurry to your journey's end." In Davis' '^ Dramatic Miscellanies " we read : " Dryden's last and most perfect rhyming tragedy was ^ Aureng-Zebe.' In this play, the passions are strongly depicted, the OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 185 characters well discriminated, and the diction more familiar and dramatic than in any of his preceding pieces. Hart and Mohun greatly distinguished themselves in the characters of Aureng-Zebe and the Old Emperor. Mrs. Marshall was admired in Nourmahal, and Kynaston has been much extolled by Gibber for his happy expression of the arrogant and savage fierceness in Morat." Winter- shall was Amirant; Mrs. Coxe, Indamora; and Mrs. Cor- bett, Melesinda. When revived in 1726, beautiful Nancy Oldfield played Indamora, and Mrs. Gibber Melesinda, to the Aureng-Zebe of Wilkes and the Morat of Booth. Dryden was now weary of rhymed dramas, and the public taste had changed, influenced in a great degree by the sharp ridicule of " The Rehearsal." The poet saw that he must perforce seek a new field for the exercise of his genius ; and, challenging competition with Shakespeare, he produced the famous tragedy of "All for Love; or, The World Well Lost." In this he is inferior to the great master; but, I think, to him only. Pathos, and the sympathetic faculty, and deep passion were not at Dryden's command ; but in the other qualifications of the dramatic writer he shows himself here to be very richly endowed. There is dignity— there is animation— there is strength ; besides a rare profusion of impressive figures and images, and a pomp of diction which compels our admiration. In the following description of Gleopatra's voyage down the Gydnus, the musical flow of the versi- fication and the richness of the language are very pleasing : — *♦ Ant.— The tackling silk, the streamers, waved with gold, The gentle winds were lodged in purple sails ; Her nymphs, like Nereids, round her conch were placed, Where she, another sea-born Venus, lay. 186 THE MERRY MONARCH; Orla. — No more : I would not hear it. A7it. — Oh, you must ! She lay, and leant her cheek upon her hand, And cast a look so languishingly sweet, As if secure of all beholders' hearts. Neglecting she could take them : Boys, like Cupids, Stood fanning, with their painted wings, the winds That played about her face ! But if she smiled, A darting glory seonu'd to blaze abroad : That man's desirini,'' eyes were never wearied, But hung upon the object : To soft flutes The silver oars kept time ; and while they played, The hearing gave new pleasure to the sight ; And both to thought. 'Twas heaven, or somewhat more : For she so charmed all hearts, that gazing crowds Stood panting on the shore, and wanted breath To give their welcome voice." We become conscious that this is not the highest poetry- only when we read the original of Shakespeare, which suggested Drjden^s glowing paraphrase. Taken by itself, however, it must be pronounced most admirable, and in luscious sweetness equal to anything of Beaumont and Fletcher's. One of the most animated scenes is the quarrel between Antony and Ventidius. Here again Dryden has attempted to bend the bow of Shakespeare ; and though he has not succeeded, yet he gives proof of the possession of a stalwart and strenuous arm. It is impossible to despise such writing as the following : — "Ant. — {Starting up.) — Art thou Ventidius ? Vent, — Are you Antony ? I'm liker what I was, than you to him I left you last. Ant. — I'm angry. Fent. — So am I. Ant. — I would be private ; leave me. Vent. — Sir, I love you. And therefore will not leave you. Ant. — Will not leave me ! Where have youjearnt that answer ? Who am I ? OE, ENGLAND UNDER CUAKLES II. 187 Vent. — Ant- Vent.- Ant,— Vent,— Ant, — Vent,- Ant,- Vent. Ant, Vent- Ant. Vent, Ant, Vent.- Ant,- Vent Ant. My emperor ; the man I love next Heaven : If I said more, I think 'twere scarce a sin : You're all that's good, and god-like. -All that's wretched. You will not leave me then ? -'Twas too presuming To say I would not ; but I dare not leave you : And, 'tis unkind in you to chide me hence So soon, when I so far have come to see you. Now thou hast seen me, art thou satisfied ? For, if a friend, thou hast beheld enough ; And, if a foe, too much. Look, emperor, this is no common dew. \_Weeping. I have not wept this forty years j but now My mother comes afresh into my eyes ; I cannot help her softness. By Heaven, he weeps ! poor, good old man, he weeps ! The big round drops course one another down The furrows of his cheeks.— Stop them, Ventidius, Or I shall blush to death : they set my shame That caused them, full before me. -I'll do my best. -Sure there's contagion in the tears of friends : See, I have caught it too. Believe me, 'tis not For my own griefs, but thine.— Nay, father ! , — Emperor. Emperor ! Why, that's the style of victory ; The conq'ring soldier, red with unfelt wounds, Salutes his general so : but never more Shall that sound reach my ears. I warrant you. -Actium, Actium ; oh ! , — It sets too near you. —Here, here it is ; a lump of lead by day. And in my short, distracted, nightly slumbers The hag that rides my dreams. — —Out with it ; give it vent. — Urge not my shame. I lost a battle. — . — So has Julius done. —Thou favourest me, and speak'st not half thou think'st ; For Julius fought it out, and lost it fairly : But Antony — 188 THE MERRY MONARCH. Fcnt— Nay, stop not. Ant. — Antony, — Well, thou wilt have it, — like a coward, fled, Fled while his soldiers fought ; fled first, Ventidius. Thou long'st to curse me, and I give thee leave. I know thou cam'st prepared to rail. Vent. — Up, up, for honour's sake ; twelve legions wait you, And long to call you chief : By painful journeys I led tlieni, patient both of heat and hunger, Down from the Parthian marches to tlie Nile. Twill do you good to ace their sunburnt faces. Their scarred cheeks and chapt hands : there's virtue in them. They'll sell those mangled limbs at dearer rates Than you their bands can buy. -Where left you them ? -I said in Lower Syria. -Bring them hither ; There may be life in these. They will not come. -Why didst thou mock my hopes with promised aids To double my despair ? They're mutinous. -Most firm and loyal. -Yet they will not march To succour one. trifler I They petition You would make haste to head them. ■Fm besieged. ■There's but one way shut up : How came I hither? -I will not stir. They would perhaps desire A better reason. I have never used My soldiers to demand a reason of My actions. Why did they refuse to march 7 They said they would not fight for Cleopatra. Why should they fight indeed to make her conquer, And make you more a slave ? to gain you kingdoms Which, for a kiss, at your next midnight feast, You*ll sell to her ? Then she new-names her jewels, And call this diamond such or such a toy ; Each pendant in her ear shall be a province. Ant* — Ventidius, I allow your tongue free licence On all my other faults ; but, on your life, No word of Cleopatra : she deserves More worlds than I can lose. Ant.— Vent.— Ant.— Vent. — Ant.— Vent- Ant.— Vent. — Ant.— Vent.— Ant.— Vent.—' Ant.— Vent.—' OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 189 Fenf.— Behold yon Powers, To whom you have intrusted human kind ! See Europe, Africa, Asia, put in balance. And all weighed down by one light, worthless woman I think the gods are Antony's, and give, Like prodigals, this nether world away To none but wasteful hands. Ant — You grow presumptuous. rent.— I take the privilege of plain love to speak. Ant.—FMn love ! plain arrogance, plain insolence 1 Thy men are cowards ; thou, an envious traitor ; Who under seeming honesty, hast vented The burden of thy rank, o'er flowing gall. O that thou wert my equal ; great in arms As the first Cc-esar was, that I might kill thee Without a stain to honour 1 Ve7it.— You may kill me ; You have done more already,— called me traitor. Ant.— Art thou not one ? Vent. — For showing you yourself, Which none else durst have done ? but had I bore That name, which I disdain to speak agaii', I needed not have sought your abject fortunes, Come to penetrate your fate, to die with you. What hindered me to have led my conquering eagles To fill Octavius' bands ? I could have been A traitor then, a glorious, happy traitor, And not have been so called. Ant. — Forgive me, soldier : Pve been too passionate. f^ent, — You thought me false ; Thought my old age betrayed you : kill mc, sir. Pray kill me : yet you need not, your unkindness Has left your sword no work. Ant.—l did not think so ; I said it in my rage : Prythee, forgive me, W'hy didst thou tempt my anger, by discovery Of what I would not bear? . . . But Cleopatra — Go on ; for I can bear it now. Vent. — No more. Ant— Thou dar'st not trust my passion, but thou maj 'st ; Thou only lov'st, the rest have flattered me. Fd»f.— Heaven's blessing on your heart for that kind word ! May I believe you love me ? Speak again. 190 THE MERRY MONAECH ; ^ni— Indeed I do. Speak tLis, and this, and this. [Bugging him. Thy praises were unjust ; but, I'll deserve them. And yet mend all. Do with me what thou wilt ; Lead me to victory ! Thou know'st the way. Vent. — And, will you leave this — Ant. — Pr'ythee, do not curse her, And I will leave her ; though. Heaven knows, I love Beyond life, con(iucst, empire, all, but honour; But I will leave her. Vent. — That's my royal master ; And, shall we fight ? Ant. — I warrant thee, old soldier. Thou Shalt behold mc once again in iron ; And at the head of our old troops that beat The Partliiaiis. cry aloud— Come, follow me! Vent. — Oh, now I hear my em})eror 1 in that word Octavius It'll. Gods, let me see that day, And, if I have ten years behind, take all : I'll thank you for the exchange. Ant.— 0, Cleopatra ! Fent. — Again ? Ant.—Tvc done : In that last sigh, she went. Caesar shall know what 'tis to force a lover From all he holds most dear. Vent. — Methinks you breathe Another soul : Your looks are more divine ; You speak a hero, and you move a god. Aiit—Oh, thou liast tired me ; my soul's up in arms, And mans each part about me : Once again That noble eagerness of fight has seized me ; That eagerness with which I darted upward To Cassius' camp : In vain the steepy hill Opposed my way ; in vain a war of spears Sung round my head, and planted on my shield ; I won the trenches, while my foremost men Lagged on the plain below. F^n^.— Ye gods, ye gods, For such another honour ! j^nt. — Come on, my soldier ! Our hearts and arms are still the same : I long Once more to meet our foes ; that thou and I, Like Time and Death, marching before our troops. May taste fate to them : mow them out a passage, And, entering where the foremost squadrons yield, Besrin the noble harvest of the field. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 191 This is manly, vigorous, and even poetical writing. The blank verse, which Dryden had never before attempted, is strong and fluent, with the cadences effectively dis- tributed, and a skilful avoidance of monotony. It is, of course, inferior to Shakespeare's ; but in its degree it is good and satisfying. Taine is no great admirer of Dryden, but he does justice to his " All for Love." " The poet," he says, " is skilful ; he has planned, he knows how to constiuct a scene, to represent the internal struggle by which two passions contend for a human heart. We perceive the tragical vicissitude of the strife, the progress of a sentiment, the overthrow of obstacles, the slow growth of desire or wrath, to the very instant when the resolution, rising up of itself or seduced from without, rushes suddenly in one groove. There are natural words ; the poet writes and thinks too genuinely not to discover them at need. There are manly characters : he Inmself is a man ; and beneath his courtier's pliability, his affectations as a fashionable poet, he has retained his stern and energetic character." When the play was fii-st produced, the part of Antony was played by Hart ; Ventidius, Mohun ; Dolabella, Clarke ; Alexas, Goodman ; Serapion, Griffin ; Myris, Coxon ; Cleopatra, Mrs. Boutell ; and Octavia, Mrs. Cory. At a later period Cleopatra was one of Mrs. Oldfield's favourite characters. We must pass over the comedy of " Limberham ; or, The Kind Keeper," brought out at the Duke's Theatre in Dorset Gardens in 1G78, with a brief reference. From beginning to end it is absolute filth ; such filth that even a Eestoration audience was disgusted with it, and after three representations it was withdrawn from the stage. 192 THE MERRY MONARCH; The worst of it is tbat some of the lewdest and most ribald language is put into the mouth of a young girl,. who is represented as the only virtuous person in the piece. No excuse can be made for a man of genius who degrades himself in this shameless fashion. The com- position and production of such a play as " Limberham " —the atmosphere of which is the reeking atmosphere of the brothel— is an indelible blot on Dryden's character. " Limberham " is supposed to have been a caricature of the Duke of Lauderdale ; but more probably the Earl of Shaftesbury was intended. About this date (1679) Dryden collaborated with Nathaniel Lee in a tragedy on the old classical story of '« (Edipus," in which both poets show themselves at their strongest, as if inspired by the passion and pathos of the subject. The phm was Dryden's, and he wrote the first and third acts. Lee's portion is, on the whole, finely written probably it was revised by Dryden, as the style through- out preserves a remarkable uniformity. The incantation scene, which is wholly Dryden's, rises to a high poetic level ; and the ghost of Laius is a creation not altogether unworthy of Shakespeare. Indeed, it must be owned that " (Edipus " is a work of considerable merit, though the incestuous passion which supplies its motive unfits it for the modern stage. The story runs that when, soon after its first production, it was performed at Dublin, a musician in the orchestra was so strongly affected by the madness of (Edipus, that he himself actually became delirious. This may be untrue or exaggerated ; but, as Scott remarks, when the play was revived, " about thirty years ago," the audiences were unable to support it to an end. The original cast was as follows : — (Edipus, Betterton ; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 193 Adrastus, Smith; Creon, Samford ; Tiresias, Harris; Ghost of Laius, Williams; Jocasta, Mrs. Betterton; Euiydice, Mrs. Lee. " Troilus and Cressida; or, Truth Found Too Late. A Tragedy. As it is acted at the Duke's Theatre," was published in 1679, with a Preface containing the grounds of Criticism in Tragedy. Compared with the great original of Shakespeare, its demerits are only too con- spicuous ; the additions are trivial and in bad taste, the omissions are deplorable. The delicacy of the beautiful old tale has been grossly marred by the introduction of ribald passages in Dryden's worst style ; and Pandarus, whom even Shakespeare has drawn somewhat coarsely, is converted into a loathsome buffoon. The original cast included Smith as Hector, Betterton as Troilus, Leigh as Pandarus, Harris as Ulysses, Bow- man as Patroclus, Underbill as Thersites, Mrs. Mary Lee as Cressida, and Mrs. Betterton as Andromache. " The Spanish Friar ; or. The Double Discovery," was acted at the Duke's Theatre in 1681. It is one of the most popular, though not, perhaps, one of the best, of Dryden's dramatic efforts. Though the plot is not, as Johnson strangely remarks, exceedingly happy in its com- bination of the tragic and comic elements, the situations are worked up with all the skill of a practised playwright. In the comic scenes, the liveliness of the dialogue may entertain the reader; while the broadly humorous cha- racter of Dominic is developed with a care and cunning Dryden does not always exercise. This whimsical exag- geration of a Roman Catholic Priest was singularly acceptable to the public at a time when the so-called Popish Plot had awakened the fiercest passions of VOL. I. ^ 194 THE MEERT MONARCH; OK, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 195 t M religions bigotry. It is worth noting that, after the Eevolution of 1688, this was the first play represented by order of Queen Mary and in her presence. " The tragic part/^ says Scott, " has uncommon merit. The opening of the drama, and the picture of a besieged town in the last extremity, is deeply impressive, while the description of the noise of the night attack, and the gradual manner in which the intelligence of its success is communicated, arrests the attention, and prepares ex- pectation for the appearance of the hero, with all the &:plendour which ought to attend the principal character in tragedy. The subsequent progress of the plot is liable to a capital objection, from the facility with which the Queen, amiable and virtuous, as we are bound to suppose her, con- sents to the murder of the old dethroned monarch." Hallara^s criticism is as follows : — "'The Spanish Friar,' so far as it is a comedy, is reckoned the best performance of Dryden in that line. Father Dominic is very amusing, and has been copied very freely by succeeding dramatists, especially in the Duenna. But Dryden has no great abundance of wit in this or any of his comedies. His jests are practical, and he seems to have written more for the eye than the ear. It may be noted as a proof of this, that his stage directions are unusually full. In point of diction, the Spanish Friar in its tragic scenes, and AU for Love, are certainly the best plays of Dryden." Mr. Saintsbury's criticism is less favourable : — " ' The Spanish Friar ' [is] a popular piece, possessed of a good deal of merit, from the technical point of view of the playwright; but which I think has been some- what overrated, as far as literary excellence is concerned. The principal character is no doubt amusing, but he is heavily indebted to Falstaff on the one hand and to Fletcher's Lopez on the other ; and he reminds the reader of both his ancestors in a way which cannot but be unfavourable to himself. The play is to me most interest- ing, because of the light it throws on Dryden's grand characteristic, the consummate craftmanship with which he could throw himself into the popular feeling of the hour. This ' Protestant play ' is perhaps his most notable achievement of the kind in drama, and it may be admitted that some other achievements of the same kind are less creditable." 4 In the tragedy of " The Duke of Guise," written for a political purpose in 1C84, Dryden again found a colla- borator in Nat Lee. The Duke is undoubtedly intended for the Duke of Monmouth, and the party significance of the play is obvious from beginning to end. At first the representation was prohibited, nor was permission given until December, when Charles 11. had finally determined on severe measures against his ambitious son. The reception was unfavourable ; but the Court party took it up, and eventually secured for it a moderate success. To Dryden must be ascribed part of the first act, the whole of the fourth, and the first part of the fifth. The introduction of the necromancer, Malicorne, is due to Dryden, who has seldom written anything finer than the last scene between the magician and the fiend. The reader may be glad to have it before him. It takes place in Malicorne's chamber. After a loud knocking at the dpor, a servant enters : — " Mai. — What noise is that? Serv, — An ill-looked surly man, With a hoarse voice, says he must speak with you. 196 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES H. 197 I i Mai. — ^Tell him I dedicate this day to pleasure, I neither have, nor will have, business with him. [Exit Servant. What louder yet ? what saucy slave is this ? IKnock louder. He-enter Servant. Serv, — He says you have, and must have, business with him. Come out, or he'll come in, and spoil your mirth. Mai, — I will not. jSter».— Sir, I dare not tell him so; (Knocking again more jiercely .. M.J hair stands up in bristles when I see him ; The dogs run into corners ; the spayed bitch Bays at his back, and howls. jifal, — Bid him enter, and go off thyself. \_Exit Servant. Enter Melanax, ari hour-glass in his hand, almost empty. How dar'st thou interrupt my softer hours ? By heaven, I'll ram thee in some knotted oak. Where thou shalt sigh and groan to whistling winds Upon the lonely plain, or I'll confine thee Deep in the Red Sea, grovelling on the sands. Ten thousand billows rolling o'er thy head. JIfel.— Oh, ho, ho ! Mai. — Laughest thou, malicious fiend ? ril ope my book of bloody characters, Shall crumple up thy tender airy limbs, Like parchment in a flame. Mel. — Thou canst not do it. Behold this hour-glass. Jifal, — Well, and what of that ? Mel. — Seest thou then these ebbing sands ? They run for thee, and when their race is run. Thy lungs, the bellows of thy mortal breath. Shall sink for ever down, and heave no more. jlfo2._What, resty, friend ? Nine years thou hast to serve. Mel.—l^ot full nine minutes. Mai.— Thon liest ; look on thy bond, and view the date, j^el — Then, wilt thou stand to that without appeal ? Mai.— I will, so help me Heaven ! j(/e/.— So take thee Hell. ^Oives him the bond. There, fool ; behold who lies, the devil, or thou ? Mai. Ha ! one and twenty years are shrunk to twelve ! Do my eyes dazzle ? J/e?.— No, they see too true : They dazzled once, I cast a mist before them So what was figured twelve, to thy dull sight Appeared full twenty -one. Mal.- Mel.- Mal.- Mel.- Mal.- Mel- Mai. - Mel.— Mai. — Mel.' Mai,- Mel- Mai. Mel- -There's equity in Heaven for this, a cheat. Fool, thou has quitted thy appeal to Heaven To stand to this. -Then I am lost for ever ! Thou art! -O why was I not warned before ? -Yes, to repent ; then thou hadst cheated me. -Add but a day, but half a day, an hour : For sixty minutes I'll forgive nine years. No, not a moment's thought beyond my time 1 Despatch ; 'tis much below me to attend For one poor single fare. So pitiless ? But yet I may command thee, and I will ; I love the Guise, even with my latest breath. Beyond my soul, and my lost hopes of Heaven: I charge thee, by my short-lived power, disclose What fate attends my master. -If he goes To council when he next is called, he dies. -Who waits ? Enter Servant. Go, give my lord my last adieu j Say, I shall never see his eyes again ; But if he goes, when next he's called, to council, Bid him believe my latest breath, he dies. lExit Servant. The sands run yet.— do not shake the glass !— I shall be thine too soon '.—Could I repent !— Heaven's not confined to moments.— Mercy, mercy ! ■1 see thy prayers dispersed into the winds. And Heaven has passed them by. I was an angel once of foremost rank, Stood next the shining throne, and winked but half; So almost gazed I glory in the face That I could bear it, and stand farther in ; 'Twas but a moment's pride, and yet I fell, For ever fell ; but man, base earth-born man, Sins past a sum, and might be pardoned more : And yet 'tis just; for we were perfect light. And saw our crimes ; man, in his body's mire, Half-soul, half-clod, sinks blindfold into sin, Betrayed by frauds without and lusts within. -Then I have hope. -Not so ; I preached on purpose To make thee lose this moment of thy prayer. Thy sands creep low ; despair, despair, despair ! 198 THE MEERY MONARCH; Mai. — Where am I now ? upon tho brink of life, The gulf before me, devils to push me on, And Heaven behind me closing all its doora. A thousand years for every hour I've passed, could I 'scape so cheap ! but ever, ever ! Still to begin an endless round of woes, To be renewed for pains ; and last for hell ! Yet can pains last, when bodies cannot last ? Can earthly substance endless flames endure ? Or, when our body wears and flits away, Do souls thrust forth another crust of clay To force and guard their t( lultr souls from fire ? 1 feel my heart-strings rend ! — I'm here, — I'm gone ! Thus men, too careless of their future state, Dispute, know nothing, and believe too late. \_Afiash of lightning ; they sink together. The original cast of this tragedy included Kjnaston, as Henry III., King of France ; Betterton, as the Duke of Guise ; Smith, as Crillon ; Percival, as Malicorne ; Giles, as Melanax; Lady Slingsby, as the Queen-Mother; and Mrs. Barry, as Marmoutier, niece to Crillon. It could not be supposed that the Whigs would remain silent under the trenchant attack on their party and principles which this play embodied. A vigorous reply appeared in the " Defence of the Charter and Municipal Eights of the City of London,'' by Thomas Hunt, the lawyer. In ShadwelFs "Lenten Prologue " (April, 1683) the satire is laid on heavily, if somewhat clumsily ; and Shadwell is also credited with the part authorship of a pamplilet entitled " Some Reflections on the Pretended Parallel in the Play called The Duke of Guise." These criticisms provoked from Dryden the publication of his "Vindication of the Duke of Guise," in which his powers as a controversialist receive the most admirable illus- tration. In the last year of Charles II. 's life and reign Dryden produced at the Queen's Theatre, in Dorset Garden, OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 199 his opera of ''Albion and Albanius," for which the music was supplied by Louis Grabu, the master of the King's band, whom Charles II., in the excess of his French partialities, preferred to Purcell. In this opera, as in the tragedy which preceded it, Dryden had an avowed political object. He introduced, in chronological order, and under allegorical forms, the principal incidents of Charles II.'s reign, and depicted them as all leading up to the victory of the Crown over his opponents. The allegory, to tell truth, is dull and tedious, and the plot contains nothing very ingenious or novel. Dryden may have learned from Verrio to paint the Duchess of York as Venus, or her husband, as protected by Neptune, and Charles II. as finding a counsellor in Proteus. But the lyrical diction is everywhere sweet and glowing. "The reader finds none of those harsh inversions and awkward constructions by which ordinary poets are obliged to screw their verses into the fetters of musical time. . . . Every line seems to flow in its natural and most simple order, and where the music required repetition of a line, or a word, the iteration seems to improve the sense and poetical effect. Neither is the piece deficient in the higher requisites of lyric poetry. When music is to be ' married to immortal verse,' the poet too commonly cares little with how indifferent a yoke-mate he provides her. But Dryden, probably less from a superior degree of care, than from that divine impulse which he could not resist, has hurried along in the full stream of real poetry." Grabu's music was of a trivial and indifferent character. The play failed to attract the public ; and as a heavy sum had been laid out upon the scenery, decorations, and dresses. 200 THE MERRY MONARCH ; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 201 n i\ the result was a very considerable loss to the theatre. That the Whigs whom the dramatist satirised, and rival dramatists, and the admirers of Purcell and the EngHsh school of music should triumph in the disaster is intelli- gible enough. The following verses are a specimen of the lampoons which appeared : — *• From Father Hopkins, whose voice did inspire him, Bayes sends this raw show to public view ; 'Prentices, fops, and their footmen admire him, Thanks patron, painter, and Monsieur Grabu. " Each actor on the stage his luck bewailing. Finds that his loss is infallibly true ; Smith, Nokes, and Leigh, in a fever with railing, Curse poet, painter, and Monsieur Grabu. *• Betterton, Betterton, thy decorations, And the machines, were well written, we know ; But, all the words were such stuff, we want patience, And little better is Monsieur Grabu." The first representation of " Albion and Albanius " took place on the 3rd of June, 1685.* The music was published by Grabu in 1687, with a dedication to James JI. The finale, put into the mouth of Fame, is as follows: — "Renown, assume thy trumpet! From pole to pole resounding Great Albion's name ; Great Albion's name shall be The theme of Fame, shall be great Albion's name, Great Albion's name, great Albion's name. Record the Gaelic's glory ; A badge for heroes and for kings to bear ! For kings to bear ! And swell the immortal story With songs of gods, and fit for gods to hear ; And swell the immortal story With songs of gods, and fit for gods to hear ; For gods to hear." • Charles II., •* in honour of whom it was principally made," had then been dead more than three months ; but '* he had been pleased," says Dryden in his preface, " twice or thrice to command that it should be practised before him, especially the first and third acts of it ; and publicly declared, more than once, that the composition and choruses were more just and more beautiful than any he had heard in England." By many critics "Don Sebastian," produced in 1690, after a tolerably long pause in his dramatic activity, is considered Dryden's best work in this direction, or, at least, to challenge equality with his "All for Love." Hallam's opinion is less favourable. He places its chief excellence in the .highly-finished character of " Dorax." Dorax, he says, and with much justice, is the best of the poet's tragic characters; perhaps the only one in which he has made practical use of his great knowledge of the human mind. " It is highly dramatic, because formed of those complex passions which may readily lead either to virtue or to vice, and which the poet can manage so as to surprise the spectator without transgressing con- sistency." Having delivered himself of this eulogium, Hallam returns to his favourite cold judiciousness. " Don Sebastian," he says, " is as imperfect as all plays must be in which a single personage is thrown forward in too strong relief for the rest. The language is full of that rant which characterised Dryden's earlier tragedies, and to which a natural predilection seems, after some interval, to have brought him back. Sebastian himself may seem to have been intended as a contrast to Muley-Moluch ; but if the author had any rule to distinguish the bluster- in o- of the hero from that of the tyrant, he has not left the use of it in his reader's hands. The plot of this tragedy is ill-conducted, especially in the fifth act. . . . Our feelings revolt at seeing, as in Don Sebastian, an incestuous passion brought forward as the make-weight of a plot, to eke out a fifth act, and to dispose of those characters whose fortune the main story has not quite wound up." For our own part, we regard this estimate as unfair 202 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 203 and unsatisfactory in its tone of exaggerated depreciation. We concede the rant, the occasional ribaldry, the ill- management and unfortunate motif of the fifth act ; but, on the other hand, must insist that the interest of the situations is often very great, that the diction is usually vigorous and often poetical, and that Dryden in this play has sounded the depths of human passion more deeply than in any other of his dramatic works. Of the higher Shakespearian sympathy and insight there is, of course, nothing. Dryden, in his happiest moods, could only be Dryden ; and Dryden at his happiest no more mates with Shakespeare than, in the domain of Music, Spohr ranks with Beethoven. But "Don Sebastian" is a stirring and impressive drama, in which the poet exhibits con- siderable power over some of the strongest emotions of the human heart. On all matters of poetical criticism one would rather accept the judgment of Scott than that of Hallam, and Scott bestows on ''Don Sebastian" no stinted praise. The characters, he says, are contrasted with singular ability and judgment. " Sebastian, high-spirited and fiery -, the soul of royal and military honour ; the soldier and the king ; almost embodies the idea which the reader forms at the first mention of his name. Dorax, to whom lie is so admirable a contrast, is one of those characters whom the strong hand of adversity has wrested from their natural bias ; and perhaps no equally vivid picture can be found of a subject so awfully interesting. Born with a strong tendency to all that was honourable and virtuous, the very excess of his virtues became vice, when his own ill fate, and Sebastian's injustice, had driven him into exile. By comparing, as Dryden has requested, the character of Dorax, in the fifth act, with that he main- tains in the former part of the play, the difference may be traced betwixt his natural virtues, and the vices engrafted on them by headlong passion and embitter- ing calamity. There is no inconsistence in the change which takes place after his scene with Sebastian. . . . It is the same picture in a new light ; the same ocean in tempest and in calm ; the same traveller, whom sun- shine has induced to abandon his cloak, which the storm only forced him to wrap more closely around him. . . . The last stage of a virtuous heart, corroded into evil by wounded pride, has never been more forcibly displayed than in the character of Dorax. . . . " Muley-lMoluch is an admirable specimen of that very frequent theatrical character— a stage tyrant. He is fierce and boisterous enough to be sufficiently terrible and odious, and that without much rant, considering he is an infidel Soldam, who, from the ancient deportment of Mahomet and Termagaunt, as they appeared in the old Mysteries, might claim a prescriptive right to tear a passion to tatters. Besides, the Moorish emperor has fine glances of savage generosity, and that free, uncon- strained, and almost noble openness, the only good quality, perhaps, which a consciousness of unbounded power may encourage in a mind so firm as not to be totally depraved by it. The character was admirably represented by Kynaston, who had, says Gibber, ' a fierce lion-like majesty in his port and utterance, that gave the spectator a kind of trembling admiration.' It is enough to say of Bonducar, that the cool, fawning, intriguing, and unprincipled statesman is fully developed in his whole conduct; and of Alvarez, that the little he has to ■'■ ■■■ f 204 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND TINDER CHARLES II. 205 say and do is so said and done as not to disgrace Ms commonplace character of tlie possessor of the secret on which the plot depends ; for it may be casually observed that the depository of such a clue to the catastrophe, though of the last importance to the plot, is seldom himself of any interest whatever. The haughty and high-spirited Almayda is designed by the author as the counterpart of Sebastian. She breaks out with the same violence, I had almost said fury, and frequently discovers a sort of kindred sentiment, intended to pre- pare the reader for the unfortunate discovery that she is the sister of the Portuguese monarch." With all its merits, however, " Don Sebastian " conclu- sively proves that Dryden was a great playwright rather than a great dramatist. He was a man of genius, who, possessing some invention, some knowledge of the stage, and an ample command of splendid and lively diction, took to writing plays, not because he possessed the dramatic faculty, but because he wanted money.* He has not created a character, unless we allow that Dorax is one; and, after all, Dorax is more of a copy than an original. The name of Shakespeare immediately sug- gests a whole gallery of living, breathing figures— Lear, Hamlet, Mercutio, Hermione, Cordelia, Desdemona, Mac- beth, and a hundred more; but Dryden's gallery is peopled with shadows — whose names we forget — which have no distinctness of feature to impress their recollec- tion on our mind — which pass before us like the fictions of a dream, and are equally vague, unsubstantial, and « A dramatic author then received all the third night's profits and what he could obtain from a bookseller for his copyright— altogether, from £100 to jei50. fugitive. They are part of the stock-in-trade of the theatre— as much as the scenery and the decorations. Though not very well received at first, the play grew rapidly into popularity. It was dedicated to the Earl of Leicester, and acted and printed in 1690. The original cast included— Don Sebastian, Williams; Muley-Moluch, Kynaston ; Dorax, Betterton ; Bonducar, Sandford ; Mufti, Underbill ; Muley-Zaydan, Powell, jun. ; Don Antonio, Betterton ; Don Alvarez, Bowman ; Mustapha, Leigh; Almayda, Mrs. Barry; Morayma, Mrs. Montfort; Johayma, Mrs. Leigh. We subjoin the famous scene between Dorax and the Kino" of which Scott writes— not without exaggeration— that " had it been the only one ever Dryden wrote, it would have been sufficient to ensure his immortality. There is not," he says, "no, perhaps, not even in Shakespeare,— an instance where the chord, which the poet designed should vibrate, is more happily struck; strains there are of a higher mood, but not more cor- rectly true." Dorax, having taken off his turban, and put on «a peruke, hat, and cravat," re-entered. Dor.— Now, do you know me ? iSc&a&t.— Thou shouldest be Alonzo. Dor.— So yoQ should be Sebastian : But when Sebastian ceased to be himself, I ceased to be Alonzo. Sehast.—As in a dream I see thee here, and scarce believe mine eyes. Dor.— Is it so strange to find me where my wrouga And your inhuman tyranny have sent me ? Think not you dream ; or, if you did, my injuries Shall call so loud that lethargy should wake, And death should give you back to answer me. A thousand nights have brushed their balmy wings Ovrer these eyes ; but ever when they closed, 206 THE MERRY MONARCH; Your tyrant image forced them ope again, And dried the dews they brought : The long-expected hour is come at length, By manly vengeance to redeem my fame ; And, that once cleared, eternal s^leep is welcome. JSehast—l have not yet forgot 1 am a king, Whose royal office is redress of wrongs : If I have wronged thee, charge me face to face ; — I have not yet forgot I am a soldier. Por. 'Tis the first justice thou has ever done me. Then, though I loathe this woman^s war of tongues. Yet shall my cause of vengeance first be clear ; And, Honour, be thou judge. .Sebost.— Honour befriend us both. — Beware, I warn thee yet, to tell thy griefs In terms becoming majesty to hear : I warn thee thu>, because I know thy temper Is insolent, and haughty to superiors. How often hast thou braved my peaceful court, Filled it with noisy briwis arul windy boasts ; Aud with past service, nauseously repeated. Reproached even me, thy prince ? j)ffr, — And well I might, when you f rget reward, The pact of heaven in kings ; for punishment Is hangman's work, and drudgery for devils. — I must and will reproach thee with my service. Tyrant 1— It irks me so to call uiy prince ; But just resentment and hard usage coined Tiie unwilling word ; and, grating as it is, Take it, for 'tis thy due. Sehast.^B.o\v, tyrant ? Don — Tyrant. Sehast.^Tvait >v I— that name thou canst not echo back ; That robe of infamy, that circumcision 111 hid beneath that robe, proclaim thee traitor ; And if a name More foul than traitor be. 'tis renegade. Dor.— If I'm a traitor, think,— and blush, thou tyrant,— Whose injuries betrayed me into treason, Effaced my loyalty, unhinged my faith, Aud hurried me, from hopes of heaven, to hell. All these, and all my yet unfinished crimes, When I shall rise to plead before the saintt!, I charge on thee to make thy damning sure. Sehast. — Thy old presumptuous arrogance again. That bred my first dislike and then my loathing, — Once more be warned, aud know me for thy king. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. Dor.— Too well I know thee, but for king no more. This is not Li.oy._Why, love does all that's noble here below ; But all the advantage of that love was thine. For, coming fraughted back, in either hand With palm and olive, victory and peace, I was indeed prepared to ask my own (For Violante's sons were mine before :) Thy malice had prevention* ere I spoke ; And asked me Violante for Henriquez. Sebast.—I meant thee a reward of greater worth. J)or.~ AVhere justice wanted, could reward be hoped? Could the robbed passenger expect a bounty From those rapacious hands who stripped him first ? Sehast— Ee had my promise ere I knew thy love. j)or. — My services deserved thou shouldst revoke it. Sehast.' -Thy insolence had cancelled all thy service : To violate my laws, eve i in my court. Sacred to peace and safe from all affronts, — Even to my face, as done in my despite, Under the wing of awful majesty To strike the man I loved ! i?t>r.— Even in the face of heaven, a place more sacred, Would I liave struck the man who, propt by power, Would seize my right and rob me of my love. — But, for a blow provoked by thy injustice. * Used, of course, in ihQ old sense of " anticipation," " going before, 207 I It 208 THE MEREY MONARCH; The hasty product of a jnst despair, When he refused to meet me in the field, That thou shouldst make a coward's cause thy own ! Sebast.—Be durst; nay more, desire^', and begged with tears To meet thy challenge fairly. *Twas thy fault To make it public ; but my duty, then, To interpose, on pain of my displeasure, Betwixt your swords. J)or,^On pain of infamy He should have disobeyed. Sehast. The indignity thou didst was meant to me: Thy gloomy eyes were cast on me with scorn, As who should say,— The blow was there intended ; But that thou didst not dare to lift thy hands Against anointed power. So was I forced To do a sovereign jusiice to myself, And spurn thee from my presence. . . . But thou hast charged me with ingratitude ; Hast thou not charged me ? Speak ! j)m\^1how know'st I have: If thou disowii'st that imputation, draw, And prove my fliur.L'e a lie. Behast.^l^o ; to disin(»ve that lie I must not draw. Be conscious to tliy \v(.rth, and tell thy soul What thou hast done this day in my defence. To tight thee after this, wjiat wtM-e it else Than owning th;it inirratitude thou urgest? That isthmus stands between two rushing seas ; Which, mounting, view each other from afar, And strive in vain to meet. j^fyf, — ril cut that isthmus. Thou know'st I meant not to preserve thy life, But to reprieve it, for mine own revenge. I saved thee out of honourable malice: Kow, draw ; 1 should be l(»th to tliink thou dar'st not ; Beware of such another vile excuse. 8eha»t,—0h, patience, beware ! Dor, — Beware of i)atience, too ; That's a suspicious word. Ir had been proper. Before thy foot bad spurned me ; now 'tis base : Yet, to disarm thee of thy last defence, I have thy oath for my security. The only boon I begged was this fair combat: Fight, or be perjured now ; that's all thy choice. Sebast.— Now can I thank tliee as thou wouldst be thanked. Never was vow of honour better paid, [^Dran-ing, OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. If my true sword but hold, than this shall be. The sprightly bridegroom, on his wedding night. More gladly enters not the lists of love : Why, 'tis enjoyment to be summoned thus. Go, bear my message to Henriquez' ghost ; And say, his master and his friend revenged him. Dor. — His ghost ! then is my hated rival dead ? Sebast. — The question is beside our present purpose : Thou seest me ready ; we delay too long. Dor. — A minute is not much in cither's life, When there's but one betwixt us : throw it in, And give it him of us who is to fall. Sebast. — He's dead ; make haste, and thou may'st yet o'ertake him. Doj\ — When I was hasty, thou delayed'st me longer. — I pr'ythee, let me edge one moment more Into thy promise: for thy life t)reserved, Be kind ; and tell me how that rival died, Whose death, next thine, I wished. Sebasi. — If it wouldst please thee, thou shouldst never know; Bat thou, like jealousy, iuquir'st a truth Which, found, will torture thee. — He died in fight; Fought next my person ; as in consort fought ; Kept [)ace for pace, and blow for every blow ; Save when he heaved his shield in my defence. And on his naked side received my wound. Then, when he could no more, he fell atone; But rt)lled his falling body cross their way. And made a bulwark of it for his prince. Dor.— I never can forgive him such a death! Sebast. — I pro[>hesied thy proud soul could not bear it. — Now, judge thyself, who best deserved my love ? I knew you both ; and (durst I say) as heaven Foreknew, among the shining angel host, Who would stand firm, who fall. Dor. — Had he been tempted so, so had he fallen ; And so, had I been favoured, had I stood. SebcLSt. — What had been, is unknown ; what is, appears^ Confess, he justly was preferred to thee. Do?'. — Had I been born with hia indulgent stars. My fortune had been his, and his been mine. — worse than hell ! what glory have I lost. And what has he ac(iuired by such a death ? 1 should have fallen by Sebastian's side. My cor{)se had been the bulwark of my King. His glorious end was a patched work of fate, 111 sorted with a soft, effeminate life It suited better with my life than hia VOL. I. F 209 I 210 THE MEEEY MONARCH; So to have died : Mine had been of a piece, Spent in your service, dying at your feet. [ Sehast.— The more effeminate and soft his life, The more his fame to struggle to the field And meet his glorious fate. Confess, proud spirit, (For I will hear it from thy very mouth), That better he deserved my love than thou ? X>or.— Oh, whither would you drive me ? I must grant,— Yes, I must grant, but with a swelling soul,— Henriquez had your love with more desert. For you he fought and died : I fought against you ; Through all the mazes of the bloody field Haunted your sacred life ; which that I missed Was the propitious error of my fate, Not of my soul : my soul's a regicide. Sehast. IMore calmhj-\.— Thou might'st have given it a more gentle name. Thou mean'st to kill a tyrant ; not a king : Speak, didst thou not, Alonzo ? Dor.— Can I speak ? Alas, I cannot answer to Alonzo !— No, Dorax cannot answer to Alonzo ; Alonzo was too kind a name for me. Then, when I fought and conquered with your arms, In that blest age I ^\ as the man you named ; Till rage and pride debased me into Dorax ; And lost, like Lucifer, my name above. Sehast.— Yet 'twere this day I owed my life to Dorax. Dor,— I saved you but to kill you : there's my grief. iSebasf.— Nay, if thou canst be grieved, thou canst repent; Thou canst not be a villain though thou wouldst : Thou own'st too much, in owning thou hast erred ; And I too little, who provoked thy crime. Dor.— Oh, stop this headlong torrent of your goodness ; It comes too fast upon a feeble soul. Half -drowned in tears before : spare my confusion ; For pity spare, and say not first you erred ; For yet I have not dared, through guilt and shame, To throw myself beneath your royal feet. — Now spurn this rebel, this proud renegade ; 'Tis just you should, nor will I more complain. Sehait.—lndcedy thou shouldst not ask forgiveness first ; But thou prevent' st me still in all that's noble. Yes, I will raise thee up with better news. Thy Violante's heart was ever thine ; Compelled to wed, because she was my ward, Her soul was absent when she gave her hand ; {Falls at his feet. l^Takinghimup, OUy ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II, 211 Nor could my threats, or his pursuing courtship. Effect the consummation of his love : So, still indulging tears she pines for thee, A widow, and a maid. Dor. — Have I been cursing heaven, while heaven blest me ? I shall run mad with ecstacy of joy : What ! in one moment, to be reconciled To heaven, and to my king, and to my love ! — But pity is my friend, and stops me short For my unliappy rival :— Poor Henriquez ! Sehast. — Art thou so generous, too, to pity him ? Nay, then, I was unjust to love him better. Here, let me ever hold thee in my arms ; And all our (quarrels be but such as these, Who sh-ciU love best and closest shall embrace. Be what Henriquez wa?,— be my Alonzo. Do7'. — What, my Alonzo, said you ? my Alonzo ? Let my tears thank you, for I cannot speak : And, if I could, Words were not made to vent such thoughts as mine. Sehast. — Some strange reverse of fate must sure attend This vast profusion, this extravagance Of heaven, to bless me thus. 'Tis gold so pure It cannot bear the stamp, without alloy ; Be kind, ye Powers ! and take but half away : With ease the gifts of fortune I resign ; But let my love and friend be ever mine. lEmhraeing him. [Exeunt. In 1690, Dryden produced at the Theatre Eoyal his comedy of " Amphitryon/' on a subject which Plautus was the first to touch, and after him, Moli^re. In dedi- cating it to Sir William Leveson-Gower, Dryden justly defines the extent of his obligations to his illustrious pre- decessors. '' Were this comedy wholly mine," he says " I should call it a trifle, and perhaps not think it worth your patronage ; but when the names of Plautus and Moliere are joined in it, that is, the two greatest names of ancient and modern comedy, I must not presume so far on their reputation, to think their best and most unquestioned productions can be termed little. I will not give you the trouble of acquainting you what I have added, or altered. THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 213 in either of them, so much, it may be, for the worse ; but only that the difference of our stage from the Roman and the French did so require it. But I am afraid, for my own interest, the world will too easily discover that more then half of it is mine ; and that the rest is rather a lame imitation of their excellencies than a just translation." To the Eoman poet both Moliere and Dryden owe the amusing device of the two Sosias ; the complications in which the malicious ingenuity of Mercury involves his unfortunate original; Alcmena's quarrel with her real husband, and her reconciliation with Jupiter, who per- sonates him ; the final encounter of the genuine and the sham Amphitryon ; and the astonishm ent of the unhappy husband who finds himself anticipated by his rival in each proof of his identity. To Moliere Dryden is greatly in- ferior in the blatant indecency of his dialogue. A subject, hazardous enough in itself, he has so treated as to make offensive by its shameful suggestiveness ; and where Moliere is witty, Dryden is simply coarse. On the other hand, he has improved the plot by the amusing intrigue be- tween Mercury and Phadra ; and in the scenes between Jupiter and Alcmena attains a higher poetical level than either of his great predecessors. Lastly, the animal spirits of Dryden are nowhere more conspicuous than in this comedy, which is instinct with vitality from beginning to end, and gives one the impression of having been written with a charming spontaneity. The dialogue is wonderfully "brisk and airy,''— though it cannot be described as humorous. The songs in "Amphitryon" were set to music by Purcell,— "in whose person," says Dryden, "we have at length found one Englishman equal with the best abroad.'* They are : — " Celia, that I once was blest ; " " Fair Iris, I love, and hourly I die;" and the duet, "Fair Iris and her swain." The original cast included : — Betterton as Jupiter ; Lee, Mercury; Bowman, Phoebus; Williams, Amphitryon; Nokes, Sosia ; Sandford, Gripus ; Bright, Polidas ; Bowen, Tranis; Mrs. Barry, Alcmena; Mrs. Montfort, Phsedra; Mrs. Cory, Bromia ; and Mrs. Butler, Night. " The last piece of service " which Dryden " had the honour to do for his gracious master King Charles IL," was the " dramatic Opera " of " King Arthur ; or, The British Worthy." The King did not live to see it pro- duced upon the stage, " yet the Prologue to it, which was the Opera of " Albion and Albanius,' was often practised before him at Whitehall, and encouraged by his appro- bation." Dryden, like Milton, had had his imagination touched by the old chivalrous romances of " Ather's son, Begirt with British and Armoric Knights." and conceived the idea of treating it epically, as well as dramatically. The epic poem he never wrote; and the dramatic compositions which he has connected with King Arthur bear no reference to the Arthurian legends. We see nothing of Excalibur, nor of the Round Table Chivalry; Guenivere is absent, and Sir Lancelot and Sir Gawain. The story, indeed, is rather that of a fairy tale than of a media3val legend ; and the supernatural machinery be- longs to the Oriental rather than to the Celtic world. But the incidents are ingeniously contrived, and the develop- ment of the plot is arranged with much skill. A pathetic interest attaches to the character of Emmeline, with her blindness, and the simplicity with which she describes her ^ 214 THE MEERY MONARCH ; ideas of visible objects. The scene in which she recovers her sight is very tenderly treated. " The machinery is simple and well managed ; the language and ministry of Grim- bald, the fierce earthy demon, are painted with some touches which rise even to sublimity. The conception of Philidel, a fallen angel, retaining some of the hue of heaven, who is touched with repentance, and not without hope of being finally received, is an idea altogether original." The main incident in Dryden's play is borrowed, however, from the episode in Tasso's " Gerusalemme Liberata," of Einaldo's adventures in the haunted grove on Mount Olivet. "King Arthur" was acted in 1691, and received with great favour. Dryden mentions that it enjoyed the approval of Queen Mary, who had perused it in manu- script. The music was furnished by Pure ell, and con- tains some of his happiest inspirations. Says Dr. Burney : " If ever it could, with truth, be Siiid of a composer that he had devance son siecle, Purcell is entitled to that praise, as there are movements in many of his works which a century has not injured, particularly the duet in ' King Arthur/ 'Two daughters of this aged stream,' and < Fairest Isle, all isles excelling,' which contain not a single passage that the best composers of the present times, if it presented itself to their imagination, would reject." Another celebrated song is the " Come, if you dare," which Mr. Sims Reeves has made familiar to modern audiences. The dances were composed by the celebrated Priest. At the first representation the cast stood as follows : — King Arthur, Betterton ; Oswald, Saxon King of Kent, Williams; Merlin, a famous necromancer, Kynaston; Conon, Duke of Cornwall, Hodgson; Osmond, a Saxon OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 215 magician, Sandford ; Aurelius, friend to King Arthur, Alexander; Albamart, Captain of Arthur's Guards, Bowen ; Guillamar, friend to Oswald, Harris ; Emmeline, daughter of Conon, Mrs. Bracegirdle ; Matilda, Mrs. Eichardson; Philidel, an Airy Spirit, Mrs. Butler; Grimbald, an Earthy Spirit, Mrs. Bowman. " Cleomenes, the Spartan Hero," a tragedy, was pro- duced in 1692. Its story— that of a banished monarch, seeking, in the Court of an ally, assistance to relieve his country from a foreign yoke, and restore himself to his ancestral throne — was not one that King William III.^s censors could be expected to welcome, and the perform- ance of the piece was at first prohibited. But through the exertions of Lord Eochester, Queen Mary's maternal uncle, the Court was convinced of its harmlessness, and " Cleomenes " was allowed to strut on the stage of the Theatre Eoyal. The play was successful, though the hero is not painted in sufficiently vivid colours, and it loses, therefore, what should ensure its continuity of interest. None of the characters are very strongly defined : the impression produced by that of Cassandra was probably due to the admirable acting of Mrs. Barry, whom Dryden, in his Preface, liberally compliments by saying, "that she had gained by her performance a reputation beyond any woman he had ever seen on the theatre." Owing to illness, Dryden was not able to complete his tragedy, and the latter half of the fifth act was written by Southerne. The original cast was as follows :— Cleomenes, Betterton; Cleonidas, Lee ; Ptolemy, Alexander ; Soribius, Sandford ; Cleanthes, Mountford ; Pantheus, Kynaston ; Csenus, 216 THE MERET MONARCH; Hudson ; Cratesiclea, Mrs. Betterton ; Cleora, Mrs. Brace- girdle; and Cassandra, Mrs. Barry. "Cleomenes" contains one of Dryden's finest songs. As, happily, it is free from the impurity which so often disfigures his lyrics, we can transfer it to these pages : — " No, no, poor suffering heart, no change endeavour, Choose to sustain the smart rather than leave her; My ravished eyes behold such charms about her, I can die with her, but not live without her : One tender sigh of hers to see me languish Will more than pay the price of my past anguish : Beware, O cruel fair, how you smile on me, 'Twas a kind look of yours that has undone me. Love has in store for me one happy minute, And she will end my pain who did begin it ; Then no day void of bliss, of pleasure, leaving, Ages shall slide away without perceiving: Cupid shall guard the door, the more to please us, And keep out Time and Death when they would seize us: Time and Death shall depart, and say, in flying, Love has found out a way to live by dying." Dryden closed his long and industrious career as a dramatist in 1694, and, unfortunately, closed it with a failure— his tragi-comedy of "Love Triumphant." It was unsuccessful when represented,"^ and we cannot imagine that anyone will take pleasure in its perusal. The plot is singularly unpleasant, for it turns upon an incestuous passion, which Dryden treats with charac- teristic coarseness; while the underplot is not only extravagant, hut indecent. By damning the play, the public showed that they had made some advance in moral feeling; whereas the play shows that Dryden had made * A contemporary letter-writer notes : " The second play is Mr. Dryden's, called ♦ Love Triumphant ; or, Nature will Prevail.' It is tragi-comedy; but, in my opinion, one of the worst he ever writ, if not the very worst : the comical part descends beneath the style and show of a Bartholomew Fair droll. It was damned by the universal cry of the town, nemine contra- dicente but the conceited part. He says in his Prologue that this is the last the town must expect from him ; he had done himself a kindness had he taken Lis leave before." OB, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 217 none, but that he wallowed in filth as gratuitously in the reign of William III. as he had done in that of Charles II. The versification, we may add, is often careless, and in many places Dryden lapses into his favourite heroic couplets. An incident in the first scene of the second act, where Alphonso makes known to Victoria his guilty passion by reading from a book, reminds us of the pathetic scene between Paolo and Francesca da Eimini in Dante's great epic. The original cast included : Yeramond, Kynaston ; Alphonso, Betterton ; Garcia, Williams ; Ramirez, Alex- ander ; Sancho, Doggett ; Carlos, Powell ; Lopez, Under- bill; Ximena, Mrs. Betterton; Victoria, Mrs. Barry; Celidea, Mrs. Bracegirdle ; Dalinda, Mrs. Montfort ; and Nurse, Mrs. Kent. Dryden was also the author of a Prologue, Song, Secular Masque, and Epilogue, composed for Beaumont and Pletcher's play of "The Pilgrim," when it was revived for his benefit in the spring of 1700. Though written within a few weeks of his death, they exhibit all his old vigour and fertility. The epilogue refers to Jeremy Collier's " Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage" (1698), in which, with justifiable indignation, that learned divine had severely censured the profligate writing of living dramatists, from Dryden to D'Urfey. It is greatly to Dryden's credit that he at once saw and acknowledged the magnitude of his fault. In the Prologue, it is true, he makes a lame effort to excuse himself by shifting the responsibility on the shoulders of his patrons : — •' Perhaps the parson stretched a point too far, When with onr theatres he waged a war. He tells yon, that this very moral age Received the first infection from the stage ; 218 THE MEERY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 219 But sure, a banished Court, with lewdness fraught, The seeds of open vice, returning, brought . . . The poets, who must live by Courts, or starve, Were proud so good a Government to serve ; And mixing with bufloons and pimps profane, Tainted the stage for some small snip of gain." But in " the Preface " to his " Fables," he says, with more frankness, and in a worthier spirit : " I shall say the less of Mr. CoUier, 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 obscurity, profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph ; if he be my friend, and I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance. It becomes me not to draw my pen in the defence of a bad cause, when I have so often drawn it for a good one."^ A comedy called '' The Mall ; or, The Modish Lovers," acted in 1674, is sometimes attributed to Dryden's pen; as also another, " The Mistaken Husband," produced in 1675. But neither seems to us distinguished by any of the poet's characteristics. We have presented this long summary of Dryden's dramatic work for two reasons: first, because Dryden was unquestionably, all things considered, the greatest * It may be noted that Lord Lansdowne, in his prologue to " The Jew of Venice,"' differed from both Collier and Dryden, attributing the evil com- plained of neither to the dramatists exclusively, nor to the Court, but to the audiences which tolerated it. He says : — " Each in his turn, the prophet and the priest, Have viewed the stage, but like false prophets guessed. The man of zeal, in his religious rage, Would silence poets and reduce the stage ; The poet, rashly to get clear, retorts On Kings the scandal, and bespatters Courts. Both err : for, without mincing, to be plain, The guilt's your own of every odious scene ; The present time still gives the stage its mode : The vices that you practise, we explode." playwright of the Restoration ; and, second, because it so clearly illustrates the main elements of his intellectual power and the limitations of his genius. Nothing is more clear than that, with all his gifts, he did not possess the dramatic faculty. He could not create ; his characters are puppets, moved to and fro with much ingenuity of device, but they did not convey to the spectator, they do not convey to the reader, any sense of reality, any touch of actual life and truth. It may be conceded, perhaps, that he furnished the first sketches of the stage coquette and the stage fop; and Mr. Saintsbury asserts that in the •' Spanish Friar " he achieved something like an indepen- dent and an original creation. This is all that can be allowed, and it is not sufiicient to justify the critic in ascribing to him the rank of a great dramatist. Putting Shakespeare aside as unapproachable, he is not only in- ferior in dramatic power to Ben Jonson and Fletcher, but even to Wycherley, and certainly to Congreve. Who re- members any of his characters ? Who can recall, with two or three exceptions, any striking and original scenes, in which the passions or the humours are so vividly dis- played that the memory instantaneously recalls them, like that between Manly and Fidelia in " The Plain-Dealer," or between Ben and Fondlewife in " Love for Love " ? What touch of pathos or tender feeling do we treasure up, what prodigal overflow of joyous wit? We have already commented with some severity on Dryden's uncleanness, which, in his comedies, amounts to a colossal offence against the primary laws of decency and good taste. In our English literature we doubt whether there is anything like it — it is so constant, so loudly exhibited, so diffused. It taints and corrupts the 220 THE MEERY MONAECH ; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 221 active atmosphere of his comic drama ; every character is infected by it— the wife, the husband, the young maiden, the lover, the priest, the cavalier, the king. So favour- able a biographer and critic as Mr. Saintsbury is obliged to admit that it is unpardonable. ''It does not come under any of the numerous categories of excuse which can be devised for other offenders in the same kind. It is de- liberate, it is unnecessary, it is a positive defect in art. When the culprit, in his otherwise dignified and not un- successful confiteor to Collier, endeavours to shield himself by the example of the elder dramatists, the shield is seen at once, and what is more, we know that he must have seen it himself, to be a mere shield of paper. But in truth the heaviest punishment that Dryden could possibly have suffered, the punishment which Diderot has indi- cated as inevitably imminent on this particular offence, has come upon him. The fouler parts of his work have simply ceased to be read, and his most thorough defenders can only read them for the purpose of appreciation and defence at the price of being queasy and qualmish. He has exposed his legs to the arrows of any criticaster who chooses to aim at him, and the criticasters have not failed to jump at the chance of so noble a quarry." Yet, while admitting all these defects, we should be disposed to refer to Dryden^s dramatic work as presenting the most signal and convincing evidence of his remark- able powers. It was written '' against the grain ; " it was written with the writer's knowledge that he lacked the faculty which alone could give it an enduring vitality ; yet how strong it is, how copious, how thoroughly well done, how manly ! What a profusion of sonorous and highly-coloured verse — of rolling, vigorous couplets which seem to have flowed without effort from his spontaneous pen — of terse and felicitous expressions of judicious re- flections and wise thoughts — of ample, picturesque, rhetoric, which has a dignity and a robustness that are eminently Dry den's own ! Then, in his lighter scenes, how continuous is the vivacity, how inexhaustible the bright and lively dialogue, which is not witty, and seldom humorous, and yet conveys an impression of wit and humour from the art with which it has been constructed, and the brisk easiness of its manner. Of what can be accomplished by a man of rare literary talent, who is en- dowed also with great force of purpose and untiring in- dustry, literature affords no more striking example than the dramas of John Dryden. They are anything you like except masterpieces of the higher dramatic faculty; while so strong was his resolution and so varied were his endowments, that in ''All for Love " and "Don Sebas- tian " he apj)roaches even these, and bad Shakespeare never lived, might probably have imposed upon us to an extent that we are now unwilling to confess. Thomas, or, as his contemporaries always called him, Tom, D'Urfey, was born between 1635 and 1640. His family were originally French, and his parents emigrated toEiii^land about 1628. Tom was educated for the law; a profession which he soon forsook, " under a persuasion," says Hawkins, ^' which some poets and even players have been very ready to entertain as an excuse for idleness and an indisposition to sober reflection, namely, that law is a study so dull that no man of genius can submit to it/' D'Urfey, we suspect, never thought himself a man of genius, but he was conscious of considerable parts, and began at once to write for the stage as offering almost the .'J%:ISGMS 222 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 223 il' only available road to distinction. A jovial companion, able to write a good song and to sing one, and a ready wit, he soon attracted the attention of Charles II. and his " merry men," and was admitted to their most private symposia. Many of his lyrics are neatly turned, and dis- play an agreeable gaiety ; but nearly all are disfigured by indecency to such an extent that it is astonishing how Purcell and Blow could be induced to set them to music, or any modest woman to sing them in public. Their sensual strains, however, were highly appreciated by Charles, with whom their author was a favourite. " I myself remember," says Addison, "King Charles II. leaning on D'Urfey's shoulder more than once, and humming over a song with him." He was also greatly favoured by Lord Buckhurst (afterwards Earl of Dorset), and spent many jovial hours at that gay nobleman's Kentish country-seat, which he describes with so much unction in his verses on the Glory of Knoll:— " Knoll most famous in Kent still appears, Were mansions surveyed for a thousand long years ; In whose dome mighty monarchs might dwell, Where five hundred rooms are, as Boswell can tell." There is a portrait of D'Urfey included in Vander- gucht's picture, " A Conservation Piece," which is still preserved at Knowle. D'Urfey's political songs— he was a strong Tory and a vehement " No-Popery " man-made some noise in their day. His tumid ode, " Joy to Great Casar," written in the latter years of Charles II., was (says Addison, ironi- cally) such a blow to the Whigs that they did not recover from it all that reign. Eevived by the partisans of James II. it was sung at every loyal gathering and shouted in the streets by ignorant mobs. Its author lived, however, to see great Csesar deposed, and to bear allegiance to the Whig Deliverer. His useless career was extended into the reign of George I., and he died in February, 1723, when he must have been about 83 vears of ao*e. He was wont to say that he had written more odes than Horace and more comedies than Terence ; but then their odes and comedies were meant for posterity, while his were forgotten almost before his death. His poetical pieces were collected in 1719-20, under the title of '^ Wit and Mirth ; or. Pills to Purge Melancholy.'' " I cannot suffi- ciently admire the facetious title of these volumes," wrote Addison, with gentle sarcasm,^ '' and must censure the world of ingratitude while they are so negligent in re- warding the jocose labours of my friend, Mr. D'Urfey,who was so large a contributor to this treatise, and to whose humorous productions so many rural squires in the re- motest parts of this island are obliged for the dignity and state which corpulency gives them. It is my opinion," he adds, 'Hhat the above pills would be extremely proper to be taken with asses' milk, and might contribute to- wards the renewing and restoring of decayed luno-s." But the dulness, even more than the indecency, of D'Urfey's verses has banished them from the library. Of his plays none are remembered, except by the literary student, though they include comedies (Heaven save the mark !), interludes, and operas. ''The Fond Husband; or, The Plotting Sisters," was first acted in 1C76. " This comedy," says Steele, " was honoured with the presence of King Charles II. three of the first five nights [a fact which proves that King Charles II. was easily amused, and was * In The Guardian, No. 29. D'Urfey's original title was " Laugh and Be Fat ; or, Pills to Purge Melancholy." .^qpFSMUSCS 224 THE MERRY MONARCH; I' not so good a judge of wit as he is generally thought to have been]. My friend has in this work shown himself a master, and made not only the characters of the play, but also the furniture of the house contribute to the main design. He has also made excellent use of a table with a carpet, and the key of a closet ; with these two implements, which would, perhaps, have been overlooked by an ordinary writer, he contrives the most natural perplexities that ever were represented on a stage. He also made good advan- tage of his knowledge of the stage itself ; for, in the nick of°being surprised, the lovers are let down and escape at a trap-door." « The Injured Princess ; or, The Fatal Wager," 1682, is a wretched travesty of Shakespeare's « Cymbeline." D'Urfey, who touched nothing which he did not spoil, adapted " A Commonwealth of Women," 1686, from Fletcher's " Sea Voyage," and " A Fool's Preferment ; or. The Three Dukes of Dunstable," 1688, from the tragedy of' " The Two Noble Kinsmen." He wrote a comic opera " The Two Queens of Brentford ; or, Bayes no Poetaster," as a sequel to "The Eehear.ul," but it has none of the fine humour of the original. His best dramatic composition is "The Marriage-Hater Matched," 1693, in which Dog- get, the actor-he of the Thames Watermen's " coat and badge "-first gained the favour of the theatre-going public. * Writing of the Comic Drama of the Restoration, Macaulay" in a well-known essay, says, with only too much truth, that this part of our literature is a disgrace * To his last play Pope wrote a prologue (published in the poet's works) in which he says : , .^ , " He scorned to borrow from the wits of yore, But ever writ, as none e'er writ before." OB, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. £25 to our language and our national character. « It is clever indeed, and very entertaining; but it is, in the most emphatic sense of the words, ' earthly, sensual, devilish.' Its indecency, though perpetually such as is condemned not less by the rules of good taste, than by those of morality, is not, in our opinion, so disgraceful a fault as its singularly inhuman spirit. We have here Belial, not as when he inspired Ovid and Ariosto, ' graceful' and humane,' but with the iron eye and cruel scorn of Mephis- tophiles. We find ourselves in a world, in which the ladies are like very profligate, impudent, and unfeeling men, and in which the men are too bad for any place but Pande- monium, or Norfolk Island. We are surrounded by fore- heads of bronze, hearts like the nether millstone, and tongues set on fire of hell." No one who has been compelled by literary exigencies to drag through the impurities of the Eestoration Drama wiU think this censure too severe. It is not so much its indecency of which one has to complain as of the impurity which pervades it like a malarious atmosphere. There is indelicate writing even in Shakespeare, but it is to a great extent accidental ; it does not enter into the web and woof of his plays ; it never affects his teaching. Nowhere is vice justified in Shakespeare ; nowhere is virtue degraded and made to look ridiculous. But the Restoration Drama, like so much of the modern French Drama, is the apo- theosis of sensuality and lust. It represents every woman as at heart a harlot and every man a rake. It invests adultery with an air of grace and fashion. In these plays the husband is always a booby or a sot; the gallant an airy, agreeable, genial, and elegant gentleman. "The dramatist does his best to make the person who commits VOL. I. 226 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 227 III the injury graceful, sensible, and spirited, and tbe person who suffers it a fool, or a tyrant, or both." Why, then, should these plays be read '? The answer usually given alleges two reasons ; first, their wit, and second, their value as reflecting the social life of their age. We are not sure that either is satisfactory. It seems to us that the wit and humour of the Restoration Drama have been a good deal exaggerated ; and we doubt whether it is worth the while of ordinary people to soil their garments and themselves by hunting for sham dia- monds in the depths of a cloaca. As to the significance attributed to them from the historical point of view, is not this, too, exaggerated? We are told that " the garb, the manners, the topics of conversation, are those of the real town and of the passing day." But the " real town " must have been confined within the narrowest limits, must have been " the town " of the wits and the courtiers, the gallants and the fine ladies. No one believes that Ethe- rege and Wycherley and Congreve painted the manners and morals of the great mass of English society ; that all the wives of England were adultresses, and all the hus- bands cuckolds. The age that produced a Rochester and a Duchess of Cleveland produced also an Algernon Sidney and a Lady Eachel Russell. To go to the Restoration Drama for a picture of the real social life of England in the latter half of the seventeenth century would be as just as if a later generation turned to the comedies of Mr. Byron and the burlesques of Mr. Burnand for a picture of English social life in the Victorian era. What it does reproduce is the narrow and shameless world in which such men as Buckingham and Killigrew and Chaffinch played important parts. It was written for such men— for the Roisterers as Henri Taine calls them — for such men, and for the women with whom such men toyed and trifled. Taine's description of the conditions under which the Restoration Drama originated and flourished seems to us admirable. " I imagine,^' he says, " those foppish and half-intoxicated men, who saw in love nothing beyond desire, and in man nothing but sensuality; Rochester in the i3lace of Mercutio. What part of his soul could comprehend poesy and fancy ? The comedy of romance was altogether beyond his reach ; he could only seize the actual world, and of this world but the palpable and gross externals. Give him an exact picture of ordinary life, commonplace and probable occurrences, literal imitations' of what he himself was and did ; lay the scene in London, in the current year ; copy his coarse words, his brutal jokes,' his conversation with the orange girls, his rendezvous in the Park, his attempts at French dissipation. Let him recognise himself, let him find again the people and the manners he had just left behind him in the tavern or the ante-chamber; let the theatre and the street reproduce one another. Comedy will give him the same entertain- ment as real life ; he will wallow equally well there in vulgarity and lewdness ; to be present there will demand neither imagination nor wit; eyes and memory are the only requisites. This exact imitation will amuse him and instruct him at the same time. Filthy words will make him laugh through sympathy; shameless imagery will divert him by appealing to his recollections. ^ he author, too, will take care to amuse him by his plot, which gene- rally has the deceiving of a father or a husband for its subject. The fine gentlemen agree with the author in 228 THE MEEEY MONARCH I siding with tlie gallant ; they follow his fortunes with interest, and fancy that they themselves have the same success with the fair. Add to this, women debauched, and willing to be debauched ; and it is manifest how these provocations, these manners of prostitutes, that inter- change of exchanges and surprises, that carnival of ren- dezvous and suppers, the impudence of the scenes only stopping short of physical demonstration, those songs with their double meaning, that coarse slang shouted loudly and replied to amidst the tableaux vivants, all that stage-imitation of orgie, must have stirred up the inner- most feelings of the habitual practices of intrigue. And what is more, the theatre gave its sanction to their manners. By representing nothing but vice, it authorised their vices. Authors laid it down as a rule that all women were impudent hussies, and that all men were brutes. Debauchery in their hands became a matter of course, very rare a matter of good taste ; they profess it : Eochester and Charles II. could quit the theatre highly edified ; more convinced than they were before that virtue was only a pretence, the pretence of clever rascals who wanted to sell themselves dear." The cleverest of the Comic Dramatists of the Restoration was Sir George Etherege, whose first comedy, " The Comical Eevenge ; or, Love in a Tub," was produced in IGOl, at the Duke's Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It met with a most successful reception, and at once intro- duced its author into Charles ll/s circle of intimate friends. Etherege dedicated it to the accomplished Buck- hurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset, with a graceful com- pliment : "I could not have wished myself more for- tunate than I have been, in the success of this poem : the OHj ENGLAND UNDER CHAELES II. 229 writing of it was a means to make me known to your lord- ship; the acting of it has lost me no reputation; and the printing of it has now given me an opportunity to show you how much I honour you." The ease and liveliness of the dialogue attracted such large audiences to Lincoln^s Inn Fields, that in a single month the manage- ment realized a profit of £1,000. The heroes are Colonel Bruce and Lord Beaufort ; the heroines, Graciana and Aurelia. The object of the author seems to have been " the forcible exhibition of the roarers, scorn ers, gamblers, and cheats who then infested the town, and made the taverns ring day and night with their riots. Mixed up with these rampant scenes is a pure love story, treated more gravely and earnestly than usual." This, however, is the weakest portion of the play. Four years elapsed before Etherege again appealed to the suffrages of the town. His second comedy, " She Would If She Could," 16G8, was ^^ barbarously treated " on the first night, and in our humble opinion deserved the rough treatment it received. Pepys could find "nothing in the world good in it;" and says that "few people were pleased with it." He characterises the plot and de- nouement as "mighty insipid," and the piece as a whole (somewhat contradictory) as " dull, roguish, and witty." By degrees, however, it became popular. Shadwell after- wards pronounced it the best comedy written since the Eestoration ; and Dennis, the critic, eulogised its truth of character and the grace and freedom of its dialogue. Steele, with much pungency and truth, remarks : " I know but one who has professedly written a play upon the basis of the desire of multiplying our species : and that is the polite Sir George Etherege. No author, except him. THE MERRY MONARCH; has put the imaginations of tlie audience upon this one purpose from the beginning to the end of the comedy." In 1676 appeared his third, last, and best comedj,. " The Man of Mode ; or, Sir Fopling Flutter," in which Dorimont stands for the Earl of Eochester, Bellair for Etherege himself,"^ and Sir Fopling for Beau Hewitt, a well-known fine gentleman of the period. There is no doubt as to the ease and cleverness of the dialogue, but the whole plaj is an offence against morality; and it is a curious trait of the times that so libertine a production should have been dedicated to Mary of Modena, then Duchess of York. " It is a perfect contradiction," writes Steele, " to good manners, good sense, and common honesty ; and there is nothing in it but what is built upon the ruin of virtue and innocence. I allow it to be nature, but it is nature in its utmost con-uption and degeneracy." Etherege, who came of a good Oxfordshire family, was born about 1636. After being educated at Cambridge, he travelled abroad ; then studied law for awhile at one of the Inns of Court, and, at the age of 28, made his dehiU as a dramatic author. Having thus gained admission to the society of the wits and rakes of the Eestoration, he expended his time and estate in wild revels in the taverns and the stews, and at the gaming table ; and in the next twelve years wrote only two more comedies. Bankrupt in health and means, he paid his addresses to a wealthy * Spence records the opinion of Etherege's contemporary^ Dean Lockier, that the dramatist intended Dorimont for himself. " Sir George Etherege," he said, " was as thorough a fop as ever I saw ; he was exactly his own Sir Fopling Flutter, and yet he designed Dorimont, the genteel rake of wit, for his own picture." I OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 231 widow, who, it is said, refused to marry him unless he " could make her a lady." He purchased, therefore, " the honour " of knighthood, and to " Sir George " she was induced to give her hand. It may be assumed that he soon dissipated her fortune, since we find him compelled to take refuge from his creditors on the Continent, where, through the Duke of York's influence, he obtained the post of Minister at Ratisbon, and was doomed — " To make grave legs in formal fetters, Converse with fops and write dull letters; To go to bed 'twixt eiglit and nine, And sleep away my procioiis time ; In such an idle, sneaking })lace Where Vice and Folly hide their face.'* At Ratisbon Etherege died about 1694 — breaking his neck by a fall downstairs, when, intoxicated with wine, he was showing out the guests who had shared his drinking bout. Etherege left a daughter by Mrs. Barry, on whom he settled a fortune of £6,000. Se is said to have been a very handsome man, *^fair, slender, and genteel" — a man of " much courtesy and delicate address.'^ Another of the dramatic knights of the Restoration was the Tory cavalier. Sir Francis Fane, who wrote a tragic drama, called '' Sacrifice," a masque, and a comedy, entitled "Love in the Dark" — from which Mrs. Centlivre has taken the character of Indigo, and transplanted it, with improvements, into the comedy of " The Busy- body " as its hero, Marj)lot. '^ A freezing mediocrity " is the characteristic which Sir Walter Scott attributes to the plays of Sir Robert Howard,. the brother-in-law of Dryden, and his collaborateur in '^The Indian Qyeen." Howard, born in 1626, was a 232 THE MEREY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 233 younger son of Thomas, Earl of Berkshire; and, with the rest of his family, espoused the cause of Charles I. throughout the Civil War. For his loyalty he suffered a long imprisonment in Windsor Castle. After the Eestoration he was knighted,"^ was made an auditor of the Exchequer, with a salary of £3,000, and became member for Stockbridge. In the year of the King's return he published a vokime of Poems, containing Pane- gyricks to the King and to General Monk, translations of the fourth book of the jEneid, and of the Achilleis of Statius, a comedy called "The Blind Lady," and a number of indifferent Songs and Sonnets. Prefixed to it were some very eulogistic verses by Dryden, now included in his Epistles, of which we may give a speci- men: — " As there is music uninformed by art In those wild notes which, with a merry heart, The birds in unfrequented shades express, Who, better taught at home, yet i)lea8e us less ; So in your verse a native sweetness dwells, Which shames composure, and its art excels." He refers to Howard's translations : — " Elisa's griefs are so expressed by you, They are too ekxiuent to have been true. Had she so spoke, /Eiiea.s liad obeyed What Dido, rather ihim what Juve had said. If funeral rites can give a ghost repose, Your muse so justly ha> di.seharged those, Elisa's shade may now its wanderiug cease . . . But if ^neas be obliged, no less Your kindness great Achilles doth confess : Who, dressed by Statius in too boki a look, Did ill become those virgin robes he took." Dryden, who, it must be owned, when he paid com- * Howard saved Rochester's life in the skkmish at Cropredy Bridge. pliments, paid them right royally, concludes with a prediction : — " But to write worthy things of worthy men — " (the worthy men being Monk and Charles II). " Is the peculiar talent of your pen : Yet let me take your mantle up, and I Will venture in your right to prophesy. This work, by merit first of fame secure, Is likewise happy in its geniture ; For, since 'tis born when Charles ascends the throne, It shares at once his fortune and its own." It is supposed that Dryden made the acquaintance of Howard through Herringman, the publisher. At all events, after the publication of this poetical eulogium, the knight warmly befriended the poet, and introduced him to the Earl of Berkshire, at Charlton, in Berkshire, where the two worked together on the tragedy of " The Indian Queen," ^ and Dryden secured the heart and hand of Howard's sister Elizabeth. The marriage took place on the 1st of December, 1663, and in the following month, January, 1664, was produced the tragedy, which, with another tragedy, '^ The Vestal Queen," and two comedies, " The Surprisal," and " The Committee," Howard pub- lished in 1665 under the title of "Four New Plays." In the preface to this volume Howard states his argu- ment in favour of the use of blank verse in the drama, in opposition to Dry den's plea for rhymed couplets. " Another way of the ancients," he says, " which the French follow, and our stage has now lately practised, is to write in rhyme; and this is the dispute betwixt many ingenious persons, whether verse in rhyme or verse without the * Evelyn records that, on January 5th, 1664, he saw " The Indian Queen " acted ; a " tragedy well written, so beautiful with rich scenes as the like had never been seen here, or haply (except rarely) elsewhere ia .a mercenary theatre." 234 THE MERRY MONARCH. OR, ENGLAND FNDER CHARLES II. 235 i ^ sound, whicli may be called blank verse (tliougb a hard expression), is to be preferred?" He esteemed both proper, " one for a play, the other for a poem or copy of verses : a blank verse being as much too low for one as rhyme is unnatural for the other : a poem being a premeditated form of thought upon designed occasions, ought not to be impoverished of any harmony iu words or sound ; the other is presented as the effect of accidents not tlioii<4'lit of." Our later dramatists have all been of Howard's opinion ; but Dry den stuck to his colours, and in his ''Essay of Dramatic Poesie," in 1669, a kind of ''ima- ginary conversation " in which Howard figures as Crites, Buckhurst as Eugenius, Sedley as Lisideius, and the poet himself as T^eander, he stoutly contended for dramas in rhyme. Nothing daunted, Howard returned to the charge in his preface to his tragedy, '^ The Great Favourite ; or, The Duke of Lerma/' and had the satisfaction of firing the last shot. This tragedy is remarkable for the force of its satire^ which, without much effort at disguise, is directed against Charles II. and his seraglio. Its resonant periods are caricatured by Fielding in his burlesque of" Tom Thumb." To his play of " The Vestal Virgins ; or, The Eouian Ladies," Howard wrote two endings, one tragical, the other " comical," and left the public to choose between them. His best dramatic effort is his comedy of " The Committee ; or. The Faithful Irishman," in which the humorous aspects of Puritanism are amusingly por- trayed."^ It is the original of the farce of "Honest Thieves," which still keeps the stage. * Pepys speaks of it (June 12th, 1663) as " a merry but indifferent play, only Lacy's part, an Irish footman, is beyond imagination." His bad verses and his personal pretensions exposed Howard to immortal ridicule. Under the name of Bilboa lie was the original hero of "The Eehearsal," though afterwards deposed from the unlucky pre-eminence in favour of Dryden ; and in ShadwelPs play of " The Sullen Lovers " he is satirised as Sir Positive At-All. A stout Whig, Sir Eobert was no bigot, nor was he a servile courtier ; while, in Parliament, he had, as Macaulay admits, " the weight whicli a staunch party man of ample fortune, of illustrious name, of ready utterance, and of resolute spirit will always have." He took an active part in the debates on the Corporation Bill in 1690, and success- fully opposed the decision of the Peers to confirm the illegal sentence passed upon Titus Gates — not that he loved the man, but that he loved the law. He died at the age of 72, in 1698. ^'The solid nonsense that abides all tests." Such, in Dorset's opinion, was the poetry of Sir Eobert^s brother, Edward Howard, the author of several bad plays, and the worse poem of '' Bonduca, The British Princess " (1669), — whom Pope has niched in the Dunciad — " And highborn Howard, more majestic Bire, With Fool of Quality completes the quire." All the wits girded at him — Waller, Eochester, Bucking- ham. He wrote six or seven dramas, which neither his contemporaries nor posterity have been able to appreciate. In his tragedy of '^ The Usurper " he attempted satire on a grand scale, and Damocles is supposed to represent Oliver Cromwell, Cleomenes General Monk, and Hugo de Petra Cromwell's chaplain, Hugh Peters. From one of his comedies Mrs. Inchbald borrowed some of the incidents- in her " Every One Has His Fault." 236 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 237 The third and last of the Berkshire Howards was James Howard, whose "mighty pretty, witty, pleasant, and mirthful comedy" (as Pepys styles it), "The English Monsieur/' is ridiculed in Buckingham's " Eehearsal.'' The hero is represented as smitten with Gallomania, and railing at everything English, whether cookery, clothing, or dancing. He challenges a man for praising an English divine, and, being victorious, boasts—" I ran him through his mistaken palate, which made me think the hand of justice guided my sword." He loves a French lady, who rejects him, but as it was " a denial with a French tone of voice " he finds it positively agreeable. As she takes final leave of him, he turns to a friend, and exclaims: " Do you see, sir, how she leaves us ; she walks away with a French step ! " Of course, he prefers the airy gait of the French ladies to the clumsy shuffling of the English : " I have seen such hojine amie in their footsteps, that the King of France's mditre de danse could not have found fault with any one tread amongst them all. In these walks I find the toes of English ladies ready to tread upon one another." According to some authorities, Thomas Killigrew, wit, dramatist, and courtier, was born at his father's seat, Hanworth Park, near Hounslow; but in a copy of Diodati's Bible, sold in Dean Wellesley's library, in 1866, among several entries on the reverse of the title page, in his own handwriting, is one which distinctly states that he was " born at Lothbury, London," on February the 7th, 1611. He was the son of Sir Eobert Killigrew, Chamber- Iain to Queen Henrietta Maria, and younger brother of Dr. William Killigrew, the friend and servant of Charles I. and II., and author of some dramatic pieces. Thomas was early introduced to Court life, being made a page of honour to Charles I. while in his teens. He married a maid of honour, accompanied Charles II. into exile, and, as groom of the bedchamber, won the young monarch's favour by his wit, and retained it by his subservient profligacy. In opposition to the remonstrances of his sager counsellors, Charles appointed him Eesident at Venice, his chief duty being to obtain loans from the English merchants there; but his shameful vices occasioned such a scandal that the Venetian Government compelled Charles to recall him. He wrote six plays while at Venice ; a feat to which Sir John Denliam alludes in some satiric verses : — " Our Resident Tom From Venice is come, And has left all the statesmen behind him ; Talks at the same })itch, Is as wise, is as rich ; And just where you left him, you find him. But who says he's not A man of much plot May repent of this false accusation ; Having plotted and penned Six plays to attend On the force of his negotiation.'' When Killigrew published, in 1G64, a collection of nine of his plays, he noted, however, that they had been written in as many different cities — London, Paris, Madrid, Eome, Turin, Florence, Venice, Naples, and Basle — which, if true, spoils the j)oint, such as it is, of Sir John Denham's epigram. While Killigrew played the part of pander and jester to Charles, he seems also to have acted as a spy upon him, and to have been in receipt of Judas-money from the Commonwealth Government. Downing, CromwelF& ^38 THE MEREY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 239 ambassador at the Hague, writing to Secretary Tliurloe, in 1658, respecting a clandestine visit of Charles to the Dutch Court, says : — '' As for Charles Stuart having been in Holland, surely you had my memorial thereof : at the very time, I had an account from one Killigrew, of his bedchamber, of every place where he was, and the time, with his stay and company, of which also I gave you an account in mine of the last post : he vowed that it was a journey of pleasure, and that none of the States-General, nor any person of note, of Amsterdam, came to him." After the Restoration Killigrew obtained from the King (in 16G3) a patent empowering him to open a theatre in London, and established himself in Drury Lane at the head of the so-called " King's Company.'^ * He opened it iu August with Beaumont and Fletcher's play of "The Humorous Lieutenant,'^ and the principal actors were Hart, Mohun, Kynaston, Lacy, Bird, Baxter, Hancock, and the Shatterals ; the principal actresses, Mrs. Corry, Hughes, Knipp, the Marshalls, and Uphill. Later additions were Goodman, Haines, Harris, Shirley ; Nell Gwynn and Mrs. Boutell. The members of this company Avere sworn at the Lord Chamberlain's office to serve the King. Ten of the gentlemen were enrolled on the establishment of the Eoyal Household, and provided with liveries of scarlet cloth and silver lace. In the Lord Chamberlain's warrants they were designated '^ Gentle- men of the Great Chamber." As Groom of the Bedchamber to the King and Master * He seems to have had an early pcnc/iant for the drama. Pepys relates : "Tlios. Killigrew's way of gettinff to see playa when he wjis a bf»y. He would go to the lied Bull (the theatre), and when the man cried to the boys, • Who will go and be a devil, and he shall see the play for nothing ? ' then would he go in, and be a devil upon the stage, and so get to see plays." of the Eevels, Killigrew filled no unimportant position at a Court where the great object of everybody, monarch and courtiers, nymphs and gallants, was to devise the best and brightest means four passer le temps. He was of a sprightly and witty humour, says Hamilton, and had the art of telling a story in the most entertaining manner, by the graceful and natural turn he could give it. Charles delighted in his repartees, even when they wounded him to the quick. According to the poet Cowley, who pro- fessed to have been present, Killigrew, on one occasion, publicly told the King that his matters were coming into a very ill state, but that yet there was a way to help all. Says he : " There is a good, honest, able man that I could name, that if your Majesty would employ, and command to see all things well executed, all things would soon be mended; and this is one Charles Stuart, who now spends his time in employing his life about the court, and hath no other employment ; but if you would give him this employ- ment, he were the fittest man in the world to perform it."-^ Entering the Eoyal apartment, one day, booted and spurred, and with riding-whip in hand, he sharply replied to the King's question, whither he was going in such a violent hurry : " To Hell, sir! to fetch up Oliver Crom- well, to look after the afPairs of England, for his successor never will." Another time, when the Council had assembled, and the King, as usual, had not made his appearance, the Duke of Lauderdale hastened to remonstrate with him, but in vain. Eeturning from the presence-chamber, he met Killigrew, who, on being acquainted with his brother's * Pepys' Diary, December Oth, 1666. 240 THE MERRY MONARCH ; errand, offered a wager of £100 that Charles should attend the Council in half an hour. Feeling sure of winning the money, Lauderdale accepted it. Killigrew repaired at once to the King's apartment, and informed him of the whole circumstances. "I know,'' he pro- ceeded, "that your Majesty hates Lauderdale: now, if you only go this once to the Council, I know his covetous disposition so well that, rather than pay the £100, he will hang himself, and never plague you again/' Charles, with a burst of laughter, exclaimed, " Well, Killigrew, I ^positively will go." He kept his word, and Killigrew won his wager. Oldys asserts that he was appointed King's jester ; and Pepys records that he was told, by a Mr. Brisbane, that he had " a fee out of the Wardrobe for cap and bells, under the title of King's Fool or Jester, and may revile or jeer anybody, the greatest person, without offence, by the privilege of his place." But the story is improbable. Killigrew was not without his good impulses and refined tastes. He gave with a lavish hand to the poor, and he was a passionate lover of good music. He showed both tact and enterprise as a theatrical manager. In Pepys there is a note of conversation between the Diarist and the Manager which is full of curious interest. Its date is the 12th of February, 1667 : " Thos. Killigrew tells me," he says, " how the audience at his house is not above half so much as it used to be before the late Fire. That Knii)p is like to make the best actor that ever came upon the stage, she understanding so well : that they are going to give her £30 a year more. That the Stage is now by his pains a thousand times better and more glorious than ever heretofore. Now, wax candles, and many of them : then, OK, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 241 not above 31bs. of tallow : now all things civil, no rude- ness anywhere ; then, as in a bear-garden ; then, two or three fiddlers, now, nine or ten of the best: then, nothing but rushes upon the ground, and everything else mean, now, all otherwise : then the Queen seldom, and the King never, would come ; now, not the King only for state, but all civil people do think they may come as weU as any. He tells me that he hath gone several times (eight or ten times, he tells me) hence to Eome, to hear good music ; so much he loves it, though he never did sing or play a note. That he hath ever endeavoured in the late King's time, and in this, to introduce good music, but he never could do it, there never having been any music here better than ballads. And (he) says ' Hermit poore * and ' Chivy Chese ' [Chevy Chase "^J was all the music we had j and yet no ordinary fiddlers get so much money as ours do here, which speaks our rudeness still. That he hath gathered in Italians from several courts in Christendom, to come to make a concert for the King, which he do give £200 a year apiece to ; but badly paid, and do come in the room of keeping four ridiculous Gnndilows, he having got the King to put them away, and lay out their money this way. And indeed I do com- mend him for it ; for I think it is a very noble under- taking. He do intend to have sometimes of the year these operas to be performed at the two present theatres, since he is defeated in what he intended in Moorfields on purpose for it. And he tells me plainly that the city audience was as good as the court; but now they are most gone." * This was sung to three different airs, of which the most popular was "The hunt is up." VOL. I. B 242 THE MERRr MONARCH; One regrets tliat so good a lover of music should have been implicated with Lord Falmouth, the Earl of Anson, and other so-called ''men of honour," in the shameful attempt to blacken the character of Anne Hjde, Lord Clarendon's daughter, just before the Duke of York's public declaration of their marriage. Killigrew, in his zeal, went further than any in aspersing her chastity, and in writing himself down a villain ; and not the least re- marlvable part of the transaction is the fact that the Duke seems to have taken no umbrage at the slander cast upon his wife. Killigrew died at Whitehall, in his 72nd year, on the 19th of March, 1682. Of his dull and dreary ''Comedies and Tragedies " the only one which is now remembered, *'The Parson's AVedding," owes its incidents in great measure to Shakerly Marmion's comedy of " The Anti- quary.'' It was originally represented wholly by women. By his first wife, Cecilia, daughter of Sir Henry Croft, of Suffolk, and one of Henrietta Maria's maids of honour, he became the father of Henry Killigrew, one of the most reckless libertines of Charles's libertine court. He was usually styled " the younger," to distinguish him from his uncle, Dr. Henry Killigrew, Almoner to the Duke of York, and Master of the Savoy. His name is preserved in our theatrical annals by his once popular play, " The Conspiracy," which both Ben Jonson and Lord Falkland thought worthy of favourable notice. It was revised by the author, and as ** Pallantire and Eudora," republished in 1653. He died about forty years later. John Lacy, the actor, whom Tom D'Urfey celebrates as "the standard of true comedy," was born near Doncaster about 1620. He was trained to be a dancing-master, but ob- OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 243 taining a lieutenant's commission, entered the army, only to quit it, after very brief military service, for the stage. His handsome person and rich racy humour made him a great favourite with the public, while with Charles II. he was in such esteem that the king caused Wright to paint for him that triple portrait which at Hampton Court attracts the curious visitor's gaze. He was the original Teague in Howard's play of " The Committee," and Bayes in Buck- ino-ham's "Rehearsal," while he excelled as Falstaff, and never failed in any character that he undertook. A man with a dangerous satiric gift, he loved those parts in which he could hurl sarcasms at the ill-doings of the courtiers ; and in Howard's " Silent Woman," in which he played Captain Otter, used his tongue so freely that the King, greatly offended, shut him up in the Porter's Lodge. In a few days he was released, and Howard, going behind the scenes to congratulate him, was so roundly abused by the actor, who told him he was "more a fool than a poet," tbat Hov/ard struck him in the face with his glove. Lacy, bursting with rage, brought his cane down upon the head of the unlucky dramatist, who thereupon hastened to the King and made complaint. Charles ordered the theatre to be closed, a punishment which was harder upon Lacy's fellow-actors than upon Lacy himself. Lacy appears in this chapter as a dramatic author : he produced four plays— "The Dumb Lady," 1672; "Old Troop," 1672; "Sir Hercules Buffoon" (posthumous), 1681; and " Sawny the Scot" (also posthumous), in 1691. Leonard wrote and adapted several plays, of which it is necessary to notice only one, "The Counterfeite," because Colley Cibber borrowed from it for his comedy "She Would and She Would Not." 244 THE MEREY MONARCH; Second only to Otwaj among the dramatists of the age was Nathaniel Lee, who, with much bombastic extrava- gance and rant of passion, contrives at times to touch the tenderest chords of the feelings, and elicit a strain of genuine pathos and noble love. The following passage is a specimen of his better style : — " I disdain All pomp when thou art by : far be the noise Of kings and courts from us, whose gentle souls Our kinder stars have steered another way. Free as the forest birds we'll pair together, Fly to the arbours, grots, and flowery meads, And, in soft murmurs, interchange our souls : Together drink the crystal of the stream, Or taste the yellow fruit which Autumn yields ; And when the golden evening calls us home, Wing to our downy nest, and sleep till mom." There is enough merit in Lee's dramatic productions^ notwithstanding their fustian and occasional incoherence, to justify the kindly criticism in Eochester's " Trial of the Poets ":— " Nat Lee stepped in next, in hopes of a prize, Apollo rememb'ring he had cut once in thrice. By the rubies in's face he could not deny But he had as much wit as wine would supply ; Confessed that indeed he had a musical note, But sometimes strained so hard that it rattled in the throat ; Yet owo'd he had sense, and t' encourage him for't He made him his Ovid in Augustus's court." Nathaniel Lee was the son of Dr. Richard Lee, of Hat- field, in Herts, and was born about 1657. He was edu- cated at Westminster, and afterwards at Trinity College, Cambridge, where, in 1668, he took his degree of B.A. Four years later he came up to London, relying, it is said, upon the Duke of Buckingham's promises, and failed as an actor, owing to nervousness. It is on record that he played Duncan in *^ Macbeth." He next took to writing OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 245 II for the stage, and from 1675 to 1684 produced a play annually. Over-work, excitement, and intemperance brought on an attack of insanity, and he was confined in Bethlehem Hospital until 1688. He resumed his labours as a dramatist, though subject to fits of partial derange- ment; fell into extreme poverty, and was saved from starvation only by a weekly pittance of ten shillings allowed to him by one of the theatres. He died in 1691, falling down, one winter night, in the snow, when drunk, and perishing of the cold before discovered. That he could answer a fool according to his folly we learn from a well-known anecdote. A fine gentleman who saw him during his confinement in Bedlam, observed: "It is an easy thing to write like a madman." "No," answered Lee, "it is not an easy thing to write like a madman ; but it is very easy to write like a fool." Mrs. Siddons was a great admirer of the dramatic power of " poor Nat Lee." She read his best tragedy, " Theodosius ; or. The Force of Love," with such pathos that her hearers could not repress their tears. His great defect, his extravagance of imagery and diction, is hinted at in Dryden's complimentary lines on his "Eival Queens; or, the Death of Alexander the Great"— in which Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Boutell had their famous quarrel— when he encourages him to despise those critics who condemn " The too much vigour of his youthful excuse." And that he was not unaware of his weakness is evident from his dedication of "Theodosius," where he says: " It has often been observed against me that I abound in ungoverned fancy ; but I hope the world will pardon the sallies of youth : age, despondency, and dulness come too fast of themselves. I discommend no man for keeping 246 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 247 tlie beaten road ; but I am sure the noble liunters that follow the game must leap hedges and ditches sometimes, and run at all, or never come into the full of a quarry." Addison censures Lee for a mock sublimity, but as he includes Shakespeare in the censure, it loses much of its effect,—" in those authors," says the condescending critic, " the affectation of greatness often hurts the perspicuity of style." His plays were very popular with the audiences of his time, and the turgidity of their language and senti- ment w^as forgotten in the interest of their situations. They possess, as Campbell remarks, a much more frequent capability for stage effect than a mere reader would be apt to infer from the superabundance of the poet's extra- vagance. His best plays are " Nero," 1G75 ; "The Rival Queens," 1677; "Theodosius; or. The Force of Love," 1680; " Mithridates ; " ^^The Princess of Cleeves," 1680 ; "The Massacre of Paris," 16D0; and ^^ Lucius Junius Brutus." He assisted Dryden in the composition of " (Edipus," 1679, and " The Duke of Guise," 1683. Maidwell, a schoolmaster, produced the comedy of "The Loving Enemies," which he made "designedly dull," he says, " lest by satirising folly the author might bring upon his skull the bludgeon of fools." Matthew Medbourne, the actor, in 1670, put upon the stage a close translation of Moliere's inimitable " Tar- tuffe," ^ which was acted with much success, and thus led the way for Gibber's '^ Nonjuror," 1717, and Bickerstaffe's "Hypocrite," 1768. He was a Eoman Catholic, and his religious zeal afforded Titus Gates an excuse for implicat- ing him in the " Popish Plot." * A translation in verse, by John Oxenford, was brought out at the Ilay- market in 1851. Il 'Wf Among the playwrights of the period must not be foro'otten the eccentric Huguenot refugee, Pierre Antoine Motteux, whom the revocation of the edict of Nantes drove to England in IGGO. He established himself in London, and by his industry and talent, throve so vigorously that he became the owner of a large East India warehouse in Leadenhall Street, while throu4-h his knowledge of foreign languages he was employed as a clerk in the foreign department of the Post Gfiice. According to Sir Water Scott, he added to these voca- tions the trade of a bookseller, and also found leisure to play the part of a fast man about town, to edit " The Gentleman's Journal," to wander into feeble poetical efforts, and to compose some seventeen comedies, farces, and musical interludes which had their little day. One of these, called " Novelty," was novel at least in con- struction, since in each of its five acts it presented an independent plot. In the same mood of eccentricity he projected an opera, " The Loves of Europe," which was to exhibit the different methods of love-making pursued by the various European nations. To his one tragedy, " Beauty in Distress," * Dryden makes a complimentary reference in his '^Twelfth Epistle " (169S) :— " The public voice Has equalled thy performance with thy choice. Time, action, place, are so preserved by thee. That e'en Coracille might with envy see The alliance of his Tripled Unity. Thy incidents, perhaps, too thick are sown; But too much plenty is thy fault alone. At least but two can that good crime commit, Thou in design, and Wycherly in wit." This modified praise might pass, but the poet soon * It was played by Betterton's company in the Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. THE MERRY MONARCH permits Ms friendly ^ood-nature to blunt his critical per- ceptions. He continues in a strain of absurd exaggera- tion : — " Let thy own Gauls condemn thee, if they dare. . . . Their tongue enfeebled, is refined too much ; And, like pure gold, it bends at every touch : Our sturdy Teuton yet will art obey, More fit for manly thought, and strengthened with allay. But whence art thou inspired, and thou alone, To flourish in an idiom not thy own ? It moves our wonder, that a foreign guest Should overmatch the most and match the best. In under-praising thy deserts, I wrong ; Here find the first deficience of our tongue : Words, once my stock, are wanting, to commend So great a poet, and so good a friend." The best work done by Motteux was his translations of Rabelais and of " Don Quixote," of both of which good use has been made by later adaptors. He died under discreditable circumstances, in 1718. William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle — best remem- bered, perhaps, by the romantic biography in which his Duchess has celebrated his virtues and achievements and her own affection and vanity—was born in 1592. At an early age he attracted the attention of James VI. by his accomplishments and undoubted talents, and in 1620 was made Baron Ogle and Viscount Mansfield. Charles I. raised him to the higher dignity of Earl of Newcastle, and placed in his charge the Prince of Wales. At the outbreak of the Civil War the Earl showed his gratitude to the royal house to which he owed his advancement by pouring £10,000 into the King's treasury, and raising, at his own charge, a troop of 200 men, known, from their uniform, as his " Whitecoats.'' In 1642 Charles appointed him to the command of all the royalist OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 249 forces in the northern and midland coimties, and the Earl justified the appointment by a vigorous exhibition of military capacity. He swept the Parliamentary army out of Yorkshire, and crossed the Humber, after inflicting a severe defeat upon Fairfax at Atherton Moor, near Brad- ford (June 30th, 1643). He recovered the towns of Gainsborough, Lincoln, and Beverley, but failed in an attack upon Hull. Eaised to the rank of Marquis for those achievements, he marched northward to oppose the advance of the Scots, but was ultimately compelled to throw himself into York, where he withstood a three months' siege, until relieved by the arrival of Prince Eupert. As is well known, he counselled the Prince not to attack the R oundheads, but to retire southward. The Prince, however, insisted on fighting, and was crushed by Cromwell and Fairfax at Marsten Moor on the 2nd of July, 1644. Concluding that no battle would be fought that day — for it was evening when the two armies came into conflict — the Marquis had retired to his couch, and was reposing peacefully, when " a great noise and thunder of shooting gave him notice of the armies being en- gaged. Whereupon he immediately put on his arms, and was no sooner got on horseback but he beheld a dismal sight ; the King's right wing being irretrievably broken '' by the charge of CromwelFs Ironsides. With due speed he hastened to see "in what posture his own regiment of Whitecoats was." On the way he met his old troop of gentlemen volunteers. " Gentlemen,^' he said, " you have done me the honour to choose me your Captain, and now is the fittest time that I may do you service ; wherefore, if you'll follow me, I shall lead you on the best I can, and show you the way to your own honour." 250 THE MERRY MONARCH; But lie could not stem tlie tide of battle wliich liad turned against the Eojalists, tliong-li in the final charge it was Ms regiment which offered the stoutest resistance. Again and again the Rouiiort, the latter of whom had saved himself with mucli dithculty. Rupert asked how the business went ? '* All is lost and gone upon our side," said the Marquis. '^I am sure my men fought well," rejoined the Prince, *^aiid know no reason of our rout but this, because the devil did help his servants ! " "What will you do ?" said General King. " I will rally my men " iC And wliat will Lord Newcastle do ? " Dis- gusted at the turn of affairs, ;nid at the obstinacy which had led to so fatal a defeat, the Marquis answered that he would go into Holland. Accordingly, he crossed the seas, and remained abroad until the Restoration. His ffreat estates having been confiscated by the Parliament, he and his wife (to whom he had been married at Paris in 1G45) were reduced to extreme poverty, and at one time forced to pawn their clothes and jewels to keep the wolf from the door. At the Restoration he recovered his estates, was made a Duke in 16G1, and lived in that sustained magnificence which the Cavendishes have always affected. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 251 He died in 1676 — three years after his ^^high-souled Duchess" and a stately monument in Westminster Abbey preserves the memory of a noble couple, whose loyalty and pure affection and high culture are refreshing to contemplate among the vices and meannesses of the Caroline period. The Duke wrote, in 1657, a treatise on Horsemanship, "Le Methode et Invention Nouvelle de dresser les Chevaux/^ of which an English translation was pub- lished in 1667. He gains a place in our record, however, through his comedies, " The Country Captain/' " Variety," " The Humorous Lovers/' and " The Triumphant Widow ; or. The Medley of Humours." Pepys speaks contemptu- ously of " The Humorous Lovers" — he ascribes it to the Duchess, whom he seems to have strongly disliked — as '* a silly play ; the most silly thing that ever came ui)on a stage.-" But in all these comedies there are sketches of characters and amusing incidents which would make the fortune of a modern dramatist. The Duke was ignorant of stage-craft, but he had seen much of men and manners, and had evidently a fine faculty of observation. A famous character of the chivalrous Duke has been written by Lord Clarendon. We have already referred to the life written by the Duchess (1667)— a book which held a high place among Charles Lamb's favourites. Horace Walpole says of it : — " It is equally amusing to hear her sometimes compare her lord to Julius Caesar, and oftener to acquaint you with such anecdotes as in what sort of a coach he went to Amsterdam. The touches on her own character are inimitable. She says that it pleased God to command his servant Nature to endue her with a poetical and philosophical genius, even from her birth.''^ 252 THE MERRY MONARCH; She wrote numerous plays, poems, and miscellaneous compositions. At Trotton, near Midhurst, where his father, the Eev. Humphrey Otway (afterwards rector of Woolbeding), was curate, Thomas Otway, one of the greatest of English dra- matists of the second class, was bom on the 3rd of March, 1651. He was educated at Winchester School, and at Christ Church, Oxford ; but left the University without taking a degree, made his way to London, and tried his fortune on the stage in the same year as Nat Lee (1672). Through lack of confidence, he failed in his first part, the King in Mrs. Behn's " Jealous Bridegroom,'^ and then tried his hand at dramatic writing. His first tragedy " Alcibiades," was produced in 1675; and in the same year appeared his " Don Carlos," which ran for thirty nights, and filled for awhile the author's empty pockets. The plot was derived (as is that of Schiller's tragedy) from the Abbe de St. Eeal's "Dom Carlos, Nouvelle Historique," published in 1672. From Eacine's " Bere- nice ^' he adapted, with considerable modifications, his tragedy of " Titus and Berenice,'^' and, about the same time, published a clever version of Molifere's comedy, " The Cheats of Scapin." This was in 1667 ; and, in the same year Lord Plymouth procured for him a cornetcy in a regiment of dragoons, which he accompanied to Flanders. He was soon cashiered for his irregularities, and, return- ing to London, resumed the precarious profession of a dramatic author. His comedy of " Friendship in Fashion," wholly unworthy of his genius, was followed by his tragedy of " Caius Marius," in which he amalga- mated a good deal of Shakespeare's " Romeo and Juliet," OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 255 adapting it to the "polite taste" of the French school. Juliet becomes Lavinia ; Mercutio, Salpitius ; and Romeo, Marius Junior. It is strange enough that the perpetrator of this wretched literary fraud should have produced, in the same year, the really beautiful tragedy of " The Orphan," which is full of tender and pathetic writing, though unfortunately its plot, and sometimes its language, unfits it for presentation before a modern audience."^ Moniraia, however, is a character in which a great actress can always command the feelings of her audience. There is an admirable touch of pathos in her dying words : " How my head swims ! 'Tis very dark ; good-night." Otway reaches the high- water mark of his genius in his celebrated tragedy of "Venice Preserved "f (1682), the suggestion of which came from St. Real's " Historic de la Conjuration que les Espagnols formerentin 1618, contre la Republique de Yenise," published in 1674. It contains three characters, Belvidera, Jaffier, and St. Pierre, which are distinct creations. The plot, one of deep and harrow- ing interest, is skilfully developed, and the final catas- trophe admirably worked out ; the versification is fluent, forcible, and sometimes coloured with true poetry ; while the stronger passions of the heart are portrayed by a powerful hand. Belvidera is a beautiful type of self- sacrificing womanhood ; " she has given herself wholly, and is lost as in an abyss of adoration for him whom she has chosen — can but love, obey, weep, suffer — and who dies like a flower plucked from the stalk, when her arms * Johnson speaks of it as, in his time, " one of the few plays that keep possession of the stage. It is a domestic tragedy, drawn from middle life. Its whole power is upon the affections." f Closely imitated by La Fosse in his '* Manlius.** 254 THE MERRY MONARCH; are torn from tlie neck around wliicli she lias locked tliem." Is there not exquisite tenderness in the following passage ? : — " Bdvidera. — My lord, my love, my rcfuixe ! Hapiiy my eyes when tlifv Ix'Uold thy face I My heiivy heart will cviisc its doL'tu] beating At siit,dit of thee, and bound with sfirightly joys. Oh, smile as when our l()v<> were in their spring, And cheer my fainting >ou] ! Jqffier.—As wiien our loves Were in tlieir spring 1 Has, then, my fortune changed thee ? Art thou not, I'elvidera, still the same, Kind, good, and teiidt-r, as my arms iirst found thee? If thou art altered, wliero shall I have harbour? Where ease my loaded heart / Oh. where complain? Uel, — Does this a{){)ear likeehange, or love decaying, When thus I throw inyselt into thy bosom, With all the resolution of strong truth ? I joy more in thee Than did tliy motlier, when she hugged thee first, And blessed the god ill her travail past. J^aff. — Can there iu women In- -uch glorious faith? Sure, all ill stories of thy sex are false ! Oh, woman ! lovely w(»iiian ! Nature made thee To temper man : we had hftii hnites without you ! Angels are painted fair, to look like you : Tliere's in you all that we believe of heaven ; Amazing briglitness, purity, and truth. Eternal joy and everlasting love! Bel, — If love be treasure, we'll he wondrous rich. Oh, lead me to some desert, wide and wild, Barren as our misfortunes, w here my soul May have its vent, where I may tell aloud To the high heavens, and every list'ning planet, With what a boundless stock my bosom's fraught! Jaff. — Belvidera I doubly I'm a beggar: Undone by fortune, and in debt to thee. Want, worldly want, that hungry meagre fiend, Is at my heels, and chases me in view. Canst thou bear cold and hun-er .' Can those limbs, Framed for the tender ollices of love, Endure the bitter gripes of stnarting poverty? When banislied by our mis'ii'-s abroad — As suddenly we shall be— to ^cek out In some far climate, where our names are strangers, OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 255 For charitable succour, wilt thou then, When in a bed of straw we shrink together, An»i the bleak winds shall whistle round our heads ; Wilt thou then talk thus to me ? Wilt thou then Hush my cares thus, and shelter me with love? 2?e/. — Oh 1 I will love, even in madness love thee ! Tliough my distracted senses should forsake me, I'd find some intervals when my poor heart Should 'suage itself , and be let loose to thine. Though the bare earth be all our resting-place, Its roots our food, some cliff our habitation, I'll make this arm a pillow for thine head ; And as thou sighing liest, and swelled with sorrow. Creep to thy bosom, pour the balm of love Into thy soul, and kiss thee to thy rest ; Then praise our God, and watch thee till the morning. jaff". — Hear this, you heavens, and wonder how you made her ! lieign, reign, ye monarchs, that divide the world ; Busy rebellion ne'er will let you know Tranquillity and happiness like mine ; Like gaudy ships, the obsequious billows fall And rise again, to lift you in your pride ; They wait but for a storm, and then devour you 1 1, in my private bark already wrecked, Like a poor merchant, driven to unknown land, That had, by chance, packed up his choicest treasure In one dear casket, and saved only tliat : Since I must wander further on the shore, Thus hug my little, but my precious store, Kesolved to roam and trust my fate no more." It is certain that writing like this, so smooth and tender, the English stage was not to know again for nearly two centuries. A life withered by alternations of excess and want Otway closed tragically, at the early age of 34, on the 14th of April, 1685. To escape a debtor's prison he had taken refuge in the Bull, a public-house on Tower Hill^ where, in the stress of his hunger, he was fain (it is said) to solicit a shilling from a gentleman, who gave him a guinea; and buying bread, he choked himself, in his eagerness, with the first mouthful. According to another 256 THE MERRY MONARCH; account, lie died of fever, caused by fatigue, and by bis drinking water wben over-beated, Wbatever tbe manner of bis deatb, it is certain tbat be died destitute and friend- less. Otway, as we bave said, is seen at bis best in " Tbe Orpban " and *' Venice Preserved."* It was in tbese two plays only tbat be did justice to bis indubitable dramatic power. In bis otber efforts be sbowed bimself a man of bis time ; tbe picture is blurred by coarseness of colour- ing ; tbe Satyr's boof peeps out beneatb tbe Muse's robe. " Like tbe rest, be writes obscene comedies, ' Tbe Soldier's Fortune,' * Tbe Atbeist,' ' Friendsbip in Fasbion.' He depicts coarse and vicious cavaliers, rogues on prin- ciple, as barsb and corrupt as tbose of Wycberley, — Beau- gard, wbo vaunts and practices tbe maxims of Hobbs ; tbe fatber, an old, corrupt rascal, wbo brags of bis morality, and wbom bis son coldly sends to tbe dogs witli a bag of crowns ; Sir Jolly Jumble, a kind of base Falstaff, a pander by profession, wbom tbe courtesans call ' papa, daddy,' wbo, if be sits but at tbe table witb one, be'll be making nasty figures in tbe napkins:^' Sir Davy Dunce, a dis- gusting animal, " wbo bas sucb a breatb, one kiss of bim were enougb to cure tbe fits of tbe motber ; ^tis worse tban assafoetida. Clean linen, be says, is unwbolesorae .... be is continually eating of garlic, and cbewing tobacco ; Polydore, wbo, enamoured of bis fatber's ward, tries to force ber in tbe first scene, envies tbe brutes, and makes up bis mind to imitate tbem on tbe next occasion."t A great Englisb writer made it bis boast and consolation * We must note that Antonio in '* Venice Preserved," is intended for the celebrated Earl of Shaftesbury, whose latter years were spent in the coarsest sensuality. t Taine, " Hist. Eng. Literature," iii., 41, 42. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 257 tbat be bad not written a line wbicb, on bis deatb-bed, be would wisb to blot. Alas, poor Otway ! Tbere are pages upon pages on wbicb, wben dying, be must bave longed to pour a flood of concealing ink ! ^ Samuel Pordage was tbe son of a Berksbire clergyman, wbo lost bis living in 1654 on suspicion of conversing witb evil spirits. He bred bis son up to tbe law, and tbe young lawyer publisbed, in 1660, a volume of poems, and an annotated translation of Seneca's '*Troades." He was also tbe autbor of two dull tragedies, " Herod and Mari- amne," 1673, and '' Tbe Siege of Babylon," 1678 ; and of a reply to Dryden's "Absolom and Acbitopbel," wbicb be entitled " Azaria and Eusbai." In tbis be represents Monmoutb as Azaria, Cromwell as Zabad, Cbarles as Amazia, Sbaftesbury as Husbai, and Dryden as Sbimei : — " Sweet was the muse that did his wit inspire, Had he not let his hackney muse to hire." • Hallam says of Otway's two famous plays that they will generally be reckoned the best tragedies of this period [the Restoration]. " They have both a deep pathos, springing from the intense and unmerited distress of women ; both, especially the latter, have a dramatic eloquence, rapid and flowing, with less of turgid extravagance than we find in Otway's contem- poraries, and sometimes with very graceful poetry. The story of the Orphan is domestic, and borrowed, as I believe, from some French novel, though I do not at present remember where I have read it ; it was once popular on the Btage, and gave scope for good acting, but is unpleasing to the delicacy of our own age. Venice Preserved is [was] more frequently represented than any tragedy after those of Shakespeare ; the plot is highly dramatic in con- ception and conduct ; even what seems, when we read it, a defect, the shift- ing of our wishes, or perhaps rather of our ill-wishes, between two parties, the senate and the conspirators, who are redeemed by no virtue, does not, as is shown by experience, interfere with the spectator's interest. Pierre indeed is one of those villains for whom it is easy to excite the sympathy of the half -principled and the inconsiderate. But the great attraction is in the character of Belvidere; and when that part is represented by such as we remember to have seen, no tragedy is honoured by such a tribute, not of tears alone, but of more agony than many would seek to endure. The ver- Bification of Otway, like that of most in this period, runs almost to an excess into the line of eleven syllables, sometimes also into the sdrucciolo form, or twelve syllables with a dactylic close."— *' History of Literature of Europe," iv., i^85, 286. VOL. I. S 258 THE MEREY MONARCH; Pordage, as land-steward to tlie Earl of Pembroke, found his true vocation. To an obscure dramatist, named Nevil Payne, we owe tbree plays which, in their time, enjoyed a moderate degree of popularity : — '' Fatal Jealousy," in which Nokes gained bis sohriqnet of " Nurse Nokes ; " " The Morning Eamble,^' produced in 1673; and "The Siege of Constan- tinople,^^ a tragedy, whicb was made the vehicle of a severe attack upon Lord Shaftesbury. Major Thomas Porter, one of the roystering men about town, showed some dramatic talent in his play, "The Villain,"— in whicb Sandford, as famous in his day for playing villains as the redoubtable 0. S. Smith in the palmy time of Adelphi melodrama, earned great applause, —and in bis lively comedy of " The Carnival." He figured in a tragedy of real life, thus described by Pepys : — July 29, 1667. He and his great friend, Sir Henry Bellassis, were talking together . . . "and Sir H. Bel- lassis talked a little louder than ordinary to Tom Porter, giving of bim some advice. Some of the company stand- ing by said, ' What ! are they quan-elling, that they talk so bigb ? ' Sir H. Bellassis, hearing it, said, ' No ! ^ says he : ^ I would have you know I never quarrel, but I strike : and take that as a rule of mine ! ' ' How ? ' says Tom Porter, ' strike ! I would I could see the man in England tbat durst give me a blow ! ' with that Sir H. Bellassis did give him a box of the ears ; and so they were going to figbt there, but were hindered." . . . Dryden's boy was then employed to find out in what direction Bellassis went, and the infuriate Major overtook him in Covent Garden. . . " Tom Porter, being informed that Sir H. Bellassis' coach was coming, went down out of the coffee- OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 259 bouse where he staid for the tidings, and stopped tbe coach, and bade Sir H. Bellassis come out. ' Why,' says H. Bellassis, ' you will not hurt me coming out, will you ? ' * No,' says Tom Porter. So out he went, and botb drew." Tom Porter soon passed his sword through the body of tbe knight, who, feeling that tbe wound was mortal, called the Major to him, kissed bim, and witb chivalrous resolu- tion, kept his feet — that he might effect his escape un- molested. As soon as he saw tbat his friend was safe, be fell back in a swoon from loss of blood. Ten days after- wards he died. The Major recovered from his wounds, and the date of bis death is uncertain. Thomas Eawlins, the " engraver of the Mint," publisbed in 1648, a volume of poems, entitled "Calanthe," and was the author of " Tom Essence," a comedy, 1677, and of a tragedy, " Tbe Eebellion," which its loyal senti- ments made temporarily popular. He was not a pro- fessional author, and was fond of declaring that "be had no desire to be known by a threadbare coat, having a calling tbat would maintain it worthy " Edward Eevet was tbe autbor of the comedy of " Tbe Town Sbifts." Thomas Rymer's name is beld in good repute as that of tbe learned editor of the " Fsedera, Conventiones, et Cujuscunque Generis Acta Publica inter Reges Angliae et alios Principes," a work of inestimable value to tbe historian. He was born in Yorkshire in 1638 ; educated at the Northallerton Grammar School, and at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge ; and became a member of Gray's Inn, 1686. That a man might be a lawyer and an antiquary, and yet not a successful dramatist, he proved by bis tragedy of " Edgar ; or, The Englisb Monarch,'' 260 THE MERRY MONARCH; publislied (because no manager would act it) in 1678. It is written in rhyme, and « after the manner of the ancients," and Eymer fondly hoped that it would depose Shakespeare from his pride of place ! He ventilated his erroneous views of the dramatic art in his critique on "The Tragedies of the Last Age/'* 1678, which, accord- ing to him, were defective in every particular. His taste and discrimination as a critic may be inferred from his assertion that '* in the neighing of a horse or the growl- ing of a mastiff, there is a meaning ; there is as lively expression, and, may I say, more humanity than many times in the tragical frights of Shakespeare I " Still more completely to write himself down an ass, he adds : — " I have thought our poetry of the last age as rude as our architecture; one cause thereof might be, that Aris- totle's treatise of poetry has been so little studied amongst us." He speaks of Milton's " Paradise Lost " as that " which some are pleased to call a poem ! " Poor Eymer ! It was well for him when he was appointed historiographer to King William in 1692, and his talents were directed into a fitting channel. With laudable industry and fine scholarship he carried out Montague and Lord Somers' scheme of a collection of public docu- ments relating to the foreign affairs of England. Eymer died on the 14th of December, 1714. *' The first boy-poet of our age," as Dry den calls young Saunders in his epilogue to the boy-poet's "Tamerlane the Great/' never fulfilled his early promise. He pro- duced this tragedy, and was heard of no more— like * " The Tragedies of the last age considered and examined by the Practice of the Ancients, and by the Common Sense of All Ages." The plays criticised are Beaumont and Fletcher's " RoUo," " King and No King," and "Maid's Tragedy." OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 261 the poet in Bailey's "Festus,'' who, after writing his one great poem, " fell into himself," and was thence- forward silent. The character of Doeg in Dry den's great satire of "Absalom and Achitophel " is intended, as everybody knows, for Elkanah Settle, a poet of some note in his day, though now remembered only as pilloried by Dryden : — " Doeg, though without knowing how or why, Made still a blundering kind of melody ; Spurred boldly on, and dashed through thick and thin, Through sense and nonsense, never out or in ; Free from all meaning, whether good or bad, And, in one word, heroically mad : He was too warm on pi eking- work to dwell, But f agotted his notions as they fell. And if they rhymed and rattled, all was well. Spiteful he is not, though he wrote a satire. For still there goes some thinking to ill-nature : He needs no more than birds and beasts to think — All his occasions are to eat and drink. . . . Railing in other men may be a crime But ought to pass for more instinct in time ; Instinct he follows, and no further knows, For to write verse with him is to transpose. . . . Let him rail on, let his invective muse Have four-and-twenty letters to abuse, Which, if he jumbles to one line of sense, Indict him of a capital offence. In fireworks give him leave to vent his spite, These are the only serpents he can write ; The height of his ambition is, we know. But to be master of a puppet show ; On that one stage bis works may yet appear. And a month's harvest keep him all the year." Elkanah Settle was born at Dunstable in 1648, and in his eighteenth year entered at Trinity College, Oxford, which he left, however, without taking a degree. Fired with ambitious hopes he went to London, and like many other clever young men, turned to his pen as the weapon with which prosperity and fame were to be achieved. In 262 THE MEEEY MONAECH ; OE, ENGLAND TJNDEE CHAELES II. 263 politics he took up Whig principles, and some political pamphlets made his name known. In 1671, he produced his first play, *' Cambjses," which Eochester patronised for the purpose of provoking Dryden ; and the brilliant noble also lent his powerful support to Settle's tragedy of *^The Empress of Morocco," written, a la Frangaise, in rhymed couplets.* His success inflamed his vanity, and in the dedication to his play he had the audacity to gird at Dryden^s habit of introducing his dramas to the public with critical reviews and summaries. '*^My Lord," he said, "whilst I trouble you with this kind of discourse, I beg you would not think I design to give rules to the Press as some of our like have done to the Stage." John Crowne, with assistance from Dryden and Shadwell, compiled a severe expose of Settle's tragedy, to which Settle briskly rejoined, much to the amusement of the public. That he had wounded Dryden to the quick is evident from the poet's savage attack upon him : — " He's an animal of most deplored understanding, with- out reading and conversation. His being is in a twilight of sense, and some glimmering of thought which we can never fashion into wit or English. His style is boisterous and rough-hewn, his rhyme in- corrigibly lewd, and his numbers harsh and ill-sounding. The little talent he has is fancy. He sometimes labours with a thought ; but, with the pudder he makes to bring it into the world, it is commonly still-born ; so that for want of learning and elocution he will never be able to express anything justly or naturally." Nothing daunted. Settle continued to put his plays upon the stage, and, * It was 80 much admired, that' the ladies and gentlemen of the Court learned it by heart, to play before the King at Whitehall. I I . i as he was not wanting in invention, most of them ob- tained a temporary popularity. " Ibraham, the Illustrious Bassa" he founded on Magdeleine de Scuderi's two- volume romance, with the same title ; '' Pastor Fido," on Guarini's pastoral drama. He also wrote " Love and Eevenge," "The Conquest of China by the Tartars," "FatJl Love," and '^Tlie Female Prelate, being a History of the Life and Death of Pope Joan." He compiled fifteen plays in all. If deficient in genius, Settle did not lack courage, and to Dryden's " Absalom and Achitophel," in which, as we have seen, he was gibbetted as Doeg, he replied, on behalf of the Whigs, with " Absalom Senior ; or Absalom and Achitophel Transposed " (1681). In his latter days he was overtaken by misfortune, owing, perhaps, to his want of principle ; for, on the accession of James IL, he who as a Whig had superin- tended the fireworks at the burning of the Pope's effigy, produced a panegyrical poem on the Coronation of James n. (1685). The Eevolution of 1688 left the turncoat without friends, and he was thankful to accept a small pension as the city poet for a " Triumph of London/* written every Lord Mayor's Day. As he advanced in years his poverty increased ; he wrote low " drolls " for the shows at Bartholomew Fair, and even acted the part of a dragon, enclosed in a green leather case of his own invention, to which Young alludes — " Poor Elkanah, all other changes past, For bread in Smilbfield dragons hissed at last; Spit streams of fire to make the butchers gape, And found his manners suited to his shape." He died in the Charterhouse on the 12th of February, 264 THE MERRY MONARCH ; 1724. Five years later Pope, in The Dunciad levelled a final insult at the unfortunate poetaster : " Now, Night descending, the proud scene was o'er, But lived in Settle's numbers one day more." He had previously attacked him as " the author of a poem entitled * Successio.' " " Codeus writes on," he says, " and will for ever write." He adds : " The heaviest Muse the swiftest course has gone, As clocks run fastest when most lead is on. What though no bees around your cradle flew, Nor on your lips distilled their golden dew; Yet have we oft discovered in their stead A Bwarm of drones that buzzed about your head." We are hardly justified in including Shirley among the Eestoration dramatists ; intone and sentiment he belonged to the great Elizabethan school, of which he was the last, and not altogether an unworthy member. But he lived on into Charles's reign, and his plays were sometimes produced for the edification of Charles's Court, which, while listening to their healthy and vigorous poetry, must have felt in the presence of a fresh new atmosphere. James Shirley was born in London about 1594, nine years before the death of " great Elizabeth." He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, and St. John's College, Oxford, where Laud (its president) refused to ordain him, because he was disfigured by a mole on the left cheek. He then removed to St. Catharine's Hall, Cambridge, took orders, and held a cure near St. Albans until he went over to the Eoman Communion. After brief experience of a school- master's life in the Grammar School at St. Albans, he repaired to London, and began to write for the stage. His culture and dramatic skill, and his Catholic profes- sion, secured him the patronage of Henrietta Maria, and he throve vigorously until the outbreak of the Civil War. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 265 His fertility was amusing ; drama after drama proceeded from his prolific, but by no means feeble pen : — " Love Tricks,'^ 1625; ''The Wedding," 1629; "The Grateful Servant," 1630; "The School of Compliment," 1631; "The Changes," 1632 ; "A Contention for Honour and Eiches," 1633; "The Witty Fair One," "The Bird in a Cage," " The Triumph of Peace," " The Night Walkers " (adapted from Fletcher), all in 1633. In 1635 appeared " The Traitor," which, on October 10th, 1661, Mr. Pepys saw " most admirably acted," and thought " a most excel- lent play ; " and in 1637, " The Lady of Pleasure," "The Young Admiral," "The Example," "Hyde Park," and "The Gamester." When the Master of the Eevels licensed " The Young Admiral," he entered in his register his formal approval of its freedom from obscenity and profaneness, trusting that the exceptional commendation would encourage the poet " to pursue this beneficial and cleanly way of poetry." Evelyn in his Diary refers to this play as having been acted before the King in October, 1662. " The Gamester," a comedy of genuine merit, was founded on one of Malespini's " Ducento Novelle ; " and its success has led to its revival on three separate occa- sions—as "The Wife's Eelief; or. The Husband's Cure," adapted by Charles Johnson, in 1711; as " The Gamester," in 1758, by Garrick; and as "The Wife's Stratagem," in 1827, by John Poole. The comedy of " Hyde Park " is characterised by Alexander Dyce as " a finished specimen, replete with airy, sparkling wit." Pepys notes (on July 11th, 1668) that " he went to see an old play of Shirley^s called Eyde ParJc, where horses are brought upon the stage; but it is a very moderate play, only an excellent epilogue spoke by Beck Marshall." 266 THE MERRY MONARCH ; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 267 In 1637 Shirley went to Dublin, and supplied plays for tlie new theatre, opened by Ogilby, whom lie afterwards assisted in translating Homer and Virgil. Eeturning to London in 1638, at the opening of the Civil War, he exchanged his pen for his sword, and fought under the chivalrous Earl of Newcastle, whom he helped, according to Anthony Wood, in the composition of his dramas. The success of the Commonwealth party closed the theatres, and Shirley was obliged to resume his old profession as a schoolmaster, in which he continued after the Restoration. Driven from his house in Whitefriars by the Great Fire, he and his wife were so overwhelmed by anxiety and alarm that they both died on the same day in October, 1666. Besides the plays already mentioned he wrote *'The Eoyal Master," 1638; "The Duke's Mistress," 1638; "The Maid's Revenge," 1639 ; ''The Tragedy of Chabot, Admiral of France," 1639; "The Ball," in which he collaborated with George Chapman, 1639; *^The Arcadia," 1640,— a pastoral, in which, with much poetical feeling, he has embodied the chief incidents of Sir Philip Sidney's famous romance; "The Humorous Courtier/' 1640 ; and, in the same year, " St. Patrick for Ireland," " Love's Cruelty," " The Constant Maid," and " The Coronation." "The Triumph of Beauty" appeared in 1646, and *'The Brothers "in 1652, together with "The Sisters," "The Doubtful Heir," "The Imposture," and "The Cardinal." Pour plays belong to 1653,—" The Court Secret," '' Cupid and Death," "The General," and "Love's Victory." "The Politician," and "The Gentleman of Yenice," 1605; " The Contention of Ajax and Achilles," 1659, and in the same year, " Honoria and Mammon." Of his earliest H work, "Echo; or. The Unfortunate Lovers," 1618, no trace remains; and it is supposed to be identical with " Narcissus ; or. The Self-Lover," which he published in 1646. The influence of Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis" is conspicuous in it. Shirley was also the author of three Latin Grammars, " An Essay Towards an Universal and Rational Grammar," and of a volume of notes and miscellaneous poems. No author, except Shakespeare, has written so many five-act pieces. His fertility of invention was most admirable, and there is as much vigour as fluency in his versification, which has sometimes a ring of Fletcher's graceful style, and sometimes of Massinger's freedom and variety. He was the last of the Elizabethans ; not equal to the greatest among them, yet not altogether unworthy to wear their singing robes and keep them company. He sat at the same table, though lower down than those whom he acknowledged to be his masters. Mr. Hallam is of opinion that he has no originality, which is true in the sense that his plays do not bear the impress of a strong and distinct individualism ; that he has no force in conceiving or delineating character, though his " Bostock" in " The Ball," and "Aretina" in " The Lady of Pleasure," are- types well-designed and well-executed ; that he has little of pathos, and less, perhaps, of wit. Hallam owns, however, that " his mind was poetical ; his better characters,, especially females, express pure thoughts in pure language ; he is never timid or affected, and seldom obscure; the incidents succeed rapidly, the personages are numerous, and there is a general animation in the scenes, which causes us to read him with some pleasure." While admitting his want of profound interest, and his incapa- 268 THE MEERY MONARCH; bility to grapple with the stronger passions, Campbell is charmed with his polished and refined language, the airy touches of his expression, the delicacy of his sentiments^ and the happiness of his imagery. Of the felicitous grace with which he writes, here is a specimen : — ** Her eye did seem to labour with a tear, Which suddenly took birth, but overweighed With its own swelling, dropt upon her bosom, Which, by reflection of her light, appeared As nature meant her sorrow for an ornament. After, her looks grew c heerf ul, and I saw A smile shoot graceful upward from her eyea, As if they had gained a victory o'er grief j And with it many beams twisted themselves, Upon whose golden threads the angels walk To and again from heaven." " Shirley," says Charles Lamb, ^' claims a place among the worthies of this period, not so much for any transcen- dant genius in himself as that he was the last of a great race, all of whom spoke nearly the same language, and had a set of moral feelings and notions in common." He in- herited, as it were, their traditions, and was so ardent in his loyalty that no ambition ever crossed him to strike out an independent path. He was content to do as they had done; to echo their music, and paint with the same colours. He was, however, no incompetent or servile imitator. He studied, but he did not copy. His own gifts were considerable, and entitle him to our respect. Few men have ever exhibited a richer fancy, and this fancy is generally pure and elevated. His scenes abound in similes of the most agreeable and picturesque kind ; and even when his characters are not very boldly drawn, or his inci- dents worked up with much passion, he invariably pleases by his melodious eloquence and by the subdued pathos of his strain. He constantly reminds us of Fletcher, who OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 26^ was evidently his favourite model, and in two or three of the lyrics scattered through his plays we observe all Fletcher's exquisite grace and tender melancholy. The elder poet would have had no cause to be ashamed of the following " Lullaby," which occurs in Shirley's masque of " The Triumph of Beauty" (1646):- "Cease, warring thoughts, and let this brain No more discord entertain, But be smooth and calm again. Ye crystal rivers that are nigh, As your streams are passing by Teach your murmurs harmony. Ye winds that wait upon the Spring And perfumes to flowers do bring, Let your amorous whispers here Breathe soft music to his ear. Ye warbling nightingales repair From every wood to charm this air. And with the wonders of your breast Each striving to excel the rest, When it is time to wake him, close your parts, And drop down from the tree with broken hearts." In the well-known Dirge from "The Contention of Ajax and TJlyses " (1659), which, it is said, was a favourite with Charles II., we hear that sad note origina- ting in a deep sense of the mutability of human things that echoes through all the Elizabethan poetry. Though these fine stanzas have appeared in all our Anthologies, the reader will not fail to welcome their transcription in our pages : — " The glories of our birth and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armour against fate ; Death lays his icy hands on kings : Sceptre and crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade. 270 THE MEERY MONAECH ; Some men with swords may reap the field, And plant fresh lanrels where they kill- But their strong nerves at last must yield j They tame but one another still : Early or late They stoop to fate, And must give up their murmuring breath, When they, poor creatures, creep to death. The garlands wither on your brow. Then boast no more your mighty deeds ; Upon Death's purple altar now See, where the victor-victim bleeds : Your heads must come To the cold tomb, Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust." The last stanza seems to us perfect in expression ; there are no redundant epithets ; and the compound " vietor- victim " is introduced with happy effect. Of the fluent elegance and natural force of his dramatic style, we give a brief specimen from "The Grateful Ser- vant/' Cleona is told by her page, Dulcino, of his interview with her lover Foscari :— '* Cleona.— The day breaks glorious to my darkened thoughts. He lives, he lives yet ! Cease— ye amorous fears, More to perplex me.— Prithee, speak, sweet youth, How fares my lord ? Upon my virgin heart I'll build a flaming altar, to offer A thankful sacrifice for his return To life and me. Speak, and increase my comforts. Is he in perfect health ? Dul. — Kot perfect, madam. Until you bless him with the knowledge of Your constancy. ^e._Oh, get thee wings, and fly, then ; Tell him my love doth burn like vestal fire, Which, with his memory richer than all spices, Disperses odours round about my soul. And did refresh it when 'twas dull and sad With thinking of his absence— [He is going. Yet stay, Thou goest away too soon. Where is he ? Speak. OE, ENGLAND TJNDEE CHAELES 11. 271 j)^l^ — He gave me no commission for that, lady ; He will soon save that question by his presence. Cle. — Time has no feathers ; he walks now on crutches. Relate his gestures when he gave thee this. What other words ? Did mirth smile on his brow ? I would not for the wealth of this great world He should suspect my faith. What said he, prithee ? J)ul.—B.e said what a warm lover, whom desire Makes eloquent, could speak ; he said you were Both star and pilot. Cle.— The sun's loved flower that shuts his yellow curtain When he declineth, opens it again At his fair rising : with my parting lord I closed all my delight; till his approach It shall not spread itself." Thomas Shadwell, who came of a good old Stafford- shire family, was born at Stanton Hall, Norfolk, in 1640. Educated at Caius College, Cambridge, he entered the Middle Temple for the study of the law ; made the usual continental tour ; and returning home, embraced the pro- fession of letters. As the stage then offered the readiest way to distinction, Shadwell, in 1669, produced the tragic comedy of " The Foyal Shepherdess," which was sufficiently successful to encourage him to persevere. Taking Ben Jonson as his model, he next wrote " The Sullen Lovers" and "The Humorists,^' and in 1671 adapted Moliere's « L'Avare," under the name of " The Miser." Then came the tragedy of "Psyche" in 1675, and that of "The Libertine" in 1676. In the same year was acted one of his best comedies, " Epsom Wells," a comedy of manners, lively, bustling, and humorous, which in itself is a suffi- cient answer to Dryden's bitter sneer that "Shadwell never deviates into sense." Shadwell was a Whig, and political rancour has done its best to depreciate his ability and mutilate his fame ; but as a dramatist he rose head and shoulders above most of his contemporaries, and it is 272 THE MERRY MONARCH ; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 273 only in his " Love for Love " and " Don Sebastian " tliat Dryden has over passed him. He shared with some other writers the strange notion that Shakespeare was deficient in stage-craft, and, in 1678, improved after his fashion the great poet's " Timon of Athens.'' In his dedication he says that " Shakespeare never made more masterly strokes than in this, yet I can truly say I have made it into a i^layT Shadwell, in 1682, published his " Lancashire Witches," which secured an immediate popularity, and in Teague O'Divelly, the Irish priest, and Smerk, a Church of England chaplain, contains two strongly marked and original characters. Yet it is by no means one of his best efforts, and its success must greatly have been due to political feeling. Its attacks on the Eoman Catholics and on the intolerance of the Anglicans are so severe that much of the dialogue was omitted on the stage, by order of the Master of the Eevels, but it is restored in the published play. "Bury Fair," 1689, and " The Scriveners," 1690, belong to the same category as "Epsom Wells," and reflect the manners of the period with a good deal of satiric force. Of his comedy, " The Virtuoso," 1676, Langbaine writes* "that nobody will deny this play its meed of applause. At least, I know that the University of Oxford, wlio may be allowed competent judges of comedy, especially if such characters as Sir Nicholas Gimcrack and Sir Formal Trifle, applauded it. And as no one undertook to discover the frailties of sucli pretenders to this kind of knowledge before Mr. Shadwell, so none since Mr. Jonson's time ever drew so many different characters of humour, and with • Gerard Langbaine (1656-1692), in his "Account of the English Dramatick Poets," (1691), from which we have often borrowed. 14 such success." Elsewhere Langbaine says: — "I own I like his (Shad well's) comedies better than Dryden 's, as having more variety of characters, and those drawn from life. . . . That Mr. Shadwell has preferred Ben Jonson for his model I am very certain of, and those who will read the preface to ' The Humourists ' may be sufficiently satisfied what a value he has for that great man." His in- debtedness to Ben Jonson appears somewhat prominently in his " Squire of Alsatia." ^ Eochester couples Shadwell with Wycherley, which is unfair to the author of " The Plain Dealer " : — " None serve to touch upon true comedy But hasty Shadwell and slow Wycherley.'* And he esteemed his conversational powers so highly, that he said of him — " If he had burnt all he wrote, and printed all he spoke, he would have had more wit and humour than any other poet.'' The tragic dramatist has a much better chance of being remembered by posterity than the comic, for the former deals with the passions, which are immortal ; the latter with the humours, which are fugitive. For this reason Shadwell, now-a-days, is a mere name ; but his ill-fortune is also owing to his presumptuous folly in attempting to reply to Dryden's poem of " The Medal — a Satire against Shaftesbury " (1682). Shad well's composition was entitled " The Medal of John Bayes — a Satire against Folly and Knavery," and was one long invective against the great poet, who is styled '' coward," '' slave," " half-wit," " half-fool," and reviled with a coarseness which renders quotation im- possible. Unlucky Shadwell! he drew down upon him- * This comedy was partly written nnder the roof of the genial and generous Dorset, at Copped Hall, near Epping. VOL. I. T 274 THE MERRY MONARCH; self the blasting liglitning of Dryden's wrath in his "Mac Flecknoe/' published in October, 1682, and fell to the ground, crushed and prostrate, a thing for gods and men to laugh at, or regard with contemptuous pity. Eichard Flecknoe, an Irish Eoman Catholic Priest, who wrote much nonsense, and died in 1778 ; who — " In pun and verse was owned without dispute Through all the realms of nonsense absolute ; — '* is represented as in his last days appointing Shadwell to be his successor on the throne of Dulness, because he alone of all his sons stood "confirmed in full stupidity." From all quarters, through streets littered with paper, the nations assemble to gaze upon the young hero, who stands near his father's throne, his brow enveloped in thick fogs, and "a vacant smile of satisfied imbecility" upon his counte- nance : — " The hoary prince in majesty appeared, High on the throne of his own labour seared. At his right hand our young Ascanius sate, Rome's other hope, and pillar of the State ; His brows thick fogs instead of glories grace, And lambent dulness played around his face. As Hannibal did lo tlie altars come, Sworn by his sire, a mortal foe to Rome ; So Shadwell swore, nor should his vow be vain, That he till death true dulness would maintain, And in his father's right and realm's defence, Ne'er to have peace with wit, nor truce with sense. The King himself the sacred unction made, As King by office, juhI as priest by trade. In his sinister hand, instead of ball, He placed a mighty mug of potent ale." The impetuous satirist continues to shower down blow upon blow. He attacks Shadwell's method of composi- tion : — it This is thy province, this thy wondrous way, New humours to invent for each new play." -'i f" OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 275 He cannot refrain from a coarse personal allusion : — " Nor let thy mountain-belly make pretence Of likeness; thine's a tympany of sense, A tun of man in thy large bulk is writ." Flecknoe continues to bless and advise his successor until, after the manner of Sir Formal Trifle, in Shad- well's comedy of " The Virtuoso," he disappears through a trap door — " He said : but his last words were scarcely heard : For Burn and Longril " — two characters in '' The Virtuoso " — " had a trap prepared, And down they sent the yet declaiming bard. Sinking he left his drugget robe behind. Borne upward by a subterranean wind. The mantle fell to the young prophet's part, With double portion of his father's art." Eefusing to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy to William and Mary, Dry den, in 1689, lost his offices of poet-laureate and historiographer, which, at the instance of Lord Dorset, were bestowed upon Shadwell. That his old enemy should be thus preferred was gall and worm- wood to the author of " Mac Flecknoe," who would not have resrretted his loss if the laurel had fallen to Con- greve; but on the Whig side Shadwell was the man of letters most worthy of it. He wore it only three years. His death occurred on the 19th of November, 1692. The story goes that it was accelerated by an overdose of opium, to the use of which drug he had been addicted, though always taking the precaution (says Dr. Bendy) to say his prayers before he swallowed his dose. The name of Thomas Southern is somewhat faintly preserved — every year the remembrance growing dimmer — 276 THE MERRY MONARCH; bj his tragedies of " Oronooko," founded on Mrs. Aphra Belin's novel, and of " Isabella ; or, The Fatal Marriage " (originally entitled "The Innocent Adultery"), in wbicb our most famous actresses from Mrs. Porter and Peg Wofi&Dgton down to Mrs. Siddons and Miss O'Neil, bave loved to exhibit their powers. Thomas Southern was born in Dublin in 1660, the year of the Kestoration, and educated there at Trinity College. At the age of eighteen he crossed the Channel, made his way to London, and entered himself at the Middle Temple. He soon abandoned the study of the law, and took up the popular craft of dramatic writing. He must have already become a member of the literary society of London, when, in 1682, he produced his first play, "The Loyal Brother; or, The Persian Prince," for Dryden consented to write a prologue and epilogue to it. On this occasion Dryden raised the price of his prologue, because the players, he said, had had his goods too cheap. Southern borrowed his plot from a now forgotten novel, " Tachmus, Prince of Persia ;" and his play grew into popularity, because it was understood to be a compliment to James, Duke of York. In 1684, appeared his comedy, " The Disappointment ; or. The Mother in Fashion," founded on the novel in '' Don Quixote " of " The Curious Impertinent." In the follow- incr year, on James II.'s accession to the throne, he entered the army, and was soon promoted to the command of a company in Lord Ferrer's regiment, in which he served during Monmouth's rebellion. With military service he V as quickly satisfied, and hanging up his sword he resumed his well-loved pen. Unlike the majority of the wits and dramatists of the day, he lived a prudent and decorous life, made money, and saved it. When Dryden once asked OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 277 him how much he had obtained for his last new play, he admitted, to the poet's great astonishment, that he had received £700. He succeeded in extracting from a pub- lisher £150 for the mere right of printing one of his dramas. Before his time a dramatic author had claimed only one night's profits as his perquisites. Southern in- sisted on a second and a third night; and he did not dis- dain to go round to his patrons and sell tickets for the nio-hts in which he had this personal interest. " He was a perfect gentleman ; he did not lounge away his days or nights in coff*ee-houses or taverns, but after labour cultivated friendship in home circles, where virtue and moderate mirth sat at the hearth. In his bag- wig, his black velvet dress, his sword, powder, brilliant buckles, and self-possession, Southerne charmed his company, wherever he visited, even at fourscore. He kept the even tenor of his way, owing no man anything; never allowing his nights to be the marrers of his mornings; and at six- and-eighty carrying a bright eye, a steady hand, a clear head, and a warm heart, wherewith to calmly meet, and make surrender of all to the Inevitable Angel." In May, 1692, Southern produced Dryden's tragedy of '' Cleomenes ; or, The Spartan Hero," which, at the poet's request, he had finished for him, adding the second half of the fifth act. His tragedy of '' The Fatal Marriage," in which he is seen at his best, appeared in 1694, and his "Oronooko" in 1696. In his comedies very little of his unquestionable talent is conspicuous. His "Sir Anthony Love" was successful; but the only good thing in it is Sir Anthony's speech to Count Yerola : — " Of the King's creation you may be ; but he who makes a count never made a man "—a thought which has often been repeated, 278 THE MERRY MONARCH; or rather has occurred independently to different minds. As to Burns : — " A king may make a belted knight, A marqniB, duke, an' a' that ; But an honest man's aboon his might, Gude faith he cannot fa' that." Southern wrote ten plays in all. To those we have named may be added "The Wife's Excuse," 1692, *^The Spartan Dance," and ''The Rambling Lady," and " Money's the Mistress." With the last, which was unsuccessful, he closed his long and respectable career. He died May 26th, 1746, having thus lived tlirougli the reigns of Charles II., James IT, William III., Anne, George I., and into that of George II. He was born in the year which witnessed the restoration of the Stuart dynasty to the throne, and he died in that which beheld its collapse on the fiital field of Culloden.* Sir Eobert Stapleton may be dismissed in a few lines. He was the third son of a Yorkshire gentleman; was born in the early part of the 17tli century _, and educated at Douai in the English Benedictine Monastery. Eeturning to England, and mixing with some men of wit and fashion, lie abandoned the creed of his fathers ; and obtained the post of gentleman usher to Prince Charles — a post he retained after Charles ascended the throne. In 1642 his royal master knighted him ; when the king retired into Oxford, after the Battle of Edgehill, the University re- warded his loyal services by making him a D.C.L. At the Eestoration, this scholarly cavalier and gentleman received a small court office, and began to write for the stage. His comedy of ^'The Slighted Maid," 1663, was felt to be dull by the theatre-going Pepys; and Dry den says of it, that ♦ The battle of CuUoden was fought on the 16th of April, 1746. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II, 279 " there is nothing in the first act that might not be said or done in the second ; nor anything in the middle which mio-ht not as well have been at the beginning or the end." <'Tlie Step-Mother," was given to the world in 1664 ; "The Royal Choice," about 1667; and "Hero and Leander," in 1669. The last was a dramatic version of the "Loves of Hero and Leander," which he had already translated from the Greek of Musaiiis. He also translated Juvenal, and Strada's History of the Belgic War. He died on the 11th of July, 1669. The name of Nahuni Tate is preserved in connection with that monument of portentous dulness, the autho- rized metrical version of the Psalms, which, in conjunc- tion with Nicholas Brady, he executed in 1695-1698. He was the son of Dr. Faithful Tate, was born at Dublin in 1652, and educated there at Trinity College. He came to London, and at the age of 25 published a volume of "Poems." Turning, like most of the clever young men of the day, to the stage as the best means of securing public recognition, he in rapid succession produced his trao-edies of "Brutus of Alba," "The Loyal General," and "Richard 11. ; or, The Sicilian Usurper." With infinite audacity he applied his mangling hand to Shakes- peare's " King Lear," undertaking "to rectify what was wanting ; " and carrying out his undertaking by con- verting it into a kind of comedy, which ends with the happiness of Lear and Cordelia ! Ho also altered " Corio- lanus,'^ and applied it to current politics, under the title of "The Ingratitude of a Commonwealth; or. The Fall of Coriolanus." As a member of the Tory party, and a hanger-on of Dryden, he was allowed to furnish the great satirist's "Absalom and Achitophel " with a second part. 280 THE MEBRY MONARCH j OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 281 published in 1682, to which Dryden contributed the cha- racters of Settle as Doeg and Shadwell as Og, and some other touches, amountin;^^ in all to 200 lines (lines 310-509). Plying an industrious, if not a brilliant, pen, Tate pub- lished, in 1686, his ''Memorials for the Learned,'^ and in 1691 his " Characters of Virtue and Vice." In the follow- ing year, on the death of Shadwell, he was made poet- laureate, though those were sadly withered laurels which crowned his unblushing brow ; and to show how unworthy he was of the office, he accomplished, in 1696, with the assistance of Dr. Nicholas Brady, his " New Version of the Psalms." His endowments did not suffice to secure him from the consequences of his intemperance and im- providence, and lie died poor and in debt, on the 12th of Auo-ust, 1715. Besides the works already named he wrote " Miscellanea Sacra," 1698 ; " Panacea, a Poem on Tea ;" a play called ^'The Innocent Epicure," and a volume of " Elegies," 1699. The loyal birthday odes which he wrote as poet-laureate are such wretched trash as fully to justify Pope's bitterly contemptuous reference : — " The bard whom pilfered pastorals renown, Who turns a Perfiiati tale for half a crown, Just writes to make his barrenness appear, And strains, from liard-bound brains, eight times a year: He w^io, still wanting,'-, tiiough he lived on theft. Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left : And he who now to sense, now nonsense leaning, Means not, but blunders round about a meaning, And he whose fustian's so sublimely bad. It is not poetry, but pun run mad ; All these my modest satire bade translate. And owned that nine such poets made a Tate." One of the most successful comedies of the Eestoration period was " The Adventures of Five Hours,^' skilfully adapted, at the suggestion of Charles II., from the Spanish of Calderon, by Sir Samuel Tuke. It was produced in 1663, and gave great satisfaction to the public. Pepys praises it with extravagant warmth (January 8fcli : — ^^ There being the famous new play acted the first time to-day, which is called 'The Adventures of Five Hours,' at the Duke^s house, being, they say, made or translated by Colonel Tuke, I did long to see it ; and so we went ; and though early, were forced to sit, almost out of sight, at the end of one of the lower formes, so full was the house. And the play, in one word, is the best, for the variety and the most excel- lent contrivance of the plot to the very end, that ever I saw, or think ever shall, and all possible, not only to be done in the time, but in most other respects very admit- table, and without one word of ribaldry ; and the house, by its frequent plaudits, did show their sufficient appro- bation ''). Mr. Pepys was so well pleased that he went to see it again on the 17th, though then "it did not seem so good as at first," owing, he candidly says, to " my being out of order." But, he adds, it is indeed " a very fine play.'^ * Evelyn was present at the first performance. '^ I went," he says, " to see my kinsman. Sir George Tuke's, comedy acted at tbe Duke's Theatre, which took so universally, that it was acted for some weeks every day, and it was believed it would be worth to the comedians £400 or £500. The plot was incomparable ; but the language stiff and formal.'^ Evelyn's criticism is, as usual, judicious. The play, as Langbaine says, is excellent " for economy and contrivance ; " " one of the pleasantest stories," says Echard, "that have appeared on our stage;" but the * On another occasion he pronounces " Othello" "a mean thing" when compared with Sir Samuel Tuke's comedy. 282 THE MERRY MONARCH; dialogue is seldom easy or witty. The following couplet, however, is still remembered : " He is a fool who thinks by force or skill To turn the current of a woman's will." We come now to tli<^ chief of the comic dramatists of the Restoration, Williain Wycherley, who was twenty years old when King Charles '' came to his own again." Pope endows him with the wit of Phiutus, the art of Terence, anl Menandu's fire; but if he excelled them in humour and inventiveness, he went far beyond them m obscenity. His plays are utterly an 1 absokitely corrupt, not in language only, but in idea ; and he seems to have been incapable of conceiving a virtuous character, or of giving expression to a pure thought. His men are rakes, whose exuberant animal spirits cannot lead us to condone their incessant offences against decency; his women are courtesans, whose prurient charms are made all the more conspicuous by the flashing gems with which they are adorned. If they truly represent the society in which Wycherley lived, their and his lU'oper home must have been a brothel. He makes Lady Fidget say, in " The Country Wife," "Our virtue is like the statesman's religion, the quaker's word, the gamester's oath, and the great man's honour ; but to cheat those that trust us ;— " so that Wycherley must have been unfortunate in the women he knew. Some praise is at times bestowed on his manliness ; but a gentleman may be manly without being profligate ; and it is no sign of manliness, let us be sure, to defame our mothers and wives and sisters. Courtesans and procuresses ; these are the women who blurt out his oaths and his inuendoes. If one of them have a turn for honesty, he gives her "the manners- OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 283 and the boldness of a hussar in petticoats." Dryden speaks of " The satire, wit, and strength of manly Wycherley." We may concede the wit and the strength and the satire ; but we must deny the manliness of a writer who had no perception of the higher truths of human life, and no reverence for the modesty of womanhood. "Wycherley's plays," says Macaulay, "are said to have been the produce of long and patient labour. The epithet of ' slow ' was early given to him by Eochester, and was frequently repeated. In truth, his mind, unless we are greatly mistaken, was naturally a very meagre soil, and was forced only by great labour and outlay to bear fruit, which, after all, was not of the highest flavour. He has scarcely more claim to originality than Terence. It is not too much to say that there is hardly anything of the least value in his plays of which the hint is not to be found elsewhere. . . . The only thing original about Wycherley, the only thing which he could furnish from his own mind in inexhaustible abundance, was profligacy. It is curious to observe how everything that he touched, however pure and noble, took in an instant the colour of his own mind. Compare Moliere's Ecole des Femmes with the Country Wife. Agnes is a simple and amiable girl, whose heart is indeed full of love, but of love sanctioned by honour, morality, and religion. Her natural talents are great. They have been hidden, and, as it might appear, destroyed by an education elaborately bad. But they are called forth into full energy by a virtuous passion. Her lover, while he adores her beauty, is too honest a man to abuse the confiding tenderness of a creature so charming and inexperienced. Wycherley l:l| 284 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 285 takes this plot into liis hands ; and fortliwith this sweet and graceful courtship becomes a licentious intrigue of the lowest and least sentimental kind, between an impudent London rake and the idiot wife of a country squire. We will not go into details. In truth, Wjcherley's indecency is protected against the critics as a skunk is protected against the hunters. It is safe, because it is too filthy to handle, and too noisome even to approach.^' A similar transformation takes place in "The Plain Dealer." Moli^re's Alceste is a man of much nobleness and purity, who has been soured into misanthropy by the evidences on every side of treachery, hypocrisy, and malevolence. Wycherley borrows him, and, in the words of Leigh Hunt, converts liim into " a ferocious sensualist, who believed himself as great a rascal as he thought everybody else." The surliness of Moliere's hero is €xaff<^erated until it becomes a caricature. " But the most nauseous libertinism and the most dastardly fraud are substituted for the purity and integrity of the original. And, to make the whole complete, Wycherley does not seem to have been aware that he was not drawing the portrait of an eminently honest man. So depraved was his moral taste that, while he firmly believed that he was producing a picture of virtue too exalted for the commerce of this world, he was really delineating the greatest rascal that is to be found, even in his own writings." William Wycherley was born in 1640, at Clive, near Shrewsbury, where his father, a gentleman of ancient lineage, had an estate valued at some £600 a year. The Civil War having established a republican form of govern- ment and a Presbyterian heirarchy, the elder Wycherley would not send his son and heir to schools where these were advocated, but chose that he should be educated in Prance. Por some time he resided on the banks of the Charente, and enjoyed the society of the Duke and Duchess of Montausier — the latter better known as Julia d'Angennes de Rambouillet — and in the cultured and elegant circle that gathered round them learned a good deal, both of fashionable manners and morals. It was natural enough in the circumstances that the gay young Mlow, who at no time cared anything about religion, should relapse from Protestantism, which he, of course, associated with Puritanism, into Eoman Catholicism. And it was equally natural, perhaps, that when at the Eestoration he returned to England, and found that Protestantism at Court could put on a gay and smiling face, he should return to his father's religion. He became a member of Queen's College, Oxford, and to Bishop . Barlow belongs the credit, such as it was, of converting this " good-for-nothing Papist " into a " good-for-nothing Protestant.'^ He left the University without taking a degree, and entered at the Middle Temple ; but for the dry study of the law he had no taste, and he spent his time in the theatres and other fashionable places of amusement. Having a turn for writing, he betook himself to dramatic composition, though at first without gaining access to the stage. He afterwards said that he wrote his first play, " Love in a Wood," at nineteen ; " The Plain Dealer " at twenty-five ; and " The Country Wife " at one or two- and-thirty ; but these early dates were undoubtedly suggested by his vanity. It was in 1672 that his " Love 286 THE MERKT MONARCH; in a Wood ; or, St. James's Park," was produced, and the internal evidence shows that it could not have been written long before. Its success, aided by his handsome face and figure, won for the young author the favour of the Duchess of Cleveland, and she made him acquainted with his " good fortune " in a characteristic fashion. When driving in the Ring, she caught sight of him in a crowd of belles and fine gentlemen, and putting her head out of the coach window, shouted, '' Sir, you are a rascal, you are a viUain,'' and added a coarse epithet reflecting on the fViir fame of the mother who bore him. On the following day Wycherley called upon her, and humbly begged to know how he had been so unfortunate as to ofEend her. Thus began an intimacy which placed Wycherley within the most private circle of the Court. " The partiality with which the great lady regarded him was indeed the talk of the whole town ; and sixty years later old men who remembered those days told Voltaire that she often stole from the Court to her lover's chambers in the Temple, disguised like a country girl, with a straw hat on her head, pattens on her feet, and a basket in her hand." The Duchess introduced her new favourite to Charles, who was charmed with his address and conversation, and distinguished him by special attentions. On one occasion, when he was confined by a fever to his lodgings in Bow Street, the King good-naturedly called upon him, sat by his bed, and finding him depressed and really ill, advised him to pay a visit to the South of France, and gave him £500 to defray the expenses of the journey. Buckingham, then Master of the Horse, and one of the Duchess's para- mours, had at first displayed some marks of jealousy ; but OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 287 he, too, was won over by Wycherley's manners, admitted him into his friendship, and gave him a place in the royal household and a commission in his own regiment. It is said that the dramatist in after years solicited his patron- age for the great author of " Hudibras," who had fallen upon evil days, and was sinking into obscure poverty. The Duke consented to see him, and an appointment was made ; but two pretty women happening to pass by, the poet was forgotten, and soon afterwards died in want. When the second Dutch War broke out, Wycherley, like other young men of fashion, buckled on the sword. As a volunteer he served under Prince Rupert, in 1673, in the naval campaign against De Euyter, and, on his return home, celebrated it in some indifferent verses. It was in this year that he brought out his second play, " The Gentleman Dancing-Master," but it failed to hit the taste of the town. Neither at the West End, nor in Salisbury Court, could an audience be got to receive it with approval. This failure, however, was more than compensated by the brilliant success, in 1673, of his '' Country Wife "—partly founded upon Moliere's " L'Ecole des Femmes " and '' L'Ecole des Maris." "Though one of the most profligate and heartless of human compositions, it is," says Macau- lay, "the elaborate production of a mind, not indeed rich, original, or imaginative, but ingenious, observant, quick to seize hints, and patient of the toil of polishing." It is a play which one cannot read without afterwards becom- ing conscious of a nasty flavour in one's mouth. Not less immoral, and not less witty, was " The Plain Dealer," which appeared in 1677, the hero of which, Manly, is represented as "of an honest, surly, nice humour, supposed first, in the time of the Dutch war, to have 288 THE MERRY MONARCH; procured the command of a ship out of honour, not interest, and choosing a sea life only to avoid the world." We must suppose, therefore, that this cynical and selfish sensualist is the dramatist's ideal of a true man. Ilaz- lett's remark that this play is " a most severe and piog- nant moral satire," in which " the truth of feeling and the force of interest prevail over every objection," we are unaWe to accept or appreciate. It seems to us rather the kind of criticism upon Yahoos that might have been written by one of themselves. Yet, through the efforts of Lord Dorset and the critics, the play rose into such favour that its author was commonly known as "The Plain- Dealer," or as " Manly Wycherley," and the thentre was always full when it was set down for representation. One of the few quotable passages we subjoin, because it affords a favourable speciu.en of Wycherley's " manly " morality as well of his terse and epigrammatic language :— •• Manlu.-TeW not me, my good Lord Plausible, of your decorous, super- •linf tom= ind .lavish ceremonies ! your little tricks, winch you, the ;:„Te,so"heworUMo daily over and over, for and to one another; not «,if nf love or duty, but your eervile fear. l^lX-Na i'f-th.i-faith,youarc too passionate; and I must beg vo^ptdon and i^ave to tell you they are the acts and rules the prudent of '"'^"v'-L^em. But HI have no leading strings; I can walk alone. Ih^e a hamcs ; and will not tng on in a taction, kissing my leader behmd. that another may do the "k« '« ■'- ^^^^ ^ „„a P/aiiS.— What, will you be singular men i ukc uuuv^uj 'TJr^t'ther than be general, liUe you, follow everybody ; court and kisTeTeiTbody ; though perhaps at the san.e time you hate everybody. to--Why, seriously, with your pardon, my dear fnend- Sv -Wit k your pardon, my no friend, I will not as you do, wh.sper ™v hatred or my scorn, call a man fool or knave by signs or mouths ove r !htulder while you have him in your arms. For such as you like clln ~ UocUets, are only dangerous to those you embrace. pL -Such as I ! Heavens defend me I upon my honour - Mmiy,-^Von your title, my lord, if you'd have me believe you. OK, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 289 piam. — Well, then, as I am a person of honour, I never attempted to abuse or lessen any person in my life. Manly. — What, you were afraid ? Flaus.—^o, but seriously, I hate to do a rude thing ; I speak well of all mankind. Manly. — I thought so, but know, that speaking well of all mankind is the worst kind of detraction ; for it takes away the reputation of the few good men in the world, by making all alike. Now, I speak ill of most men, because they deserve it ; I that can do a rude thing rather than an unjust thing. P/ai«.— Well, tell not me, my dear friend, what people deserve ; I ne'er, mind that. I, like an author in a dedication, never speak well of a man for his sake, but my own. I will not disparage any man to disparage myself ; for to speak ill of people behind their backs is not like a man of honour and truly to speak ill of 'em to their faces, is not like a complaisant person : but if I did say or do an ill thing to anybody, it should be behind their backs, out of pure good manners. Manly. — Very well, but I that am an unmannerly sea-fellow, if I ever speak well of people — which is very seldom indeed — it should be sure to be behind their backs ; and if I would say or do ill to any, it should be to their faces. I would jostle a proud, strutting, over-looking coxcomb, at the head of his sycophants, rather than put out my tongue at him when he were past me ; would frown in the arrogant, big, dull face of an overgrown knave of business, rather than vent my spleen against him when his back was turned; would give fawning slaves the lie whilst they embrace or commend me ; cowards, whilst they brag ; call a rascal by no other title, though his father had left him a duke's ; laugh at fools aloud afore their mistresses ; and must desire people to leave me, when their visits grow at last as troublesome as they were at first impertinent. [Manly thrusts out Lord Plausible. Freeman.— Yon are a lord with very little ceremony, it seems. Manly. A lord ! what, thou art one of those who esteem men only by the marks and value fortune has set upon 'em, and never consider intrinsic worth ! But counterfeit honour will not be current with me : I weigh the man, not his title ; 'tis not the king's stamp can make the metal better or heavier. Your lord is a leaden shilling, which you bend any way, and de- bases the stamp he bears, instead of being raised by it." '' The Plain-Dealer '' marks the climax of Wycherley's career. 'Tis the summit of the ascent ; thenceforward the decline is rapid and complete. The king, desiring to place his natural son, the young Duke of Eichmond, under a man of accomplished manners, selected Wycherley, though, to be sure, a worse tutor for a youth, if manners VOL. I. w 290 THE MERRY MONARCH; mean morals, could hardly have been chosen. Elated with his good fortune, the wit betook himself for a little entertainment to Tunbridge Wells, where, one day, whHe turning over books in a bookseller's shop on the Pantiles, he heard a rich and gay young widow, the Countess of Drogheda, inquiring for " The Plain-Dealer." " Madam,'' said a friend, who attended him, " since you are for the Plain-Dealer, there he is for you,'' and pushed Wycherley forward. The acquaintance thus casually begun soon ripened into an intimacy, and the intimacy ended in a marriage. It proved an unhappy one : the Countess, know- iug her handsome husband's* taste for gallantries, watched him as closely as ever, in his own comedy, Mr. Pinchwife watched his rustic spouse. He was, indeed, allowed to meet his friends in the Cock Tavern, opposite to his house; "but on such occasions the windows were always open, in order that her ladyship, who was posted on the other side of the street, might be satisfied that no woman was of the party.'' The marriage had deprived him of Court favour, while failing to add to his domestic comfort. The Countess, it is true, died early, and left him her fortune ; but this dis- position of it was contested by her kith and kin, and a series of law suits beggared the unfortunate widower, and he was thrown into the Fleet, and there he lingered, forgotten by his brilliant intimates, for seven years ; when a fortunate chance took James II. to the theatre one night when "The Plain-Dealer" was acted. He was pleased with the play, and remembered the author, whom a pen- sion of £200 a year rescued from the ignominy of a prison. It was probably out of gratitude for the royal * Pope says he had •' the true nobleman look." OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 291 munificence that Wycherley about this time returned to the communion of the Church of Eome. Shortly after these events Mr. Wycherley the elder died, and the dramatist, a man of fifty, succeeded to the family estates. Even then, his position did not improve ; he could not shake off the black care which rode behind him so closely as he went on his downward way. His property was entailed, and his extravagance added con- tinually to his embarrassments. He was on ill terms with his heir-at-law, who, therefore, refused to join in any scheme for relieving Wycherley at the cost of his in- heritance . Macaulay describes him as leading, during a long course of years, *' that most wretched life, the life of a vicious old boy about town." Expensive tastes with little money, and licentious appetites with declining vigour, were the just penance for his early irregularities. A severe illness had produced a singular effect on his in- tellect. His memory played him pranks stranger than almost any that are to be found in the history of that strange faculty. It seemed to be at once preternaturally strong and preternaturally weak. If a book were read to him before he went to bed, he would wake the next morn- ing with his miud full of the thoughts and expressions which he had heard over night ; and he would write them down, without in the least suspecting that they were not his own. In his verses the same ideas, and even the same words, came with tedious but unconscious iteration. We come now to the female dramatists of the Restora- tion, among whom Mrs. Aplira Behn is unhappily con- spicuous. One cannot tell her story without pain, because it is all that it should not have been, that Nature never meant it to be. She might have been an honour to her 292 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 293 sex by her genius ; her immodesty made her its disgrace. Women who now blush with shame at her discredited name might have repeated it with pride. She is not forgotten, simply because she serves us as so glaring an example of high talents prostituted to disgraceful uses. Against her many offences we can urge but one set- off; that she was the first to plead, and she pleaded it with the eloquence of earnestness, the cause of the slave. ''K gentlewoman by birth, of a good family in the city of Canterbury,'' "»«• Aphra Johnson was born at Wye in that city, in 1640. She was accustomed, by a pleasant fiction, to describe herself as the daughter of a Lieu- tenant- General Johnson, who, through the influence of his kinsman. Lord Willoughby, was appointed Governor of Surinam and the thirty-six West Indian islands. It seems true enough that in her childhood she accompanied her family to Surinam, though not to occupy so dis- tinguished a position. Her previous talent had already astonished the domestic circle— she wrote " the prettiest, soft, engaging verses in the world ; " and boy-lovers had fluttered around her, fascinated by her "uncommon charms of body, as well as of mind.'' Her father died on the passage ; but his widow and children remained for some years in Surinam, of the scenery of which Aphra afterwards wrote with much picturesque fervour : " This country," she says, " affords all things, both for beauty and use; 'tis these eternal springs, always the very months of April, May, and June; the shades are * Such was Mrs. Bebn'a own account of her lineage ; but the Countess of Winchelsea says that she was the daughter of a barber and Mr Edmund Go^ has unearthed from the parochial reg ster of Wye the fact that u kTf^rs, the dauchter, and Peter, the son of John and Amy Johnson, wfr^ baptized at Wye on July lOth.' 1G40. (See Athenc^um, No. 2,967. Sept. 6th, 1884.) I 1 ri perpetual, the trees bearing at once all degrees of leaves and fruits, from blooming buds to ripe autumn ; groves of oranges, lemons, citrons, figs, nutmegs, and noble aromatics continually bearing their f ragrancies ; the trees appearing all like nosegays adorned with flowers of different kinds ; some are all white, some purple, some scarlet, some blue, some yellow— bearing at the same time ripe fruit, and blooming young, or producing every day new. The very wood of all these trees has an intrinsic value above common timber; for they are often cut of different colours, glorious to behold, and bear a considerable price to inlay withal. Besides this, they yield rich balm and gums, so that we make our candles of such an aromatic substance as does not only give a sufficient light, but, as they burn, they cast their perfume all about." Not less glowing is her description of her Surinam home, which was called St. John's Hill : — " It stood on a vast rock of white marble, at the foot of which the river ran, a vast depth down, and not to be descended on that side ; the little waves, still dashing and washing the foot of this rock, made the softest murmurs and purlings in the world, and vast quantities of different flowers, eternally blooming, and every day and hour new, fenced behind them with lofty trees of a thousand rare forms and colours, that the prospect was the most ravishing that sands can create. On the edge of this white rock, towards the river, was a walk or grove of orange and lemon trees, about half the length of the Mall here, whose flowery and fruit-bearing branches met at the top, and hindered the sun, whose rays are very fierce there, from entering a beam into the grove ; and the cool air that came from the river made it not only fit 294 THE MERRY MONARCH; to entertain people in at all the hottest hours of the day, but refreshed the sweet blossoms, and made it always sweet and charming. And sure the whole globe of the world cannot show so delightful a place as this grove was; not all the gardens of boasted Italy can produce a shade so entire as this, which Nature had joined with art to render so exceeding fine ; and 'tis a marvel to see how such vast trees — as big as English oaks — could take footing on so solid a rock, and in so little earth as covered that rock. But all things by Nature there are rare, delightful, and wonderful." We suspect that Aphra gives free rein to her imagina- tion when she goes on to describe the sports in which she at this time indulged ; such as searching for young tigers in their lairs, and daring the fury of their enraged dams. She was attended in her dangerous expeditions by a young black slave — named Ciesar by his master — who in his own land had been honoured as Prince Oronooko, and his melancholy story made a great impression upon her. Eeturning to England soon after the Restoration, her wit and beauty obtained her an introduction to Charles II., and she related to him the tragic narrative. With all his selfishness Charles had gleams of generous feeling, and he was so affected by it that he desired her to make it public. Such was the origin of " Oronooko," her first and her best novel. About this time she became acquainted with and married a Mr. Behn, a Dutch merchant in London, but was soon left a widow. The King, who recognized her personal charms and mental gifts, then sent her to Antwerp to employ them in the craft of a political spy. This she did in the most effectual manner, establishing OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 295 such an influence over an Antwerp merchant, named Van der Albert,^ who was deep in the counsels of the Dutch Government, that she was able to communicate to Charles n.'s cabinet De Euyter's intention to carry his fleet up the Thames. Unfortunately, the English ministers refused to credit the intelligence, and took no steps to arrest the disaster that left so deep a stain on our naval renown. Van der Albert died when about to marry this fascinating Eng- lishwoman ; and she returned to England to devote her life to pleasure and literature. She managed to find time for both pursuits, though they are not generally regarded as compatible ; and because she did so, failed to do justice to the powers she unquestionably possessed. Her writings all bear the mark of haste : but what is worse, they suffer also from the moral deterioration inevitable from the gay license of her mode of living. Her plays are coarser than those of Wycherley, without Wycherley's wit; her poems are lewder than those of Sedley, with- out Sedley's art. Her career as a dramatist she began in * In one of her letters she gives an amusing, but probably fictitious, account of Van der Albert, and another of her Dutch suitors :—" Your friend and humble servant," she writes, " has set two of them in a blaze ; two of very different ages (I was going to say degrees, sir, but I remember there are no degrees in Holland). Van der A^lbert is about thirty-two, of a hale constitution, something more sprightly than the rest of his countrymen; and though infinitely fond of his interest and an irreconcilable enemy to Monarchy bas by the force of love been obliged to let me into some secrets that might have done our King, and, if not our court, our country, no small service. But I shall say no more of this service till I see you, for particular reasons which you shall then likewise know. " My other is about twice his age, nay, and bulk too, though Albert be not the most Barbary shape you have seen : you must know him by the name of Von Bruin. He had not visited me often before I began to be sensible of the influence of my eyes on this old piece of worm-eaten touchwood, but he had not the confidence (and that's much) to tell me he loved me ; and modesty, you know, is no common fault of his countrymen, though I rather impute it to a love of himself, that he would not run the hazard of being turned mto ridicule in so disproportionate a declaration. He often insinuated that he knew a man of wealth and substance, though stricken, indeed, in years, and on that account not so agreeable as a younger man, that was passionately in love with me, and desired to know whether my heart was so far engaged that his friend should not entertain any hopes." 296 THE MEERY MONARCH; 1671, and wrote in all eighteen plays, namely: — "The Forced Marriage," 1671; "The Amorous Prince," 1671; "The Dutch Lover," 1673; " Adelazar," 1677; "The Town Fop," 1677; "The Eover; or. The Banished Cavalier," her best and most popular comedy, 1677; "The Debauchee," 1677; "Sir Patient Fancy," 1678; "The Feigned Courtezans," dedicated to Nell Gwjnn, 1679; "The Rover," a second part, 1681; "The City Heiress," 1682; "The Roundheads," 1682; "The Young King," 1683 ; " The Lucky Chance," 1687 ; " The Emperor of the Moon," 1687; "The Widow Ranter," 1690; "The Younger Brother," 1696. Their general coarseness is in- dicated by Pope's well-known allusion — " The stage how loosely does Astraea tread " — Astraea being the name by which she loved to call herself, and to have her friends call her. It might be pleaded that she wrote to suit the taste of the time; but this is only partly true, for she continued to wallow in filth long after her audiences had grown tired of so much garbage; and if it be said that she reflected the manners of the age, our reply must be that she reflected the manners only of a certain class of men and women, who had much better have been left in oblivion. Her liveliness is undeniable; not one of her plays can be characterised as dull, but then very few of them are original. Mrs. Behn was a bold and consummate pilferer ; she stole from Wilkins and Marlowe, from Shirley and Xilligrew, from the French and Italian comedies; but she made excellent use of what she stole, and many scenes occur in her plays which could not fail on the stage to excite amusement. The guilt of prurient suggestion and indelicate ex- OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 297 pression attends her in her poems, of which she published a volume in 1684 ; and in the following year a Miscellany, including several by Rochester and other writers. She also wrote some entertaining model love-letters, and translated the "Maxims" of Eochefoucauld, and the "Plurality of Worlds" of Fontenelle. Eight short novels proceeded from her pen, of which we have already named the best, " Oronooko." All this literary effort was comprised within 1671 and 1689, the year in which she died, at the comparatively early age of 47. Thus, in point of industry and versatility, as well as in point of intellectual capacity, she ranks among the first of English female writers ; and it is deeply to be regretted that she gave so little conscientious care to her work, that she condescended to a coarseness and a freedom which prevent the pure-minded of her own sex from making acquaintance with it. True it is that in her time their faults were not seen so clearly as they are at present. An old lady of family assured Sir Walter Scott that, in her younger days, "Mrs. Behn's novels were as currently upon the toilette, as the works of Miss Edge- worth at present ; and described with some humour her own surprise when the book falling into her hands after a long interval of years, and when its contents were quite forgotten, she found it impossible to endure at the age of fourscore what at fifteen she, like all the fashionable world of the time, had perused without an idea of im- propriety.'' But this applies only to her novels, which, unpleasant as they sometimes are, rise above her plays in unquestionable superiority. " Oronooko ; or, the Eoyal Slave," merits consideration as the first English novel with a purpose, and the first 298 THE MERBT MONARCH J public indictment against slavery. In both respects it is a book of some value and of high interest. Written in a clear and forcible style, it is informed by a noble generosity of sentiment, while its fresh and picturesque descriptions indicate a real living sympathy with nature. It is the book of a strong mind — of a mind which, better trained, and schooled by study and observation, might have pro- duced something much worthier of its strength. ^^The King of Coromantion," begins the romancist, " was of himself a man of a hundred and odd years old, and had no son, though he had many beautiful black slaves ; for most certainly there are beauties that can claim of that colour. In his younger years he had many gaUant men, too — his sons, thirteen of whom died in battle, conquering when they fell; and he had only left him for his successor, one grandchild, son of one of those dead victors, who, as soon as he could bear a bow in his hand and a quiver at his back, was sent into the field to be trained up by one of the oldest generals to war, where, from his natural inclination to arms and the occasions given him, with the good conduct of the old general, he became, at the age of seventeen, one of the most expert captains and bravest soldiers that ever saw the field of Mars." At the end of the war the Prince visited the Court, from which he had been absent eleven years ; " and 'twas amazing to imagine where it was he learned so much humanity, or, to give his accomplishments a juster name, where 'twas he got that real greatness of soul, those re- fined notions of true honour, that absolute generosity, and that softness that was capable of the highest passions of love and gallantry, whose objects were almost continually fighting men, or those mangled or dead, who heard no- OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 299 sounds but those of war and groans. Some part of it we may attribute to the care of a Frenchman of wit and learn- ino", who, finding it turn to a very good account to be a sort of royal tutor to this young black, and perceiving him very ready, apt, and quick of apprehension, took a great pleasure to teach him morals, language and science, and was for it extremely beloved and valued by him. Another reason was, he loved, when he came from war, to see all the English gentlemen that traded thither ; and did not only learn their language, but that of the Spaniards also, with whom he traded afterwards for slaves." " I have often seen and conversed with this great man, and bear witness to many of his mighty actions, and do assure my reader the most illustrious Courts could not have produced a braver man, both for greatness of courage and mind ; a judgment more solid, or wit more quick, and a conversation more quick and diverting. He knew almost as much as if he had read much ; he had heard of the late civil wars in England, and the deplorable death of our great monarch, and would discourse of it with all the sense and abhorrence of the injustice imaginable. He had an extremely good and graceful mien, and all the civility of a well-bred, great man. He had nothing of barbarity in his nature, but in all points addressed himself as if his education had been in some European Court." A glowing portrait is drawn of the young Oronooko's physical graces : — " He was pretty tall, but of a shape the most exact that can be fancied— the most famous statuary could not form the figure of a man more admirably turned from head to foot. His face were not of that brown, rusty black which most of that nation are, but of a perfect ebony, or polished 300 THE MERRY MONARCH; jet. His ejes were the most awful that could be seen -and very piercing ; the white of them being like snow, as were his teeth. His nose was rising and Roman, instead of African and flat; his mouth, the finest-shaped that could be seen — free from those great turned lips which are so natural to the rest of the negroes. The whole propor- tion and air of his face was so noble and exactly formed, that, bating his colour, there would be nothing in nature more beautiful, agreeable, and handsome. There was no one grace wanting that bears the standard of true beauty. His hair came down to his shoulders, by the aid of art, which was by pulling it out with a quill, and keeping it combed, of which he took particular care." As the body, so the mind : — " Nor did the perfections of his mind come short of those of his person, for his discourse was admirable upon almost any subject, and whoever had heard him speak would have been convinced of their errors, that all fine wit is confined to the white man, especially to those of Christendom, and would have confessed that Oronooko was as capable even of reigning well, and of governing as wisely, had as great a soul, as politics maxims, and was as sensible of power as any prince civilized in the most refined schools of humanity, or the most illustrious courts." With Imoinda, the beautiful daughter of a general who has died in saving Oronooko's life in battle, this perfect young prince falls in love ; but his grandfather, who is also in love with Imoinda, on discovering that she pre- fers her youthful suitor, sells her into slavery. Soon afterwards Oronooko himself is kidnapped, with a hun- dred young blacks, by an English trader. In his rage and despair he resolves to starve himself; but is induced to OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 301 i take his food by the captain's solemn promise to set him and his companions at liberty as soon as they reach the land. They arrive at Surinam, and, of course, the captain breaks his word. He is sold in the public mart, and pur- chased by a Cornish gentleman named Trefry, who names him Csesar, treats him with much humanity, and takes him to see a beautiful black girl, who proves to be no other than Imoinda, under the new name of Clemone. With Mr. Trefry' s sanction the two slaves are married, and for a while live in much happiness and contentment. By degrees, the despair of recovering his liberty begets in Oronooko a sullen and gloomy mood, which, as he has great influence over the minds of the other slaves, wakens apprehensions of danger, and Mrs. Behn is requested to intervene. It was known, she says, that he and Clemone were scarce absent an hour in a day from her lodgings ; that she showed them all the kindness in her power. She rivetted his attention with stories of the heroes of anti- quity, while she taught his wife all the pretty works she was mistress of, and endeavoured to communicate to her some knowledge of Christianity. Her arguments and remonstrances wrung from him a pledge that he would make no immediate effort to escape, though it was given with an air of impatience and reluctance that convinced her he would not tarry much longer in bondage. "He had a spirit all rough and fierce, and that could not be tamed by lazy rest; and though * all endeavours were used to exercise himself in such actions and sports as this world afforded, as running, wrestling, pitching the bar, hunting and fishing, chasing and killing tigers of a monstrous size, which this Continent affords in abundance, and wonderful snakes, such as 302 THE MEREY MONAECH J Alexander is reported to have encountered at the river of Amazons, and which Caesar took great delight to overcome — ^yet these were not actions great enough for his large soul, which was still panting after more renowned actions." His patience gave way at last; with his wife and numerous slaves, he fled to the woods ; was overtaken by six hundred whites, headed by a wretch named Byam ; and, after a desperate struggle, in which Imoinda fought gallantly by his side, was deserted by his com- panions, and forced to surrender. He was whipped im- mediately, in the savagest manner, but endured his suffer- ings in heroic silence. Indian pepper was rubbed into his wounds, and his legs and arms were loaded with fetters. Mrs. Behn found him in this miserable condition ; ordered him to be put at once into a healing bath, so as to cleanse liis wounds of the irritating pepper, and directed the chirurgeon to anoint him with a healing balm. In a short time he partially recovered. Thenceforward, however, he was a changed man ; he lived only for one object, and that was to avenge the indignity which had been put upon him. It was the shame, not the pain of the lash, which had penetrated like an iron to his soul. His first care was to deliver his wife and her unborn babe from the cruelty of the white men, and in effecting this, he dis- played the cold, stem fortitude of the old Eoman hero. " Being able to walk, and, as he believed, fit for the execution of his great design, he begged Tref ry to trust him into the air, believing a walk would do him good, which was granted him ; and taking Imoinda with him, as he used to do in his more happy and calmer days, he led her up into a wood, where (after a thousand sighs and long OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 303 gazing silently on her face, while tears gushed in spite of him from his eyes), he told her his design : first, of killing her, and then his enemies, and next himself, and the im- possibility of escaping, and therefore he told her the neces- sity of dying. He found the heroic wife faster pleading for death than he was to propose it, when she found his fixed resolution, and, on her knees, besought him not to leave her a prey to his enemies. He grieved to death, yet, pleased at her noble resolution, took her up, and, embracing her with all the passion and languishment of a dying lover, drew his knife to kill this treasure of his soul, this pleasure of his eyes ; while tears trickled down his cheeks, hers were smiling with joy she should die by so noble a hand, and be sent into her own country (for that is their notion of the next world) by him she so tenderly loved in this." The fatal stroke is no sooner delivered than the un- happy Oronooko repents it ; and his great grief absorbs his lono-ino- for revenue. He throws himself down by the side of the dead body of the wife he had so tenderly loved, and lies there, growing weaker every day until he is dis- covered, and falls again into the cruel hands of his ene- mies. " The English, taking advantage by his weakness, cried out, ' Let us take him alive by all means.' He heard 'em, and, as if he had revived from a fainting or a dream, he cried out, ' No, gentlemen, you are deceived ; you will find no more Casars to be whipped ; no more find a faith in me ; feeble as you think me, I have strength yet left to secure me from a second indignity.' "They swear all anew, and he only shook his head, and beheld them with scorn. Then they cried out, ' Who will 304 THE MERRY MONARCH; venture on this single man? Will nobody?' They all stood silent, while Csesar replied — " ' Fatal will be the attempt of the first adventurer, let Mm assure himself (and, at that word, held up his knife in a menacing posture) : 'look ye, ye faithless crew,* said he, ' 'tis not my life I seek, nor am I afraid of dying ' (and at that word, cut a piece of flesh from his own throat and threw it at 'em) ; ' yet still T would live, if I could, till I had perfected my revenge ; but, oh, it cannot be ! I feel life gliding from my eyes and heart ; and if I make not haste, I shall fall a victim to the shameful whip.' " He inflicted on himself a fearful and a mortal wound, but was captured, carried back, and received such attention as recovered him sufficiently to suffer a slow and cruel death. He endured the tortures which his persecutors heaped upon him, without flinching, and an heroic life ended fitly with an heroic death. Such is the touching story of Oronooko, which Southern afterwards cast into a dramatic form. How much of it was fact, how much sprang from Mrs. Behn's lively imagination, it is impossible to say ; but what is certain is that she has told it in a very effective and striking fashion, with genuine earnestness and generosity of spirit, and, in telling it, has risen out of that atmosphere of worldliness and sensual pleasure which did her genius such cruel wrong. Her poetical compositions, among other grave faults, have that of artificiality. One of the best is the follow- mg:- " The grove was gloomy all around, Murmuring the stream did pass, Where fond Astrsea laid her down Upon a bed of grass ; OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 305 I slept and saw a piteous sight, Cupid a- weeping lay, Till both his little stars of light Had wept themselves away. Methought I asked him why he cried ; My pity led me on, — All sighing the sad boy replied, ' Alas ! I am undone ! As I beneath yon myrtles lay, Down by Diana's springs, Amyntas stole my bow away, And pinioned both my wings.' * Alas ! ' I cried, * *twas then thy darts Wherewith he wounded me ? Thou mighty deity of hearts. He stole his power from thee ? Kevenge thee, if a god thou be, Upon the amorous swain, I'll set thy wings at liberty, And thou shalt fly again ; And for this service on my part, All I demand of thee. Is, wound Amyntas' cruel heart And make him die for me.' His silken fetters I untied, And those gay wings displayed, Which gently fanned, he mounting cried, ' Farewell, fond easy maid! ' At this I blushed, and angry grew I should a god believe. And waking found my dream too true, For I was still a slave." We are hardly justified in including Mrs. Katherine Phillips, " the matchless Orinda," as her contemporaries were pleased to call her, among the female Dramatists on the strength of her translations of " Le Pompee " and "Les Horaces " of Corneille. But she is a woman who has claims not to be overlooked — was she not Jeremy Taylor's friend, to whom our English Chrysostom dedicated his "Treatise on Friendship "?— and, therefore, we find a corner for her in these pages. She was born in 1633, and VOL. I. X l^'iSSPlf-'i 306 THE MERRY MONARCH; died in 1664, four years after ''the glorious Eestoration." A brief but beautiful life, brightened by purity, culture, domestic peace, and all the womanly graces. Marrying a gentleman whom she devotedly loved, she retired from the Court of which she was well fitted to have been an ornament, to live with him and her children among the " sylvan solitudes " of Wales. The talents which de- lighted and astonished her contemporaries she exhibited at a very early age. Aubrey tells us that she was very apt to learn, and made verses when she was at school; that she devoted herself while still in her girlhood to religious duties, and would read and pray by herself an hour together. She read the Bible through before she was four years old; could repeat many chapters and passages of Scripture ; and was a frequent hearer of sermons, which she would bring away entire in her memory, and would take down verbatim when she was ten years old. Who will wonder that of such a prodigy Nicholas Eowe should write — ** Orinda came, To ages yet to come an ever-glorious name " ? Alas, to this present age, nomen et prceterea nihil'— or rather, the shadow of a name. None but the student now troubles himself about the accomplished lady whom Dryden and Cowley, Eoscommon and Orrery combined to praise. We add, however, a few biographical details. The daughter of John Fowler, a London merchant, she was educated at a Hackney boarding-school, where her skill in poetry distinguished her above her com- panions. Afterwards she became " a perfect mistress '' of the French tongue, and was taught the Italian by her OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 307 ingenious friend, Sir Charles Cotterel. Bred up in the tenets of Presbyterianism, she abandoned them as soon as she could examine and judge for herself. She married, when little more than sixteen, James Phillips, of the Priory of Cardigan, Esquire, by whom she had a son and daughter. She proved in all respects an admirable wife, — particularly by the assistance she afforded him in his affairs, which, '' being greatly incumbered," she, by her powerful influence with Sir Charles Cotterel, and other great friends, and by her good sense and excellent manage- ment, reduced to order. To amuse her leisure she com- posed many poetical pieces, which, being scattered abroad among her friends and acquaintances, were collected together by an unknown hand, and published in 1663, — an ungenerous treatment which so affected her as to in- duce a severe attack of illness. " Her remarkable humility, good-nature, and agreeable conversation greatly endeared her to all her acquaintance ; and her polite and elegant writings procured her the friendship and correspondence of many learned and eminent men. On her going to Ireland with the Viscountess Dungannon to transact her husband's affairs there, her great merit soon recom- mended her to the regard of those illustrious peers, Ormond, Orrery, Roscommon, and many other persons of distinction, who showed her singular marks of esteem ; and at the pressing instances of those noblemen, particularly Lord Roscommon, she translated from the French of Corneille, into English, the tragedy of Pompey, which was acted on the Irish stage several times with great applause in 1663 and '64. It was likewise afterwards acted very successfully at the Duke of York's theatre in 1678. She also translated from the French of Corneille the tragedy 308 THE MEERY MONARCH; of Horace. Sir John Denliam added a fifth act to the play, which was represented at Court by persons of quality." While in Ireland she renewed a former intimacy with Bishop Jeremy Taylor, who had already honoured her by composing and publishing " A Discourse of the Nature, Offices, and Measures of Friendship, with Eules of Con- ducting it. In a Letter to the most ingenious and excel- lent Mrs. Katherine Phillips." Mrs. Phillips, while on a visit to her friends in London, was seized with small-pox, and died of it at her lodgin-s in Fleet Street.* She was buried in the church of St. Bennet Sherehog. In 1667, a friend edited and published, in folio, '' Poem- by the most deservedly admired Mrs. Katherine Phillips the matchless Orinda. To which are added M. Corneill.'s Pompey and Horace, Tragedies, with several other Trans- lations from the French; and her Picture before them, engraved by Faithorne." A second edition appeared in 1678, in the preface to which it was stated that Orinda wrote her familiar letters with good facility, in a very fair hand, and perfect orthograpliy; and that "if they were collected with those excellent discourses she wrote on several subjects, they would make a volume niucli larger than that of her Poems." In 1705 a small volume of her letters to Sir Charles Cotterel was published, under tlie title of " Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus." The editor is good enough to describe them as " the efPect of a * Mrs. Anne KilH.i?i 11 a victim to the same disease. In bis Elegy to her memory Drjdeu nay a : — ** But thus Orinda died : Heaven, b.v the same disease, did both translate ; As equal \vere their souls, so equal was their fate.'' OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 309 ihappy intimacy between herself and the late famous Poliarchus/' the platonic nom de plume by which Sir Charles elected to be addressed ; and to praise them as ^'an admirable pattern for the pleasing correspondence of a virtuous friendship ! " He adds, with amusing compla- cency, that " they will sufficiently instruct us how an inter- course of writing, between two persons of different sexes, ought to be managed with delight and innocence." There is no doubt about their innocence ; but their frigid affecta- tions and formal commonplaces lead us to wonder how it was that " the matchless Orinda " obtained so high a re- putation among wits and critics who certainly were fully competent to judge. We suppose there was a charm in her conversation which she failed to communicate to her correspondence, and that in criticising the latter her partial judges were biased by their recollections of the former. The complimentary verses prefixed to her collected Poems show, however, that the writers were at least as much influenced by their respect for her morals as by their admiration of her talents. They dwell quite as warmly on her " hate of vice and scorn of vanities " as on her taste and skill as a maker of smooth rhymes. And it is this which is really the salt and savour of her poems. They reflect "the tender goodness of her mind," but nowhere is the reader conscious of a breath of true poetical inspiration. Their subjects are just those which would recommend themselves to an amiable and accom- plished woman— poems to her friends (" Lucasia," Lady Dungannon, and "Eosania," Mistress Eegina CoUier) ; affectionate stanzas to her husband ; occasional verses suggested by the marriages and deaths of her relatives and 310 THE MEERY MONARCH. intimates ; and some feeble praises of the Welsh language and country life. Perhaps the most wonderful thing is a kindly epitaph on her mother-in-law — the only mother-in- law, perhaps, who ever received a public tribute ! As a specimen of the general quality of Orinda's compositions we take the last lines of her memorial to her eldest son,. who died in his 13th year : — " Alas ! we were secure of our content ; But find too late that it was only lent To be a mirror, wherein we may see How frail we are, how spotless we should be. But if to thy blest soul my grief appears, Forgive and pity these injurious tears ; Impute them to Affection's sad excess, Vfhich will not yield to Nature's tenderness. Since 'twas through dearest ties and highest trust Continued from thy cradle to thy dust ; And so rewarded and confirmed by thine, That (wo is me ! ) I thought thee too much mine.'' THE DUCHESSES. Cleveland. Portsmouth. ElCHMOND. Mazarin. 1^ CHAPTER IV. THE DUCHESSES. Cleveland — Portsmouth — Eichmond — Mizarin. An acute Frencli critic comments upon the strong con- trast presented by the libertinism of England under the Restoration to the libertinism of Prance ; the former being as hard, forced, and brutal, as the latter was grace- ful, gay, and natural. The contrast unquestionably ex- isted, and was due, I think, to a fact not discreditable to our country — that libertinism as a trade was uncongenial to the English character ; and that, therefore, the courtier and the gallant who embarked in it rushed to an extreme because they were playing a part to which their associa- tions had not accustomed them. Such, no doubt, was the case with the women of fashion and society. It had never been the custom of English gentlewomen to aban- don themselves to the public profession of immorality; and when, under the evil influence of a licentious Court, they disregarded their old sweet traditions of purity and simplicity, the very reaction drove them into an attitude of revolt against all virtue. Louis XIV. had his mis- tresses like Charles II., but over his illicit connections 314 THE MERRY MONARCH; was thrown a certain air of dignity, and even of romance, so that modest maidens read the story of La Valliere almost without a blush. But the mistresses of Charles II. behaved like street harlots; were as lewd in their manners, as coarse in their language ; and covered their royal " lover " with ridicule by the open indecorum of their infidelities. The Court of Louis XIY. was, au fond, as dissolute, perhaps, as that of the Merry Monarch, but its external aspect was one of order, seemliness, and courtesy; while that of the latter, with its orgies, its assignations, and its brawls, was an outrage upon public decency. From week to week Whitehall or Hampton Court resounded with the din of these heartless saturnalia. The courtiers bandied repartees and doubles eniendres with their king, and mocked him to his face; the maids of honour toyed with their admirers in his presence, and laughed at him behind his back. The grossest scandals were of daily occurrence ; the daughters of noble families outvied one another in the race of dishonour ; no woman with any pretension to charm of face or grace of figure escaped — and few resented — the degrading attentions of the '^ men of fashion," who scofied at female purity as a delusion, and applied all their powers to the unrestrained indulgence of the senses. Duelling and raking were the avowed accomplishments of a fine gentleman. As the historian says — "grave divines winked at the follies of ' honest fellows ' who fought, gambled, swore, drank, and ended a day of debauchery by a night in the gutter. Life among men of fashion vibrated between frivolity and excess. One of the comedies of the time tells the courtier that * he must dress well, dance well, fence well, have a talent for love-letters, an agreeable voice, be amorous and OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 315 discreet — but not too constant.' To graces such as these the rakes of the Kestoration added a shamelessness and a brutality which passes belief." This brutal and shameless sin which cankered English society within the limits of Court influence was, in a great measure, due to the evil example of the man whom tradition so absurdly designates "the Merry Monarch." He was a man of courage and of fine parts, of perfect manners, and easy temper; had some knowledge of art and poetry ; told a story happily ; and could hold his own amongst the brilliant wits of his Court. But a re- morseless ennui consumed him, springing, perhaps, from a constitutional gloom of temperament ; and he took refuge from it in the coarser forms of pleasure. During his exile he had seen much of the '' seamy side of life,'' and had learned to disbelieve in the truth of man and the purity of woman. Sensual enjoyment became his exclu- sive object ; but even into this he carried the burden of his invincible weariness, and he cared nothing for the women whom he made his mistresses — very little for the children of whom they proclaimed him the father. They deceived him openly, but he made no sign of anger or annoyance. Nor, we believe, did he feel any ; he could not rouse himself sufficiently from his cynical indif- ferentism to entertain even these lesser emotions. It was but a part of the farcical comedy of which fate had made him the central figure. What did it matter? It would all end some day, and, meanwhile, he took such amusement as he could get, and recognized that he was cheated by the women on whom he lavished his royal gifts, and ridiculed by the courtiers whom he treated with so much good-natured familiarity. '' No thought of re- 316 THE MERRr MONARCH ; morse or sliame," says Mr. Green, " seems ever to have crossed Ms mind." Why should it? Here was a man to whom life was nothing more than a dreary farce, which he and others were compelled to play out : how could re- morse or shame penetrate the armour of this apathetic negligence ? He cared nothing for the past ; and as for the future, he did not think, he said, that God would make a man miserable only for taking a little pleasure out of the way. Perhaps, at last, he became conscious of some small anxiety on the subject ; if so, he got rid of it in his usual easy fashion by embracing Eomanism, and throwing all responsibility on the shoulders of his con- fessor. " Mistress followed mistress,'' says the historian, '' and the guilt of a troop of profligate women was blazoned to the world by the gift of titles and estates." These profli- gate women enjoy a kind of spurious immortality as " the Beauties of the Court of Charles II.'' Posterity has dealt with their memory much more kindly than they deserved, and I am not at all sure but that their names are better known to multitudes than those of the men of letters, and the philosophers, and the statesmen who, during their shameless reign, helped to make English literature, English science, and English history. I suspect that for a hundred who have heard of Nell Gwynn you will not find one who has heard, let us say, of Cud worth or Henry More. We are a moral people ; yet audacious vice has a certain kind of attraction for us, like that of a deep pool for a man who cannot swim. He looks on, fascinated ; though he has no intention of plunging into it. The curious popular interest still exhibited in the Beauties of the Court of Charles II. may be due to some such cause OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 317 as this; or it may be owing to the influence of their personal charms as preserved for us on glowing canvas by the brush of Sir Peter Lely. Everybody knows the apartment at Hampton Court — it is called " King William III.'s Bedroom" — the walls of which are adorned with the portraits of these voluptuous nymphs. When tlie Palace is open to the public you will always find an admiring crowd grouped before Sir Peter Lely's master- pieces, contemplating the liberal charms which once beguiled a king. The origin of these portraits is thus explained by the biographer of the Count de Grammont :— " There was in London," he says, " a celebrated portrait- painter, called Lely, who had greatly improved himself by studying the famous Vandyke's pictures, which were dis- persed all over England in abundance. Lely imitated Vandyke's manner, and approached the nearest to him of all the moderns. The Duchess of York being desirous of having the portraits of the handsomest persons at Court, Lely painted them, and employed all his skill in the per- formance; nor could he ever exert himself upon more beautiful subjects."* As Byron tells us, their disordered drapery hints we may admire them freely ; but one cannot help a passing ♦ We subjoin Horace Walpole's criticism :—" If Vandyck's portraits are often tamo and spiritless, at least they are natural ; his l:il)ourod draperies flow with ease, and not a fold but is placed with propriety. Lely su])plied the want of taste with cUnquant : his nyinphs trail frini^es aiid^ eml-ioi- dery through meadows and purling streams. Ao shade our humble frigate^ go: Such part the ele[)hant bears, anoiis and botches with disgrace And public scan OK. ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 385 Vanbrugh's adaptation of Fletcher's " The Pilgrim," to which he also contributed a prologue and an epilogue— the former dealing, severely, with Sir Richard Blackmore, and the latter with Jeremy Collier— closes the poet's long literary career. A lameness, with which he had been afflicted in the early part of the year, resulted in erysipelas, and this terminated in a gangrene in one of his toes. His surgeon suggested amputation of the limb, to prevent mortification, but Dryden refused to risk a dubious and painful operation, observing that in the ordinary course of nature he had not long to live. He bore his sufferings with fortitude, and faced death with composure. " When nature could be no longer supported he received the notice of his approaching dissolution with sweet submission and entire resignation to the Divine Will, and he took so tender and obliging a farewell of his friends as none but he himself could have expressed." He passed away very quietly at three o'clock on Wednesday evening. May 1st, 1700. Twelve days later his remains were interred with much public ceremony in Westminster Abbey, in a grave between the last resting-places of Chaucer and Cowley. For a detailed criticism of his works, and fuller par- ticulars of his life, the reader is referred to Bell, Mitford, Johnson, Sir Walter Scott, and especially to his latest editor, Mr. George Saintsbury. A fine and appreciative estimate of his poetical achievement will be found in Lowell's delightful volume of essays, entitled, " My Study Windows." Within the limits imposed, partly by the circumstances of the time and the social influences which surrounded him, and partly by his own tastes and temper, he was unquestionably a great poet ; but as those limits excluded all the topics and questions which arise VOL. I. C C 386 THE MERRY MONARCH. out of the stud}- and love of nature, the contemplation of the unseen, and the consideration of the wants and aspirations of humanity— in a word, all those topics and questions which most nearly affect us in our relation to the Divine Fatherhood and our fellow men— he can never be classed with the greater masters of English song, with Milton or Wordsworth, with Shelley, Browning, or Tennyson. Professor Ward remarks that it is futile to seek in Dryden for poetic qualities which he neither possessed nor affected. Wordsworth observed that in the whole body of his works there is not a single image from nature, and we may add that the landscapes he occa- sionally draws are coldly artiEcial— without a breath of life. A more signal defect is his want of sympathy. We miss in him the true lyrical cry, and to sublimity he seldom aspires and never attains. " If it be too much to say that the magnificent instrument through which his genius discourses its music lacks the vox Jmmana of poetry speaking to the heart, the still rarer presence of the vox angelica is certainly wanting to it.^' But as a poetical rhetorician, as a master of versification, as an adept in the use of poetic forms, he has hardly ever been equalled. The sound of silver trumpets breathes through his strenuous couplets, and his verse rolls on, stately and irresistible, like the march of an army to battle. APPENDICES. APPENDIX A. p. 150. THE SIEGE OF RHODES. As the pattern and type of a long line of dramas, ex- ceptional in form and anomalous in character, which we have agreed — for want of an apter term — to call English Operas, " The Siege of Rhodes '^ merits detailed comment. It was also the first drama in which stage scenery and accessories were introduced on an elaborate and exten- sive scale. It was the first in which the heroic or rhymed couplets of the French tragedy were adopted. For these reasons, it marks an epoch in our dramatic history. From Davenant's preface to the first part, published in 1656, we incidentally learn the dimensions of the stage to which he was compelled to confine his scenic effects. He speaks of it as about " eleven feet in height and about fifteen in depth, including the places of passage reserved for the Music." "This," he adds, "is so narrow an allowance for the fleet of Solyman the Magnificent, his army, the Island of Ehodes, and the varieties attending the Siege of the City, that I fear you will think we invite you to such a contracted trifle as that of the Caesars ,dUb ■■■■c- ■-■'■'■MiiwifUMtip' i#Hjlf I." ^-e 390 THE MEEET MONAKCH ; carved upon a nut." A ranch more spacious stage was available in the Duke's Theatre, of which he took the direction after the Restoration. " The Siege of Ehodes ^' is divided into five *' entries " or set scenes, — " tableaux " we suppose thej would now be called. The scene for the First Entry shows '' a maritime coast, full of craggy rocks and high cliffs, with several verdures naturally growing upon such high situations; and, afar off, the true prospect of the city Ehodes, when it was in prosperous estate : with so much view of the gardens and hills about it, as the narrowness of the room could allow the scene. In that part of the horizon, terminated by the sea, was represented the Turkish fleet making towards a promontory, some few miles distant from the town.'' The Entry is prefaced by Instrumental Music. Enter Admiral and Villerius ; from whom we learn that the Turkish fleet is on its way to attack Ehodes and its garrison of Christian knights. Then come in Alphonso, Duke of Sicily, — wedded to lanthe only a month ago, — and the High Marshal of Ehodes, who advises him to re- turn to Sicily before the siege begins. He refuses : — " My sword against proud Solyman I draw, His ciir>Ld prophet and his sensual hiw'" — a declaration repeated by the Chorus as all depart from the stage. lanthe enters next, with her two women, Melosile and Madina, bearing caskets of jewels. She is in Sicily, but will hasten to her husband in threatened Ehodes, and convert her jewels into arms and gunpowder. With a soldier's chorus the First Entry closes, and the scene changes to the city of Ehodes, beleaguered by sea and land. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 391 After the usual prelude of instruments, Villerius and the Admiral discourse, and the audience gather that the siege has lasted for three months, during which Duke Alphonso's brilliant courage has inspired the soldiers and citizens, but that Christendom, rent by dissension, will not come to sustain the Cross against the Crescent. Duke Alphonso enters, and in lyric measure celebrates the brave deeds of the different knights. In a strain of despair, he adds, however — " If Death be rest, here let us die, Where wearineSvS is all We daily get by Victory, Who must by Famine fall. Great Solyman is landed now ; All Fate he seems to be ; And brings those tempests in his brow Which he deserved at sea." Animated with heroic courage, the chivalry of Ehodes depart on their several duties ; and Solyman the Magnifi- cent comes upon the stage, accompanied by Pirrus, his Vizier Bassa (Pasha), whom he reproaches for having been so long withstood by a single city. He orders an immediate assault, and Pirrus having quitted him, breaks forth into a lyrical eulogium of the Christian skill in war, while condemning the Christian proneness to love and wine. Enter Mustapha, a Pasha, with lanthe, veiled, who has been captured by a Turkish squadron on her voyage to Ehodes : — «. Sohj.—^\'\\^i is it thou wouldst show, and yet dost shroud ? Mus.—l bring the Morning pictured in a Cloud . . . This is lanthe, the Sicilian flower, Sweeter than buds unfolded in a shower. Bride to Alphonso, who in Khodes so long Safe with her lord when both are free And on their course to Sicily, Then Rhodes shall for that valour mourn Which stops the haste of our return." 392 THE MERRY MONARCH; Having summoned a multitude of masons from Greece, Soljman commands that, within a month, a palace shall be erected for him on Mount Philermus, so as to overlook the Rhodians, and there he resolves that his patience shall wear them out if his anger cannot subdue them. The scene changes to the beleaguered city. Enter Ville- rius, Admiral, Alphonso, and lanthe. Villerius and the Admiral extol the conjugal devotion of lanthe, which has been of greater profit to Rhodes than all the princes of Christendom ; and the Admiral gallantly assures her that they will thenceforth have a twofold object, to save her as well as the city. Alphonso, when left alone with his wife, expresses his fears that her presence will, for her dear sake, make a coward of him. lanthe replies in the true heroic spirit, and then recounts the generous deeds of Soly- man : — " lanthe.— These are the sninllcst <,'ifts his bounty know. Alpli.— What could he give you more ? lanthe, — He gave me you ; And you may homeward now securely go Through all his fleet. Alph. — But honour says not so. lanthe. — If that forbid it, you shall never see That I and that will disagree ; Honour will speak the same to me. Aljjh.^This Christian Turk amazes me, my dear." — a line in which Davenant has surely sounded the depths of pathos! lanthe now departs, and Alphonso confides to the audience the divided thoughts which so sorely trouble him. Now — " The theme has been of each heroic song ; And she for his relief those t be known. lanthe is so fair, that none can be Mistaken, araonir thousands, which is she." The scene returns to Ehodes. Enter Alphonso and lanthe, the latter of whom acknowledges that they erred through excess of pride in not accepting the Sultanas generous promise ; for why should honour scorn to take what honour's self does offer ? Alphonso, in the exagger- ation of chivalry, replies : — " To be o'ercome by his victorious sword Will comfort to our fall afford : Our strength may yield to his; but 'tis not fit Our virtue should to his submit : In that, lanthe, I must be Advanced, and greater far than he. 395 OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. Janihe.—'Ee is a foe to Rhodes and not to you. Alph. — In Rhodes besieged we must be Rhodiana too. lanthe.^'Twas fortune that engaged you in this war. Alph. 'Twas Providence. Heaven's prisoners here we are. lanthe.— Th^t Providence our freedom does restore ; The hand that shut now opens us the door. Alj)h.—B.ad Heaven that passport for our freedom sent, It would have chosen some better instrument Than faithless Solyman. lanthe. — say not so ! To strike and wound the virtue of your foe Is cruelty which war does not allow : Sure he has better words deserved from you. ^/i3?i.— From me, lanthe, no ; What he deserves from yon, you best must know." It must be owned that lanthe in this dialogue appears in a much more amiable light than does her husband, whose jealousy of Solyman begins to reveal itself. lanthe, distressed and shocked by such a manifestation, resolves to seek her death in the morrow's battle. From a sub- sequent dialogue between Villerius and the Admiral, we learn that the siege progresses apace, that the Turks have laid down mines which the Ehodians have sought to countermine; but that the courage and fine mind of Duke Alphonso are disordered by his causeless jealousy. In this scene the jealousy of Eoxolana is dealt with. The Sultan has refused to see her before he delivers the final assault, and this refusal she attributes to his love for the beautiful Sicilian. The Entry closes with a repre- sentation of the fury of the fight, which rages with special vehemence about the English station. The Fifth Entry opens with the clash of arms and the clang of battle. In spite of the presence of their Sultan, the Turks give way. In a while they rally, and then the Ehodians in their turn fall back; but the English volun- teers refuse to budge an inch : — 396 THE MEERY MONARCH; " Musta.— Those desperate English ne'er will fly ! Their presence still doth hinder others' flight, As if their mistresses were by To see and praise them while they fight. Soly.—Tlmt flame of valonr in Alphonso's eyes Outshines the light of all my victories." The English, at length, seem to retire ; and Soljman impels the advance, in his haste to conquer the heroic husband and wife whom his generosity desires to save. Afterwards comes a scene between Alphonso and the Admiral. The latter summons him to assist his receding force, but at the same time informs him that his lanthe Hes wounded in the English quarter. Now stands Al- phonso— " this way and that dividing his swift mind " as Tennyson puts it. Rhodes or lanthe? Honour on the one side ; Love on the other. Love prevails, and Alphonso proceeds to his Lxnthe. Then enter Pirrus, whose troops have been repulsed, with the loss of seven crescents. Enter Mustapha, and a good many martial speeches are ground out. Enter Solyman, who reproaches his army for their want of courage, and announces that if he cannot take Ehodes by the sword, he will reduce it by famine. The scene changes to the besieged town. ''Enter Villerius, Admiral, lanthe. She in a night-gown ; and a chair is brought in." Her companions inform the wounded heroine that her life is in no danger ; and that the assault of the Turks has been defeated, chiefly by the splendid courage of Alphonso, who, like herself, is slightly wounded. He enters, led in by two mutes. Husband and wife exchange affectionately penitential speeches; he, for having sunk so low as to doubt her faith ; she, for having taken umbrage at his jealousy. " ^Z^/i.— Accursed crime ! let it have no name Till I recover blood to show my shame. OE5 ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 397 lanth.— Why stay we at such distance when we treat ? As monarch's children making love By proxy to each other move, And by advice of tedious councils meet. Alph.—Keep back, lanthe, for my strength does fail When on thy cheek I see thy roses pale. Draw all the curtains, and then lead her in ; Let me in darkness mourn away my sin." He is led out by the two mutes, while lanthe is carried away in a sedan-chair! Enter Solyman and Eoxolana, the latter attended by her women. Solyman reproaches her with her jealousy, which, he says, her women have inspired and cherished. And he concludes thus :— " Thy war with Rhodes will never have success Till I, at home, Roxana, make my peace. I will be kind if you'll grow wise ; Go chide your whisperers and your spies. Be satisfied with liberty to think ; And when you should not see me, learn to wink". The play ends with a grand chorus of soldiers rejoicing in the discomfiture of the Turks :— " You began the assault With a very long halt ; And as halting ye came, So ye went off as lame ; And have left our Alphonso to scoff ye. To himself as a dainty He keeps his lanthe, Whilst we drink good wine, and ye drink but coffee !" I THE MERRY MONARCH. 399 APPENDIX B. p. 230. "the man of mode." Of "The Man of Mode/' a brief analysis may be in- teresting. Dorimont, the Man of Mode, belongs in many respects to the same category of fashionable and fascina- ting gallants as Dryden's comedy-heroes, while the other principal male character, Sir Fopling Flutter, is his counterfoil ; a fool and a fribble, who imports his affecta- tions from France. In the first scene of the first Act we find him conversing with an orange-girl, who informs him that a handsome gentlewoman and her mother, lately come to town, have, in their ignorance, taken lodgings at her house. They are recognized by his friend Medley, who next enters, as Lady Woodvil and her wayward, rich, and lovely daughter Harriet. Lady Woodvil's business in London, of which she has a great horror, is to conclude a marriage between Harriet and a certain young gentleman, named Bellair, whose affections, however, have already been engaged to Emilia, a ward of her Aunt Townley. In the conversation which ensues between Dorimont, Medley, and Bellair, much cheap wit is employed in ridicule of marriage ; but Bellair remains constant to his loyal in- tentions. He is called away, and his friends discuss him. •*'He's handsome," says Dorimont, '' well-bred, and by much the most tolerable of all the young men that do not abound in wit." '^ Ever well dressed," rejoins Medley, " always complaisant, and seldom impertinent ; you and he are grown very intimate, I see." " It is our mutual interest to be so : it makes the women think better of his understanding, and judge more favourably of my reputa- tion : it makes him pass upon some for a man of very good sense, and I upon others for a very civil person," Thus we see that, in the society of the Restoration, it was accepted as a law of nature that wit and morality could not go together ; that a rake must necessarily be a man of parts, and a clean-living man a fool. Emilia, the lady-love of Bellair, is worthy of him in her virtue and discretion. Dorimont has vainly endeavoured to subdue her, but still hopes for success when she is married. Meanwhile, Dorimont is engaged to Belinda, whom he has met, masked, at the play, on condition that, in her presence, he insults her friend and his mistress, Mrs. Lovitt, as a proof of his love. To carry out this gentlemanly design, he has written a note to Mrs. Lovitt, appointing to call upon her in the afternoon ; and while, preparatory to his visit, Belinda agrees to excite Mrs. Lovitt's jealousy, and thus afford him an excuse for his insults, and he undertakes to represent himself as resent- ful of her attentions to Sir Fopling Flutter, though he Tery well knows that she hates him. Act II. We now find the elder Bellair in town, with the intention of marrying his son to the fair and wealthy Harriet Woodvil. By a strange contretemps, he has taken lodgings in the same house with Emilia, his son's lady- APPENDIX B. p. 230. "the man of mode." Of ''The Man of Mode/' a brief analysis may be in- teresting. Dorimont, the Man of Mode, belongs in many respects to the same category of fashionable and fascina- ting gallants as Dryden's comedy-heroes, while the other principal male character, Sir Fopling Flutter, is his counterfoil ; a fool and a fribble, who imports his affecta- tions from France. In the first scene of the first Act we find him conversing with an orange-girl, who informs him that a handsome gentlewoman and her mother, lately come to town, have, in their ignorance, taken lodgings at her house. They are recognized by his friend Medley, who next enters, as Lady Woodvil and her wayward, rich, and lovely daughter Harriet. Lady Woodvil's business in London, of which she has a great horror, is to conclude a marriage between Harriet and a certain young gentleman, named Bellair, whose affections, however, have already been engaged to Emilia, a ward of her Aunt Townley. In the conversation which ensues between Dorimont, Medley, and Bellair, much cheap wit is employed in ridicule of marriage ; but Bellair remains constant to his loyal iu- THE MBRRY MONARCH. 399 tentions. He is called away, and his friends discuss him. ^'He's handsome," says Dorimont, '' well-bred, and by much the most tolerable of all the young men that do not abound in wit." '' Ever well dressed," rejoins Medley, " always complaisant, and seldom impertinent ; you and he are grown very intimate, I see." " It is our mutual interest to be so : it makes the women think better of his understanding, and judge more favourably of my reputa- tion : it makes him pass upon some for a man of very good sense, and I upon others for a very civil person," Thus we see that, in the society of the Eestoration, it was accepted as a law of nature that wit and morality could not go together ; that a rake must necessarily be a man of parts, and a clean-living man a fool. Emilia, the lady-love of Bellair, is worthy of him in her virtue and discretion. Dorimont has vainly endeavoured to subdue her, but still hopes for success when she is married. Meanwhile, Dorimont is engaged to Belinda, whom he has met, masked, at the play, on condition that, in her presence, he insults her friend and his mistress, Mrs. Lovitt, as a proof of his love. To carry out this gentlemanly design, he has written a note to Mrs. Lovitt, appointing to call upon her in the afternoon ; and while, preparatory to his visit, Belinda agrees to excite Mrs. Levitt's jealousy, and thus afford him an excuse for his insults, and he undertakes to represent himself as resent- ful of her attentions to Sii- Fopling Flutter, though he very well knows that she hates him. Act II. We now find the elder Bellair in town, with the intention of marrying his son to the fair and wealthy Harriet Woodvil. By a strange contretemps, he has taken lodijinffs in the same house with Emilia, his son's lady- 400 THE MERRY MONARCH ; love, of whom he himself becomes enamoured. The elder Bellair is a country squire of fifty-five, and his suit to Emilia he presses in rustic fashion, applying rough names to her affectionately, and swearing, *^ a-dod," that she is a beauty and a rogue. So the plot thickens between the two Bellairs and Emilia, and an amusing game of cross- purposes is played. Meantime, Belinda, in pursuance of her compact, calls on Mrs. Lovitt, and stirs up her jealous wrath ; Dorimont enters, and a coarse scene follows, in which this ^' man of mode " wins the hand of Belinda by his vulgar insolence to his discarded mistress. Act III. From a conversation between Harriet and her woman, Bury, we learn that the former is by no means the pattern gentlewoman her aunt imagines ; and that she has come to London from no desire to marry Bellair, but from a wish to indulge in its dissipations. She confesses to have seen the fascinating Dorimont, and to have been absolutely charmed by him. Young Bellair enters ; and after some sparring they agree that they will not marry one another, but for the present will amuse their parents with a pretended engagement. The scene changes to a crush at Lady Townley's, where Sir Fopling Flutter appears, and Dorimont and Medley befool him to the great entertainment of the men and women of fashion present. Next we pass to the fashionable promenade of the Mall, where the gallants muster in great force; Dorimont attends sedulously upon Harriet, while Mrs. Lovitt and Sir Fopling Flutter indulge in a mild flirtation. In the evening there is to be a dance at Lady Townley's, at which Dorimont will be present under the name of Mr. Courtage — in order not to alarm Lady Woodvil — and intends to prosecute his suit to the wild, witty, lovesome, and beautiful Harriet. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 401 Act IV. Country dance at Lady Townley's. The pre- tended Mr. Courtage produces a favourable impression on Lady Woodvil, while old Bellair dances attendance upon Emilia. Sir Fopling and masquers enter; and the scene is one of wild dissipation, which does not close until dawn of day. Old Bellair retires to his wine, and Dorimont steals away to keep an appointment with Belinda, who, with delightful modesty, has promised to visit him in his lodgings at five in the morning. We are introduced to his lodgings just as Belinda is leaving, having obtained Dorimont's promise that he will give up Mrs. Lovitt. Sir Fopling and a party of roysterers suddenly break in upon them ; and with difficulty Belinda escapes by a back-stair into a sedan-chair, which, as she, in her confusion, forgets to give any instructions, is set down at the accustomed spot, near Mrs. Levitt's door in the Mall. As Belinda is seen by Mrs. Lovitt's maid, she must needs pretend that she has come to pay her a visit, and accounts for the early hour by saying that some Welsh cousins had pressed her to accompany them to buy flowers and fruit at Covent Garden. She has bribed the chairmen to say that they took her up in the Strand, near the well-known Market, which even then, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, had acquired a reputation. Act V. Belinda's quick invention is accepted by her friend; but Dorimont suddenly makes his appearance, and, much agitated, she retires into another room. His object is to recover his influence over Mrs. Lovitt, so that she may compensate him for her studied neglect of him in the Mall by publicly insulting Sir Fopling before his friends. Belinda breaks in upon them, and hurls re- proaches at Dorimont, of which Mrs. Lovitt partially VOL. I. DD 402 THE MERRY MONARCH. guesses the meaning. We pass on to Lady Townley's house, and discover that Smirk, a domestic chaplain, has, with her Ladyship's sanction, married Emilia to Bellair the younger. When old Bellair and others enter, he is hurriedly concealed in a cupboard. Old Bellair has every- thing prepared for his marriage to Emilia, and Dori- mont has contrived to bind his lofty self to nuptials with the witty and lovesome Harriet. But when Smirk, the chaplain, is released from his cupboard to perform the ceremony for the elder Bellair and Emilia, he refuses, on the ground that he has already married the young lady once that morning. The denouement provokes much laughter; old Bellair comes in for a good deal of ridicule ; and the young couple are duly forgiven. As a picture of " high life,'' suh Carolo Secundo rege^ " The Man of Mode " is not without its value ; but the coarseness of its tone and the corruption of its atmosphere point to the unhealthy condition of Society which then ob- tained. Love is burlesqued and degraded; marriage laughed at ; woman's virtue and man's honour are repre- sented as the dreams of fastidious minds ; and the drama- tist seems wholly unable to perceive that the hero on whom he has lavished so much pains, whom he so triumphantly puts forward as the mirror of fashion and the ideal of a gentleman, is nothing after all but a libertine and a snob. If a man is to be judged by the company he seeks, we ought to judge a playwright by the heroes he invents. APPENDIX. CHAPTER III. P. 143. Arrowsmith's comedy, "The Reformation," was published in 1673. It was originally produced at the Duke's Theatre. Downes, in his Eoscius AnglicanuSy says : " The Reformation in the play being the reverse to the laws of morality and virtue, it quickly made its exit to make way for a moral one," i.e., Davenant's alteration of "Macbeth." It seems to have been partly directed against Dryden. P. 144. Sir Richard Steele's criticism of Banks's tragedy, " The Unhappy Favourite," is as follows : " There is in it not one good line, and yet it is a play which was never seen without drawing tears from some part of the audience : a remarkable instance that the soul is not to be moved by words, but things ; for the incidents in this drama are laid together so happily that the spectator makes the play for himself, by the force which the cir- cumstance has upon his imagination. Thus, in spite of the most dry discourses, and expressions almost ridiculous with respect to propriety, it is impossible for one unpreju- diced to see it untouched with pity. I must confess this 404 THE MERRY MONARCH; effect is not wrought on such as examine why they are pleased; but it never fails to appear on those who are not too learned in nature to be moved by her first sugges- tions/' P. 144. Baker ascribes three tragedies to the surgeon, John Bancroft : " Sertorius/' 1679 ; " Henry II.," 1693 ; and ^^ Edward III.," 1691. P. 145. Alexander Brome's "Cunning Lovers^' is founded on " The Seven Wise Masters of Eome," Dave- nant's ^^Unfortunate Lovers," and a novel called '* The Fortunate Deceived." P. 147. Lord Orrery's plays, in chronological order, are : " Mustapha " (tragedy), 1668 ; " Henry V. " (tragedy), 1672; "The Black Prince" (tragedy), 1669; ^^Tryphon" (tragedy), 1669; "Mr. Anthony" (comedy), 1690; "Guzman'' (comedy), 1693; "Herod" (tragedy), 1691 ; "Altemira" (tragedy), 1702. P. 148. Of John Corye, or Corey, nothing is known but that he lived in Charles II.'s reign, and produced one comedy, which is a plagiarism from various authors — Quinault, Corneille,Eandolph, and Beaumont and Fletcher. It was published in 1672, under the title of " The Generous Enemies ; or, The Ridiculous Lovers." P. 149. We subjoin a complete list of Crowne's dramatic compositions : — "Juliana" (tragi-comedy), 1671 ; "Charles VIII. of France," 1672; "The Country Wit" (comedy), 1675; "Andromache," 1675; "Calisto" (a masque), 1675; " City Politiques " (comedy), 1675 ; "The Destruction of Jerusalem" (a tragedy, in two parts), 1677; "The Ambitious Statesman" (tragedy), 1679; "The Misery of Civil War" (tragedy), 1680; "Henry YI." (tragedy, in OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 405 two parts), 1685; "Thyestes" (tragedy), 1681; "Sir Courtly Mce" (comedy), 1685; "Darius" (tragedy), 1688; "The English Friar" (comedy), 1690; "Eegulus" (tragedy), 1694; "The Married Beau" (comedy), 1694; "Caligula" (tragedy), 1698; and "Justice Busy" (comedy), not printed. In reference to " Sir Courtly Nice," Crowne's best play, John Dennis, the critic, says : " All that is of English growth in it is admirable ; for though we find in it neither the fine designs of Ben Jonson, nor the general and masculine wit of Wycherley, nor that grace, that delicacy, nor that courtly air which make the charms of Etherege; yet is the dialogue so lively and so spirited, and so attractively diversified and adapted to the several characters; four of those characters are so entirely new, yet so general and so important, are drawn so truly and so graphically, and opposed to each other ; Surly to Sir Courtly, and Hothead to Testimony, with such a strong and entire opposition ; those extremes of behaviour, the one of which is the grievance, and the other the plague of society and conversation; excessive ceremony on one side, and on the other rudeness and brutality, are so finely exposed in Surly and Sir Courtly; and those divisions and animosities in the two great parties of England, which have so long disturbed the public quiet and undermined the public interest, are so happily repre- sented and ridiculed in Testimony and Hothead, that though I have more than twenty times read over this charming comedy, yet I have always I'ead it not only with delight but rapture ; and it is my opinion, that the greatest comic poet that ever lived in any age might have been proud to be the author of it." P. 150. To the list of Sir William Davenant's plays 406 THE MEERr MONARCH ; here given must be added : " Britannia Triuinphans " (a masque), 1637; ^^Salmacida Spolia" (a masque), 1639; " Love and Honour/' 1649; "Entertainment at Eutland House," 1656 ; " The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru," 1658; '^History of Sir Francis Drake," 1659; "The Fair Favourite," 1673; "Law against Lovers," 1673; " News from Plymouth," 1673 ; " Play-house to be Let," J 673; "The Siege," 1673; "The Distresses," 1673; and alteration of "Macbeth," for which Matthew Locke wrote his celebrated "Music." With respect to " Love and Honour," a tragi-comedy, of which the scene lies in Savoy, Downes tells us that it was produced with much splendour of costume ; the King giving Betterton his coronation suit, in which he acted the part of Prince Alvaro; the Duke of York giving his to Mr. Harris, in which he played Count Prospero ; and Lord Oxford gave his to Mr. Pain, who performed Lionel. It was originally called "The Courage of Love," and was afterwards named by Sir Henry Herbert, at Davenant's request, "The Nonpareilles ; or. The xMatchless Maids." "The Man^s the Master" (borrowed from Scarron's Jodelet and L'Heritier Ridicule) was the last play written by Dave- nant, being finished not long before his death. P. 161. Dryden's tragi-comedy of "Secret Love" is founded, according to Baker, on a novel called "The History of Cleobuline, Queen of Corinth," pt. vii., book 7, under whose character that of the celebrated Christina, of Sweden has been confidently affirmed to be represented. The characters of Celadon, Florimel, Olinda, and Sabina are borrowed from the history of Pisistrata and Corintha, in The Grand Cyrus, pt. ix., ver. 3 ; and that of the French Marquis from Ibrahim, pt. ii., ver. 1. Dry den has also ORj ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 407 made some use of Shirley's " Changes ; or. Love in a Maze." P. 193. " The Spanish Friar " was severely criticised on its first appearance both by Dryden's personal enemies and the partisans of the Duke of York. The former declared it was mainly stolen from other authors ; the latter affirmed that it attacked the Roman religion. In respect to the latter charge, Charles XL said that knaves itt every profession should be alike subject to ridicule ; and as to the former, he exclaimed, " God's fish! steal me such another play any of you, and I'll frequent it as much as I do the ' Spanish Friar.' " P. 200, Dryden's " Albion and Albanius." Downes records that this play happening to be performed at an unlucky time — the very day on which the Duke of Mon- mouth landed in the West — it ran but six nights. P, 201. " Don Sebastian." See Addison's criticism on this play in The Guardian, No. ex. P. 224. Tlie complete list of D'Urfey's dramatic com- positions is as follows : — " Siege of Memphis " (t.), 1676; "Fond Husband; or, The Plotting Sisters" (c), 1676; "Madame Fickle " (c), 1677 ; " Fool turned Critic " (c), 1678 ; " Trick for Trick " (c), 1678 ; " Squire Old Sapp " (c), 1679; "Virtuous Wife" (c), 1680; "Sir Barnaby "Whigg" (c), 1681; "Royalist" (c), 1682; "Injured Princess" (t.-c), 1682; "Commonwealth of Women," 1686; "Banditti," 1686; "Fool's Preferment; or, Three Dukes of Dunstable" (c), 1688; " Bussy D'Ambois " (t.), 1691; "Love for Money" (c), 1691; "Marriage- Hater Matched " (c), 1692 ; " The Eichmond Heiress ; or, A Woman Once in the Right " (c), 1693 ; " Don Quixote " (in three parts), 1694-6 ; " Cjnthia and Endymion " (op.), 408 THE MERRY MONARCH ; 1697; "Intrigues at Versailles" (c), 1697; ^'Cam- paigners '^ (c), 1698 ; "Masaniello " (play, in two parts), 1699-1700 ; " Bath " (c), 1701 ; " Wonders in the Sun '^ (comic opera), 1706; "Modern Prophets" (c), 1709; '' Old Mode and the New " (c), 1709 ; '' The Two Queens of Brentford;" '^Grecian Heroine" (t.), 1721; and " Ariadne " (opera), 1 72 1 . P. 235. The Hon. Edward Howard's plays are : "Usurper" (t.), 1668; ''Six Days' Adventure" (c), 1671; "The Women's Conquest" (tragi-com.), 1671; "Man of Newmarket" (c), 1G7S; "The Change of Crowns ; " " The London Gentleman ; " and " The United Kingdoms." The last three were not printed. P. 236. The Hon. James Howard [)i'oduced a perversion of "Eomeo and Juliet," in which both the hero and the heroine were preserved alive ; it was never printed. Besides the comedy of "The English Musician/' he wrote, in 1G72, " All Mistaken." P. 236. Thomas Killigrew's plays are : " Prisoners " (t.-c.) ; "Claricilla" (t.-c.) ; " Princess ; or. Love at First Sight" (t.-c); "Parson's Wedding" (c.) ; "Pilgrim" (t.) ; " Cicilia and Clorinda ; or, Love in Arms '^ (t.-c, in two parts) ; " Thomaso " (c, in two parts) ; " Bella- mira, her Dream ; or. The Love of Shadows " (in two parts) . In " The Parson's Wedding," the device employed by Careless and Wild to beguile Lady Wild and Mrs. Pleasance into marriage seems borrowed from Marmioa Shakerley's "Antiquary" and Lodowick Barry's " Ham Alley." P. 236. Sir William Killigrew was the author of "Pandora; or. The Converts," 1661, originally a tragedy, but altered into a comedy to please the public taste; i| OK, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 409 ^'Ormasdes; or, Love and Friendship" (t.-c), 1665; "Selindra," 1665; "The Siege of Urbin,^^ 1666; and '' The Lnperial Tragedy," 1 669. P. 213. The prologue to Lacy's " Sir Hercules Buffoon " was written by Tom D'Urfey, who refers to its post- humous character : — " Know that famed Lacy, ornament o' tli' stage, That standard of true comedy in our age, Wrote this new play — And if it takes not, all that we can say on't Is, weVe h'la fiddle, not his hands, to play on't.'* P. 258. Nevil Payne was the reputed author of three plays: " The PatalJealousy " (t.), 1673; " The Morning Eamble " (c), 1673 ; and " The Siege of Constantinople; (t.), 1675. " The Fatal Jealousy " is borrowed from " The Unfortunate Lovers " in Beard's " Theatre." P. 259. " Tom Essence ; or, The Modish Wife," by Thomas Eawlins, is founded on two French comedies, the "Cocu Imaginaire" of Moliere and the "Don Cesar d'Alvaros" of Corneille. Rawlins died in 1673. The pieces which pass under his name, in addition to " Tom Essence," are "Eebellion " (a tragedy), 1640 ; and " Tun- bridge Wells '' (a comedy), 1678. In the preface to his tragedy he says : " Take no notice of my name, for a second work of this nature shall hardly bear it. I have no desire to be known by a threadhm^e coat, having a calling that will maintain it woolly,'* P. 259. In this chapter we have accidentally omitted the name of Edward Eavenscroft, who lived in the rei^n of Charles II. and his two successors, and deserves men- tion as one of the very worst of the Eestoration dramatists. His compositions, or rather, compilations, are twelve in number: "Careless Lovers" (c), 1673; 410 THE MERRY MONARCH ; " Mamamouchi " (c), 1675; '^ Scaramouch, a Philoso- pher" (c), 1677; '^ Wrangling Lovers" (c), 1677; ''King Edgar and Alfreda" (t.-c), 1677; "English Lawyer" (c), 1678; "London Cuckolds" (c), 1682; *' Dame Dobson" (c), 1684; "Titus Andronicus " (t.), 1687; '^Canterbury Guests" (c), 1695; "Anatomist" (c), 1697; and "Italian Husband" (t.), 1698. "Mama- mouchi ; or, The Citizen turned Gentleman/' is borrowed wholesale, without acknowledgment^ from Moliere's " Monsieur Pourceaugnac " and " Bourgeois Gentil- homme." In like manner, as Langbaine points out, "Scaramouch, a Philosopher" is taken from Moliere. In "The Wrangling Lovers; or, The Invisible Mistress," Moliere has again been laid under contribution. P. 259. Of Revet's comedy of " The Town Shifts ; or. Suburb Justice," acted at the Duke's Theatre in 1671, Langbaine speaks as an instructive and moral piece, and bestows much praise on one of the characters, Lovewell, who, though reduced to poverty, not only maintains in his own actions the principles of " innate honesty and integrity," but even labours to recommend them to his two comrades, Friendly and Faithful. According to the preface, this play was begun and finished in a fortnight. The world would have sustained no loss if it had never been begun, or never finished. P. 260. According to Langbaine, Charles Saunders was a King's Scholar at Westminster School when he produced his tragedy of " Tamerlane the Great," which is warmly praised by Banks and other of his contem- poraries. P. 264. We subjoin a complete list of Elkanah Settle's dramatic compositions : — J OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES IT. 411 (€ a "Cambyses, King of Persia'^ (t.), 1671 ; "The Empress of Morocco" (t.), 1673; "Love and Eevenge " (t.), 1675 ; The Conquest of China by the Tartars" (t.), 1676; Ibrahim, the Illustrious Bassa" (t.), 1677; "Pastor Fido; or, The Faithful Shepherd" (pastoral), 1677; "Fatal Love; or. The Forced Inconstancy" (t.), 1680; " The Female Prelate : being the History of the Life and Death of Pope Joan " (t.), 1680 ; " The Heir of Morocco " (t.), 1682; "Distressed Innocence; or. The Princess of Persia" (t.), 1691; "JSTew Athenian Comedy," 1693; "The Ambitious Slave; or, A Generous Revenge" (t.), 1691; "Philaster; or. Love Lies a Bleeding" (t. c), 1695; "The World in the Moon " (opera), 1697 ; '^ The Virgin Prophetess ; or, The Fate of Troy " (opera), 1701 ; "The Siege of Troy," 1707; "City Ramble; or. The Playhouse Wedding" (c), 1711; and ^^ The Lady's Triumph" (comic opera), 1718. " Philaster " was i^eau- mont and Fletcher's play, with the two last acts re- written. P. 272. By a misprint Shadwell's comedy of ''The Scowerers" has been turned into "The Scriveners." From Lady Gimcmck in " The Virtuoso," Congreve has evidently borrowed his Lady Fbjaiit in "The Double Dealer." "The Miser," 1672, is an adaptation from Moliere's " L'Avare." "Psyche," 1675, is what we should now call a spectacular drama. Music, dancing, and scenery secured for it a great success. It is founded on " The Golden Ass," by Apuleins, and " Psyche " by Moliere. " The Woman-Captain," acted at the Duke's Theatre in 1680, is full of lively incident. In his pre- face to " Bury Fair," the author says that his comedy was written "during eight months painful sickness; 412 THE MERRY MONARCH ; wherein all the several days in which I was able to write any part of a scene, amounted not to one month, except some few which were employed in indispensable business." " The Amorous Bigot, with the second part of Teague O'Divelly," is very inferior to " The Lancashire Witches/' 111 1G93 was published a posthumous comedy by Shadwell, " The Volunteers ; or, The Stock-jobbers." P. 276. The dates of Southern's dramatic composi- tions are: — ^' The Loyal Brother; or, The Persian Prince" (t.), 1(.;S2; "The Disappointment" (c), 1681; ''Sir Antuny Love ; or, The lianibling Lady " (c), 1G91 ; " The Wives' I-xcuse; or, Cuckolds Make Themselves" (c), 1G92 ; "The Maid's Last Prayer; or. Anything rather than Fail" (c), 1693; "The Fatal Marriage; or. The Innocent Adultery" (t.), 1G91; "Oroonoko" (t.), 1696; " Tie Fate of Capua" (t.), 1700 ; " The Spartan Dame " (t.),1719; and "Money the Mistress" (a play), 1726. The plot of •' The Loyal Brother " is taken from an old fiction, called " Tachmas, Prince of Persia." That of "The Disappointment ; or. The ^Mother in Fashion," partly from "The Curious Impertinent" in "Don Quixote." " ]\Ioney the Mistress," when produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields, proved a failure. Southern, who was then in his 67th year, was behind the scenes when, on the first night, the audience were hissing vigorously. Rich, the prompter, w^ho was standing by his side, asked him if he heard what the audience were doing'? " No, sir," replied Southern, " I am very deaf." " The Spartan Dame " was written in 1687, though not acted until 1719, when its success was so great that the author's profits amounted to £500. The subject is derived from Plutarch's " Life of Aofis." OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 4ia P. 279. The music to Sir Robert Stapylton's comedy of " The Stepmother " was composed by Matthew Lock. Two Masques are introduced, called " Apollo's " and "Diana's." P. 280. We give a full list of Nahum Tate's dramatic compositions :—" Brutus of Alba" (t.), 1678; "The Loyal General" (t.), 1680; "Richard IL ; or. The Sicilian Usurper," 1681 ; "The Ingratitude of a Commonwealth; or, The Fall of Coriolanus," 1682 ; " Cuckold's Haven; or, An Alderman no Conjurer " (f.), 1685 ; " A Duke and JSTo Duke" (f.), 1685; "The Island Princess " (t.-c), 1687 ; "Injured Love; or, The Cruel Husband (t.), 1707; "Dido and ^Erieas " (op.). None of these have any originality. The last-named is simply a bad abridgment of Webster's " White Devil." P. 281. Sir Samuel Tuke was of Temple Cressy, in the county of Essex, and a Colonel of horse in the service of Charles L, " while the afi^iirs of that monarch wore any appearance of success." He was created a baronet in March, 1664, and died at Somerset House on Januxrv 26th, 1673. His one dramatic effort was extraordinarily successful. Echard says of it: — "This is one of the pleasantest stories that ever appeared upon our stage, and has as much variety of plots and intrigues, without anything being precipitated, improper, or unnatural, as to the main action." P. 296. A note or two on Mrs. Behn's plays may be acceptable. The two parts of "The Rover" are described as "both of them very entertaining ; they contain much business, bustle, and intrigue, supported with an infinite deal of sprightliness." The plot is based upon Killigrew's " Don Thomaso." In reference to " The Forced Marriage '* 414 THE MEERY MONARCH; we are told that Otwaj, the poet, having expressed an inclination to turn actor, Mrs. Behn gave him the king in this play as a probation part ; " but, not having been used to the stage, the appearance of a full audience put him into such confusion as effectually spoiled him for an actor." The comedy of " The Amorous Prince ; or. The Curious Husband" is chiefly bas ed on Cervantes' novel of ^'The Curious Impertinent," for which the old dramatists had a curious fancy. " The Dutch Lover" is from a Spanish source. " Abdelazar; or. The Moor's Eevenge," is an adaptation of Marlowe's " Lust's Dominion." " The Town Fop; or. Sir Timothy Tawdry " is largely borrowed from George Wilkins's comedy, ''The Miseries of En- forced Marriage." The prologue and epilogue to ''The Debauchee" (an adaptation of Eichard Brome's "Mad Couple Well Matched") were written by the Earl of Eochester. Hints for " Sir Patient Fancy " have been borrowed from Moliere's " :^^alade Imaginaire" and "M. Pourceaugnac." The dedication of ''The Feigned Cour- tesans ; or, A Night's Intrigue," to Nell Gwynn, contains the following extraordinary passage: — "I with shame look back on my past ignorance, which suffered me not to pay an adoration long since where there was so very much due ; yet even now, though secure in my opinion, I make this sacrifice with infinite fear and trembling; well knowing that so excellent and perfect a creature as yourself differs only from the Divine Powers (!) in this : the offerings made to you ought to be vvortliy of you, whilst ^Afiy accept the will alone." "The City Heiress ; or, Sir Timothy Treatall" is largely plagiarised from Middleton's ^' Mad World, my Masters,'* Massinger's "Guardian," and Middleton's "Inner Temple Masque." OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 415 t The prologue was written by Otway. " The Eoundheads ; or, The Good Old Cause " is greatly indebted to Tatham's comedy of " The Eump." The tragi-comedy of " The Young King; or. The Mistake " owes its plot to the story of Alcamenes and Menalippe in CalprenMe's romance of " Cleopatre." In indelicacy " The Lucky Chance ; or, An Alderman's Bargain" probably surpasses all that Mrs. Behn ever wrote. The farce of " The Emperor of the Moon " is from the French piece, "Arlequin Empereur dans la Monde de la Lune." " The Widow Eanter; or. The History of Bacon in Virginia " is borrowed from the well-known story of Cassius who, in the belief his friend Brutus had been defeated, caused himself to be put to death by the hand of his freedman Dandorus. END OF VOL. I. ?- ■'M"v COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES lrf.,^-V1.-,'i-_^— COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES This book is due on the date Indicated below, or at the expiration of a definite period after the date of borrowing, as provided by the rules of the Ubrary or by special arrange- ment with the Ubrarian hi charge. DATE BORROWED DATE DUE "^ M^^ \\j^ - ■4^ DATE BORROWED Ca0(l14l)M1OO DATE DUE -f f 010663827 t^^ ■M c I merry moi^ ^^ VA » X s 3. *>....-">'/* v-"",",-"'^ iiiiwWriMiNIIIII*''*'" ••^' •? *• . »^-r ^r:^r :y>( 4£.066 A +^ +>iP crreat measure oi tne Cuz ' give me some ! to the great pitr audience. And so naturally did he act the Sm.th s part that being at a fair in a country town, and that farce le „g prelented, the only master-smith of the town came to him! saying, ' Well, although your father speaks so .11 of you yet when the fair is done, if you will come and work wiL me, I will give you twelve-pence a week m^re than I give any other journeyman.' Thus was he taken for a smith bred, that was, indeed, as much of any t ade The fall of the Long Parliament, by which they had been so cruelly persecuted, was grateful enough to the payers, and we may fairly assume that Alex-d- Brome fpoke their feelings in the verses -^f ';-^^^''' ^^j^" fixed to the collected edition of Richard Brome s Plays. The players, he exclaims, have survived the Parliament :- "See the strange twirl of times! when such poor things Outlive the dates of parliaments or kings I This revolution makes exploded wit Now see the fall of those that ruined it ; And the condemn^ stage hath now obtamed To see her executioners arraigned. There's nothing permanent ; those h.gh great men That rose from dust, to dust may fall again ; And fate so orders things, that the same hour Sees the same man both in contempt a°d P"':" ' For the multitude, In whom the power doth he, Do in one breath cry Hail .' and Crua/y . THE MEREY MONAECH ; The Government could suppress the public theatres, but they could not suppress the taste for dramatic repre- sentations, and clandestine performances became of fre- quent occurrence during the Protectorate. In Lord Hatton, of Scotland Yard, the poor actors found a kindly patron ; and not less generous was the Countess of RoUand, who erected a private stage at her mansion, Holland House, Kensington. It was necessary that these performances should take place with the greatest precau- tions, and we are told that William Goffe, " the woman- actor," was employed as " the jackal " to give notice of the different "fixtures," and communicate between actors and audience. At the close of the play a collection was made for the benefit of the actors, whose share was care- fully proportioned to their respective merits. To increase their funds the players resorted to the practice of publishing the plays, which had hitherto been jealously kept in manuscript, and in one year no fewer than fifty were thus given to the public. Many of these have undoubtedly perished, for though the titles are re- corded, the plays themselves are not known. And, in 1653, John Cotgrave issued a remarkable collection ^' of the most and best of our English Dramatic Poems'' under the title of "The English Treasury of Wit and Language." In his preface he complains that "the Dramatic Poem had been too much slighted ; " and he adds that some, not wanting in wit themselves, had, through this unfortunate neglect, "lost the benefit of many rich and useful observations ; not duly considering, or believing, that the framers of them were the most fluent and redundant wits that this age, or I think any other, ever knew." OB, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. ^ But With the overthrow of -the Eumps," and the en- trance into London of prudent George Monk and his egiments, brighter days dawned for the poor p W - Bustlinc. old Ehodes, who had been prompter at the Z:VtL„ The*e, »d .fterw.rd. ^'^ /"^"^ pamphlets in a shop at Charing ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Lp in Hyde Park, and wheedled out of the General Zission to revive the drama at the Cockpit, m Drury T"^' annP 1660^ A similar license was granted to ':Zl:2o^Z t.e sa.e ti.e opened the Salis^ CoutTheatre. That Monk's tastes were theatncaWe oZ from the fact that, when he and the Council of Stle w re entertained by the London Guilds, dramatic ' sentations were always included in tl^e Progra-e Jth " dancing and singing, many shapes and ghosts, and ;^e like; and all to please his Excellency the Lord Tit the revi.al of the drama was att-ded J^; good deal of irregular competition ; but in 662 the King took the matter in hand, and settled all dispute ^7 • • ^n+Pnts for two theatres only— one to Thomas ^rirtho opened in Drury Lane at the head of the S^rc;: an Ind the other to Sir William Da.enant LM'buI li York's company, in ^^^ ^ Elect Street. The latter afterwards removed o the old Tennis Court in Portugal Eow, ^^^^^'^^J^ll Lincoln's Inn Fields. In 1671, after the ^-th J ^ave^ nant the Duke's comedians betook themselves to the new m Dorset Gardens, built by Sir d^^stophe^ W-> and decorated by Grinling Gibbons ^^^^^^'^^ Kinc^'s Company, burnt out of Drury Lane m 1672, touna Srt Lincoln's Inn Fields until Wren provided % ^ 6 THE MEEEY MONAECH ; The Government could suppress the public theatres, but they could not suppress the taste for dramatic repre- sentations, and clandestine performances became of fre- quent occurrence during the Protectorate. In Lord Hatton, of Scotland Yard, the poor actors found a kindly patron ; and not less generous was the Countess of Holland, who erected a private stage at her mansion, Holland House, Kensington. It was necessary that these performances should take place with the greatest precau- tions, and we are told that William Goffe, " the woman- actor," was employed as *^ the jackal " to give notice of the different "fixtures," and communicate between actors and audience. At the close of the j)lay a collection was made for the benefit of the actors, whose share was care- fully proportioned to their respective merits. To increase their funds the players resorted to the practice of publishing the plays, which had hitherto been jealously kept in manuscript, and in one year no fewer than fifty were thus given to the public. Many of these have undoubtedly perished, for though the titles are re- corded, the plays themselves are not known. And, in 1653, John Cotgrave issued a remarkable collection '^ of the most and best of our English Dramatic Poems ^'* under the title of "The English Treasury of Wit and Language." In his preface he complains that "the Dramatic Poem had been too much slighted ; " and he adds that some, not wanting in wit themselves, had, through this unfortunate neglect, "lost the benefit of many rich and useful observations ; not duly considering, or believing, that the framers of them were the most fluent and redundant wits that this age, or I think any other, ever knew." 7 OE, ENGLAND TINDEE CHAELES II. But with the overthrow of -the Eumps," and the en- trance into London of prudent George Monk and his regiments, brighter days dawned for the poor players. Bustling old Rhodes, who had been prompter at the Blackfriars Theatre, and afterwards sold books and pamphlets in a shop at Charing Cross, hastened to the Lp in Hyde Park, and wheedled out of the Genera permission to revive the drama at the Cockpit, m Drury Lane (June, 1660). A similar license was granted to Beeston, who about the same time opened the Salisbury Court Theatre. That Monk's tastes were theatrical we opine from the fact that, when he and the Council of State were entertained by the London Guilds, dramatic representations were always included in the programme ^th " dancing and singing, many shapes and ghosts, and the like ; and all to please his Excellency the Lord General." -i-i, « At first the revival of the drama was attended with a good deal of irregular competition ; but in 1662 the King took the matter in hand, and settled all disputes by issuing patents for two theatres only-one to Thomas Killi-rew, who opened in Drury Lane at the head of the KincT's Company ; and the other to Sir William Da.enant and'the Duke of York's Company, in Salisbury Court Fleet Street. The latter afterwards removed to the old Tennis Court in Portugal Row, on the south side ot Lincoln's Inn Fields. In 1671, after the death of Dave- nant, the Duke's comedians betook themselves to the new theatre in Dorset Gardens, built by Sir Christopher Wren, and decorated by Grinling Gibbons. Meanwhile the King's Company, burnt out of Drury Lane in 1672, found shelter in Lincoln's Inn Fields until Wren provided 8 THE MERRY MONARCH ; them with a new house in 1674. Eight years later, on Killigrew's death, the two companies united, and started at the New Drury Lane Theatre, also built by Wren, on the 16th of November, 1682. Before we put together a few biographical and critical notes respecting the Actors and Actresses of the Restora- tion, we must say a word or two in description of the theatres in which, and of the audience before which, they donned the sock and buskin. The usual hour of per- formance, at least in Charles II.'s early years, was three in the afternoon. The house was lighted, partly by the light of heaven, which the open roof— for the pit was not covered over* — freely admitted, and partly by flaring candles, wliicli were trimmed by regular " snuffers." Two rows of boxes t accommodated the King and his cour- tiers, the nobles, and the wealthier gentry ; but the com- pany in the pit was frequently among the best, and thither resorted the wit and the critic, on whose fiat the fate of play and players depended. Thither, too, went the gay gallants of the period, dividing their attention between the fair actresses on the stage and the beauties in the boxes, with a ready glance for a pretty face among the orange girls, who pushed the sale of their costly fruit. When, in February, 1668, Sir George Etherege's comedy, '« She Would if She Could," was produced at the Duke's House, the pit was crowded with a brilliant company, in- cluding Buckingham, and Dorset, and Sedley, which in- continently condemned the play, much to the dissatisfac- tion of its author. Our wonder that ladies could attend • Pepys records, on one occasion, the inconvenience caused by a storm of hail. t Tlie prices of admission to the boxes seem to have ranged from 48. to 18d. On the first night of a new piece the prices were sometimes doubled. (See Pepys, Dec. 16th, 1661.) OB, ENGLAND TINDER CHARLES II. » f o^ ^nrlpppnt a drama is not much xt,p r)erformance of so indecent; a, charmincr faces he saw, and so loTed to see, we rruoTber who ..ade even this slight concession to de- corum must have been very small. The natronage of the Court was extended to the Sta.e The patrona ^ ^^^^^ ^^^^ T • ^ r«iioTlp«5'<4 reio'n on a more iiueiuji- during Chailts s rei„i ^^^^ Wore or since. The saturnine King, so laise y before or theatre, almost every "Thp Merry Monarch, went to ine uuc , nin-ht, to escape for awnue iio.u him and of course was followed by everybody who sumed Inm, and 01 CO ^^^ breathed the atmosphere of the Court. ': ditorium " must often have presented a more int^re^- ing, and certainly a more entertaining spectacehan the . A , f or example, on the 20th of April, 1661 , when -^".^'^^ol^ saw the King, and the DuUe of YoIZ his recently-wedded Duchess. The play was Fletcher's " Humorous Lieutenant," not very wel a^ted ; but Mr. Pepys found great pleasure m seeu^ s^ -ny ,reat beauties, especially Mrs. Palmer ^ due t m to ^ known as Lady Oastiemaiuc i „i ^4? fomi- XI -iz- ^ riirl rikcover a [?reat deal ot tami- with whom the King did discovei g ^^^^^.^^ liarity." Again, on October '^^^^''^Zln.e--"! did of Braganza made her first public ^PP^^'^^!, go thither," says Pepys, " and by very great fo une d^d follow four or five gentlemen who were carried to a little loilow rour o « i, „„,i «„ erent through a narrow private door in the wall, and so crept ^-t, .< tv-o lorlipti were then observed to be * .. I remember," says Colley Cb^er ' the 1«^;-^ ^^^ ^11 they had been decently afraid of venturmg '>"f -f*'^f *'Ju*p:" "odesty ; or if their curiosity assured'tliey might do it without insult to their mo.l^ ^ were too strong for their P='t'!f'''^fdav8 of acting, but in masks, which ances, and rarely came - the first days^^o*^ ^^ J,.^^ .^^^^^^ ,, ^^^,,,, custom, however, had so many m t.u" i abolished these many years. 10 THE MEERY MOJ!f ARCH ; place, and come into one of the boxes next the King's, but so as I could not see the King or Queen, but many of the fine ladies, who yet are really not so handsome gener- ally as I used to take them to be, but that they are finely dressed. There we saw ' The Cardinal ' [by James Shir- ley], a tragedy I had never seen before, nor is there any great matter in it. The company that come witli me into the box were all Frenchmen, that could speak no English ; but Lord ! what sport they made to ask a pretty lady that they got among them, that understood both French and English, to make her tell them what the actors said." On the 21st of November Mr. Pepys took his wife to the Cockpit, and they had excellent places, and saw the King, and Queen, and the boy-Duke of Monmouth, and my Lady Castlemaine, and all the fine ladies. He was there again on the 1st of December — he was always making vows not to go to the theatre for a certain period, and always breaking these vows — and saw acted a trans- lation of Corneille's "Cid "— ** a play," he says, " I have read with great delight, but is a most dull thing acted, which I never understood before, there being no pleasure in it, though done by Betterton, and by lanthe [Mrs. Betterton], and by another fine wench [Mrs. Norton] that is now in the room of Roxalana [Mrs. Davenport] ; nor did the King or Queen once smile all the whole play, nor any of the whole company seem to take any pleasure, but what was in the greatness and gallantry of the com- pany." We fear our dear friend Pepys had a touch of snobbish- ness or flunkeyism in his character, for when he went to the Duke's Theatre, on December 27th, to see the " Siege of Ehodes," he expresses himself as not pleased with the OK, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES U. 11 audience: the house was "full of citizens-there hardly Sw Year's Day, 1663 : " the house was full of cxt.zens, the chief box, radiant in a velvet gown, winch was then " the fashion." ^^ At the Cockpit, on the 5th, the Duke ana 4- HTirl hpfore all the audience " did show Vnrk were present, and oeiore iin tuc Yorkweiep , ^^gthou-lit, unnatural dalliances, some impertinent, and metnou^ , ^^ such as kissing of Ws, and leaning upon one anc. be But these great people seldom manifested much respect for the audience_or for themselves. What a -ene ^s tha .hich Pepys sketches for us as l>-"f ;;--^;; f^^ Enc^'s Theatre one day in January, l^^* =-'H°" *^^ King, coming the other day to his Theatre to see The IndFan Queen,' my Lady Castlemaine was in the n^ bo^ r.A Ipnnino- over other ladies awhile to "hpfnrp he came ; and leaning uvtii kjvl Xer with the King, she rose out of the hox and went :1 he King's, and set herself on the ^^^^^fj^l^ hetween the King and the Duke of York; which puUh Zing himself, as well as everyhody else, ou of counte 11 "-this impertinent feat heing intended to ^o e to the world that she had not, as was supposed, lost the royal 'T;;he 4th of October Pepys went to see a foolish pl^y called "The General," and happened to sit near to S^r Charles Sedley. who " at every line did take notic^^^e dulness of the part and hadne3S of the action, and that most pertinently." Cromwell's Another time he sees among the company O daughter, Mary, with her husband, Y.scount Falcon 12 THE MERRY MONARCH; bridge, and is much pleased by ber gracious looks and modest dress, and by the timidity with which she shrinks from the gaze of curious spectators, putting on her vizard, and keeping it on all the play. But he is more gratified, we fancy, by the sight of laughing Nell Gwynn, who, with her fair locks and bright eyes, shines conspicuous in the front of the house, sometimes filling the soul of Pepys with exultation by condescending to chat with him, and sometimes moving his admiration by the sharp repartees she fearlessly exchanges with the most celebrated wits of the time. On the 5th of June, 1665, he attends the performance at the Duke's Theatre of Lord Orrery's play of " Mus- tapha ; " but " all the pleasure of the play was " that the King and Lady Castleraaine were present, " and pretty witty Nell Gwynn and the younger Marshall sat next us ; which pleased me mightily." There is a curious entry in the Diary for December 21st, 1668. The King and his Court went to see " Macbeth " at the Duke's Theatre, and Pepys sat just under them and Lady Castlemaine, and '' close to a woman that comes into the pit, a kind of a loose gossip that pretends to be like her, and is so, something. The King and Duke of York minded me, and smiled upon me, at the handsome woman near me, but it vexed me to see Moll Davies, in a box over the King's and my Lady Castlemaine's, look down upon the King, and he up to her ; and so did my Lady Castlemaine once, to see who it was ; but when she saw Moll Davies, she looked like fire, which troubled me. 99 We have remarked that, on the restoration of the Theatres, their performances began at three in the after- 1^ OB, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. noon . but later hours came afterwards to be the fashion. Pepy^ notes, on one occasion, that the play was not over 3 eleven, and that he walked home by moonlight And in Evelyn's correspondence, when complainin g of the tduencyof ^^ our theatrical pastimes during the season of Lent?' when, he says, there are more wicked and obscene ^s permitted in London than in all the world *id.,;J«™rt, ..th.. *. ..dies »d tie ^U^ come recking from the play late on Saturday mght to their Sunday devotions ; and the ideas of the farce possess their fancies to the infinite prejudice of devotion, besides the advantages it gives to our reproachful bias- ^irange and exciting was the scene, on the evening of February 2nd, 1679, at the Duke's Theatre, w^ere, ^^^^^^^^ with diamonds, and conspicuous by her pau.ted doll-h^^^^ beauty, sat Louise de Queronaille, Duchess of Ports- „.outh. Some roisterers, informed of her P-ence w^- seized with a frenzy of morality, and with ^-n - r^^^ and fiaming torches made their way into the P;^. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ curses upon the Duchess of Portsmouth -^^ ^^^^^l'^ sons of honour. A general n.eUe ensued, in -^-^^^^^^^^ truders hurled their firebrands among the affrighted actor, on the stage, while they pricked and slashed the hmbs and bodies of the audience, until they were overpowered and driven out. Instead of punishing the rioters Charles punished the unoffending actors, and closed the house during the royal pleasure. Here is another curious incident, recorded by Pepys m 1667--" how a gentleman of good habit, sitting just before us, cutting of some fruit in the mi^dst of the play did drop down as dead ; but with much ado. Orange Moll OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 15 THE ME RET MONARCH; did thrust lier finger adown Ms throat, and brought him to life again." It was at the Duke's Theatre in Dorset Gardens, on an April evening in 1682, that Charles, the son of Sir Edward Dering, quarrelled with a choleric young Welshman, named Vaughan, and not having room in the pit to fight it out, climbed on the stage, and exchanged thrust and pass before the excited audience. Dering got the worst of it, and was carried home, bleeding with a wound in the side ; and Vaughan was detained a prisoner until the authorities were satisfied that the other ofi'ender's hurt was not mortal. The fine gentlemen of the period would have found time hang heavy on their hands but for the hours passed in the Theatre. When weary of displaying themselves in the pit, or lounging in the boxes by the side of their lady-loves, they resorted to the tiring-rooms of the pretty actresses, and made merry with the paraphernalia of the toilette. One Saturday, in February, 1667, a certain Sir Hugh Myddelton commented with such rude freedom on the dressing processes of the nymphs of Drury Lane Theatre, that Kebecca Marshall sharply advised him to reserve his company for the ladies of the Duke's House since those who served the King did not meet with his approbation. In reply Sir Hugh, an ill-conditioned fellow, threatened he would kick, or that his footman should kick her. On the following Monday Mistress Marshall com- plained of this insult to the King, who, however, did not at once take notice of it. As she left the theatre on Tuesday evening, after the play. Sir Hugh hung about her, and at last whispered something to a ruffianly re- tainer, who thereupon followed her closely, and pressed I .gainst her with suet violence ^^^^'/^f'^f /^^* ^'^ should rob or stab her, she screamed for help. The wretch for a minute or two was abashed ; then picking ,p some mud and refuse from the f f -'/l ^^f ^^^^^ about the actress's face and hair, and took ^o flight. The next day she lodged a second complaint with the King, who, some few days afterwards, issued a decree, pro- bibitinc^ gentlemen from entering the tiring-rooms of the ladies o^f the King's Theatre. The prohibition, however, was as unwelcome to the actresses as to the beaux, and in a short time was, by mutual consent, ignored. Of the audiences of the Restoration, that is, of those .udiences so far as they were composed of fine ladies and fine gentlemen. Monsieur Henri Taine furnishes an elabo- rate picture. "They were rich," he says, "they had tried to deck themselves with the polish of Frenchmen ; they added to the stage moveable decorations music, lights, probability, comfort, every external aid ; but they wanted heart. Imagine these foppish and half-mtoxicated nien, who saw in love nothing beyond desire, and in man aothing beyond sensuality ; Rochester in the place of Mercutio. What part of his soul could comprehend poesy and fancy ? The comedy of romance was alto- Lther beyond his reach; he could only seize the actual Lid, and of this world but the palpable and gross externals. Give him an exact picture of ordinary life commonplace and probable occurrences, literal imitations of what he himself was and did ; lay the scene ^- L°-don, in the current year; copy his coarse words, his brutal iokes, his conversation with the orange-girls, his rendez- vous in the Park, his attempts at French dissertation. Let him recognize himself, let him find again the people 16 THE MEEET MONARCH; OE, ENGLAND TJNDER CHABLES II. 17 and the manners he had just left behind him in the- tavern or the ante-chamber; let the theatre and the street reproduce one another. Comedy will give him the same entertainment as real life ; he will wallow equally well there in vulgarity and lewdness ; to be present there will demand neither imagination nor wit; eyes and memory are the only requisites. This exact imitation will amuse him and instruct him at the same time. . . . The author, too, will take care to amuse him by his plot, which generally has the deceiving of a husband or a father for its subject. The fine gentlemen agree with the author in siding with the gallant ; they follow his for- tunes with interest, and fancy that they themselves have the same success with the fair. Add to this, women debauched, and willing to be debauched ; and it is mani- fest how these provocations, these manners of prosti- tutes, that interchange of exchanges and surprises, that carnival of rendezvous and suppers, the impudence of the scenes only stopping short of physical demonstration, these songs with their double meaning, that coarse slang shouted loudly and replied to amidst the tableaux vivants, all that stage imitation of orgie, must have stirred up the innermost feelings of the habitual practisers of intrigue." From the audiences we return to the actors. When Killigrew opened the King's Theatre his com- pany included Bateman, Baxter, Theophilus Bird, Blag- den, Burt, Cartwright, Clem, Duke, Hancock, Charles Hart, Kynaston, Lacy, Mohun, Robert and William Shot- terel, and Wintersel. He afterwards added Beeston, Bell, Charleton, Goodman, Griffin, Haines, Harris, Hughes, Liddell, Reeves, and Shirley. The ladies were Mrs. Corey, Eastland, Hughes, Knipp, Anne and Rebecca Marshall, Rutter, Uphill, and Weaver ; while at different dates engagements were made with Mrs. BouteU, Nel Gwynn, James, Reeves, and Verjuice. The members of the King's Company were formally sworn in at the Lord Chamberlain's office as His Majesty's servants, and the ten leading actors were not only entered on the establish- ment of the Royal Household, but supplied with a hand- Bome uniform of scarlet cloth and silver lace. To the Duke's Theatre belonged Betterton, Dixon, LUlieston, Lovell, James and Robert Nokes ; and, after- wards Blagden, Harris, Medbourne, Norris, Price, Rich- ards and Young. The ladies were Mrs. Betterton, Davenport, Davies, Gibbs, Holden, Jennings, and Long. Some degree of reputation attaches to Charles Hart, the grandson of Shakespeare's sister-not to be con- founded with that other Hart who served as a maoor in Prince Rupert's cavalry. He began his professional career by playing women's parts, but after the Restora- tion asserted his histrionic capacity by his Alexander the Great (in Lee's play), his Cataline (in Ben Jonson's tra-^edy), and his Othello. He was not less successful as Manly in Wycherley's "Plain Dealer." Rymer refers to him and Mohun as the ^sopus and Roscius of their time. His handsome presence made him a great favourite with the ladies, and we know that he was Nell Gwynn's « Charles the First." In the scandalous chromcles his name is also associated with that of the Duchess of Cleve- land. Says Pepys (April 7th, 1668) :-« Mrs. Knipp tells me that my Lady Castlemaine is mightily in love with Hart of their house ; and he is much with her m private, and she goes to him and do give him many presents ; and that the thing is most certain, and Beck Marshall only -VOL. II. X '- 1 g THE MEEEY MONABCH ; privy to it, and the means of bringing them together : which is a very odd thing, and by this means she is even with the King's love to Mrs. Davis." The salary of this famous actor was only £3 a week ; but after he became a shareholder in the theatre, his share of the profits brought his annual income up to £1,000. He quitted the stage in 1682, and retired to his country house at Great Stanmore, where he died in the foUowing year, and was buried in the old churchyard. To Hart's Cataline, in Ben Jonson's tragedy, Burt played Cicero. He was a good actor of solid parts, but did not succeed in characters of much force and passion. James Nokes, the son of a vendor of toys, played women's parts at the opening of his brilliant career, and even in his later life was famous as "the Nurse " m Otway's perversion of -Eomeo and Juliet," and Payne's " Fatal Jealousy." As a comedian few of his contem- poraries equalled, none surpassed him : in the unctuous- ness of his subtle humour he seems to have resembled Munden. He studied character with a keenly observant eye, and reproduced every detail with wonderful truth to nature. Both Court and city delighted in him. Charles II it is said, first recognized his ability when he was playing Norfolk in "Henry VIIL," and distinguished him to the last with his royal favour. In May, 1670, when the King and his Court went to Dover to meet the Queen-mother, Henrietta Maria, he was accompanied by the Duke of York's comedians, who performed before the briUiant audience the play of " Sir Solomon,'^ founded on Moliere's " L'Ecole des Femmes." Nokes played Sir Arthur Addel, which he dressed in close imitation of the OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 19 costume of the French gentlemen in the Queen-mother's train. To render his equipment the more exact the Duke of Monmouth took off his own sword and belt, and buckled them to the actor's side. His caricature of the airs and graces of the Frenchmen was as perfect as his imitation of their dress, and convulsed the King and his courtiers with laughter— a curious compliment for a host to pay his guests. The Duke's sword and belt Nokes treasured as souvenirs until his death in 1692.^ Colley Cibber says of him :— " He scarce ever made his first entrance in a play but he was received with an involuntary applause; not of hands only, for these may be, and have often been, par- tially prostituted and bespoken, but by a general laughter, which the very sight of him provoked, and nature could not resist ; yet the louder the laugh the graver was his look upon it ; and sure the ridiculous solemnity of his features were enough to have set a whole bench of bishops into a titter, could he have been honoured (may it be no offence to suppose it) with such grave and right reverend auditors. In the ludicrous distresses which, by the laws of comedy, folly is often involved in, he sunk into such a mixture of piteous pusillanimity, and a consternation so ruefully ridiculous and inconsolable, that when he had shook you to a fatigue of laughter, it became a moot point whether you ought not to have pitied him. When he debated any matter by himself, he would shut up his mouth with a dumb, studious front, and roll his full eye into such a vacant amazement, such a palpable ignorance of what to think of it, that this silent perplexity (which would sometimes hold him several minutes) gave your * This story is told by Downes, in his " Roscius Anglicanus." 20 THE MEEET MONAECH ; OB, ENGLAND UNDEE CHABLES II. 21 imagination as fuU content as the most absurd thing he could say upon it." Another of the popular actors of the Eestoration was the comedian, John Lacy. He was held in such esteem by Charles U. that he took from the best players the parts to which they had a prescriptive right by the laws of the stage and gave them to his favourite. A first-rate « all round" actor. Lacy was not less admirable as Shakes- peare's Falstaff than as the Irishman Teague in Howard's farcical comedy of "The Committee."* AU parts came alike to him, but for the beaux and lovers of comedy he was specially fitted by his handsome person and graceful address. He had been, in early Ufe, a dancing-master and a soldier ; and his experience in these capacities proved very useful to him on the boards. His position with the pubUc and the King gave Hm so much con- fidence that he gave peculiar point in the dialogue he de- Uvered to any satire which hit the vices and follies of the Court, and he seems to have interpolated sarcasms of his own. la Howard's « Sileat Woman " he indulged his wit to such an extent that even the King was offended, and ordered the daring actor to be confined in the porter's lodge. On his release, a few days afterwards, Howard offered him his congratulations, which Lacy took very ill, declaring that the speeches put by the dramatist into the mouth of « Captain Otter " had wrought all the trouble, and pronouncing him more a fool than a poet; an epigrammatic way of telling the truth which goaded Howard into striking the truth-teller with his glove in • T an^hftine SDeaks of him as " a Comedian whose ahilities in action were ™L^enUv known to all that frequented the King's Theatre, where he wa^ Buacientiy known w nprfnraied all parts that he undertook to a SlrS^ (n^"m:c"h 'thaTi rnfa^rto^t:, th\t.as this age_never had, so Se next will never have his Equal, at least not h,s Supenor." 4 the face. Lacy, in return, gave the aristocratic dramatist a blow with his ca^e. Howard immediately carried his complaint to the King, who ordered the theatre to be closed, and thus made all the company snfEer for the rash- ness of one of their number. In 1671 Lacy played " Bayes " in the Duke of Bucking- ham's " Eehearsal," and introduced a startling and not altogether happy innovation by mimicking to the life the poetDryden. The portrait was exact in every detail, but its cruelty was proportionate to its cleverness. Bucking- ham, it is said, took considerable pains in teaching Lacy. Lacy died in 1681. Three years later his posthumous comedy, " Sir Hercules Buffoon ; or, The Poetical Squire,^' was brought out at Drury Lane, with a prologue by Tom D'Urfey. ^ It did not hold the stage, and has long been forgotten. There is a triple portrait of Lacy (executed by Wright, by command of Charles II.) at Hampton Court, representing him as Teague in "The Committee,''^ Mr. Seinple in "The Cheats,'' and M. Galliard in "The Variety." The visitor to Dulwich College will remember the por- trait of William Cartwright, the second of the great bene- factors of that noble institution. At his death he bequeathed to it his collection of pictures and his library. Before he entered the dramatic profession he had been a bookseller in Holborn, and in that capacity had acquired a knowledge of books, which explains the valuable cha- racter of his library. As an actor, he gained no sraaU reputation, and was particularly esteemed for his Fal- staff. * Lacy also wrote " The Dumb Lady ; or, The Farrier made Physician," 1672 ; "Old Troop ; or, Monsieur Ragon," 1672 ; and « Sawny the Scot ; or, The Taming of a Shrew," 1677. 22 THE MEEET MONAECH J OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 23 Of another of the Restoration actors the portrait will be found at that famous seat of the Saekvilles, Knowle. Major Mohun, who in his time played many parts— an actor in the peaceful days of Charles I, then, during the Civil War, a gallant soldier on the King's side, and after the Restoration an actor again, and a very good one— was always a welcome guest at the table of the lord of Knowle, the genial Buckhurst. He excelled in sach parts as Clitus and Cassius, but played the modern rakes, the Dapperwits and Pinchwifes of the new comedy, with an airy grace and vivacity which none of his imitators could approach. Off the stage he was as lovable as on it he was inimitable. When Nathaniel Lee read to him the part he was to create in one of his swelling dramas, Mohun said, with charming address, "Unless I could play the character as beautifully as you read it, 'twere vain to try it at all." As a striking contrast to this gracious and gallant soldier-player, we put forward Cardell Goodman, whose unwholesome reputation is summed up in the expressive epithet generally attached to his name, "Scum" Good- man. His theatrical career extended over only twelve years, from 1677 to 1690. Having been expelled from Cambridge University for defacing the portrait of its Chancellor, the Duke of Monmouth, he took to the stage as a means of livelihood, and made his first appearance as Polyperchon in Nat Lee's « Rival Queens." He found a friend and associate in the actor Grif^n, and the two poor players shared together their garret, their bed, and their shirt. It is related of Goodman that, forgetful (as he always was) of every rule of honesty and fairness, he wore the shirt one day when it was Griffin's turn to wear it, because he was fain to visit some frail nymph of his ac- quaintance. To eke out his scanty funds he borrowed horse and pistol, and played on the road the part of a highwayman ; but he was arrested and thrown into New- gate, and escaped the gallows only through the favour of James IL His good looks and dashing ways soon after- wards secured him the favour of the Duchess of Cleve- land. " This woman," says Oldmixon, « was so infamous in her amours, that she made no scruple of owning her lovers ; among whom was Goodman the player ... and the fellow was so insolent upon it, that one night, when the Queen was at the theatre, and the curtain, as usual, was immediately ordered to be drawn up, Goodman cried, as my Duchess come ? ' and being answered, no, he swore ^ terribly the curtain should not be drawn up till the Duchess came, which was at the instant, and saved the affront to the Queen." \ Scum Goodman, however, was a villain at heart. Annoyed at the presence of a couple of the Duchess's children, and fearing, perhaps, that their portions would lessen his gains, he bribed an Italian quack to poison them. But the plot was discovered, and Scum for a second time became an inmate of Newgate. He was tried for a misdemeanour ; had influence enough to save his worthless neck, but was compelled to pay so heavy a fine that it reduced him to poverty. He left the stage in 1 690. Colley Cibber says that when he, a debutant, was re- hearsing the small part of the Chaplain in Otway's "Orphan," Scam Goodman was so pleased that he swore with a big oath the young fellow had in him the making of a good actor. Goodman, as became a man whose life had been saved by King James, was an ardent Jacobite, and joined in 24 THE MEEET MONAECH ; Tenwick and Churnock's desperate scheme to assassinate William III. He had already distinguished himself as one of the first forgers of hank-notes ; nothing, indeed, was too vile for him to engage in. While the details of the plot were being arranged, Goodman, Porter, Parkjns, and other confederates, endeavoured to raise a riot in London (June 10, 1695). They met at a tavern in Drurj Lane, and, when hot with wine, rushed into the streets, beat kettledrums, unfurled banners, and began to light bonfires. But the watch, supported by the populace, soon over- powered the revellers, whose ringleaders were apprehended, tried, fined, and imprisoned. They regained their liberty after a few weeks, and resumed their more criminal design. It was discovered, however, and Goodman was then ready to turn informer. To save Fenwick's life, his friends were anxious to get out of the way this all-important witness, and to buy him off they employed the agency of a daring Jacobite adventurer, named O'Brien. " This man," says Macaulay, "knew Goodman well. Indeed, they had be- longed to the same gang of highwaymen. They met at the Dog in Drury Lane, a tavern which was frequented by lawless and desperate men. O'Brien was accompanied by another Jacobite of determined character. A single choice was offered to Goodman, to abscond and to be rewarded with an annuity of five hundred a year, or to have his throat cut on the spot. He consented, half from cupidity, half from fear. O'Brien was not a man to be tricked. He never parted company with Goodman from the moment when the bargain was struck till they were at Saint Ger- mains." What became of Goodman is not known. Probably he perished in a street brawl at the hands of rogues of more OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHAELES II. nerve than he had, for the man was always a coward as well as a knave. One of the most popular of the Duke'3 Company was Harris, whose portrait in his favourite character of Cardinal Wolsey was painted by Hailes, and xs preserved in the Pepysian Library at Cambridge. He was a man of versatile talents, a fine singer and dancer, and a good talker, who commanded respect even from the wxtty and learned company that gathered round Dryden at Wxll s Coffee-House. He was on intimate terms with Pepys : "I do find him," says Pepys, «a very excellent person, such as in my whole acquaintance I do not know another better qualified for converse, whether in things of his own trade, or of other kind ; a man of great understanding and observation, and very agreeable in the manner of his discourse, and civil, as far as is possible." Then there was Scudamore, who took what is now called we believe, the "juvenile lead," and played the lover, and the fine gentleman, and the chivalrous knight with a grace and spirit that charmed all beholders. He « created the part of Garcia in Congreve's " Mourning Bride. In 170a he married a young lady of £4,000 fortune, who had fallen in love with the gay and gallant actor, though he was then wearing old age and grey hairs. Eeference must also be made to Anthony Leigh, whose portrait is one of those at Knowle, hung there by the great patron of art and letters, the first Earl of Dorset. Cibber speaks of Dominique in Dryden's " Spanish Friar" as his best part, and it is in this part the artist has painted him. « In the courting, grave hypocrisy of the Spanish Fnar Leigh stretched the veil of piety so thinly over him, that in every look, word, and motion, you saw a palpable, 26 THE MERRY MONARCH ; wicked shyness shine throngliout it. Here lie kept his: vivacity demurely confined, till the pretended dnty of his function demanded it; and then he exerted it with a choleric, sacerdotal insolence. I have never yet seen any- one that has filled the scenes with half the truth and spirit of Leigh. I do not doubt but that the poet's knowledge of Leigh's genius helped him to many a pleasant stroke of nature, which, without that knowledge, never might have^ entered into his conception." Leigh was on the stage from 1672 to 1692. One of his fellow-actors was the celebrated Smith, the original of Sir Topling Flutter (1676), Pierre (1682), Chamont (1680), and Scandal (1695), of whom an in- teresting anecdote is told by Gibber. '^Mr. Smith," he says, " whose character as a gentleman could have been no way impeached, had he not degraded it by being a celebrated actor, had the misfortune, in a dispute with a gentleman behind the scenes, to receive a blow from him. The same night an account of this action was carried to the King, to whom the gentleman was represented so grossly in the wrong, that the next day his Majesty sent to forbid him the court upon it. This indignity cast upon a crentleman only for maltreating a player, was looked upon as the concern of every gentleman, and a party was soon found to assert and vindicate their honour, by humbling this favoured actor, whose slight injury had been judged equal to so severe a notice. Accordingly, the next time Smith acted, he was received with a chorus of cat-calls, that soon convinced him he should not be suffered to pro- ceed in his part ; upon which, without the least discom- posure, he ordered the curtain to be dropped, and having a competent fortune of his own, thought the conditions of OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 27 adding to it by remaining on the stage, were too dear, and fr^om that day entirely quitted it." He returned to it, however, in 1695 ; not to meet with Hs old favour, for the Whig portion of his audiences resented his well-known Tory sympathies. He died xn the following year. Sandford made Ms first appearance on the stage in 1661, two years before his colleague Santh, and remained o„ it two years after his colleague's death, that ^s untd 1698 It was his peculiar fortune to play the viUain- the villain of comedy as well as of tragedy ; and the audiences were so accustomed tohi.n in ^^^^l^'^^^'Tl when he was cast for an honest man, they showed their annoyance hy hissing the piece in which he was, to then- fancy, so strangely out of place. He was very great in nielodramatic characters, and in all was famous for his admirable delivery. The verses of the poet gamed an additional attraction from the intelligence and spirit with which he rendered them. In Hampstead churchyard, though without monumental record, lies Jevon, who, like Lacy, began his career as a r^aitre de danse. He was a fellow of infinite fun and fancy, who, in one of Settle's bombastic tragedies, having, according to the stage direction, "to fdl on his sword," placed it flat on the stage, deliberately fell over it, and duly « died." At the coffee-house an angry waiter exclaimed, " Tou are wiping your dirty boots with 1 1 ^r. 1 » " Never mind, boy," retorted Jevon, my clean napkin ! JNever uim , jj r utt,^ « I'm not proud-'twiU do for me." The farce of The Devil to Pay » is based upon his little play, " A Devil ot a Wife," in which he himself acted Jobson. Cademan, like Cartwright, had been a bookseller, and 28 THE MERRY MONARCH; when driven from the stage by an accident — Harris, in a fencing-scene, wounded him in the eye, and the wound brought on paralysis of the tongue— returned to his original calling. Cave Underbill was one of the earliest accessions to Davenant's company. Few actors have surpassed him in length of service ; he was on the stage from 1661 to 1710 ; and none, perhaps, in the exquisite art with which, like our own Compton, he represented the dry and stolid wit, the malicious dunderhead, the uxorious old dotard, or the sourly humorous rustic. His " Don Quixote " was good; his "Sir Sampson Legard " (in Congreve's "Love for Love ") better ; and his " Grave-digger,'^ in Hamlet best. There is a kindly notice of him in Steele's Tatler, 1709, in which he is commended for the naturalness and modesty of his acting, and for the fidelity with which he adhered to the words of his author. In both these respects Joseph Haines— or Joe Haines, as his friends called him— sinned largely. He " gagged " as the whim seized him ; and played always to the au- dience instead of to his fellow-players. A man of ready wit and easy address, he is the hero of more than one good story. Arrested on Holborn Hill by a couple of bailifPs for a debt of £20, he turned to them with a bow and a smile. " Here comes the carriage of my cousin, the Bishop of Ely ; let me speak to him, and I am sure he will satisfy you iu this matter.'^ Thrusting his head in at the carriage-door, he whispered to good Bishop Patrick that the two men in waiting were Eomanists, who inclined to become Protestants, but had still some scruples of con- science. " My friends," said the Bishop, " if you will presently, OB, ENGLAND TJNDEB CHARLES II. 2^ come to my house, I will satisfy you in this matter." The Zms duly waited upon him; an explanation soon en- Id; and the Bishop, partly, I think, out o pure benevo- lence, and partly, perhaps, from a feeling of shame, paid Clergyman into accepting a situation as '^ Chaplain to the KinJs Theatre," and sent him behind the scenes, ringing a beU, and calling the actors and actresses to ^T'the course of an excited discussion on Jeremy Pollier's " Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage,'^ a critic remarked that the attack was unfair, inasmuch as the stage was a mender of morals. "True," said Haines; '«but so is CoUier a mender of morals, and two of a trade, you know, never Tailes was once cast by Charles Hart for the part of a Senator in Ben Jonson's " Cataline," Hart himself taking the title-role. Disgusted with the character Haxnes de- liberately marred Hart's best scene by taking a seat behind him, in a grotesque costume ; and, with pot and pipe in hand, grimacing at Cataline until the audience were convulsed with laughter. Por this escapade he was rightly punished by dismissal. Early in James IL's reign, Haines, to secure the Court favour, announced to Lord Sunderland his conversion to Eomanism, and explained that he had been led to it^ by a vision of the Virgin, who had said to him, '^ Joe arise . Por once he met his match. The Earl did not believe in his would-be convert, and remarked that Jbe ^irgin, she had appeared, " would have said ' Joseph, if only out 80 THE MEKBT MONARCH; Of respect for her husband ! » Haines completed the farce by recanting his pretended conversion on the stage ! Holding a taper, and wearing the penitential white sheet, he recited some a propos couplets with an effectiveness of delivery which deceived his hearers into thinking they were witty. The date and place of Haines's birth are uncertam ; but he was educated at a school in St. Martin's-in-the- Fields, whence, at the cost of some gentlemen who had admired his precocious talents, he was sent to Queen s College, Oxford. There he became acquainted with WilHamson, afterwards famous as Sir Joseph, the veteran diplomatist and Minister of State, who continued his friendship when they had both left college, and appointed him his Latin Secretary on his accession to cabinet ofiace. Haines, however, could not keep a secret, and the revela- tions he made to his boon companions rendered his dis- missal unavoidable. Sir Joseph sent him back to make use of his scholarship at Cambridge ; but falling m with a company of strolling players at Stonrbridge Fair, he was fascinated by the stir and variety of the theatrical life, and after a brief experience " in the provinces," flashed forth upon Drury Lane stage to become the de- lio-M of the tovm. \mong his best parts were Sparkish in " The Country Wife " Eoger in "Esop," Tom Corand in « The Constant Couple," Lord Plausible in "The Plain Dealer," and Captain Bluff in " The Old Bachelor." But in no part which he played did he ever fall below himself ; that is, never was he otherwise than airy, sparkling, self-pre- served, and inimitable. He was the Charles Matthews of the stage of the Restoration. OB, ENGLAND TINDEE CHAELES II. 31 His theatrical career began in 1672 and ended in 1701, in which year (on the 4th of April) he died at his own house in Hart Street, Covent Garden. Before the French custom of giving female parts to women was adopted on the English stage, one of the most Booular representatives of female character was Edward Kynaston, who so excelled in this difficult role that Downes thinks it " disputable " whether any actress that suc- ceeded him produced an equal impression on the audience. Kynaston was a mere lad when, as a member of Sir WiUiam Davenant's company, he made his first appear- ance « before the footlights " in 1659. His success was immediate ; and he specially earned distinction, as Downes tells us, by his performance in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Loyal Subject." Pepys saw him in this character on the 18th of August, 1660 :-" Captain Ferrers," he says « took me and Creed to the Cockpit play, the first that I have had time to see since my coming from sea, ' The LoyaU Subject,' where one Kynaston, a boy, acted the Duke's Sister [Olympia], but made the loveliest lady that ever I saw in my life. After the play done, we went to drink, and by Captain Ferrers' means, Kinaston, and another that acted Archas the General, came and drank with us." Pepys saw him again on the 7th of January, 1661, in Ben Jonson's " Epicene ; or, The Silent Woman." " Among other things here," says Pepys, " Kynaston, the boy, had the good time to appear in three shapes : first, as a poor woman in ordinary clothes, to please Morose ; then in fine clothes, as a gallant ; and in these was clearly the prettiest woman in the whole house ; and lastly, as a man ; and then likewise did appear the handsomest man in the house." Q2 THE MEERT MONARCH; Ar...\.^ nf his eood looks ; and Colley There can be no doubt ot ms goo .. ^^elves +l.^v mialit have sufficient time to do, because piay ' ! ed to begin at four o'clock, the hour that people of were used to begin dinner." On one +i,» aame rank are now (1740) goin„ x.u Tn t^e King entering the theatre at an unusuaUy T W the c^^tain did not rise as usual, because the early hour, the curta ^^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^ actors were not ready to be - ^^^^^^^ nfir:h:t;al^x -dUly pleaded that the rr^ : s not e. shaved. The oddity of the excuse so Queen w „,,-.v,e for-tili:ible, was cer- tainly offensive, " Indeed," she replied, " I am very sorry, but I have no other name to give him, poor boy 1 " Charles took the hint, and gave him a name and a title. VOL. II. E 50 THE MERRY MONARCH ; during one of his daily constitutional walks in the Park, in 1671, he could not but overhear ''a very familiar dis- course '' between his Majesty and the " impudent come- dian/' She was looking out of her garden, on a terrace at the top of a wall, while the King stood on the green walk beneath. No wonder Evelyn was scandalized at what he saw and heard. This house stood on the south side of Pall Mall ; it was given by the King to Nell Gwynn on a long lease. The story runs, that on her dis- covering it to be only a lease under the Crown she returned him the lease and conveyance, saying she had always " conveyed free " under the Crown, and always would ; and would not accept it till it was conveyed free to her by an Act of Parliament, made on and for that purpose. It was afterwards in the possession of the famous physician Heberden ; and, until recently, was occu- pied by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. It is now numbered 79. She had pre- viously lived on the other side of Pall Mall, in a house on the left-hand of St. Jameses Square, the site of which is occupied by the present Army and Navy Club. She had also a house by the river-side, two miles out of town, built, it is said, by the architect of Chelsea Hospital, and later known as Sandford Manor House. The tradition is that the King's Eoad received its name from the King's frequent visits to this spot. At Windsor she resided in Burford House, in which she was succeeded by the Princess Anne. Her name is also associated with Lauderdale House, Highgate (now a convalescent branch of St. Bartholomew's Hospital) ; where, according to a popular myth, she received Charles's recognition of her infant, aferwards Duke of St. Alban's, by holding it OR, ENGLAUfD UNDER CHARLES II. 51 1 out of a window, and threatening to let it fall unless he grave it a title. When Charles IT. visited Winchester in the spring of 1681, to superintend the erection of a stately palace which he had projected, he was accompanied by Nell Gwynn and desiring to lodge her close to his own apartments at the Deanery, he demanded her admittance to the adjoin- ing prebendal residence of the illustrious Ken. With all the courage of a truly virtuous mind the future Bishop refused the royal request. " Not for his kingdom ! '' was the uncompromising answer; and Charles had the good sense to admire his chaplain's conscientiousness. Nor did Nell Gwynn take ofiPence. To do her justice, she made no hypocritical pretence of virtue, but candidly acknowledged her dishonourable position. In February, 1680, when she visited the Duke's Theatre, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, a person in the pit loudly applied to her the coarse name which the language of the streets bestows upon lewd women. She heard it with a laugh ; but with mistaken chivalry it was resented by Thomas Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke, — perhaps because he had married the younger sister of another of the King's favourites, Louise de la Querouaille. A commotion ensued. Some of the audience sided with Nelly's champion, others with her assailant. Swords were drawn, and a few scratches exchanged, before the unseemly quarrel could be subdued. She was one day driving through the streets of Oxford, when the populace, mis- taking her for the French harlot, the Duchess of Ports- mouth, who was, of course, a Eoman Catholic, began to hurl at her the foulest epithets in their vocabulary. Nell put her head out of the coach window. " Good people," 52 THE MERET MONARCH ; she said, with that charming laugh of hers, which nobodf could resist, "you are mistaken; I am the Protestant w— e!" The rivalry between Nell and the infamous Duchess of Portsmouth was open and avowed, and a curious picture of it is drawn in one of her letters by Madame de Sevigne. "The Duchess of Portsmouth," she writes, "has not failed in anything she proposed to herself. She desired to be mistress to the King, and so she is ; he lodges with her almost every night, in the face of the Court ; she has had a son, who has been acknowledged, and presented with a couple of duchies. She accumulates wealth, and makes herself feared and respected by as many as she can. But she did not anticipate that she should find in her way a young actress, on whom the King dotes ; and from whom she finds it impossible to withdraw him. He divides his time, his care, and his health between the two. The actress is not less haughty than the Duchess ; she insults her, she makes grimaces at her, she attacks her : she frequently steals the King from her, and boasts when- ever he gives her the preference. She is young, indis- creet, confident, wild, and of an agreeable humour. She sings, she dances, and she acts with a good grace. She has a son by the King, and hopes to have him acknow- ledged. For she reasons thus : ^ This Duchess pretends to be a person of quality ; she affirms that she is related to the best families in France, and whenever any person of distinction dies, she puts herself in mourning.* If she * It was the custom of Mademoiselle do la QiieroiiaiUe to put on mourning at the death of any member of the French aristocracy, on t^« P^^^^^^^^.'^^; Bhe was related to all the great families of France A Fi-ench P^"^^^> 1^° about the same time as the Cham .>f Trutary. Mademoiselle put on mourn mg,and so did Nelly, who, when a>ked for whom she wore «^t)le. laugtimgly replied, " Oh, for the Cham of Tartary, who was quite as nearly related to me as the Prince de was to Mademoiselle de QuerouaiUe. OR^ ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 53 be a lady of such quality, why does she lower herself to he a courtesan ? She ought to die with shame. As for me, it is my profession ; I pretend to nothing better. The King entertains me, and I am constant to him at present. He has a son by me ; I profess that he ought to acknow- ledge him ; and I am well assured that he will, for he loves me as well as he loves the Duchess.' " The popular affection for Nell Gwynn was probably due in no small degree to the popular hatred of the Duchess of Portsmouth. The latter was a foreigner and a Papist ; the former was English-born and a Protestant. These facts are duly insisted upon in a pasquinade, entitled, "A Pleasant Battle between Two Lap-dogs of the Utopian Court,^' which Mr. Jesse quotes. Part of the argument is, he says, as follows : — *' The English lap-dog here does first begin The vindication of his lady, Gwynn : The other, much more Frenchified, alas, Shows what his lady is, not what she was." The two curs, Tutty (Nell Gwynn's) and Snap-Short (the Duchess of Portsmouth's), discuss with much freedom the qualities of their respective mistresses, who, in the middle of the contention, enter the room, and them- selves take up the cudgels : — " Duchess op Portsmouth. — Pray, Madam, give my dog fair play ; I protest you hinder him with your petti- coats ; he cannot fasten. Madam, fair play is fair play. " Madam Gwynn. — Truly, Madam, I thought I knew as well what belonged to dog-fighting as your ladyship : but since you pretend to instruct me in your French dog- play, pray, Madam, stand a little farther ; as you respect your own flesh, for my little dog is mettle to the back^ and smells a Popish Miss at a far greater distance : pray, 54 THE MEEKY MONAECH 5 Madam, take warning, for you stand on dangerous ground. Haloo, haloo, lialoo : lia brave Tutty, ha brave Snap-Short ! A guinea on Tuttj,— two to one on Tutty : done, quoth Monsieur ; begar, begar, we have lost near tousand pound. " Tutty it Beems beat Snap-short, and the bell Tutty bears home in victory : farewell ! " * Against Nell Gwynn's many vices, her immorality, her gambling habits, her wild extravagance,* her love of strange oaths, we may set that one great virtue of Charity, which covers, as we know, a multitude of sins. She was generous by nature, and no case of distress came to her knowledge but her hand was immediately open. The story that she persuaded Charles to build Chelsea Hospital maybe apocryphal ; but at all events it shows the popular conviction of her goodness of heart. Poor men of genius found in her a liberal benefactress, as Dryden and Butler, Otway and Nathaniel Lee were ready to acknowledge. Nell Gwynn died at her house in Pall Mall in November, 1687. She was only thirty-eight years of age. It is noticeable that most of the frail beauties and dashing cavaliers of the Merry Monarch's saturnalian reign passed from the scene while still comparatively young. The reason is not far to seek: they lived at high-pressure. To borrow a phrase from the sporting world, the pace was too fast, and they exhausted their stock of vitality in an endless round of intrigue, revelry, and dissipation. The immediate cause of Nell Gwynn's death was apoplexy. She lingered for some weeks after the fii-st attack, and gave many tokens of her sorrow for the failings and folHes ♦ This may be forgiven, perhaps, to one who rose from indigence to the enjoyment of almost unlimited wealth. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 55 in which she had wasted her feverish life. "Her repen- tance in her last hours," says Cibber, "I have been unquestionably informed appeared in all the contrite symptoms of a Christian sincerity.*' She was buried in the church of St. Martin's-in-the- * Fields, and Dr. Tenison, the vicar, preached a funeral sermon in which he warmly and frankly praised her kind- ness of heart and her charities, and bore testimony to the sincerity of her earnestness and the peace of her last hours. This discourse was brought to the notice of Queen Mary, at a later period, in the hope it would injure the Doctor's chances of perferment. But with characteristic good sense the Qneen replied : — "I have heard as much; it is a sign that the poor unfortunate woman died peni- tent ; for if I can read a man's heart through his looks, had she not made a pious and Christian end, the Doctor would never have been induced to speak well of her." Of the birth or antecedents of Mrs. Hughes the his- torians of the stage say nothing. She first came before the public in 1663, after the opening of the theatre in Drury Lane, and was the first female representative (it is said) of Desdemona. Less by her artistic than by her per- sonal gifts she charmed the town. When the Court was at Tunbridge Wells in 1668, drinking the waters, raffling for toys, lace, or gloves, jesting with the country girls in the market, and at evening assembling on the bowling- green, where those who liked could dance ^' upon a turf more soft and smooth than the finest carpet in the world," the Queen sent for the players, and among them came Mistress Hughes, with such a splendour of loveliness that she took captive the grave and reserved Prince Kupert. Abandoning his laboratory, with its alembics, crucibles. 56 THE MEBRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 57 and forges, he laid siege to the proud beauty, and re- nounced his " chemical speculations " for the more critical study of a woman's varying moods. " The impertinent gipsy," says Count Hamilton, with his usual indifference to the claims of virtue, '' chose to be attacked in form, and proudly refusing money, that in the end, she might sell her favours at a dearer rate, she caused the poor Prince to act a part so unnatural, that he no longer appeared like the same person. The King was greatly pleased with that event, for which great rejoicings were made at Tunbridge— ' what a strange condition of society this one fact reveals ! ' — but nobody was bold enough to make it the subject of satire, though the same constraint was not observed respecting the follies of other person- ages. j» The Prince was supposed to have been preceded in her goodwill by Sir Charles Sedley. Pepys, who had had the privilege of saluting her with a kiss in tlie green- room at Drury Lane in May, 1668, describes her as " the pretty woman called Pegg, that was Sir Charles Sidley's mistress . . a mighty pretty woman, and seems, but is not, modest." But the curse of lewdness then rested upon the stage, and scarcely man or woman escaped it. Margaret Hughes was settled by her princely "pro- tector" in the house at Hammersmith, built by Sir Nicholas Crispe, which, in 1683, the Prince purchased from his nephew, and presented to her. She resided in it for ten years, and then sold it to one Timothy Lanney, *^ a scarlet dyer."^ She had one daughter by the Prince, Euperta, who became the wife of General Howe. * In 1748 it was purchased by Bubb Dodington, and in 1792 by the Margrave of Brandenburg-Anspach, who named it " BrandoTiburg HouBe." In 1820 it was tenanted by Queen Caroline, wife of George IV. Among the most prominent figures in Pepys^ picture- gallery is the pretty, sweet-voiced, lively, and clever Mistress Knipp (or Knep), for whom our immortal diarist had evidently a strong partiality. As an actress she excelled in the parts of fine ladies, ladies' maids, and milk maids ; she dressed with taste, acted with intelli- gence, and sang with natural skill and feeling. Her delivery of a prologue was always a feat of elocution. Mrs. Knipp was unfortunate in her husband, a horse- jockey, who ill-treated and even beat her; but she seems never to have forgotten her duty as a wife, though Mrs. Pepys called her "a wench," and disapproved very strongly of her husband's attentions to the fascinating actress. Her career on the stage extended from 1664 to 1678, during which period she acted sixteen different characters. The first reference to her in Pepys is under the date " December 6th, 1665/' when he was spending some merry hours at the house of his friends, Mr. and Mrs. Pierce. " The best company for music I ever was in in my life/' he says, " and wish I could live and die in it, both for musique and the face of Mrs. Pierce, and my wife, and Knipp, who is i)retty enough, but the most excellent, mad-humoured thing, and sings the noblest that ever I heard in my life.^' On the following day the same company met at Pepys' house : — " Most excellent musique we had in abundance, and a good su2)per, dancing, and a pleasant scene of Mrs. Knipp's rising sick from table, but whispered me it was for some hard word or other her husband gave her just now when she laughed, and was more merry than ordi- nary. But we got her in humour again, and mighty 58 THE MERRY MONARCH; 3> merrj/' Slie seems to have been of an April nature; alternating between smiles and tears. Thenceforward the name of Mrs. Knipp turns up con- stantly in the wonderful Diarj. One day at Lord Brouncker's he meets his ** dear Mrs. Knipp," and sings with her, and hears her sing, admiring particularly her little Scotch song of "Barbara Allen." Next day he re- ceives a letter from her to which she has subscribed '' Bar- bary Allen " as her name ; and he sends an answer to it, signing himself ** Dapper Dicky." On another occasion comes Mrs. Knipp to speak with him privately, " com- plaining how like a devil her husband treats her" — ^a strange confidence for a wife to repose in the ears of her husband's friend ! A curious illustration of the manners of the time comes out in the entry for January 18th, 16G6 :— " To Captain Cocke's, where Mrs. Williams was, and Mrs. Knipp. I was not heartily merry, though a glass of wine did a little cheer me. After dinner to the office [at the Admiralty] . Anon comes to me thither my Lord Brouncker, Mrs. Williams, and Mrs. Knipp. I brought down my wife in her night-gown, she not being indeed very well, to the office to them. My wife and I anon and Mercer, by coach, to Pierce's, when mighty merry, and sing and dance with great pleasure ; and I danced, who never did in company in my life." This was at a time when the Plague was gatliering up its last harvest of victims in the Metropolis, " the deaths being now but 79 " (in the week) says Pepys. We pass on to February 23rd :— " Comes Mrs. Knipp to see my wife, and I spent all the night talking with this baggage, and teaching her my song of * Beauty, retire,' OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 59 which she sings and makes go most rarely, and a very fine song it seems to be. She also entertained me with repeating many of her own and others' parts of the play- house, which she do most excellently ; and tells me the whole practices of the play-house and players, and is in every respect most excellent company." Mrs. Knipp, indeed, can no more be kept out of Mr. Pepys's written confidences, than "the head of Kinir Charles I." out of the speeches of Mr. Dick. On the 20th, Mrs. Knipp dines with Mr. and Mrs. Pepys, and mighty pleasant company she is, so that the careful Pepys actually gives his wife 20s. "to lay out on Knipp." She is the fortunate recipient of six pairs of gloves on Valentine's Day. On the 9th of March he and Mrs. Pierce and the charming actress set out to dine at Chelsea, but are frightened back by a report that the inn there was " shut up of the plague." On the 9th of May he ac- companies them to Cornhill ; on his return finds his wife " mightily vexed at his being abroad with other women " (as she had some right to be), so that when they were gone she called them names, which offended Mr. Pepys' sense of propriety. On the 6th of August we have further evidence of Mrs. Pepys' not unreasonable displeasure: — " After dinner, in comes Mrs. Knipp, and I sat and talked with her. . , I very pleasant to her ; but perceive my wife hath no great pleasure in her being here. However, we talked and sang, and were very pleasant. By and by comes Mr. Pierce and his wife. . . Knipp and I sang, and then I offered to carry them home, and to take my wife with me, but she would not go ; so I with them leav- ing my wife in a very ill humour. However, I would not be removed from my civility to them, but sent for a coach, •60 THE MERRY MONARCH ; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 61 and went with them ; and in our way, Knipp saying that she came out of doors without a dinner to us, I took them to Old Fish Street, to the very house and woman where I kept my wedding dinner, where I never was since, and then I did give them a jole of salmon, and what else was to be had. And here we talked of the ill-hum onr of my wife, which I did excuse as much as I could, and they seemed to admit of it, but did both confess they wondered at it. ... I set them both at home, Knipp at her house, her husband being at the door ; and glad she was to be found to have stayed out so long with me and Mrs. Pierce, and none else. Home, and then find my wife mightily out of order, and reproaching Mrs. Pierce and Knipp as wenches, and I know not what. But I did give her no words to ofEend her, and quietly let all pass." Mrs. Knipp does not reappear in the Diary until October 25th, when Pepys notes that he met her at Mrs. Williams's, and " was glad to see the jade." His wife's " ill-humour," no doubt, had something to do with her long absence. We may assume, however, that by this time Mrs. Pepys had got over it, since she accompanied Knipp and Mr. and Mrs. Pierce to the new playhouse at Whitehall. In November Mr Pepys goes to *' Km'pp's lodgings, whom I find," he says, " not ready to go home with me, and then staid reading of Waller's verses while she finished dressing, her husband being by. Her lodging very mean, and the condition she lives in ; yet makes a show without doors, God bless us ! " One of the saddest stories in Count Grammont's " Me- moirs "—a book which, from the moralist's point of view, is full of melancholy stories— is that of which Mrs. Daven- port, the " Roxalana " of Sir William Davenant's " Siege of Rhodes" was the heroine. Count Hamilton tells it with more feeling than he exhibits on any other occa- sion : — " The Earl of Oxford (Aubrey de Vere, 20th Earl, and the last of his house who held the title) fell in love with a handsome, graceful actress belonging to the Duke's Theatre, who performed to perfection, particularly the part of Roxana, in a very fashionable new play, inasmuch that she ever after retained that name : this creature being both very virtuous, and very modest, or, if you please, wonderfully obstinate, proudly rejected his addresses and presents. This resistance influenced his passion ; he had recourse to invectives, and even to spells ; but all in vain. This disappointment had such effect upon him that he could neither eat nor drink ; this did not signify to him ; but his passion at length became so violent that he could neither play nor smoke. In this extremity love had recourse to Hymen : the Earl of Oxford, one of the first peers of the realm, is, you know, a very handsome man ; he is of the order of the Garter, which greatly adds to an air naturally noble. In short, from his outward appearance, you would suppose he was really possessed of some sense ; but as soon as ever you hear him speak you are perfectly convinced of the contrary. This passionate lover presented her with a promise of marriage, in due form, signed with his own hand ; she would not, however, rely upon this ; but the next day she thought there could be no danger, when she and himself came to her lodgings, attended by a clergyman, and another man for a witness : the marriage was accord- ingly solemnized with all due ceremonies in the presence of one of her fellow-players, who attended as a witness oii 62 THE MEEEY MONARCH; her part. Tou will suppose, perhaps, that the new countess had nothing to do but to appear at court according to her rank, and to display the EarFs arms upon her carriage. This was far from being the case. When examination was made concerning the marriage it was found to be a mere deception : it appeared that the pretended priest was one of my Earl's trumpeters, and the witness his kettle- drummer. The parson and his companion never appeared after the ceremony was over ; and as for the other witness, they endeavoured to persuade her that the Sultana Roxana might have supposed, in some part or other of a play, that she was really married. It was all to no purpose that the poor creature claimed the protection of the laws of God and man, both which were violated and abused, as well as herself, by this infamous imposition ; in vain did she throw herself at the King's feet to demand justice ; she had only to rise up again without redress ; and happy might she think herself to receive an annuity of one thousand crowns, and to resume the name of Roxana instead of Countess of Oxford." It seems, however, to have been through the King's interposition that " Lord Oxford's Miss/' as Evelyn calls her, obtained her annuity (£300). In due time she recovered her spirits, and Pepys records that at the play he saw " the old Roxalan in the chief box, in a velvet gown, as the fashion is, and very handsome, at which I was glad." Mary Davis, or Davies, reported to be the natural daughter of Charles Howard, second Earl of Berkshire, though some authorities claim for her a more honourable origin as the lawful daughter of a blacksmith, appeared at the Duke's Theatre early in 1667, and by her good looks. OR, ENGLAND UKDEK CHARLES II. 63 graceful dancing, and fine voice soon (and by no means reluctantly) attracted the attention of the King, whose conquest she completed by her admirable singing— in the character of Celania, in " The Mad Shepherdess '"'—of the old song, '' My lodging is on the cold ground." We will hope that Fepys romances when he declares that her own flither acted the part of Pandar. The King caused a house to be furnished for her in Suffolk Street, and presented her with a ring worth £700. Pepys chanced, on one occasion, to be passing through the street as the King's mistress was stepping into her coach, and a "mighty fine coach " it was, he says. The rise of this new favourite, who presumed not a little upon her scandalous prosperity, was very unwelcome at Court. When she was to dance a jig in the presence of the enamoured sovereign, the Queen, we are told, retired hastily, as if unwilling to be publicly insulted. The im- perious Duchess of Cleveland was unable to conceal her indignation. On the authority of one of the ladies of the Court, Pepys relates that during some private theatricals at Whitehall the King's eyes were fixed so constantly on the charming Moll that the angry Duchess was " in the sulks ^' during the whole of the play. On another occa- sion, when Pepys was at the theatre, the King, throughout the evening, kept his gaze at a particular box, where shone the temporary loadstar of his fickle affections. The Duchess of Cleveland lifted her eyes to discover the object of the King's demonstrative regard, and when she per- ceived who it was, broke out into such a passion that " she looked like fire.'' Of the later history of Mary Davis nothing is known. She had a daughter by the King in 1673, who received 64 THE MERKT MONAKCH ; the name of Mary Tudor, and in 1687 married the second Earl of Derwentwater. Their son was the brave and chivalrous young nobleman who lost his head for his share in the Rebellion of 1715. Thus, the grandson of Charles II. became the victim of his loyalty to the royal house with which he was himself by blood connected. Before his death the Duke of Richmond, son of Charles n. by Louise de la Querouaille, was requested to present to the Lords a memorial on behalf of the young Earl, his kinsman. He presented the memorial, but with astound- ing inhumanity expressed his earnest hope that their lordships would not suffer themselves to be influenced About the time that Moll Davis left the stage a bright particular star rose upon its horizon in the person of Mrs. Elizabeth Barry, the original « Belvidera " of Otway's "Venice Pi-eserved," and the "Zara" of Congreve's "Mourning Bride." Elizabeth Barry was the daughter of Robert Barry, a loyal barrister, who, in the Civil War, raised a regiment for the King, and was rewarded with the rank of Colonel. He fell into great poverty during the Protectorate, and left his daughter (who was bom in 1658) nothing but his honourable name. She found a friend in Sir William Davenant, who, struck by her beauty and vivacity, sought to train her for the stage, but failed to awaken the dormant talent. Thrice she was rejected by the managers as possessing none of the qualifications of an actress. Such however, was not the opinion of Rochester, who lodged her in his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and with infinite skill and patience educated her for her profession. He made her repeat every sentence of her author until she OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES 11, 65 fully understood its meaning, and could render it with suitable expression. The management of the voice, the employment of appropriate gesture, the assumption of graceful attitudes; he neglected nothing which could render her proficiency indisputable ; and to accustom her to the stage he superintended thirty rehearsals, twelve of which were " dress rehearsals " of each of the characters she was to represent. In all these pains he was actuated by his love of the charming young actress, who, to judge from his letters, exercised a considerable influence over him to the very end of his career. About 1671 she appeared on the stage, but failed to captivate the fancy of her audience, until she enacted Isabella, the Hungarian Queen, in "Mustapha," Lord Brooke's once-famous tragedy. Thenceforward her pro- gress was sure, if slow; and, in 1680, she placed herself at the head of her profession by her briUiant performance of Monimia, in Otway's tragedy of " The Orphan ; or, The Unhappy Marriage." This was the nineteenth of' her original characters ; but the first with which she succeeded in really identifying herself. In 1682, all London flocked to see her Belvidera in Otway's finest drama, and to be moved to tears by the intensity of her pathos. Her genius was so true and profound that she could take the skeleton- character of the dramatist, and endue it with flesh and blood— a task she performed for Cassandra in Dryden's bombastic tragedy of "Cleomenes" (1692). " Mrs. Barry," says the poet in his preface, " always ex- cellent, has in this tragedy excelled herself, and gained a reputation beyond any woman I have ever seen in the theatre." "In characters of greatness," says CoUey Cibber, « Mrs. Barry had a presence of elevated dignity ; VOL. II. „ f 66 THE MEEBT MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDEB CHARLES II. 67 her mien and motion superb, and gracefully majestic ; her voice full, clear, and strong; so tliat no violence of passion 4»ould be too mucb for ber ; and when distress or tender- ness possessed ber, she subsided into the most affecting melody and softness. In the art of exciting pity, she had a power beyond all the actresses I have yet seen, or what your imagination can conceive. In scenes of anger, defiance, or resentment, while she was impetuous and terrible, she poured out the sentiment with an enchanting harmony; and it was this particular excellence for which Dryden made her the above-recited compliment, upon her acting Cassandra in his Cleomenes. She was the first person whose merit was distinguished by the indulgence of having an annual benefit play, which was granted to her alone in King James's time, and which did not become common to others till the division of this company, after the death of King William and Queen Mary." Another of her finest impersonations was Isabella in Southern's drama of "The Fatal Marriage " (1694). In 1697 she gave fresh proof of her versatility by enacting the two opposite characters of Lady Brute in Vanburgh's " Provoked Wife " and Zara in Congreve's " Mourning Bride." In 1703 she enacted Calista in Rowe's tragedy of " The Fair Penitent '^ (founded on " The Fatal Dowry" of Massinger) ; and in 1705, Clarissa, in Sir John Van- burgh^s comedy of ''The Confederacy.^' About three years later, ill-health compelled her to retire from the atacre • her last new character of importance being Phcedra, in Edmund Smith's tragedy of that name (1708). She returned, however, for one night, in the following year, to play with Mrs. BracegirJle ; and she performed Mrs. Frail, in Congreve's " Love for Love," on the occasion f> of Betterton's benefit. Her last years were spent at Acton in the enjoyment of the wealth she had gained by her genius and preserved by her prudence ; and she died of fever,* "greatly respected, "-^in her case no mere form of words— on the 7th of November, 1713. She lies buried in Acton churchyard. Two of her speeches, or phrases, which always com- manded the applause of her admiring audiences, have been handed down to us: "Ah, poor Castalio! m Otway's " Orphan," and " What mean my grieving sub- jects ? '' in Banks's " Unhappy Favourite.^' In the latter play she represented Queen Elizabeth, and with so much dignity that Mary of Modena, the wife of James IL, as a mark of her approbation, presented her with the dress she had worn upon her marriage. The charm of Mrs. Barry's beauty lay in its expression. Her eyes and forehead were fine, but it was " the mind, the music breathing o'er the face" that rivetted the gaze of the beholder. Her rich dark hair, drawn back from her brow, revealed its gracious curve. Her mouth was mobile and full of expression, though, according to Tony Aston, it opened a little too much on the right side. She was not below the average height, and her figure was plump and well-made. Her powers were seen to the best advantage in tragedy; but her comic characters were distinguished by their freedom and vivacity. "In comedy,'" says Tony Aston, "she was alert, easy, and genteel, pleasant in her face and action, filling the stage with variety of gesture." * Gibber says that during her delirium, she dropped into blank verse sav- inp— m remembrance, apparently, of Queen Anne's creation in 1711 of twelve peers at once : — » . » *' Ah, ah ! and so they make us lords by dozens." 68 THE MEEKY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES IT. 69 t She yielded so entirely to the emotions she was called upon to depict, that in stage dialogues she often turned pale or flushed red, as varying passions prompted. In Nathaniel Lee's "Eival Queens; or, The Death of Alexander the Great," she, on one occasion, played Eoxana to Mrs. Boutell's Statira. A dispute arose between the ladies as to the wearing of a certain veil, which the latter affirmed to belong to her part ; and the stage-manager decided in her favour. Both actresses went upon the stage with their passions strongly excited, and probably the wrath and jealousy with which the dramatist endows the rival queens were never more faithfully represented. When, in the gardens of Semiramis, Eoxana seizes her hated enemy, and a final struggle takes place, Mrs. Barry exclaiming, " Die, sorceress, die ! and all my wrongs die vrith thee!" drove her keen dagger right through Statira's steel-bound stays. A slight wound was the result • and a considerable commotion. When the matter came to be investigated, Mrs. Barry protested that she had been carried away by the excitement of the scene ; but there were not wanting censorious tongues to declare that she enjoyed the punishment she had inflicted on a ""to dwell on the record of Mrs. Barry's frailties would be humiliating and unprofitable. Like most of the actresses of her time, she lived a life of unbridled indul- gence, which the contemporary wits of the coffee-houses knew how to paint in the darkest colours. She had a daughter by Sir George Etherege, who died before her mother. Tom Brown censures her averice ; others speak of her as cold and heartless; but the woman to whom poor Otway addressed the six pathetic letters preserved m his published works could not have been witbout some singular charm. As Mrs. Betterton does not figure in the Chroniques Scandaleuses of the Merry Monarch's reign, we know but little of her history ; but for thirty years she was on the stage, and all that time she ranked amongst its greatest ornaments. As Miss Saunderson she won the heart and hand of the great actor, Thomas Betterton ; and it is on record that she played Ophelia to his Hamlet, during the period of his courtship, and that the audience dwelt with particular interest on their dramatic love-passages, knowing that the two were shortly to be united in wedlock. Their married life was without a cloud ; as tlieir profes- sional careers were without a failure. So profound was Mrs. Betterton's love for her noble husband, that at his death, in 1710, she lost her reason, and survived him only eighteen months. Pepys always refers to this charming actress as lanthe, from the part she played in Davenant's "Siege of Ehodes.^' His numerous allusions evidence the esteem in which she was held by the public. It was due to her artistic merits as well as to her unblemished private character that she was chosen, in 1674, to instruct the Princesses Mary and Anne in elocution. Afterwards, she was engaged to teach the Princess Anne the part of Semandra in Lee's noisy tragedy of " Mithridates." When Betterton died, Queen Anne settled on his widow a pension of £500 a year. Cibber says—" She was so great a mistress of Nature, that even Mrs. Barry, who acted Lady Macbeth after her, could not in that part, with all her superior strength and melody of voice, throw out those quick and careless strokes 70 THE MEERY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 71 of terror, from the disorder of a guilty mind, which the other gave us, with a facility in her manner that rendered them at once tremendous and delightful/' In Novemher, 1685, when the United Company, com- prising the " best talent " both of Davenant and Killi- grew's old companies, opened their season at Drury Lane Theatre, among the leading ladies, and second only to Mrs. Barry, were Mrs. Mountfort, and Mrs. Bracegirdle. Mrs. Mountfort was the soul of comedy ; and in Gibber's admirable portrait-gallery he devotes to this charming actress one of his most finished sketches. She was mistress, he says, of more variety of humour than he had ever known in any one actress. " This variety/' he con- tinues, *' was attended with an equal vivacity, which made her excellent in characters extremely difficult. As she was naturally a pleasant mimic, she had the skill to make that talent useful on the stage. When the elocution is round, distinct, voluble, and various, as Mrs. Mountfort's was, the mimic there is a great assistance to the actor. Nothing, though ever so barren, if within the bounds of nature, could be flat in her hands. She gave many brightening touches to characters but coldly written, and often made an author vain of his work, that, in itself, had but little merit. She was so fond of humour, in what part soever to be found, that she would make no scruple of defacing her fair face to come heartily into it, for when she was eminent in several desirable characters of wit and humour, in higher life, she would be in as much fancy, when descending into the antiquated Abigail of Fletcher, as when triumphing in all the airs and vain graces of a fine lady ; a merit that few actors care for. In a play of D'Urfey's now forgotten, called ' The Western Lass,' which part she acted, she transformed her whole being— body, shape, voice, language, look and features— into almost another animal, with a strong Devonshire dialect, a broad laughing voice, a poking head, round shoulders, an unconceiviug eye, and the most bedizening dawdy dress that ever covered the untrained limbs of a Joan trot. To have seen her here, you would have thought it impossible that the same could ever have been removed to, what was as easy to her, the gay, the lively, and the desirable. Nor was her humour Hmited to her sex, for while her shape permitted, she was a more adroit, pretty fellow than is usually seen upon the stage. Her easy air, action, mien, and gesture, quite changed from the coif to the cocked-hat and cavalier in fashion. People were so fond of seeing her a man that when the part of Bayes, in ^ The Rehearsal/ had for some time lain dor- mant, she was desired to take it up, which I have seen her act with all the true coxcomly spirit and humour that the sufficiency of the character required. "But what found most employment for her whole various excellence at once was the part of Melantha, in * Marriage a la Mode.'* Melantha is as finished an im- pertinent as ever fluttered in a drawing-room, and seems to contain the most complete system of female foppery that could possibly be crowded into the tortured form of a fine lady. The language, dress, motion, manners, soul, and body, are in a continual hurry to be something more than is necessary or commendable. The first ridiculous airs that break from her are upon a gallant, never seen before, who delivers her a letter from her father, recom- mending him to her good graces as an honourable lover. Here, now, one would think that she might naturally show a little of the sex's decent reserve, though never so * Dryden'a comedy, produced in 1672. fi 72 THE MERRY MONARCH ; sligMy covered. No, sir ! not a tittle of it 1 Modesty is the virtue of a poor-souled country gentlewoman. She is too much a Court lady to be under so vulgar a confusion. She reads the letter, therefore, with a careless, dropping lip, and an erected brow, humming it hastily over, as if she were impatient to out go her father's commands, by making a complete conquest of him at once ; and that the letter might not embarrass her attack, crack! she crumbles it at once into her palm, and pours upon him her whole artillery of airs, eyes, and motion. Down goes her dainty, diving body to the ground, as if she were sinking under the conscious load of her own attractions; then launches into a flood of fine language and compliment, still playing her chest forward in fifty falls and risings, like a swan upon waving water; and, to complete her impertinence, she is so rapidly fond of her own wit that she will not give her lover leave to praise it. Silent assenting bows, and vain endeavours to speak, are all the share of the con- versation he is admitted to, which at last he is relieved from, by her engagement to half a score visits, which she swims from him to make, with a promise to return in a twinkling." She made her d^but on the stage as Miss Percival, and enacted the character of Nell in " The Devil to Pay." After her marriage to William Mountfort, her best characters were Melantha, already spoken of, and Belinda in Congreve's " Old Bachelor." Mountfort, a comedian of brilliant merit, who played the airy, graceful, ardent lover as to the manner born, was slain by Captain HiU in 1692 ; and his widow soon afterwards married the actor Verbruggen. She died in 1703. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 73 Mrs. Bracegirdle, like Mrs. Mountfort, belongs to the stage of Charles II.'s reign only as a debutante. Her fame was won in later years. Yet our sketches will hardly be complete if they do not include this admirable actress, who^ unlike most of her contemporaries, was also a virtuous woman. S he was the ornament of the stage and the delight of the public from 1680 to 1707, when she gave way to the rising star of Mrs. Oldfield. "Never," says Cibber, " was any woman in such general favour of the spectators. . . . She was the darling of the theatre ; for it will be no extravagant thing to say, scarce an audience saw her that were less than half of them lovers, without a suspected favourite among them ; and though she may be said to have been the universal passion, and under the highest temptations, her constancy in resisting them served but to increase her admirers. It was even the fashion among the gay and young to have a taste or tendre for Mrs, Bracegirdle." It was the fashion, also, among the old. One day the Earl of Burlington sent her a present of some fine old china. She told the servant he had made a mistake ; that it was true the letter was for her, but the china was for his lady, to whom she bade him carry it. " Lord ! " exclaims Walpole, '' the Countess was so full of gratitude when her husband came home to dinner." Lord Lovelace was another of her suitors, and as unsuccessful as the rest. To the number and variety of the love-tokens poured in upon her Dryden alludes, in one of his epilogues written for her : — " I have had to-day a dozen billets-doux From fops, and wits, and cits, and Bow Street beaux : Some from Whitehall, but from the Temple more : A Covent Garden porter brought me four.** Congreve also entered the lists, and there is no doubt 74 THE MERRY MONARCH; his addresses were welcome to lier ; but she could not he induced to forfeit her self-respect. This he himself admits in verses which we confess we are almost m ashamed to quote : — •' Pious Belinda goes to prayers Whene'er I ask the favour, Yet the tender fool's in tears When she thinks I'd leave her. Would I were free from this restraint, Or else had power to win her ; Would she could make of me a saint. Or I of her a sinner." One Captain Eichard Hill, a dissolute man about town, fell so violently in love with her person— he could not appreciate her mind— that he resolved to carry her off by force, and persuaded Lord Mohun, who was as wild and wicked as himself, to assist. Ascertaining that, with her mother and brother, she was to sup one evening at the house of a friend, Mr. Page, in Prince's Street, Drury Lane, they hired six soldiers for the deed of violence, and posted them near Mr. Page's house. It was the 9th of December, 1692, and about ten at night, as she left Mr. Page's, the rufSans pounced upon her, but she screamed so loudly, and her brother and friend made so gallant a resistance, that the attempt failed. An excited crowd assembled, and Lord Mohun and Hill thought it prudent to undertake to escort her to her residence in Howard Street, Strand. Close at hand lived Mountfort, the actor, and Mrs. Bracegirdle, overhearing Captain Hill indulging in violent threats against him— from an absurd suspicion that he was a favoured rival— sent to Mrs. Mountfort to warn her husband, who was gone home, to be on his guard. The brilliant young cavalier, nothing .alarmed, came round into Howard Street and saluted OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 75 Lord Mohun; at the same moment Hill stepped up behind, struck him on the head, and, before he could draw in his defence, ran his sword through Mountfort's body. Captain Hill fled to the Continent; but Lord Mohun was tried by his peers for the murder, and acquitted by three-score against fourteen. He after- wards fell in the fatal duel with the Duke of Hamilton. Mrs. Bracegirdle retired from the stage in 1707, but lived in the enjoyment of an inconsiderable fortune, the •centre of a wide circle of wits and men of letters, until 1 748. THE POETS. Milton. Herrick. Maevell. Cowley. Waller. Sir W. Davenant. Earl of Dorset. Earl of Eoscommon. Earl of Eochester. Sheffield, Duke of Buck- inghamshire. Sir C. Sedley. Sir John Denham. Thomas Stanley. Sir W. Killigrew. Anne Killigrew. Samuel Butler. John Dryden. CHAPTER III. THE POETS. MlLTON-^EBRICK - MaRVELL — Co WLET — WaLLEE— SiR W. Davenant— Earl of Dorset— Earl op Eos- COMMON— Earl of Eochester— Sheffield, Duke op Buckinghamshire— Sir C. Sedley— Sir John Denham-Thomas Stanley^Sir W. Killigrew— Anne Killigrew— Samuel Butler— John Dryden. At the Eestoration Milton was in his fifty-second year, and one of the most conspicuous men, not in England only, but in Europe. As yet, it is true, he had not shown the world the full measure and range of his power as a poet, and the scholars of Europe knew little or nothing of English poetry ; but they honoured him as a controt versialist who had crossed swords successfully with one of the doughtiest of Continental combatants. In his en- counter with Salmasius, he had, by common consent, brought that champion of absolute monarchy to his knees. After reading the " Defensio pro-Populo Angli- cano,'* in which, with almost an excess of strencrth he replied to the " Defensio Eegia," the apology for Charles I., Queen Christina, of Sweden, had frankly told Salmasius that he was beaten. Whereupon Salmasius, who had 80 THE MERRY MONARCH ; enjoyed so mucli of the Queen's favour tliat she had been wont to light his fire with her own hands when she in- dulo-ed with him in confidential morning walks, declared that the Swedish climate disagreed with him, and re- turned to France. "Who is this Milton?" asked Henisius, the Dutchman, of Isaac Voss. The latter replied, " I have learned all about Milton from my uncle, Junius, who is familiar with him. He tells me that he serves the Parliament in foreign affairs; is skilled in many languages ; is not, indeed, of noble, but, as they say, of gentle birth ; kindly, affable, and endowed with many other virtues." Who is this Milton? If the ques- tion had been put to his countrymen they might have informed the querist that he was the second— ranking Oliver Cromwell as the first—great Englishman of his time ; a man with a powerful genius and a singular loftiness and purity of thought ; a courageous, resolute, and eloquent champion of civil and religious liberty ; a master of English prose, which he wrote with a stateli- ness that reflected the dignity of his character ; a poet of rare gifts and accomplishments, who, before all other English singers, had proved himself conscious of the nobleness and sacredness of the poet's mission. Good and great work Milton had already done ; but his best and greatest work belongs to the reign of Charles II., and is the distinguishing glory of that reign. The "Paradise Lost" is one of the world's half-dozen immortal poems— like " The Iliad," and " The JEneid," and the "Divina Commedia "— and the age and the country which produced it have necessarily something to be proud of. If we have little else to thank the Eestora- tion for, we have to thank it, I believe, for our great OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 32 English epic. But for the obscurity and privacy to which It relegated Milton, he might never have enjoyed the leisure, or the self-concentration, without which its com- position would have been impossible. He was thirty-two when he conceived the idea ; but he found no time to attempt its realization during the stirring periods of the Civil War and the Protectorate. For Milton was not only a poet, but a man of action. There was nothing of the recluse about him ; he did not live for poetry alone, like Wordsworth. His strong, deep sympathies with the cause of human liberty and human hope impelled him to take an active part in the struggle, and for twenty years from 1G41 to 1660, he gave to public aifairs the resources of his intellectual strength and opulence. With the ex- ception of a few sonnets, his muse, meanwhile, was silent Those graceful Italian pastorals, " L'Allegro " and " 11 Penseroso," were written while he lingered in his earlier manhood among the orchard blooms of Horton. The "Comus," which so admirably illustrates the " grave purity of his mind, and the beautiful monody of "Lycidas," belong to the year 1637. In 1639, the death of his friend Diodati drew from him his "Epitaphium Damors," and thereafter he devoted his genius to the service of his country. His wonderful intellectual activity knew no pause of weariness ; it embraced the whole field of conflict : Church Discipline, Divorce, the Freedom of the Press, Education, Civil Govemment-on all these various themes he had much to say, to which it was good for his countrymen to listen, and he said it with such a strenuousness and vehemence that they durst not close their ears. As to his prose style, writers differ. «Is he truly a VOL. II, a 82 THE MERRY MONARCH; prose writer ? " says Taine, and lie adds :— " Entangled dialectics, a heavy and awkward mind " — who but a French- man would have used these epithets ?—" fanatical and furious rusticity, an epic grandeur of sustained and superabundant images, the blast and the recklessness of implacable and all-powerful passion, the sublimity of religious and logical exaltation : we do not recognize in these features a man bom to explain, pursuade, and prove/' No ; it was not Milton's business to explain or persuade; he crushed. Like a shock of cavalry, he charged the errors and sophisms of his time, and they went down before him. How could he stop to explain or persuade, when his opponents were the minions of Prelacy and Absolutism, the deadly foes of Freedom? You might as well have asked Cromwell's Ironsides to halt on the field of Naseby, and reason with Eupert and his cavaliers. Milton's prose is the prose of a poet. It is rich in images and illustrations; it abounds in harmonious cadences ; it frequently lapses into a measured rhythm. No doubt it is sometimes rugged and sometimes exuberant; but this ruggedness is due to his intense earnestness, and this exuberance to the marvellous wealth of his resources. He has no call to be thrifty like lesser men ; and so the great river of his eloquence rolls on with copious force, carrying with it both gold and mud. Is is in the " Areopagitica," that noble plea for the liberty of the press— which so completely achieved its object that in England, at least, no serious efi"ort has since been made to curb the free expression of free thought— we see Milton's eloquence in its fullest majesty. The title is borrowed from the " Areopagitic " oration of Isocrates ; but nothing more. Between the calm grace- OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 33 fulness of the Greek orator aad the splendid fervour of the Enghsh author there is not the slightest similaritv. The Areopagitica " is warm with Milton's heart-blood. It kindles with the fire of enthusiasm from the first line to the last. The trumpet-strain never falters ; the well- poised wings never droop or weary in their lofty flight Whoever would know of what our English language' IS capable, to what heights it can reach, into how grand an organ-music it can swell, let him read the " Areo- pagitica." « Though aU the winds of doctrine," says Milton, '. were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and pro- hibitmg to misdoubt her strength. Let her and False- hood grapple ; whoever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing. He who hears what praying there is tor hght and clearer knowledge to be sent down amon.^ us, would think of other matters to be constituted beyond the discipline of Geneva, framed and fabrict already to our hands. Tet when the new light which we be<. for shines in upon us, there be who envy, and oppose, if it come not first in at their casements. What a collusion is this, whereas we are exhorted by the wise man to use diligence, to seek for wMom as for hidden trca,„res early and late, that another order shall enjoin us to know nothing but by statute. When a man hath been labour- ing the hardest labour in the deep mines of knowled..e hath furnished out his findings in all their equipa-e' drawn forth his reasons as it were a battle ran-ed' scattered and defeated all objections in his way, calls'out his adversary into the plain, ofiers him the advantage of wind and sun if he please, only that he may tiy the matter 84 THE MERRY MONARCH; by dint of argument, for Ms opponents then to skulk, to lay ambushments, to keep a narrow bridge of licensing where the challenger should pass, though it be valour enough in soldiership, is but weakness and cowardice in the wars of Truth. For who knows not that Trutli is strong next to the Almighty; she needs no policies, no stratagems, no licensings to make her victorious ; these are the shifts and defences that Error uses against ber power." Here is a fine passage which none but a poet could have written : — " Truth, indeed, came once into the world with her Divine Master, and was a perfect shape, most glorious to look on; but when He ascended, and His Apostles after Him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, lords and commons, nor ever shall do, till her Master's second coming ; He shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mould tbem into an immortal pattern of loveliness and perfec- tion." And this almost lyrical outburst in praise of Books : — " Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as OR, ENGLATO UNDER CHARLES II. 85 and .« .; , """^ ^^^^ '^'"^ ^^ lively, ^d as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon^ e eth, and be.n, sown up and down, naay chance to spmg up arnied n.en. And, ,et, on the other hand un ess wanness be used, as good almost kill a n.an as' kxU a good book: who kills a n:an kills a reasonable creature, God s image ; but he who destroys a good book lalls reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were! m the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth ; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond ^^^'^^"^''^''P^Sitio^" was written in 1644. Early in X04J Its author was appointed Latin Secretary to the CouncU of State; a post he continued to hold under Cromwell, assisted, after his blindness in 1654, by Andi-ew Marvell. Milton's form of blindness was that now known as amaurosis, formerly called, from an altogether erroneous supposition of its cause, gutta serena ("drop serene'}. The fine clear brown eyes remained unim- paired, but the nerve of sight was irreparably injured partly through excessive application, and partly through a gouty habit of body. In his domestic life Milton ^d not been wholly happy; from his first wife, Mary Powell, he had been divorced, separated by the wrong- dorng, of her family, and after her death, he married Catherine Woodcock, who was taken from him in a year at the birth of her first child. His sonnet «on his deceased wife" is an undying evidence of the love he bore her. One night after her death he had dreamed ot her as coming to him with veiled face. 86 THE MEEKT MONAECH ; .' And such as yet once more I trust to have Full sight of her in heaven without restraint- Came, vested all in white, pure as her mmd : Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight. Love, sweetnes-s goodness, in her person shined So clear, as in no faee with more delight ; But, oh, as to embrace me she inclined I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night. At the Eestoration Milton, though he knew himself to be obnoxious to the new Court, showed no sign of timidity, and made no attempt to escape its vengeance. He retired, with that quiet dignity which characterised all the actions of his life, to a fx-iend's house in Bartholomew Close ; and looked on unmoved, while a Parhament of Cavaliers and fanatical Koyalists voted ^^^.P--;*-^ and ordered that his " Eikonoclastes » and his " Def nsxo Populi Anglicani" should be burnt by the hands of the common hangman. What powerful influence was exerted on his behalf is uncertain ; some authorities give the credit to his friend and assistant, Andrew Marvell who had been elected to Hull : others, to Sir William Dave- nant, who thus repaid an obligation he had incurred to the poet; but, at all events, he was fortunate enough not to be placed among the exceptions to the Act ot Indemnity and Oblivion passed on the 29th of August He was arrested; but the House of Commons ordered his release on the 15th December, and he was so confident in his security that he ventured to appeal against the excessive fees charged in connection with Ins brie im- prisonment. For about a year he lived m Holbom near Eed Lion Square. Thence, in 1662, he removed to Jewin Street. Aldersgate, and afterwards to a small house in Artillery Walk, near BunhiU Fields, his residence for the remainder of his life. While in Jewin Street be OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHAELES II. 87 took to himself, by tlie advice of Dr. Paget, his physician, a third wife ; Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Edward MinshuU, of Cheshire, a distant kinswoman of the doctor's. She devoted herself to her husband's happiness ; but his three daughters, of whom Anne, the eldest, was sixteen — Mary, the second fifteen — and Deborah, the youngest, ten, did not relish the rule of a young step-mother. On the whole, how- ever, his household, during his latter years, was peaceful and well-ordered. The method of his daily life was sim- plicity itself: he rose at four in the summer, and at five in the winter ; heard a chapter of the Hebrew Bible, and was left to meditate until seven. After breakfast some one read to him, and he dictated to his amanuensis until noon. One hour, from twelve to one, was reserved for exercise, either walking or in a swing. He dined at one, and occupied himself with books, music, and composition until six. Two hours were given to conversation with his friends ; and, as might be supposed, he was a fine talker. He sujpped at eight, smoked a pipe, and retired to bed at nine. Among his readers was young Thomas EUwood, the Quaker. Burning with a great desire for knowledge, he came up to London, shortly after the Eestoration, and through a friend made the acquaintance of Dr. Paget, who, in 1662, introduced the young man (he was then twenty -three) to the blind poet. His reception was very favourable ; and he was invited to visit Milton at home, whenever he wished, "and to read to him what books he should appoint,^' which was all that Ellwood desired. He tells us that Milton taught him the foreign pronunciation of Latin, and perceiving with what earnest desire he pursued learning, gave him not only all the gg THE MEEET MONAECH ; encouragement but all the help he could. " For, having a curious ear, he understood by my tone," says Ellwood, " when I understood what I read, and when I did not ; and accordingly would stop me, examine me, and open the most difficult passages." In 1665, when all who could hastened to escape from the plague-stricken city, young Ellwood, at Milton's request, hired for him " a pretty box "-a plain, half- timbered, gable-fronted cottage*— at Chalfont t^t. Giles. When the poet took up his residence there, Ellwood, under a new and stringent law against the Quakers and their meetings, had been thrown into Aylesbury prison ; but as soon as he was released, he paid Milton a visit. « After some common discourses had passed between us," writes Ellwood, " he called for a manuscript of his, which, being brought, he delivered to me, bidding me take it home with me and read it at my leisure, and when I had done so return it to him with my judgment thereupon. When I came home and had set myself to read it, I found it was that exceUent poem, which he entitled Paradise Lost. After I had, with the best attention, read it through, I made him another visit, and returned him his book, with the acknowledgment of the favour he had done me m communicating it to me. He asked me how I liked it, and what I thought of it, which I modestly but freely told him; and, after some further discourse about it, I plea- santly said to him, ' Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found ? ' He made me no answer, but sat some time in a muse; then broke off that discourse and fell upon another subject. After the sickness was over and the city weU cleansed and . i.Mi • -««n«T.f nrABfirvation It stands ob the rightr Jll^::^!^^:^:^:^^^ ^ ^^ - be the .00. in which Milton dictated hia " Paradise Regained. OE^ ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 8^ become safely habitable again, be returned thitber. And wben afterwards I went to wait on bim tbere (wbich I seldom failed of doing whenever my occasions drew me to London), be showed me his second poem, called Paradise Regained, and in a pleasant tone said to me, *This is owing to you ; for you put it into my head by the question you put to me at Chalfont, which before I had not thouc^ht of. ' Milton, however, probably felt that a sequel was needed in order to emphasize and define more precisely the plan of Christ in the Divine scheme of redemption. ^' Paradise Lost " was comi)leted before the end of 1665; "Paradise Eegained" (though not published until 1671) probably in the course of the following year, or early in the spring of 1667. Milton's first great epic found a pub- lisher in Samuel Simmons, who bought the copyright for £15; £5 paid down, £5 to be paid on the sale of 1,300 copies out of a first edition of 1,500, and £5 more on the sale of 1,300 out of a second edition of 1,500 copies. Milton lived to receive a second -^ve pounds, and to his widow were paid £8 for her remaining interest in the copyright. The poem, divided at first into only ten books, was handsomely printed in a small quarto volume, which was sold for 3s. It had neither preface, notes, nor "argu- ments " prefixed to the different books (1667). A license for publication was not obtained without some diflaculty, the licencer (the Rev. Thomas Tomkyns, chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury) stumbling at a supposed political allusion in the following well-known passage : '* As when the sun, new risen, Looks through the horizontal misty air, Shorn of his beams; or, from behind the moon, In dim eclipse disastrons twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs." ■go THE MEERT MONAECH ; At length, however, it was published, and the English people soon showed their sense of the inestimable value of this new addition to their literature. Thirteen hundred copies were sold in two years, and in eleven years the sale reached three thousand copies ; not a bad sale for a reU- gious epic at a time when readers were limited to the afluent classes, and the popular taste had been corrupted by the introduction of French models and the influence of a dis- solute and luxurious Court. To criticise " Paradise Lost " would be work as super- erogatory as analysing the sun. It is universally accepted as the great English epic, which no other has yet threatened in its pride of place. It is part of the inherit- ance of every Englishman, like Magna Charta and the Bill of Eights. No doubt it has its defects ; it is prolix and even wearisome in some of its passages ; its theology is narrow ; its conceptions of Heaven and Hell are neces- sarily materialistic ; * but what are these when compared with those essential qualities of grandeur of thought and diction of loftiness of purpose, to which it owes its immor- tality ? But in Mr. Mark Pattison's monograph (m the "English Men of Letters" series), and in Professor Masson'8 comprehensive biography, the reader will find elaborate estimates which answer almost every question that can arise in connection with its study ; and he may advantageously compare Macaulay's and Dr. Channing's r.f *^\.;a /lofppf which was forced upon him by the it, in the words he puts into the moath of Kaphael . " What Bnrmounts the reach Of human sense, I shall delineate so By likening spiritual to corporal forms Ab may express them best : though what if earth 5e but^he shadow of Heaven, and thmgs therein ^^ Each to other like, more than on earth is thought f OE, ENGLAND FNDEK CHAELES II. 91 well-known essays. His attention will of course be directed to such matters as the extent of Milton's obliga- tions to Ca3dmon and Vondel, which scarcely affect more than the framework of the poem ; the obvious traces of Spenser, and in a less degree of Marlowe, in the versifica- tion and treatment; the characteristics of Milton's blank verse, its processional pomp, its complex harmonies, its majestic rhythm; the rich variety of the allusions and images; the effect of his Calvinistic theology on the development of his subject; his felicitous choice of epithets ; his incidental description s of natural scenery ; and, finally, the relation of the poem to the religious thought of the age. It is specially interesting to compare it with Spenser's " Faery Queen,"^ which presents one side or aspect of the difficult problem of which " Paradise Lost" presents the other. Thus, if we take it to be Spenser's primary object to indicate the aspiration of man's soul towards its God, it is not less the purpose of Milton to " Assert eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to man ;" while the minds of both are fascinated by the constant struggle which prevails in the soul and in the world between the antagonistic principles of Good and Evil. " Paradise Lost " and " Paradise Eegained " should be taken together as one great continuous allegorical epic, which divides naturally into four parts, and each part into four books. The first part, Books i. to iv., describes the origin and progress of the war between Good and Evil, the fall of Evil into Hell, and the renewal of the struggle upon * In the preface to his " Fables," Dryden remarks that Milton is the poetical son of Spenser. " Milton has confessed to me," he adds. " that Spenser was his original." 11 92 THE MEERT MONARCH ; earth with Man's soul as the prize of the victor. The second part, Books v. to viii., forms an intermezzo, in which, through the narrative of the Archangel Raphael, we learn the order of the events that preceded the creation of Man. In the third part. Books ix. to xii., the story of the great conflict is resumed, with Man's fall, its imme- diate consequences, and the Archangel Michael's forecast of the way in which they wiU eventually be retrieved. Lastly, the fourth part (" Paradise Regained ") brings us to the realisation of the grand Archaugelic vision m Christ's victory over the Power of Evil. On « the highest pinnacle " of the glorious Temple of Jerusalem, which shone afar " Like a monnt Of alabaster top't with golden spites," Divine Good, in the person of Jesus Christ, wins the last battle in that tremendous war which, ages agone, had begun in " heaven's wide champaign." Celestial choirs break forth into strains of victory :— " Now Thou hast avenged Supplanted Adam, and, by vanquishing Temptation, hast regained lost ParadisOj^ And frustrated the conquest fraudulent." " Samson Agonlstes - ^ was published in the same year (1671) as *^ Paradise Regained." It is a choral drama, after the Greek model, but in a severe style, and is instmct with the poet's strong individuality. In its stately verse the main aim and work of his life found their final expression. For twenty years he had championed the sacred cause of civil and religious freedom, and to the superficial observer the battle had gone against him ; the banner was torn down, and the hands which had held it * Samson is taken by the poet as the type of P-itanism, which, though fallen, had nevertheless defeated the enemies of God. OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 93 aloft would do so no more. But the poet is, by virtue of his office, a seer, and Milton foresaw that the principles he had advocated would ultimately prevail ; just as the blind and aged Samson— Samson Agonistes, the wrestler --triumphed over the Philistines. And the drama ends with a noble song of content and faith, which fitly closed Milton's work as a poet : — " So virtue, given for lost, Depressed, and overthrown, as seemed, Like that self-begotten bird In the Arabian woods imbost, That no second knows nor third. And lay erewhile a holocaust, From out her ashy womb now teemed. Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most When most unactive deemed ; And, though her body die, her fame survives A secular bird ages of lives." And again : — " All is best, though we oft doubt What the unsearchable dispose Of highest Wisdom brings about, And ever best found in the close. Oft He seems to hide His face, But unexpectedly returns, And to His faithful champion hath in place Bore witness gloriously." Milton's last years were years of peace. He bore with calmness the pains of the disease (gout) which he had inherited, and to the worst ills of Poverty happily he was never exposed. Eetaining to the last his faculties un- clouded, he passed away without pain on Sunday, the 8th of November, 1674.-^ Just three weeks before (October 15th) the grave had closed over a poet of very different mould, Eobert Her- * The best commentary on Milton's life is to be found in his own words :— ' He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter of laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem." gj THE MERRY MONARCH; rick, the author of « The Hesperides." In life and ia character a greater contrast could hardly be found than Herrick, the gay lyrist of English Epicureanism, whose philosophy was summed up in the Horatian "carpe diem " whose life was animated by no elevated purpose- consecrated by no patriotic or philanthropic work to the great Puritan poet, with his deep sense of duty, his Intense religious conviction, and his lofty zeal for the welfare of his country. Herrick was born m Cheapside, London, in 1591. In his youth he made the acquaintance of Ben Jonson, and sat with him at " those lyric feasts which he afterwards commemorated. He studied at Cambridge-unfortunately for himself took holy orders, thereby missing his vocation-and was presented by Charles L, in 1029 to the vicarage of Dean Prior, m Devonshire. Poor Herrick ! His tastes, his gifts, and Ms accomplishments fitted him to shine among the wits and beaux of London society, and he was relegated to the companionship of Devonshire boors. He did his best to be cheerful in these adverse circumstances; and amused his superabundant leisure by singing the <^ff^^'^^^- fuUest songs imaginable to imaginary Julias Silvias, Corinnas,by writing in fluent but vigorous verse about conn- Z cnsto-s and rural peculiarities, while he drank amp e dights of generous liquor, or taught his pet pig to dnnk out of a tankard, or chatted airily with his faithful «.rv«.nt-Pme In 1648 he was expelled from his vicarage, lid he returned to London, where he published h^ lyncs epigrams, and miscellanies, under the title of He perides "- so called, of course, because written m the West ^England. In the previous year he had given to tbe world some soberer strains,his " Noble Numbers ; or, Piou. OE, ENGLAND TINDER OHAELES II. 95 Pieces ; " but in these his genius is seen to less advan- tage. During the Puritan period Herrick lived at West- minster, on the alms of the wealthier Eoyalists, and I cannot suppose that this chapter of his life was a happy, and It was certainly not an honourable, one. After the Restoration he returned to his Devonshire vicarage, and probably with the burden of gathering years upon him, knew better how to appreciate its quiet. He was in his 84th year when he died. As Herrick wrote nothing in his later life, we may be thought to have erred in placing him among the poets of Charies the Second's reign ; but his lyrics breathe the true spirit of the Eestoration. They were much more in harmony with the time, when king and courtiers gave up everything to pleasure, than at the date of their publica- tion, when the country was divided into two hostile camps, and the minds of men were informed with a deep earnest- ness and a strenuous ardour of which the poet of " The Hesperides " was wholly incapable. However this may be, Herrick, as a lyrist, has few equals among our English poets. The English language becomes plastic as cUy in his ingenious hands, and assumes the most graceful and fantastic forms. Ehymes come at his bidding; and felicities of expression of the most artistic character seem to spring up spontaneously. No doubt he polished his verses with the utmost care, but he had the art to conceal art, and perhaps none of our poets is more successful in producing the impression that he sings, like the birds because lie cannot help singing. He lifts up his voice among the flowers and the green leaves with notes as sweet and natural as those of the mavis. 96 THE MERRY MONARCH ; An accent of melancholy sometimes finds its way into HerricFs bright, gay verse ; but it is the melancholy of Paganism. It is the pleasure-seeker's sorrow as he sees the dregs inthe wine-cup; as he observes the shortening of the days and the fading of the flowers. " Let ns be merry," he cries with something of forced merriment, " for to-morrow we die." It is not that he recognizes the vanity and triviality of his pleasures ; but that they must so soon come to an end. It is this thought which interrupts his hilarious song with a sudden cadence of pam. He weeps to see the daffodils haste away so soon ; because they remind him of the mortality of human affairs, and the brief span of human existence. " We have short time to stay as you ; We have aa short a spring ; As quick a growth to meet decay As you or anything : We die, As your hours do ; and dry Away Like to the summer's rain, Or as the pearls of morning-dew, Ke'er to be found again." We have here no hint of a brighter future, no sugges- tions of immortality ; it is the old Pagan creed, and it sits unbecomingly on the English priest. As might be expected, there is no earnestness in Herrick's'' religious poetry. I do not say that it is inten- tionally insincere, but he does not put his heart into his song ; and it has happily been said that he sings to the old heathen tunes. " Even at his prayers, his spirit is mundane and not filled with heavenly things.- He carries Ms gay jocular temper into the sanctuary ; in his " Dirge of Jepthah's Daughter "he introduces the strangest, the most alien allusions to seventeenth century customs as OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 97 far removed as possible from his subject. He is most at home, however, when singing of his real or ideal mis- tresses, of bright eyes and sweet flowers, of wassail-bowls and morris-dances, of all that is bright and luxuriant in mral life, of country wakes and races, of the may-pole and the harvest-field ; and when dealing with such themes his verse is always vigorous, always musical, and always picturesque,, though, unfortunately, not always decent. " I sing/' he says : — " I ainj? of hrooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July flowers ; I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes. I write of Youth, of Love ; and have access By those, to sing of cleanly wantonness ; I sing of dews, of rains, and, piece by piece. Of balm, of oil, of spice, and ambergris. I sing of times trans-shifting ; and I write How roses first came red, and lilies white. I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing The court of Mab, and of the Fairv Kin^r I write of Hell ; I sing, and ever shall Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all." Herrick is a poet for the summer-time, for golden noons and warm, sweet twilights, when our "bosom's lord'' sits lightly on its throne, and we are disposed for awhile to listen to the strains of careless lyres and to watch the free dances of rustic maids. Four years after Milton, died his collaborateur and friend, Andrew Marvell (1624-1678), who, in the Civil War period, had laboured both in prose and poetry to advance the cause of the Parliament and discredit that of the Crown. Though bred in the atmosphere of Puritanism, VOL. II. __ gg THE MERRT MONARCH ; Marvell, however, was not a ^^^^ ^^^"^^^^ ^! ■1 A +>,« nlisolutism of Charles I., he was not a Ke assaded ^^^f-^^^^^^^^^.n as Milton's assistant- ^rrXthf deration, as a .e.ber of Parliament and alter tne ministry, had wonld have given lus suppoit to the ^ °-= ^ the King's policy been honest and const.tn^.onah He as inflexible and as incorruptible as a B°-- J^ , 1 +v,« =torv— how Charles II. once sent to Everybody knows the story how ^^^ h\m Danbv, the Lord Treasurer, to ofier mm him Danby, ^ ^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^8. for his advocacy a place ai x-'uu ^+ >>„ ?n. The member for Hull was poor, but he could not be an IceHo stain the whiteness of his soul by accepting a tX his only answer to the King's agent was to caU ^ bnoe , ui» J successive days he servant to bear witness that tor inree had dined on a shoulder of mutton. As a poet Marvell has grace and fancy, wit and leam- i,, he h -- descriptive power and much earnestness of f^lC but he is very unequal, and his wit sometimes of feeling, du j ^^ ^^^ "Britannia <1pcrpnerates into an idle ingeuuiuj. degenerat ^^^^ ^^.^ ^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^^.^j and Raleigh he struci. p ^^^^^ -!_ 4-^^ wViipTi was afterwards wor^eu vj^ hanter which was ^^^^ .^ .. ^j^^ Swift and Junius. He is seen ^ ^^ Garden," which, of its kind '^ ^f'f' ^^^^^^y^ Bermudas," and "The Horatian Ode on Cromwell s . la 1650Marvenbecame tntor to Ma^j^the dang te^^ through this Fairfax, the general of the P'^''""^"' '^^tn to Milton, who, in 1659, re- engagement that he became perBonaUyJno^^^^ ^^ the CoancJ of oommended him to Bradshaw as f-?^'^"^ j ,, ^ell versed in French irtrspeaHng of h,m ^ a »a" of goo^^^^^^^^ and Italian, Spanish and Uutcn, a b „~pnmDlishments that, if he had naa ^ of so inch capacity and so many ^"'^P^^^^ ^een slow to introduce ^feeling of jealousy o^J'-^J;,t^c™^well-s p„tectorate that Marvell him as a coadjutor. It was not received his appomtment. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 99 Return from Ireland.^' This last contains the well- .known picture of Charles I. on the scaffold : " While round the armed bands Did clap their bloody hands : He nothing common did, or mean, Upon that memorable scene, But with his keener eye The axe's edge did try ; Nor called the gods, with vulgar spite. To vindicate his helpless right, But bowed his comely head L)own, as upon a bed." Some good, strong lines occur in his poem upon Milton's '"Paradise Lost," which has a special interest as having been written by one of the poet's friends and intimate associates. " That majesty/' he says, " That majesty which through thy work doth reign Draws the devout, deterring the profane ; And things divine thou treat'st of in such state As them preserves, and thee, inviolate. At once delight and horror on us seize, Thou sing'st with so much gravity and ease, And above human flight dost soar aloft With plume so strong, so equal, and so soft : The bird named from that paradise you sing So never flags, but always keeps on wing. Where could'st thou words of such a compass find ? Whence furnish such a vast expanse of mind ? Just Heaven thee, like Tiresias, to requite. Rewards with prophecy thy loss of sight." In the year that witnessed the publication of '' Paradise Lost/'— Dryden's "Annus Mirabilis/'— died Abraham Cowley, whose later life had been spent among the pleasant groves of Chertsey, and within hearing of the murmurous waters of the Thames. Born in 1618, he was the posthumous son of a London stationer. His mother did her best to get him a careful and comprehensive ^^Q THE MERKY MONARCH ; education; and from Spenser's worlds, -^^^^ '^J /^^ «t.antlv in her parlour, a cherished con>panion, the boy stantiy in uei p while at West- drank in his first poetical inspiration. Wh^k^ ^^ ^.„,ter School he wrote p. pastoral comedy, called bove s S?e •" and in 1633 appeared his "Poetical Blossoms^^ ^ 'portrait of the author at the a,e of ^^^^^^^^^^ juvenile volume contained " ^^^^^'^f ^\f ;7 J, r, = nT,a Thishe," written when he was ten, ana Pyramus and ihisoe, ^i,^„ hp was thirteen « Constantia and Philetus," written when he was tii v.!rold* rrom 1636 to 1643 he was a student at years o^ ^"^ r.^bridee • and when expelled on Trinity College, Cambiuige , v/iwv* Kot fvon, great deeds, 1"> '«""':',, '''°";:„ . The unknown are better than .U known , Ba,nour -«" "l';; •'i;'.J;™u;;t whose 't depends Acquaintanc- I " "' ";^' ^^oice of friends. Not on the ninnl"i, but tut. lui ■^ , u ij „r,t ViiiBiness, entcrtam the Ugnt, l^tsl^er'as u^diSa L death, the night. Mv hon^ii a cottat?e, more Than palace, and should fittmg be, For all my nso, not luxury. My garden P-'y'\';;/;^[.^. ^^^ pleasures yield, ^^^^"''"tenvy'rh^labinefidd. Horace might envy m ma ^^ Thus would I double my life's fading spaee^ For he that runs it well twice runs his race. And in this true delight, Thestlbought sports, Uns bap^7 etate, 1 would not fear nor wish my fate, But boldly say each night. ORj ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 101 the correspondence that passed between her and the King. He remained in France until 1656. Eeturning to England he resided there under surveillance until the death of Cromwell, and published the first folio edition of his Works. He was made an M.D. of Oxford, and began to take up the study of botany, under the impulse of the new love of scientific pursuits which was springino- up in England. On the death of Cromwell, apprehensive probably of civil commotion, he rejoined his friends in France; but at the Eestoration came back, and took up his abode, first at Barnes, and afterwards at Chertsey. Notwithstanding his well-proven loyalty, the time treated him with neglect ; and he owed the means of livelihood to the munificence of Lord St. Albans and the Duke of Buckingham.-^ His comedy, ^' The Cutter of Coleman Street," had painted with a good deal of freedom the dissolute joviality of the Cavaliers ; and he had given offence by an ode in honour of Brutus. When involved in the work and anxiety of the world, Cowley had breathed many an aspiration for the joys of rural Solitude ; yet it is certain that in his retirement at Chertsey he was not altogether happy. Surrey, he soon discovered, was not Arcadian ; and the Eestoration had not brought back the Golden Age. There was as little innocence in Chertsey as in London; his tenants would not pay their rents, and his neighbours turned their cattle every night to pasture freely in his meadows. If Pope may be credited, his death came of an igno- minious cause : — '' It was occasioned," says the poet, " by * Through their influence he obtained a lease of some lands belonging to the Queen, worth about £300 per annum. 102 THE MERRT MONARCH; a mean accident while bis great friend Dean Sprat was with him on a visit. They had been together to see a neighbour of Cowley's, who, according to the fashion of those times, made them too welcome. They did not set out for their walk home till it was too late, and had drunk so deep that they lay out in the fields all night. This gave Cowley the fever that carried him off"— on the 28th of July, 1667. His remains were carried by water to Westminster, and interred with much pomp in the Abbey. In the folio edition of his " Works " we find them arranged in five divisions: 1, "Miscellanies," including " Anacreontiques ; " 2, "The Mistress," a collection of love poems ; 3, " The Davideis," an heroic poem of the troubles of David ; 4, " Pindarique Odes," to which were afterwards added, 6, " Verses on Various Occasions ; " and 6, " Several Discourses by way of Essays in Verse and Prose." Taken as a whole, the poems are dreary reading ; for Cowley, like Wordsworth, thought that whatever he had written must needs be worth preserving; and, there- fore, one has to plod wearily through a great stretch of desert to reach an oasis where the leaves are green and the birds sing. In the "Miscellanies" there is much that is mean, much that is forced, but there is also much that is very good— as the fine monody on William Hervey and the elegy on Crashaw. The former will bear comparison with Matthew Arnold's "Thyrsis;" the latter contains some weighty lines, familiar to every lover of English Poetry. As, for instance, the- couplet : — " His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might Be wrong ; his life, I'm sure, was in the right." OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 103 And the exquisite compliment " Poet and Saint ! to thee alone are given The two most sacred names of earth and heaven, The hard and rarest union which can be Next that of godhead with humanity." Of the Love Poems we may say with Johnson that they are '' such as might have been written for penance by a hermit, or for hire by a philosophical rhymer who had only heard of another sex." He did not ''look into his own heart and write" (as Sidney bids the poet do), but composed his amatory lyrics as exercises in verse — as part of the obligation which rested on every man who sought admission to the poetic brotherhood. "Poets," he says, " are scarce thought Freemen of the Company without paying some duties and obliging themselves to be true to Love." One can easily understand what will be the result when a man writes love poems in this spirit ! They abound with frigid and unpleasant conceits ; far-fetched images ; the misapplied ingenuities of a vexatious pedantry. What they do 7iot contain is a spark of true passion-a flash of real and genuine feeling. It is in the " Pindarique Odes " I think that Cowley is seen at his best ; for by common consent " The Davideis " has long ago been given over to oblivion; and in the " Ode to Mrs. Hobbs '' and the " Ode on the Eoyal Society" he writes with an elevation, a fervour, and even a simplicity which constrain us to cry — si sic omnia ! In some of his less ambitious efforts he is also seen to great advantage, and they help us to understand the influence he exercised over his contemporaries. Cowley, in fact, is just one of those poets who shine most in our Anthologies, where their gold is presented 1 104 THE MERRY MONARCH; without their dross. In his wide poetical garden weeds are profusely mingled with flowers ; bnt of these flowers there are enough to make up a posy which, for bloom and colour, shall please the most fastidious. In our Antholo- gies we can forget the metaphysics, the artificialities, the <' conceits," and the 'Mnixed wit^' which Johnson and Addison have so severely and justly condemned; those grave pervading errors which have heaped the dust of forgetfulness on the poetry of a- man who possessed not a few of the essential qualities of a true poet. Cowley was unfortunate in his age ; he came too late, and too soon. The prodigal strength and exuberant vigour of the Elizabethans were almost exhausted, and as yet the fine taste and critical judgment of Dryden and Pope had not begun to assert their influence. How well he could write when he threw off his self-imposed tetters may be seen in those verses on Solitude which we extract from his admirable "Discourses by way of Essays," in which ripe thought and calm, clear judgment are expressed in a manly and dignified prose :— " Hail ,old patrician trees, so great and good ! Hail, ye plebeian underwood ! Where the poetic birds rejoice, And for their quiet nests and plenteous food, Pay with their grateful voice. Hail, the poor muse's richest manor seat I Ye country houses and retreat, Which all ihe happy gods so love, That for you oft they quit their bright and great Metropolis above. Here Nature does a house for me erect, Nature the wisest arcliitect, Who those fond artists does despise That can the fair and living trees neglect, Yet the dead timber prize. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 105 Here let me careless and unthoughtful lying, Hear the soft winds above me flying, With all their wanton boughs dispute, And the more tuneful birds to both replying, Nor be myself too mute. . . . Ah, wretched, and too solitary he Who loves not his own company ! He'll feel the weight of 't many a day Unless he call in sin or vanity To help to bear 't away. O solitude, first state of human-kind ! Which blest remained till man did find Even his own helper's company. As soon as two (alas!) together joined, The serpent made up three. . . Thou the faint beams of reason's scattered light, Dost like a burning-glass unite, Dost multiply the feeble heat, And fortify the strength, till thou dost bright And noble fires beget. Whilst this hard truth I teach, methinks I see The monster London laugh at me, I should at thee too, foolish city. If it were fit to laugh at misery, But thy estate I pity. Let but thy wicked men from out thee go, And all the fools that crowd thee so, Even thou who dost thy millions boast, A village less than Islington will grow, A solitude almost.'* One of the fairest spots in Kent is that Penshurst which the poets have endowed with a lasting fame; and few of the old Kentish manor-houses are better worth a visit than Penshurst Place, the Home of the Sidneys. If the reader should obtain admission to it^ he will, of course, direct his particular attention to the Gallery, which contains some good specimens of the great masters, and a few portraits of historical interest. Among the latter he will observe two of Lady Dorothea Sidney, 106 THE MERRY MONARCH; daughter of the Earl of Leicester. One, by Vandyke, re- presents her in her lovely youth, attired as a shepherdess, with lonj:: golden curls crowning the virgin beauty of her brow. The other, by Hoskins, shows her in her married womanhood, when she seems to have lost none of her per- sonal attractions. This noble lady, in 1639, married the Earl of Sunderland ; bat in Encrlish literature she is known by the name of Saccharissa (" the sweetest '') , given to her in his polished verses by her poet-lover, Edmund Waller. An avenue of beeches at Penshurst is still called " Sac- charissa's Walk.^' Edmund Waller occupies a niche among our English poets, not so much on account of his lyrical praises of this old-world beauty, as on account of his share in the development of our versification. Dryden, in the dedica- tion to his drama of " The Eival Ladies,^' speaking of rhyme, observes that " the excellence and dignity of it were never fully known till Mr. Waller taught it; he first made writing easily an art : first showed us to con- clude the sense most commonly in distichs, which in the verse of those before him runs on for so many lines together that the reader is out of breath to overtake it." Elijah Fenton also speaks of him as the " Maker and model of melodious verse ; " and this exaggerated praise was repeated by Voltaire, who aflarmed that he had created the art of liquid numbers. The French wit might be forgiven for not knowing much of our earlier literature ; but Dryden and Fenton ought to have known— and, indeed, Dryden did Imow— that melodious verse and excellent rhyme had been written long before Waller wrote. The share of credit reaDy due to him is that he introduced the French f ashioa OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 107 of writing couplets ; those heroic distichs which Denhara and Dryden adopted, and Pope, Johnson, Goldsmith, and others, down to Byron, esteemed so highly. Waller's principal merit is the polish of his verses. They are sweet, accurate, and fluent; but never glow with passion or break into lyrical music. There is such an uniform elegance about them that they cloy and weary the reader, who longs with a singular impatience for some interruption to this elaborate monotony. Even in his love-songs there is not the slightest warmth— no evidence of manly feeling— no sign and token of the trustfulness and fervour and tenderness of love. Waller's suit was unsuccessful; but it does not seem that he felt very deeply the disappointment to his hopes. The truth is, that he thought a great deal more of himself than of the lady, and while he sang was chiefly anxious about the figure he should make in the eyes of posterity. Would Saccharissa do for him what Laura had done for Petrarch ? That was what he really cared about ; in his case the last thino- to be feared was a broken heart. Perhaps the Lady Dorothy saw this as clearly as we see it; and it may account for her dismissal of the sweet singer and insincere lover. Waller's poetical work is easily summed up: besides his love-songs, he wrote a long epical poem on the Summer's Islands ; ^ a vigorous '' Panegyric upon Oliver Cromwell ; " some feeble stanzas on the " Death of the late usurper, O.C. ; " and, towards the close of his career, six dreary cantos "Of Divine Life." He is now best remembered by his graceful lyric, " Go, lovely Eose ; " * Evidently in Byron's mind when he wrote *' The Island." 108 THE MERRY MONARCH; liis pathetic couplets on " Old Age and Death ; " and his pretty conceit about the Girdle : — " A narrow compass, and yet there Dwelt all that's good, and all that's fair j Give me but what this ribbon bound, Take all the rest the sun goes round." It is a characteristic of his good and passionless verse that it was always the same, in old age as in early man- hood ; drawing ingenious moralities from a fading rose, or celebrating " His Majesty's Escape at St. Andrew's ; " never rising to any heights of eloquence or power, and never sinking below a certain level of graceful execution. Edmund Waller was born at Coleshill, in Warwickshire, on the third of March, 1605— the year in which Sir William Davenant was born. His father died in his infancy, and left him an income of £3,500 a year, equal . to about £10,000 or £11,000 at the present value of money. His mother was John Hampden's sister — a relationship of which any Englishman might be proud. He was edu- cated at Eton and Cambridge, and at the age of seventeen the precocious young man entered Parliament as member for Agmondesham. He was scarcely twenty-five when he married a city heiress, who, dying within a twelvemonth, left him richer than before; and the wealthy young gallant, already of some repute as a poet, began his suit to Lady Dorothy Sidney. He pelted her with love- verses for some years, but she proved obdurate, and, in 1639, bestowed her hand on the Earl of Sunderland. It is said that, meeting her in later life, when Time had dealt hardly with her, he replied to her inquiry when he would again write such verses upon her, " When you are as young, madam, and as handsome as then you were." But no gentleman would have made such a reply, and, OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 109 with all his faults. Waller was a gentleman. Eeturned to Parliament in 1640, he took at first the popular side, owing, probably, to the influence of his uncle Hampden' and was foremost in the opposition to the ship-money tax'; but he veered round to the Royalists as events hurried on the Civil War. For his share in a plot to surprise the London train bands and let in the royal troops, in 1648, he narrowly escaped the scaffold ; but his abject entreaties saved his life, and he was let off with a fine of £10,000 and a year's imprisonment. * On his release, he croised over to France, and lived at Eouen with a good deal of splendour. After some years he returned to England, and made his peace with Cromwell, by whose majestic character he , seems to have been strongly impressed. His '' Panegyric on Oliver Cromwell '^ contains some of his best writing. With easy morality he prepared a congratulatory address to Charles II., which was so inferior in poetical merit that the cUhonnair monarch rallied him on the disparity. " Poets, sir," answered Waller, with felicitous imperti- nence, " succeed better in fiction than in truth.'^ He sat in several Parliaments after the Restoration, and Bishop Burnet tells us that he was the delight of the House of Commons. For his loyal subservience he was rewarded with the Provostship of Eton. At the accession of James XL, he was elected representative for a Cornish borough; and his keen political sagacity soon predicted the issue to which the new King's arbitrary measures would brin UNDER CHARLES II. Ill Let us get rid of this nauseous remembrance by repeat- ing the one perfect— or almost perfect — lyric which will keep Waller's name alive in future ages : — " Go, lovely Eose, Tell her that wastes her time and me. That now she knows When I resemble her to thee How sweet and fair she seems to be. Tell her that's young, And shuns to have her graces spied, That hadst thou sprung In deserts where no men abide, Thou must have uncommended died. Small is the worth Of beauty from the light retired ; Bid her come forth, Suffer herself to be desired. And not blush so to be admired. Then die, that she The common fate of all things rare May read in thee, How small a part of time they share Who are so wondrous sweet and fair." In none other of his poems has Waller touched such a chord of truth and virtue. In none other are his cadences so new and fresh, and yet so sweet — sweet with almost a Shakespearian sweetness. The song is one of those which set themselves naturally, as it were, to music. You set an air to the words perforce as you repeat them. One can forgive Waller a good deal for this lustrous and ex- quisitely wrought gem. In all Sir William Davenant's ponderous folio collec- tion of masques, tragedies, operas, heroic poems, and what not, I can find nothing to equal Waller^s claim to immortality. The dust of oblivion rests upon them. The life-blood of genius was wanting, and so they decayed rapidly, and the world put them out of sight, as dead 112 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 113 things that were not worthy even of decent interment. Yet his epic poem of "Gondibert'' (published in 1651) had its admirers in its da} — a very short one— and Waller and Cowley would predict for it an enduring renown. And that its author had a large command of sonorous rhe- torical verse and no small amount of technical skill, we are constrained to admit. He was a man of ingenuity, scholarship, and patience ; but he was no poet. The dry bones were there ; but he could not put into them the breath of life. "Gondibert" is an epic of chivalry, in which the story carries an inner significance, being designed to recom- mend and illustrate the study of Nature, and to deduce therefrom certain philosophical conclusions. It is written in two-syllabled lines, and in quatrains; a metrical form^ afterwards adopted by Dryden in his '' Annus Mirabilis." Davenant, in his preface, explains his use of it on the ground 'Hhat it would be more pleasant to the reader, in a work of length, to give this respite or pause between every stanza (having endeavoured that each should contain a period) than to run him out of breath with continued couplets. Nor doth alternate rhyme by any lowliness of cadence make the sound less heroick, but rather adapt it to a plain and stately composing of musick ; and the the brevity of the stanza renders it less subtle to the composer and more easy to the singer, which in stilo recitativo, where ihe story is long, is chiefly re- quisite." And he goes on to express the astounding hope that the cantos of his poem— of this dreary, monotonous, semi-philosophical essay in rhyme, which has neither dramatic incident nor lyrical break— would be sung at * Davenant borrowed it from Sir John Davies's " Nosce teipsum." i village feasts ! Heaven help the villagers who had the misfortune to join the audience ! They could escape being reduced to utter imbecility only by falling into a heavy sleep. The argument, briefly told, is this : — Aribert the Lombard is prince of Yerona. His beautiful daughter, Rhodalind, who is his heiress, is sought in marriage by two renowned warriors. Prince Oswald, who is a man of great worldly ambition, and Duke Gondibert, whose aims and aspirations are loftier. While engaged in the chase, Gondibert falls into an ambush laid by Oswald ; in the duel which ensues, he is wounded, but Oswald is slain. The wounded Gondibert is carried to the house of the philosopher Astragon, which is in itself an allegory, with its garden labelled '' Nature's Nursery," and its " Nature's Ofiice, and its Librarj^," " The Monu- ment of Vanished Minds," and its threefold Temple, dedicated to " Days of Praise, of Prayer, and Penitence." Here he is tenderly nursed by Astragon's daughter, Birtha, who seems intended as a type of Nature, and soon learns to love her. He applies to Astragon to sanction his suit, and, in doing so, gives an account of his aim and purpose, which shows that Davenant was not incapable of serious and elevated thought. He desires to bring the world under the rule of a single monarchy, not to gratify a mean ambition, but in order to secure the happiness of the peoples, and inaugurate a reign of peace. This object accomplished he would then abandon himself to the study of Nature in company with Birtha : — ** Here all reward of conquest I would find ; Leave shining thrones for Birtha in a shade ; With Nature's quiet wonders fill my mind, And praise her most because she Birtha made." VOL. II, T 114 THE MERRY MONARCH; There are some fine lines scattered through this ponderous poem, and its general tone is grave and earnest; but apart from its want of interest and the monotony of its versification, the entire absence of human passion and feeHng will account for the neglect it has experienced. We give a specimen or two of the poet's happier flights: — "And now the weary world's great medicine, Sleep. This learned li08t di.^pensed to every guest, Which shuts those wounds where injured lovers weep. And flies oppressors to relieve the opprest. It loves the cottatre and from Court abstains, It stills till' MJiuian thouj^di tlu- sloiuibe high, Frees the grieved captive in his c chains, Stops Want's loud mouth, and blinds the treacherous spy." The description of the Virgin Birtha is not without a certain poetical grace : — " Iler beauty princes durst not hope to use. Unless, like poets, for their morning theme; And her mind's beauty tlioy would rather choose, Which did the light in lieauty's lanthorn seem. She neVr saw courts, yet courts could have undone With untaught looks and an unpractised heart ; Her arts, the most prepared could never shun. For Nature spread them in the scorn of Art. She never had in busv cities been, Ne'er warmed with hopes, nor e'er allayed with fears ; Not seeing punishment, could guess no sin ; And sin not seeing, ne'er had use of tears. But here her father's precepts gave her skill. Which with incessant business filled the hours ; In spring she gathered blossoms for the still ; In autumn, berries ; and in summer, flowers. And as kind Nature, with calm diligence. Her own free virtue silently employs, Whilst she, unheard, does ripening growth dispense So were her virtues busy without noise." OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 115 The following would make a fit inscription for a Library : — " Where, when they thought they saw in well-sought books, Th' assembled souls of all that Men held wise, It bred such awful reverence in their looks, As if they saw the buried writers rise." Sir William Davenant (or D'Avenant, as he preferred to write it) was the son of an Oxford vintner, and born in February 1605. An apocryphal story, told to Pope by Betterton the player, makes him the natural son of Shakespeare, who, it is said, on his journeys between London and Strat ford-on- Avon, was accustomed to lodge at the Crown Tavern, kept by the elder Davenant. The poet, we are told, was proud of the supposed relationship. He always professed a great admiration for Shakespeare, and one of the earliest essays of his boyish muse was an Ode to his memory. Eeceiving his education at the Oxford Grammar School, he was afterwards sent to Lin- coln College, but left without taking a degree. He be- came page to the Duchess of Richmond, and next was in the service of Sir Philip Sidney^s friend, Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke. After his fiither's death, in 1628, he took to writing for the stage. His fi.rst composition was a tragedy, *' Albovine, King of the Lomhards" (1629), and this was followed by two plays, " The Cruel Brother" and " The Just Italian," which are condemned by their very titles. In 1634 he wrote a masque, for Queen Henrietta Maria and her ladies, entitled '' The Temple of Love." The following year witnessed the production of a volume of poetry, con- taining his Shakespearian Ode and a poem in heroic couplets, entitled '* Madagascar," which celebrated the ex- ploits at sea of Prince Eupert. He was so much esteemed at Court for his poetical invention that, in 1637, on the Jig THE MEEBT MONAKCH ; aeath of Ben Jonson, he was appointed poet-laureate ; and, two years later, was made director of the King and Queen's company of actors at the Cockpit in Drury Lane. His royalist sympathies led to his apprehension and imprison- ment when the Civil War broke out ; but he effected his escape to France. When Queen Henrietta despatched to the Earl of New- castle a supply of military materiel, Davenant returned to England, was made the Earl's Lieuten ant-General of the Ordnance, and for his courage and conduct at the siege of Gloucester and in the field, received, in 1643, the honour of knighthood. The successes of the Puritans decided him to^seek refuge in France, and while living with Lord Jermyn, in the Louvre, began his " heroic poem " of " Gondibert," sending the manuscript to Hobbes (" of Malmesbury") as he wrote it. His restless spirit soon wearying of inaction, he resolved to found a settlement in the loyal colony of Virginia ; but the ship in which he had embarked was captured by one of the Parliament's men-of-war, and he was lodged in prison at Cowes Castle, in the Isle of Wight* There he continued his poetical magnum opus, of which Waller sang in complimentary phrase :— __ ^^^^ ^^ ^^.^ ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^ monsters swell, But hrnntin pas -ions such aa with ns dwell; Man is thy thcmi-. his virtue or his racro, ^^ Drawn to the life in each elaborate pase." . It • „vi„„f ;= na fnllnwi! — " H'" liii'l "■^ infienions • Aubrey's version of the .nc.dcnt >9 »«'"''""' . weavors, from France design to carry a certain "'unber of '^''^;;'^\^Z^^^r^ot ta^ur from the to Virginia, and by Mary, the qneen ^'^"'^"^''^'^'XTo.^; so when the poor Kin- c,f France to go mto the prmon and p.ck ana cnoo^^^ ^^^^^ wretches un„ .^^^''^^"he w„s on his viyage to Virijinia and not more, and shipped them , au. as "oj" belondnf; to the Parlia- jorgotten. He was a prieoner at both. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 117 He Ccarried it down to the middle of tlie third book, and as he intended to have five books answering to the five acts of a play, with cantos answering to scenes, he had consequently finished one-half . He therefore drew up a postscript, in which he says : " I am here arrived at the middle of the third book. But it is high time to strike sail and cast anchor, though I have run but half my course, when at the helm I here am threatened with Death, who, though he can visit us but once, seems troublesome, and even in the innocent may beget such a gravity as diverts the music of verse." Davenant was removed to the Tower, but through the influence, as some say, of two Aldermen of York, whom he had once obliged, or, as others say, of Milton, to whom he afterwards repaid the service in kind, he escaped the punishment of high treason, and though kept in prison for two years, was treated with great indulgence. On his release the indefatigable wit planned the estab- lishment of a theatre, and in spite of a world of difficulties, succeeded in opening Rutland House, Charterhouse Yard, on the 21st of May, 1656, for what he called " operas,'^ in which he combined (as the elder Disraeli puts it) " the music of Italy and the scenery of France." There he produced, with scenic effects, illustrative music, songs, and choruses, the first part of his '' Siege of Ehodes." After the Restoration he obtained the management of the Duke of York's company of players (which included the famous Betterton), acting first at the theatre in Portugal Row, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and aferwards in Dorset Gardens. A clause in his patent sanctioned a great innovation :— " Whereas the women's parts in plays have hitherto been acted by men in the habits of women. 118 THE MEKEY MONARCH ; at which some have taken offence, -xe do permit and give leave for the time to come that all women's parts be acted by women on the stage." For his new company Davenant remodelled his " Siege of Ehodes," and also produced a second part, in which, instead of blank verse for the dialogue, he adopted the French use of rhymed couplets. " 111 tlie ' Siege of Ehodes; " says Morley, " Davenant held by the extension of that theory of Ilohbes's to con- tending nations as well as to contending men of the same country, which he had made the ground of Gondibut's ambition to subdue the world. His life was too much given to low pleasures, and he was called upon to enter- tain the frivolous. If Davenant could have felt with Milton that he who would excel in poetry shoukl be himself a poem, his genius had wings to bear him higher than he ever reached. Among the musical love-passions of ' The Siege of Rhodes ' he was still aiming at some embodiment of his thought that the nations of Christen- dom failed in their work for want of unity. They let the Turks occupy Rhodes because they could not join for succour. In his dedication of the published play to the Earl of Clarendon, Davenant (referring with humour to ^the great images represented in tragedy by Monsieur Corneille ') says : ' In this poem I have revived the remem- brance of that desolation which was permitted by Christian princes, when they favoured the ambition of such as defended the diversity of religions (begot by the factions of learning) in Germany ; whilst those who would never admit learning into their empire Gest it should meddle with religion, and intangle it with controversy) did make OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 119 Ehodes defenceless ; which was the only fortified academy in Christendom where divinity and arms were equally professed.' " Davenant's latest literary efforts were in an unfortunate direction— the adaptation of Shakespeare to the taste of the Court of Charles II. In these efforts he displayed not only a corrupt task, but a singular want of the dramatic instinct. He died at the age of 63, on the 7th of April, 1668. In another chapter we have had something to say of the cause of Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset. Among the poets he claims notice as one of the earliest of our writers of society verse; and probably no English Anthologies will ever fail to include those bright, brisk stanzas, beginning :— " To all you Ladiea now at land We men at sea indite ; But first would have you understand How hard it is to write : The Muses now, and Neptune, too, We must implore to write to you." The fame they enjoyed well deserved their absolute and genuine excellence ; but probably owes something to the alleged romantic circumstances of their composition. They are entitled a " Song written at Sea, in the First Dutch War, 1665, the Night before an Engagement,'^ the engagement being supposed to be the bloody battle ofB the coast of Suffolk, fought, on the 3rd June, between the English fleet, under the Duke of York, and the Dutch tinder Opdam. But from the diary of Pepys it is evident that they were written six months before this great sea fight, and their connection with it was an invention of Itll 120 THE MEERY MONARCH ; the poet Prior. As a matter of fact, the fifth stanza dis- poses of the " night before the battle " theory :— •* Should foggy Opdam chance to know Our sad and dismal story, The Dutch would scorn so weak a foe, And quit their fort at Goree, For what resistance can they find From men whoVe left their hearts behind ? " The Earl's literary performance was not equal to his literary promise. He had a fine taste, much skill in com- position, and abundant leisure ; but he accomplished little. A few satires, more remarkable for violence than vigour, and a few graceful songs, are all that bear his name. When Prior asserts that, " there is a lustre in his verses like that of the sun in Claude Lorraine's landscapes," his language is that of a friend, not of a critic. All that can truly be said of them is that neither in polish nor point are they deficient. A characteristic specimen of Lord Dorset's verse, and of the kind of verse that pleased his contemporaries, is found in the following song :— " Dorinda's sparkling wit and eyes United cast too fierce a light, Which blazes high, but quickly dies, Pains not the heart, bu Jiurts the sight. Love is a calmer, gentler joy, Smooth are his looks, and soft his pace ; Her Cupid is a blackguard boy, That runs his liuk full in your face." Lord Dorset was a generous patron of literature, and literary men, who, by the way, have never fared so well ia Endand as durincr the latter half of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries. He assisted almost all the poets of his time, from Waller to Pope, and counted among his intimates and friends " glorious John " and " Matt Prior." His clear judgment recognised the OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 121 trenchant wit and profuse power of Butler's " Hudibras," which he helped to make popular at Court. He loved to gather round him a brilliant circle of men of letters at Knowle, his seat near Sevenoaks, where Shadwell wrote his best comedy. A pleasant story is told of one of their symposia, whereat it had been agreed that each person present should write an impromptu, and that Dryden should decide which was the best. While the others were laboriously cudgelling their brains, Dorset penned only a line or two, and threw his paper towards the judge, who, on reading it, easily obtained the assent of the company to his decision in its favour. For it ran thus :— " I pro- mise to pay Mr. John Dryden, or order, £500 on demand. Dorset." This was a golden impromptu, about the merits of which there could be no mistake. Pope speaks of this accomplished nobleman as ''the grace of courts, the muses' pride ; " ^ and Horace Walpole says, " he was the first gentleman in the voluptuous court of Charles II., and in the gloomy one of King William. He had as much wit as his first master, or his contem- poraries Buckingham and Rochester, without the King's want of feeling, the duke's want of principle, or the earl's want of thought." When Dorset became William III.'s Lord Chamberlain in 1689, one of the first acts which official duty imposed upon him was peculiarly painful to a man of his generous sympathies, a man so loyal to his humblest friends. Dryden could no longer remain poet-laureate. He was not only a Papist, but an apostate, and the country would not have him among the subjects of their Majesties. * " Blest courtier, who could Kin^? and country please, Yet sacred keep his friendship and his ease." i I ' m* 1 .ii| 122 THE MEKEY MONARCH; " He had a^i^ravated tlie guilt of Ms apostasy by calum- niating and ridiculing the Church \vhich he had deserted. He had, it was flicetiously said, treated her as the Pagan persecutors of old treated her children. He had dressed her up in the skin of a wild beast ; and then baited her for the public anmsement." Accordingly, he was deprived of his place ; but the bounty of Dorset bestowed on him a pension equal in amount to the salary which he had lost.^ It must be owned that the aristocracy of seventeenth century England was, whatever its faults, an aristocracy of culture ; its members loved literature with a generous affection, clierished men of letters with a fervour which had no humiliation in it, and themselves wooed the Muse with ardour and not wholly without success.f Among these noble poets I own to a particular respect for Went- worth Dillon, Earl of Eoscommon, upon whom Pope has bestowed no common eulogium : — "111 all Charles's (lays Koscommon only boasts unspotted lays." His judgment was sound and clear, his taste accurate, and he wrote with ease and smoothness, if not w^ith any degree of fervour or with any of the passion of genius. The nephew and godson of the great Earl of Straftbrd, he * An ill-natnred allusion to Dryden's reception of this beneficence occurs in Blackmore's ponderous " Prince Arthur " :— "Sakil's high roof, the Muses' palace, rung With endless airs, and endless songs he sung. To bless good Sakil Laurus would be first; But Sakii's prince and Sakil's God he curst. Sakil without distinction thifw liis bread, Disi>ise(l the flatterer, but the poet fed. . " Sakil "of course is Sackville; and " Laurus '' .^^T^en .-either in al^- Bion to the lost Laureateship, or as a translation of his celebrated nickname JBayes. + So Lord Mul grave wrote : , . ^^i "Withouthis song no fop is to be foond/'-but all the emgers were not fops. \ OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 123 was born in 1633. At the age of ten, while receiving his education at the Protestant College at Caen, he succeeded to his father's title. He remained abroad and travelled in Italy till the Restoration, when he was made captain of the company of Gentlemen Pensioners, and afterwards Master of the Horse to the Duchess of York. The evil influence of the Court led him to a temporary indulgence at the gaming-table; but his sound sense prevailed. He married, and devoted his leisure to literary pursuits. On the Continent he had acquired a taste for French poems ; * and he studied with much devotion Boileau's '' L'Art Poetique," in which the canons of a frigid criticism are applied to the poet's inspired work. In conjunction with Dryden, he meditated a scheme for establishing in England an Academy like that which in France has exercised a considerable influence over the world of letters. In 1681 he published an " Essay on Translated Yerse," which may be held to entitle him to the name of ''the English Boileau;" and in 1684 he put his principles into practice in a translation of Horace's " Art of Poetry." He trans- lated also a part of Guarini^s " Pastor Fido," Yirgil's Sixth Eclogue, one or two Odes of Horace, and the old Latin hymn, " Dies Iraj." The national unrest due to the arbitrary measures of James II. inspired him with apprehensions of civil war, and he prepared to retire to Eome saying it was best to sit near the chimney when the chamber smoked. But an attack of gout prevented his departure, and he died in London on the 17th of January, 1685, while still in the prime of manhood. "At * Yet was he not at all narrow in his poetical sympathies ; he was one of the first Eni^lish critics to do justice to the sublimity of Milton. We may infer that though he wished to introduce Academic exactness, it was not at the expense of any of the essential characteristics of the English genius. j^24 THE MERRY MONARCH ; the moment in which he expired," says Johnson, « he uttered with an energy of voice that expressed the most fervent devotion, two lines of his own version of ' Dies ' 'My God, my Father, and my Friend, Do not forsake me in my end ! '" That lie could write with force and terseness the fol- lowing extract will show : — " Oq sure foundations let your fabric rise, And with attractive majesty surprise ; Not by affected, meretricious arts, But strict harmonious symmetry of parts, While through the whole inseusibly must pass, With vital heat to animate the mass ; A pure, an active, an auspicious dame, And bright as heaven, from where the blessmg came ; But few, few spirits, pre-ordained by fate, The race of gods, have reached tliat envied height ; No rebel Titan's sacrilegious crime, By heaping hills on hills, can thither climb. The grizzly ferryman of hell denied ^neas entrance, till he knew his guide ; How justly then will impious mortals fall. When pride would soar to heaven without a call? Pride, of all others the most dangerous fault, ^^ Proceeds from want of sense or want of thought. ' It is something of surprise to find a writer in Charles IL's reign putting forward a plea on behalf of decency :- " Immodest words admit of no defence, For want of decency is want of sense. What moderate fops would rake the park or stews. Who among troopsof faultless nymphs may choose 7 Variety of such is to be found ; Take then a subject proper to expound. But moral, great, and worth a poet's voice ; For most of sense despise a trivial choice: And such applause it must expect to meet, As would some painter busy in a street To copy bulls and bears, and every sign ^^ That calls the staring sots to musty wine." Another poet-peer who claims our notice is John Wil- OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 125 mot, Earl of Eochester, who, in his saner moments and happier moods, could sing with a grace and sweetness not surpassed by any of his intimate contemporaries. Had those moods and moments been more frequent and of longer duration he must have attained a high place among English poets of the second rank. Oh, the pity of it that a man of such fine endowments should have yielded them up to the devils of lust and intemperance ! What can be more tender or delightful than the following '' swallow- flio-ht of song ? " It wants the peculiar quaintness of the Elizabethans, but has a charm of its own which it is im- possible to resist :— " My dear Mistress has a heart Soft as those kind looks she gave me ; When, with love's resistless art. And her eyes, she did enslave me ; But her constancy's so weak, She's so wild and apt to wander, That my jealous heart would break Should we live one day asunder. Melting joys about her move, Killing pleasures, wounding blisses, She can dress her eyes in love, And her lips can arm with kisses ; Angels listen when she speaks, She's my delight, all mankind's wonder, But my jealous heart would break Should we live one day asunder." This is one of those songs which sing themselves. In the following we note the unusual strain of pathos : — ** Absent from thee I languish still, Then ask me not, when I return ? The straying fool 'twill plainly kill To wish all day, all night to mourn. Dear, from thine arms thou let me fly, That my fantastic mind may prove The torments it deserves to try, That tear my fixed heart from my love 226 THE MEERY MONARCH ; When, wearied with a world of woe, To thy safe bosom I retire, Where love and peace and honour grow, May I contented there expire. Lest once more wandering from that heaven, I false on some base heart unblest, Faithless to thee, false, unforgiven. And lose my everlasting rest." « Witli Eochester," says Mr. Gosse. " the power of writing songs died in England until the age of Blake and Burns. Ho was the last of the Cavalier lyrists, and in some respects the best. In the qualities that a song de- mands, simplicity, brevity, pathos and tenderness, he arrives nearer to pure excellence than any one between Carew and Burns. His style is without adornment, and, save in this one matter of song-writing, he is weighed down by the dryness and inefficiency of his age. But by the side of Sedley or of Congreve he seems as fresh as by the side of Dryden he seems light and flowing, turning his trill of song brightly and sweetly, with the consum- mate artlessness of true art. Occasionally, he is_ sur- prisin-ly like Donne in the quaint force and ingenuity of his ima-cs. But the fact is that the muse of Rochester resembres nothing so much as a beautiful child which has wantonly rolled itself in the mud, and which has grown so dirty that the ordinary wayfarer would rather pass it hurriedly by, than do justice to its native charms." Eochester's satires are not deficient in vigour and keen- ness • but their filthiness renders them unquotable. I have' no fancy for wading through a sewer on the chance of picking up a piece of silver. His poem on « Nothing is in-enious; and some happy characterisation is to be found in the " Trial of the Poets for the Bays," a satirical poem after the manner of Suckling's " Session of the OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 127 Poets." The writers brought on the stage are — Drjden, Etherege, Wycherley, Shadwell, Settle, Otway, Mrs. Behn, Tom D'Urfey, and Betterton— to the hist of whom the bays are ironically given. Rochester also wrote, or, more correctly speaking, travestied from Fletcher, the tragedy of " Valentiuian." Yet another poet pen flourished in these days of aristo- cratic culture, John Sheffield, Earl of Malgrave, Marquis of Normanby, and Duke of Buckinghamshire (to name at once his three stages in the peerage), who outlived most of his contemporaries, and died at the age of seventy in the reign of George I. He was born in 1G49. At the age of seventeen, he volunteered to serve at sea against the Dutch. "He passed six weeks on board," says Macaulay, ^' diverting himself, as well as he could, in the society of some young libertines of rank, and then re- turned home to take the command of a troop of horse. After this he was never on the water till 1672, when he again joined the fleet, and was almost immediately appointed captain of a ship of 8i guns [the Royal Catherine], reputed the finest in the navy. He was then twenty-three years old, and had not, in the whole course of his life, been three months afloat. As soon as he came back from sea he was made Colonel of a regiment of foot. This," adds the historian, " is a specimen of the manner in which naval commands of the highest importance were then given; and a very favourable specimen; for Mul- grave, though he wanted experience, wanted neither parts nor courage." To gain some knowledge of war, he entered the French service, and made a campaign under Turenne^ in which his bravery was conspicuous. He afterwards commanded 128 THE MEERY MONARCH; the forces defending Tangier against the Moors, and during the expedition (1680) wrote his poem of "The Vision/' characterised by Johnson as a licentious poem,, with little power of invention or propriety of sentiment. He became a member of the Privy Council of James II., who appointed him governor of Hull and Lord Chamber- lain ; and he proved his loyalty by giving the king much sound and sensible advice, which the king never followed. He acquiesced in the Revolution of 1 G88, though at first he refused office under the new Government. It is to his honour that he signed the protest of some of the peers against the Bill, in 1693, for instituting a censorship of the Press ; and in the same session he opposed, with all the force of his eloquence, the Bill for the regulation of Trials in cases of High Treason. Though created Marquis of Normanby, with a pension of £3,000 a year, he maintained his independence; and among the op- ponents of the harsh and ail)itrary measure known as Sir John Fenwick's Attainder Bill none was more persever- ingly active. On the accession of Queen Anne, whose lover he had at one time been, he was distinguished with special favour, made Lord of the Privy Seal, and created Duke of Buckinghamshire. He was president of council, and one of the Lords Justices in Great Britain ; but when George I. succeeded to the throne, he threw himself into active opposition to the Court. His death took place on the 24th of February, 1720. He was interred in West- minster Abbey, where his epitaph, written by himself, unblushingly proclaims that he lived and died a sceptic. His Tory politics will account for the strain of bitter- ness that runs through Macaulay's character of this able statesman : " Mulgrave wrote verses which scarcely ever OB, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 129 rose above absolute mediocrity ; but as he was a man of high note in the political and fashionable world, these verses found admirers. Time dissolved the charm, but, unfortunately for him, not until his lines had acquired a prescriptive right to a place in all collections of the works of English poets. To this day, accordingly, his insipid essays in rhyme and his paltry songs to Amoretta and Gloriana are reprinted in company with Comus and Alexander's Feast. The consequence is that our genera- tion knows Mulgrave chiefly as a poetaster, and despised him as such. In truth, however, he was, by the acknow- ledgment of those who neither loved nor esteemed him, a man distinguished by fine parts, and in parliamentary eloquence inferior to scarcely any orator of his time. His moral character was entitled to no respect. He was a Hbertine without that openness of heart and hand which sometimes makes libertinism amiable, and a haughty aristocrat without that elevation of sentiment which sometimes makes aristocratical haughtiness respectable. The satirists of the age nicknamed him Lord Allpride, and pronounced it strange that a man who had so exalted a sense of his dignity should be so hard and niggardly in aU pecuniary dealings." I venture to think more highly than does the brilliant historian of the Duke's literary qualifications. He writes with vigour and perspicuity, and his canons of criticism are just and sensible. His two principal works are-an *^ Essay on Satire," pubHshed in 1675, and his ''Essay on Poetry,^^— the latter a kind of Ars Poetica, published anonymously in 1682, and enlarged and revised, with some touches by Pope, in 1691. It is written in the heroic couplet, and was warmly commended by Pope and VOL. II. I J" 130 THE MERRY MONARCH; Eoscommon and Drjden. Not a few of its lines have become familiar quotations, as, for example : — "Fancy is but the feather of the pen ; Keason is that substantial, useful part Which gains the head ; while t'other wins the heart.'* '* Of all those arts in which the wise excel. Nature's chief master-piece is writing well.** " True wit is everlasting like the sun, Which, though sometimes belund a cloud retired, Breaks out again, and is by all admired." " Read Homer once, and you can read no more, For all books else appear so mean, so poor, Verse will seem prose ; but still persist to read, And Homer will be all the books you need." Like Rochester, Mulgrave indulged in a squib against contemporary poets and poetasters. In 1719, on the appointment of Eusden to the post of poet laureate, he published the satire of " The Election of a Laureate," in which he introduced Blackmore, Congreve, Lansdowne, Bishop Atterbury, Philips, Gay, Cibber, D'Urfey, Prior, and Pope. It concludes thus : — "At last in rushed Eusden, and cried, 'Who shall have it, But I, the true laureat, to whom the King gave it?' Apollo begged pardon, and granted his claim, But vowed, though, till then he'd ne'er heard of his name." Mulgrave had the good sense and the good taste to rank Shakespeare and John Fletcher before all other Eno-lish dramatists ; but in later life his good sense and good taste deserted him, partly through the influence of French criticism, and partly perhaps through the strength of his political prejudices, and he undertook a revision of Shakespeare's '' Julius Caesar." A believer in the gospel of the unities, he was shocked by the boldness with which Shakespeare treats time and place, and proceeded to re- construct Shakespeare's great historical drama on the OR^ ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 131 model of a French tragedy. The result was seen in two plays instead of one, " Julius Caesar '^ and " Marcus Brutus," each ending with a denunciation of the Roman hero's act of tyrannicide. The audacious adapter ventured even to meddle with Shakespeare's language, and trans- lated the fine, terse, and pregnant line, " The good is oft interred with their bones," into '^ The good is often buried in their graves " — an alteration which throws a startling light on the noble author's want of true poetical percep- tion. Among the crowd of aristocratic poets whom the Restoration warmed into activity one of the most refined and graceful was Sir Charles Sedley, the friend of Dorset and Roscommon and Dryden, and the ^^ Lisideius " of Dryden's " Essay of Dramatic Poesie." He was born at Aylesford, in Kent, in 1G39. His mother was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Henry Saville, the learned provost of Eton, whose talents and love of scholarship she seems to have inherited.^ At the age of seventeen, young Sedley, already distinguished by his intellectual gifts, entered Wadham College, Oxford, but left the University without taking a degree, and went abroad. He returned to England at the Restoration, and about 1667 found his way to Court, where the grace of his address and the charm of his conversation soon made him " the observed of all observers." With the King he was a great favourite, and among the beauties and wits that assembled in the gay circle at Whitehall no one was * Compare Waller's epitaph : — " Here lies the learned Saville's heir, So early wise, and lasting fair, That none, except her years they told, Thought her a child, or thought her old." 132 THE MEEET MONAECH ; more popular. Sliadwell says of him that he would speak more wit at a supper than all his adversaries could have written in a year. Pepys tells us that to sit near him at the theatre, and hear his comments on a new play, was an intellectual treat. It was gracefully said by the King that " Nature had given him a patent to be Apollo's Viceroy." His love-verses are bright, vivacious, and graceful. They are free from the indelicate expressions which offend us as those of Suckling or Kochester, but it cannot be pretended that they are purer in sentiment. His muse is attired in the garb of a courtezan, but the courtezan is a Lais or a Phryne, and not a common street-walker. Whether she is less dangerous may weU be doubted. The sober Evelyn couples him with Etherege :— " But gentle Etherege and Sedley's Muse Warm the coy maid, and melting love infuse." And to this evil power of stimulating the imagination, while assuming a mask of decency, Rochester alludes :- "For songs and verses, mannerly obscene, That can stir nature up by springs unseen ; And, without forcing blushes, warm the queen— Sedley has that prevailing, gentle art. That can, with a resistless charm, impart The loosest wishes to the chastest heart ; Eaise such a conflict, kindle such a fire Between declining virtue and desire ; Till the poor vanquished maid dissolves away In dreams all night, and sighs and tears all day." This fascinating sweetness is designated by Bucking- ham " Sedley's witchcraft," though it would seem to have been more apparent to his contemporaries than it is to the critics of a soberer day. That he could, at will, write with elegance and yet without offending the most OE, ENGLAND TNDEE CHARLES II. 133 fastidious taste, I readily admit. Take tlie following song as a specimen : — *♦ Ah, Cliloris, that I now could sit As unconcerned as when Your infant beauty could beget No pleasure, nor no pain ! "When I the dawn used to admire And praised the coming day; I little thought the growing fire Must take my rest away. Your charms in harmless childhood lay, Like metals in the mine, Age from no face took more away Than youth concealed in thine. But as your charms insensibly To their perfection prest, Fond love as unperceived did fly, And in my bosom rest, My passion with your beauty grew, And Cupid at my heart, Still as hia mother favoured you, Threw a new flaming dart. Each gloried in their wanton part: To make a lover, he Employed the utmost of his art. To make a beauty she. Though now I slowly bend to love, Uncertain of my fate, If your fair self my chains approve, I shall my freedom hate. Lovers, like dying men, may well At first disordered be, Since none alive can truly tell What future they must see." The opening lines of another of his songs have received the merit-mark of imiversal approbation, and to this day are quoted : — '* Love still has something of the sea From whence his mother rose." Sir Charles Sedley's plays are now known only to the 134 THE MEREY MONAECH ; scliolar, and thougli they contain some witty passages and a felicitous sketch or two of character-painting, they are not worthy of deliverance from the oblivion into which they have fallen. Their construction is irregular, and they are deficient in dramatic interest. The tragedy of "Antony and Cleopatra" was produced at the Duke's Theatre in 1667; his comedy (the best of his dramatic works) of '' The Mulberry Garden," at Drury Lane, in 1668; and "Bellamira; or, The Mistress," at the King's House in 1687. We are told that " while this play was acting, the roof of the play-house fell down ; but very few were hurt, except the author, w^hose merry friend, Sir Fleetwood Shepherd, told him that there was so much fire in the play, that it blew up the poet, house, and all. Sir Charles answered, *No; the play was so heavy it brought down the house, and buried the poet in his own rubbish.' " Sedley also wrote the tragedy of " Beauty the Conqueror," and two other dramas have, but on no good grounds, been ascribed to him. This briUiant wit and easy courtier was guilty on one occasion of a profligacy so vile that one is inclined to attribu te it to mental aberration. He presented him- self, after " a wild revel," perfectly naked in the balcony of the Cock Tavern, in Bow Street, and harangued the crowd of porters and orange -girls in such profane and indecent language that they resented it with volleys of stones, and compelled him and his companions (among whom, unhappily, was Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset) to retire. For this shameful exploit they were brought before the Court of Common Pleas, and heavily fined, Sir Charles Sedley's penalty being not less than £500. The Lord Chief Justice, Sir Robert Hyde, sar- OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHAELES II. 135 castically inquired of the dissolute wit if he had ever read ^'The Complete Gentleman?"* ''1 believe," he replied, unabashed, '' I have read more books than your lordship." It is said that Sir Charles and his companions eno-ao-ed Killii^rew and another courtier to intercede with the King for a reduction of the penalty ; but, contrary to the proverb, honour does not always prevail among such men, they obtained a grant of the money for them- selves, and extorted it to the last farthing. Another of Sedley's indefensible pranks is related by Oldys :«_^f There was a great resemblance," he says, " in the shape and features, between him and Kynaston the actor, who once got some laced clothes made exactly after a suit Sir Charles wore, who therefore got him well caned. Sir Charles's emissary pretending to take Kynaston for Sir Charles, quarrelled with him in St. James's Park, and beat him as Sir Charles. When some of his friends, in pity to the man, reproved Sir Charles for it, he told them that they misplaced their pity, and that it was himself they should bestow it on ; that Kynaston's bones would not suffer as much as his reputation ; for all the town believed it was him that was thrashed, and suffered such a public disgrace." It seems to be generally agreed that, after his mad orgie at the Cock Tavern, Sedley adopted a more serious mode of life, and began to take an active interest in public affairs. As member for Eomney, in Kent, he took a frequent part in the debates in the House of Commons, and by his eloquence and vivacity obtained a considerable influence. During the reign of James II. he distinguished * Henry Peacham's book, published in 1622, of which a new edition had appeared in 16G1. 136 THE MEREY MONARCH himself hj his vigorous opposition to the measures of the Court. It is true that in this opposition he was influenced, perhaps, as much bj personal feelings as by regard for the public interest. Profligate as he was, or had been, he could not as a father witness without shame and indigna- tion the illicit connection which James, when Duke of York, had formed with his daughter, the notorious Catherine Sedlej.* And when he was asked the reason of his bitter antipathy to a king who had loaded him with favours, he replied, " I hate ingratitude ; and, there- fore, as the king has made my daughter a Countess, I will endeavour to make his daughter a Queen." On his accession to the throne, James was reluctantly induced, by the advice of his confessors and the remon- strances of his queen, t to dissolve the connection ; though he had just shown tbe strength of his afffection by creating » Catherine Sedley was distinjiniished by her wit and accomplishments, but possessed no personal clmrnis, excej)t two brilliant eyes. Her countenance was hajr^rard, and her form lean. Charles II., though he admired her in- tellectual gifts, laughed at lier want of comeliness, and declared that the priests must liave recommendiMl lur to liis brother by way of penance. She was too clever a woman not to know and own her ugliness, and affirmed that she could not understand the secret of James's passion for her. " It cannot be my beauty," she said, " for he must see that I have none : and it cannot be my wit, for he has not enough to know that I have any." Like many plain women, she wns fond of sumptuous dress, and Lord Dorset has somewhat coarsely satirised the weakness which led her to af^jiear in public places, in all the gorgeousness of Brussels lace, diamonds, and paint : — " Tell me, Dorinda, why so gay. Why such embroidery, fringe, and lace ? Can any dresses find a way To stop the approaches of decay, And mend a ruined face ? . . . . So have I seen in larder dark Of veal a lucid loin, Replete with many a brilliant spark, (As wise philosophers remark) At once both stink ami shine." t The intrigues of which she was the author are described at length by Macaulay. See also Evelyn's Diary, under date January 19. 1686 ; Bishop Barnet's History of His Own Time, i, 682 ; and Rousby's Memoirs. OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 137 )h her (1686) Baroness of Darlington and Countess of Dor- chester for life. She afterwards became the wife of Sir David Coljear, first Earl of Portmore. She died at Bath in 1717. In the Parliaments of King William and Queen Mary, Sir Charles was generally on the side of the Opposition ; and in the session of 1690 made one of his best speeches in condemnation of the large sums expended on salaries and pensions. Macaulay refers to it as proving, what his poems and plays might make us doubt, that his contempo- raries were not mistaken in considering him as a man of parts and vivacity. Gradually, as he advanced in years, he withdrew from the political arena ; and the public had almost forgotten him at the time of his death, which took place at Haverstock Hill^ on the 20th of August, 1701. A complete edition of his works, including love songs, translations from martial and other classic writers, prologues and epilogues, plays and speeches, was published in the following year by his friend and kinsman, Captain Ayloff, who observes that " he (Sir Charles) was a man of the first class of wit and gallantry ; his friendship was courted by everybody ; and nobody went out of his com- pany but pleased and improved; Time added but very little to Nature, and he was everything that an English gentleman could be.'^ That his powers were considerable no one can reasonably doubt. It is to be regretted that he did not make a worthier use of them. The last of the aristocratic poets whom we shall notice * Steele for awhile (1712) resided at this house. He writes to Pope : — " I am at a solitude, a house between Hampstead and London, wherein Sir Charles Sedley died. This circumstance set me a-thinking and ruminating upon the employments in which meu of wit exercise themselves." The house was pulled down in 1869, and its site is now occupied by Steele Terrace. 1 138 THE MERRY MONARCH; 9r is Sir John Denliam, whose " chief claim to immortality, according; to a recent critic, rests on the fine lines in his poem of " Cooper's Hill/' descriptive of the Thames :— •' O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme ; Thoiif^h deep yet clear, tliough gentle yet not dull, Strong without rage, witliout o'er flowing full.'* But these are not the only j^ood lines in a poem, which had at all events the merit of being the first of its kind (for Ben Jonson^s " Penshurst " cannot fairly be con- sidered of the same category), which Dry den, with exuberant praise, declares " for the majesty of its style is, and ever will be, the exact standard of good writing." The allusion to St. PauPs (not Wren's Cathedral, but its predecessor) is worth quotation : — " That sacred pile, so vast, so high, That whether 'tis a part of earth or sky Uncertain seems, and may 1 - thought a proud Aspiring mountain or descending cloud." The following couplet seems to have suggested a passage in Dr. Johnson's " London " : — "Under his proud surrey the city lies. And like a mist beneath a hill doth rise, Whose state and wealth, the business and the crowd. Seems at this distance but a darker cloud, And is to him who rightly things esteems Ko other in effect but what it seems. When, with like haste, though several ways, they run, Some to undo, and some to be undone ; While luxury and wealth, like war and peace. Are each the other's ruin and increase ; As rivers lost in seas some secret vain Thence reconveys, then to be lost again. happiness of sweet retired content ! To be at once secure and innocent I " And surely the impartial critic will own that in these OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 139 lines — on the reformation and the sharp contrast between Monasticism and Puritanism— strength and smoothness are not unhappily combined : — *' No crime so bold but would be understood A real, or at least a seeming good, Who fears not to do ill, yet fears the name, And, free from conscience, is a slave to fame. Thus he the Church at once protects and spoils : But princes' swords are sharper than their styles. And thus to th' ages past he makes amends. Their charity destroys, their faith defends. Then did religion in a lazy cell. In empty, airy contemplation dwell ; And like the block unmoved lay ; but ours. As much too active, like the stork devours. Is there no temperate region can be known Betwixt their frigid and our temperate zone ? Could we not wake from that lethargic dream, But to be restless in a worse extreme ? And for that lethargy was there no cure But to be cast into a calenture ? Can knowledge have no abound, but must advance So far, to make us wish for ignorance. And rather in the dark to grope our way Than, led by a false guide, to err by day ! " '^ Cooper's Hill " was written in 1640 and published in 1643.'^ It is a poem of nearly four hundred lines, written ♦ *' The epithet, majestie Denham, conferred by Pope, conveys rather too much ; but Cooper's Hill is no ordinary poem. It is nearly the first instance of vigorous and rhythmical couplets, for Denham is incomparably less feeble than Browne, and less prosaic than Beaumont. Close in thought, and nervous in language like Davies, he is less hard and less monotonous ; his cadences are animated and various, perhaps a little beyond the regularity that metre demands ; they have been the guide to the finer ear of Dryden. Those who cannot endure the philosophic poetry, must ever be dissatisfied with Cooper's Hill : no personification, no ardent words, few metaphors beyond the common use of speech, nothing that warms, or melts, or fascinates the heart. It is rare to find lines of eminent beauty in Denham ; and equally so to be struck by any one as feeble or low. His language is always well-chosen and perspicuous, free from those strange terms of ex- pression, frequent in our older poets, where the reader is apt to suspect some error of the press, so irreconcilable do they seem with grammar or meaning. The expletive do, which the best of his predecessors use freely, seldom occurs in Denham ; and he has in other respects brushed away the rust of languid and ineffective redundancies which have obstructed the popularity of men with more native genius than himself." — Hallam, *• Literature of Europe," iii., 254, 255. 140 THE MERRY MONARCH; in the heroic couplet, and embodies the reflections sug- gested to a thoughtful observer by the various scenes which are visible from the summit of its author's " Mount Parnassus."* These include a long reach of the winding Thames, the towers of Windsor Castle, St. Paul's Cathedral, and the field of Runnymede. The freshness of the subject,t and the fluent strength of the versifica- tion, secured for this poem an immediate popularity. Dryden pronounced it " the exact standard of good writing." " This poem," says Johnson, " had such reputation as to excite the common artifice by which envy degrades excellence. A report was spread that the performance was not his own, but that he had bought it of a vicar for forty pounds." Pope, in his poem of ^' Windsor Forest/' which " Cooper's Hill " suggested, affirms that — " On Cooper's Hill eternal wreaths shall grow While lasts the mountain, or while Thames shall flow;" while Somerville, in " The Chase," calls upon us to tread with respectful awe — « Windsor's green glades ; where Denham, tuneful bard, Charmed once the list'ning Dryads with his song. Sublimely sweet." By a natural law of reaction the excessive praise of one generation is succeeded by the extreme depreciation of another. Southey writes of Denham with great frigidity : * Cooper's Hill lies about half-a-mile to the north-west of Egham, where the poet's father had built for himself a house— (now the Vicarage)— *' in which his son Sir John (though he had better seats) took most delight. The spot from which the poet made his survey is traditionally said to be now comprised within the grounds of Kingswood Lodge ; a seat marks the t Johnson praises Denham as " the author of a species of composition that may be denominated local poetry, of which the fundamental subject la Bome particular landscape, to be poetically described, with the addition of such embellishments as may be supplied by historical retrospection or in- cidental meditation." OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 141 — " That Sir John Denham began a reformation in our verse, is one of the most groundless assertions that ever obtained belief in literature. More thought and more skill had been exercised before his time in the construc- tion of English metre than he ever bestowed on the sub- ject, and by men of far greater attainments and far higher powers. To improve, indeed, either upon the versification or the diction of our great writers, was impossible ; it was impossible to exceed them in the knowledge or in the practice of their art, but it was easy to avoid the more obvious faults of inferior authors : and in this way he suc- ceeded, just so far as not to be included in ' The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease ; ' nor consigned to oblivion with the 'persons of quality' who contributed their vapid effusions to the miscellanies of those days. His proper place is among those of his contemporaries and successors who called themselves wits, and have since been entitled wits by the courtesy of Eng- land.'^ I venture to claim for him a higher position. Surely some hearty praise may be given to a writer who virtually introduced into our poetical literature a new kind of composition, and one peculiarly adapted to the tastes and sympathies of Englishmen? Surely some hearty praise is justly due to a writer who had so strono^ a relish for the beauties of landscape, and was so keenly alive to the pastoral sentiment. And though he did not begin " a reformation in our verse,'' he certainly showed how the heroic couplet might be written with vigour while not losing in ease. Denham's other works include an '' Essay on Gaming ; " and a translation of the second book of " The ^neid." In 1641, his feeble tragedy of '' The Sophy " was produced 142 THE MEERY MONARCH; at a private house in Blackfriars with so mucli success that Waller said " he broke out like the Irish rebellion, some ten thousand strong, when nobody was aware, or in the least suspected it." The best thing in it is a Song to Morpheus, in the fifth Act, which is graceful and pleasing : — " MorpheuB, the humble god, that dwells In cottages and smoky cells, Hates gilded roofs and beds of down; And, though he fears no prince's frown, Flies from the circle of a crown. Come, I say, thou powerful god, And thy leaden charming rod. Dipt in the Lethean lake, O'er his wakeful temples shake, Lest he should sleep and never wake. Nature, alas ! why art thou so Obliged to thy n^ro-"*'-*- foe? Sleep, that is thy uc^l repast, Yet of Death it bears a taste. And both are the same thing at last." In a satirical poem, written at a much later date, in imitation of Suckling's « Session of the Poets," occurs a caustic allusion to Denliam's tragedy and poem : ** Then in came Denham, that limping old bard. Whose fame on The Sophy and Cooper's Hill stands ; And brought many stationers, who swore very hard, That nothing sold better, except 'twere his lands." 5> Denham also wrote " An Elegy on Abraham Cowley, which is full of grace, and contains a happy reference to the great Elizabethan poets and their immortal pre- decessors : — " Old Chaucer, like the morning star * To us discovers day from far. His light those mists and clouds dissolved Which our dark nation long involved. * Borrowed by Tennyson in his " Dream of Fair Women," where he speaks of Chaucer as " the morning star of song." OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 143 Next (like Aurora) Spenser rose. Whose purple blush the day foreshows; The other three with his own fires Phoebus, the poet's god, inspires: By Shakespeare's, Jonson's, Fletcher's lines Our stage's lustre Rome's outshines." Denham also wrote a translation of " Cato Major," and a metrical version of the Psalms. We turn from the poems to the poet. Sir John Denham was the son of Sir John Denham, Chief Baron of the Exchequer in Ireland, who married the daughter of the Irish baron of Mellofont, Sir Garret More. He was bom in Dublin in 1615. When he was two years old, his father was made Baron of the English Exchequer, and the family removed to England. In 1631, young Denham was entered a gentleman commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, where "he was looked upon," says Wood, "as a slow' dreaming young man, and more addicted to gaming than study; they (his companions) could never imagine he could ever enrich the world with the issue of his brain, as he afterwards did.'^ After taking his degree he entered Lincoln^s Inn, where the dice-box divided his attention with the desk. " He was much rooked by gamesters, and fell acquainted with that unsanctified crew to his ruin." Wood relates that at this time, his father, receivino- cer- tain intimation of the follies which enfeebled Denham's life, addressed to him a letter of strong but affectionate remonstrance ; and that the son, with unworthy duplicity, composed and printed an "Essay against Gaming," which, being forwarded to the Chief Baron, completely lulled his suspicions. The anecdote seems hardly credible ; an astute and veteran lawyer would hardly be deceived by so simple an artifice. Aubrey relates another story, which 144 THE MEERY MONARCH; seems to have greater pretensions to authenticity. Den- ham, he says, was generally temperate in drinking ; but "one time, when he was a student of Lincohi's Inn, having been away at the tavern with his comrades, late at night^'a frolic came into his head, to get a plasterer's brush and a pot of ink, and blot out all the signs between Temple Bar and Charing Cross, which made a strange confusion the next day, as it was in June time ; but it happened that they were discovered, and it cost him and them some moneys. This," adds Aubrey, " I had from E. Estcourt, Esquire, who carried the ink-pot." The death of his father soon afterwards placed him in enjoyment of a considerable fortune, which enabled him to make a conspicuous figure among the wits and gentlemen of the Court. The success of his tragedy of " The Sophy " increased his reputation ; upon which a seal was set by the publication of " Cooper's Hill." In the civil troubles which then convulsed the land, Denham espoused the loyal cause with grave enthusiasm, and was entrusted with several missions of deliency and importance. In 1648 (it is said) he conveyed the young Duke of York to France, when he shared the seclusion of the royal family. In 1650, the exiled king sent him on an embassy to the King of Poland ; and in 1652 appointed him Surveyor of His Majesty's Buildings— an office which, at that time, was equally without emoluments and without duties. Return- ino- to England at the Restoration, he received both honours and rewards, and made one of the brilliant circle which Charles II. loved to assemble round him. Un- fortunately he was weak enough to be beguiled by the charms of the fair Miss Brooke, whose beauty had attracted the attention of the Duke of York. As soon ^ f OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 145 as she had secured a position by becoming Lady Denham,**^ she scrupled not to encourage the suit of her royal lover, who, according to Pepys, followed her up and down the presence chamber "like a dog." Writing in 1667, he says: — "The Duke of York is wholly given up to his new mistress, my Lady Denham ; going at noon-day with all his gentlemen to visit her in Scotland Yard ; she de- claring she will not be his mistress, as Mrs. Price, to go up and down the Privy Stairs." His beautiful wife's infidelity seems to have afflicted Sir John Denham with mental disorder. " He became crazed for a time," says old Anthony Wood, "and so, consequently, contemptible among vain fops." Aubrey says : — " This madness first appeared when he went from London to see the famous free-stone quarries in Portland, in Dorset. When he came within a mile of it, he turned back to London again, and would not see it. He went to Hounslow, and demanded rents of lands he had sold many years before ; but it pleased God that he was cured of this distemper, and wrote excellent verses, particularly on the death of Abraham Cowley, afterwards." From a letter preserved among the correspondence of Sir William Temple, we gather that his insanity was of a very mild form (1667) : "Poor Sir John Denham is fallen to the ladies also. He is at many of the meetings, at dinners talks more than ever he did, and is extremely pleased with those that seem willing to hear him, and from that obligation exceedingly praises the Duchess of Monmouth and my Lady Cavendish : if he had not the name of being mad, I believe in most companies he would be thought * Miss Brooke was his second wife ; his first was a Miss Cotton, of Gloncestershire, by whom he had issue one son and two daughters. VOL. II. L ■ ■— p W l lr ' W • - r- — '^ ..p^m. mi . m v « . 1 2^g THE MERRY MONARCH; wittier than ever he was. He seems to have few ex- travagances besides that of telliny stones of Umself,M he is always inclined too." Heavens ! if a man is to be de- clared insane, becanse he tells stories of himself, our asylums wonld cease to have room for their inmates. At this date Denham was a widower, having lost his lovely wife on the 7th of January, 1667. The report spread abroad that she had been poisoned, and as he was supposed to have sacrificed her to his jealousy the populace of his neighbourhood threatened to tear him m pieces " as soon as he ventured abroad. The suspicion is improbable, however, and her death was more likely due to the ignorance of the physicians of the age. Sir John recovered his faculties towards the close of the year, wrote the Elegy on Cowley, and a few months afterwards closed his chequered career-dying at Whitehall, in Marc^- ^^^ " A resting-place was provided for him m Westminster Abbey, near the graves of the two poets whom he had warmly admired, Chaucer and Cowley. „ ^. , . „ In 1678, the year in which Andrew Marvell died-ten years after the death of Denham-the grave closed over L ashes of a thoughtful poet and a ripe scholar Thomas Stanlev He was bom at Cumberlow, in Herts, in Stanley, u ^^ ^1^^ 1625, and was the son oi ou ^ ^, , x author of several poems, who was knighted by Charles L THe younger Stanley had the advantage of being educated by Fairfax, the accomplished translator of Tasso, and attained a wide and profound knowledge of Latin and Lek, French and Italian. At Cambridge his reputat oa for scholarship stood very high, and he carried off the aegree of M.A. when only in his ^^^^f^^'^^'^^f^^ Afler a tour on the Continent he returned to Enghuid, OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 147 I and in the Middle Temple, London, settled down to the pursuit of his legal and literary studies, apparently undis- turbed by the din of civil war, or by the great political changes which were giving a new direction to English history. That they did not greatly affect the social fabric, however, is evident from the fact that, only a few weeks after the execution of Charles I., Stanley published a volume of poems, as one might do in the most ordinary times. In 1655 he issued the first part of his great ^' History of Philosophy, containing the Lives, Opinions, Actions, and Discoveries of the Philosophers of every Sect,^' which was completed in 1660. "It is, in a great measure, confined to biography, and comprehends no name later than Carucales. Most is derived from Diogenes Laertius ; but an analysis of the Platonic philosophy is given from Alcinous, and the author has compiled one of the Peripatetic system from Aristotle himself. The doctrine of the Stoics is also elaborately deduced from various sources. Stanley, on the whole, brought a good deal from an almost untrodden field ; but he is merely an historian, and never a critic of philosopy." ^ Latin trans- lations of it were published at Amsterdam, in ] 690, and at Leipzig, in 1711. Stanley raised still higher the fame of English scholar- ship by his celebrated edition of ^schylus, with Latin translations and copious notes in 1663. That he owed a great deal to Casa.ubon, Dorat, and Scaliger may be admitted, without making any substantial deduction from the credit due to him for patient and persevering erudition. His ^schylus must always remain " a great monument of critical learning." * Hallam, " Literature of Europe/' iv,, 63. < n» ii» ■ ■ n i m i i i'«« ^48 THE MERRY MONARCH ; Stanley died in London, April 12tli, 1678, at tlie com- paratively early age of 53. As a poet Stanley had nothing in common with his im- mediate contemporaries. He belonged to what Johnson has designated (not very happily) the Metaphysical School, the School of Crashaw and Donne, though his scholarly taste enabled him to avoid the extravagant con- ceits and far-fetched ingenuities on which his predecessors so often made shipwreck. An innate refinement led him also to avoid the indelicacy which disfigures so much of the poetry of the age. His translations are, perhaps, even better than his original poems; they are singularly graceful, while conveying, with happy fidelity, the spirit of the originals. But it is of his own work that we shall give a brief specimen. One could wish there had been more of it, for it is always finished in execution, and admirable in tone. " Celia, singing. Boses inbreathing forth their scent, Or stars their borrowed ornament, Nymphs in the watery sphere that move, Or angels in their orbs above, The winged chariot of the light, Or the slow silent wlieels of night. The shade which from the swifter sun Doth in a circular motion run, Or souls that their eternal rest do keep, Make far less [more ?] noise than Celia's breath in sleep. But if the Angel which inspires This subtle flame with active fires, Should mould this breath to words, and those Into a harmony dispose, The music of this heavenly sphere Would steal each soul out at the ear, And into plants and stones infuse A life that Cherubim would choose. And with new powers invest the laws of fate, Kill those that live, and dead things animate." OE, ENGLAND TJNDEE CHAELES II. 149 I We may add that in 1657 Stanley published the "Psalterium Carolinum; the Devotions of his Sacred Majestie in his Solitude and Sufferings, rendered into verse.'^ An elder brother of Thomas Killigrew — the wit and dramatist, and unofficial jester to Charles II. — Sir William Killigrew (born in 1605) dabbled freely in verse, some specimens of which are embedded in the dulness of his " Artless Midnight Thoughts of a Gentleman at Court, who for many years built of sand, which every blast of cross fortune has defaced; but now he has laid new foundations on the Eock of his Salvation" (1693). Un- fortunately the " Artless Thoughts " were built on sand. They are upwards of two hundred and thirty in number, but not one is worth preservation. Killigrew was a brave Cavalier and a loyal servant of the Crown ; he held the post of Yice-Chamberlain to the Queen for two-and- twenty years ; but he was neither poet, philosopher, nor dramatist. He wi'ote five plays — '' The Siege of Urbin,^' " Selindra," " Pandora,"^ and " Love and Friendship'' — published in 1666, in which there is none of the wit that, it is said, his conversation displayed — and '^ The Imperial Tragedy," published in 1669. Sir William lived to a ripe old age, dying in the early part of 1693, when he had just attained his eighty-ninth year. Sir William's niece, Anne Killigrew, daughter of his youngest brother. Dr. Henry Killigrew (author of " The Conspiracy,") maintained the reputation of the family for * This was cast, at first, in the form of a tragedy ; bnt as the anthorities •of the theatre did not want tragedies, its author obligingly converted it into a comedy. Sir Robert Stapylton says of Sir William's plays that they con- tained .... plots well laid. The language pure and every sentence weighed ! 150 THE MEERY MONARCH; literary gifts and accomplishments. Dryden has cele- brated her genius for painting and poetry in one of the finest of his odes ; and she deserves to be remembered with gratitude if only for having inspired this noble lyric effusion. Allowing for the genial extravagances of a poet's imagination, there must still have been rare merit in the young artist of whom Dryden could say :— " Art she had none, yet wanted none, For nature did that want supply. So rich in treasure of her own, She might our boasted stores defy : Such noble vigour did her verse adorn, That it seemed borrowed where 'twas only bom." Anthony Wood affirms that " she was a Grace for beauty, and a Muse for wit ; and gave the earliest dis- coveries of a great genius, which, being improved by a polite education, she became eminent in the arts of poetry and painting." These engaging and eminent accomplish- ments, says Betham, were the least of her perfections, for « she crowned all with an exemplary piety and unblemished virtue." She painted several historical compositions, some pieces of still life, and portraits of the Duke and Duchess of York. But the promise of her genius never ripened into performances ; she was carried off by small-pox, on the 16th of June, 1685, in her twenty-fifth year. Her « Poems/' in a thin quarto, were published in 1686. Hallam ranks Oldham as a satirist '' next to Dryden ; " he characterises him as " spirited and pointed," but thinks Ms versification " too negligent " and his subjects " tem- porary." It is his good fortune, however, that he preceded Dryden, so that no one can diminish his merits by accus- ing him of imitation. For ourselves, the chief interest of OE, ENGLAOT) UNDER CHARLES II. 151 his poetry lies in its indications of what he might have become if his genius had had time to mature. With longer experience, riper thought, and calmer judgment he would have been the English Juvenal. As it is, the strength and strenuousness of his verse compel our admir- ation ; but we can hardly forgive the occasional grossness of his language and the unmeasured fury of his invective, to say nothing of his defects of execution. To these defects Dryden, who greatly valued his young predecessor, and praised him with the fullest generosity, alludes, when he admits that, had his brief career been prolonged, *' Years might (what Nature gives the young ) Have taught the numbers of thy native tongue." We who know how Keats and Shelley wrote while "young," can hardly accept this kindly excuse ; nor Dry- den's other plea, that •* Satire needs not those, and wit will shine Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line." The full splendour of the diamond is not brought out until it has been polished. Oldham was never feeble. Even in his Translations, or rather, Imitations from Horace, Juvenal, and Boileau, his manly vigour and force and frankness are very noticeable. The following quotation affords not only a good specimen of his style, but an interesting illustration of the social position of a domestic chaplain in the days of Charles n.:— " Some think themselves exalted to the sky. If they light in some noble family, Diet, a horse, and thirty pounds a year, Besides the advantage of his lordship's car, The credit of the business, and the state, Are things that in a youngster's sense sound great. Little the inexperienced wretch does know What slavery he oft must undergo, ^ X52 THE MERRY MONARCH; Who, though in silken scarf and cassock drest, Wears but a gayer livery at best. When dinner calls, the implement must wait, With holy words to consecrate the meat, But hold it for a favour seldom known, If he be deigned the honour to sit down — Soon as the tarts appear, Sir Crape, withdraw ! Those dainties are not for a spiritual maw. Observe your distance, and be sure to stand Hard by the cistern with your cap in hand ; There for diversion you may pick your teeth, Till the kind voider* comes for your relief. For mere board wages such their freedom sell, Slaves to an hour, and vassals to a bell ; And if the enjoyment of one day be stole, They are but prisoners out on parole : Always the marks of slavery remain. And they, though loose, still drag about their chains. And Where's the mighty prospect after all, A chaplainship served up, and seven years' thrall ? The menial thing, perhaps, for a reward Is to some slender benefice perferred, With this proviso bound : that he must wed My lady's antiquated waitiug-maid In dressing only skilled, and marmalade."! John Olclliam, the author of this forcible satire, was born at Sliipton, in Gloucestershire, on the 9th of August, 1653. He received from his father, a non -conforming clergyman, the elements of a sound education, and was afterwards sent to Tilbury Grammar School, ^vhence, with credit, he proceeded to Edmund Hall, Oxford. His natural ability was soon made manifest, and he acquired a local reputation as a writer of good English verse and a proficient in Latin scholarship. In 1674 he took his degree of B.A., and in the same year was engaged as a master at Whitgift Hospital, Croydon, where he re- mained for three years, wrote his '' Satires against the * The basket containing the broken victuals left over from dinner. tLord Macaulay has largely availed himself of this passage in hiB description of the condition of the clergy at the Restoration. OB, ENGLAND UNDER CHAKLES II. 153 Jesuits," and was discovered by Eochester, Dorset, and Sir Charles Sedley, who introduced him to the Earl of Kingston, and procured him a tutorship in the family of Sir Edward Thurlow, at Eeigate. He seems to have quickly wearied of this engagement ; nor did he much longer hold a similar appointment in the house of Dr. Lower, a famous London physician, who advised him to study medicine (1681). After a brief experience of the life of a man of pleasure, he retired to the Earl of King- ston's mansion, with the view, it is said, of preparing for holy orders, and accepting a chaplaincy in his patron's family — though one would think that such a position would have been eminently distasteful to his proud and independent spirit. He escaped the trial, however, by his early death, which took place from small-pox, at the Earl's seat. Holme Pierpoint, on December 8, 1683. One of the most celebrated names in the poetical litera- ture of the reign of Charles II. is that of Samuel Butler, though we suspect that his great work, '' Hudibras," is, like " The Fairy Queen," more talked about than read. We could take large odds that the number of readers who have actually gone through its nine cantos from beginning to end is infinitesimally small. People pick up their know- ledge of this poem from the extracts which appear in all our Anthologies, and it must be owned that in this way they get at the poet's best, and are led to form a higher esti- mate of his genius than would be the case if they had to wade through all his diffusiveness and the multipUcity of minute details which his ingenious fancy crowds one upon another. " Hudibras " is a work of wonderful wit, singular learn- ing, and felicitous versification, but not to our thinking a •1 154 THE MEERY MONARCH ; great poem. We should even be inclined to say tliat it is not a poem at all. It is an elaborate satire, thrown into a clever metrical form ; but there is nothing of that dramatic fervour, or glow of imagination, or depth of passion which we look for in true poetry. The imagery is always grotesque ; the sentiment genernlly trivial and mean. There is wit enough, and to spare ; there is a good deal of shrewd reflection and acute knowledge of men and things; there are terse epigrammatic couplets which the memory readHy seizes and appropriates ; there are felicitous rhymes which in themselves have a rare element of humour— as for instance, " And pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, Was beat with fist, instead of a stick " — but this is all. No doubt this is enough to prove Butler^s genius; only it does not make him a poet, in the sense in which Spenser, and Keats, and Wordsworth are poets. «Hudibras," as everybody knows, is a parody of " Don Quixote," in which the satire, bitter always and some- times savage, is directed against Puritanism, or, rather, against Butler's conception of it. The nobler side of Puritanism, its heroic courage, its sublime faith, he either could not or would not see ; and, therefore, his satire to some extent fails, because it is directed against an unreality. So far as it was levelled at externals, at the fanatical legisla- tion of the Puritans, and their affectations of dress and language, it was effective, but then it was also of only temporary influence. None but those portions have lived which are applicable to folly and fanaticism everywhere and at all times. And here it may be observed that many of the attributes with which the satirist invests his Puri- tan Knight were by no means peculiar to the Puritans. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 155 Hypocrisy, and pretension, and bigotry belong to no one sect or faction. In Butler's own party were to be found men to whom the following passage was at least as appro- priate as to any of his opponents : — ** For rhetoric, he could not ope His mouth but out there flew a trope ; And when he happened to break off r th' middle of his speech, or cough, H' had hard words, ready to show why, And tell what rules he did it by : Else, when with greatest art he spoke, You'd think he talked like other folk ; For all a rhetorician's rules Teach nothing butto name his tools." This want of veracity is conspicuous throughout Butler's work, and renders it a burlesque as well as a satire. It is pitched throughout in too low a key ; and the exagger- ation is so gross and so obvious that we are inclined to sympathize with the objects of it. A man in a pillory is contemptible only so long as his persecutors refrain from making a martyr of him. Another defect is Butler's discursiveness. His stores of learning were so vast that they supplied his ingenious fancy with material for the prodigal decoration of any point it touched upon ; and when once his fancy was let loose, it ran away with him. He luxuriated in his own profuseness ; he could not rest until he had said every- thing that could be said : and the thought never occurred to him that what did not weary himself might very pro- bably weary his readers. Thus, he has to describe the breeches of his hero, and it takes him more than forty lines to do it in. At first the description is exquisitely comic, and we are delighted with the happy conceits which follow one another so quickly ; but after a while the fun grows forced and tedious, and we begin to wonder 156 THE MERRY MONARCH; when the writer will make an end of it.* We see that he is writing for his own entertainment, and not for ours :— *' His breeches were of ragged woollen, And had been at the siege of BuUen ; To old King Harry so well known, Some writers held they were his own ; Though they were lined with many a piece Of ammunition, bread and cheese, And fat black \mdd\ngs, jj roper food For warriors that delight in blood ; For, as we said, he always choso To carry victual in his hose, That often tempted rats and mice The ammunition to surprise ; And when he put a hand but in The one or t'other magazine, They stoutly on defence on't stood, And from the wounded foe drew blood." Had the poet ceased here all would have been well, but he continues with merciless amplitude to pile conceit upon conceit, until we feel that Ben Jonson's criticism of Shakespeare would more justly be applied to our much- offending author, "that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped : Sufflaminandus erat, as Augustus said of Halerius/' He goes on at full gallop, thus:— «' And till th' were stormed and beaten out, Ne'er left the fortified redoubt ; And though knights-errant, as some think, Of old, did neither eat nor drink, Because when through deserts vast, And regions desolate they passed, When belly-timber above ground, Or under, was not to be found, Unless they grazed, there's not one word Of their provision on record ; Which made some confidently write They had no stomachs but to fight. * The wildest of all criticisms is surely Prior's. He praises Butler for what Butler never understood :— «• Yet he, consummate master, knew^ When to recede and when pursue.' »» OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 157 Tis false for Arthur wore in hall Round table like a farthingal ; On which, with shirt pulled out behind, And eke before, his good knights dined ; Though 'twas no table some suppose, But a huge pair of round trunk-hose, In which he carried as much meat As he and all the knights could eat ; When laying by their swords and truncheons, They took their breakfasts on their nuncheons." There is scarcely any plot or definite action* in '' Hudi- bras," and the incidents are few ; though some are diverting enough, such as the attack of the knight and his squire on the bear and the fiddle, and their imprisonment in the stocks. The want of continuity helps as much as the diffusiveness to make it wearisome. As it stands, the story extends in time over three days. From the initial line, " When civil dudgeon first grew high/' it is clear that Butler intended its action to bear date with the Civil Wars; but, after two days and nights are completed, he suddenly passes, in the third part, to Oliver Cromwell's death, and then, in the last canto, turns again to his hero. The thin stream of narrative with which he begun has by this time disappeared. Even the original intention of the poem seems to have been changed, and the satire against the Puritans concludes with an attack on Charles II. and his mistresses. For these reasons " Hudibras " remains a poem which all admire and few read, and the few who read do so " by fits and starts,'^ a continuous perusal of it being almost impossible. Butler is one of the most allusive, because he is one of the most learned of writers. What Burton's '' Anatomy of Melancholy " is in our prose literature, " Hudibras " is ♦ Nash, however, distinguishes four principal actions, or episodes .—The victory of Hudibras over Cruodero— TruUa's victory over Hudibras— Hudi- bras' victory over Sidrophel— and the Widow's repulse of Hudibras. 158 THE MERET MONAECH ; OK, ENGLAKD TJNDEE CHAELES II. 159 in our poetical. To enjoy it thoroughly one needs ^ a knowledge almost as wide and deep as its author's. "There is always an undercurrent of satiric allusion," says a critic, "beneath the main stream of his satire. The juggling of astrology, the besetting folly of alchymy, the transfusion of blood, the sympathetic medicines, the learned trifling of experimental philosophers, the knavery of fortune-tellers, and the folly of their dupes, the mar- vellous relations of travellers, the subtleties of the school- divines, the freaks of fashion, the fantastic extrava- gancies of lovers, the affectations of piety, and the absurdities of romance, are interwoven with his subject, and soften down and relieve his dark delineation of fanatical violence and perfidy." Of wise saws and modern instances " Hudibras " is full to overflowing. No writer has ever shown more readiness in compressing " the wisdom of the many " into a terse couplet or two, as easily remembered as a proverb or a popular apophthegm or a nursery rhyme. Many of his "good things" have become part and parcel of our daily discourse, and we speak Butler, as Molifere's Jourdain spoke prose, without knowing it. His works are sufficiently accessible to render unnecessary on our part any attempt to exhibit by quotation their general characters ; but of the felicity with which their witty author condensed a thought or an image into a sentence, and pointed it by a couple or so of felicitous rhymes, we shall make bold to furnish some illustra- tions. Here is a graceful simile :— " True as the dial to the Bun, Although it be not shined upon." We agree with Leigh Hunt that the following is as elegant as anything in Lovelace or Waller : — u I f . What security's too strong To guard that gentle heart from wrong, That to its friend is glad to pass Itself away, and all it has, And like an anchorite, gives over This world, for the heaven of a lover ? " There is an exceptional elevation (for Butler) in the following : — " Like Indian widows, gone to bed In flaming curtains to the dead." An *' exquisite and never-to-he-sufficiently repeated couplet " : — " Compound for sins they are inclin'd to, By damning those they have no mind to." And now for some wise thoughts : — " Doubtless the pleasure is as great Of being cheated as to cheat ; As lookers-on feel most delight That least perceive a juggler's sleight ; And still the less they understand, The more they admire his sleight-of-hand." «* For what in worth is anything, But so much money as 'twill bring." ** He that is valiant and dares fight, Though drubbed can lose no honour by 't. Honour's a lease for lives to come, And cannot be extended from The legal tenant : 'Tis a chattel Not to be forfeited in battle. If he that in the field is slain Be in the bed of honour lain, He that is beaten may be said To lie in honour's truckle-bed. For as we see the eclipsed sun By mortals is more gazed upon Than when, adorned with all his light. He shines in serene sky most bright, So valour in a low estate Is most admired and wondered at." 160 THE MERRY MONARCH; u The following miscellaneous thougMs are partly from Hudibras " and partly from Butler's " Eemains " :- «* In Rome no temple was so low As that of Honour, built to show How humble Honour ought to be, Though there 'twas all authority." " Money that, like the swords of Kings, Is the last reason of all things." «* Ay me 1 what perils do environ The man that meddles with cold iron ? " •* 'Tis not restraint or liberty That makes men prisoners or free, But perturbations that possess The mind, or equanimities. The whole world was not half so wide To Alexander when he cried Because he had but one to subdue, As was a paltry narrow tub to Diogenes, who is not said (For aught that ever I could read) To whine, put linger i' th* eye, and sob Because he had ne'er another tub." «* Fools are known by looking wise, As men tell woodcocks by their eyes." *' AH smiittcrers are more brisk and pert Than tho^e that understand an art ; As little sparkles shine more bright Than glowing coals that give them light." '• Great conquerors greater glory gain By foes in triumi>h led than slain.' "As at the approach of winter, all The leaves of great trees are to fall, And leave then naked, to engage With storms and tempest when they rage, While humbler plants are forced to wear Their fresh green liveries all the year ; So when their glorious season's gone With great men, and hard times come on, The greatest calamities oppress The greatest still, and spare the less." *' Valour's a mousetrap, wit a gin, That women oft are taken in.'* OB, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 161 " Night is the sabbath of mankind To rest the body and the mind." ** Opinion governs all mankind, Like the blind's leading of the blind.'* «• Wedlock without love, some say, Is like a lock without a key." *' As if artiller}' and edge-tools Were th' only engines to save souls I " " Those that fly may fight again. Which he can never do that's slain." * " He that complies against his will Is of his own opinion still." ** In the hurry of a fray 'Tis hard to keep out of harm's way." *• In all the trade of war no feat Is nobler than a brave retreat. For those that run away and fly Take plan at least of the enemj'." We select a few of Butler's liumorous and happy rhyme endings:— " A true beard's like a batter'd ensign 'r ^ ^ That's bravest which there are most tents in." « Convened at midnight in outhouses. To appoint new rising rendezvouses." " Doctor epidemic, Stored with deletery med'cins, Which whosoever took is dead since," ** Wholesale critics, that in coifee- Houses cry down all philosophy." ** To th' emperor Caligula, That triumphed o'er the British sea,t « In the "Apophthegms" of Erasmus, translated by Udall, 1542, we *« That same man that runnith awaie Maie again tight another daie." Butler was imitated by Goldsmith in his ^" Art of Poetry on a New Plan" — " He who fights and runs away May live to fight another day ; But he who is in battle slain Can never rise and fight again." t Pronounced sai/. VOL. II. ^ 162 THE MERRY MONARCH; Took crabs and oysters prisoners, And lobsters 'stead of cuirassiers : Engaged his legions in fierce bustles With periwinkles, |)ra\vns, and mussels, And led his troops, with furious gallops, To charge whole regiments of scallops." *•' Madame, I do as is my duty, Honour the shadow of your shoe-tie." •' Anti-christian assemblies To mischief bent as far's in them lies." " That proud dame Used him so like a base rascallion, That old Fyg — what d' you call him — malion, That cut his mistress out of stone, Had not so hard a hearted one." •' * Heaven ! ' quoth she, * can that be true ? I do begin to fear 'tis you ; Not by your individual wdii.skers, But by your dialect and discourse.' " Samuel Butler, tlie aiitlior of " Iludibras," was born at Strensbam, in Worcestersliire, in 1612. About almost every main incident in liis life the authorities differ, and they differ also in their descriptions of his father's posi- tion ; for while Anthony AVood says his father was com- paratively wealthy, others assert that he was simply a yeoman of poor estate, and that it was with difficulty he provided his son with such education as the Worcester Grammar School afforded. As to the future poet, it is equally uncertain whether he went from school to Oxford University or to Canibrid-e, or whether he went to either. While still in his early manhood he obtained an appoint- ment as clerk to Mr. Jefferys, of Earl's Coombe, in Wor- cestershire^ an eminent justice of the peace; and here he turned his leisure to advantage in the study of books, and the cultivation of music and painting. He was next at Wrest, in Bedfordshire, the seat of the Countess of Kent, OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 163 where he enjoyed the use of a good library and the con- versation of the learned Selden. Afterwards we find him in the family of Sir Samuel Luke, a Presbyterian Colonel and one of Cromwell's officers, " scout master for Bedford- shire, and governor of Newport Pagnell/' We must suppose the treatment he received at the hands of his patron was harsh and ungenerous, or we shall be unable to excuse the want of gratitude and good faith which led him to caricature Sir Samuel in the person of Sir Hudibras.* And that Sir Samuel was the original seems by no means doubtful from the following allusion : " 'Tis sung there is a valiant Mamaluke In foreign land ycleped . . . ." when the rhyme obviously requires that the blank should be filled up with the ColonePs name.f At the Eestoration Butler was made secretary to the Earl of Carberry, Lord President of Wales, and also steward of Ludlow Castle. About the same time he married — Mrs. Hubert, a widow of means, says one bio- grapher, — a widow, says another, who had lost her fortune by injudicious investments. Li lG62,at the age of fifty, he rose into sudden reputation by the publication of the first part of his colossal satire, which, as we learn from Pepys, was the admiration of the King and his courtiers. The * The name ^\-as bom.^ved from Spenser :—" Sir Hndibras, a hardy man ( " Fairy Queen," ver. l^ i., 17.) Sidrophel, the astrologer, was meant for Lilly. t The elder Disraeli, in his " Curiosities of Literature," in an elaborate paper fudeavours to viii<]icate Biuier iroiu the accusation of injrratitude in having caricatured his natron, Sir Samuel Luke. His vindication seems to us w..rth nothing, if it be agreed tliat Luke was reallv the oricri„al as most persons believe, of Butler's hero. But it is only justice to state that the editors of "The Grub Street Journal" (January 1730) assert that the actual prototype was '* a Devonshire man, Colonel KoUe," and that the name " liudibras " is derived from " Hugh de Bras," the old tutelar saint ot Devonshire. The assertion would be easier to credit if those who made It had given us some particulars both of the Devonshire Colonel and the Devonshire saint ! 164 THE MERRY MONARCH ; second part followed in 1663 ; the third in 1678. Butler had to be content with fame. If he needed, and antici- pated, a more solid recompense he was disappointed. The story that Charles presented him with a purse of three hundred guineas rests on no authentic foundation ; and though Clarendon, it is said, gave him reason to hope for perferment he never received it. Anthony Wood asserts, but the other authorities deny, that the Duke of Bucking- ham, when Chancellor of Cambridge, appointed him as his secretary, and on all occasions treated him with liberality and kindness. But if this be untrue, there seems reason to believe that the following anecdote is not less untrue : " Mr. Wycherley had always laid hold of any opportunity which offered of representing to the Duke of Buckingham how well Mr. Butler had deserved of the royal family by writing his inimitable Hudibras, and that it was a re- proach to the Court that a person of his loyalty and wit should suffer in obscurity, and under the wants he did. The Duke always seemed to hearken to him with atten- tion enough, and after some time undertook to recom- mend his pretensions to his Majesty. Mr. Wycherley, in hopes to keep him steady to his word, obtained of his Grace to name a day, when he might introduce that modest and unfortunate poet to his new patron. At last an appointment was made, and the place of meeting was agreed to be the Roebuck. Mr. Butler and his friend attended accordingly ; the Duke joined them, but as the devil would have it, the door of the room where they sat was open, and his Grace, who had seated himself near it, observing a pimp of his acquaintance (the creature too was a knight) trip by with a brace of ladies, immediately quitted his engagement to follow another kind of business. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 165 at which he was more ready than to do good office to those of desert, though no one was better qualified than he, both in regard to his fortune and understanding, to protect them ; and from that time to the day of his death, poor Butler never found the least effect of his promise." This is a good story ; but, with Johnson, we disbelieve its authencity. That Butler did not meet with the generous support and recognition to which his genius, and his services to the cause of the Eoyalists, entitled him, is evident enough from the complaints of Oldham and Dry den, which could never have been so publicly and generally made if there had been no warranty for them. Oldham writes with honest indignation :— *' On Butler, who can think without just rage, The glorj and the scandal of the age ? Fair stood his hopes, when first he came to town, Met everywhere with welcomes of renown. Courted and loved by all, with wonder read, And promises of princely favour fed. B ut what reward for all had he at last, After a life in dull expectance past ? The wretch, at summing up his misspent days, Found nothing left but poverty and praise. Of all his gains by verse he could not save Enough to purchase flannel and a grave. Reduced to want, he in due time fell sick, Was fain to die, and be interred on tick, And well might bless the fever that was sent To rid him hence, and his worse fate prevent.'* (Satire against Poetry). And Dryden : " Unpitied Hudibras, your champion friend, Has shown bow far your charities extend. This lasting verse shall on his tomb be read, * He shamed you living, and upbraids you dead ! ' " But Butler himself had already protested, in his " Hudi- 166 THE MEEEY MONAECH ; bras at Court '' (in tlie '' Eemains ") against the royal in- gratitude : — *' Now after all, was it not hard That he should meet with no reward, That fitted out this knight and squire, This monarch did so much admire." It may be that the obscurity in which the poet was sufiPered to remain originated in the faults of his char- acter. Aubrey speaks of him as choleric, and of a severe and sound judgment ; adding, with keen knowledge of human nature, " satirical wits disoblige whom they con- verse with, and consequently make themselves many enemies and few friends." Such, he says, was Butler's case. In this '' mist of obscurity ''—the phrase is Johnson's— died Samuel Butler, on the 25th of September, 1680; and at the expense of his friends was buried in St. Paul's Churchyard, Covent Garden, the honour of a public funeral in Westminster Abbey having been refused. About forty years afterwards, Alderman Barber erected in the Abbey a monument to his memory, on which is engraved an elaborate laudatory inscription in Latin, which in pithiness and force is much surpassed by the epitaph ascribed to John Dennis :— " Near this place lies interred The body of Mr. Samuel Butler, Author of Hudibras. He was a whole species of poet in one, Admirable in a manner In which no one else has been tolerable : A manner which began and ended with him, In which he knew no guide, And has found no followers." The tardiness of this tribute to the poet elicited some epigrammatic lines from Samuel Wesley : — OE, ENGLAND UNDEE CHAELES II. 167 " While Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive, No generous patron would a dinner give ; See him, when starved to death and turned to dust, Presented with a monumental bust. The poet's fate is here in emblem shown, He asked for bread, and he received a stone." Besides his immortal "Hudibras," Butler was the author of a couple of pamphlets, a satirical Ode on the exploits of the famous highwayman, "Claude Duval," and various poems and prose writings included in his " Eemains," of which we may notice as the most im- portant, " The Elephant in the Moon ; " "A Satire upon the Eoyal Society ; " "A Satire upon the Imperfection and Abuse of Human Learning;" and "A Panegyric upon Sir John Denham's Eecovery from his Madness.'* His " Description of Holland," with its richly humorous exaggeration, is well known. i-j A COUPLE OF COUETIEES. The Eakl op Eochester. The Duke of Buckingham. n ■ CHAPTER IV. a couple of courtiees. The Earl of Rochester. The Duke of Buckingham. John Wihnot, Earl of Rochester. The most brilliant figure of a brilliant Conrt — a man of unquestionable ability, but of the most shameless profli- gacy — wit, poet, dramatist, politician — gifted with rare personal graces and a wonderful charm of manner, yet perverting his fine endowments to the worst purposes — John Wilmot, Earl of Eoch ester, has, in the most literal sense of Johnson^s hackneyed lines, left a name to point a moral, if not exactly to adorn a tale. It would seem as if at his birth those powers in whose hands rest the distri- bution of the good things of nature had lavished upon him all except that one which is indispensable to their right use, the heavenly gift of virtue. With all his talents, with all his opportunities of rank and fortune, his was a wrecked life — a life misspent, and, therefore, unen joyed — and the only part of it to be contemplated with satisfaction are the hours of contrition and reflection which he spent with the shadow of death upon him. 172 THE MEERY MONARCH; John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, was born at Ditchley, in Oxfordshire, on the 10th of April, 1647. His father was Henry, Lord Wilmot, a brave and loyal Cavalier, who attended Charles II. during his wanderings after the battle of Worcester, and was rewarded for his faithful service with the Earldom of Rochester. His son and only surviving child received his early education at the Grammar School of Burford, whence he was removed to Wadham College, Oxford, in 1G59. His intellectual powers were quickly conspicuous ; he attained with facility a wide knowledge of the classics ; wrote verses with fluency ; and spoke epigrams with careless profusion. In 1661, at the age of fourteen, he was admitted to the degree of M.A., and the Chancellor of the University, Lord Clarendon, distinguished him from other candidates by kissing him in the Continental fashion. He made the customary "grand tour" of France and Italy, and, returning to England in 1665, became at once a splendid figure at Charles's splendid Court. His wit, his handsome person, his graceful address, made him the observed of all ob- servers. Charles admitted him to his intimacy, conferring on him the appointment of a Gentleman of the Bedchamber and Controller of Woodstock Park ; and soon in that disso- lute scene the young Earl was gayest among the gay. There were times in the wayward career of this remark- able man when he seems to have struggled against him- self—to have been conscious of his powers, and made desultory efforts to direct them to a worthy purpose. Thus, in the winter of 1665, he joined, as a volunteer, the Earl of Sandwich's expedition against the Dutch, whose East India fleet took refuge in Bergen harbour, and were there attacked by Sandwich with desperate resolu- OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 173 tion. Rochester served on board The Revenge, was in the thick of the action, and under a tremendous fire preserved his usual air of careless gallantry. In the following year he was present at the great battle of the 3rd of June, and was sent by Sir Edward Sprague with a message to one of his captains in the heat of the engagement, going and returning in an open boat, under a storm of shot, as coolly as if he had been sauntering in the Mall. The stern expe- rience of war exercised for a time a salutary influence on his conduct. He avoided the gay gallants with whom he had plunged into dissipation, and lived with a temperance and a discretion which led his friends to hope he might yet justify their high opinions. He was already married. In his early manhood he chose for his wife one Elizabeth Mallet, the daughter of John Mallet, Esquire, of Enmore, in Somersetshire, a young lady of considerable personal charms, with a fortune valued at £2,500 a year.*^ The match was favoured by Charles II., who deigned to recommend his favourite to the lady's attention ; nor does there seem to have been any insuper- able obstacle to its successful conclusion. Yet, with the perverseness which distinguished him, Eochester resolved to carry her off by force. As the lady was returning home one evening, after supping with Mrs. Frances Stewart, her coach was surrounded by a number of armed men, afoot and on horseback, who violently hurried her into another, drawn by six horses, and drove off rapidly towards Uxbridge, where Eochester was awaiting his intended bride. But the alarm having been given, and a hot pursuit undertaken, the abducted heiress was restored, and Eochester, by the * This is the " melancholy heiress " (la triste heritiere) of Count Hamil- ton; so called, I suppose, as the wife of Eochester. 1 174 THE MERRY MONARCH; King's order, committed to the Tower. Eventually, how- ever, he was pardoned both by his King and by Miss Mallet, and their marriage soon afterwards took place * Nor does it seem, on the whole— in spite of his infidelities and numerous absences— to have been an uuhappy one Eochester's letters afford convincing proof, as we shall see, that he could be an affectionate husband and a tender father ; his better nature revealing itself in the pure atmo- sphere of Home. After the temporary reformation to which I have alluded Eochester broke out into the wildest escapades. His fan- tastic freaks were the amusement, as his epigrams were the terror, of the Court. He mimicked the Lord Chancellor in the King's presence; he played audacious tricks on the ladies who fluttered, butterfly-like, in the sunshine of royal smiles ; he quarrelled with the courtiers, and, as in his quarrel with Lord Mulgrave (afterwards Duke of BuckiMglianishire),bore himself in such a manner as to show that his once brilliant courage had been im- paired by the excesses which were ruining his constitu- tion. " He gave himself up," says Bishop Burnet, " to all sorts of extravagance, and to the wildest frolics that » Pepvs gives the follow iii^^ uecouiit of tliis boyish escapade (Rochester was thru ill his 18th ycur): -" Mnv 2s\ KWi:.. To my Liuly Saiidwichs, where, to my shame, I had not I at while. There, upon iny telling her u ~i**rv ol" mv Lord ot U.K-hestt rs niniuiig away on Friday niglit last with Mi< Mailctt, tlio i,neat beauty au.l fortune oi the Xortli, who had supped at \VhiU-hall with Mrs. fett;wart, and wa.- -•..iiig home to lier lodgings with her graudtuther, my L..rd Hally, by eoueh ; and was at Charing Cross seized on by both horse and footmen, and forcibly taken Irom him, and put into a coaeli with >i\ h and two u.. men provided to receive her, and carried away. Upon immediate jmrsuit, my 1 ' -f llochester (for whom the King had si.oke to the lady often, but witli nw ^access) was taken at Uxbridge ; but the lady is not yet heard of, and the King mighty angry, and the Lord sent to the Tower. Hereupon my lady did confess to me, as a ereat secret, her being concerned in this story. For it tins match breaks between my Lord Kochester ■mA lier, then, by the consent of all her friends, mv Lord liinchiugbroke (Lord Sandwich's son and heir) stands fair, and ia invited tor her." OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 175 wanton wit could devise. He would have gone about the streets as a beggar, and made love as a porter. He set up a stage as an Italian mountebank. He was for some years always drunk ; and was ever doing some mischief. The King loved his company, for the diversion it afforded, better than his person ; and there was no love lost between them. He took his revenges in many Jibels. He found out a footman that knew all the Court ; and he furnished him with a red coat and a musket, as a sentinel, and kept him all the winter long, every night, at the doors of such ladies as he believed might be in intrigues. In the Court, a sentinel is little minded, and is believed to be posted by a captain of the guards to hinder a combat ; so this man saw who walked about and visited at forbidden hours. By this means Lord Eochester made many discoveries; and when he was well furnished with materials, he used to retire into the country for a month or two to write libels. Once, being drunk, he intended to give the King a libel he had writ on some ladies, but, by mistake, he gave him one written on himself. He fell into an ill habit of body, and, in set fits of sickness, he had deep remorses, for he was guilty both of much impiety and of great immoralities. But as he recovered, he threw these off, and turned again to his former ill courses." " He set up a stage as an Italian mountebank." This was one of Eochester's most extraordinary exploits. He had been banished from Court for one of his bitter lam- poons, but growing weary of rural retirement, and feeling sure that the King would soon recall him, he ventured up to London. Here he took lodgings among the rich mer- chants and leading tradesmen ; changed his dress and assumed a fictitious name; and, having a wonderful 176 THE MEEEY MONARCH; facUity in adapting Mmself to all classes and persons, lie soon wormed his way into the good graces of some of the wealthy aldermen and the favour of their stately ladies. He was invited to all their feasts and assemblies, and while, in the company of the husbands, he declaimed against the faults and mistakes oP Government, he joined their wives in railing against the profligacy of the Court ladies, and in inveighing against the King's mistresses. He agreed with them that the cost of all these extrava- gances fell upon the industrious poor ; that the city beauties were not inferior to those of the other end of the town, although, in the city, a sober husband was con- tented with one wife ; and, finally, he protested that he wondered Whitehall was not yet consumed by fire from heaven, since such rakes as Eochester, Killigrew, and Sidney were suffered there. In this way he endeared himself to the cits, and made himself welcome at their clubs, until the restless gallant grew weary of the endless round of banquets. But, instead of approaching the Court, he retired into one of the obscurest corners of the City, where, changing again his name and dress, he caused bills to be distributed, announcing^" The recent arrival of a famous German doctor, who, by long study and extensive practice, had discovered wonderful secrets and infallible remedies." Of this curious document we give such passages as are con- sistent with a regard for decency :— « To all gentlemen, ladies, and others, whether of city, town, or country, Alexander Bendo wisheth all health and prosperity. , , , ^ " Whereas this famed metropolis of England (and were the endeavours of its worthy inhabitants equal to their OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 177 power, merit, and virtue, I should not stick to denounce it in a short time, the metropolis of the whole world) • whereas, I say, this city (as most great ones are) has ever been infested with a numerous company of such, whose arro- gant confidence, backed with their ignorance, has enabled them to impose on the people, either by premeditated cheats, or at best, the palpable, dull, and empty mistakes of their self-deluded imagination in physic, chymical and Galenic; in astrology, physiognomy, palmistry, mathe- matics, alchymy, and even, in government itself, the last of which I will not propose to discourse of, or meddle at all in, since it in no way belongs to my trade or vocation, as the rest do; which (thanks to my God) I find much more safe, I think equally honest, and therefore more profitable. . " But as to all the former, they have been so erroneously practised by many unlearned wretches, whom poverty and neediness, for the most part (if not the restless itch of deceiving), has forced to struggle and wander in unknown parts, that even the professions themselves, though origi- nally the products of the most learned and wise men's laborious studies and experience, and by them left a wealthy and glorious inheritance for ages to come, seem, by this bastard race of quacks and cheats, to have been run out of all wisdom, learning, perspicuousness, and truth, with which they were so plentifully stocked ; and now run into a repute of mere mists, imaginations, errors, and deceits, such as, in the management of these idle pro- fessors, indeed they were. "You will therefore, I hope, gentlemen, ladies, and others, deem it but just that I, who for some years have VOL. II, ^ 178 THE MEEKT MONARCH; OB, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 179 with aU faithfulness and assiduity courted these arts, and received such signal favours from them, that they have admitted me to the happy and full enjoyment of them- selves, and trusted me with their greatest secrets, should with an earnestness and concern more than ordinary, take their parts against those impudent fops, whose saucy, impertinent addresses and pretensions have brought such a scandal upon their most immaculate honours and repu- tations. « Besides, I hope you will not think I could be so impu- dent, that if I had intended any such foul play myself, I would have given you so fair warning by my severe obser- vations upon others. ' Qui alterum incusant probri, ipsum se intueri oportet.' However, gentlemen, in a world like this, where virtue is so exactly counterfeited and hypo- crisy 80 generally taken notice of, that every one, armed with suspicion, stands upon his guard against it, it will be very hard, for a stranger especially, to escape censure. All I shall say for myself on this score is this: -if I appear to any one like a counterfeit, even for the sake of that, chiefly, ought I to be construed a true man. Who is the counterfeit's example? His original; and that, which he employs his industry and pains to imitate and copy ; is it therefore my fault, if the cheat by his wits and endeavours makes himself so like me, that consequently I cannot avoid resembling him ? Consider,'pray, the valiant and the coward, the wealthy merchant and the bankrupt, the poUtician and the fool ; they are the same in many things, and differ but in one alone. "The valiant man holds up his head, looks confidently round about him, wears a sword, courts a lord's wife, and owns it ; so does the coward : one only point of honour I 'i excepted, and that is courage, whicli (like false metal, one only trial can discover) makes the distinction. ''The bankrupt walks the exchange, buys bargains, draws bills, and accepts them with the richest, whilst paper and credit are current coin : that which makes the difference is real cash ; a great defect indeed, and yet but one, and that the last found out, and still, till then, the least perceived. ''Now for the politician :— he is a grave, deliberating, close, prying man : pray, are there not grave, deliberating, close, prying fools ? " If then the difference betwixt all these (though infinite in effect) be so nice in all appearance^ will you expect it should be otherwise betwixt the false physician, astrologer, etc., and the true? The first calls himself learned doctor, sends forth his bills, gives physic and counsel, tells and foretels ; the other is bound to do just as much : it is only your experience must distinguish betwixt them; to which I willingly submit myself. I will only say something to the honour of the mountebank, in case you discover me to be one. " Eeflect a little what kind of creature it is :— he is one then, who is fain to supply some higher ability he pretends to with craft ; he draws great companies to him by under- taking strange things, which can never be effected. The politician (by his example no doubt) finding how the people are taken with spurious miraculous impossibilities, plays the sam- game ; protests, declares, promises I know not what things, which he is sure can never be brought about. The people believe, are deluded, and pleased ; the expec- tation of a future good, which shall never befal them, draws their eyes off a present evil. Thus are they kept 180 THE MEEET MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND rNDEE OHAELES II. 181 and established in subjection, peace, and obedience ; he in greatness, wealth, and power. So yon see the politician is, and mnst be a rrwuntehank in State affairs ; and the mountebank no donbt, if he thrives, is an arrant politiciaa in physic. But that I may not prove too tedious, I will proceed faithfully to inform you, what are the things la which I pretend chieEy, at this time, to serve my country. « First, I wiU (by the leave of God) perfectly cure that lobes Britannica, or grand English disease, the scurvy : and that with such ease to my patient, that he shall not be sensible of the least inconvenience, whilst I steal his dis- temper from him. I know there are many who treat this disease with mercury, antimony, spirits, and salts, being dangerous remedies ; in which I shall meddle very httle, and with great caution ; but by more secure, gentle, and less fallible medicines, together with the observation of some few rules in diet, perfectly cure the patient, having freed him from all the symptoms, as looseness of the teeth, scorbutic spots, want of appetite, pains and lassitude in the limbs and joints, especially the legs. And to say true there are few distempers in this nation that are not, or at least proceed out originally from the scurvy ; which, were it well rooted out (as I make no question to do it from all those who shall come into my hands), there would not be heard of so many gouts, aches, dropsies, and consump- tions; nay, even those thick and slimy humours, which generate stones in the kidneys and bladder, are for the most part offsprings of the scurvy. It would prove tedious to set down all its malignant race ; but those who address themselves here, shall be still informed by me of the nature of their distempers, and the grounds I proceed upon to their cure : so will all reasonable people be satisfied that I treat tliem with care, honesty, and understanding ; for I am not of their 023inion, who endeavour to render their vocations rather mysterious than useful and satisfactory. '' I will not here make a catalogue of diseases and dis- tempers ; it behoves a physician, I am sure, to understand them all ; but if any one come to me (as I think there are very few that have escaped my practice) I shall not be ashamed to own to my patient, when I find myself to seek ; and, at least, he shall be secure with me from having experiments tried upon him; a privilege he can never hope to enjoy, either in the hands of the grand doctors of the court and Tower, or in those of the lesser quacks and mountebanks. " It is thought fit, that T assure you of great secrecy, as well as cure, in diseases, where it is requisite ; whether venereal or others ; as some peculiar to women, the green- sickness, weaknesses, inflammations, or obstructions in the stomach, reins, liver, spleen, &c. ; for I would put no word in my bill that bears any unclean sound; it is enough that I make myself understood. I have seen physician's bills as bawdy as Aretine's Dialogues, which no man, that walks warily before God, can approve of. . . . *' I have, likewise, got the knowledge of a great secret to cure barrenness. . . Cures of this kind I have done signal and many. . . . "As to astrological predictions, physiognomy, divina- tion by dreams, and otherwise (palmistry I have no faith in, because there can be no reason alleged for it), my own experience has convinced me more of their consider- able effects and marvellous operations, chiefly in the direction of future proceedings, to the avoiding of dangers that threaten, and laying hold of advantages that might 182 THE MERRY MONARCH; offer themselves ; I say, my own practice has convinced me, more than all the sage and wise writings extant, of those matters ; for I might say this of myself (did it not look like ostentation), that I have very seldom failed in my predictions, and often heen very serviceable in my advice. How far I am capable in this way, I am sure is not fit to be delivered in print: those who have no opinion of the trath of this art, will not, I suppose, come to me about it ; such as have, I make no question of giving them ample satisfaction. " Nor will I be ashamed to set down here my willing- ness to practise rare secrets (though somewhat collateral to my profession), for the help, conservation, and aug- mentation of beauty and comeliness ; a thing created at first by God, chiefly for the glory of His own name, and then for the better establishment of mutual love between man and woman ; for when God had bestowed on man the power of strength and wisdom, and thereby rendered woman liable to the subjection of his absolute will, it seemed but requisite that she should be endued likewise, in recompense, with some quality that might beget in him admiration of her, and so enforce his tenderness and love. "The knowledge of these secrets I gathered in ray travels abroad (where I have spent my time ever since I was fifteen years old, to this my nine and twentieth year) in France and Italy. Those that have travelled in Italy will tell you what a miracle art does there assist nature in the preservation of beauty ; how women of forty bear the same countenance with those of fifteen ; ages are no ways distinguished by faces ; whereas, here in England, look a horse in the mouth, and a woman in the face, you OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 183 presently know both their ages to a year. I will, there- fore, give you such remedies that, without destroying your complexion (as most of your paints and daubingsdo) shall render them perfectly fair ; clearing and preserving them from all spots, freckles, heats, pimples, and marks of the small-pox, or any other accidental ones, so the face be not seamed or scarred. " I will also cleanse and preserve your teeth white and round as pearls, fastening them that are loose ; your gums shall be kept entire, as red as coral ; your lips of the same colour, and soft as you could wish your lawful kisses. ^' I will likewise administer that which shall cure the worst of breaths, provided the lungs be not totally perished and imposthumated ; as also certain and infal- lible remedies for those whose breaths are yet untainted ; so that nothing but either a very long sickness, or old age itself, shall ever be able to spoil them. *^ I will, besides (if it be desired) tahe away from their fatness, who have over much, and add flesh to those that want it, without the least detriment to their constitutions. " Now, should Galen himself look out of his grave, and tell me these were troubles below the profession of a physician, I would boldy answer him, that I take more glory in preserving God's image in its unblemished beauty, upon one good face, than I should do in patching up all the decayed carcases in the world. " They that will do me the fiivour to come to me, shall be sure, from three of the clock in the afternoon till eight at night, at my lodgings in Tower Street, next door to the sign of the Black Swan, at a goldsmith's house, to find " Their humble servant, "Alexander Bendo." 184 THE MERRY MONARCH; The fame of Alexander Bendo soon spread to tlie west- end of the town, and the maids of honour sent their servants to wait upon him, and secretly put to the test his supposed wonderful powers. His knowledge of the inner life of the Court, and of its scandals and intri^^ues, enabled him to answer their questions in a way that caused either alarm or diversion, according to circum- stances. The curiosity of Miss Jennings, afterwards Duchess of Tyrconnel, and Miss Price, two of the most daring of the court sirens, was so moved that they ventured on the hazardous enterprise of visiting the new magician in person. Disguised as orange-girls they drove thither in a hackney-coach, but when within half a street of the desired goal attracted the attention of the infamous Brouneker— ^' a pestilent rogue," says Pepys, " an atheist, that would have sold his King and country for sixpence almost, so corrupt and wicked a rogue he is by all men^s report" — and, to escape his insolent addresses, aban- doned their design. "While they were under these alarms," says Count Hamilton, "their coachman was engaged in a squabble with some blackguard boys, who had gathered round his coach in order to steal the oranges; from words they came to blows: the two nymphs saw the commencement of the fray as they were returning to the coach, after having abandoned the design of going to the fortune-teller's. Their coachman being a man of spirit, it was with great difficulty they could persuade him to leave their oranges to the mob, that they might get off without any furthur disturbance : having thus regained their hack, after a thousand frights, and after having received an abundant share of the most low and infamous abuse applied to them during the fracas. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES 11. 185 they at length reached St. James's, vowing never more to go after fortune-tellers, through so many dangers, terrors, and alarms, as they had lately undergone.-" Eochester was soon afterwards recalled to Court, where he resumed his old course of profligate folly. In his lucid intervals he read a good deal, and it seems that he was specially partial to the study of history. He did not refrain from his ironical comments on his Sovereign's infirmities. Charles was very fond of repeating the story of his adventures in Scotland and Paris, and this he did with such frequency that Rochester said, severely, " He wondered that a man with so good a memory as to repeat the same story without losing the least circumstance, yet could not remember that he had told it to the same person the very day before." Still sharper was the well- known epigram which penetrated even through the King's easy indifference : — ** Here lies onr sovereign lord the King, Whose word no man relies on j He never said a foolish thing, And never did a wise one.'* The Sting of this terse satire lay, no doubt, in its truth. Charles, we are told, never forgave it. Like Lord Ljtton^s Gabriel Varney, Rochester possessed a constitution which alcoholic excess could not directly affect. It was a dangerous organisation, and, perhaps, the ruin of his life was partly owing to this physical gift. "He was unhappily made for drunkenness," saya Bishop Burnet, " for he had drank all his friends dead, and was able to subdue two or three sets of drunkards one after another : so it scarce ever appeared that he was disordered after the greatest drinking : an hour or two of 186 THE MERRY MONARCH; sleep carried all off entirely, that no sign of tliem re- mained. He would go about business without any un- easiness, or discovering heat either in body or mind." But a terrible Nemesis dogged the profligate's footsteps. " After he had killed all his friends, he fell at last into such weakness of stomach, that he had perpetual choHc when he was not within, and full of strong liquor, of which he was frequently seized, so that he was always either sick or drunk." He was not yet thirty when his constitution suddenly gave way, and the brilliant wit found himself overtaken by a premature old age. Feeble and weary, dissatisfied with himself, conscious of the manner in which he had abused his powers, he began to turn his mind to serious thoughts, and with remorse for the past mingled uncer- tainty as to the future. Might not that religion be true which he had so constantly ridiculed ? And if so, then, indeed, he had cause to tremble ! About this time he made the acquaintance of Bishop Burnet, and held with him many earnest conversations on those great truths which concern the eternal destiny of man. The Bishop has left a record of these conversations, which it is impossible to read without the liveliest interest. Eochester was not at once converted ; but it does not appear that he ever had been a confirmed atheist, and his disbelief was that of the head rather than that of the heart. In the spring of 1680, Eochester retired to his country seat at Woodstock, and in the fresh country air recovered some small portion of his former health. But the exer- tion of a long journey on horseback into Somersetshire proved too much for his enfeebled frame, and he returned to Woodstock with the shadow of death upon him. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 187 ^1 Suffering acutely from a troubled conscience, he sought the advice of Mr. Parsons, his mother's chaplain ; he was also attended by the Bishop of Oxford, Dr. Marshall, rector of Lincoln, and Dr. Pierce, President of Magdalen. One day, while Mr. Parsons was reading to the invalid that 53rd chapter of Isaiah, which has ever been expressibly dear to the Christian, a sudden light seemed to break upon his mind, and the darkness of unfaith in which he had hitherto been involved was swept aside. He was not only convinced by the argument which Mr. Parsons founded upon it, but by a Divine power which moved Mm so effectually that thenceforward he believed as firmly in his Saviour as if, like Thomas, he had seen the wounded side, and the prints of the nails in the hands and feet. The sincerity and completeness of his con- version appear in the letter which, at this time, he wrote to Dr. Pierce : — "My indisposition renders my intellectuals almost as feeble as my person, but considering the candour and ex- treme charity your natural mildness hath always shown me, I am assured at once of a favourable construction of my present lines, which can but faintly express the sorrowful character of an humble and afflicted mind: and also those great comforts your inexhaustible good- ness, learning, and piety, plenteously afford to the droop- ing spirits of poor sinners, so that I may truly say, — Holy man! to you I owe what consolation I enjoy^ in urging God's mercies against despair, and holding me up under the weight of those high and mountainous sins, my wicked and ungovernable life hath heaped upon me. If God shall be pleased to spare me a little longer here, I have unalterably resolved to become a new man ; to wash 188 THE MERRY MONARCH ; out the stains of my lewd courses with my tears, and weep over the profane and unhallowed abominations of my former doings ; that the world may see how I loath sin, and abhor the very remembrance of those tainted and un- clean joys [ once delighted in ; these being, as the Apostle tells us, the things whereof I am now ashamed ; or, if it be His great pleasure now to put a period to my days, that He will accept my last gasp, that the smoke of my death- bed offering may not be unsavoury to His nostrils, and drive me like Cain from His presence. " Pray for me, dear Doctor, and all you that forget not God, pray for me fervently. Take heaven by force, and let me enter with you in disguise ; for I dare not appear before the dread majesty of that Holy One I have so often offended. Warn all my friends and companions to a true and sincere repentance to-day, while it is called to- day, before the evil day come and they be no more. Let them know that sin is like the AngeFs book in the Revela- tions, it is sweet in the mouth, but bitter in the belly. Let them know that God will not be mocked ; that He is an holy God, and will be served in holiness and purity, that requires the whole man and the early man: bid them make haste, for the night cometh when no man can work. Oh that they were wise, that they would consider tbis, and not with me, with wretched me, delay it until their latter end. Pray, dear sir, continually pray for your poor friend, "EOCHESTEE." A narrative exists in the British Museum of a visit paid to the dying Earl by one of his boon companions, who seems to have been ignorant of his illness : — "When Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, lay on his death- OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 189 bed, Mr. Fanshawe* came to visit him, with an intention to stay about a week with him. Mr. Fanshawe, sitting by the bedside, perceived his lordship praying to God through Jesus Christ, and acquainted Dr. Eadcliffe, who attended my Lord Rochester in this illness, and was then in the house, with what he had heard • and told him, that my lord was certainly delirious, for to his knowledge, he said, he believed neither in God nor in Jesus Christ. The doctor, who had often heard him pray in the same manner, proposed to Mr. Fanshawe to go up to his lord- ship to be further satisfied touching this affair. When they came to his room, the doctor told my lord what Mr. Fanshawe said, upon which his lordship addressed himself to Mr. Fanshawe, to this effect : * Sir, it is true you and I have been very bad and profane together, and then I was of the opinion you mention. But now I am quite of another mind, and happy am I that I am so. I am very sensible how miserable I was whilst of another opinion. Sir, you may assure yourself that there is a Judge and future state ; ' and so entered into a very handsome dis- course concerning the Last Judgment, future state, &c., and concluded with a serious and pathetic exhortation to Mr, Fanshawe, to enter into another course of life ; adding that he (Mr. F.) knew him to be his friend ; that he never was more so than at this time : and, ' Sir,' said he, ' to use a Scripture expression, I am not mad, bat speak the words of truth and soberness.' Upon this Mr. Fanshawe trembled, and went immediately a-foot to Woodstock, and there hired a horse to Oxford, and thence took coach to London." * Probably Mr. William Fanshawe, who married Mary, one of Charles II.'s daughters by Mary Walters. liiBpri fttf-. j-itiiiriiirif nanaiiiii n 190 THE MERRY MOl^ARCH ; Bistop Burnet was a welcome visitor to tlie bedside of the dying Earl, who told him, at intervals, for he was in too feeble a condition to hold any prolonged speech, of the remorse with which he looked back upon his mis- spent life and its wasted opportunities, — of his deep contri- tion for having so offended his Maker and dishonoured his Eedeemer, — and of the longing with which he turned to his God and crucified Saviour. He hoped to obtain the Divine mercy, for he knew and felt that he had sincerely repented ; and after the storm and stress in which his mind had been tossed for weeks, he now enjoyed a heavenly calm. At one time he asked Burnet what he thought of the efficacy of a death-bed repentance. At another, he declared that, as for himself, he freely forgave all who had done him wrong; he bore ill will to no man, he had made arrangements for the payment of his debts, and suffered pain with cheerfulness. He was content to live or die, as God pleased ; and though it was a foolish thing for a man to pretend to choose whether he would live or die, yet, so far as wishes went, he was fain to die and be at rest. He knew that he could never again recover his health so ftir that life would leave any comfort for him ; and while he was confident he should be happy if he died, he feared that if he lived he might relapse. To his friends he sent affectionate messages, reminding them of the uncertain tenure of life, and enjoining them to publish to the world any circumstances connected with his own life and death which might possibly prove of benefit to others. It was his prayer, he said, that as by his life he had inflicted injury upon religion, he might at least do it some service by his death. At the Bishop's hands he received the bread and wine < OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 191 of the Holy Eucharist, his wife, for whom he expressed the most tender affection, participating with him. His children were brought to his bedside; he took leave of them lovingly, and bestowed upon them his solemn blessing. He sent, too, for all his servants, and while they surrounded his bed, declared to them in strong and simple words his regret for his dissolute life and pernicious opinions. At last, the slow decay came to an end ; the flickering lamp of life went out; and this man of brilliant parts and rare gifts expired, in the thirty-third year of his age, on the 26th of July, 1680. He was interred by the side of his father in the north aisle of Spilsbury Church, Oxfordshire. By his Countess, Eochester left four children ; Charles, the third Earl, who died on the 12th of November, 1686, and with whom the title became extinct ; Anne, whose second husband was Francis, the son of Fulke Greville, Lord Broke; Elizabeth, afterwards wife of Edward Montague, Earl of Sandwich ; and Mallet, who married John Yaughan, first Viscount Lisburne. M. Taine's portrait of Eochester is painted in the darkest colours. Byron allows his Corsair " one virtue" as a set-off against his "thousand crimes," but Taine deals less mercifully with the dissolute Earl. Here is his incisive sketch : — "His manners were those of a lawless and wretched mountebank; his delight was to haunt the stews, to de- bauch women, to write filthy songs and lewd pamphlets ; he spent his time between gossipping with the maids of honour, broils with men of letters, the receiving of insults, the givmg of blows. By way of playing the'' gallant he' eloped with his wife before he married her. Out of a 192 THE MERRY MONARCH; spirit of bravado, he declined fighting a duel, and gained the name of a coward. For five years together he was said to be drunk. The spirit within him failing of a worthy outlet, plunged him into adventures more befitting a clown. Once with the Duke of Buckingham he rented an inn on the Newmarket road, and turned innkeeper, supplying the husbands with drink and defiling their wives. He introduced himself, disguised as an old woman, into the house of a miser, robbed him of his wife, and passed her on to Buckingham. The husband hanged himself; they made very merry over the affair. At another time he disguised himself as a chairman, then as a beggar, and paid court to the gutter-girls. He ended by turning a quack astrologer, and vendor of drugs for procuring abortion, in the suburbs. It was the licentious- ness of a fervid imagination, which fouled itself as another would have adorned it, which forced its way into lewdness and folly as another would have done into sense and beauty.'^ All this may be, and, indeed, is true ; but on the other side it is only fair to remember that this profligate wit was capable of generous actions, and had the grace, in his soberer moments, to be ashame^l of the life he led, and of the waste of powers of which he was guilty. There is this excuse— we do not put it forward as altogether satis- factory—to be made for Rochester and his roistering companions ; that with superabundant vitality, and all the energy and ripe vigour of their race, they had absolutely no fitting field of action open to them. Beyond the seas no such outlets for a spirit of adventure were open then as are open now ; no great war braced up their man- hood, and awakened their loftier impulses. ParHamentary OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 193 I life offered no generous and elevating career ; no healthy public opinion held in check their riotous and exuberant animalism. So they went into the streets and the stews, and there exhausted the gifts and graces which, under happier circumstances, might have done so much for their country and themselves. They were unfortunate in the age into which they were born. A century earlier, and they would have shone among the daring spirits who adorned the times of great Elizabeth. A century later, and their pulses would have been stirred by that in- spiration of freedom and humanity which breathed a new life into the dry bones of the European nations. As it was, they came into an atmosphere of corruption and luxurious apathy, and sensual indulgence, the evil in- fluence of which not even a Sidney or a Eussell could wholly escape. We may and must condemn them, and yet something of pity may rightly mingle with our anger. On the literary work of Rochester we are not prepared to say that M. Taine's criticism is wholly just. He makes no attempt to separate the golden grain from the worth- less chaff, while he evidently accepts as Rochester's very much which belongs to other and even filthier writers. '' We cannot copy," he says, " even the titles of his poems ; they were written only for the haunts of vice. Stendhal said that love is like a dried-up bough cast into a mine; the crystals cover it, spread out into filigree work, and end by converting the worthless stick into a sparkling tuft of the purest diamonds. Rochester begins by depriving love of all its adornment, and to make sure of grasping it, converts it into a stick. Eveiy refined VOL. II. n 194 THE MERRY MONARCH ; sentiment, every fancy; tlie enchantment, the serene, sublime glow which transforms in a moment this wretched world of ours; the illusion which, uniting all the powers of our being, shows as perfection in a finite creature, and eternal bliss in a transient emotion, all has vanished; there remain but satiated appetites and palled senses. The worst of it is, that he writes without spirit, and methodically enough. He has no natural ardour, no picturesque sensuality ; his satires prove him a disciple of Boileau. Nothing is more disgusting than obscenity in cold blood. We can endure the obscene works of Giulio Eomano, and his Venetian voluptuousness, because in them genius sets ofi sensuality, and the loveliness of the splendid coloured draperies transforms an orgie into a work of art.* We pardon Eabelais, when we have entered into the deep current of manly joy and vigour, with which his feasts abound. We can hold our nose and have done with it, while we follow with admiration, and even sympathy, the torrent of ideas and fancies which flows through his mire. But to see a man trying to be elegant and remaining obscene, endeavouring to paint the sentiments of a navvy in the language of a man of the world, who tries to find a suitable metaphor for every kind of filth, who plays the blackguard studiously and deliberately, who, excused neither by genuine feeling, nor the glow of fancy, nor knowledge, nor genius, degrades a good style of writing to such work ; it is like a rascal who sets himself to sully a set of gems in a gutter. The ♦ Rnt Giulio Komano, and the writers who write as Romano painted, are infinitely more dangerous than Kocheeter. Evelyn saw that the insmuated Bensuality of "gentle Etherege" and Sedley was more corrupting than EoXster'B open lewdness. As for Rabela s. he descends mto depths mto which even Rochester would hardly have followed him. 1 OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 195 end of all is but disgust and illness. While La Fontaine continues to the last day capable of tenderness and happi- ness, this man at the age of thirty insults the weaker sex with spiteful malignity : — * When she is young, she whores herself for sport ; And when she's old, she bawds for her support. She is a snare, a shamble, and a stews ; Her meat and sauce she does for lechery choose, And does in laziness delight the more, Because by that she is provoked to whore. Ungrateful, treacherous, eaviously inclined, Wild beasts are tamed, floods easier far confined. Than is her stubborn and rebellious mind . Her temper so extravagant we find, She hates, or is impertinently kind. Would she be grave, she then looks like a devil, And like a fool or whore, when she be civil. Contentious, wicked, and not fit to trust. And covetous to spend it on her lust.' What a confession is such a judgment! what an abstract of life ! You see the roisterer stupified at the end of his career, dried up like a mummy, eaten away by ulcers. Amid the choruses, the crude satires, the remembrance of plans miscarried, the sullied enjoyments which are heaped up in his wearied brain as in a sink, the fear of damnation is persecuting; he dies a devotee at the age of thirty- three." That Rochester's coarse lines embody a libel on woman we readily admit, but Rochester drew from the women he was acquainted with— the shameless harlots, the aban- doned adulteresses, who made Charles's Court hideous. See them in the pages of Hamilton and Pepys,* and you feel that the wonder is, not that Rochester wrote of * One specimen will suffice:-" Here," says Pepys, "I first understood by their talk the meaning of company that were lately called Bailers • Harris telling how It was by a meeting of some young blades, where he was among them, and my Lady Burnet and her ladies ; and their dancing naked, and all the roguish things m the world." ' 1 196 THE MERRY MONARCH; them with such savage cynicism, but that he did not rather curse them as the cause of his indecency. How dijfferent might have been his life and death had he but had the good fortune to fall under the purifying influence of some woman worthy of the name! if he had lived among the Violas and Imogens of Shakespeare instead of among the Lucys and Lady Dapperwits of Wycherley ! Eochester was unquestionably a man of versatile genius, who, with wider culture and more knowledge of men and manners, might have added something considerable to his country's literature. As it was, he expended himself, when at his best and sanest, upon trifles. He had no earnest ambition, no lofty purpose; he took no serious view of life; it was enough for him if he pleased a mistress with a dainty love-song or stung a rival with an epigram. Yet his natural vigour and strength were such that epigram and love-song had almost always in them a true poetic touch. Unhappily his writings are stained by the lewdness which then permeated the social life of the English upper classes, and the wit and fancy which were capable of really noble work were degraded to the level of the bagnio. But we must again remind the reader that a large proportion of the coarse and indelicate verses ascribed to Eochester were not written by him, and that the only authentic edition of his works is that which was published in 169L When he chose he could write with a grace, a playful- ness, and a rhythmical flow worthy of all praise. For instance, the freshness, the tender exaggeration, the simple sweetness of the following song must be felt by every reader, and especially by the reader who is still in the flush of his first true passion : — I OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHAELES 11. 197 " My dear Mistress has a heart Soft as those kind looks she gave me When, with love's resistless art, And her eyes she did enslave me ; But her constancy's so weak, She's so wild and apt to wander, That my jealous heart would break Should we live one day asunder. Melting joys about her move, Killing pleasures, wounding blisses, She can dress her eyes in love, And her lips can arm with kisses ; Angels listen when she speaks, She's my delight, all mankind's wonder, But my jealous heart would break, Should we live one day asunder." He manages double-syllable endings with happy facility. €an anything be more fluent and graceful than this ?— " When on those lovely looks I gaze, To see a wretch pursuing, In raptures of a blest amaze. His pleasing happy ruin, 'Tis not for pity that I move ; His fate is too aspiring, Whose heart, broke with a load of love, Dies wishing and admiring. But if this murder you'd forego, Your slave from death removing, Let me your art of charming know, Or you learn mine of loving ; But whether life or death betide, In love 'tis equal measure, The victor lives with empty pride. The vanquished dies with pleasure." In his lyric on " The Bowl '' there is evidence of a facile fancy, while the versification is perfect in its musical flow and exquisite choice of words : — THE BOWL. " Contrive me, Vulcan, such a cup As Nestor used of old, Show all thy skill to trim it up, Damask it round with gold. \ 198 THE MERRY MONARCH ; Make it so large that, filled with sack Up to the swelling brim, Vast toasts on that delicious lake, Like ships at sea, may swim. Engrave not battle on his cheek, With war I've nought to do, I'm none of those that took Maestrick, Nor Yarmouth leaguer knew. Let it no name of planets tell, Fixed stars or constellations, For I am no Sir Sindropliel, Nor none of his relations. But carve thereon a spreading vine ; Then add two lovely boys: Their limbs in amorous folds entwine, The types of future joys. Cupid and Bacchus my saints are, May Drink and Love still reign, With wine I wash away my care, And then to love again." One more specimen of liis powers as a lyrist^ wliicli we take as foisted by him upon Fletcher's tragedy of " Valen- tinian.^' A comparison of it with Fletcher's own lyrics will illustrate the singular change in the spirit and form of English poetry which had been effected in half a cen- tury ^ : — Nymph. '* Injurious charmer of my vanquished heart, Canst thou feel love, and yet no pity know ? Since of myself from thee I cannot part, Invent some gentle way to let me go; For what with joy thou didst obtain, And I with more did give. In time will make thee false and vain, And me unfit to live." * Fletcher died in 1625 — twenty-two years before Rochester's birth, and fifty-five before his death. < OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 199 Shepherd, " Frail angel, that wouldst leave a heart forlorn, With vain pretence Falsehood therein might lie, Seek not to cast wild shadows o'er your scorn, You cannot sooner change than I can die ; To tedious life I'll never fall, Thrown from thy dear-loved breast ! He merits not to live at all Who cares to live unblest." "With Eochester," says Mr. Grosse, "the power of writing songs died in England until the age of Blake and Burns. He was the last of the Cavalier lyrists, and in some respects the best. In the qualities that a song demands, simplicity, brevity, pathos, and tenderness, he arrives nearer to pure excellence than any one between Carew and Burns. His style is without adornment, and, save in this one matter of song-writing, he is weighed down by the dryness and insufficiency of his age. But by the side of Sedley or of Congreve he seems as fresh as by the side of Dry den he seems light and flowing, turning his trill of song brightly and sweetly, with the consum- mate artlessness of true art." His satires are vigorous enough, but so stained with licentiousness that we cannot quote from them. We note, however, a terse and telling allusion to Charles II. as " A merry monarch, scandalous and poor." Modern readers will hardly agree with Johnson that the poem " On Nothing " (suggested, perhaps, by the French poet, Passerat's, " Nihil ") is " the strongest effort of his muse ; " but it contains some ingenious quips and quiddities : — " Nothing ! thou elder brother even to shade, Thou hadst a being ere the world was made, And, well fixed, art alone of ending not afraid. . . . ' i ill j ■ 200 THE MERRY MONARCH; Nothing, who dwell'et with fools in grave disguise, For whom they reverend shapes and forms devise, Lawn sleeves, and furs, and gowns, when they like thee look wise. French truth, Dutch prowess, British policy, Hihemian learning, Scotch civility, Spaniards' dispatch, Danes' wit, are mainly seen in thee." Eocliester's prose style was excellent. His letters are among the best in the language ; they are written with so much clearness, pertinency, force, and such happy terms of expression. Here is one addressed to a reckless man of pleasure, like himself, Sir Henry Saville : — " Whether Love, Wine, or Wisdom, which rule you by turns, have the present ascendant, I can nor pretend to de- termine at this distance ; but Good Nature, which waits about you with more diligence than Godfrey himself, is my security that you are not unmindful of your former friends. To be from you, and forgotten by you at once, is a misfortune I never was criminal enough to merit, since to the black and fair countesses I villanously be- trayed the daily addresses of your divided heart. You forgave that upon the first bottle, and upon the second, on my conscience, would have renounced the whole sex. Oh ! that second bottle, Henry, is the sincerest, wisest, and most impartial downright friend we have ; tells us truth of ourselves, and forces us to speak truth of others ; banishes flattery from our tongues and distrust from our hearts ; sets us above the mean policy of court prudence, which makes us lie to one another all day, for fear of being betrayed by others at night. And before God I believe the arrantest villain breathing is honest as long as that bottle lives, and few of that tribe dare venture upon him, at least among the courtiers and statesmen. I have seriously considered one thing, that of the three businesses OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II, 201 U j of this age— women, politics, and drinking, the last is the only exercise at which you and I have not proved ourselves arrant fumblers. If you have the vanity to think otherwise, when we meet next, let us appeal to friends of both sexes, and, as they shall determine, live and die mere drunkards or entire lovers: for, as we mingle the matter, it is hard to say which is the most tiresome creature, the loving drunkard or the drunken lover." " Bath, the 22nd of June." But his letters to his wife possess an additional charm ; the charm of an affectionate nature. They are tender, playful, and loving. It is impossible to read them with- out forming a strong impression that their writer had in him the germs of abundant good, and, under happier social conditions, or had his life been fortunately inspired by some noble motive, would have done justice to his rich endowments of mind and person. He was the victim, so far as any man can be, who, after all, has, to a certain extent, his fate in his own hands, of circumstances. It was his misfortune, while young, to be thrown into the midst of a dissolute Court, and to be entangled in a web of temptation from which he never succeeded in extricat- ing himself. His very virtues and engaging qualities — his wit, his high-bred manners, his fascinating conversa- tion, his generosity— helped him on to his ruin. But no severer condemnation of the profligate society cherished by Charles II. can be found, or is needed, than that which is supplied by the wrecked life and dishonoured name of Eochester. Of his letters to his wife, who, be it said, was fully worthy of them, we give some specimens : — ii V \ III 202 THE MERRY MONARCH; " Wife, " I am very glad to hear news from you, and I think it very good when I hear you are well ; pray be pleased to send me word what you are apt to be pleased with, that I may show you how good a husband I can be ; I would not have you so formal as to j udge of the kindness of a letter by the lengtli of it, but believe of everything that it is as you would have it. ^' 'Tis not an easy thing to be entirely happy ; but to be kind is very easy, and that is the greatest measure of happiness. I say not this to put you in mind of being kind to me ; you have practised that so long, that I have a joyful confidence you will never forget it ; but to show that I myself have a sense of what the methods of my life seemed so utterly to contradict, I must not be too wise about my own follies, or else this letter had been a book dedicated to you, and published to the world. It will be more pertinent to tell you, that very shortly the King goes to Newmarket, and then I shall wait on you at Adderbury ; in the meantime, think of anything you would have me do, and I shall thank you for the occa- sion of pleasing you. " Mr. Morgan I have sent on this errand, because he plays the rogue here in town so extremely, that he is not to be endured ; pray, if he behaves liimself so at Adder- bury, send me word, and let him stay till I send for him. Pray, let Ned come up to town ; I have a little business with him, and he shall be back in a week. " Wonder not that I have not written to you all this while, for it was hard for me to know what to write upon several accounts ; but in this I will only desire you not to be too much amazed at the thoughts my mother has of i OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 203 you, since, being mere imaginations, they will as easily vanish, as they were groundlessly created ; for my own part, I will make it my endeavour they may. What you desired of me in your other letter, shall punctually be performed. You must, I think, obey my mother in her commands to wait on her at Aylesbury, as I told you in my last letter. I am very dull at this time, and there- fore think it pity in this humour to testify myself to you any further. Only, dear wife, I am your humble servant, " Rochester." There is a pleasant lively humour in the follow- ing:— '' From our tub at Mrs. Forward's, this 18th of Oct. " Wife, " We are now in bed, so that we are not in a condition of writing either according to thy merit or our desert. We therefore do command thy benign acceptance of these our letters, in what way soever by us inscribed or not directed, willing thee therewithal to assure our sole daughter and her issue female, the Lady Anne Tart, of our best respects. This with your care and diligence, in the execution of our firmans, is at present the utmost of our will and pleasure. " I went away like a rascal without taking leave, dear wife. It is an unpolished way of proceeding, which a modest man ought to be ashamed of. I have left you a prey to your own imaginations amongst my relations, the worst of damnations. But there will come an hour of deUverance, till when, may my mother be merciful unto you. The small share I could spare you out of my pocket 204 THE MEERY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 205 l| I liave sent as a debt to Mrs. Rouse : within a week or ten days I return you more. " Pray write as often as you have leisure to your '^ Rochester." In the next specimen a little soreness is evident : — "My Wife, " The difficulties of pleasing your Ladyship do increase so fast upon me, and are grown so numerous, that, to a man less resolved than myself never to give it over, it would appear a madness ever to attempt it more. But through your frailties mine ought not to multiply. You may therefore secure yourself that it will not be easy for you to put me out of my constant resolutions to satisfy you in all I can. I confess there is nothing will so much contribute to my assistance in this as your dealing freely with me; for since you have thought it a wise thing to trust me less and have reserves, it has been out of my power to make the best of my proceedings effectual to what I intended them. At a distance, I am likeliest to learn your mind, for you have not a very obliging way of delivering it by word of mouth ; if, therefore, you will let me know the particulars in which I may be useful to you, I will show my readiness as to my own part ; and if I fail of the success I wish, it shall not be the fault of your humble servant, " Rochester.'' His letters to his son are not less admirable : — " I hope, Charles, when you receive this, and know that I have sent this gentleman to be your tutor, you will be very glad to see I take such care of you, and be very grate- ful, which is best shown in being obedient and diligent. You are now grown big enough to be a man, if you can be wise enough ; for the way to be truly wise is to serve God, learn your book, and observe the instructions of your parents first, and next your tutor, to whom I have entirely resigned you for this seven years, and according as you employ that time, you are to be happy or unhappy for ever ; but I have so good an opinion of you, that I am glad to think you will never deceive me ; dear child, learn your book and be obedient, and you shall see what a father I will be to you. You shall want no pleasure while you are good, and that you may be so are my constant prayers. " Rochester." "Charles, I take it very kindly that you write me, though seldom, and wish heartily you would behave yourself so as that I might sliow how much I love you without being ashamed. Obedience to your grand- mother, and those who instruct you in good things, is the way to make you happy here and for ever. Avoid idleness, scorn lying, and God will bless you. " Rochester." Such was this brilliant man of fashion, in his happier and worthier moods, and under the purifying influence of the sweet Home affections."^ * Dr. Johnson, "Lives of the Poets," suh voce; "Poems by Earl of Rochester," ed. 1691 ; " Some Passages in the Life and Death of John, Eurl of Rochester," by Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury (IG80^ • Peovs^ " Diary ; " Evelyn, « Diary ; " etc, etc. ^' 206 THE MERKY MONAECH J George Yilliers, Duke of Buckingham. The pseudo-romance attacWng to tlie career of this splendid but wayward noble has given him a remarkable place in our literature. It has been his strange fortune to have had his memory preserved by the genius of Dryden, Pope, and Scott. It cannot be said that the portraits they have drawn present him in flattering colours, but they have seized the popular imagination, so that it may well be doubted whether George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, is not the best known of all the figures that played their parts in the tragi-comedy of Charles the Second's reign. Before we attempt a sketch of his life we shall bring together these skilfully elabo- rated " characters " of the brilliant Duke, together with some other notices, showing the light in which historians have agreed to regard him. Everybody knows that he is the Zimri of Dryden's "Absalom and Achitophel," and in that fine satire no other portrait is drawn with more care or point. It has all the terseness of an epigram; its compact and vigorous couplets make themselves remembered; and their irre- sistible force leaves us no time to doubt their truth : — "Some of tlieir cliiefs were princes of the land; In the first rank of tliese did Zimri stand : A man so various, that he seemed to be Not one, bnt all mankind's epitome: Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong ; Was everything by starts, and nothing long; But, in the course of one revolving moon, Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon : Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. Blest madman, who could every hour employ With something new to wish or to enjoy ! lluiling anil })raising wt-rr his usual themes; And both, to show his Judgment, in extremes: BBiffliaiBiai^iiiiii OR, ENGLA:ND under CHARLES II. o 07 So over-violent, or over-civil, That every man with him was God or Devil. In squandering wealth was his peculiar art: Nothing went unrewarded but desert. Beggared by fools, whom still he found too late; He had his jest, and they had his estate. He laughed himself from court ; then sought relief By forming parties, but could ne'er be brief: For, spite of him, the weight of business fell On Absalom and wise Achitophel : * Thus, wicked but in will, of means bereft. He left not faction, but of that was left." Not less finished is Pope's antithetical description of the mean and obscure death of the once brilliant Duke :— " In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung, The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung, On once a flock-bed, but repaired with i^traw, With tape-tied curtains, never meant to draw. The George and Garter dangling from that bed Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red. Great Villiers lies— ahis I how changed from him, That life of pleasure and that soul of whim ! Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love ; Or just as gay at council, in a ring Of mimic statesmen and their merry King. No wit to flatter, left of all his store ! No fool to laugh at, which he valued more- There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends, And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends I " Says Horace Walpole, speaking of the Duke:—'' His portrait has been drawn by four masterly hands : Burnet has hewn it out with his rouj^^h chisel— Count Hamilton touched it with that slight delicacy that finishes while it seems but to sketch— Dryden catched the living likeness —Pope completed the historical resemblance." He has also attempted it himself :—" When this extraordinary man," he says, " with the figure and genius of Alcibiades, could *« Absalom:" the Duke of Monmouth. "Achitophel:" the Earl nf Shaftesbury. 208 THE MERRY MONARCH ; equally charm the presbyteriaii Fairfax and the dissolute Charles ; when he alike ridiculed that witty King and his solemn Chancellor; when he plotted the ruin of hi& country with a cabal of bad ministers, or, equally un- principled, supported its cause with bad patriots, one laments that such parts should have been devoid of any virtue. But when Alcibiades turns chemist ; when he is a real bubble and a visionary miser ; when ambition is but a frolic ; when the worst designs are for the foolishest ends^ contempt extinguislies all reflections on his character." Bishop Burnet describes him as " a man of noble presence. He had a great liveliness of wit, and a peculiar faculty of turning all things into ridicule, with bold figures, and natural descriptions. He had no sort of literature, only he was drawn into chemistry; and for some years he thouglit he was very near the finding of the philosopher's stone, which had the effect that attends on all such men as he was, when they are drawn in to lay out for it. He had no principles of religion, virtue, or friendship; pleasure, frolic, or extravagant diversion was all that he laid to heart. He was true to nothing ; for he was not true to himself. He had no steadiness nor conduct; he could keep no secret, nor execute any design without spoiling it. He could never fix his thoughts, nor govern his estate, though then the greatest in England. He was bred about the King, and for many years he had a great ascendant over him ; but he spake of him to all persons with that contempt, that at last he drew a last- ing disgrace upon himself. And he at length ruined both body and mind, fortune and reputation equally. The madness of vice appeared in his person in very eminent instances ; since at last be became contemptible and poor. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES IT. 209 sicklj-, and sunk in his parts, as well as in all other respects ; so that his conversation was as much avoided as ever it had been courted.'^ In still blacker colours the unfortunate Duke is painted by Butler, the author of " Hudibras," who thus revenged himself upon a man he hated:—" The Duke of Bucks '' he says, '' is one that has studied the whole body of vice. His parts are disproportionate to the whole ; and, like a monster, he has more of some, and less of others, than he should have. He has pulled down all that nature raised in him, and built himself up again after a model of his own. He has dammed up all those lights that nature made into the noblest prospects of the world, and opened other little blind loop-holes backward, by turning day into night, and night into day. His appetite to his pleasures is diseased and crazy, like the pica in a woman, that longs to eat that which was never made for food, or a girl in the green sickness, that eats chalk and mortar. Perpetual surfeits of pleasure have filled his mind with bad and vicious humours (as well as his body with a nursery of diseases), which makes him affect new and extravagant ways, as being sick and tired with the old. Continual wine, women, and music put false values upon thino-s which, by custom^ become habitual, and debauch his understanding so, that he retains no right notion nor sense of things. And as the same dose of the same physic has no operation on those that are much used to it; so his pleasures require a larger proportion of excess and variety, to render him sensible of them. Be rises, eats, and goes to bed by the Julian account, lon^^- after all others that go by the new style, and keeps the same hours with owls and the antipodes. He is a great VOL. II. p 210 THE MERRY MONARCH; observer of tlie Tartar customs, and never eats till the Great Cliam, having dined, makes proclamation that all the world may go to dinner. He does not dwell in his house, but haunts it like an evil spirit, that walks all night, to disturb the family, and never appears by day. He lives perpetually benighted, runs out of his life, and loses his time as men do their ways in the dark: and as blind men are led by their dogs, so is he goverened by some mean servant or other, that relates to his pleasures. He is as inconstant as the moon which he lives under ; and although he does nothing but advise with his piUers all day, he is as great a stranger to himself as he is to the rest of the world. His mind entertains all things very freely that come and go, but, like guests and strangers, they are not welcome if they stay long. This lays him open to all cheats, quacks, and impostors, who apply to every particular humour while it lasts, and afterwards vanish. Thus, with St. Paul, though in a different sense, he dies daily, and only lives in the night. He deforms nature, while he intends to adorn her, like Indians that hang jewels in their lips and noses. His ears are per- petually drilled with a fiddlestick. He endures pleasures with less patience than other men do their pains." "^ In his " Memoirs of Count Grammont," Count Hamil- ton, whose touch is exact and incisive, light as it ap- pears, in his scandalous chronicle of Frances Stewart, says : — " The Duke of Buckingham formed the design of governing her in order to ingratiate himself with the King; God knows what a governor he would have been, and what a head he was possessed of, to guide another ; however, he was the properest man in the world to * Butler, " Posthumous Works," ii., 72, OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 211 insinuate himself with Miss Stewart," who was very childish in her behaviour and amusements, and delighted in building houses of cards, " as playful children do." She had, however, a passion for music, and had some taste for singing. Now, according to Hamilton, the Duke '' who built the finest towers of cards imaginable, had an agreeable voice : she had no aversion to scandal ; and the Duke was both the father and the mother of scandal; he made songs, and invented old women's stories with which she was delighted; but his particular talent consisted in turning into ridicule whatever was ridiculous in other people, and in taking them off, even in their presence, without their perceiving it. In short, he could act all parts with so much grace and pleasantry, that it was difiicult to do without him, when he had a mind to make himself agreeable. . . He was extremely handsome, and still thought himself much more so than he really was. Although he had a great deal of discernment, yet his vanity made him mistake some civilities as intended for his i)ei'son, which were bestowed only on his wit and drollery. ^^ The master-hand of Scott has portrayed the splendidly wayward Duke with wonderful power and fidelity in his romance of '^ Peveril of the Peak." The reader will remember the scene in which the pretended Mauritanian sorceress addresses the Duke with so much boldness. " What are you ? " she says. " Nay, frown not ; for you must hear the truth for once. Nature has done its part, and made a fair outside, and courtly education hath added its share. You are noble, it is the accident of birth — handsome, it is the caprice of nature — generous, because to give is more easy than to refuse— well-ap- 212 THE MERRY MONARCH ; parelled, it is to the credit of your tailor — well-natured in the main, because you have youth and health — brave, because to be otherwise were to be degraded — and witty, because you cannot help it. ... I have neither allowed you a heart nor a head. . . . Nay, never redden as you would fly at me. I say not but nature may have given you both ; but folly has confounded the one, and selfish- ness perverted the other." With these estimates before us of his complex character, we proceed to sVetch the career of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. George Villiers, son of the first Duke of Buckingham of that family, was born at Wallingford House, St. James's Park, on the 30th of January, 1627. His mother was Lady Catherine Manners, and the daughter and heiress of the wealthy Earl of Eutland. Thus, while to his father he owed the proudest title of any subject in England, he was indebted to his mother for the greatest estate. He was only a year and a half old when his father fell beneath the knife of Felton, and public wrongs were avenged by individual enmity. His younger brother. Lord Francis Yilliers, was a posthumous child. The two brothers were educated with the children of Charles I., and at an early age entered Trinity College, Cambridge. But the outbreak of tlie Civil War kindled their loyal and chivalrous sympathies; and, suddenly abandoning their studies, they left the University and repaired to the royal camp, just before the attack upon Lichfield. For this imprudent exhibition of fidelity they were punished by the confiscation of their estates ; which, however, the Parlia- ment very soon returned them in generous recognition of the fact that they were young and inexperienced. They OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 213 were then sent to travel abroad, under the care of their tutor, a Mr. Aylesbury, and the young Duke dazzled the nobles of France and Italy by the splendid state which he maintained. Their chief stay was made at Florence and at Rome, where the Duke studied mathematics under Abraham Woodhead, the Roman Catholic controver- sialist. When, at a later period, Woodhead was ejected from his fellowship in University College, Oxford, by the influence of the dominant faction, his former pupil generously lodged him at York House. The two brothers returned to England in 1648, when the Civil War was in its last throes. Though the King's cause was hopeless, they gallantly joined the small force assembled by Lord Holland, who appointed the Duke his master of the horse. Closely pressed by the Common- wealth soldiers, under Colonel Rich, the little band of cavaliers fell back towards Kingston in Surrey; but at Nonsuch, near Ewell, were overtaken and defeated (July 7th). This was the last stroke struck on behalf of Charles L Lord Holland was taken prisoner; Lord Francis Villiers slain, while, with his back to a tree, and refusing quarter, he fought against overwhelming num- bers. On this elm (says Aubrey), which was cut down in 1680, was carved an ill-shaped V for Villiers, in memory of the brave young noble.* * Two difEerent versions of the circumstances of his death, are on record. Brian Fairfax, in his " Memoirs of the Duke of Bnckingham" (p. 17), gays : — " My Lord Francis, at the head of his troop, having his horse slain under him, got to an oak tree in the hij^^hway about two miles from Kingston, where he stood with his back against it, defending himself, scorn- ing to ask quarter, and they barbarously refusing to give it ; till with nine wounds in his beautiful face and body, he was slain. The oak tree is his monument, and has the two first letters of his name, F. V., cut in it to this day." On the other hand, Ludlow, in his " Memoirs " (i. 256), tells -a more scandalous story : — *' The Lord Francis, presuming perhaps that his beauty would have charmed the soldiers, as it had done Mrs. Kirke, for whom he had made a splendid entertainment the night before he left the 214 THE MEREY MONARCH; Meanwliile, the Duke made his way towards St. Neot's, attended b}' Tobias Eustat ;* but the house in which he took refuge was presently surrounded by the enemy, and perceiving that only in a desperate measure lay any means- of safety, he dashed through the leaguer, sword in hand, and effected his escape. By way of London he gained the sea coast, and embarking in a fishing-boat, joined Prince Charles, who, with a small squadron, was cruising in the Downs. The Parliament called upon him to surrender within forty days ; but he gallantly adhered to the royal cause, and was accordingly deprived of his vast estates. This, we must own, was a trial of loyalty which few young men of twenty would have been able to withstand, aaid that there was something noble in the Duke's nature we may fairly argue from his loyalty under such harsh conditions. Something was saved for the youn g Duke out of the wreck of his fortunes. An old servant, one John Trailman, who had been allowed to remain at York House, sue ceeded, by the exercise of great pains and ingenuity, in forwarding to him at Antwerp the valuable collection of pictures formed by the first Duke during his travels in Italy. By the sale of these pictures Buckingham supported himself while in exile. When the Scots invited Charles II. to take possession of his Northern Kingdom, Buckingham was the only Englishman of quality they permitted to accompany him; and many lively stories are told of the ridicule which, in town, and made her a present of plate to the value of a thousand pounds, stayed behind his company, when nnseason.ibly daring the troopers, and refusing to take quarter, he was killed, and after his death there was found upon him some of the hair of Mrs. Kirke sewed iu a piece of ribbon that hung next his skin." * Afterwards groom of the bedchamber to Charles II. OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHAELES II. 215 private, he and the young monarch lavished on the sour faces, canting language, and rigid tenets of the Covenan- ters. At Worcester Field he fought bravely by the King's side (September 3, 1656) ; and after the battle was lost, accompanied him in his flight as far as Boscobel House. There he parted from him ; and, with Lords Derby and Lauderdale, went northward, in the hope of overtaking General Lesley, with the main body of the Scottish horse. After dispersing a small body of the Commonwealth troops under Colonel Blundel, they were encountered, near Newport, by Colonel Lilburn's regiment, and the two Earls were taken prisoners. Buckingham, and half-a-dozen other Cavaliers, abandoning their horses, crept along the lanes and fields to a wood at Blowe Park, where the Duke, having placed his George (given him by Queen Henrietta Maria) in safe custody, exchanged clothes with a labourer, and was conveyed by Nicholas Matthews, a carpenter, to Bilstrop, in Nottinghamshire. There he was hospitably entertained by a " hearty cavalier " named Hawley, and after rest and refreshment, proceeded to his kinswoman. Lady Villiers, at Brooksby, in Lincolnshire. Finally, after enduring many hardships, he reached London in safety. The strain of waywardness in his nature which did so much to neutralise the value of his gifts of mind and person here first showed itself. It might have been thought that, at the very head-quarters of his ene- mies, he would have lived in privacy and chosen some obscure retreat; but, if a gossiping chronicler of the times may be credited, he attired himself as a mounte- bank, and played his antics in the most public places. « He caused himself to be made a Jack Pudding's coat, a little hat with a fox's tail in it, and adorned with cock's 216 THE MEERY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 217 ii feathers. Sometimes he appeared in a wizard's mask; sometimes he had his face bedaubed with flour, sometimes with lamp-black, as the flincy took him. He had a stage erected at Charing Cross, where he was attended by violins and puppet-players. Every day he produced ballads of his own composition upon what passed in town, wherein he himself often had a share. These he sung before several thousands of spectators, who every day came to see and hear him. He also sold mithridate and Ms galbanura plaister in this great city, in the midst of his enemies, whilst we were obliged to fly, and to conceal ourselves in some hole or other." It is impossible that Buckingham's proceedings can have been unknown to the authorities; but the Commonwealth Government were probably content to ignore the freaks of a young man of twenty-three, so long as he abstained from political in- trigues. Growing weary of this amusement, Buckingham suddenly left London, and hastened to cross over to France. Incap- able of rest or repose, he joined the French army as a volunteer, and won distinction by his gallantry at the sieges of Arras and Valenciennes. About this time Parliament conferred on Sir Thomas Fairfax a large portion of the Buckingham estates, some of which, however, the Puritan general had the grace to restore to the Duchess. Then to the excitable imao-ina- tion of the young Duke occurred an idea worthy of a Don Quixote or any of the heroes of the old chivalry. He proposed to himself to recover his patrimonial inheritance by the simple process of wedding Mary Fairfax, the General's only daughter and heiress. To be sure, as a preliminary it was needful to see and be seen ; which was no easy matter in the case of an exile. And further, if the youny lady's consent were obtained, the sanction of the father was indispensable, and that this would be forth- coming was by no means a certain result. But to triumph over difiiculties was Buckingham's great delight, and at length, in the summer of 1657, he boldly crossed over to England, and appeared before Fairfax as a suitor for his daughter's hand. The young lady was charmed, no doubt, by the romance of the adventure, and speedily won by the graceful manners and lively conversation of her handsome gallant. Nor was her father averse to the match. He was somewhat troubled in conscience by the possession of the confiscated estates, which would thus return to their legitimate owner in a natural and facile manner ; and as he was himself of aristocratic descent, he was by no means unwilling that his daughter should occupy the highest position in the English nobility. The marriage accordingly took place on the 7th of September, 1657, at Fairfax's seat of New Appleton, near York. Cromwell, when he heard of it, committed Buckingham to the Tower, and re- fused his release when petitioned for it by Fairfax. The following is the purport of the reply to the General's memorial: — " At the Cofncil at Whitehall. " Tuesday, 17th November, 1657. " His Highness having communicated to the Council that the Lord Fairfax made address to him, with some desires on behalf of the Duke of Buckingham : Ordered, that the resolves and Act of Parliament, in the case of the said Duke, be communicated to the Lord Fairfax, as the grounds of the Council's proceedings touching the said 218 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 219 Duke ; and that there be withal signified to the Lord Fair- fax, the CounciFs civil respects to his lordship's own person. That the Earl of Miilgrave, the Lord Deputy Fleetwood, and the Lord Strickland, be desired to deliver a messacre from the Council to the Lord Fau-fax, to the effect aforesaid. " Henry Scobell, Clerk of the Council." On the accession of Richard Cromwell, in 1658, the Duke was removed to Windsor Castle, and allowed to enjoy the company of the poet Cowley, whose acquaintance he had made while a student at Cambridge. Early in the following year he obtained his release, through the in- fluence of his powerful friends. In the Merciirius Politicus for February 21st, 1658-9, is the following entry :— "The humble petition of George Duke of Buckingham was this day read. Eesolved, That George Duke of Buckingham, now prisoner at Windsor Castle, upon his engagement upon his honour at the bar of this House, and upon the engagement of Lord Fairfax, in twenty thousand pounds, that the said Duke shall peaceably demean him- self for the future, and shall not join with, or abet, or have any correspondence with, any of the enemies of the Lord Protector, and of this Commonwealth, in any of the parts beyond the sea, or within this Commonwealth, shall be discharged of his imprisonment and restraint ; and that the Governor of Windsor Castle be required to bring the said Duke of Buckingham to the bar of this House on Wednesday next, to engage his honour accordingly. Ordered, that the security of twenty thousand pounds to be given by the Lord Fairfax, on the behalf of the Duke of Buckingham, be taken in the name of his Highness the Lord Protector." After his release the young Duke retired to his father- in-law^s seat at New Appleton, where, with his wonderful faculty for adapting himself to the most novel conditions, he lived the quiet and orderly life of a country squire of the old school, and gained the esteem of Fairfax by his Puritanical professions. This was a happy time for the Duchess, who was afterwards to suffer so much from his gross infidelities. It was her misfortune that nature had not fitted her to retain the affections of her volatile husband. Her person was far from prepossessing — she is spoken of as " lean, brown, and little " — while she had neither the fascination of manner nor the vivacity of conversation in which the absence of physical attractions is forgotten. All that can be said of her — and it is no mean praise — is that she was pure and amiable ; but purity and amiability were not the womanly qualities most admired by George, Duke of Buckingham. At the Restoration Buckingham recovered his estates, and was appointed a member of the Privy Council, as well as Master of the Horse, a Lord of the Bedchamber, and Lord Lieutenant of Yorkshire. At once he plunged into the career of profligacy and pleasure by which his name is best remembered. For shining in a Court like Charles II's., he possessed every qualification. High birth, rank, and abundant wealth ; a handsome countenance and well-knit figure ; while the charm of his address was irresistible, and no one excelled him in pointing an epigram or turning a compliment. He moved with an easy elegance, which drew all eyes upon him as he sauntered into the presence chamber or aired his graces in the Mall. " No man," says Madame Dunois, " was ever handsomer, or more nicely made ; and there was such an attraction in his conversation that he •I 220 THE MERRY MONARCH; pleased more by liis wit than even by bis person. His words subdued every heart ; he seemed borne for gallantry and magnificence, and in both respects surpassed all the lords of the English Court." Buckingham's pursuits were as various as his talents. He dabbled in aleliemy, and amused himself with the vain dream of discovering the philosopher's stone; he scribbled with careless fluency lampoons and love-songs ; he lavished large sums of money in building— an amusement as fas- cinating and as dangerous as gambling, in which he also indulged; he patronised poets and made love to frail beauties ; he led the fashion in gay and gorgeous cos- tumes ; and at Court he was foremost in every intrigue and the moving spirit in every startling exploit. In this way he contrived to get rid of his vast income, until to meet his expenditure he was compelled to mortgage his estates, and borrow money at usurious rates from the Jews. Of the buffoonery with which he at times condescended to divert the king an instance will suflace. On one occasion he entered the royal presence attired as the Lord Chancellor— whom he hated— mimicking his stately gait and his habit of puffing out his cheeks ; a pair of bellows hanging before him for the purse, while Colonel Titus, as mace-bearer, preceded him with a fire-shovel on bis shoulders. The imitation was so perfect that the specta- tors were convulsed with laughter. It would not be interesting, and assuredly it would be far from profitable, to dwell upon the amours of this volatile man of pleasure. He was by no means the most profligate of Charles's profligate Court, but one of his en- gagements was attended with consequences which has given it a sinister imp ortance. Among the beautiful women OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 221 of the time a foremost place was held by Anna Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury, whose name had already figured in many a chronique scandaleuse before she became the mistress of Buckingham. As both parties were notorious for their fickleness, it was generally believed that the intrigue would be of brief duration ; nevertheless it lasted for years, and it may be doubted whether the frail Coun- tess was not the only woman for whom Buckingham felt a real attachment. " The Duke of Buckingham and Lady Shrewsbury," says Hamilton, " remained for a long period both happy and contented : never before had her constancy been of so long a duration ; nor had he ever been so submissive and respectful a lover. This continued until Lord Shrewsbury, who never before had shown the least uneasiness at his lady's misconduct, now chose to resent it: true, it was public enough, but less dishonourable to her than any of her former intrigues. Poor Lord Shrewsbury, too polite a man to make any reproaches to his wife, was resolved to have redress for his injured honour. He accordingly chal- lenged the Duke of Buckingham ; and the Duke of Buck- ingham, as a reparation for his honour, having killed him upon the spot, remained a peaceable possessor of this famous Helen^' (January 16th, 1667).* * Pepys has the following entry in his Diary, January 17th, 1667: — " Much discourse of the duel yesterday between the Duke of Buckingham, Holmes, and one Jenkins on one side, and my Lord of Shrewt>bury, Sir John Talbot, and one Bernard Howard, on the other side; and all about my Lady Shrewsljury, who is at this time, and hatli for a great while been, a mistress to the Duke of Buckingham. And so lier husband challenged him, and they met yesterday in a close near Barn Kims, and there fought : and my Lord Shrewsbury is run through the body, from the right breast through the shoulder; and Sir Jolm Talbot all along up one of his arms; and Jenkins killed u{)on the {dace, and the rest all in a little measure w(mnded. This will make the world think that the King hath good counsellors abt)ut him, when the Duke of Buckingham, the greatest man about him, is a fellow of no more sobriety than to fight about a mistress. And this may prove a very bad accident to the Duke of Buckingham, but that my Lady Cattlemaine do I 222 THE MEERY MONARCH ; Lord Shrewsbury was not killed on tlie spot, but, liaving been run tlirougb the body from the right breast to the shoulder, died of the wound on the 16th of March. The affair is tragical enough in this brief statement of it, and supplies a moral which anyone may read ; but we may possibly dismiss as invented embellishments the stories that the shameless woman for whom so much blood was shed held the Duke's horse during the combat, attired as a page, and that afterwards the Duke passed the night with her in his bloody shirt. For the credit of human nature let us hope that these horrible circumstances are not true. Without them the narrative is dark enough, and fills the mind with wonder that the chief characters who figure in it were not overwhelmed with the anger and detestation of society. Parliament, it is true, took some slight notice of the double adultery and murder, faintly remembering the maxim that -Noblesse oblige." Buckingham was called to the bar of the House of Peers for '' scandalously living with Lady Slirewsbury as man and wife, he being a married man ; and for having killed my Lord Shrewsbury, after he had debauched his wife ; " but it does not appear that any public censure was pronounced upon him. Two months after the death of her husband, the Duke installed the Countess in his own house. For the first time in her married life the Duchess found courage to riilp all at thi-^ time as much as ever she did, and she will, it is believed, keep In iir te < vell\^^^ the Duke of Buckingham : thougli this is a time that the Kinff^vill he very backward, I supp..se, to appear in such a busmess. And it i^)rettv to hear how the King had some notion ot this challenge a 1 nr two -L) an n.v l.ord General to coniine tlie Duke, or ^\: t^^^'S^rVj^ouhl not do any .uch thing as fight: and the general rusted to the King that he, sending for him. would do it ; and the King irZted to tie general. And it is said that n.y Lord Shrewsbury's case is to be feared t at he mav die too ; and that may make it much worse for the Duke of Bualinghanf : and I shall not le much sorry for it, that we may have some sober man come in his room to assist in the Government. on, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 223 protest against the dishonour done her, and angrily pro- tested that it was impossible she could live under the same roof with her husband's paramour. '' So I thought. Madam," said the Duke, coldly, " and have therefore ordered your coach to convey you to your father." It has been stated that the Duke was married to the Countess by his chaplain. Dr. Sprat; but as the illegal act would have placed him in the power of his enemies, we may dismiss the tale as without foundation. He had a son by the Countess, to whom the King was weak enough and shameless enough to stand godfather. Buckingham be- stowed on him his second title of Earl of Coventry ; but the child died at an early age. There can be no question that the Countess, by her wit and beauty, exercised over the fickle Duke a very con- siderable influence. The French Ambassador thought it worth his while to secure her good offices for political pur- poses, and it is on record that he presented her with a gratuity of 10,000 livres. A pension was afterwards settled upon her by the French Court, and she then undertook that "she would make Buckingham comply with Kino- Charles in all things." That he was capable of better things, and, if he had concentrated his powers, could have done some worthy work in English literature, was shown by his amazingly clever burlesque of "The Eehearsal," produced at the King's Theatre in 1671. Its merits are very great: it is original in design, is witty, decent, well written, and skilfully constructed. Its vigorous protest against the extravagance and lewdness of the Caroline drama was urgently needed, for Dryden and Sir Eobert Howard had flooded the stage with nonsensical and indecent rant. 224 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 225 It was in just ridicule of this hyperbolical absurdity that Buckingham wrote his "Eehearsal,"^ produced at the Theatre Royal on 7th of December, 1671. Its success was immediate, " the very popularity of the plays ridi- culed aiding/' as Sir Walter Scott has remarked, " the effect of the satire, since evrerybody had in their recollec- tion the originals of the passages parodied ; '' and the heroic drama eventually sank under the effectual blows levelled at it by the satirist. ^' The Rehearsal " is, of course, in five acts, but it has no plot ; the characters come and go without any interde- pendence upon each other's actions. These characters are Bayes,t Johnson, and Smith ; the Two Kings of Brent- ford (an allusion, perhaps, to Charles II. and his brother, the Duke) ; Prince Prettyman, Prince Volscius ; Gentle- man Usher ; Physician ; Drawcansir (to rhyme with Dryden's Almanzor) ; General and Lieutenant- General ; Cordelia, Tom Thimble, Fisherman, Sun, Thunder, Players, Soldiers, Two Heralds, Four Cardinals, Mayor, Judges, Sergeants-at-Arms ; Amaryllis, Cloris, Parthe- nope, Pallas, Lightning, Morn, Earth. The scene is laid at Brentford, and the first act opens with a dia- logue between Smith, a countryman, and Johnson, a citizen, upon plays. To them enters Bayes, who presently informs them that the last rehearsal of a new play of his is fixed for that very morning, and invites them to attend. They are well pleased to do so, and thenceforth Bayes, throughout the piece, acts as a kind of Chorus, explaining * In coDJuTietioii, it is said, with Martin Clifford, Master of the Charter TTnime l»r Si'iat. Hutler, and others. ^t S lirst iir Kichard Howard, under the name of Bilboa was the hei^ Then Davenant was substituted, and as he was poet laureate l^ayes waa substituted lor Bilboa. Finally, Dryden, aa the chiei author of heroic plays, was selected as the object of ridicule. everything that takes place on the stage. There is a little joke about Amarillis : as she wears armour, Bayes will call her Armarillis, and then he proceeds : "Look you, sir, the chief hinge of the play, upon which the whole plot moves and turns, and that causes the variety of all the several accidents which, you know, are the thing in Nature that make up the grand refine' ment of a play, is, tliat I suppose two Kings to be of the same place : as, for example, at Brentford ; for I love to write familiarly. Now the people having the same relations to 'em both, the same affections, the same duty, the same obedience, and all that ; are divided among themselves in point of devoir and interest, how to behave themselves equally between 'em: these Kings differing sometimes in particular; though, in the main, they agree (I know not whether I make myself well understood). John.—l did not observe you, sir ; pray say that again. Baijes.—Why, look you, sir (nay, I beseech, you be a little curious in taking notice of this ; or else you'll never understand my notion of the thing) ; the people being embarrassed by their equal ties to both, and the Sovereigns concerned in a reciprocal regard, as well to their own interest, aa the good of the people, make a certain kind of a— you understand mc * upon which, there do arise several disputes, turmoils, heart-burnings, and all that— In fine, you'll apprehend it better when yon see it. [£xit to call the Players, Smith.— I find the author will be very much obliged to the players, if they can make any sense out of this. Enter Bates. Now, gentlemen, I would fain ask your opinion of one thing. I have made a prologue and an epilogue, which may both serve for eithe!- ; that is, the prologue for the epilogue, or the epilogue for the prologue*' (do yon mark ?) ; nay, they may both serve too, I'gad, for any other plly aa well aa this. Smith.—Yerj well ; that's indeed artificial. Bayes— And I w^ould fain ask year judgments, now, which of them would do best for the prologue ? For, you must know there is, in nature, but two ways of making very good prologues : the one is by civility, by insinuation, good language, and all that, to— a— in a manner, steal your plaudit from the courtesy of the auditors; the other, by making use of some certain personal things, which may keep a hawk upon such censuring persons, as cannot otherwise, I'gad, in nature, be hindered from being too free with their tongues. To which end, my first prologue is, that I come out in a long black veil, and a great hugo hangman behind me, with a furred cap, and his sword dnuvn ; and there tell 'em plainly, that if out of good nature they will not like my play, Igad, I'll een kneel down, and he shall cut my head off. Whereupon they all clapping— a— * An allusion to the two Prologues to the " Maiden Queen." VOL. II. Q 226 THE MEEEY MONAECH ; iSwitf/i.— Ay, but suppose they doii*t. Bai/e*.— Suppose I Sir, you may suppose what you please, I have nothing to do with your suppose, sir ; nor am at all mortified at it ; not at all, sir; I'gad, not one jot, sir. Suppose quoth a !— ha, ha, ha ! IWalhs away," The dialogue tlien turns on the various devices con- trived for securing the applause of an audience; and with the introduction of Thunder and Lightning to speak the Prologue, the first act ends. A lively parody occurs in this part of the scene : — " Bayes.—l have made too, one of the most delicate dainty similes in the whole world, I'gad, if I knew but how to apply it. fimit/i.— Let's hear it, I pray you. JBayes. — 'Tis an allusion to Love. So Boar and Sow, when any storm is nigh, Snuff up, and smell it gath'ring in the sky : Boar beckons Sow to trot in chestnut groves, And there consummate their unfinished loves. Pensive in mud they wallow all alone. And snort and gruntle to each other's moan." * The second act introduces the Gentleman Usher and Physician of the two Kings, who converse in whispers— a hit at Davenant's " Play-house to be Let " and at '' The Amorous Prince "—on matters of State, and then go off, without having in any way advanced the action. The two Kings enter, hand-in-hand—" speak French to show their breeding "—and quickly exeunt. Prince Prettyman next appears : — " Prince.— How strange a captive am I grown of late ! Shall I accuse my love, or blame my fate ? My love, I cannot ; that is too divine : And against fate what mortal dares repine ? *'0f Dryden*s " Conquest of Granada," part ii., a. i., s. 2.:— •* So two kind turtles, when a storm is nigh, Look up, and see it gathering in the sky. Each call his mate to shelter in the groves. Leaving in murmurs their unfinished loves. Perched on some drooping branch they sit alone, And coo, and hearken to each other's moan." \ i OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 227 [Lies down. Enter Cloris. But here she comes. Since 'tis some blazing Count, is it not ? Bayes.—B]Rzmg Count ! mark that. I'gad, very fine. Pret^But I am so surprised with sleep, I cannot speak the rest. {^Sleeps.* Bayes.—BocB not that, now, surprise you, to fall asleep just in the nick? His spirits exhale with the heat of his passion, and all that, and swop falls asleep, as you see. Now here she must make a simile. Bayes.—Bnt she's surprised.f That's a general rule : you must ever make a simile when you are surprised ; 'tis the new way of writing. Claris.— As some tall Pine which we on Etna find I have stood the rage of many a boisterous wind. Feeling without, that flames within do play, Which would consonie his root and sap away ; He spreads his wasted arms unto the skies. Silently grieves, all pale, repines and dies: So, shrouded up, your bright eye disappears. Break forth, bright scorching sun, and dry my tears. [Exit. Bayes.~l am afraid, gentlemen, this scene has made you sad; for I must confess, when I writ it, I wept myself. Smith.— Iso, truly, sir, my spirits are almost exhaled too, and I am likelier to fall asleep. Prince Prettyman starts up, and says— Fret. — It is resolved. [Exit Smith.— Mr, Bayes, may one be so bold as to ask you a question, now, and you not be angry ? Bayes.-^O Lord, sir, you may ask me what you please. I vow to gad, you do me a great deal of honour : you do not know me, if you say that, sir. Smith.— Then, pray, sir, what is it that this Prince here has resolved in his sleep ? Bayes.— Why, I must confess, that question is well enough asked, for one that is not acquainted with this our way of writing. But you must know, sir, that, to out-do all my fellow-writers, whereas they keep their intrigs secret till the very last scene before the dance; I now, sir, do you mark me ? — a — Smith.— Begin the play, and end it, without ever opening the plot at all ? Bayes.—l do so, that's the very plain truth on't : ha, ha, ha ; I do, I'gad. If they cannot find it out themselves, e'en let 'em alone for Bayes, I warrant you. But here now, is a scene of business: pray observe it; for I daresay you'll think it no unwise discourse this, nor ill-argued." In this scene of business, the Gentleman Usher and * In ridicule of an incident in Sir W. Berkeley's " The Lost Lady." t Dry den's "Indian Emperor," a. iv., s. 4. 228 THE MERRY MONARCH ; Physician seat themselves on the thrones of the Two Kings, and then march out, flourishing their swords. Smith naturally asks, "how they came to depose the Kings so easily ? " but expresses himself satisfied when Bayes replies, that " they long had a design to do it before ; but never could put it in practice till now ; and, to tell you true," he adds, " that's one reason why I made 'em whisper so at first." At the end of the scene Mr. Bayes accidentally injures liig nose— an allusion to Sir William Uavenant's damaged feature— so that in Act iii. he appears with a paper on it. Prince Prettyman enters with Tom Thimble, and the two are made to caricature Dryden's comic writing in '' The Wild Gallant." The second scene brings on the two Qsurpers, to whom Cordelia brings news from Prince Volscius ; and afterwards enters Amarillis, " with a book in her hand." By a mysterious turn of fate. Prince Prettyman is revealed as a fisherman's son — "A secret, great as is the world, In which I, lilu; the Sool, am tossed and hurled" — and having disclosed this secret, goes out, in order that Prince Volscius, Cloris, Amarillis, and Harry "with a ridino- cloak and boots " (in ridicule of James Steward's "Enf-lish Musician ") may enter ; with Parthenope after- wards. While Prince Yolscius is pulling on his boots, to join his army at Kightsbridge, he sees Parthenope, and falls in love with her. VoLsnrs sits down. " How has my passion made me Cupid's scoff ! This hasty boot is on. tlie other off, And sullen lies, witli amorous * An allusion to Dryden's bad mode of reading, t A favourite expletive with Dryden. 230 THE MEERY MONARCH; " Bayes. — I make a male person to be in love with a female. Smith.— Do yon mean that, Mr. Bayes, for a new thing ? Bayes.— Yes, sir, as I have ordered it. Yon shall hear. He having passionately loved her through my five whole plays, finding at last that she consents to his love, just after that his mother had appeared to him like a ghost, he kills himself. That's one way. The other is, that she coming at last to love him, with as violent a passion as he loved her, she kills her- self." A funeral now comes upon the stage, with the two Usurpers and attendants. a Xing Usher. — Set down the Funeral Pile, and lot our grief Eeceive, from its embraces, some relief. King Fhysidan. — Was't not unjust to ravish hence her breath, And, in life's stead, to leave us nought but death ? The world discovers now its emptiness, And, by her loss, demonstrates we have less. Bayes. — Is not that good language now ? is not that elevate ? It's my non ultra, I'gad. You must know they were both in love with her. Smith. — With her ? with whom ? Bayes.— \^^hJ, this is Lardella's funeral. /Stw/M.— Lardella ! I, who is she ? Bayes.— Why, sir, the sister of Drawcansir. A lady that was drowned at sea, and bad a wave for her winding-sheet.* King ^sAer.— Lardella, O Lardella, from above. Behold the tragic issue of our love. Pity us, sinking under grief and pain, For thy being cast away upon the main. Bayes. — Look you now, you see I told you true. Smith.— Aye, sir, and I thank you for it, very kindly. Bayes.— Ay, I'gad, but you will not have patience ; honest Mr. — a— you will not have patience. Johnson.— Fr3.y, Mr. Bayes, who is that Drawcansir ?.t £(lyes.—^\hy, sir, a fierce hero, that frights his mistress, snubs up kings, baffles armies, and does what he will without regard to good manners, justice, or numbers. Mr. Bayes then snatches from the coffin a copy of verses * So in " The Conquest of Granada " : — *' For my winding sheet, a wave I had ; and all'the ocean for my grave." t Almanzor, in the same play. "I have found a hero," says Dryden, in his Dedication ; " I confess, not absolutely perfect ; but of an excessive and over boiling courage. Both Homer and Tasso are my precedents. Both the Greek and the Italian poet had well considered that a tame hero who never transgresses the bounds of moral virtue, would shine but dimly in an epic poem.'* T^ OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 231 5> which Lardella composed, just as she was dying, with the view that it should be pinned upon her coffin, and so read by one of the Usurpers, who was her cousin. Bayes is at much pains to explain that Lardella, in this paper, makes love "like a Humble Bee." The whole passage is in close and exquisite parody of Dryden's " Tyrannic Love, Act iii, s. 1. " Since death my earthly part will thus remove, I'll come a Humble Bee to your chaste love. With silent wings, I'll follow you, dear couz ; Or else, before you, in the sunbeams buz. And when to melancholy groves you come, An airy ghost, you'll know me by my Hum ; For sound, being air, a ghost does well become. [Dryden : — My earthly part . . . Which is my tyrant's right, death will remove, I'll come all soul and spirit to your love. With silent steps I'll follow you all day ; Or else before you, in the sunbeams, play, ril lead you thence to melancholy groves, And there repeat the scenes of our past loves.] At night, into your bosom I will creep. And Buz but softly if you chance to sleep : Yet, in your dreams, I will pass sweeping by, And then, both Hum and Buz before your eye. [Dryden : — At night I will within your curtains peep ; With empty arms embrace you while you sleep. In gentle dreams I often will be by ; And sweep along before your closing eye.] Your bed of love from dangers I will free ; But most from love of any future Bee. And when, with pity, your heart-strings shall crack. With empty arms I'll bear you on my back. Then at your birth of immortality. Like any winged archer hence I'll fly, And teach you your first flutt'ring in the sky. [Dryden : — All dangers from your bed I will remove ; But guard it most from any future love. And when, at last, in pity, you will die, I'll watch your birth of immortality : Then, turtle-like, I'll to my mate repair ; And teach you your first flight in open air.] " 232 THE MEERY MONARCH; The two Usurpers are about to kill themselves on Lar- della's tomb, when Pallas enters ; forbids the sacrifice ; informs them that Lardella lives ; and that from these funeral obsequies shall arise a nuptial banquet. The coffin opens and discovers the promised banquet. While the two Usurpers are partaking of it, enters Drawcansir : — "King Physician.— ^hvd man is this that dares disturb our feast? Dram. — He that dares drink, and for that drink dares die, And knowinj^ this, dares yet drink on, am I.* t7o7mso7i.— That is as much as to say, that tlioughhe would rather die than not drink, yet he would fain drink for all that too. Bayes. — Eight ; that's the conceipt on't. Johnson.— 'Tv?> a marvellous good one ; I swear. King Usher. — Sir, if you please, we should be glad to know How long you here will stay, how soon you'll go. Bayes. — Is not that now like a well-bred person, I'gad ? So modest, so gent! Smith. — Oh, very like. Draw. — You shall not know how long I here will stay ; But you shall know I'll take my bowls away.f [Snatches the bowls out of the King's hands^ anddritiks'em off. Smith. — But, Mr. B:i}es, is that (too) modest and gent ? Bayes. — No, I'gad, Sir, but its great. King Usher. — Tliough, Brother, this grum stranger be a clown, He'll leave us, sure, a little to gulp down. Draw. — Whoe'er to gulp one drop of this dares think, I'll stare away his very power to drink. {The two Kings sneak off the Stagrwith their Attendants, I drink, I huff, I strut, look big and stare ; And all this I can do, because I dare." | The next persons involved in this amazing mystery, which reminds us of Pope^s famous line — ^' a mighty maze, * Dryden, " Conquest of Granada" : — Almahide. — " My Lidit will sure discover those who talk ; Who dares to interrupt my private walk? Almanzor — He who dares love; and for that love must die, And knowing this, dares yet love on, am I." t " I will out now, if thou would'st beg me, stay : But I will take my Almahide away" Dryden, " Conquest of Granada," pt. i, a. v. X jlZwtansor.— Spite of myself I'll stay, fight, love, despair, And I can do all this, because I dare. " Conquest of Granada," part ii., a. ii. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 233 yet not without a plan "—are the two princes, Pretty man and Volscius. Bayes explains that, according to another new conceit, he makes them fall out because they are not in love with the same woman. The dialogue between them is carried on in sonorous ^' heroic couplets," because, says Bayes, " the subject is too great for prose," and he inter- rupts at almost every line to express his admiration of his own work. " Oh, Pgad," he says, " that strikes me . . . Now the Rant's a coming . . . Ah, Godsookers, that's well writ ! . . . Well, gentlemen, this is that I never yet saw any one write bat myself. . . Here's true spirit and flame all through, I'gad." And amid this self-laudation the curtain drops. Act the fifth opens with the usual introductory words on the part of Bayes. ''Now, gentlemen," he says, ^'I will be bold to say, I'll show you the greatest scene that ever England saw : I mean not for words, for those I do not value; but for state, show, and magnificence." It is to surpass the great scene in Henry VIII., for instead of ten bishops, he brings in four cardinals. Here is the stage direction : — " The curtain is drawn up, and the two Usurp- ing Kings appear in State, with the four Cardinals, Prince Prettyman, Prince Volscius, Amarillis, Cloris, Parthenope, &c., before them Heralds and Serjeants at Arms with Maces." The tw^o Princes contend who shall speak first, each wish- ing the other to take precedence, but at last they give priority to Amarillis. Just as she is on the point of addressing the company, *' soft music ^' is heard, and the two right kings of Brentford descend in the clouds, sing- ing, in white garments, with three fiddlers sitting before them in green. At this unexpected sight the two Usurpers steal away; and the two rightful monarchs join in a duet. 234 THE MERRY MONARCH ; which as well as " the descent in clouds," is parodied from* Dryden's '^ Tyrannic Love." We print the original and the travesty side by side that the spirit and fun of the latter may be better appreciated : — Frmn " The Rehearsal." " 1 King. — Haste, brother King, we are sent from above. 2 King. — Let us move, let us move : Move to remove the Fate Of Brentford's long united State. 1 King. — Tara, tara, tara, full East and bj South ; 2 JSngr.— We sail with thunder in our mouth. In scorching noon-day, whilst the traveller strays, Busy, busy, busy, busy, we hustle along. Mounted upon warm Phoebus his rays, Through the heavenly throng, Haste to those Who will feast us, at night, with a pig's pretty toes. 1 iSTinflr.— And w ell fall with our pato In an ollio of hate. 2 King, — But now supper's done, the servitors try, Like soldiers, to storm a whole half-moon pie. 1 ffing.— They gather, they gather hot custard in spoons, Alas, I must leave these half-moons, And repair to my trusty dragoons." From " Tyrannic Love." " Nakar. — Hark, my Damilear, we are called below. Damilear. — Let us go, let us go I Go to relieve the care Of longing lovers in despair ! NaJtar. — Merry, merry, merry, we sail from the East. Half tippled at a rain- bow feast. I)amil.—-ln the bright moon- shine while winds whistle loud, Tivy, tivy, tivy, we mount and we fly. All racking along in a downy white cloud: And lest our leap from the sky should prove too far. We slide on the back of a now-falling star. Nakar. — And drop from above In a jelly of love! Damil. — But now the sun's down, and the ele- ments red, The spirits of fire against us make head ! Nakar. — They muster, they muster, like gnats in the air, Alas! I must have thee, my fair, And to my light horse- men repair. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 235 2 King. — stay, for you need not as yet go astray ; The tide, like a friend, has brought ships in our way. And on their high ropes we will play. Like maggots in filbirds, we'll snug in our shell; We'll frisk in our shell, We'll friik in our shell, And farewell. 1 King. — But the ladies have all inclination to dance. And the green frogs croak out a corants of France. 2 King. — Now, mortals, that hear How we tilt and career, With wonder will fear, The want of such things as shall never appear. 1 King. — Stay you to fulfil what the gods have decreed ; 2 King. — ^Then call me to help you* if there shall be need. 1 King. — So firmly resolved is a true Brentford King To save the distressed and help to 'em bring. That ere a full pot of good ale you can swallow, He's here with a whoop, and gone with a hollow. 5> Damil. — stay, for you need not to fear 'em to-night; The wind is for us, and blows full in their sight : And o'er the wide ocean we fight ! Like leaves in the autumn our foes will fall down ; And hiss iu the water — Both. — And hiss in the water and drown! Nakar. — But their men lie securely entrenched in a cloud : And a trumpeter hor- net to battle sounds loud. Damil. — Now mortals that spy How we tilt in the sky With wonder will gaze; And fear such events as will ne'er come to pass! Nakar. — Stay you to perform what the man will have done. Damil. — Then call me again when the battle is won. Both. — So ready and quick is a spirit of air To pity the lover and succour the fair. That, silent and swift, the little soft god Is here with a wish, and is gone with a nod." The two Kings descend from the cloud and occupy their thrones after this flow of lyrical nonsense. Says King No. 1, "Come now, to serious counsel we'll advance.'* The 2nd King replies, " I do agree ; but first, let's have a 236 THE MEERT MONAECH ; dance." The dance is interrupted by the entrance of two Heralds, who announce that "The Enemy's at the door, and in disf^aise, Desires a word with both yonr Majesties : Having, from Kiiightsbridge, hither march'd by stealth." King No. 2 bids them attend a while, and " drink our health." With two guineas in their pockets — " we have not seen so much the Lord knows when" — the two Heralds retire, and Amarillis resumes her address. It is immediately interrupted by the appearance of a soldier with his sword drawn, who warns the two Kings to save their royal persons, the army having quarrelled among themselves. Here Bayes explains that to avoid inde- corum and tediousness he sums up " liis whole battle in the representation of two persons only." '* I make 'em both come out in armour, cap-a-pee, with their swords drawn, and hung, with a scarlet ribbon at their wrists (which, you know, represents fighting enough) each of ^em holding a lute in his hand." " How, sir," says Smith, " instead of a buckler ? " ^'0 lord, O lord ! instead of a buckler? Pray, sir, do you ask no more questions. I make ^em, sir, play the battle in recitative.^' [A parody on " The Siege of Ehodes."] " Just at the very same instant that one sings, the other, sir, recovers you his sword, and puts himself in a warlike posture : so that you have at once your ear entertained with music, and good language, and your eye satisfied with the garb and accoutrements of war." ** Enter f at several doors, the General and Lieutenant-Qeneeal aryned * caj)-a-pee/ with each of them a lute in his hand, and his sword drawn, and hung, with a scarlet ribbon at his wrist. Lieut.-Qen. — Villain, thou liest. Qen. — Arm, arm, Gonzalvo, arm; what No The lie no flesh can brook, I trow. OE, ENGLAND UNDEE CHAELES II. 237 Lieut.-Qen. - Oen.- Lieut.- Gen.- Gen»' Lieut.-Gen,- Qen.- LieuU'Qen.- Gen.- Lieut.-Gen.- Gen.- Lieut.-Gen.- Qen.- -Advance, from Acton, with the Musqueteers. -Draw down the Chelsea cuirassiers. —The band you boast of, Chelsea cuirassiers, Shall, in my Putney pikes, now meet their peers. -Chiswickians, aged, and renowned in JBght, Join with the Hammersmith brigade. -You'll find my Mortlake boys will do their right, Unless by Fulham numbers over-laid. -Let the left wing of Twick'nam foot advance, And line that eastern hedge. —The horse I raised in Petty France Shall try their chance. And scour the meadows over-grown with sedge. -Stand : give the word. —Bright Sword. -That may be thine, But 'tis not mine. —Give fire, give fire, at once give fire. And let those recreant troops perceive mine ire. -Pursue, pursue ; they fly That first did give the lie. \^Exeunt." But every battle must come to an end. And how does Bayes effect this ? '' By an eclipse, which, let me tell you, is a kind of fancy that was yet never so much as thought of, but by myself, and one person more, that shall be nameless." " Enter the Lieutenant-General. What midnight darkness does invade the day, And snatch the victor from his conquered prey ? Is the sun weary of his bloody sight, And winks upon us with his eye of light? 'Tis an Eclii)se. This was unkind, Moon, To clap between me and the i>un so soon, Foolish Eclipse 1 thou this in vain hast done ; My brighter honour had eclipsed the sun. But now behold eclipses two in one, [^Exii."' Bayes goes on to explain his ^^ conceit " for represent- ing an eclipse, the first hint of which, he says, was derived from the dialogue between Phoebus and Aurora 238 THE MERET MONAKCH ; in [Sir E. Stapylton's comedy of] "The SHghted Maid " : — " Bayes. — You have heard, I suppose, that your eclipse of the Moon is nothing else but an interposition of the Earth between the Sun and Moon : as likewise your eclipse of the Sun is caused by an interlocution of the Moon betwixt the Earth and Sun ? Smith. — I have heard so, indeed. Bayes. — Well, Sir ; what do me I but make the Earth, Sun, and Moon, come out upon the Stage, and dance the Hey * hum f And, of necessity, by the very nature of tliis dance, the Earth must be sometimes between the Sun and the Moon, and the Moon between the Earth and the Sun; and there you have both your Eclipses. That is new, I'gad, ha? Johrii^on, — That must needs be very fine, truly. Bayes. — Yes, there is some fancy in it. And then, Sir, that there may be something in it of a joke, I make the Moon sell the Earth a bargain. Come, come out. Eclipse, to the tune of Tom Tyler. Enter LUNA. Zuna.—Orhis, O Orhis, Come to me, thou little rogue Orhis. Enter the EARTH, Orhis. — What calls Tcrra-firma pray? Luna. — Luna, that liter ^llilles by day. Orhis. — What means Luna in a veil ? Luna. — Luua means to show her tail.f Enter SoL. Sol. — Fie, Fister, fie ; thou niak\e his anger 'twill not move; Since I did it out of love. Hey down, derry down. Orh. — When shall I thy true love know, Thou i)retty, pretty Moon? Luna- — To-morrow soon, ere it be noon, On ^Mourit Vesuvius. Sol. — Then I will shine. » Hey, or Hay : a dance borrowed sfrom the French. In Sir John Davies's poem of " The Orchestra " we read : — " He taught them rounds and winding hays to tread." t In Sir R. Stapylton's *' Slighted Maid" we read: — " Phesb. — Who calls the world's great light? Aur. — Aurora, that abhors the night. Pla'h. — Why does Aurora, from her cloud. To drowsy Phoebus cry so loud ? '* OE, ENGLAND XJNDER CHARLES II. 239 Orh, — And I will be fine. £^^^._And we will drink nothing but Lipary wine.* Omnes. — And we, &c., &c. Bayes. — So, now, vanish Eclipse, and enter t'other Battle, and fight. Here ■now, if I am not mistaken, you will see fighting enough. [A hattle is fought between foot and great Hohhy-Jiorset. At lastf DrAWCANSIB conies in, and hills 'em all on both sides. All this while the hattle is fighting, Bayes is telling them when to shout, and shouts with 'em. Bra/wc. '"Others may boast a single man to kill ; But I, the blood of thousands, daily spill. Let i>etty Kings the names of Parties know : Where'er I come, I slay both friend and foe. The swiftest horseman my swift rage controls. And from their bodies drives their trembling souls. If they had wings, and to the gods could liy, I would pursue, and beat 'em through the sky : And make proud Jove, with all his thunder, see This single arm more dreadful is than he. [^Exit. Bay ^5.— There's a brave fellow for you now, Sirs. I have read of your Hector, your Achilles, and a hundred more; but I defy all your histories, and your romances too, I gad, to sliow me one such conqueror as this Drawcansir. Johnson. — I swear, I think you may. Smith.— V>\it, Mr. Bayes, how shall all these dead men go off? for I see none alive to help 'em. Bayes. — Go off ! why, as they came on ; upon their legs ; how should they go off? Why, do you think the people do not know they arc not dead ? He is mighty ignorant, poor man ; your friend here is very silly, Mr. Johnson, I'gad he is. Come, Sir, I'll show you go off. Rise, Sirs, and go about your business. There's go off for you. Hark you, Mr. Ivory. t Gentlemen, I'll be with you presently. {ExiU Jo/mson.— Will you so? Then we'll be gone. Smith. — I, prithee let's go, that we may preserve our hearing. One battle more would take mine quite away. ^Exeunt, Enter BAYES and PLAYERS. Bayes. — Where are the gentlemen ? 1 Player. — They are gone, Sir. Bayes.— Gone 1 'Sdeath, this last Act is best of all. Til go fetch 'em again. lExit. 3 Player.StsLj, here's a foul piece of paper of his. Let's see what 'tis. * " What can make our figures so fine? Drink, drink, Wine Lippari-wine."— SiR R. StapyltoN. t *♦ Abraham Ivory had formerly been a considerable actor of women's parts; but afterwards stupified himself so far with drinking strong waters, that, before the first acting of this farce, he was fit for nothing but to go of errands ; for whieli, and mere charity, the Company allowed him a weekly salary.'' — From *' The Key to the Rehearsal," 1704. 240 THE MEEEY MONAECH ; [Reacts.] 2he Argument of the Fifth Act.-C\ov% at length, being sensible of Prince Prettyman's passion, consents to marry him; but, just as they are going to Church, Prince Prettyman meeting, by chance, with old Joan the Chandler's widow, and remembering it was she that brought him acquainted with Cloris, out of a high point of honour, breaks off his match with Clons and marries old Joan. Upon which, Cloris, in despair, drowns herself: and Prince Prettyman, discontentedly, walks by the river side. 1 Flaver.-Fo^ ont, this will never do: tis just like the rest. Come, lets ^ [Exeunt. ^ eo°"- Enter Bates. Bayes.-A plaguu on 'em both for me, they have made me sweat to run after 'em. A couple of sensekes rascals, that had rather go to dinner thaa see this play out, with a pox to 'em. What comfort has a man to write for such dull rogues? Come, Mr. -a- Where are you, Sir? come away quick, quick. ^ Enter PLAYERS again. Players.— Sit, they are gone to dinner. BoAjes.-Yes, 1 know the Gentlemen are gone ; but I ask for the Players. Players.-^hy an't please your worship, Sir. the Players are gone ta dinner too. , ,_. . ., , . +y-_ Bave..-How? are the Players gone to Dinner? Tis impossible the Players gone to dinner • I'gad, if they are, I'll make 'em know what i is to injure a person that does 'em the honour to write for 'em, and all that. A company of proud, conceited, humorous, cross-grained persons, and all that. I'gad, 111 make 'em the most contemptible, despicable inconsider- able persons, and all that, in the whole world for this trick. I gad, 1 11 be revenged on -cm, ni sfll this play to the other House. i.4.r.-Xay, good Sir, dou't take away the Book ; youU disappoint the Town, that come, to see it acted here, this afternoon Ba^es.-lh:V. all one. I must reserve tins comfort to myse f, my Book and I will go together, we will not part, indeed. Sir. The Town 1 why^ w a Ze I for the Town ? l^ad, the Town has used me as seurvily as the Playei^ We done- but lU be revenged on them too: I will both Lampoon and p't Jm t^o. r,ad. Since they will not admit of my Plays, they shall know what altiri:! Ian.. And so farewell to this Stage for ever, I'gad. iE^t. ^ Plaver —What shall we do now ? 2 Player-con., then, let's set up Bills for another Play : We shall lose nnthinir bv this, I warrant you. 1 pTair.-I am of your opinion. But, before we go, let's see Haynes and Shirley practic. the last Dance ; for that may serve for another Play. 2 Aai/er.-V\i call 'em : I think they are in tlie tyring-room. The Dance done. 1 Player.-Come, come ; let's go away to diuner. lExeunt Omnes." * The fa^iionable time of dining, when this play was 77«<^". ^-J^^"*'^^ o-clo^. '■11^'' Rehearsal " is, therefore, supposed to take place in the morning. OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 241 *^ The Eehearsal '' is Buckingliam's chief literary work ; but he was also the author of a farce entitled " The Battle of Sedgraoore," which possesses no claim on the attention of posterity, and he adapted from Beaumont and Fletcher the comedy of " The Chances." His unquestionable talent is seen to some advantage in the religious tracts which he wrote in his maturer years. In these he argues with con- siderable vigour for entire freedom of conscience as the surest safeguard for the principles of the Reformation ; and seeks to demonstrate the truth of the Christian religion by ingenious logical conclusions."^ Buckingham's political career is a part of the history of his time, and cannot, therefore, be examined in these pages. He carried into it his characteristic levity ; but liad he combined with his brilliant parts a steady resolu- tion and a calm judgment, with reticence of speech and tenacity of purpose, he might surely have taken a fore- most place among English statesmen. Unfortunately he touched nothing which his wayward temper did not mar, and he took up politics not as a serious business, but as a gamester's speculation, not with any regard for the in- terests of his country, but either as a means of increasing his personal influence or gratifying his spirit of adven- ture. In 1666 we find him intriguing against Clarendon, and playing with projects which verged close upon the borders of treason. Though detected, and deprived of all his commissions, in the following year he again basked in the sunshine of the royal favour. After dis- charging with some success an embassy to the French Court, he was gratified by the downfall of Clarendon, and took the lead in the council of Ministers to which was appUed the famous epithet of " The Cabal " from the # " Discourse upon Reasonableness of Men's having a Religion." VOL. II. ^ 242 THE MEEKX" MONARCH. initials of its principal members, Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, Lauderdale. In 1672 he was again sent on an embassy to Louis XIY., who was then at Utrecht. Landing at the Hague, he had an interview with the Princess of Orange. Eulogizing with his usual fluent eloquence the admirable qualities of the Dutch, he referred to the deep interest which England felt in the prosperity of the Commonwealth. "We do not use Holland like a mistress," he said, " we love her as a wife." " Aye, in truth," replied the Princess, " I believe you love us as you love your own." On the death of Charles II., Buckingham retired from Court and from public life, and spent the brief remainder of his wasted years on his Yorkshire estate. He died on the 16th of April, 1688, after a three days' i'.lness. Hav- ing over-heated himself while hunting, he sat down on the wet grass, and the result was a violent inflammation which his enfeebled constitution was unable to withstand. His last breath was not drawn, as Pope represents, " in the worst inn's worst room," but in the house of one of his own tenants at Kirby-Moorside; and the Earl of Arran, Lord Fairfax, and others, stood by his death-bed. He professed himself at the last a member of the Church of England, and received the Sacrament, according to the Anglican rite, "with all the decency imaginable." His body, having been embalmed, was removed to Westminster Abbey. The principal authority for the private life of the Duke is Brian Fairfax. In almost all the histories and correspondence of his time, he necessarily figures ; and his character has been drawn by Bishop Burnet, Warburton, Butler, Walpole, Macaulay, Scott, Count Hamilton, Dry- den, and Pope. A brief but interesting memoir occurs in Mr. J. Heneage Jesse's " England under the Stuaiis." THE PEOSE WEITEES. Bishop Jeremy Taylor. Dr. Eobert South. Dr. Isaac Barrow. Bishop Beveridge. Dr. Ralph Cudworth. Benjamin Whichcote. John Bunyan. Thomas Hobbes. Abraham Cowley. IzAAK Walton. John Dryden. Sir William Temple. Thomas Eymer. Dr. Henry More. Valentine Greatrakes. Dr. Theophilus Gale. James Harrington. Sir Robert Pilmer. Bishop Cumberland. Bishop Wilkins. Bishop Sprat. Earl op Clarendon. Bishop Burnet. Anthony a Wood. Sir William Dugdale. Elias Ashmole. Archbishop Leighton. Bishop Ken. Richard Baxter. George Fox. William Penn. Sir Roger L'Estrange. Robert Boyle. John Ray. Thomas Sydenham. Sir Isaac Newton. Sir Thomas Browne. CHAPTEE V. THE PROSE WRITERS OF THE RESTORATION. Bishop Jeremy Taylor— Dr. Eobert SorTH— Dr. Isaac Barrow— Bishop Beveridge — Dr. Ralph Cudworth Benjamin Whichcote — John Bunyan — Thomas Hobbes— Abraham Cowley— Izaak Walton— John Dryden— Sir William Temple — Thomas Rymer — Dr. Henry More— Valentine Greatrakes— Dr. Theophilus Gale — James Harrington — Sir Robert FiLMER— Bishop Cumberland — Bishop Wilkins — Bishop Sprat — Earl of Clarendon — Bishop Burnet Anthony a Wood — Sir William Dugdale — Elias AsHMOLE — Archbishop Leighton — Bishop Ken — ■ Richard Baxter— George Fox— William Penn — Sir Roger L'Estrange— Robert Boyle — John Ray — Thomas Sydenham — Sir Isaac Newton — Sib Thomas Browne. Charles II. had been seven years on the throne when Jeremy Taylor died. Chronologically, therefore, we may. claim the English Chrysostom as one of the Prose Writers of the Restoration ; but, with a single exception, his great works had all been written in the reign of Charles I., or during the Commonwealth, and in style they are related to those of the Elizabethan rather than to those of the Caroline school. The exception is his great treatise on casuistical divinity, the " Ductor Dubitantium " on which he himself based his hopes of fame. This was issued in the year of the Restoration; and in the same year he published his tractate on the Lord's Supper, entitled, '' The Worthy Communicant," and received his episcopal preferment. His sermon, " Yia Intelligentiae," was pub- lished in 1662. Also, the three sermons which he dedi- cated to the Duchess of Ormond; and the ''Dissuasive 246 THE MEEEY MONARCH ; from Poperj/' which lie wrote at the request of the Irish Bishops. On the strength of these post-Eestoration publications^ we include the great bishop in our list of " Worthies," thankful that the lustre of his name lights up the dark pages of Charles's reign. Jeremy Taylor, who, by the consent of all, ranks as the greatest orator the English Church has produced, was the son of a Cambridge barber, or barber-surgeon, and first saw the light in his father's house about the 13th of August, 1613. He came of a reputable family, which for generations had held lands in Gloucestershire, but had been reduced to honourable poverty after the martyrdom of Dr. Kowland Taylor,* the courageous and learned rector of Hadleigh, by the confiscation of his estates. The barber, or barber-surgeon, had education enough to be able to ground his son, as the son informs us, "in grammar and the mathematics." At the early age of three he had begun to attend Parse's Grammar School, then recently founded ; and it was probably some indica- tions of more than ordinary capacity which led his father to enter him, when only thirteen years of age, at Caius College, in the University of his native town, as a " poor scholar." It is pleasant to remember that he was the contemporary of John Milton, who entered Christ's College in 1625, and it is not an unreasonable conjecture that sympathy of tastes and intellectual power united in friendly relations the future author of " Holy Living and Dying" and the future poet of the "Paradise Lost." " Though in after life," remarks Prebendary Humphreys, '^a wide gulf was interposed between the poet and the divine, the one becoming secretary to the Pro- tector, the other chaplain to the King, at this * In the third year of Queen Mary." OR, ENGLAT4D UNDER CHARLES II. 247 time they might be friendly opponents in the dreary exercises of the schools ; they might well be companions in lighter and more congenial studies ; they might go up to the house of God together ; they might be compared for their poetical temperament, for their love of ancient learning, for the beauty of their souls, and for their out- ward comeliness." During his University career Taylor must also have heard of George Herbert, the " sweet singer " of '' The Temple ; " nor is it unlikely that he was familiar with the name of Oliver Cromwell, then an undergraduate of Sidney Sussex College. The" course of study then in vogue at Cambridge was not adapted to develop Taylor's imaginative faculties. His Alma Mater did not nourish him with satisfying food; she was still teaching that old scholastic philosophy which Bacon censured for its "unprofitable subtlety and curiosity," while Millar characterised its " ragged notions and brabblements " as " an asinine feast of sow-thistles and brambles." Duns Scotus and Avicenna still perplexed their students with intricate speculations and vain hypo- theses. To a genius so subtle as Taylor's it was easy, perhaps, to detect some grains of gold even in sandy wastes of Ockham, Lauretus, and Suarez ; but we can fancy with what delight he turned from this disappoint- ing pursuit to the study of the great masters of the Greek and Roman literature. In 1631 Taylor took his Bachelor's degree, and soon afterwards was elected to a Pellowship. Before proceed- ing to his degree of M.A. he received holy orders, though, like the illustrious Usher, he wanted two years of the canonical age of twenty-three. He quickly became celebrated for his pulpit eloquence ; but his future career seems to have been decided by one of those 248 THE MERRY MONARCH; opportunities which always occur to men capable of mak- ing use of them. At the request of a college friend he preached for him in St. Paul's Cathedral ; where by his *^ florid and youthful beauty, his sweet and pleasant air, and his sublime and learned discourses/' he at once se- cured the attention of the ])ublic. They took him, says Bishop Enst^ for some yoiim;' angel, newly descended from the visions of glory. The repute of his great excellence as a preacher soon spread to Lambeth ; and Archbishop Laud, who, whatever his faults and failings, was always quick in the detection and recognition of merit, summoned him to preach before him. The singular 2)romise of the brilliant young genius lie at once acknowledged; and thinking it more to the advantage of the world that such mighty parts should be afforded better opi)ortunities of study and improvement than a course of constant preach- ing would allow of, he secured for him the nomination to a fellowship of All Souls, Oxford — a distinction of no ordinary kind, wliieh carried with it, moreover, a consider- able income. During liis residence at Oxford the sweet courtesy of his manners and the wide range of his powers made him the object of general esteem and admiration. (1635-7). In 1637, Bishop Juxon, at the instigation of the Primate, promoted the splendid young divine to the rectory of Uppingham, in Rutlandshire. In the following year, he was selected to preach at St. Mary's, in that famous pulpit since occupied by so many illustrious men ; and in connection with the sermon wliich he preached on that occasion old Anthony a Wood tells a strange story of Taylor's intended secession to the Eoman Church, affirm- ing that the Yice-Chancellor interpolated certain passages in the sermon with the view of inducingr the Eomanists to OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 249 reject his advances. As if Taylor would have adopted such interpolations ! The whole fabrication was sug- gested probably by Taylor's intimacy with the learned Franciscan, A Sancta Clara, the queen's chaplain. In Jeremy Taylor's writings ample evidence exists of his strong repudiation of the erroneous doctrines of Eome ; and that he did not favour the Roman discipline was de- monstrated by his marriage, on the 27th of May, 1639, to Pha3be Landisdale. By this lady lie had three sons, one of whom, William, died in May, 1(342, and was soon after- wards followed to the grave by his mother. At Uppingham, Jeremy Taylor spent five years in peaceful seclusion, until the storm and stress of civil war broke over the country. He must have felt very keenly the committal of his friend and patron, Archbishop Laud, to the Tower (in 1640), and he no doubt accepted it as a sign and a warning of sorrowful days darkening over the afflicted Church. He did not hesitate as to the side it was his duty to support ; and when, after the final rupture between Charles and his Parliament, the King retired to Oxford, Taylor hastened thither to join him, and was appointed his domestic chaplain. It was by the royal command that he published, in 1642, his first work, '' Episcopacy Asserted,'^ in which he presents with great force and clearness the arguments in favour of the epis- copal government of the Church. Charles rewarded the author with the diploma of Doctor of Divinity. His learned manifesto aroused much enthusiasm among Churchmen ; being " backed and encouraged by many petitions to His Majesty, and both Houses of Parlia- ment, not only from the two Universities whom it most concerned, but from several counties of the Kingdom. 250 THE MERRY MONARCH; It is uncertain whether he joined the Eojal army at Nottingham ; but his living at Uppingham was seques- trated in the earliest months of the Civil War ; his rectory- house was plundered and despoiled; and his family ex- pelled. In these circumstances he was free to follow the King in his various inarches ; and it is noticeable that he gathered a knowledge of military affairs which afterwards provided him in his sermons with numerous forcible illustrations : He accompanied the royal army to Wales in the beginning of 16GI; and at the siege' of Cardigan Castle was taken prisoner. With the treatment he received he had, however, no fault to find. He was speedily released; and then for some time gained a laborious livelihood as a schoolmaster at Llanvihansrel Aberbythic. '^ In this great storm," he writes to Lord Halton, ''which hath dashed the vessel of the Church all to pieces, I have been cast upon the coast of Wales, and, in a little boat, thought to have enjoyed that rest and quietness which, in Englan-l, in a greater, I could not hope for. Here I cast anchor, and thinking to ride safely, the storm followed on with so impetuous violence that it broke a cablo, a:i 1 I lost my anchor ; and here again I was exposed to the mercy of the sea, and the gentleness of an element that could neither distinguish things nor persons. And but that He Who stilleth the raging of the sea and the noise of His waves, and the madness of His people, had provided a plank for me, I had been lost to all the opportunities of content or study. But I know not whetlier 1 have been more preserved by the courtesies of my fri'Mids, or the gentleness and mercies of a noble enemy ; for ' the barbarous people showed us no little kindness ; for, having kindled a fire, they received us all because of the present rain and the cold.* And now OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 251 since I have come ashore, I have been gathering a few sticks to warm me ; a few books to entertain my thoughts, and divert them from the perpetual meditation of my private troubles and the public dyscrasy ; but those which I could obtain were so few and so impertinent, and unuseful to any great purposes, that I began to be sad upon a new stock, and full of apprehension that I should live unprofitably, and die obscurely, and be forgotten, and my bones thrown into some common charnel-house, with- out any name or note to distinguish me from those who only served their generation by filling the number of citizens.** It was about this time that he found a second wife in a Mistress Joanna Bridges, a lady of good means, reputed to have been an illegitimate daughter of Charles I. ; and a friend in Lord Carbery, whose seat of Golden Grove was situated in the vicinity of Taylor's pleasant retreat. Another and still more valuable friend was the learned, pious, and liberal-handed John Evelyn. He continued to carry on his school, assisted by William Nicolson, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, and William Wyatt, afterwards Prebendary of Lincoln. For the use of their scholars Taylor and Wyatt composed a " Grammar,** which was published in 1647. And though he was without books, " except so many,*' he says, " as a man may carry on horseback," it was now that he wrote his great work, "The Liberty of Prophesying," in which he proposes to enlarge the limits of comprehension and narrow the bounds of controversy by the adoption of the Apostles' Creed as the standard and exposition of Evangelical Truth— a proposition similar, as Melissom re- marks, to one put forward by Erasmus. He who traces its close-linked reasoning, observes its fertility of allusion,. 252 THE MERRY MONARCH ; and warms himself in the glow and fervour of its poeti- cal imagery, will surely join in the admiration with which Coleridge always regarded it. In itself it justifies his eulogy of its author as "the most eloquent of divines, I had almost said, of men; and if I had, Demosthenes would nod approval and Cicero express assent." Bishop Heber says:— "On a work so rich in intellect, so renowned for charity, which contending sects have rivalled each other in approving, and which was the first, perhaps, since the earliest days of Christianity, to teach those among whom differences were inevitable, the art of differing harmlessly, it would be almost impertinent to enlarge in commendation." Had he written no other book, the Christian Church, as Canon Farrar remarks, would have owed him a debt that could never be repaid. The grand cause of religious tolerance has had no mightier champion ; and though his attack failed in its immediate object, it eventually suc- ceeded in establishing religious freedom on an impreg- nable basis. In plan this famous treatise is exceedingly simple. Taking the Apostles' Creed as embodying the principal articles of the Christian faith, he declares that all subsi- diary dogmas are superfluous or indifferent, and not to be required of believers as indispensable to their salvation. This bold position, Taylor, with some slight misgivings when vexed by the uncompromising hostility of Irish Pres- byterianism, maintained throughout his life. " I thouo-ht ," he wrote in his Epistle Dedicatory, " it might not misbe- come my duty and endeavours to plead for peace and charity and forgiveness and permissions mutual; although I had reason to believe that, such is the iniquity of men, OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 253 and they so indisposed to receive real impresses, that I had as good plough the sands, or till the air, as persuade such doctrines which destroy men's interests, and serve no end but the great end of a happy eternity, and what is in order to it. But because the events of things are in God's disposition, and I knew them not— and because, if I had known, my good purposes would be totally as ineffectual as to others— yet my own desig- nation and purpose would be of advantage to myself, who might, from God's mercy, expect the retribution which He is pleased to promise to all pious intend- ments ; I resolved to encounter with all objections, and to do something to each. I should be determined by the consideration of the present distemperatures and necessi- ties, by my own thoughts, by the questions and scruples, the sects and names, the interests and animosities, which at this day, and for some years past, have exercised and disquieted Christendom.'^ We have not at our command adequate space to unfold the various links of the chain of argument which he has wrought out of the purest gold, and embellished with the most precious stones. But we may venture to introduce a specimen or two of his style and method, which, we hope, will send the reader to study the original, if haply he be unacquainted with it. The essence of his reasoning, or, perhaps, we should rather say, the aim and motive of it, may be seen in the following most beautiful parable, or allegory, which comes from the Persian poet Saadi, through the medium of Grotius in his " Historia Judaica " : — " When Abraham sat at his tent door, according to his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old 254 THE MEREY MONARCH; man stooping and leaning on his staff, weary with age and travail, coming towards him, who was an hundred jears of age. He received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, caused him to sit down, but observing that the old man sat and prayed not, nor begged for a blessing on his meat, he asked him why he did not wor- ship the God of heaven. The old man told him that he worshipped the fire only, and acknowledged no other God. At which answer Abraham grew so zealously angry that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night in an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham, and asked him where the stranger was. He replied, " I thrust him away because he did not worship Thee." God answered him, " I have suffered him these hundred years, althou^^h he dishonoured Me ; and couldst not thou en- dure him one night, when he gave thee no trouble?" Tpon this, saith the story, Abraham fetched him back again, and gave him hospitable entertainment and wise in- struction. " Go thou and do likewise," adds Taylor, " and thy charity will be rewarded by the God of Abraham." That generous breadth of sympathy and that fine spirit of liberal piety which inspired our great English divine are seen in his remarks on the practice of Christian Churches towards persons who do not accept their formu- laries. " In St. Paul's time," he says, " though the manner of heretics were not so loose and forward as afterwards, and all that were called heretics were clearly such and highly criminal, yet, as their crime was, so was their censure, that is, spiritual. They were first admonished, once at least, for so Irenseus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, and Jerome, OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 255 read that place of Titus iii. But since that time all men, and at that time some read it, ' after a first and second admonition,' reject a heretic. ' Rejection from the com- munity of saints after two warnings,' that is the penalty. St. John expresses it by not 'eating with them,' not ^ bidding them God speed,' but the persons against whom be decrees so severely, are such as denied Christ to be come in the flesh, direct Antichrists. And let the sentence be as high as it lists in this case, all that I observe is, that since in so damnable doctrines nothing but spiritual censure, separation from the communion of the faithful was enjoined and prescribed, we cannot pretend to an Apostolical precedent, if in matters of dispute and innocent questions, and of great uncertainty and no malignity, we shall proceed to sentence of death. "Well, however zealous the Apostles were against heretics, yet none were by them, or their dictates, put to death. The death of Ananias and Sapphira, and the blindness of Elymas the sorcerer, amount not to this, fyr they were miraculous inflictions, and the first was a punishment to vow-breach and sacrilege, the second of sorcery and open contestation against the religion of Jesus Christ ; neither of them concerned the case of this present question. Or if the case were the same, yet the authority is not the same ; for he that inflicted these punishments was infallible, and of a power competent, bat no man at this day is so. But as yet people were not converted by miracles, and preaching, and disputing, and heretics by the same means were endangered, and all men instructed, none tortured for their opinion. And this continued till Christian people were vexed by disagreeing persons, and were impatient and peevish by their own too much confidence, and the luxuriancy of a pros- 256 THE MERRY MONARCH; perous fortune ; but then they would not endure persons that did dogmatize anything which might intrench upon their reputation or their interest. And it is observable that no man nor no age did ever teach the lawfulness of putting heretics to death, till they grew wanton with prosperity; but when the reputation of the governors was concerned, when the interests of men were en- dangered, when they had something to lose, when they had built their estimation upon the credit of disputable questions, when they began to be jealous of other men, when they overvalued themselves and their own opinions, when some persons invaded bishoprics upon pretence of new opinions, when they, as they thrive in the favour of emperors, and in the success of their disputes, solicited the temporal power to banish, to fine, to imprison, and to kill, their adversaries. " So that the case stands thus : In the best times, among the best men, when there were fewer temporal ends to be served, when religion and the pure and simple designs of Christianity only were to be promoted, in those times and amongst such men no persecution was actual nor per- suaded, nor allowed towards disagreeing persons. But as men had ends of their own and not of Christ, as they receded from their duty, and religion from its purity, as Christianity began to be compounded with interests and blended with temporal designs, so men were persecuted for their opinions." Admirable both in thought and expression is the follow.. mg :- C( As it was true of the martyrs, as often as we die, so often we are born, and the increase of their troubles was the increase of their confidence and the establishment of OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 257 their persuasions ; so it is in all false opinions ; for that an opinion is true or false is extrinsical or accidental to the consequents and advantages it gets by being afflicted. And there is a popular pity that follows all persons in misery, and that compassion breeds likeness of affections, and that very often produces likeness of persuasion ; and so much the rather because there arises a jealousy and pregnant suspicion that they who persecute an opinion are destitute of sufficient arguments to confute it, and that the hangman is the best disputant. For if those argu- ments which they have for their own doctrine, were a sufficient ground of confidence and persuasion, men would be more willing to use those means and arguments, which are better compliances with human understanding, which more naturally do satisfy it, which are more human and Christian, than that way which satisfies none, which destroys many, which provokes more, and which makes all men jealous. To which add, that those who die for their opinion have in all men great arguments of the hearti- ness of their belief, of the confidence of their persuasion, of the piety and innocency of their persons, of the purity of their intention and simplicity of purposes, that they are persons totally disinterested, and separate from design. For no interest can be so great as to be put in balance against a man's life and his soul ; and he does very im- prudently serve his ends, who, simply and foreknowingly, loses his life in the persuasion of them. Just as if Titus should offer to die for Sempronius upon condition he might receive twenty talents when he had done his work. It is certainly an argument of a great love, and a great confi- dence, and a great sincerity, and a great hope, when a man lays down his life in attestation of a proposition. ' Greater VOL. II. S 258 THE MEREY MONARCH; love tlian tliis liath no man, tlian to laj down liis life/ saith our blessed Saviour. And altliougli laying of a wager is an argument of confidence more than truth ; yet laying such a wager, staking of a man's soul, and pawning his life, give a hearty testimony that the person is honest, confident, resigned, charitable, and noble. And I know not whether truth can do a person or a cause more advantages than those can do to an error. And, there- fore, besides the impiety, there is great imprudence in canonizing a heretic, and consecrating an error by such means, which were better preserved as encouragements of truth and comforts to real and true martyrs. And it is not amiss to observe, that this very advantage was given by heretics, who were ready to show and boast their catalogues of martyrs; in paiiicular the Circumcillinis did so, and the Donatists; and yet the first were heretics, the second schismatics. And it was remarkable in the scholars of Priscillian, who, as they held their master in the reputation of a saint while he was living, so, when he was dead, they held him in veneration as a martyr ; they, with reverence and devotion, carried him and the bodies of his slain companions to an honourable sepulture, and counted it religion to swear by the name of Priscillian. So that the extinguishing of the person gives life and credit to his doctrine, and when he is dead, he yet speaks more effectually .'' That is a fine saying of Taylor's, that God places a watery cloud in the eye, so that when the light of heaven shines on it it may produce a rainbow to be a sacrament and a memorial that God and the sons of men do not love to see a man perish. Such rainbows often shone across the clouds of Taylor's life. He experienced many seasons OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 259 of adversity, but they never failed to be lighted up by the glory of a true friendship. "When the north wind blows," he says, " and it rains sadly, none but fools sit down' in it, and cry; wise people defend themselves against it with a warm garment, a good fire, and a dry roof." All these he found at Golden Grove, Lord Carberry's beautiful seat. Green woods, and the songs of birds, and the ripple of the Torvy combined their enchantments for his pleasure, and helped to stimulate his imagination. The fine metaphors and apposite similes with which he so freely ornamented his luxuriant prose were suggested to him by the broad uplands and the leafy hollows of the valley between Carmarthen and Llandovery. Conspicuous in the green landscape rose the wavy crest of Grongar Hill, which Dyer has celebrated in his pleasant pastoral poem. The picture was just such an one as Taylor, who, though he wrote in prose, was a true poet, loved to contemplate : — " I am fallen," he writes, " into the hands of publicans and sequestrators, and they have taken all from me ; what now? Let me look about me. They have left me the sun and moon, fire and water, a loving wife, and many friends to pity me, and some to relieve me ; and I can still discourse, and unless I list, they have not taken away my merry countenance, and my cheerful spirit, and a good conscience ; they have still left me the providence of God, and all the promises of the Gospel, and my religion, and my hopes of heaven, and my charity to them too ; and still I sleep and digest, I eat and drink, I read and meditate. I can walk in my neighbour's pleasant fields, and see the variety of natural beauties, and delight in all that in which God delights— that is, in virtue and wisdom, in the whole creation, and in God Himself." 260 THE MEKKT MONARCH ; In the works which Jeremy Taylor composed at Golden Grove we trace the perceptible influence of the scenery that surrounded and delighted him. Their frequent passages of rui-al description are redolent with the sweet odours of poetry. Our readers will probably be familiar with his beautiful comparison of a Christian's prayer to the heavenward songful flight of a lark :— « So have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven and climb above the clouds ; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest, than it could recover by the vibration and frequent weighing of its wings, till the little creature sat down to pant and stay till the "storm was over ; and then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing as if it had learned music from an angel, as he passed sometimes through the air about his ministering here below. So is the prayer of a good man." It will be seen that, as is the case with every great writer, Taylor's style is peculiarly his own, and is dis- tinguished by a kind of stately music, like the harmonious peal of an organ. The imagery is rich and exquisite ; the rhythm sustained and dignified. Here are a few sped- mens :— "The love of the Divine Architect has scattered the firmament with stars, as a man sows corn in his fields." « So have I seen a rose newly-springing from the clefts of its hood, and at first it was fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven as a lamb-fleece ; but, when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and OR, ENGLAND TTNDEE CHAELES II. 261 dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it be<^an to put on darkness, and decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age ; it bowed the head and broke its stalk, and at night having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and out- worn faces.' " The sun approaching towards the gates of the morn- ing first opening a little eye of heaven, and sending away the' spirits of darkness, and giving light to a cock, and callin.. up the lark to matins, and by-and-bye gilding the frino'Is of a cloud, peeping over the eastern hills, thrusting out lis golden horns like those which decked the brow of Moses, when he was forced to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of God ? " 'Tor so doth the humble ivy creep at the foot of the oak, and leans upon its lowest base, and begs shade and protection, and to grow under its branches, and to give and take mutual refreshment, and pay a friendly influence for a mighty patronage ; and they grow and dwell together, and are the most remarkable of friends and married pairs of all the leafy nation." It is easy, when we read such swallow-flights of poetical expression, to understand why Mason called Jeremy Taylor » the Shakespeare of English prose ; " and why Mr. Lecky, with much more felicity, has compared his style to " a deeply-murmuring sea with the sunlight on it." The love of nature which filled his soul rejoiced in " the breath of heaven, not willing to disturb the softest stalk of a violet ; " in " the gentle wind shaking the leaves with a refreshment and cooling shade ; " in " the rainbow, half made of the glory of Ught, and half of the moisture of a cloud ; " and in « the fountain, swelling over the green k 262 THE MEEET MONARCH ; tnrf." In the Divine liandiwork he found a continual inspiration of praises and thanksgiving ; and he was one of the very first of our writers who endeavoured to lead the soul through Creation up to Creation's God : " Let every- thing you see represent to your spirit the excellency and the power of God, and let your conversation with the creatures lead you unto the Creator ; and so shall your actions be done more frequently with an eye to God's presence, by your often seeing Him in the glass of the creation. In the face of the sun you may see God's beauty ; in the fire you may feel His heart wanning ; in the water His gentleness to refresh you ; " it is the dew of heaven that makes your field give you bread." In the tranquil retirement of Golden Grove Taylor's genius reached its maturity. It was there that he wrote his " Holy Living and Holy Dying," his " Life of Christ," some of his finest " Sermons," his " Treatise on the Real Presence," and the volume of devotional exercises which he affectionately entitled " The Golden Grove." And now we may pause to glance at the distinctive marks of Jeremy Taylor as a divine, a writer, a preacher, and a theologian. In all four capacities we are struck by the fulnesr and solidity of his thought, the breadth of his observation, the living nature of his sympathies, as weU as by those minor but special characteristics, the richness of his imagery and the opulence of his diction. In all he exhibited the same well-balanced judgment, the same judicious avoidance of extremes ; the moderate wisdom which sometimes induced him, after the utterance of a strong statement, to qualify it in a later work. In all, we observe the same liberal and enlightened spirit, and the same large-souled disregard of forms and formularies wheix OK, ENGLAND TJNDEE CHABLES II. 263 set against the eternal verities. We have already com mented on his style, in which "the mind, the music that inform it compel our warmest admiration. ^Vhen every deduction has been made that a cold and severe critic can claim-when we have admitted his occasional exuber- ance, the over-amplitude of his images, the infrequent lapse into what, to our modern taste, seems grotesque and objectionable-it still remains true that he is unquestion- ably one of the three or four greatest masters of Enghsh prose. His style, more animated and plastic than that of Gibbon, is more sweeping and harmonious than that ot Hooker, more majestic than that of South. ^\ hile Sir Thomas Browne approaches nearer to hun than any other writer, he falls short of Taylor in the matter of picturesque allusiveness and poetical sensibility. To this allusiveness we have not failed to direct the reader s atten- tion From the accumulated treasures of reading, obser- vation, experience, and reflection he draws without stint image and simile, metaphor and illustration. Not less con- spicuous is the grandeur of his conceptions, which are those of a man living always in the pure serene air of spiritual thought. The greatest ideas were his ordinary food He dealt with them as freely and easily as smaller minds deal with their paltry commonplaces. Pathos, terror, sublimity, tenderness-he struck each chord ot the manifold lyre with even skill. He handled with equal felicity the radiant pencil of a Claude Lorraine and the powerful brush of a Salvator Rosa. He could paint scenes with the graciousness of a Spenser or the lurid po.ver ot a We must venture on a few more quotations in illustra- tion of this many-sidedness :— 264 It I THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 265 "All the successions of time, all the changes of nature, all the varieties of light and darkness, the thousand thousands of accidents in the world, and every con- tingency to every man and to every creature, doth preach one funeral sermon, and calls us to look and see how the old sexton Time throws up the earth and digs a grave, where we must lay our sins or our sorrows, and sow our bodies, till they rise again in a fair or an intolerable eternity." <«"When persecution hurls a man down from a large fortune to an even one, or from thence to the face of the earth, or from thence to the grave, a good man is but preparing for a crown, and the tyrant does but just knock off the fetters of the soul, the manacles of passion and desire, sensual lives and lower appetites; and if God suffers him to finish the persecution, tlien he can but dismantle the souFs prison, and let the soul fly to the mountains of rest. And all the intermediate evils are but like the Purian punishments : the executioner tore off their hairs, and rent their silken mantles, and discomposed their curious dressings, and lightly touched the skin; yet the offender cried out with most bitter exclamations, while his fault was expiated with a ceremony and without blood. So does God to His servants : He rends their upper gar- ments, and strips them of their unnecessary wealth, and ties them to physic and salutary discipline ; and they cry out under usages which have nothing but the outward sum and opinion of evil, not the real substance." " The river that runs slow and creeps by the banks, and begs leave of every turf to let it pass is drawn into little hollo wnesses, and spends itself in smaller portions, and dies with diversion ; but when it runs with vigorousness and a full stream, and breaks down every obstacle, making it even as its own brow, it stays not to be tempted by little avocations, and to creep into holes, but runs into the sea through full and useful channels. So is a man's prayer ; if it moves upon the pit of an abated appetite, it wanders into the society of every trifling accident, and stays at the corners of the fancy, and talks with every object it meets, and cannot arrive at heaven; but when it is carried upon the wings of passion and strong desires, a swift motion and a hungry appetite, it passes on through all the intermediate regions of clouds, and stays not till it dwells at the foot of the Throne, where Mercy sits, and ihence sends holy showers of refreshment. I deny not but some little drops will turn aside, and fall from the full channel by the weakness of the banks and hollowness of the passage; but the main course is still continued; and although the most earnest and devout persons feel and complain of some looseness of spirit and unfixed attentions, yet their love and their desire secure the main portions, and make the prayer to be strong, fervent, and effectual." « Because friendship is that by which the world is most blessed and receives most good, it ought to be chosen among the worthiest persons, that is, amongst those that can do greatest benefit to each other ; and though in equal worthiness I may choose by my eye, or ear, that is, into the consideration of the essential I may take in also the acci- dental and extrinsic worthinesses ; yet I ought to give everyone their just value ; v^hen the internal beauties are equal, thou shalt help to weigh down the scale, and I wiU love a worthy friend that can delight me as well as profit me, rather than him who cannot delight me at all. 266 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND TINDER CHARLES II. 267 and profit me no more; but jet I will not weigli tlie gayest of flowers, or the wings of butterflies, against wheat ; but when I am to choose wheat, I may take that which looks the brightest. I had rather see thyme and roses, marjoram and July flowers (gilli-flowers), that are fair, sweet, and medicinal, than the prettiest tulips, which are good for nothing; and my sheep and kine are better servants than race-horses and greyhounds; and I shall nither furnish my study with Plutarch and Cicero, with Livy and Polybius, than with Cassandra and Ibrahim Bassa ; * and if I do give an hour to these for divertisement or pleasure, yet will I dwell with those than can instruct me, and make me wise and eloquent, severe and useful to myself and others. I end this with the saying of Lalius in Cicero: ^Friendship ought not to follow utility, but utility friendship.' When I choose my friend, I will not stay till I have received a kindness ; but I will choose such an one as can do me many if I need them; but I mean such kindnesses which make me wise, and which make me better ; that is, I will, when I choose my friend, choose him that is the bravest, the worthiest, and the most excellent person ; and then your question is soon answered. To love such a person, and to contract such friendships, is just as authorized by the principles of Christianity, as it is warranted to love wisdom and virtue, goodness and beneficence, and all the impresses of God upon the spirits of brave men." In 1648 Taylor published " The Life of Christ; or, The Great Exemplar ; " the preface to which breathes his usual liberality of view and is rendered especially valuable by its vigorous generalisations. It seeks to prove that the per- ♦ Two of Mademoiselle de Scuderi's interminable romances. A I ceptive part of true religion, the moral law, as taught by Nature, by Moses, and our Lord, is in all its parts abso- lutely "reasonable;" in other words, eminently and peculiarly fitted to subserve the purpose for which man was made, of " living happily." The work itself is thoroughly practical ; it elucidates the teaching of the labours'' and character of Christ, and applies it to the reader^s benefit. Chronological order is not strictly observed ; and, of course, Taylor does not anticipate the "negative criticism" which, of late years, has been applied so perseveringly to the Gospel narrative. Defects of plan are obvious, and to topics of comparative un- importance an undue space is sometimes allotted ; but these and other faults are as nothing compared with the beauty and splendour of the composition as a whole, and the spiritual insight, the knowledge of the human heart, and the deep pathos which underlies particular passages. Of the "Holy Living and Holy Dying," the most popular of Jeremy Taylor's works, and probably the most popular, as it seems to us incomparably the best, of all English devotional writings, it would be as superfluous as presumptuous to speak in praise. How many aching hearts, how many weary minds have sought and found consolation in its pages ! How many con- sciences have they awakened— how many souls have they moved, purified, exalted 1 When John Wesley had read the chapter " On Purity of Intention," he was so deeply touched by it, so overcome, that he thenceforth resolved to devote his whole life to God, all his thoughts, and words, and deeds— "being thoroughly convinced that there was no medium, but that every part of life must 268 THE MEERT MONARCH ; either be a sacrifice to God or to one's self." It lias been said that the "Holy Living and Dying" are the " Paradise Lost and Eegained " of devotional literature, with their sublime strains softened by the singular beauty of the Christian " Allegro and Penseroso." With Keble we are ready to exclaim—" Audiamus jam ilUm hene beateque Vivendi ac moriendi Antistitem." To the depressed, the feeble, the weary— to the broken spirit and the fainting heart, as to the trusting, undoubting soul ; to the eager- ness of youth, the aspiration of manhood, the contented- ness of old age— these consecrated pages come with a balm and a benediction ; for their writer speaks as if his lips had been touched with a live coal from the altar of God. They glow with the sweet pure sunshine of heaven; in each eloquently musical period we seem to catch the echoes of angelic songs. " All images of rural delight ; the rose and the lily ; the lark at heaven's gate ; the "various incidents of sun and shade ; the shadows of trees ; the gilding of clouds, the murmuring of waters —whatever charms the eye, or comforts the heart, or enchants the ear, is collected in these pictures of the religious character." The rare excellence of Taylor's manual is most manifest when we compare it with the devotional treatises of the Eoman Church ; and the comparison is the more valuable from the way in which it brings out the sober teaching and the manly modera- tion of the Church of England. For with all Taylor's sweetness, there is no effeminacy; with all his strict- ness of discipline, no asceticism. While appealing to the heart, the soul, the conscience, he appeals also to the mtellect and the understanding. He never fails to be practical and self-reliant ; his earnestness is governed OR, ENGLAND TJNDKR CHARLES II. 269 ty cood sense, and never dreams itself away m a sen- suous sentimentalism. In this one- sentence, which, we think, only an English Churchman, or at all events only an English Christian, could have written, you find the quintessence of Jeremy Taylor's theory of the true re- gimen of life : - " God hath given every man work enough to do, that there should be no room for idleness, and yet hath so ordered the world that there shall be place for devotion. He that hath the fewest businesses in the world is called upon to spend more time in the dressing of his soul; and he that has the most affairs may so order them that they shall be a service of God." In the preface to the volume of prayers to which he gave the title of « The Golden Grove," Taylor warmly expresses his regret at the overthrow of the English Church, and his deep affection for " her sacraments so adorned and ministered," and " her circumstances of relic^ion so useful and apt for edification." He states with much freedom his opinion of the harsh and un- christian conduct of the Puritan preachers. At a time when Taylor stood almost alone in his advocacy of religious tolerance, his language not unnaturally excited the°prejudices of the dominant party; and Taylor was arrested and thrown into prison. He was quickly released ; but seems again to have offended the ruling powers, and to have been committed to Chepstow Castle, where, however, he was not uncourteously treated. He used his pen to good purpose, adding twenty-five dis- courses to the collection previously published, and pro- ducing his « Unum Necessarium ; or. The Doctrine and Practice of Eepentance, describing the Necessities and Measures of a Strict, a Holy, and a Christian Life, and 270 THE MERKY MONARCH ; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 271 a rescued from Popular Errors." This theological manifesto involved him in new troubles; for by attacking the Calvinistic doctrine of Original Sin, and other related dogmas, it provoked not only the anger of the Calvinistic and Puritan preachers, but the censure of some of the Catholic divines of his own Church. The moderate Warner, Bishop of Eochester, expressed his disapproval ; while the admirable Sanderson complained, even with tears, of Taylor's departure from the cautious and Scrip- tural' teaching of the Church of England. In a strain which showed that he was no convert to the tolerant sins of the " Liberty of Prophesying," he lamented the misery of the times, so that it was not possible to suppress by authority such " perilous and unseasonable novelties." Taylor's theories, which may be traced to his dislike to the Augustinian theology, are probably much more acceptable in the present day than they were in his own. That they were not wholly consistent in themselves, however, Coleridge has shown in the « Aids to Reflec- tion." On his return from imprisonment, he still continued his residence in Wales, diversifying it by occasional visits to London and its neighbourhood— more particularly to Evelyn, at Sayes Court, where he met with Robert Boyle, the philosopher, the theoretical Watkins, and Berkeley, afterwards Bishop of Cloyne. In reference to one of these visits, in 1655, he writes to Evelyn:-" I did believe myself so very much bound to you for your so kind, so friendly reception of me in your Tuscalanum, that'l had some little wonder upon me when I saw you making excuses that it was no better. Sir, I came to see jou and your lady, and am highly pleased that I did II SO, and found all your circumstances to be an heap and union of blessings. But I have not either so great a fancy and opinion of the prettiness of your abode, or so low an opinion of your prudence and piety, as to think you can be anyways transported with them. I know the pleasure of them is gone off from their light before one month's possession; and that strangers, and seldom {i.e., occasional) seers, feel the beauty of them more than you who dwell with them. T am pleased, indeed, at the order and the cleanness of all your out- ward things; and look upon you not only as a person, by way of thankfulness to God for His mercies and g^oodness to you, especially obhged to a great measure of piety, but also as one who, being freed in great degrees from secular cares and impediments, can, without excuse and alloy, wholly intend what you so passionately desire, the service of God." We cannot wonder that such a man as Taylor drew towards him the hearts of many friends. We have seen on what terms of afPectionate intercourse he lived with Kichard Yaughan, Earl of Carberry. When the first Lady Carberry died, he preached her funeral sermon, and painted a portrait of her in glowing colours which, as Heber says, belongs rather to an angehc than a human character. The second Lady Carberry was the original of '' the Lady '' in Milton's " Comus ; " she, too, bestowed on Taylor her confidence and regard. His relations to Evelyn were of the pleasantest description. Evelyn would fain have had him settle in London that he might be nearer to him ; but Taylor was content with occasional visits, when he officiated to private congregations of Churchmen, and enjoyed the graceful hospitality of » I| I I I H I P I .I III IIH I " ^*i 272 THE MEREY MONAKCH ; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 273 Sayes Court. In 1657, Evelyn granted his friend a pension, wliich must have been welcome exceedingly; '^ since he was sorely inconvenienced by the res angustcB. domi, and suffered much from family troubles, losing two of his sons through an attack of smallpox." In 1658, the Earl of Conway, another of Taylor's in- fluential friends, induced him, by enlisting Evelyn's in- fluence, to accept a lectureship at Lisburn, or, as it was then called, Lisnagarvy, in the north of Ireland. As the stipend was small, and the duty to be shared with a Pres- byterian, Taylor at first felt some reluctance; but it was overcome, and in the summer he crossed to Ireland, and settled with his family at Portmore, within about eight miles of Lisburn, There, in full view of the broad ex- pause of Lough Neagh, and with the silent shadows of ^rim mountains gathering round him, he enjoyed the se- elusion so dear to a contemplative mind. - My retirement to this solitary place,- he wrote to Evelyn, - hath been, I hope, of some advantage to me as to this state of religion, in which I am yet but a novice, but, by the goodness of God I see fine things before me whither I am contending. It is' a great, but a good work, and I beg of you to assist me with your prayers, and to obtain of God for me that I may arrive at the height of love and union with God, which is given to all those souls who are very dear to God " The tradition runs, that he was wont to retire for study or devotion to some of the picturesque islets which repose amid the shining waters of the lake. In 16G0, he issued, as we have already noted, his great casuistica/ work, the " Ductor Dubitantium,- and also, a The Worthy Communicant," in which he expatiates upon the blessings to be derived from the holy receiving of the Lord's Supper, and furnishes the minister with useful directions for dealing with difficult cases of con- science. It is not without traces of the affluence and power of Taylor's earlier writings. One of the most strik- ing passages is that in which he speaks of the Sacra- mental mystery as having been made intricate, like a doctrine of philosophy, and difficult by the assertion and dissolution of distinctions. ''So we sometimes espy a bright cloud formed into an irregular figure ; which, as it is observed by unskilful and fantastic travellers, looks like a curtain to some, and as a castle to others ; some tell that they saw an army with banners, and it signifies war; but another, wiser than his fellows, says it looks like a flock of sheep, and foretells plenty ; and all the while it is nothing but a shining cloud, by its own mobility and the activity of a wind cast into a contingent and artificial shape ; so it is in this great mystery of our religion, in which some copy strange things which God intended not ; and others see not what God hath plainly told." To this great English divine, and greatest of English ecclesiastical orators, no higher preferment was given at the Eestoration than the Bishopric of Down and Connor, to which he was nominated on the 6th of August, 1660. Shortly after, he was elected Yice- Chancellor of the University of Dublin. His consecration took place on the 27th of January, 1661, in St. Patrick's Cathedral. The sermon which he preached on the occasion won the atten- tive admiration of liis hearers by its force of argument and brilliancy of style. " The whole ceremony was con- ducted without any confusion or the least clamour heard, save many prayers and blessings from the people, although the throng was great, and the windows throughout the VOL. II. ^ 272 THE MERRY MONARCH ; Sayes Court. In 1657, Evelyn granted his friend a pension, whicli must have been welcome exceedingly; " since he was sorely inconvenienced by the res angndm domi, and suffered much from family troubles, losing two of his sons through an attack of smallpox." In 1658, the Earl of Conway, another of Taylor's in- fluential friends, induced him, by enlisting Evelyn's in- fluence, to accept a lectureship at Lisburn, or, as it was then called, Lisnagarvy, in the north of Ireland. As the stipend was small, and the duty to be shared with a Pres- byterian, Taylor at first felt some reluctance; but it was overcome, and in the summer he crossed to Ireland, and settled with his family at Portmore, within about eight miles of Lisburn. There, in full view of the broad ex- panse of Lough Neagh, and with the silent shadows of grim mountains gathering round him, he enjoyed the se- clusion so dear to a contemplative mind. " My retirement to this solitary place," he wrote to Evelyn, " hath been, I hope, of some advantage to me as to this state of religion, in which I am yet but a novice, but, by the goodness of God I see fine things before me whither I am contending. It is a great, but a good work, and I beg of you to assist me with your prayers, and to obtain of God for me that I may arrive at the height of love and union with God, which is given to all those souls who are very dear to God » The tradition runs, that he was wont to retire for study or devotion to some of the picturesque islets which repose amid the shining waters of the lake. In 16G0, he issued, as we have already noted, his great casuistical' work, the " Ductor Dubitantium," and also, "The Worthy Communicant," in which he expatiates upon the blessings to be derived from the holy receiving OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 273 of the Lord's Supper, and furnislies the minister with useful directions for dealing with difficult cases of con- science. It is not without traces of the affluence and power of Taylor's earlier writings. One of the most strik- ing passages is that in which he speaks of the Sacra- mental mystery as having been made intricate, like a doctrine of philosophy, and difficult by the assertion and dissolution of distinctions. ''So we sometimes espy a bright cloud formed into an irregular figure ; which, as it is observed by unskilful and fantastic travellers, looks like a curtain to some, and as a castle to others ; some tell that they saw an army with banners, and it signifies war; but another, wiser than his fellows, says it looks like a flock of sheep, and foretells plenty ; and all the while it is nothing but a shining cloud, by its own mobility and the activity of a wind cast into a contingent and artificial shape ; so it is in this great mystery of our religion, in which some copy strange things which God intended not; and others see not what God hath plainly told." To this great English divine, and greatest of English ecclesiastical orators, no higher preferment was given at the Eestoration than the Bishopric of Down and Connor, to which he was nominated on the 6th of August, 1660. Shortly after, he was elected Yice-Chancellor of the University of Dublin. His consecration took place on the 27th of January, 1661, in St. Patrick's Cathedral. The sermon which he preached on the occasion won the atten- tive admiration of his hearers by its force of argument and brilliancy of style. " The whole ceremony was con- ducted without any confusion or the least clamour heard, save many prayers and blessings from the people, although the throng was great, and the windows throughout the VOL. II. ^ 274 THE MEEBT MONAECH ; OK, ENGLAND UNDEK CHAELES II. 275 Hi whole passage of the procession, to and from the cathedral, fiUed ^vith spectators." In the following April the ad- jacent diocese of Dromore was added to that of Down and Connor, in aclmowledgment of the good bishop's " virtue, wisdom, and industry." He had previously been made a Privy Councillor ; and in May, 1661, he was appointed to preach at the opening of the two Houses of Parliament. His wise and energetic administration of the Univer- sity of Dublin laid the foundation of that repute which it has enjoyed down to our own time. In his own die cese he displayed a similar vigour. Having found the cathedral of Dromore in a dilapidated condition, he re- built the choir at his own expense. He underwent no small anxiety and vexation from the Presbyterian clergy who, during the sway of the Commonwealth, had been intraded into the benefices of the Church; but the majority eventually yielded to his force of character, while the laity received him always with admiring regard. His celebrated sermon. Via Intelligentiw, published in 1662, showed that his faith in his own great doctrine of toleration was still unshaken, though he seems to have arrived at the conclusion that it can hardly be applied to those who deny its validity or will not avail themselves of its operation. Taylor's later literary labours comprised three sermons, dedicated to the Duchess of Ormond, and a " Discourse on Confirmation." He also preached the funeral sermon for Archbishop Bramhall, and published his " Dissuasive from Popery," a work, undertaken at the request of the Irish Bishops, which met with immediate and extensive success. He had projected, and was actually engaged in preparing, a treatise on the Beatitudes, when he was seized, though still in the very maturity of manhood, with what proved to be a mortal disease (1667). It has been conjectured that his health had already been affected by his grief at the misconduct of his two surviving sons, one of whom had perished in a duel, while the other had joiued in the excesses of the Earl of Rochester. Symptoms of fever appeared on the 3rd of August, and ten days later, in the 55th year of his age, and the seventh of his episco- pate, he passed away. His remains were interred in the choir of the cathedral church of Dromore ; his name lives in the hearts of all English Churchmen who know how to appreciate the splendour of a genius devoted to God's service, and the beauty of a holy and blameless life. "To sum up all in a few words," says Bishop Eust, " this great prelate had the good humour of a gentleman, the eloquence of an orator, the fancy of a poet, the acute- ness of a schoolman, the promptness of a philosopher, the wisdom of a counsellor, and the piety of a saint." At the Restoration the Church of England, recovering from its severe depression, seemed suddenly endowed with a new vitality, and produced a growth of eminent divines and teachers, distinguished by their intellectual vigour. Bishops Pearson, Bull, and Beveridge; Doctors South and Barrow ; Baxter and Howe, who had not yet left her com- munion ; these all came into the foremost rank in the early years of Charles H.'s reign : while a new school of eminent men arose, of whom TiUotson, Burnet, and StiU- ingfleet were the chief representatives-men who, m close sympathy with the bold and independent thinkers at Cambridge, became the founders of the Moderate party in the Church. 276 THE MEERY MONARCH; Conspicuous in tMs illustrious group as a rhetorician and a thinker, a scholar and a divine, was Dr. Eobert South. The son of a prosperous London merchant, he was born in 1633. His early education he received at Westminster School, which was then a perfect hotbed of royalist principles of the most advanced kind. As South afterwards said, in a sermon preached to a later genera- tion of Westomonasterians, " in the very worst of times, when it was my lot to be a member of a school un- taintedly loyal, we were really King's soldiers, as well as called so ; " and he adds that on that very day, " that eternally black and infamous day, of the King's murder, I myself heard the King pubUcly prayed for "—it is said, by South himself—" but an hour or two at most before his sacred head was struck off." At Christ Church, Oxford, South soon attained disthiction as a scholar and a wit. His strong prejudices against Puritanism were so openly expressed that Dr. John Owen, whom Cromwell had appointed Dean of the College, rebuked him publicly as ** one who sat in the seat of the scornful ; " a rebuke to which South replied, with interest, in his earliest ser- mon on '* The Professors of Godliness, but Workers of Iniquity, with their Sad Countenances and Hypocritical Groanings," preached in 1659. At the Restoration he was immediately recognised as the great preacher of the University ; and on the occasion of the issue of a Commission to expel from Oxford its Puritan professors and principles, he delivered a remark- able sermon (July 29, 1660) in favour of a learned clergy, and in severe denunciation of his opponents. He spoke with great fervour of the eloquence of Scripture, com- mending it for imitation to the ministers of the Church, OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 277 "Where," he said, "where do we ever find sorrow flowing in such a naturally prevailing pathos as in the Lamenta- tions -of Jeremiah ? One would think that every letter was wrote with a tear, every word was the noise of a breaking heart ; that the author was a man compacted of sorrows ; disciplined to grief from his infancy ; one who never breathed but in sighs, nor spoke but in tears and groans. So that he who said he would not read the Scrip- ture for fear of spoiling his style, showed himself as much a blockhead as an atheist, and to have as small a gust of the elegancies of expression as of the sacredness of the matter." He adds that, "Questionless when Christ says that a Scribe must be stocked with things new and old, we must not think that He meant that he should have a hoard of old sermons (whosoever made them), with a bundle of new opinions; for this certainly would have furnished out such entertainment to his spiritual guests, as no rightly-dis- posed palate could ever relish." Rewards and dignities poured in upon the brilliant and uncompromising orator. Though only 28 years of age, he was chosen Public Orator, and in this capacity congratu- lated Clarendon on his installation as Chancellor in a speech of rare eloquence ; was made one of his chaplains, and appointed to preach before the King at Whitehall. It was during the sermon he then delivered that he was obliged, according to the Puritans, by his sudden qualms of conscience while inveighing against the Great Rebellion, to quit the pulpit. If so, his conscience was speedily quieted, for in almost all his sermons at this period he is found denouncing Cromwell and Milton, the Puritans and the Nonconformists, and this with a violence of language and an amplitude of misrepresentation which are very 278 THE MEERT MONAKCH ; OB, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES 11. 279 deplorable. He was soon afterwards appointed a Pre- bendary of Westminster and Canon of Christ Church, and the remainder of his long life was spent either at Westminster or Oxford, except when, in 1674, he accom- panied Lawrence Hyde's embassy to Poland, to congratu- late King John Sobieski on his accession. "South/' says Dean Lake, "was the great University preacher, and his subsequent career might be easily tracked by his Sermons/' He, no doubt, supported Dr. Jane in the famous decree of Passive Obedience which passed Convocation on the day of the execution of Lord Eussell, against " certain damnable doctrines, destructive of the sacred persons of Princes/' and we may be sure that all the bitterest Acts of Parliament against the Dissenters— the two Acts of Uniformity, the Conventicle Act, the Five Mile Act, which drove 2,000 clergy out of the Church of England and imprisoned Baxter and Bunyan — ^received his hearty approbation. He even carried his hatred of novelties so far that, in the true old style of Oxford, he denounced the newly-formed Eoyal Society, of which the ancient Bishop Ward of Salisbury was the second President, in a speech, as Public Orator. It would be very curious if we could ascertain what were his relations with his old school-fellow Locke, at Christ Church, in whose expulsion he must have borne a part. He declared himself ready to put on a buff coat against Monmouth; and would take no part whatever against James II., though he did not become a Nonjuror. But he, of course, opposed every act of toleration or compre- hension during the reign of William, and was a warm supporter of Sacheverel in 1706 ; and one of his last acts was a hearty adhesion to Lord Arran (whose brother, the Duke of Ormond, had been just before impeached for high treason), who was elected by the Chapter to the High Stewardship of Westminster-^an ofiice still in their gift —with the words, " Heart and hand for my Lord Arran.'^ South died, at the age of 83, in 1716. Years had not taught him tolerance or moderation ; and to the very last he breathed fiery invectives against all with whom he dis- agreed. To what extremes his passionate genius carried him you may see in his controversy with Sherlock on the doctrine of the Trinity. Still, with all abatements, he was a man of great intellectual power, a master of analysis and method, endowed with great gifts of expression, and possessed of a sharp and ready wit. With a little more moral enthusiasm, more self-control, and something of the poet's divine faculty of imagination, South would have taken, not the first place among English preachers, for that 4ould still have had to be allotted to Jeremy Taylor, but, at all events, the second; which must now, wethmk, be given to Barrow. Of the copiousness and fine humour of his method, and its occasional pomp of rhetoric, we have no space for illustration. But a few brief specimens of his style may be welcome to the reader :^" He who owes all his good nature to the pot and pipe, to the jollity and compliances of merry company, may possibly go to bed with a wonderful stock of good-nature overnight, but then he will sleep it all away again before the morning." "Love is the great instrument and engine of Nature, the bond and cement of society, the spring and spirit of the universe. Love is such an affection as cannot so properly be said to be in the soul as the soul to be m that.'' V 280 THE MEERT MONARCH; *' The understanding arbitrated upon all the reports of sense and all the varieties of imaj^ination, not like a drowsy judge only hearing, but directing the verdict." "It is wonderful to consider how a couiuiand or call to be liberal^ either upon a civil or religious account, all of a sudden impoverishes the rich, breaks the merchant, shuts up every private man's exchequer, and makes those men in a minute have nothing, who, at the very same instant, want nothing to spend." " ' I speak the words of soberness,' says St. Paul, ^ and I preach the Gospel, not with the enticing words of man's wisdom.' This was the way of the Apostles, discoursing of things sacred. Nothing here of the fringes of the North Star; nothing of ^Nature's becoming unnatural ; ' nothing of ' the down of angel's wings, or the beautiful locks of cherubims ; ' no starched similitudes, introduced witli a ^Thus have I seen a cloud rolling in its airy mansion.' "^ No, these were sublimities above the rise of the Apostolic spirit, for the Apostles, poor mortals ! were content to take lower steps . . . and to use a dialect which only pierced the conscience, and made the hearers cry out, 'Men and brethren, what shall we do?' It tickled not the ear, but sunk into the heart ; and when men came from such sermons, they never commended the preacher for his taking voice or gesture ; for the fineness of such a simile, or the quaintness of such a sentence ; but they spoke like men conquered by the overpowering force and evidence of the most concerning truths, much in the words of the two disciples going to Emmaus, ' Did not our hearts burn within us while He opened to us the Scrip- tures ? ' *' * This ifl an obvious allusion to Jeremy Taylor's prodigality of ornament. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 281 In 1677, ten years after the death of Jeremy Taylor, died Dr. Isaac Barrow, Master of Trinity College, and Vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge, whom Charles 11. is said to have described as "the best scholar in England." He demands attention here, how- ever, not as scholar or mathematician, but as one of the most eminent of the Anglican divines and theologians, in whom are shown the best growth and fruit of the English Church. His works, as lately edited, occupy nine moderate-sized volumes; the old edition, familiar to us in our youth, was in three ponderous folios. The theological portion consists chiefly of '^Sermons.'' Generally speaking, sermons are a very fugitive kind of literature ; have as brief a life as political pamphlets— those swiftest of birds of passage-or poems " published at the request of friends " but the "discourses" of Dr. Barrow have a place among our standard classics. Charles II. said of Barrow, that he was an unfair preacher, because he exhausted every subject he touched, and left nothing for any person to say who came after him ; and this exhaus- tiveness is, no doubt, one of his special marks. He ex- amines the subject from every possible point of view ; looks around it and about it and into it ; surveys it in all its various aspects, all its lights and shades of difference and distinction. "Every sermon," says a recent critic, "is exhaustive, in the sense of being a comprehensive discus- sion of all the compound parts of his subject. He goes through them all, one by one, step by step, and places each in its right position. The process, it must be owned, is sometimes tedious, but it must also be allowed that the result, in the hands of a strong and laborious workman like Barrow, is vastly impressive. When the quarry is ZOtt THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 283 exhausted, canil all the stones are in their appointed places, we have a massive and a solid edifice before us, complete from its foundations to its roof, and strongly compacted in every part." We do not think that Barrow's sermons, with all their massiveness and solidity of thought, are ever dull or tedious reading; their style is so strong, clear, exact, and decisive. It is that of a man who feels per- fectly niiister of his theme and of himself; who knows that he has attempted nothing which he cannot easily ac- complish. It lacks the splendid opulence of Taylor's richly-coloured diction, but then it exhibits a wonderful transparency ; the current is strenuous and full, but you can see to the bottom of it. As a theologian, Barrow concerns himself little about Dogma, nor does he deal with any of those subtler ques- tions—the why, the whence, and the whither— which per- plex inquiring and restless minds. He is the preacher, far excellence, of a practical religion, the reHgion of every- day life. He says himself :— " Religion consisteth not in fair profession and glorious pretences, but in real practice ; not in a pretentious adherence to any sect or party, but in a sincere love of goodness and dislike of naughtiness ; not in a nice orthodoxy, but in a sincere love of truth, in a hearty approbation of, and compliance with, the doctrines fundamentally good and necessary to be believed ; not in harsh censuring and virulently inveighing against others, hut in a carefully amending our own ways; not in a furious zeal for or against trivial circumstances, but in a conscionable practising the substantial facts of religion." This is the very essence of Barrow's teaching, the charac- ter of which is evident even in the titles of his sermons : as, for instance, "Upright Walking sure Walking,^' "The: Folly of Slander," " Not to Offend in Word," " Against Foolish Talking and Jesting," ''Of Contentment," "Of Industry," " Of being Imitators of Christ." Barrow was born in 1630. He was educated at the Charterhouse, and afterwards at Trinity College, Cam- bridge, of which he became a Fellow. He travelled ex- tensively on the Continent from 1655 to 1659 ; returned to England, took holy orders, and was appointed Professor of Greek at Cambridge, and also of Geometry at Gresham College. He held the post of Lucasian Mathematical Lecturer at Cambridge until 1669, when he was suc- ceeded by his friend and pupil, Sir Isaac Newton. Charles II. appointed him Master of Trinity, in 1 672 ; and he was Vice-Chancellor of the University when he died, in 1677, at the early age of 47. Bishop Beveridge was born in February, 1637, in the parish of Barrow-upon-Soar, in Leicestershire, of which parish his father was Vicar. He was a boy of twelve when Charles I. perished on the scaffold at Whitehall. His father had died some time previously ; but the family seem to have had substance enough to be able to send the lad, in 1653, to Cambridge, where he entered St. John's, and came under the influence of its head. Dr. Tuckney, a dis- tinguished Puritan and Calvinist. The influence of this able divine did not sufftce to separate Beveridge from the Church of his fathers, but it modified to some extent his religious convictions. He became a hard student, and applied himself with much energy to the study of the early history of the Church, and of the languages and Hterature of the East. Before he was twenty he compUed a Syrian Grammar. The result of his patristic and eccle- siastical researches were given to the world in 1672 and I 284 THE MERRY MONARCH ; 1679, in ''The Pandectae" and ''Tlie Canones,"— books of no small value and merit in their time, though since superseded by the labours of more fortunate scholars. In the year following the Eestoration, Beveridge was ordained deacon and priest, and instituted to the Vicarage of Ealing. Thence, in 1672, he removed to the living of St. Peter's, Cornhill, where he toiled with unabatiiig dili- gence for a period of thirty years. " He applied himself," we are told, " with the utmost labour and zeal to the dis- charge of his ministry in several parts and offices ; and so instructive was he in his discourse from the pulpit, so warm and affectionate in his private exhortations, so regular and uniform in the public worship of the Church, and in every part of his pastoral functions, and so remark- ably were his labours crowned with success, that as he himself was justly styled ' the great reviver and restorer of primitive piety,' so his parish was deservedly proposed as the best model and pattern for the rest of its neighbours to copy after." While Kector of St. Peter's, he was successively pre- ferred Prebendary of St. Paul's (1674), Archdeacon of Colchester (1681), and Prebendary of Canterbuiy (1684). He carried into his archidiaconal work the same spirit of thoroughness he had infused into his parochial— person- ally visiting every parish, and obtaining an exact knowledge of its condition and necessities. At Canter- bury his rigorous Churchmanship was somewhat un- pleasantly displayed. James II. had ordered that a brief should be read for the relief of the persecuted French Protestants. Whether because he thought it illegal, which could hardly have been the case, or because, which is more probable, he did not sympathise with its purpose, OK, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 285 he objected that it was not sanctioned by the rubrics. It was then that Tillotson epigrammatically replied— « Doctor, doctor, Charity is above rubrics ! " At the Ee volution he took the oath of allegiance to William and Mary, and in 1690 was appointed one of the King's chaplains. In 1704 he was promoted to the see of St. Asaph. He died on the 5th of March, 1707, leaving behind him a hundred and fifty published sermons, dis- tinguished by their earnest eloquence and their kind exposition of Divine truth. To the Cambridge School of Moderate or Rational Theologians— perhaps we might more fitly call them Religious Liberals— belonged Dr. Ralph Cudworth, who was born in 1617, at Aller, in Somersetshire. In 1644 he was appointed Master of Clare Hall, Cambridge, and in the following year, Regius Professor of Hebrew. He became D.D. in 1651, and in 1654 Master of Christ's College. He died in 1688. We owe to this judicious thinker and profound scholar a vigorous refutation of Atheism, Hobbism, and other forms of scepticism, entitled, ''The True Intellectual System of the Universe." The principles which he lays down are these -.—First, " That all things in the world do not float without a head and governo°r, but that there is a God, an omnipotent, under- standingBeing, presiding over all.'^ Second, - That this God being essentially good and just, there is something in its own nature immutably and eternally just and unjust, and not by arbitrary law, will, and command only." And, lastly, ''That we are so far first principals or masters of our own actions as to be accountable to justice for them, or to make us guilty and blamewortliy for what we do amiss, and to deserve punishment accordingly." 286 THE MERRY MOIfARCH J Another illustrious member of this School, which con- cerned itself more with the essentials than the acci- dentals of religious faith, was Benjamin Whichcote, 1610-1GS3, who, as Provost of King's College, strongly im- pressed his own mode of thought and form of belief both upon the rising generation of students and his own col- leagues in the administration of the University. Principal Tulloch speaks of him, in slightly exaggerated language, as the founder of "the new school of philosophical theology," though this school is known chiefly by the works of more copious writers. "Like many eminent teachers, his personality and the general force of his mental character were obviously greater than his mental productiveness. A few volumes of his sermons are nearly all that survive of his labours to help us to understand them. Yet his sermons, comparatively neglected as they have been, are among the most thoughtful in the English language, pregnant with meaning, not only for his own, but for all time." They are comprised in four volumes, and undoubtedly deserve the reader's most careful atten- tion ; but of higher interest, we think, are the gems of crystallised thought which are known as his " Moral and Eeligious Aphorisms." Tillotson, in his funeral sermon, thus draws his char- acter : — " A godlike temper and disposition (as he was wont to call it) was what he chiefly valued and aspired after, that universal charity and goodness which he did continually preach and practise. His conversation was exceeding kind and afPable, grave and winning, prudent and profit- able. He was slow to declare his judgment, and modest in delivering it. Never passionate, never peremptory — so OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 287 far from imposing upon others that he was rather apt to yield. And although he had a most profound and well- poised judgment, yet he was of all men I ever knew the most patient to hear others differ from him, and the most easy to be convinced when good reason was offered ; and, which is seldom seen, more apt to be favourable to another man's reason than his own. Studious and inquisitive men," he adds, " at such an age (at forty or fifty, at the utmost) have fixed and settled their judgments on most points, and, as it were, made their last understanding - supposing that they have thought, or read, or heard what can be said on all sides of things ; and after that they grow positive and impatient of contradiction. But our deceased friend was so wise as to be willing to leave to the last, knowing that no man can grow wise without some change of his mind— without gaining some knowledge which he had not, or correcting some error which he had before. He had attained so perfect a mastery of his passions that for the latter and greater part of his life he was hardly ever seen to be transported with anger, and, as he was extremely careful not to provoke any man, so as not to be provoked by any ; using to say, ' If I provoke a man, he is the worse for my company ; and if I suffer myself to be provoked by him, I shall be the worse for his.' He was a great encourager and kind director of young divines, and one of the most candid hearers of sermons, I think, that ever was. . . He never spoke well of himself, nor ill of others. . . In a word, he had all those virtues, and in a high degree, which an excellent temper, great condescension, long care and watchfulness over him- self, together with the assistance of God's grace (which he continually implored and mightily relied upon) are apt 288 THE MERRY MONARCH ; to produce. Particularly lie excelled in tlie virtues of conversation, liumanitj and gentleness and humility, a prudent and peaceable and reconciling temper." We quote a few specimens of Whichcote's aphorisms : — " Heaven iB first a temper, and then a place." "The reason of our mind is the best instrnment we have to work withal." " There is nothing more nnnatural to religion than contentions about it."^ " It is not good to live in jest, since we must die in earnest." «' It is inconsistent with any kind of honesty and virtue to neglect and despise all kind of religion.'* " Nothing is more specific to man than capacity of religion, and sense of God." "We are all of us at times in a fool's paradise, more or less, as if all were our own, all as we would have it." " Let him that is assured he errs in nothing, take upon him to condemn every man that errs in anything.'* " I have always found that such preaching of others hath most com- manded my heart which hath most illuminated my head." * The Kestoration brought small gain to the '' inspired tinker,'^ John Bunyan, whose influence on the religious mind of England has been infinitely greater than that of all the divines at whom we have thus briefly glanced. He was committed to prison in November, 1660, on the charo-e of preaching in several conventicles in the country, to the great disparagement of the government of the Church of England. For three months he lay in Bedford gaol, and at the end of that time, as he refused to con- form, was re-imprisoned. Owing to his contumacy, he was left out of the general gaol-delivery which marked the coronation of Charles II. His wife made three appeals on his behalf to the Judges, pleading that she had four small children, unable to help themselves, one of whom * Whichcote's " Aphorisms " seem to have suggested the " Guesses at Truth." OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 289 was blind, and that she and they had nothing to live upon but the charity of good people. It was in vain. " I found myself," said Bunyan, "encompassed with infirmities. The parting with my wife and poor children hath often been to me in this place as the pulling of the flesh from the bones, and that not only because I am somewhat too fond of these great mercies, but also because I should have often brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries, and wants that my poor family was like to meet with should I be taken from them, especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer my heart than all besides. Oh, the thoughts of the hardships I thought my poor blind one might go under would break my heart to pieces. ' Poor child,' thought I, ' what sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion in this world ! Thou must be beaten, must beg, suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I cannot now endure the wind should blow upon thee.' " For eleven years Bunyan lay in Bedford gaol, not obtain- ing his release until March, 1672, when, by royal pro- clamation, Nonconformists were allowed to assemble for worship under their licensed ministers. His imprison- ment, however, bore glorious fruit. The solitude of his dungeon was peopled by his fervid genius and all-ab- sorbing devotion with a crowd of immortal figures, which he arranged in such a manner as to represent the successive scenes of a new and striking allegory. Transferring his visions to paper, he produced for the eternal delight and instruction of his fellows (in 1678) the first part of '^The Pilgrim's Progress from this World to that which is to Come, delivered under the similitude of a Dream, wherein is discovered the Manner VOL. II. w 290 THE MEEEY MONARCH; of Ms Setting Out, his Dangerous Journey, and Safe Arrival at the Desired Country." That such a book should be written, and eagerly received by the people, in the Eestoration period, is a convincing proof that the national heart remained sound at the core, in spite of the baleful influences of a profligate Court. There is a Shakespearian touch about " The Pilgrim's Progress" in the multiplicity of the characters intro- duced, their variety, their distinct individualisation, and the appropriateness of the language and sentiments allotted to them. No one who has read the book will ever forget the sharp portraiture and vivid presentment of Mr. Facing-both-Ways, Mr. Pliable, Mr. Worldly Wise- man Talkative, Hopeful, and half a hundred other actors in the stirring drama. As Macaulay says, in Ms well- known criticism, " The mind of Bunyan was so imagma- tive that personifications, when he dealt with them, became men. All the forms which cross or overtake the pilgrims, giants, and hobgoblins, illfavoured ones, and shining ones, the tall, comely, swarthy Madam Bubble, with her great purse by her side, and her fingers playing with the money, the black man in the bright vesture, Mr. Worldly Wiseman and my Lord Hategood, Mr. Talkative, and Mr. Timorous, all are actually existing beings to us. We follow the travellers through their allegorical progress with interest not inferior to that with which we foUow Elizabeth from Siberia to Moscow, or Jeanie Deans from Edinburgh to London. Bunyan is almost the only writer who ever gave to the abstract the interest of the concrete.^' But to criticise " The Pilgrim's Progress " now-a-days would be an impertinence. It has become a part of the living literature of the people, and much of it has entered OK, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 291 into and been incorporated with their daily talk. " In the wildest parts of Scotland the Pilgrim's Progress is the delight of the peasantry. In every nursery the Pil- grim's Progress is a greater favourite than Jack the Giant-Killer. Every reader knows the straight and narrow path as well as he knows a road in which he has gone backward and forward a hundred times. This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imagina- tions of oue mind should lessen the personal recollections of another. And this miracle the tinker has wrought. There is no ascent, no declivity, no resting-place, no turn- stile, with which we are not perfectly acquainted. The wicket gate, and the desolate swamp which separates it from the City of Destruction, the long line of road, as straight as a rule can make it, the Interpreter's house and all its fine shows, the prisoner in the iron cage, the palace, at the doors of which armed men kept guard, and on the battlements of which walked persons clothed all in gold, the cross and the sepulchre, the steep hill and the pleasant arbour, the stately front of the House Beautiful by the wayside, the chained lions crouching in the porch, the low green valley of Humiliation, rich with grass and covered with flocks, all are as well known to us as the siirhts of our own street." Bunyan's allegory of "The Holy War," less human than " The Pilgrim's Progress," but grander in concep- tion, and more poetical, was published in 1682 ; and in 1684, the year before Charles II. 's death, appeared the second (and inferior) part of " The Pilgrim's Progress," in which is described the heavenward progress of the Pilgrim's wife and seven children. Bunyan died on the 292 THE MERET MONARCH ; 3l8t of August, 1688. His autobiographical work, "Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners," is a curiously interesting study in psychology, which must carefully be read by all who would know what manner of man John Bunyan really was. One of the greatest Uterary names of the period is that of Thomas Hobbes. He was the son of a clergyman, and was born at Malmesbury, in Wiltshire, in April, 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada. His long life covered three generations, and was protracted through the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., Charles I., and Charles II. ; he died on the 4th of December, 1679. It was seventy-six years since, a lad of fifteen, he had entered Magdalene Hall, Oxford. In 1608, a young man of high promise, he became tutor to the eldest son of the Earl of Devonshire, and travelled with him in Prance and Italy. On his return to England, with a mind enlarged and matured by experience of men and manners, he made the acquaint- ance of Lord Bacon, Ben Jonson, and Lord Herbert of Cherbury. In 1628 he published a translation of Thucy- dides, designed as a counterblast against the evils of popular government. From 1634 to 1636 he was abroad with the young Earl of Devonshire, the son of his former pupil; and from 1636 to 1641, when he retired to Paris, be was domesticated with the Devonshire family in their stately home at Chatsworth. In 1642 appeared his first great philosophical work, « Elementa Philosophica de Cive," a defence of absolutism as the best form of govern- ment. Five years later he was made tutor to the Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles II. During the Common- wealth his genius reached its ripest ; and he published, in 1651, his magnum opus, the celebrated "Leviathan; OR, ENGLAND TJNDEB CHARLES 11. 293 or. The Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil," which he caused to be tran- scribed on vellum for presentation to his royal pupil. He was afterwards involved in a hot controversy with Dr. John Wallis, Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford, who made short work of Hobbes's pretension to have squared the circle, and proved that a " great philosopher " may be a sorry mathematician. In 1675, Hobbes himself demonstrated that he may also be an indifferent poet, by publishing a dull and tedious translation of the Iliad and Odyssey into English verse. In the year of his death, the indefatigable nonagenarian gave to the world his « Behemoth ; or. The History of the Civil Wars of England, and of the Counsels and Artifices by which they were carried on, from the year 1640 to the year 1660." It may be noted, in passing, that in this book Hobbes re- commends to the reader the popular religious manual, which, under the title of « The Whole Dnty of Man laid down in a Plain and Familiar Way," was first published in 1659. Its authorship has been attributed to a dozen different persons. « The Leviathan " is one of those classic masterpieces which everybody admires and few people read. It is divided into four parts-1. Of Man; 2. Of a Common- wealth ; 3. Of a Christian Commonwealth ; 4. Of the Kingdom of Darkness. In the first part « man's nature " is defined as " the sense of his natural powers ; " while his mental powers are classified as " cognitive," « ima- ginative," or « conceptive," and " motive." Our senses receive impressions from external objects, with which they deal by means of the cognitive faculty. According as they are produced by the senses our conceptions rise in If 294 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 295 quick succession, and we give names to them as an assist- ance to our memory. All knowledge is of two kinds : original, which we owe to memory and observation ; and science, which is the knowledge of names and propositions derived from understanding. Both, in reality, amount to nothing more than experience ; the experience which we obtain from external objects, the experience which we acquire from the proper use of names in language. Hobbes goes on to contend that truth and a true propo- sition are absolutely identical, and that knowledge is the evidence of truth ; while he defines conscience as a man's belief in the veracity of that which he asserts. The motive powers are, he says, those of the heart, acted upon and influenced by the impressions received through the senses. All concei^tions are brain-motives originating without. When they encourage and stimulate the vital movement, they are called, and the objects producing them are called, pleasant ; when they retard or depress it, they are described as painful. The former are objects of love or liking; the latter, of dislike or aversion ; and every man calls that which pleases him good, and that which he dislikes evil. Absolute goodness, that is, goodness without relation or proportion, is impossible. Things can only be relatively good ; even the goodness of God being His goodness to us simply as we understand and receive it. Upon these cardinal principles or hypotheses, Hobbes erects what is known as the Selfish system of philosophy, which makes our notions of right or wrong depend upon our views of self-interest— assuming that every man's self-love is the mainspring of his thoughts, feelings, and actions. Pity is '^imagination or fiction of future- calamity to ourselves, proceeding from the sense of another man's calamity ; that when it lighteth on such as we think have not deserved the same, the compassion is greater, because then there appeareth more probability that the same may happen to us ; for the evil that happeneth to an innocent man may happen to every man. But when we see a man suffer for great crimes, which we cannot easily think will fall upon ourselves, the pity is the less. And therefore men are apt to pity those whom they love ; for whom they love they think worthy of good, and therefore not worthy of calamity. Thence it is also that men pity the vices of some persons at the first sight only, out of love to their aspect. The contrary of pity is hardness of heart, proceeding either from slowness of imagination, or some extreme great opinions of their own exemption from the like calamity, or from hatred of aU or most men." A similar exposition is furnished of the other passions. To love, for example, is ascribed a purely selfish motive ; it is simply the desire of a certain object for our own gratification. And when we laugh, it is from a sense of our superiority to somebody. It must be confessed that this is a mean and servile philosophy, which strikes at the root of all that is purest, brightest, best in human nature. In his work, " De Corpore Politico," Hobbes applies it to the body politic. He affirms the natural equality of men, and their right to an equal possession of all things, as distinctly as the most ardent Socialist. But he goes on to argue that, differmg as they do in strength and passions-and each thinking well of himself, though detesting the same egotism when it is manifested in others^they necessarily fall into con- tention. In his natural liberty the state of man is a state 296 THE MEREY MONARCH; of war, and irresistible might becomes right. Self-defence compels him to the adoption of civil institutions ; and he sacrifices some of his rights in order to preserve the others. Might being right in the state of nature, one man might acquire the right of conquest over another, just as men have done over the lower animals. Conquest, or else mutual agreement, has led to the establishment of various systems of government, such as the monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical. To Hobbes the mon- archical seemed to offer the most advantages, or, perhaps, it would be more correct to say, the fewest disadvantages. The philosophy of Hobbes, with its materialistic tenden- cies in morals and its absolutist deductions in politics, has been attacked by numerous able controversialists, from Cudworth and Lord Shaftesbury to Bishop Butler, Lord Kaimes, and Dugald Stewart. Its unsoundness is now admitted ; but all critics agree in admiring the strength and clearness with which Hobbes has developed it in his writings. Believing that these exercised an injurious influence, we do not think Hume was too severe in his condemnation of them. Their politics, he said, were fitted only to encourage tyranny; their ethics to en- courage licentiousness. He adds, however, that " though an enemy to religion, Hobbes partakes nothing of the spirit of scepticism, but is as positive and dogmatical as if human reason, and his reason in particular, could obtain a thorough conviction on these subjects. Clearness and propriety of style are the chief excellences of Hobbes's writings." Let it be noted, moreover, that the philoso- pher's mind was essentially strong, independent, and original ; that he owed nothing to any predecessor ; that all his coin was stamped in his own mint. The metal was OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 297 not without grievous alloy, but the die was sharply wrought and the impression clean cut. It is one of the special merits of a book like "The Leviathan" that it forces its readers to think for themselves ; since we are apt to degenerate into a sleepy and languid state of mind if we read always to acquiesce and never to dispute. That form of literary composition known as " The Essay " Bacon was the first to introduce and popularise. It was adopted in the early days of the Kestoration by Abraham Cowley, the poet, whose " Essays," in style and matter, are inferior only to those of his great predecessor. Headers acquainted with Cowley's poems, and their elaborate and involved diction, overloaded with conceits, inversions, and ellipses, will certainly be surprised by the direct and forcible simplicity of his prose, which he manages with masterly ease. Among the essays we should select those on Solitude, Liberty, the Garden, and the Uncertainty of Eiches, as the best. In this connection may be mentioned Izaak Walton's charming work, " The Compleat Angler ; or, Contemplative Man's Recreation," which is simply a collection of short essays on rural scenes and enjoyments, on Nature and the delights of Nature, thrown into conversational form. Deservedly, it is one of the most popular books in the language ; one of those which establish themselves in a permanent place in our literature by right of their in- dividuality. The style is exquisitely harmonious and transparent; the descriptions are not less vivid than accurate ; the illustrations picturesque ; the reflections spontaneous, just, and healthy; while the book is every- where saturated with a deep, warm, unaffected love of Nature, which bubbles up in almost every sentence and 298 THE MERRY MONARCH ; brims over in every page. " What would a blind man give," he says, ''to see the pleasant rivers and meadows and flowers and fountains that we have met with since we met together ! I have been told that if a man that was born blind could obtain to have his sight for but only one hour during his whole life, and should at the first opening of his eyes, fix his sight upon the sun when it was in full glory, either at the rising or setting of it, he would be so transported and amazed, and so admire the glory of it, that he would not willingly turn his eyes from that first ravishing object to behold all the other various beauties this world would present to him. And this and many other like blessings we enjoy daily." To one in city pent, Walton's book will bring the fresh sweet odours of the hawthorn hedges, and the meek beauty of the cowslips, and the music of the murmuring stream. For manly, vigorous, and affluent English prose, a better model could hardly be desired than that which Dryden furnishes in his '' Critical Essays " and "Prefaces." It is to be remembered that Fox, the statesman, when writing his "History of England," would employ no word which Dryden had not used; and that Burke speaks of his style with warm approval. English criticism, as an act, dates from 1668, when Dryden published his ** Essay on Dramatic Poesy." The sharpness of his per- ception and the solidity of his judgment may be seen in Ms " Discourse on the Original and Progress of Satire," and in his critical dissertations generally. Here is a speci- men : — " I looked on Virgil as a succinct and grave majestic writer ; one who weighed not only every thought, but every word and syllable; who was still aiming to <5rowd his name into as nan-ow a compass as possibly he OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 299- could; for which reason he is so figurative that he re- quires—I may almost say— a grammar apart to construe him. His verse is everywhere sounding the very thing in your ears whose sense it bears, yet the numbers are perpetually varied to increase the delight of the reader, so that the same sounds are never repeated twice to- gether." In Macaulay's opinion, Sir William Temple (born in 1628) was one of those men "whom the world has agreed to praise highly without knowing much about them, and who are therefore more likely to lose than to gain by a close examination. Yet," he adds, " he is not without fair pretensions to the most honourable place among the statesmen of his time. A few of them equalled or sur- passed him in talents ; but they were men of no good repute for honesty. A few maybe named whose patriotism was purer, nobler, and more disinterested than his ; but they were men of no eminent ability. Morally, he was above Shaftesbury ; intellectually, he was above Russell. ... A temper not naturally good, but under strict command ; a constant regard to decorum ; a rare caution in playing that mixed game of skill and hazard, human Ufe ; a disposition to be content with small and certain winnings rather than to go on doubling the stake ; these seem to us to be the most remarkable features of his character." His diplomatic and political services belong to the province of the historian ; we shall here consider him only as the man of letters. Johnson, with exaggerated praise, refers to him as "the first writer who gave cadence to English prose ;'' an assertion implying the greatest possible ignorance of, or want of sympathy with, ^00 THE MERRY MONARCH; Bishop Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne, Cowley, and Dryden. He was, however, a regular, fluent, and per- spicuous writer, who adopted the fashionable essay form for the presentment of his sound and generally judicious observations on subjects which he had carefully studied. His *' Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning," in which he took the side of the Ancients, provoked a long and bitter controversy, from an unfortunate allusion to the supposed literary merits of the Greek "Epistles of Phalaris." Bentley immediately pounced upon the mistake, proved with ease that the Epistles were a forgery, and terribly mauled Temple for his unhappy display of ignor- ance. Temple, to be sure, found ingenious and capable defenders in Pope, Conyers Middleton, Dr. Garth, and Swift, the last of whom came to his patron's assistance with his celebrated satire, " The Battle of the Books." But if the wits had the temporary advantage, the even- tual victory, and the honour of it, were with the scholar. This famous literary quarrel, however, occurred after the Kevolution. In Dryden's preface to his best tragedy, ^* All for Love," he remarks, that in this play he had endeavoured to follow the practice of the Ancients, who, as Mr. Eymer has judiciously observed, are, and ought to be, our masters. Thomas Eymer, to whom this flattering allu- sion is made, was born about 1638; educated at North- allerton Grammar School and at Cambridge; studied law ; and became a member of Gray's Inn. He was one of the first and ablest of the critics who endeavoured to restrain the exuberant genius of English literature within the trammels of the French methods; and in 1678 he published " The Tragedies of the last Age Considered and OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 301 Examined by the Practice of the Ancients, and by the Common Sense of all Ages." In this critical essay he proposes to consider and examine Shakespeare's "Othello" and "Julius Caesar," Ben Jonson's " Cata- lina," and Beaumont and Fletcher's " RoUo," " King and No King," and '^Maid's Tragedy ; " but his remarks are really confined to the three last-named, and the spirit in which they are conceived may be inferred from the writer's crudely impertinent assertion that " our poetry of the last age " was " as rude as our architecture," and his reference to Milton's great epic as " that ' Paradise Lost ' of Milton which some are pleased to call a poem." His " Short View of Tragedy," marked by equal inepti- tude, appeared in 1693. Had he done no worthier work than these mistaken criticisms and a bad play (" Edgar; or, the English Monarch "), he would not be noticed here ; but he rendered an important service to historical litera- ture by the diligence and care with which he carried out the design of Montague and Lord Somers for collecting and publishing, under the title of " Foedera, Conventiones, et cujuscunque generis Acta Publica inter Eeges Anglia3 et Alios Principes," the official documents relating to the transactions between England and other States. Seven- teen folio volumes of this valuable work were edited by Eymer between 1703 and 1714, the year in which he died. The English representative of Neo Platonism, Dr. Henry More, belongs to the Eestoration period. He was born at Grantham, in Lincolnshire, in 1614; received his earlier education at Eton ; and was thence removed to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he obtained a fellow- ship. Eeading Plato eagerly, he followed up this line of study by devouring the so-called "New Platonists,'* 302 THE MERRY MONARCH; Plotinus and lambliclms, with their refined mysticisms, and the Florentine Platonists, until he completely saturated his mind with the form of religious philosophy now known as Christian Platonism. He was only twenty- eight when he published his "Wvx(^^^a Platoniea; or, a Platonical Song of the Soul," in four books, which he re- issued, in 1647, with prefaces and interpretations, under the title of " Philosophical Poems." These are four in number :— 1. " Psychozia ; " or, " The Life of the Soul ; " 2. " Psychathanasia ; " or, "The Immortality of the Soul j " to which is annexed a metrical ''Essay upon the Infinity of Worlds out of Platonical Principles;" 3. " Antipsychopannychia ; a Confutation of the Sleep of the Soul after Death," to which is appended " The Pre- Existency of the Soul,"* and 4. " Antimonopsychia ; a Confutation of the Unity of Souls," with a '' Para- phrase upon Apollo's Answer concerning Plotinus his Soul departed this life." These poems are written throughout in the Spenserian stanza, but, unfortunately, are destitute of the exquisite Spenserian imagery and music. There are occasional fine passages ; but the verse is generally rugged, involved, and barren, while the meaning could hardly be got at but for the notes and interpretations supplied by More him- self. His aim, however, as stated in his opening stanzas, was lofty enough : — " Not ladies' loves, nor knights' brave martial deeds, Y wrapt in rolls of live antiquities ; But th' inward fountain, and the unseen seeds, From whence are these, and what so under eye Dost fall, or is record in memorie, * *' The fanciful theory which su^'gested Wordsworth's grand ode on * The Intimations of Immortality in Childhood.' " OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHAELES II. 303 Psyche, I'll sing. Psyche ! from thee they spring. O life of Time and all Alterity ! Thy life of lives instil his nectar strong, My soul t' inebriate while I sing Psyche's song. My task is not to try What's simply true. I only do engage Myself to make a fit discovery. Give some fair glimpse of Plato's hid Philosophy. What man alive that hath but common wit (When skilful limner seeing hia intent Shall fairly well portray and wisely hit The true proportion of each lineament. And in right colours to the life depaint The fulvid eagle with her sun-bright eye), Would waxen wroth with inward choler brent Cause 'tis no buzzard or discoloured Pie ? Why man ? I meant it not : cease thy fond obloquie. So if what's consonant to Plato's school (Which will agree with learned Pythagore, Egyptian Trismegist, and th' antique roll Of Chaldee wisdom, all which Time hath tore, But Plato and deep Plotin do restore), Which is my scope, I sing out lustily : If any twitten me for such strange lore, And me all blameless brand with infamy, God purge that man from fault of foul malignity." Occasionally a genuine pearl gleams among Mora's elaborate imitations, and we come upon a happy thought not unhappily expressed. As in the following examples : — " If light divine we know by divine light, Nor can by any other means it see. This ties their hands from force that have the sprite." " By this the sun's bright waggon 'gain ascend The western hill, and draw on cheerful day ; So I full fraught with joy do homeward wend And fend myself with what that Nymph did say, And did so cunningly to me convey, Kesolving for to teach all willing men Life's mystery, and quite to chase away Mind-mudding mist sprung from low fulsome fen, Praise my good will, but pardon my weak falt'ring pen." 804 THE MEREY MONARCH; •* I saw portrayed on thia eky-oolotired silk Two lovely lads with wings fully dispread Of silver plumes, their skin more white than milk, Their lily limbs I greatly admired, Their cheery looks and lusty livelihed : Athwart their snowy breast a scarf they wore Of a pure hue.'* " But yet, my Muse, still take a higher flight, Sing of Platonic faith in the first Good, The faith that doth our souls to God invite So strongly, tightly, that the rapid flood Of this swift-flux of things, nor with foul mud Can stain, nor strike us o£E from th' unity, Wherein we steadfast stand, unshaked, unmoved, Engrafted by a deep vitality, The prop and stay of things in God's benignity." At one period of his life More deceived himself into the belief that he had had a singular vision, which, under the name of Bathjnous, he afterwards described in his "Divine Dialogues." He is discussing with his com- panions the subject of the Divine goodness, when he in- forms them that in his youth he had a strange dream of *' an old man with a grave countenance speaking to him in a wood." He is urged to tell his dream, and does not object : — " You must know, then, of what an anxious and thoughtful genius I was from my very childhood, and what a deep and strong sense I had of the existence of God, and what an early conscientiousness of approving myself to Him ; and how, when I had arrived to riper years of reason, and was imbued with some slender rudi- ments of philosophy, I was not then content to think of God in the gross only, but begun to consider His nature more distinctly, accurately, and to contemplate and com- pare His attributes ; and how, partly from the natural sentiments of my own mind, partly from the countenance OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 305 and authority of Holy Scripture, I did confidently con- clude that infinite power, wisdom, and goodness were the chiefest and most comprehensive attributes of the Divine Nature, and that the sovereign of those was His good- ness, the summit and power, if I may so speak, of the Divinity. In the meantime, being versed in no other natural philosophy nor metaphysics, but the vulgar, my mind was for a long time charged with inextricable puzzles and difficulties, to make the phenomena of the world and vulgar opinions of men in any tolerable way to comport or suit with these two chiefest attributes of God, His wisdom and His goodness. These meditations closed mine eyes at night ; these saluted my memory at first in the morning ; these accompanied my remote and solitary walks into fields and woods, sometimes so early as when most of other mortals keep their beds. " It came to pass, therefore, that one summer morning having rose much more early than ordinary, and having worked so long in a certain wood (which I had a good while frequented) that I thought fit to rest myself on the ground, having spent my spirits partly by long motion of my body, but mainly by want of sleep, and over-anxious and solicitous thinking of such difficulties, as Hylobares [one of the interlocutors] either has already, or, as I descried at first, is likely to propose; I straightway reposed my weary limbs amongst the grass and flowers at the foot of a broad-spread and flourishing oak, where the gentle fresh morning air played in the shade on my heated temples, and with unexpressible pleasure refriger- ating my blood and spirits, and the industrious bees busily humming round about me upon the dewy honey- suckles ; to which nearer noise was most melodiously VOL. II. ^ 306 THE MEERY MONARCH ; joined tlie distant singing of tlie cheerful birds re-echoed from all parts of the wood ; these delights of nature aU conspiring together, you may easily fancy, would quickly charm my weary body into a profound sleep. But my sonl was then as much as ever awake, and, as it seems, did most vividly dream that I was still walking in these solitary woods with my thoughts more eagerly intent upon those usual difficulties of providence than ever. But while I was in this great anxiety and earnestness of spirit, accompanied (as frequently when I was awake) with vehement and devout suspirations and ejaculations towards God, of a sudden there appeared at a distance a very grave and venerable person walking slowly towards me. His stature was greater than ordinary. He was clothed with a loose silk garment of a purple colour, much like the Indian gowns that are now in fashion, saving that the sleeves were something longer and wider ; and it was tied about him with a Levitical girdle also of purple ; and he wore a pair of velvet slippers of the same colour, but upon his head a Montero of black velvet, as if he were both a traveller and an inhabitant of that place at once. " While he was at any distance from me, I stood fear- less and unmoved; only, in reverence to so venerable a personage, I put off my hat, and held it in my hand. But when he came up closer to me, the vivid full force of his eyes that shone so piercingly bright from under the shadow of his black Montero, and the whole air of his face, though joined with a wonderful deal of mildness and sweetness, did so of a sudden astonish me, that I fell into an excessive trembling, and had not been able to stand if he had not laid his hand upon my head, and spoken com- OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 307 fortably to me, which he did in a paternal manner, saying, — ' Blessed be thou of God, my son ; be of good courage, and fear not ; for I am a messenger of God to thee for thy good. Thy serious aspires and breathings after the true knowledge of thy Maker and the ways of His providence (which is the most becoming employment of any rational being), have ascended into the sight of God ; and I am appointed to give into thy hands the two keys of Providence, that thou mayest thereby be able to open the treasures of that wisdom thou so anxiously and yet so piously seekest after ! ' And where withal he put his right hand into his left sleeve, and pulled out two shining bright keys— the one silver, the other of gold, tied together with a sky-coloured ribbon of a pretty breadth— and delivered them into my hands, which I received of him, making low obeisance, and professing my thankfulness for so great a gift." By this time, he continues, he had acquired a confidence and familiarity which enabled him to converse with the venerable figure that had appeared to him. Having received into his hands the silver key, he was instructed to observe the letters written on it, which, arranged in an intelli^'ible order, proved to be Claude /mstras, ut luceat domus. Then, gasping in his hand the lower part of the key, he pulled at the handle with his right, and behold, a silver tube came forth, with a scroll of thin paper- thin, but as strong as vellum, and as white as driven snow. On this scroll was drawn a representation of the motions of the planetary bodies round the sun, and of the starry hemispheres, on the principles of the Copernican system. His attention was next drawn to the motto of the golden key, which was a "treasurer of itself,'' 308 THE MEREY MONAECH ; namely, Amor Dei Lux Animoe, A golden tube with a similar scroll presented itself when the handle of the key was pressed a second time ; and on this scroll was written twelve sentences, in letters of gold, to the following effect :—" Divine Goodness is commensurate with Divine Providence or Infinite ; Time and Space—' the thread of time and the expansion of the universe '—proceed from a benevolent Deity ; Intellectual Spirits rejoiced with God before creation ; in a world of free agents, sin must be a possibility; but happiness exceeds sin and miseiy 'as much as the light exceeds the shadows / " He was pro- ceeding with his analysis of these divine sentences, when he was rudely interrupted by the braying of two asses— an unconscious touch of satire !— and the radiant vision of the grave and aged person, the keys of silver and gold, and the glorious parchment suddenly disappeared, leaving him seated at the foot of the oak, where he had fallen asleep, with an ass on each side of him ! " We confess," says Tulloch, '' that we are somewhat at a loss to understand the moral of this singular inter- ruption of his vision, the ludicrous absurdity of which strikes us at first more than anything else ; unless it be intended, as he himself half hints, to signify the indif- ferent noisiness with which the world, and even the Church, often receive and interrupt the speculations of a higher thoughtf ulness, striving to read, from the charac- tered scroll of nature and life, the mysteries of being. More professes that the completed vision would have been too much for him, and that he was more gratified at things happening as they did than if he had been all at once put in possession of truth— the continued search for which had been to him a repeated and prolonged pleasure. OE, ENGLAND TJNDEE CHAELES II. 309 ''One of the speakers, 'a zealous but airy-minded Platonist and Cartesian, or Mechanist,' suggests that the object of the vision was not merely to attest the Coper- nican system of the world, but the truth of Descartes' principles. But More, in the name of Bathynous, repu- diates this view on the ground that he espied in one of the sentences, or aphorisms of the golden key, which he had not time to read in full, the statement, ' That the primordials of the world are not mechanical, but sper- matical, or vital, which,^ he adds, ' is diametrically and fundamentally opposite to Descartes' philosophy.' He is convinced further, that, if he had had full conference with the divine sage he would have found his philosophy ' more Pythagorical, or Platonical, than Cartesian. For there was also mention of the senimal soul of the world, which some modern writers call the spirit of nature.' The aphoristic revelations, both of the silver and the golden key, gave rise to a great deal more discussion amongst the friends assembled in Caphophron's 'philo- sophical bower '-a delightful retreat of the ^airy- minded Platonist'— with the cool evening summer air ' fanning itself through the leaves of the harbour,' and a 'frugal^collation' spread — ^ a cup of wine, a dish of fruit, and a manchet.' The rest was made up with 'free discourses in philosophy.' The picture is a pleasant one, if the dialogue is sometimes tiresome; and the whole vision and description are strikingly illustrative of the dreamy ideal and enthusiasm with which the young Platonist pursued his studies and inquiries." More's poems, as we have said, were first published in 1642. Three years before— that is, in 1639— he had taken his Master's degree, and immediately afterwards 310 THE MEEEY MONARCH; was chosen Fellow of Ws college. He was offered the mastership in 1654, but declined it in favour of Cud worth. In the lettered seclusion of Christ's College, this pro- found, if somewhat visionary, thinker lived and died. His noble friends, and he had many, begged of him to accept preferment, but he refused. "Pray not be so morose/' said one of these would-be patrons ; " pray be not so morose or humoursome as to refuse all things you have not known so long as Christ's College." One day his friends led him with much persuasion as far as White- hall, in order that he might kiss the King's hand ; but when he understood that the condition of his so doing was the acceptance of a bishopric, "he was not on any account to be persuaded to it." Among More's most intimate friends was a former pupil of his. Lady Conway, and at her seat at Eugby, in Warwickshire, he spent much of his leisure. There he made the acquaintance of two remarkable men, who must not be omitted from our picture of the men of the Restoration — Baron Yon Helmont and Valentine Great- rakes. The former, the son of the famous Flemish chemist and necromancer, inherited much of his father's genius, but more of his enthusiasm and wild extravagance. He devoted himself, heart and soul, to the occult studies which had such an attraction for the inquirers of his time, and lived for a while in Lady Conway's family as her physician. Greatrakes was a man of more mark. His wonderful cures were the talk of the seventeenth century; they were formally investigated by the Royal Society, and seem to have convinced men like Henry More and Judge Glanville, both of whom have specially adverted to them. Greatrakes was an Irish gentleman. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 311 who at first used his singular powers with reluctance, but becoming convinced of their efficacy tried them upon aU who sought his healing aid. His mode of operation consisted merely in laying his hands upon the sick, and " stroking " them. In January, 1666, the Earl of Orrery invited him to England to attempt the cure of Lady Conway of the chronic headache from which she suffered, but he did not succeed ; however, while at Rugby he healed many other persons. From Rugby he removed to Worcester, and thence to London, where he practised his strange art for many months. " At the coffee-houses and everywhere," wrote a friend (" a person of great veracity and a philosopher ") to Glanville, " the great discourse now is' about Mr. G., the famous Irish stroker. He undergoes curious censures here ; some take him to be a conjurer, and some an impostor, but others, again, adore him as an apostle. I confess, I think the man is free from all design, of a very agreeable conversation, not addicted to any vice, nor to any sect or party ; bat is, I believe, a sincere Protestant. I was three weeks together with him at my Lord Conway's, and saw him (I think) lay his hands upon a thousand persons ; and really there is something in it more than ordinary ; but I am con- vinced 'tis not miraculous. I have seen pains strangely fly before his hand till he hath charmed them out of the body ; dimness cleared and deafness cured by his touch ; twenty persons at several times, in fits of the falling- sickness, were in two or three minutes brought to them- selves so as to tell where their pain was ; and then he hath pursued it till he hath driven it out at some extreme part; running sores of the king's evil dried up, and kernels brought to a puration by his hand." 312 THE MEREY MONARCH ; In 1666 was published "A brief account of Mr. Valentine Greatrakes, and divers of the strange cures by him performed ; written by himself, in a letter to the Hon. Eobert Boyle, Esq., whereunto are arranged the testimonials of several eminent and worthy persons of the chief matters of fact there related." Thereafter he passed away into oblivion. To return to More. For thirty-five years, or from 1642 to 1687, his literary activity was immense, and he pro- duced so large a number of pamphlets and treatises, small and great, that we have not room enough for their titles. We may mention his " Threefold Cabbala," a triple inter- pretation of the three first chapters of Genesis; his " Antidote against Atheism," his essay on the " Immor- tality of the Soul," and his treatises on the " Grand Mystery of Godliness," and the " Mystery of Iniquity." But the only attractive one, according to modern ideas, is the ''Divine Dialogues," which Dr. Blair has rightly described as animated " by a variety of character and a spriglitliness of conversation beyond what we commonly meet with in writings of this kind." Principal TuUoch says of them that they are upon the whole the most interesting and readable of all Morels works. "The current of thought runs along smoothly, with less tendency than in any of his other writings to digressive absurdity and wearisome subdivisions ; the style is here and there fresh and powerful ; and there is not only some liveliness of movement in the successive conversations, but an attempt is made, as Blair implies, to impart a definite portraiture to the several speakers, and to pre- serve throughout their individuality and consistency. . . . The ' Divine Dialogues,^ moreover, possess for the common OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 313 reader the advantage of condensing his general views in philosophy and religion. In fact, most of his principles may be gathered from them." Our English Platonist lived to a good old age. He died on the 1st of September, 1687, having numbered three-and-seventy years. For ourselves, we should say that there is much more to interest the student in his character than in his writings, which never exerted any influence on the national mind, or his theo sophistical system, which we can regard only with a languid curiosity. As a man, he was well fitted to engage the attention of the psychologist. Devout mystics of his exalted type have been rare in England, the home of an eminently practical religion ; and the idiosyncrasies of our race are .opposed to the cultivation of an ascetic pietism. But More lived always in an atmosphere of pure devotion and serene contemplation. So great was his spiritual happiness that at times he seems to have been almost overwhelmed by it. He told a friend that he was sometimes nearly mad with pleasure ; and this excitement he felt in the simplest circumstances. "Walking abroad after his studies, his sallies towards Nature would be often inex- pressibly ravishing, beyond what he could convey to others." His love of rural sights and sounds, his delight in the beauty of God's visible world, is manifested in several passages in his writings, and more particularly in his "Dialogues." He often said that he wished he could always be " sub dio "— " he could study abroad with less weariness by far to himself than within doors." His mental excitation, the rapture he felt in his own thoughts, sometimes prevailed over his judgment. He felt, to use 314 THE MEEBY MONARCH; Ms own words, as if his iniiid went faster tlian lie almost desired, and all the while he seemed, as it were, to be in the air. It was " this mystical glow and devotion " which dis- tinc^uished his mind and character ; " a certain transport and radiancy of thought which carried him beyond the common life, without raising him to any false or artificial height." His contemporaries noted that there was some- thing " angelical " in his very air. '' He seemed to be full of introversions of light, joy, benignity, and devotion at once— as if his face had been overcast with a golden shower of love and purity." The marvellous " lustre and irradiation" in his eyes and countenance were noticed even by strangers. ''A divine gale," as he himself phrased it, inspired his life not less than his written utterances ; but it purified while it elevated him, and he was never a victim to spiritual pride. Dr. Outram said " that he looked upon Dr. More as the holiest person upon the face of the earth." Not less conspicuous than his piety was his charity and humility. " His very chamber- door was a hospital to the needy." "When the winds were ruffling about him, he made it his utmost endeavour to keep low and humble, that he might not be driven from that anchor." It is pleasant to remember that such a man as this was the contemporary of Eochester, and Buckingham, and Sedley. He restores our pride and con- fidence in the higher qualities of our race, and shows that even in the reign of Charles 11. the honour of England was sound at the core. It is not within our province to explain his system, if system it can be called, of Christian theosophy, or to attempt a detailed criticism of his writings. This has OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 315 been done with admirable care and success by Principal TuUoch in his " Rational Theology in England in the Seventeenth Century." We confess that le jeu does not seem worth la chandelle. There are beautiful thoughts and bright, radiant passages ; but to arrive at these, the weary student has to find his way through dreary tracts of involved and barren mysticism. As Dr. Tulloch avers, More's works " do not exhibit any clear growth or system of ideas, unfolding themselves gradually, and maturing to a more comprehensive rationality. This lack of method is more or less characteristic of the school; but the multifarious character of More's writings render it more conspicuous in him than in the others. Not only so. In his later productions there is rather a decay than an increase and enrichment of the rational element. To enter into any exposition of his Cabbalistical studies— of his discovery of Cartesianism in the first chapters of Genesis, and his favourite notion of all their philosophy descending from Moses through Pythagoras and Plato ; and still more to touch his prophetical reveries— the divine science which he finds in the dream of Ezekiel or the visions of the Apocalypse— would be labour thrown away, unless to illustrate the weakness of human genius, or the singular absurdities which beset the progress of knowledge, even in its most favourable stages. The supposition that all higher wisdom and speculation were derived originally from Moses and the Hebrew Scriptures, and that it was confirmatory both of the truth of Scripture and the results of philosophy to make out this traditionary connection, was widely prevalent in the seventeenth century. It was warmly supported and elaborately argued by some of its most acute and learned 316 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 317 lit Hi intellects. Both Cudworth and More profoundly believed in this connection. But this was only one of many instances of their lack of critical and historical judg- ment. Historical criticism, in the modern sense, was not even then dreamed of; and it is needless to consider forgotten delusions which have perished, rather with the common growth of reason than by the force of any special genius or discovery.'^ * A philosophical work of some learning which appeared in 1669-1675 was the "Court of the Gentiles" of the Nonconformist divine. Dr. Theophilus Gale (1628-1678), written with a view to prove that all heathen philosophy, whether barbaric or Greek, was borrowed from the Scriptures, or at least from the Jews. The first part is entitled *^0f Philosophy," and traces the same leading principle by means of language; the second, " Of Philo- sophy ; " the third, of " The Vanity of Philosophy ; " and the fourth, of "Eeformed Philosophy," wherein " Plato's moral and metaphysic or prime philosophy is reduced to an usual form and method." Gale has been included among the Platonic philosophers, and, indeed, he himself affirms that his philosophy bears a close resemblance to that of Plato. But he is in all respects a rigid Calvinist, • " More " says Hallam, " fell not only into the mystical notions of the later Platonists, but even of the Cabalistic writers. His metaphysical philosophy was borrowed in great measure from them ; and though he waa in correspondence with Descartes, and enchanted with the new views that opened upon him, yet we find that he was reckoned much less of a Cartesian afterwards, and even wrote against parts of the theory. The most peculiar touch of More was the extension of spirit ; acknowledging and even striving for the soul's immateriality, he still could not conceive it to be unextended. Yet it seems evident that if we give extension as well as figure, which is implied in finite extension, to the single self-conscioua nomad, qualities as heterogeneous to thinking as material impenetrability itself, we shall find it in vain to deny the possibility at least of the latter. Some indeed might question whether what we call matter is any real being at all, except as extension under pecoliar conditions." —Hallam, " Introduction to the Literature of Europe," iv., 68. and does not hesitate to say, " Whatever God wills is just, because He wills it ; " and again, " God wiUeth nothing without Himself because it is just, but it is therefore just because He wiUeth it. The reasons of good and evil extrinsic to the Divine essence are all dependent on the Divine will, either decurrent or legislative." This is not writing which Plato would have endorsed. The°poIitical romance of " Oceana " was published in 1656, but its author, James Harrington, lived far into the reign of Charles II. Born in 1611, he died in 1677. He was a native of Northamptonshire, and studied at Oxford, where he came under the direction of the celebrated Chillingworth. Afterwards he travelled on the Continent for several years, and during his residence at the Hague and at Venice became a convert to the theory and practice of Eepublican government. While at Rome he attracted attention by his refusal, at some public ceremony, to kiss the Pope's toe ; but he afterwards excused himself to Charles I. on the ingenious plea that "having had the honour of kissing his Majesty's haad, he thought it a de- gradation to kiss the toe of any other monarch." His "Oceana" is based on the lines of Sir Thomas More's " Utopia," and is designed to present the model of a commonwealth so constructed as to secure the com- pletest freedom for every individual member of it. He maintains that all power depends upon property, and more particularly upon landed property. He would, there- fore, have the balance of lands fixed by an agrarian law, and' the government established on an equal agrarian basis, rising into the superstructure, or three orders— tha senate, which would debate and propose ; the people, who would resolve and decide ; and tlie magistracy, who would 318 THE MERRY MONARCH; execute— the said magistracy being elected by an equal rotation tbrougli the suffrage of the people given by ballot. After the Restoration Harrington's measures for the establishment of a Republican propaganda awakened the hostility of Charles II.'s government. He was arrested on a charge of treasonable practices, and thrown into prison ; from which he was released on showing signs of mental derangement. Though a Republican, Harrington was not a democrat ; his " Commonwealth of Oceana " is, in fact, based on the principle of a moderate aristocracy, and he himself was a great admirer of the Venetian oligarchy. " If I be worthy/' he says, " to give advice to a man that would study politics, let him understand Venice; he that understands Venice right, shall go nearest to judge, notwithstanding the difference that is in every policy, right of every government in the world." As a counterfoil to the *' Oceana/' we may take the "Patriarcha" of Sir Robert Fihner, published in 1G80, but written in the reign of Charles I. It is an uncom- promising defence and vindication of the absolute power of things ; denying the right of natural government, and the power of the people to choose their own rulers ; and affirming that positive laws cannot infringe or limit the natural and flitherly power of Kings. In his " Two Treatises of Government," published in 1G89 and 1690, Locke demolished Sir John's feeble arguments. Algernon Sidney was also the author of a refutation, which he entitled " Discourses on Government," but they were not published until 1698. His theory is sufficiently indicated in the following passage :— *' No one man or family is able to provide that wliich is requisite for their con- venience or security, whilst every one has an equal right OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 319 to everything, and none acknowledges a superior to de- termine the controversies that upon such occasions must continually arise, and will probably be so many and great, that mankind cannot bear them. Therefore .... there is nothing of absurdity in saying, that man cannot con- tinue in the perpetual and entire fruition of the liberty that God hath given him. The liberty of one is thwarted by that of another ; and whilst they are all equal, none will yield to any, otherwise than by a general consent. This is the ground of all just governments ; for violence or fraud can create no right ; and the same consent gives the power to them all, how much soever they differ from each other. Some small numbers of men, living within the precincts of one city, have, as it were, cast into a common stock the right which they had of governing themselves and children, and, by common consent, joining in one body, exercised such power over every single person as seemed beneficial to the whole ; and this men call perfect democracy. Others choose rather to be governed by a select number of such as most excelled in wisdom and virtue ; and this, according to the signification of the word, was called aristocracy ; or when one man excelled all others, the government was put into his hands, under the name of monarchy. But the wisest, best, and far the greatest part of mankind, rejecting those simple species, did form governments mixed or composed of the three, which commonly received their respective denomination from the part that prevailed, and did deserve praise or blame as they were well or ill proportioned. " It were a folly hereupon to say, that the liberty for which we contend is of no use to us, since we cannot endure the solitude, barbarity, weakness, want, misery. 320 THE MERRY MONARCH ; and dangers that accompany it whilst we live alone, nor can enter into a society without resigning it ; for the choice of that society, and the liberty of framing it according to onr own wills, for our own good, is all we seek. This remains to ns while we form governments, that we ourselves are judges how far it is good for us to recede from our natural liberty ; which is of so great importance, that from thence only we can know whether we are freemen or slaves ; and the difference between the best government and the worst doth wholly depend on a right or every exercise of that power." One of the most famous of the philosophical books of the Eestoration period is the " De Legibus Naturae Dis- quisitio Philosophica," published by Richard Cumberland, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough, in 1672. Its theory or system of ethics, which has been in vogue for nearly two centuries, differs essentially from that of the theologians, who referred all moral distinctions to Eevelation ; that of the Plutonic philosophers, who sought them in eternal and intrinsic relations ; and that of Hobbes and Spinosa, who degraded them to a matter of selfish prudence. An abstract of Cumberland's great treatise is given by the Eev. John Hunt, in his valuable " History of Religious Thought;" but in the few remarks which follow we are indebted to Hallam's analysis. A diligent observation of all propositions which can safely be regarded as general moral laws of nature reduces them all to one, the pursuit of the common good of all rational agents, which tends to our own good as part of the whole, just as its opposite tends not only to the misery of the whole system, but to our own. At first sight, he says, this scheme may seem to want the two primary requisites OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 321 of a law, a legislator and a sanction. Bat whatever elicits the natural assent of our minds must spring from the Author of Nature. God must necessarily be the author of every proposition proved to be true by the constitution of nature, of which He Himself is the Author. Nor is a sanction wanting in the rewards, that is^ the happiness which attends the observance of the law of nature, and in the opposite efforts of its neglect ; and in a lax sense, though not that of the jurists, reward as well as punish- ment may be included in the word sanction. But benevo- lence, that is, love and desire of good towards all rational beings, includes piety towards God, the greatest of them all, as well as humanity. Cumberland does not rely for support on arguments founded on revelation ; and Mr. Hallam is, perhaps, quite justified in describing him as the founder of the Utilitarian school. The " common good," and not that portion of it which belongs to the individual man, is the great end of the legislator, and of him who obeys his will. Those actions which by their natural tendency promote it may be called naturally good, more than those which tend only to the good of any one man, by how much the whole is greater than this small part. And whatever is directed in the shortest way to this end may be called right, as a right line is the shortest of all. And as the whole system of the universe, when all things are arranged so as to pro- duce happiness, is beautiful, being aptly disj)Osed to its end, which is the definition of beauty, so particular actions contributing to this general harmony may be called beautiful and becoming. "Cumberland acutely remarks," says Hallam, ^^ in VOL. II. Y I 322 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 323 answer to tlie objection to tlie practice of virtue from tlie evils which fall on good men, and the success of the wicked, that no good or evil is to be considered, in this point of view, wliich arises from mere necessity, or ex- ternal excuses, and not from our virtue or vice itself. He then shows that a regard for piety and peace, for mutual intercourse, and civil and domestic polity, tends to the happiness of everyone ; and in reckoning the good conse- quences of virtuous behaviour we are not only to estimate the pleasure intimately connected with it, which the love of God and of good men produces, but the contingent benefits we obtain by civil society, which we promote by such conduct. And we see that in all nations there is some regard to good faith and the distribution of property, some respect to the obligation of oaths, some attachments to relations and friends. All men, therefore, acknowledge, and to a certain extent perfonii, those things which really tend to the common good. And though crime and violence sometimes prevail, yet these are like diseases in the body which it sliakes off ; or if, like tliem, they prove sometimes mortal to a single community, yet human society is immortal ; and the conservative principles of common good have in the end far more efficacy than those which dissolve and destroy states. " We may reckon the happiness consequent on virtue as a true sanction of natural law annexed to it by its author, and thus fulfilling the necessary conditions of its definition. And though some have laid stress on these sometimes, and deemed virtue its own reward, and grati- tude to God and man its best motive, yet the consent of nations and common experience show us that the ob- servance of the first end, which is the common good, will not be maintained without remuneration or penal conse- quences. " By this single principle of common good we simplify the method of natural law, and arrange its secondary precepts in such subordination as best conduces to the general end. Hence moral rules give way in particular cases, when they come in collision with others of more extensive importance. For ail ideas of right or virtue imply a relation to the system and nature of all rational beings. And the principles thus deduced as to moral conduct are generally applicable to political societies, which in their two leading institutions, the division of property and the coercive power of the magistrate, follow the steps of natural law, and adopt these rules of polity, because they perceive them to promote the common weal." Only one of the ingenious and fanciful works of Dr. John Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, was published daring the Eesturation period, — namely, his ^' Essay towards a Eeal Character and a Philosophical Language,^ ^ which bears the date of 16G8, — the year in which he was pro- moted to the Episcopal Bench. Of this man of lively imagination Bishop Burnet speaks with unusual warmth : — " He was a man," he says, "of as great mind, as true a judgment, as eminent virtues, and of as good a soul as any I ever knew. Though he married Cromwell's sister, yet he made no other use of that alliance but to do good offices, and to cover the University of Oxford from the sourness of Owen and Goodwin. At Cambridge, he joined with those who studied to propagate better thoughts, to take men off from being in parties, or from narrow notions, from superstitious conceits and fierceness about opinions. He was also a great observer and promoter of 324 THE MERRY MONARCH; experimental pHlosopliy, wHch was then a new tiling, and much looked after. He was naturally ambitious; but was the wisest clergyman I ever knew. He was a lover of mankind, and had a delight in doing good." His most famous work has had many imitators ; namely, "The Discovery of a New World; or a Discourse tending to prove that it is probable there may be another Habit- able World in the Moon ; with a discourse concerning the possibility of a Passage thither/' In its lively pages he starts the proposition " that it is possible for some of our posterity to find out a conveyance to this other world, and if there be inhabitants there, to have commune with them." To the natural inquiry, how we are to ascend beyond the sphere of the earth's magnetical vigour, he answers : — '' 1. It is not perhaps impossible that a man may be able to fly by the application of wings to Ms own body ; as angels are pictured, as Mercury and Daedalus are feigned, and as hath been attempted by divers, particularly by a Turk in Constantinople, as Busbequius relates. 2. If there be such a great ruck (roc) in Madagascar as Marcus Polus, the Yenetian, mentions, the feathers in whose wings are twelve feet long, which can swoop up a horse and his rider, or an elephant, as our kites do a mouse ; why, then, it is but teaching one of these to carry a man, and he may ride up thither, as Ganymede does upon an eagle. 3. Or, none of these ways will serve, yet I do seriously, and upon good grounds, affirm it possible to make a flying chariot, in which a man may sit, and give such a motion into it as shall convey him through the air. And this, perhaps, might be made large enough to carry divers men at the same time, together with food for their viaticum, and coni- OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 325 modities for traffic. It is not the bigness of anything in this kind that can hinder its motion, if the motive faculty be answerable thereunto. We see a great ship swims as well as a small cork, and an eagle flies in the air as well as a little gnat." "This engine," he adds, "may be contrived from the same principles by which Archytas made a wooden dove, and Regiomontanus a wooden eagle." Bishop Wilkins also wrote a defence and exposition of the Copernican system under the title of a '^ Discourse concerning a new Planet, tending to prove 'tis probable our Earth is one of the Planets." He died in 1672. Dr. Thomas Sprat was another of the literary bishops of the Eestoration. He was born in 1636, and died in 1713. Lord Macaulay describes him as " sl very great master of our language, and possessed at once of the eloquence of the orator, the controversialist, and the historian." His birthplace was Tallaton, in Devonshire, where his fiither was vicar. He was educated at Wadham College, Oxford; took his degree of M.A. in 1656; and was elected to a fellowship in 1657. On the death of Oliver Cromwell he eulogised his virtues and his greatness in a Pindaric Ode ; but this did not prevent him from developing into a fervent loyalist after the Eestoration, and having taken holy orders, he became chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham, whom he assisted in his production of "The Rehearsal." He was afterwards made one of the King's chaplains. His close friendship with Dr. Wilkins led him to compile and publish a " History of the Royal Society," in 1667, of which he had been elected a Fellow. Ecclesiastical promotion now attended him rapidly : he became a prebend of Westminster in 1668, 826 THE MEREY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 327 Dean of Westminster and incumbent of St. Marg'aret's in 16SS, and Bishop of Eochester in 1681. In 1685 lie wrote, by command of the King", a far from impartial narrative of the Eye Hoose Plot, under the title of "A True Account and Declaration of the Horrid Conspiracy against the late King, his present Majesty, and the present Government." But after the Eevolution lie had the grace, or found it convenient, to publish an apology for the injustice and misrepresentation that disfigured it. An attempt was made, in 1691, to implicate him in a conspiracy for restoring James II. ; but it was easily detected, and the authors were duly punished. The Bishop died at Bromley, in Kent, on the 30th of May, 1713. He is best remembered now by his "Life of Cowley." Among the historians of the Eestoration period we must give the first place to the Earl of Clarendon. Edward Hyde, the son of a Wiltshire gentleman of good estate, was born in 1608. For several years he pursued his studies at Oxford, with a view to taking holy orders ; but the death of his two elder brothers gave anew direction to his career, and at the age of sixteen he was removed to Lon- don. There he studied law for some years, diverting his lei- sure meanwhile in the converse and companionship of such men as Ben Jonson, Selden, Lord Falkland, Lawes the musi- cian, Chilling worth, Waller, and the " ever-memorable " John Hales of Eton. These he considered to have taught him more than his books ; and he affirms that " he never was so proud, or thought himself so good a man, as when he was the worst man in the company." Entering the House of Commons in 1640, he gave himself up to the " fierce delights^' of parliamentary strife. Not without hesitation, for his political principles were really those of a moderate Constitutionalist, he attached himself to the Eoyal party, and became one of Charles L's most trusted advisers, was nominated Chancellor of the Exchequer, and received the honour of knighthood. A couple of years were spent in retirement and lettered ease in the island of Jersey; after which, in 1618, he joined Prince Charles in Holland. Passing briefly over his embassy to Spain, we find him late in 1651 attached to the exiled Charles at Paris, as his financial minister and chief councillor, with the nominal dignity of Lord Chancellor. He was, of course, an in- fluential agent in, and a witness of, the Eestoration. He was with Charles at Canterbury in his progress to London; followed his triumphant entry into the capital ; and, on the 1st of June, U560, took his seat as Speaker of the House of Lords, and also sat on the same day in the Court of Chancery. In this year of good fortune his daughter, Anne Hyde, became the wife of the Duke of York ; a marriage which made Clarendon (he received his earldom in 1661) the grandfather of two Queens of England, Mary and Anne. Though surrounded by a host of enemies and detractors, provoked partly by his haughtiness and avarice, partly by his arbitrary measures, and partly by his severe censures of the profligacy of the Court, he maintained his ground until 1665, when the King ordered him to resign the great seal. He soon afterwards retired to France, where he completed his " History of the Eebellion and Civil Wara in Eno-land.'' He was also the author of a finely- written « Essay on an Active and Contemplative Life, and why the One should be preferred before the Other." His Autobio- graphy is a valuable contribution to the literature of the time. He died in 1674. 328 THE MERRY MONARCH ; His defects as a historian are very noticeable : his style is often involved and cumbrous ; he accumulates details witliout any lucidity of method; his prejudices and pre- possessions obscure his judgment ; his narrative of events is seldom clear or direct. On the other hand, his character painting is of the first order, and as a gallery of vivid and vigorous portraits his great History is almost un- equalled. It may be said of Clarendon that lie treads the historical stage in the buskin of the tragedian ; Bishop Burnet wears the lighter, and less dignitied sock of the come- dian. He writes with conversational ease : takes his reader by the button- hole, and gossips with him familiarly about the things he has seen or the men he has known. His faculty of observation is keen and exact ; and what he observes he records with as much freedom as if he were committing his confidences to a private diary. Not with- out an inclination to credulity, and by no means exempt from strong prejudices, he seeks nevertheless to tell the truth, and is never knowingly unjust. Therefore, no one who writes of the period covered by the " History of My Own Tinie,^' can dispense with Burnet. As a specimen of his method we subjoin some passages from his character of Charles II. : — ^' He had so ill an opinion of mankind, that he thought the great art of living and governing was, to manage all things and all persons with a depth of craft and dissimu- lation. And in that few men in the world could put on the appearances of sincerity better than he could ; under which so much artifice was usually hid, that in conclusion lie could deceive none, for all w^ere become mistrustful of Mm. He had great vices, but scarce any virtues to correct OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 329 them. He had in him some vices that were less hurtful, which corrected his more hurtful ones. He was, during the active part of life, given up to sloth and lewdness to such a degree, that he hated business, and could not bear the engaging in anything that gave him much trouble, or put him under any constraint. And though he desired to become absolute, and to overturn both our religion and our laws, yet he would neither run the risk, nor give him- self the trouble, which so great a design required. " He had an appearance of gentleness in his outward deportment ; but he seemed to have no bowels nor tender- ness in his nature, and in the end of his life he became cruel. He was apt to forgive all crimes, even blood itself, yet he never forgave anything that was done against him- self, after his first and general act of indemnity, which was to be reckoned as done rather upon maxims of state than inclinations of mercy. " He delivered himself up to a most enormous course of vice, without any sort of restraint, even from the considera- tion of the nearest relations. The most studied extra- vagances that way seemed, to the very last, to be much delighted in and pursued by him. He had the art of making all people grow fond of him at first, by a softness in his whole way of conversation, as he was certainly the best bred man of the age. But when it appeared how little could be built on his promise, they were cured of the fondness that he was apt to raise in them. When he saw young men of quality, who had something more than ordinary in them, he drew them about him, and set himself to corrupt them both in religion and morality ; in which he proved so unhappily successful, that he left England .much changed at his death from what he had found it at 330 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 331 his Eestoration. He loved to talk on all tlie stories of his life to every new man that came about liim. His stay in Scotland, and the share he had in the war of Paris, in carrying messages from the one side to the other, were his common topics. He went over these in a veiy graceful manner, but so often and so copiously, that all those who had been long accustomed to them grew weary of them; and when he entered on those stories, they usually with- drew ; so that he often began them in a full audience, and before he liad done, there were not above four or five persons left about him : which drew a severe jest from Wilmot Earl of Rochester. He said he wondered to see a man have so good a memory as to repeat the same story without losing the least circumstance, and yet not re- member that he had told it to the same persons the very day before. This made him fond of strangers, for they bearkened to all his often-repeated stories, and went away as in a rapture at such an uncommon condescer .^ion in a king. " His person and temper, his vices as well as his fortunes, resemble the character that we have given us of Tiberius so much, that is were easy to draw the parallel between them. Tiberius's banishment, and his coming afterwards to reign, makes the comparison in that respect come pretty near. His hating of business, and his love of pleasures ; his raising of favourites, and trusting them entirely ; and his pulling them down, and hating them excessively ; his art of covering deep designs, particularly of revenge, with an appearance of softness, brings them so near a likeness, that I did not wonder much to observe the resemblance of their faces and persons. At Rome I saw one of the last statues made for Tiberius, after he had lost his teeth. But, bating the alteration which that made, it was so like King Charles, that Prince Borghose and Siguier Dominicio, to whom it belonged, did agree with me in thinking that it looked like a statue made for him. ^' Few things ever went near his heart. The Duke of Gloucester's death seemed to touch him much. But those who knew him best, thought it was because he had lost him by whom only he could have balanced the surviving brother, whom he hated, and yet embroiled all his affairs to preserve the succession to him. « His ill-conduct in the first Dutch war, and those terrible calamities of the Plague anl Fire of London, with that loss and reproach which he suffered by the insult at Chatham, made all people conclude there was a curse upon his government. His throwing the public hatred at that time upon Lord Clarendon was both unjust and un- grateful. And when his people had brought him out of all his difficulties upon his entering into the Trii)le Alliance, his selling that to France, and his entering on the second Dutch war with as little colour as he had for the first ; his beginning it with the attempt on the Dutch Smyrna fleet, the shutting up the exchequer, and his declaration for toleration, which was a step for the introduction of popery, made such a chain of black actions, flowing from blacker designs, that it amazed those who had known all this to see with what impudent strains of flattery addresses were penned during his life, and yet more grossly after his death. His contributing so much to the raising the great- ness of France, chiefly at sea, was such an error, that it could not flow from want of thought, or of true sense. Rauvigny told me he desired that all the methods the French took in the increase and conduct of their naval ooZ THE MERKY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 333 force niiglit be sent Mm ; and lie said lie seemed to study them with concern and zeal. He showed what errors they committed, and how they ought to be corrected, as if he had been a viceroy to France, rather than a king that ought to have watched over and prevented the progress they made, as the greatest of all the mischiefs that could happen to him or his people. They that judged the most favourably of this, thought it was done out of revenge to the Dutch, that, with the assistance of so great a fleet as Trance could join to his own, he might be able to destroy them. But others put a worse construction on it : and thought, that seeing he could not quite master or deceive his subjects by his own strength and management, he was willing to help forward the greatness of the French at sea, that by their assistance he might more certainly subdue his own people ; according to what was generally believed to have fallen from Lord Clifford, if the King must be in a dependence, it was better to pay it to a great and generous Mni-ued his archbisliopric. The remainder of his pure and bkimeless life was spent at Broadhurst in Sussex; but, being sud- denly called to London, he was seized there with an illness which, in a few days, proved mortal. He died on the 25th of June, 1Gn4, at the age of 73. A complete edition of th^ v,uiksof this estimable prelate —of whom Burnet speaks as gifted with " the greatest devotion of soul, the largest compass of knowledge, the most mortitied and most heavenly disposition that he ever saw in mortal "—was recently published by the Kev. Wilham West, the Episcopalian incumbent of Kairn. Their special characteristics are tlieir intense spirituality of tone and feeling, their large-heartedness and absolute free- dom from sectarian sentiment, and their grace of style. Here is a fine thought, finely expressed :— "Every man walketh in a vain show. His walk is nothing but an on-going in continual vanity and misery, in which man is naturally and industriously involved, adding a new stock of vanity, of his own weaving, to what he has already within, and vexation of spirit woven all along in with it. He ' walks in an image,' as the Hebrew word is; converses with things of no reality, and which have no solidity in them, and he himself has as little. He himself is a walking image in the midst of these images. They who are taken with the conceit of pictures and statues are an emblem of their own life, and of all other men's also. Life is generally nothing else to all men but a doting en images and pictures. Every man's fancy is to himself a gallery of pictures, and there he walks up and down, and considers not how vain these are, and how vain a thing he himself is." And here is a passage which Coleridge, in his " Aids to Eeflection," singles out for quotation : — "As in religion, so in the course and practice of men's lives, the stream of sin runs from one age into another, and every age makes it greater, adding somewhat to what it receives, as rivers grow in their course by the accession of brooks that fall into them; and every man when he is born, falls like a drop into the main current of corruption, and so is carried down with it, and this by reason of its strength and his own nature, which willingly dissolves into it, and runs along with it.'' Li this beautiful image we have, says Coleridge, "religion, the spirit; philosophy, the soul; and poetry, the body and drapery united; Plato glorified by St. Paul ! '' What Leighton was to the Scottish Church, was Bishop Ken to the English Church. Both were men of devout mind and holy life, who rose above the sectarian conditions in which they had been bred, and translated their religious belief into action. Among their con- temporaries they stood distinguished by the force and earnestness they threw into their Apostolic mission. They were good and great men, but great because of their goodness. 336 THE MEEEY MONARCH ; Thomas Ken, the son of a respectable attorney, was born at Little Berkbampstead, in Hertfordshire, in July, 1637. At the age of thirteen he was admitted into Winchester School, and seven years later he entered New College, Oxford, as a Probationer Fellow. Of his University life we know little, except that his fine voice and love of music led him to join a musical club that had been recently established at Oxford. In 1661, Ken took the degree of B.A., and about the same time seems to have been ordained. The respect which he had acquired by his scholarship and consistency of character was proved, in 1666, by his naanimous election to a fellowship. He thereupon returned to Winchester, where the room in which as Fellow he resided, pursued his studies, and amused his leisure by playing on his lute, is still shown to visitors. Morley was at that time occupant of the see of Win- chester, and with him resided the " Complete Angler," ,„i.l Izaak W.lto„. «h. L.. ™™,. W« .ister, Anna, the Kenna of her husband's ballads. Under the episcopal roof he lived, in virtue of the friendship of many years, " a beloved and honoured guest, with mild and lighted countenance, snow-white locks, a thankful but humble heart— with piety as sincere as unostenta- tious— till he closed his eyes on all the 'changes and chances of this mortal life,' at ninety years of age." Through his brother-in-law, Ken was admitted to the intimacy of Bishop Morley, who quickly felt the influence of his exalted character, and, in 1 609, promoted him to a prebend's stall in Winchester Cathedral. But Ken was no beneficed idler. Though not holding a pastoral charo-e, he laboured zealously in his Master's service. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 337 *^ His most exemplary goodness and piety," we are told, ^' did universally exert itself ; for this purpose he kept a constant course of preaching at St. John's Church in the South [a suburb of Winchester], where there was no preaching minister, and which he therefore called his own, and brought many Anabaptists to the Church of England ; and baptized them himself." It was at this period that Ken composed his '^ Manual " for the use of the Winchester Scholars ; and those beauti- ful '* Morning " and ^' Evening " hymns, which are the precious heritage of every English-speaking child. 'Not less dear to the Nonconformist than to the Anglican, they are " sung or said," day after day, in ten thousand house- holds, in Canada — in Australia — the isles of the Pacific — on India's coral strands — as well as in the mother country. Written, originally, to be sung in the chambers of the Winchester boys, there is good reason to believe that Ken himself adapted them to that noble melody of Tallis's, with which they are indissolubly associated. Of Ken's habit of singing his Morning Hymn regularly, at daybreak, Hawkins writes : — " That neither his study might be the aggressor on his hours of instruction, nor what he judged duty prevent his improvement, he strictly accustomed himself to but one hour's sleep, which obliged him to rise at one or two o'clock in the morning, or some- times earlier. He seemed to go to rest with no other purpose than the refreshing and enabling him with more vigour and cheerfulness to sing his Morning Hymn, as he used to do, to his lute, before he put on his clothes." It is interesting to note that the sweet simplicity of those hymns, which in itself accounts for their enduring popularity, contrasts remarkably with the complex and VOL. II. Z 338 THE MEERY MONARCH; artificial structure of mucli of Ken's later verse. They came fresh from liis heart — are absolutely spontaneous in their utterance. Unadorned as are these well-known lines, what can be more touching or more impressive ? — " All praise to Thee, my God, this night, For all the blessings of the light : Keep me, keep me, King of Kings ! Under Thine own Almighty wings. Forgive me, Lord, for Thy dear Son, The ills that I this day have done ; That with the world, myself, and Thee I, ere I sleep, at peace may be." Not a word here is superfluous; there are no orna- mental epithets ; language cannot be plainer, we had almost said balder ; and yet the effect produced is charm- ing. The Morning Hymn seems a jubilant expression of hopefulness and thanksgiving ; the Evening Hymn fills the soul with the peace and devotion that spring from an intense faith in the loving Providence of God. From 16G9 to 1G75 Ken pursued the even tenor of his way. In the latter year he broke away from his habits of seclusion, and accompanied his nephew, Izaak Walton the younger, on a Continental tour. It was the year of the Papal Jubilee ; and the English Churchman had an oppor- tunity of witnessing the Roman Court in all the splendour of its pomp and circumstance. He would often afterwards observe that he had great reason to give God thanks for his travels, since (if it were possible) he " returned rather more confirmed of the purity of the Protestant religion than before." At the close of the year he was back again in Winchester. In 1679 he took his doctor's degree, and in the same year was appointed chaplain to Charles II., who, during his frequent visits to Winchester, must have heard of his self-denial, and the golden excellence of his OK, ENGLAND UNDER CHAKLES II. 339 character. This appointment led to his being sent to Holland as the chaplain and adviser of the Princess of Orange. In this post, says Hawkins, his most prudent behaviour and strict piety gave him entire credit and high esteem with that royal lady. He contiues : — " But a consequential act of his singular zeal for the honour of his country, in behalf of a young lady, so far exasperated the Prince, that he warmly threatened to turn him from the service ; which the doctor resisting, and begging leave of the Princess (whom to his death he distinguished by the title of his mistress), warned himself from the service, till, by the entreaty of the Prince himself, he was courted to his former post and respect ; and when the year expired he returned to England." The young lady was Miss Wroth, one of the Princess's maids-of-honour, with whom Count Julienstein, half-uncle of the Prince of Orange, had fallen in love. But as he afterwards showed a disposition to behave dishonourably to the young lady, Ken constituted himself her champion, and remonstrated with him so effectively that at length he consented to marry her. The Prince was greatly offended at this marriage of so near a kinsman to an English lady, untitled and penniless, and bitterly resented Ken's chival- rous interposition. Early in 1681 Ken returned to Winchester; and soon afterwards Charles II. visited the Cathedral city to inspect the progress made in the works of the stately palace he had projected. He was accompanied by his mistress, Nell Gwynn, and desiring to lodge her in im- mediate neighbourhood to his own apartments at the Deanery, he required that the adjacent prebendal resi- pence of Ken should be allotted for her use. With 340 THE MERRY MONARCH; virtuons indignation Ken refused compliance with the royal mandate. Give np his house to a lewd actress and courtezan ? " Not for his kingdom ! " Ken sternly replied ; and it is to Charles's credit that he respected his chaplain's consistency and moral courage. In 1683 Ken accompanied the Tangier expedition as Chaplain to the Admiral in command. Lord Dart- mouth. When he returned to England in the early spring of 1684, he found his brother-in-law dead, and Bishop Morley dying. The good prelate did not linger long ; and Mew, Bishop of Bath and Wells, was then translated to Winchester, leaving his own see vacant. The vacancy was filled up by the appointment of Ken at Charles's personal dictation : — " Odd's fish ! " he ex- claimed, " who shall have Bath and Wells but the little fellow who would not give poor Nelly a lodging P " This was one of the King's latest acts, and his death actually occurred before the newly made Bishop could take pos- session of his temporalities. Of a promotion so unexpected, and so uncongenial to his way of thinking and his retired habits, Ken thus speaks :— ** Among the herdsmen, I a common swain, Lived, pleased with my low cottage on the plain ; Till up, like Amos, on a sudden caught, I to the pastoral chair was trembling brought." In Bishop Burnet's reference to it we find a touch of ill- nature, due, perhaps, to the political and theological prejudices of the man : — " Ken," he says, '* succeeded Mew in Bath and Wells ; a man of an ascetic course of life, and yet of a very lively temper, but too hot and sudden. He had a veiy edifying way of preaching, but it was more apt to move the passions than instruct; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II, 341 SO that his sermons were rather beautiful than solid ; yet his way in them was very taking. The King seemed fond of him ; and by him and Turner the Papists hoped that great progress might be made in gaining, or at least deluding the clergy." If the Papists had any such hope, it was speedily blighted ; for though Ken belonged to what is now known as the Catholic School in the Church of England, he was as hostile to Eomanism as Burnet himself. Ken was present by Charles II.'s death bed, and addressed the dying King with his usual courageous faithfulness. He refused to allow the Duchess of Ports- mouth to attend in the sick man's chamber, but warmly ^nd courageously urged upon him the duty of being reconciled to the wife he had so grossly injured by his infidelity and neglect. Burnet is compelled to admit that, in this critical time, *' he spoke with a great elevation, both of thought and expression, like a man inspired. He resumed the matter often, and pronounced many ejaculations and prayers, which affected all who were present, except him that was the most concerned, who seemed to take no notice of him, and made no answers to him. He pressed the King six or seven times to take the Sacrament, but the King always declined it, saying he was very weak. A table with the elements upon it, ready to be consecrated, was brought into the room ; which occasioned a report to be then spread about that he had received it. Ken pressed him to declare that he desired it, and that he died in the communion of the Church of England. To that he answered nothing. Ken asked him if he desired absolution of his sins ? It seems the King, if he then thought at all, thought that 342 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 343 would do him no hurt ; so Ken pronounced it over Mm." Charles's nomination of Ken to the see of Bath and Wells was confirmed bj James II., and the Bishop, with characteristic fervour, entered at once upon the discharge of his new and important duties. He visited the poor with assiduous self-denial, traversing his diocese, on " a sorry horse," in order to make himself thoroughly acquainted with its condition ; preached for every parish priest who required it of him ; encouraged his clergy in good works ; and, above all, set to his people a noble example of sincere and lowly piety and devotion. He devoted much care and thought to the education of the children of the poor, and encouraged the establishment of parochial schools in all the towns of his diocese. '' During summer he would repair to some great parish, where he would preach, con- firm, and catechize himself. In the great hall of his palace at Wells, he had always, on Sundays, twelve poor men or women to dine with him, instructing them at the same time." He delighted to maintain a dignified hospitality. " In the court of the palace at Wells there yet remain the lofty Gothic windows of that Hall, called of the Hundred Men, where public meetings were held, and the business of the county transacted. The palace was open to the judges, counsel, and noblemen and gentle- men of the county ; at the head of whom appeared the mild and Apostolic host at his episcopal table. The clergy, and the neighbouring noblemen and gentlemen of the county, were at all times expected and welcome and honoured guests." To literary labour, during his epis- copate, Ken did not greatly incline. His publications were few and unimportant ; namely, " A Sermon preached in the Cathedral Church of Bath, on Ascension Day, May 6th, 1687;" "An Exposition of the Church Catechism; or. Practise of Divine Love ; " " Directions for Prayer," printed with the former ; and, '' A Pastoral Letter to the Clergy of the Diocese of Bath and Wells, concerning their Behaviour during Lent." After the collapse of the Monmouth rebellion in 1685, he extended his Christian charity to the unhappy fugi- tives from red Sedgmoor. His palace stood scarce a day's journey from that fatal field, and its gates were thronged with supplicants, whom he relieved with liberal hands and encouraged with prudent counsel. Considering the temper of the then Government, it was at no slight personal risk that he exercised this benevolence ; but he ventured still farther, and when the Earl of Faversham was hanging his prisoners in cold blood, courageously warned him that they were by law entitled to a trial, and that their execution without trial would be deemed a murder. Yet it was Ken whom the king chose as the fittest person to prepare the unfortunate Monmouth for the scaffold to which his relentless hatred had condemned him ; and it was Ken, accompanied by Turner, Bishop of Ely, Drs. Tenison and Hooper, who stood by him in his death hour. The reader needs not to be reminded that after the victory of Sedgmoor and the Bloody Assize had crushed out the rebellion, James II. felt strong enough to proceed in his design of restoring the supremacy of the Eoman Church. To evade the resistance of Parliament he pro- rogued it, and then obtained from the judicial bench, which he had packed with his creatures, a declaration that the royal dispensation prevailed over the provisions of the Test Act. To overawe the citizens of London, who in the 344 THE MEERY MONARCH; old days were firm guardians of the liberty of tlie subject, he encamped an army of thirteen thousand soldiers at "ffounslow. With the view of Romanizing the government of the Church of England, he appointed seven commis- sioners, with the infamous Judge Jefferys at their head (1686) ; and their first act was to order the Bishop of London to suspend a London vicar who had preached against Popery. And when the Bishop refused, they suspended him. This arbitrary action of the Commissioners roused the clergy to a strenuous resistance; and anti- Roman discourses were thundered from every pulpit. Undeterred by the signs of a gathering storm^ James turned to attack the Universities. The headship of Magdalen College was vacant, and in 1G87 he recommended to its Fellows for election one Farmer, a man without scholar- ship and of evil life. The Fellows remonstrated, and when their remonstrance was ignored, elected Mr. Hough to be president. The Commissioners, in open defiance of law and custom, declared the election void ; and James endeavoured to put in a second nominee. Bishop Parker, of Oxford, a servile courtier and a concealed Papist. The Fellows stoutly adhered to their own appointment. In a mood of sullen wrath James repaired to Oxford, sum- moned the offending Fellows before him, and sharply rebuked them for their disobedience. " I am king," he replied, " and will be obeyed ! Go to your chapel this instant, and elect the bishop. Let those who refuse look to it, for they shall feel the whole weight of my hand ! " We turn, however, to the events in which Ken was personally involved. In the hope of bribing the Noncon- formists to support him, James issued, in 1687, what was called a Declaration of Indulgence, repealing the penal OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 345 laws against Nonconformists and Catholics, and the Acts which imposed a Sacramental test as a qualification for oflSce in Church or State. So far as the principle of tolera- tion was concerned, this might be regarded as a just and righteous measure; but in attempting to override the statutes of the realm, James was acting a most uncon- stitutional part, and dealing a fatal blow at English liberties. Once concede to the Crown a "dispensing power," and the laws made by Parliament became a sham and a nonentity. The Nonconformist leaders, therefore, threw in their lot with the Church of England, and rejected the sop which James had so ingeniously prepared for them. James then resolved to summon a Parliament, in the hope of extorting from it a repeal of the Test Act ; but he soon found reason to conclude that, if elected, it would represent only too faithfully the spirit of the people. Whom the gods seek to destroy they first make mad, and with mad persistency he issued, on the 27th of April, 1688, a fresh Declaration of Indulgence, and ordered that it should be read on two successive Sundays in every cathedral and parish church in the kingdom. The royal command was disobeyed, however, by nearly all the bishops and clergy. In only four of the London churches was the Declaration read ; and in those the congregations quitted their seats and departed at the opening sentences. Arch- bishop Sancroft and six of the Bishops of his province, the Bishops of Bath and Wells, Chichester, St. Asaph, Bristol, Ely and Peterborough, met at Lambeth, and signed a protest to the King, embodied in language which lacked neither moderation nor firmness, declining to publish an illegal ordinance. "It is a standard of rebellion," exclaimed the King in his passion ; " I did not expect this 346 THE MEERY MONARCH; from some of jou/' and having gone too far to recede, lie committed the recalcitrant prelates to the Tower on the charge of libel. For once the Church was on the side of Freedom ; and as the Bishops passed to their prison they were greeted with the cheers of sympathetic thousands. At its frowning gates the sentinels fell on their knees, and asked their blessing. The soldiers of the garrison loudly drank their healths. The tide of national feeling rolled in rapidly increasing volume from the capital to the furthest provinces ; but James, though his Ministers trembled, refused to stay his steps. Like a man smitten with judicial blindness he hastened to his doom. Before judges who lived by the breath of his nostrils, and a jury carefully packed, the Bishops were brought to trial on the 29th of June; but neither judges nor jury durst withstand the popular enthusiasm, and a verdict of " Not guilty " was returned. These two words sealed the downfall of the Stuart dynasty. When James II. abdicated Ken -joined the Primate in ™i„..iM„, th., » tag a, he U J, the th^e eo«M .0. be declared vacant ; but that as he had governed ill, the nation could justly prohibit him from the exercise of government, and entrust it to a regency. He had abandoned the dogma of Passive Obedience, but still upheld the doctrine of Divine Eight. He refused, therefore, in com- pany with Bancroft and six other bishops, to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary (1689). They were threatened with the deprivation of their sees ; but were allowed a year's grace to consider their position; and Queen Mary employed Bishop Burnet to negotiate their submission, offering to dispense with the oath, and pass an act of indulgence. It is to be regretted that Ken and OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 347 his brethren could not be induced to accept this reasonable concession. Eventually, as Bishop Turner engaged in an intrigue for King Jameses restoration, in which the other bishops were suspected of being involved, though there was certainly no evidence against Ken, the sentence of deprivation was put into execution, and Ken withdrew, for conscience sake, into an obscure retirement. It is worth while to get at the motives which influenced him in maintaining this obstinate attitude, and we find them explained in a letter which he addressed to Bishop Burnet, on the 5th of October, 1689 : — " I am obliged to your lordship for the continued con- cern you express for me, and for the kind freedom you are pleased to take with me : and though I have already in public fully declared my mind to my diocese concerning the oath, to prevent my being misunderstood ; yet, since you seem to expect it of me, I will give such an account, which, if it does not satisfy your lordship, will at least satisfy myself. I dare assure you, I never advised any- one to take the oath; though some, who came to talk insidiously with me, may have raised such a report. So far have I been from it, that I never would administer it to any one person whom I was to collate. And, there- fore, before the act took place, I gave a particular com- mission to my Chancellor, who himself did not scruple it ; so that he was authorised, not only to institute, but also to collate in my stead. If any came to discourse to me about taking the oath, I usually told them I durst not take it myself. I told them my reasons, if they urged me to it, and were of my own diocese ; and then remitted them to their study and prayers, for further direction. 'Tis true, having been scandalized at many persons of our own coat. 348 THE MERRY MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 34^ who for several years together preached up Passive Obe- dience to a much greater height than ever I did, it being a subject with which I very rarely meddled, and on a sudden, without the least acknowledgement of their past error, preached and acted the quite contrary, I did prepare a pastoral letter which, if I had some reason to alter my judgment, I thought to have published, at least that part of it on which I laid the greatest stress, to justify my con- duct to my flock. . . . " If your lordship gives credit to the many misrepre- sentations which are made of me, and which I being so used to can easily disregard, you may naturally enough be in pain for me ; for to see one of your brethren throw- ing himself headlong into a wilful deprivation, not only of honour and of income, but of a good conscience also, are particulars out of which may be framed an idea very deplorable. But though I do daily in many things betray great infirmity, I thank God I cannot accuse myself of any insincerity ; so that deprivation will not reach my conscience, and I am in no pain at all for myself." Ken found an asylum at Longleat, the hospitable house of his early friend, Thomas Thynne, whither he carried his lute, the small Greek Testament which was Ms constant companion, the shroud which was to be his last garment, his " sorry horse " for his occasional jour- neys, and his income of twenty pounds a quarter — all that was left of his fortune. His later life presents few incidents that call for notice. In 1696, he was sum- moned before the Privy Council, on a charge of having been concerned in raising subscriptions for the poor Non- jurors ; but he defended himself with manliness and success. In 1706, soon after the accession of Queen Anne, he was invited to return to his diocese on the understanding that Bishop Kidder, who had succeeded him, should be removed to another see. In the following year Kidder accidently came to his death, in the episcopal palace at Wells, through the fall of a stack of chimneys in the fury of the Great Storm. Ken at the time was staying at his nephew's house at Salisbury, and met with a remarkable deliverance. There, too, the stack of chimneys was thrown down, but the beam which sup- ported the roof broke their descent, so that nothing save the roof was damaged. Writing to Bishop Lloyd, Ken says: "I think I omitted to tell you the full of my deliverance in the late storm, for the house being surveyed the day following, the workmen found that the beam which supported the roof over my head was broken out to that degree, that it had but half an inch hold, so that it was a wonder it would hold together ; for which signal and particular preservation God's holy name be ever praised! " Hitherto Bishop Ken had considered himself Bishop of Bath and Wells de jure, not acknowledging the legality of his deprivation. But on Bishop Kidder's death he formally resigned, and it gave him much pleasure to see the mitre bestowed on his friend, Bishop Hooper. Queen Anne, when she found that he considered his physical infirmities a bar to his reinstatement, was graciously pleased to settle on him a pension of £200. At Longleat, in the 73rd year of his age, passed away the saintly bishop. Before the end came, he had many painful warnino-s — general debility, rheumatic pains, and much oppression of breathing. These were followed by a fit of apoplexy, which rendered him for a time unconscious. On recoverino" his senses, he calmly assumed his shroud. 350 THE MERRY MONARCH; and prepared for death in the true spirit of Christian heroism. With many prayers, and bestowing his blessing on his son^owing friends, he entered into his rest between five and six o'clock on the morning of the 19th of March, 1711. He was interred in the churchyard at Frome. Ken's poetical works were collected and published by Hawkins in four volumes — the first of which contained his hymns ; the second, " Edmund, an Epic," and " Hym- narium; or, Hymns on the Attributes of God;^' third, " Hymnotbes, the Penitent ; " and the fourth, " Prepara- tives for Death. '^ To us the wonderful thing about these compositions is that they proceeded from the pen of the anthor of the "Morning" and "Evening" hymns. They are in the worst style of the school of Cowley; cnmbroiis in versification, loaded with grotesque and arti- ficial imagery. It is said that he wrote his dreary epic, "Edmund," which is divided into fourteen books, to relieve the monotony of a sea-voyage. Probably he never intended it for the eves of the public ; and it would have been well fur his memory if his biographer had allowed it to moulder in the dust of oblivion. The four volumes, however, are not all rubbish ; the barren tract is brightened with a few flowers. And not unworthy of preservation is his sketch of " A Christian Pastor," which seems to be a bit of unconscious self- portraiture : — (i Give me tlio juiest those grrxces sball possess : Of an ambassador the just address, A fathers tt'mh'nn'>s, a shepherd's care, A leader's courav:* ', wliicli th*' cross may bear; A ruler's awe, a watchman's wakeful eye, A pilot's skill, I he helm in sh.nns to ply ; A prophet's inspiration from above ; A teacher's knowledge and a Saviour's love. OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 351 Of a mild, humble, and obliging heart, Who with his all will to the needy part; Distrustful of himself, in God confides. Daily himself among his flock divides ; Of virtue uniform, and cheerful air, Fixed meditation, and incessant prayer ; Who is all that he would have others be, From wilful sin, though not from frailty, free." In the concluding lines, Ken's devout and simple piety finds due expression : — " E'er since I hung upon my mother's breast Thy love, my God, has me sustained and blest : My virtuous parents, tender of their child ; My education pious, careful, mild ; My teachers zealous to well-form my mind ; My faithful friends and benefactors kind ; My creditable station and good name ; My life preserved from scandal and from shame; My understanding, memory, and health ; Kelations dear, and competance of wealth ; All the vouchsafements Thou to me hast shown, All blessings, all deliverances unknown — Lord, when Thy blessings which all vot'ries share With my peculiar blessings I compare, I stand amazed at their unbounded store. And silently Thy liberal love adore." A few words may be said in illustration of his character, which, however, offers no theme for the psychological analyst or the minute critic. It was simplicity itself; his Ufe set it forth; and both text and comment he who ran miij^ht read. A man of clear Intel- lect and direct purpose, Ken, when he had once deter- mined on his duty, was not to be diverted from it. His judgment was sound, his courage high. Prom what he conceived to be the truth, no inducement could separate him ; and his witness to it he was prepared always and everywhere to maintain. Hence we discern in him a true type of the Christian priest. His piety was profoundly sincere ; an intelligent and reasonable piety, though with OOJi THE MERRY MONARCH ; an ascetic touch about it; a loving and an unaffected piety, yet strong enough to sustain him in severe trials, and to encourage him to noble deeds — as when he repulsed a king's mistress, and surrendered the emoluments and dignities of the episcopate for conscience sake. He ruled his diocese firmly, yet with the gentle consideration of a loving nature ; being in all things and at all times the father of his clergy, the friend and adviser and shepherd of his laity. As a preacher, he was distinguished by his fervour, his plainness of speech, and his boldness of utter- ance : and the glow of his devout enthusiasm sometimes warmed his language into eloquence. He was not a great scholar, and his credentials to the recollection of posterity are almost exclusively confined to his two celebrated hymns. The Church of England at this period boasted of many divines who were rapidly rising into eminence as theolo- gians or preachers. Dr. John Pearson, Bishop of Chester, who died in 1686, was already famous for his "Exposition of the Creed;" Dean Tillotson, 1630-1694, who, after the Eevolution, became Archbishop of Canterbury, drew de- lighted congregations to St. Lawrence Jewry by his elo- quent sermons ; Dr. Sherlock, 1641-1707, was in the prime of manhood at Charles II.'s death, and had given evidence of scholarship and controversial ability ; and Dr. Stilling- fleet, 1635-1699, made Bishop of Chester in 1689, had produced his chief work, '' Origines Sacrae ; or, A Eational Account of the Grounds of Natural and Revealed Reli- gion," as early as 1662. We turn to the most renowned among the Noncon- formists. Richard Baxter was born in 1615 at Rowton, in Shropshire ; educated at Wroxeter; ordained in 1638 ; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 353 and from 1640 to 1642 he officiated as pastor at Kidder- minster. In the great religious and political struggle which divided England into two hostile parties, whose lines of separation are still far from being effaced, he supported the Parliament, and was present with the army as chaplain at the sieges of Bridgewater, Exeter, Bristol, and Worcester. But the polemics of officers and troopers were not to his taste, and from the vehement debates of Sergeant Moretext and Zephaniah Break-the-chains-of- Satan, he retired to Kidderminster, where, in 1653, he wrote that beautiful book of his, the consolation of so many anxious souls, '' The Saint's Everlasting Rest." He boldly remonstrated with Cromwell on his assumption of the supreme power, and plainly told him that " the honest people of this land took their ancient monarchy to be a blessing and not an evil." After the Restoration he might well have abandoned this opinion, for the Act of Uniformity, passed in 1662, drove him out of the Estab- lished Church. He retired to Acton,* where he lived in the delights of lettered seclusion until the Act of Indul- gence, in 1672, enabled him to return to London. Some passages in his " Paraphrase on the New Testament," which he published in 1685, were regarded as seditious, and he was arraigned before Judge Jeffreys. It was on the day on which Titus Gates was pilloried in Palace Yard that the venerable Nonconformist leader appeared in Westminster Hall. He asked that some little time might be allowed hiiu to prepare his defence. " Not a minute," exclaimed the brutal Jeffreys, '' to save his life ! I can deal with saints as well as with sinners. There * His house was near the church, hut has long since been pulled down» and its site caunot now be identified. VOL. II. A A 854 THE MERRY MONARCH ; stands Gates on one side of the pillorj; and if Baxter stood on the other, the two greatest rogues in the king- dom would stand together." Throughout the trial — if such a mockery of justice de- serve the name — Jeffreys behaved with similar brutality. He browbeat and silenced Baxter's advocates^ and when Baxter himself attempted to put in a word, overwhelmed him with ribald talk, mingled with quotations from " Hudi- bras." " My lord," said the aged divine, " I have been much blamed by Dissenters for speaking respectfully of bishops." " Baxter for bishops ! '' cried the Judge, " that's a merry conceit indeed. I know what you mean "by bishops ; rascals like yourself, Kidderminster bishops, factious, snivelling Presbyterians ! " Again Baxter at- tempted to speak. " Richard, Eichard," thundered the Judge, " dost thou think we will let thee poison the court P Eichard, thou art an old knave. Thou hast written books enough to load a cart, and every book as full of sedition as an egg is full of meat. By the grace of God, I'll look after thee. I see a great many of your brotherhood waiting to know what will befall their mighty Don.'^ He was sentenced to pay 500 marks, and to be impri- soned in the King's Bench until the fine was paid. He lay in confinement for a year and a half, and then regained his libei-ty, partly through the exertions of Lord Powis, and partly because James II. desired to win over the Pro- testant Nonconformists. He was informed that if he chose to reside in London he might do so without fearing that the Five Mile Act would be enforced against him. But Baxter was not to be cajoled. He refused to join in any addi-ess of thanks for the Declaration of Indulgence, and OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. u5o .strenuously exerted himself to promote a reconciliation between the Church and the Presbyterians. It was mainly through his influence that the two bodies stood side by side in the struggle against the Court. In the same moderate spirit he gave his assent, in 1689, to the Tolera- tion Act, which enabled every dissenting minister to exer- cise his functions provided he declared his belief in some thirty-four of the thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England. Two years later (on the 8th of December, 1C91) he closed his long and blameless life, a life spent in the practice of moderation and the advocacy of charity. His separate writings are said to number 168. Of these, the " Saint's Everlasting Rest " and the " Call to the Uncon- verted " are still largely read among us. A deep interest also attaches to his autobiography — " A Narrative of the most Memorable Passages of my Life and Times" — which Coleridge rightly pronounces '^an inestimable work." His own opinion of his writings is given with his usual frank- ness : — '' I must confess," he says, " that my own judg- ment is, that fewer, well studied and polished, had been better ; but the reader who can safely censure the books, is not fit to censure the author, unless he had been upon the places and acquainted with all the occasions and cir- cumstances. Indeed, for ' The Saint's Rest,' I had four months' vacancy to write it, but in the midst of continual languishing and medicine ; but, for the rest, I wrote them in the crowd of all my other employments, which would allow me no great leisure for polishing and exactness, or any ornament ; so that I scarce ever wrote one sheet twice over, nor stayed to make any blots or interlinings, but was fain to let it go as it was first conceived : and 356 THE MERRY MONARCH; when my own desire was rather to stay upon one thin^ long than run over many, some sudden occasion or other extorted almost all my writings from me; and the ap- prehensions of present usefulness or necessity prevailed against all other motives ; so that the divines which were at hand with me still put me on, and approved of what I did, because they were moved by present necessities as well as I ; but those that were far off, and felt not those nearer motives, did rather wish that I had taken the other way, and published a few elaborate writings ; and I am ready myself to be of their mind, when I forget the case that I then stood in, and have lost the sense of former motives." George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, must also be mentioned. He was the son of a weaver, and born at Drayton, in Leicestershire^ in lG2i. Apprenticed to a shoemaker who traded in wool and cattle, he devoted much of his time to the charge of sheep, and this solitary occupation enabled an excitable imagi- nation to indulge in the wildest vagaries. He was about nineteen years old, when he was one day much disturbed by the love of drink displayed by two professedly religious friends whom he met at a fair. " I went away," he notes in his journal, " and, when I had done my business, re- turned home; but I did not go to bed that night, nor could I sleep ; but sometimes walked up and down, and sometimes prayed, and cried to the Lord, who said unto me : ' Thou seest how young people go together into vanity, and old people into the earth ; thou must forsake all, young and old, keep out of all, and be a stranger to all ! ' " Accepting this as a Divine command, he gave it his most rigid obedience; abandoned his trade and his OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 357 home, and for several years wandered to and fro like a pilgrim in the desert. With his intellect too much dis- ordered to enable him to apprehend things in their true relations, he fancied that he had celestial revelations, and, like Jeanne d'Arc, heard voices. " One morning," he says, « as I was sitting by the fire, a great cloud came over me, and a temptation beset me, and I sate still. And it was said. All things come by nature ; and the Elements and Stars came over me, so that I was in a moment quite clouded with it; but inasmuch as I sate still and said nothing, the people of the house perceived nothing. And as I sate still under it and let it alone, a living hope rose in me, and a true voice arose in me which cried : There is a living God who made all things. And immediately the cloud and temptation vanished away, and the life rose over it all, and my heart was glad, and I praised the living God." Confused and disgusted by the Eabel of tongues which prevailed in the religious world, and the opposite views of Scriptural truth presented by the different denominations, he came to the conclusion that no living teachers could instruct him in Divine things, and that he must act upon the inspiration which came direct to him from heaven. '' He argued that, as the division of languages began at Babel, and as the persecutors of Christ put on the cross an inscription in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, the know- ledge of languages, and more especially of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, must be useless to a Christian minister." This is his confused utterance on the subject : " What they know they know naturally, who turn from the com- mand and err from the spirit, whose fruit withers, who saith that Hebrew, Greek, and Latin is the original: 358 THE MERRY MONARCH ; before Babell was, the earth was one of language ; and Nimrod, the cunning hunter before the Lord, which came out of cursed Ham's stock, the originall and builder of Babell, whom God confounded with many languages, and this they say is the original who erred from the spirit and command ; and Pilate had his origi- nal Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, which crucified Christ and set over him." It was about 1647 that he began to teach publicly in the neigfhbourhood of Duckenfield and Manchester, whence he made his way through the midland and northern counties. Teaching more confused and extravagant has seldooi been put before men, and yet it found many to listen and assent, because it dwelt so much on those minute regula- tions and observances which ignorant minds most keenly appreciate and readily seize hold of. " One of the precious truths which were divinely revealed to this new apostle was, that it was falsehood and adulation to use the second person plural instead of the second person singular. Another was, that to talk of the month of March was to worship the bloodthirsty god Mars, and that to talk of Monday was to pay idolatrous homage to the moon. To say Good morning or Good evening was highly reprehen- sible ; for those phrases evidently imported that God had made bad days and bad nights. A Christian was bound to face death itself rather than touch his hat to the greatest of mankind. When Fox was challenged to pro- duce any Scriptural authority for this dogma, he cited the passage in which it is written that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into the fiery furnace with their hats on ; and, if his own narrative may be trusted, the Chief Justice of England was altogether unable to OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 359 answer this argument except by crying out, 'Take him away, gaoler.' . . . Bowing he strictly prohibited, and, indeed, seemed to consider it as the effect of Satanical influence ; for, as he observed, the woman in the Gospel, while she had a spirit of infirmity, was bowed together, and ceased to bow as soon as Divine power had liberated her from the tyranny of the Evil One." His Scriptural expositions were, in their way, not less absurd and irrational. Passages of the most literal character he construed figuratively; and as figurative passages he construed not less literally, his theology was a curious jumble. Such as it was, however, he taught it everywhere, and with almost heroical persistency ; even forcing his way into churches, and interrupting the service or the sermon with loud contradictions and vehement as- sertions of doctrine. By these exploits he soon acquired the notoriety which, no doubt, he coveted. His strange face, his strange chant, his immovable hat, and his leather breeches were known all over the country ; and he boasts that wherever the rumour was heard, "The man in leather breeches is coming,^' hypocritical professors were seized with alarm, and hireling priests took to flight. He was repeatedly imprisoned; at Derby he languished in a wretched cell for a twelvemonth, and at Carlisle for six months experienced from his gaoler the most brutal treat- ment. At Ulverstone he underwent the following harsh experience : — « The people were in a rage, and fell upon me in the steeple-house before the justice's face, knocked me down,, kicked me, and trampled upon me. So great was the up- roar, that some tumbled over their seats for fear. At last lie came and took me from the people, led me out of the 360 THE MEEEY MONARCH steeple-house, and put me into the hands of the constables and other officers, bidding them whip me, and put me out of the town. Many friendly people being come to the market^ and some to the steeple-bouse to hear me, divers of these they knocked down also, and broke their heads, so that the blood ran down several ; and Judge Fell's son running after to see what they would do with me, they threw him into a ditch of water, some of them crying : ^ Knock the teeth out of his head ! ' When tbey had hauled me to the common moss-side, a multitude following, the constables and other officers gave me some blows over my back with willow-rods, and thrust me among the rude multitude, who, having furnished themselves with staves, hedge-stakes, holm or bolly bushes, fell upon me, and beat me upon the head, arms, and shoulders, till they had de- prived me of sense ; so that I fell down upon the wet common. When I recovered again, and saw myself lying in a watery common, and the peoj^le standing about me, I lay still a little while, and the power of the Lord sprang through me, and the eternal refreshings revived me, so that I stood up again in the strengthening powder of the Eternal God, and stretching out my arms amongst them, I said with a loud voice : ^ Strike again ! here are my arms, my head, and cheeks ! ' Then they began to fall out among themselves." The extravagances of Fox were, of course, out-Heroded by some of his disciples. He tells us that one of them walked naked through Skipton declaring the truth ; and that another was divinely moved to go naked during several years to market places, and to the houses of the clergy and gentry. Yet he complains that these out- rageous manifestations of fanatical indecency were re- OE, ENGLAND UNDEE CHAELES II, 361 quited by an unbelieving generation with hooting, and pelting, and the horsewhip. But though he applauded the zeal of his followers, some remains of natural modesty prevented him from imitating it. He sometimes indeed would cast off his outer raiment, or his shoes ; but the article of attire from which he obtained his popular nickname he was always careful, however, to wear in public. Throughout the Protectorate, and the reign of Charles II., and into the reign of William III., this strange prophet — who could never speak intelligibly — continued to expound his views, and gradually succeeded in organ- ising his followers into a new sect. With the help of the more educated among them, such as Eobert Barclay, Samuel Fisher, and George Keith, he reduced into some degree of system and form his teachings, and began to enforce a severe discipline. Later in life he visited Ireland, and the young colonies in North America, where he spent nearly two years in making converts to his doctrines. He died in London, in 1G90, aged 66. On the morning of the day appointed for his funeral, a great multitude assembled round the meeting-house in Gracechurch Street. Thence the corpse was conveyed to the Quaker burial-ground near Bunhill Fields. Several orators addressed the crowd which filled it — among these, not the least distinguished of Fox's disciples, William Penn. William Penn, to whom we have made brief allusion in the opening chapter of this book, was the son of Sir William Penn, the famous Admiral, and was born on the 14th of October, 1644, in St. Catherine's, near the Tower of London. When about eleven years old he was sent to School at Chigwell, where, being on one occasion in his chamber alone, " he was so suddenly surprised with an 862 THE MERRY MONARCH; inward comfort, and (as lie thought) an external glory in the room, that he has many times said how from that time he had the seal of divinity and immortality ; that there was also a God, and that the sonl of man was capable of enjoying His divine communications.'* This mental de- lusion was the efPect, no doubt, of an excited imagination, nourished by the boy's solitary pondering over his mother's religious books. The Admiral, having fallen into disgrace through the failure of the expedition against Hispaniola, removed his family, in 1656, to Ireland, where he had considerable estates, and while professing to be employed in their cultivation, engaged in plots for the restoration of the Stuart dynasty. His son, meantime, had the advantage of receiving instruction from a private tutor, and profited so largely by it that, at the age of 16, he was sent to Oxford, and entered at Christ Church as a gentleman commoner (1660). There a measure of fame accrued to liim very speedily through the brilliancy of his scholar- ship and his skill in all manly accomplishments. But by degrees Penn awoke to a perception of higher and holier things; his religious instinct was revolted by the un- bridled licence of the companions among whom he was thrown ; and he began to dream dreams of a Common- wealth of Saints which, in the coming years, he hoped to erect upon enduring foundations among the leafy wildernesses of the New World. At Oxford, about this time, the doctrines of Fox, the Quaker apostle, were very eagerly discussed. As ex- pounded by one Thomas Loe, or Lowe, they attracted the attention of Penn and his fellow-students; and the apparent simplicity which distinguished them naturally mmrwmmmmmmm OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 363 exercised a powerful influence upon minds alarmed and excited by the Court favour extended to Eomanism. They went frequently to Thomas Loe's prelections, and refrained from attending the College services. For their contumacy they were fined. Breaking then into open re- bellion they stripped off the surplice, the use of which was enjoined by the authorities ; and were thereupon ex- pelled from the University. Penn's father, a man of worldly nature and a great supporter of ''the powers that be," was so enraged at this untoward event, that when his son presented himself at home, he caused him to be whipped, and finally turned out of doors. Still the young man held to his view of what was right, and re- ceived and answered letters from the Calvanist Owen, whom his father suspected of leading his son astray. After a while the elder Penn relented ; and in the hope, natural to a worldly mind, that change of scene might efface the old impressions by exciting new, he sent him on his travels. At Paris Penn was introducrd to the Court of Louis XIV. He plunged into the wild vortex of fashionable life, and his father's worldly wisdom seemed justified by the eagerness with which this bright and accomplished young man threw himself into the current of dissipation. One night, as he was passing through a dark street, he was stopped by a French gallant, and commanded to draw and defend himself. What offence had he given ? The Frenchman accused him of not having returned the salute of courtesy with which he had approached him. Penn replied that he had never seen him ; but his adversary would accept of no excuse, and threatened to cut him down with his sword. At this insult Penn's patience 364 THE MEEEY MONARCH; broke its last bonds, and forgetting tbe doctrines of George Fox, lie drew bis blade rapidly, and assumed a defensive attitude. By tbis time a crowd bad gatbered, wbo expected tbat Penn, as in a few passes be bad dis- armed bis quarrelsome adversary, would take bis life, in accordance witb tbe laws of tbe duello ; but, greatly to tbeir admiration, be returned bini bis sword witb a polite bow, and unconcernedly went on bis way. Keceiving instructions from bis fatber to remain for awbile in France, and resume bis studies, be selected for bis tutor tbe eminent tbeologian, Mons. Ancyrault, of Saumur, and applying bimself most earnestly to work, acquired witb considerable rapidity a comprebensive knowledge of Frencb literature, as well as a considerable acquaintance witb the writings of tbe early tbeologians. He tben recommenced his travels, and visited Italy, but was recalled to England, in 1664, on tbe outbreak of tbe war witb Holland. He reached London in August, and seems to bave created quite "a sensation" in "polite circles." Gossip Pepys, after receiving a visit from tbe accomplished young traveller, records in bis Diary that " something of learning be bath got, but a great deal, if not too much, of tbe vanity of tbe Frencb garb, and affected manner of speech and gait." He bad grown a bandsome man, and bis manners were perfect in their easy grace. " Tall and well-set, his figure promised physical strengtb and bardibood of constitution. His face was mild, and almost womanly in its beauty ; bis eyes soft and fiill; bis brow open and ample ; bis features well-defined and approaching to tbe ideal Greek in contour ; the lines about bis moutb were exquisitely sweet, and yet resolute in expression. Like Milton, be wore bis hair long and OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 365 parted in tbe centre of tbe forebead, from whicb it fell over bis neck and sboulders in massive natural ringlets. In mien and manners be seemed formed by nature and stamped by art — a gentleman." Such, at least, is Mr. Hepwortb Dixon's somewbat imaginative portrait of tbe future Quaker. He entered bimself as a student at Lincoln's Inn ; but almost before be could settle down to legal studies, was summoned to accompany his father on board bis flag-sbip, tbe Loyal Charles, in March, 1665. His experience of a naval life was only of three weeks' duration; for on the 23rd of April he landed at Harwich with des- patches for tbe King, and instead of returning to tbe fleet, be withdrew to bis cbambers in Lincoln's Inn. In the month of June tbe Great Plague began its fearfal ravages in London— an event to rouse tbe conscience of the most frivolous, for in hardly any sbape is death more hateful ; in none are its accessories more painful. Tbe one spot of deadly omen ; tbe livid, swollen body ; tbe death-agony ; tbe rougbly-made coffin ; tbe plague-cart for tbe putrid corpse ; the solemn bell that woke tbe ecboes of the night ; tbe horrid pit into wbicb were huddled tbe ghastly remains of humanity— sucb circumstances as these migbt stimulate even tbe most thou^^btless to reflection. Upon Penn's naturally contem- plative mind they produced a deep, ever-enduring impres- sion; and when bis father returned to England, flushed with tbe honours of victory, be found the gay and graceful Cavalier transformed into the grave and serious student. Court festivities bad given place to disputations with learned men. Love poems and gay sonnets had been aban- doned for tbeological and political treatises ; authors and 366 THE MERKY MONARCH; legal professors of repute substituted for tlie courtiers and the frail beauties wbo displayed their meretricious charms at Whitehall. The change does not seem to have been to the Admiral's taste. He desired his son to be a prosperous man of the world, continuing in the path he himself had trodden with so much success, and raising the race of Penn to a yet higher point of affluence and pride. To wean his son from what he considered to be an irrational asceticism, he despatched him to Ireland in the autumn of 1665, furnished with introductions to the Duke of Ormond, whose vice-regal court was almost as brilliant as, and certainly more decent than, the court of Charles II. Penn was cordially received, and the gaieties which surrounded him soon appeared to have the effect antici- pated by his father. He resumed the habits and tastes of a young man of fashion. Wlien an insurrection broke out among the military at Carrickfergus, he accompanied Lord Arran as a volunteer on the expedition intended to reduce them to obedience, and displayed a courage and an intrepedity which procured him from the Duke of Ormond the offer of a captaincy of foot. His father, however, would not allow him to accept it ; and Penn betook him- self to the paternal estate at Shangarry, near Cork. On a visit to the latter town, he heard that Thomas Loe, the Oxford Quaker, was to preach there ; and recollections of his student-days induced him to be present. Loe's text was well adapted to Penn's peculiar mental condition :— " There is a faith that overcomes the world, and there is a faith that is overcome by the world." Penn felt that he himself had long hesitated in the border-land ; had long wavered between light and darkness, morning and night, the world of faith and the world of unbelief. Loe's voice OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 367 came to his uncertain soul like that of a messenger from Heaven ; and shaking off the social fetters imposed by custom and tradition, he went home that night with a new inspiration kindling in his heart : William Penn had become a Quaker. He thenceforth attended regularly the meetings of the Friends ; but, one evening in November, 1667, a company of soldiers breaking in upon their secret assembly— for the Quakers were then enduring the ordeal of a severe persecution— Loe and his fellow- worshippers were made prisoners, and committed to the town jail. Penn lost no time in communicating with his friend the Earl of Ossory, son of the Duke of Ormond, and obtained a speedy release. But great was the amazement at Court, the ridicule in the world of fashion, the consternation of Sir William Penn, when it was thus made known that his son and heir had joined the despised followers of George Fox ! He recalled him to England, and at first, observing no change in his attire, no precisian cut or rigid formaUty in his clothes, comforted himself with the hope that curiosity, and not belief, had attracted his son to the meeting-house. He soon noticed, however, that he forbore to remove his hat in the company of his friends and superiors, and on inquiring the reason, ascer- tained that his first alarms had been well-founded. He assailed him with sarcasm, but his son's convictions were too strong to be shaken by so feeble a weapon. He plied him with argument, but found him his master in Scriptural knowledge and logical reasoning. A third course remained, and the angry sea-captain adopted it : he turned him out of doors. After awhile he relented so far as to allow him to return to his house, but he would 368 THE MEERY MONARCH; not admit him into his presence. Though gifted with strong affections, the young man, for conscience sake, bore the parental anger patiently. He had already begun to expound and defend, with pen and voice, the doctrines be had embraced ; and in 1668 he published his first book, under the title of " Truth Exalted in a Short but Sure Testimony against all those Eeligions, Faiths, and Wor- ships, that have been formed and followed in the darkness of Apostasy; and for that glorious light which is now risen and shines forth in the Life and Doctrine of the despised Quakers, as the alone good old way of Life and Salvation. Presented to Princes, Priests, and Peoples, that they may repent, believe, and obey. By William Penn, whom Divine Love constrains in an holy contempt to trample on Egypt's glory, not fearing the King's wrath, having beheld the Majesty of Him who is Invisible." This was shortly followed by a severe polemic, "The Guide Mistaken," in reply to John Clapham's attack upon the Quakers in his " Guide to True Eeligion ; " and by a well-written argument in favour of the Unitarian view of The Godhead—" The Sandy Poundation Shaken " —which Mr. Pepys read, and found " so well writ, as I think it is too good for him to have writ it : it is a serious sort of book," he adds, "and not fit for everybody to read." So thought the authorities of the Church, and at their instance he was committed to the Tower, where he lingered in a solitary cell for nearly nine months, debarred from all intercourse with his family and friends. His books, however, supplied him with social converse ; his pen proved an agreeable companion ; and the fruit of his enforced seclusion appeared in that elaborate folio of his, " No Cross no Crown," in which he illustrates the OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 369 value of suffering as an agent of moral purification, and the power of Christian endurance to win the Christian victory. His own endurance the Bishop of London tested by causing him to be informed that the Bishop had re- solved he should die in his dungeon unless he recanted his errors. " I do not heed their threats," he replied ; " I will weary out their malice. Neither great nor good things were ever attained without loss and hardship. The man that would reap and not labour must perish in disappoint- ment." Shortly afterwards he published a vindication of himself and his religious opinions, entitled " Innocency with her Open Face," which produced a favourable im- pression on the public. At the Duke of York's inter- cession he obtained an unconditional release ; and departed for Ireland to resume the management of his father's property at Shangarry Castle. This was in October, 1669. In the following June he returned to England, and enjoyed the happiness of being reconciled to his father. It was in the same year that Parliament renewed the infamous Conventicle Act, which inflicted on every person attending a conventicle or meeting-house a fine of 5s. for the first, and 10s. for the second offence, while a much heavier penalty fell upon the oflBiciating minister. The Quaker assemblies had hitherto been connived at, but the law was now enforced without distinction ; and when Penn and his co-religionists re- paired to their chapel in Gracechurch Street, on the 14th of August, they found a detachment of soldiers posted at the doors, who prohibited their entrance. Penn, taking off his hat, had beguji to address them, when immediately some constables forced their way through the crowd, and VOL. II. ^ ^ 370 THE MEERT MONARCH; arrested him and anotlier, Captain William Mead, a city draper, who had served the Commonwealth with his Bword. When Penn demanded their authority, they pro- duced a warrant from the Lord Mayor, before whom the two prisoners were carried for examination. He ordered the Quaker to remove his hat, and on Penn's refusal, threatened to send him to Bridewell, and direct that he should be well whipped ; but warned against so monstrous a proceeding, he committed him and his companion to the Black Dog, a '^ sponging-house " of ill repute, in Newgate Market, to await their trial at the Old Bailey. This remarkable trial took place on the 1st of Sep- tember ; " remarkable," for it contributed in no small degree to secure the libeiiies of the subject. It pivoted, 80 to speak, on one gi-eat question. Undoubtedly, the Conventicle Act was a violation of principles laid down in the Great Charter ; but it had been passed by Parliament and sanctioned by the Crown. Could the assent of the Crown and Parliament legalize a measure which violated the ancient constitution of the realm ? No, said Penn, and claimed for every Englishman four fundamental rights as descending to him from the Saxon period: — 1, Security of Property ; 2, Security of Person ; 3, A voice in the making of all laws relating to Property or Person ; and, 4, A share, by means of the jury, in the actual administration of the Civil Law. These rights had been attacked in Penn's person, and were vindicated by Penn's courageous action. He defended himself with great spirit and ability, though the Court seized every opportunity to browbeat and confuse him. Thus said the Recorder, violently, in reply to Penn's calm request, that he would inform him by what law he OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 371 was prosecuted, and on what law the indictment was grounded — «^You must not think that I am able to sum up so many years, and ever so many adjudged cases, which we <;all common law, to satisfy your curiosity." Penn— "This answer, I am sure, is very short of my question ; for if it be common, it should not be so very hard to produce.^' Recorder (angrily)— " Sir, will you plead to your indictment ? " Penn—" Shall I plead to an indictment that has no foundation in law ? If it contain that law you say I have broken, why should you decline to produce it, since it will be impossible for the jury to determine, or agree to bring in their verdict, who have not the law produced by which they should measure the truth of the indict- ment ? '' Recorder (passionately)— " You are a saucy fellow; speak to the indictment.'' Penn " I say it is my place to speak to matters of law. I am arraigned a prisoner. My liberty, which is next to life itself, is now concerned. You are many against me, and it is hard if I must not make the best of my case. I say again, unless you show me and the people the law you ground your indictment upon, I shall take it for granted your proceedings are merely arbitrary. . . ." Recorder (waiving this critical point)— "The ques- tion is, whether you are guilty of this indictment ? " Penn—" The question is, not whether I am guilty of this indictment, but whether this indictment be legal. It i^ too general and imperfect an answer to say it is common law, unless we know both where and what it is; for 872 THE MEREY MONARCH ; where there is no law there is no transgression ; and that law which is not in being, so far from being common law, is no law at all/' Recorder — " You are an impertinent fellow. Will you teach the Court what law is ? It is lex non scripta. That which many have studied thirty or forty years to know, would you have me tell you in a moment ? " Penn — " Certainly, if the common law be so hard to he understood, it is far from being very common ; but if the Lord Coke in his Institutes be of any weight, he tells us that 'common law is common right,' and common right is the great charter privileges confirmed by various enact- ments." Recorder — " Sir, you are a very troublesome fellow, and it is not for the honour of the Court to allow you to go on. . . . My Lord, if you do not take some course with this pestilent fellow to stop his mouth, we shall not be able to do anything to-night." Lord Mayor — *'Take him away! Take him away! Put him into the bale-dock ! " And in the midst of a vigorous appeal to the jury, he was forcibly removed to the extreme end of the Court, where he could neither see nor be seen. The Recorder then proceeded — '^Tou, gentlemen of the jury, have heard what the indictment is ; it is for preaching to the people and drawing a tumultuous company after them ; and Mr. Penu was speaking. If they shall not be disturbed, you see they will go on. There are three or four witnesses have proved this — that Mr. Penn did preach there, that Mr. Mead did allow of it. After this, you have heard by substantial witnesses what is said against them. Xow we OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 373 are on matter of fact, which you are to keep and to observe, as what hath been fully sworn, at your peril." Here Penn from the bale-dock interrupted, in his loudest tones — ^' I appeal to the jury who are my judges, and to this great assembly, whether the proceedings of the Court are not most arbitrary, and void of all law, in ofPermg to give the jury their charge in the absence of the prisoners? I say it is directly opposed and destructive to the right of every English prisoner, as declared by Coke in the 2nd Institute, 29, on the chapter of Magna Charta." Recorder (with an affectation of humour)-- Why, you are present. You do hear ; do you not ? " Penn-'' No, thanks to the Court that commanded me into the bale-dock. And you of the jury, take notice that I have not been heard; neither can you legally depart the Court before I have been fully heard, having at least ten or twelve material points to offer in order to invalidate the indictment." Recorder (furiously)-" Pull that fellow down ! PuU him down! Take him to the hole. To^ hear him talk doth not become the honour of the Court." After the prisoners had been - haled away to the «qualidest of all the squalid dens in England, the " hole in Newgate, the Recorder commanded the jury to agree in their verdict according to the facts sworn. They retired for consideration; but instead of returning imme- diately,as the judges anticipated, tarried thirty minutes- sixty minutes-an hour and a half ! Then entered eight of the jurors, saying that they could not agree. The Recorder demanded the attendance of the other four, and immediately poured out upon them a flood of vituperation. THE MEREY MONARCH; The jiirj withdrew a second time ; and after two hours' absence, returned with a verdict of " Guilty of speaking in Gracechurch Street." An attempt was made to coerce or cajole them into altering it to " unlawful speaking ; '' but they manfully refused. '^ We have given in our verdict; we can give no other." They were sent back a third time ; whereupon they sent in a verdict, " Guilty of speaking to an assembly met together in Gracechurch Street." In a storm of passion, the Lord Mayor pro- nounced their foreman "an impudent, canting knave." The Eecorder exclaimed, " You shall not be dismissed till you bring in a verdict which the Court will accept. You shall be locked up, without meat, drink, fire, and tobacco. You shall not think thus to abuse tbe Court. We will have a verdict, by the help of God, or you shall starve for it ! " Penn— "'The jury, who are my judges, ought not to he thus menaced. Their verdict should be free— not forced." Eecorder — '^ Stop that fellow's mouth, or put him out of Court ! " Lord Mayor (addressing the jury) — " You have heard that he preached ; that he gathered a company of tumul- tuous people ; and that they not only disobey the martial power, but the civil also." Penn — "That is a mistake. We did not make the tumult, but they that interrupted us. The jury cannot be so ignorant as to think we met there to disturb the peace, because it is well known that we are a peaceable people, never offering violence to any man, and were kept by force of arms out of our own house. You are English- men," he said to the jurors ; ^' mind your privileges : give not away your rights." OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 375 The jury were then locked up, and the prisoners carried back to Newgate. The next morning (Sunday) the Court was again crowded, and with anxiety chequered by hope the public awaited the reappearance of the jurors. At seven o'clock their names were called over, and the Clerk once more inquired if they had agreed upon a verdict. They replied in the affirmative. " Guilty, or not guilty? " « Guilty of speaking in Gracechurch Street." Lord Mayor—" To an unlawful assembly ? " Bushel-" No, my lord; we give no other verdict than we gave last night." Lord Mayor-^'You are a factious fellow; Til take a course with you." ^^ Bushel— "I have done according to my conscience. Lord Mayor— "That conscience of yours would cut my throat." Bushel—" No, my lord, it never shall." Lord Mayor—" But I will cut yours as soon as I can. Eecorder (jestingly)-" He has inspired the jury; he has the spirit of divination ; methinks he begins to affect me/ I will have a positive verdict, or else you shaU starve." . Penn— " I desire to ask the Eecorder a question. Do you allow the verdict given of William Mead ? " Eecorder-" It cannot be a verdict, because you are indicted for conspiracy; and one being found 'Not Guilty' and not the other, it is no verdict." Penn—" If ' Not Guilty ' be no verdict, then you make of the jury and of the Great Charta a mere nose of wax." Mead-" How ? Is ' Not Guilty ' no verdict ? " Eecorder—" It is no verdict." Penn-" I affirm that the consent of a jury is a verdict in law; and if WiUiam Mead be not guilty, it follows 5> 376 THE MEERT MONARCH; that I am clear, since you liave indicted us for conspiracy, and I could not possibly conspire alone/' Once more the unfortunate jurors were compelled to retire — only to persist in the verdict already given. The Eecorder, carried by his wrath beyond the bounds of decency, exclaimed— " Your verdict is notliing. You play upon the Court. I say you shall go and bring in another verdict, or you shall starve ; and I will have you carted about the city as in Edward the Third's time." Foreman — " We have given in our verdict, in which we are all agreed ; if we give in another, it will be by force, to save our lives." LoEB Mayor — "Take them up to their room." Officer — " My lord, they will not go." The jurors were constrained to withdraw — actual violence being used — and locked up without food and water. Ex- posed to this harsh treatment, some weaker minds wavered, and would have given way but for the courageous resolu- tion of Bushel, and others like Bushel, who understood the importance of the question at issue. So when, on Monday morning, the Court once more summoned the jurors, there was not, though they had fasted two days and nights, a traitor or coward among them. Wan and worn were they, with hunger, fatigue, and a not un- natural anxiety, but determined to do justice to their fellow-men, arraigned, as they knew, on a false charge. Clerk — " Gentlemen, are you agreed upon your verdict ? '^ Jury—" Yes." Clerk — "Who shall speak for you?*' Jury — " Our foreman." Clerk—" Look upon the prisoners. What say you : is OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II, 377 William Penn guilty of the matter whereof he stands indicted in manner and form, or not guilty? " Foreman— "You have your verdict in writing." Clerk—" I will read it." Eecorder— " No, it is no verdict. The Court will not accept it." Foreman—" If you will not accept of it, I desire to have it back again." Court—" The paper was no verdict, and no advantage shall be taken of you for it." Clerk— How say you : is William Penn guilty or not guilty?" Foreman (resolutely)—" Not Guilty:' Eecorder—" I am sorry, gentlemen, you have followed your own judgments and opinions rather than the good advice which was given you. God keep my life out of your hands ! But for this the Court fines you forty marks a man, and imprisonment in Newgate till the fines be paid." Penn—" Being freed by the jury, I demand to be set at liberty." Lord Mayor—" No ; you are in for your fines." Penn—" Fines ! What fines ? " Lord Mayor—" For contempt of Court." Penn—" I ask if it be according to the fundamental laws of England that any Englishman should be fined except by the judgment of his peers ? Since it expressly contradicts the 14th and 29th chapters of the Great Charter of England, which says, ^ No free man ought to be amerced except by the oath of good and lawful the vicinage.'" Eecorder-" Take him away ; put him oat of the CJourt." 378 THE MERRY MONAECH ; Penn — "I can never urge the fundamental laws of England, but you cry out, 'Take him away! take him away ! ' But this is no wonder, since the Spanish Inquisi- tion sits so near the Recorder's heart. God, who is just, will judge you all for these things.'* The prisoners and the jurors refusing to pay the fines so arbitrarily inflicted upon them, were removed to Newgate. The latter, at Penn's instigation, immediately brought an action against the Lord Mayor and the Recorder for having imprisoned them in defiance of law and justice. It was argued on the 9th of November, before the twelve judges, who unanimously decided in favour of the appel- lants. They were immediately released, and Penn went forth triumphant, having struck one effectual blow in vindication of the liberties of the subject. *^Son William," said Admiral Sir William Penn, as he lay on his death-bed, a man prematurely old — broken down by a life of action and adventure — " Son William, if you and your friends keep to your plain way of preaching, and also keep to your plain way of living, you will make an end of priests to the end of the world." In this pre- diction he was wrong, as latter-day prophets usually are ; but his saying is worthy to be noted as a proof of the influence exercised upon the old sea-king's impetuous temper by his son's quiet steadiness in well-doing. He died on the 16th of September, ten days after his son's release, and was buried in the parish church of St. Mary Redclyfie, in the city of Bristol. On his death- bed he recommended his son to the favour of the Duke of* York, and also solicited for him the King's protection. Penn was appointed sole executor, and inherited an estate valued at £1,500 per annum, in addition to claims on the OB, ENGLAND UNDER OHAKLES II. 37^ Crown for moneys lent and arrears of salary, amounting to about £15,000. It was about this time that Penn made the acquain- tance of Gulielma Maria, the fair daughter of Sir William Springett, a strict Puritan soldier, who died during the siege of Arundel Castle, a few weeks before his daughter's birth. She lived with her mother, who had married a second time, and chosen a man of worth and capacity, the celebrated Isaac Pennington, at Chalfont, in Bucking- bamshire ; in the immediate neighbourhood of the poet Milton, and Milton's friend and pupil, the Quaker Ellwood. Pennington was a follower of George Fox ; and it was their mutual interest in the doctrines of the New Light that led to Penn's visit to Chalfont, and consequent introduc- tion to his co-religionist's step-daughter, with whom he immediately fell in love. " She was a very desirable woman," says Ellwood, " whether regard was had to her outward person, which wanted nothing to render her comely ; or to the endowments of her mind, which were very extraordinary and highly obliging ; or to her outward fortune, which was fair.^' To Penn's grave and earnest attachment she responded with all the warmth of maiden- hood. The young Quaker, meanwhile, was active in his vocation. He published an exposure of the treatment to which he had been subjected at the Old Bailey, under the title of " Truth rescued from Imposture ; " as well as a « Caveat against Popery," not less moderate in tone than cogent in reasoning. The former production roused against him some untiring enemies in the civic authorities, who eagerly watched for— and soon found— an opportunity to make their vengeance felt. Going from Chalfont to 580 THE MERRY MONARCH; London, lie attended, as was liis wont, the Quaker meet- ing-house in Wheeler Street; but while preparing to address the brethren, was seized by a troop of cavalry, and hurried off to the Tower. This was on the 5th of February, 1671. In the Tower he was confronted by his most determined persecutors, and subjected to a rigorous and insulting examination. An attempt was made to force upon him the oath of allegiance ; but Penn refused to subscribe, on the ground that his conscience forbade him to take up any arms, whether for his Sovereign or against his own foes. Sir John Eobinson— " I am sorry you put me upon this severity. It is no pleasant work to me.'' Penn — "These are but words. It is manifest that this is a prepense malice. Thou hast several times laid the meetings for me, and this day particularly." EoBiNsoN— " No, I profess I could not tell you would be there." Penn — ''Thine own corporal told me that you had in- telligence at the Tower that I should be at Wheeler Street to-day, almost as soon as I knew it myself. This is dis- ingenuous and partial. I never gave thee occasion for such unkindness." EoBiNsoN— "I knew no such thing; but if I had, I confess I should have sent for thee." Penn—" That confession might have been spared. I do heartily believe it." EoBiNsoN— " I vow, Mr. Penn, I am sorry for you. You are an ingenious gentleman, all the world must allow that; and you have a plentiful estate. Why should you render yourself unhappy by associating with such a simple people?" OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 381 Penn—" I confess I tave made it my choice to relin- quish the company of those that are ingeniously wicked, to converse with those who are more honestly simple." Robinson — " I wish thee wiser." Penn — " I wish thee better." Robinson—" You have been as bad as other folks." Penn— "When and where? I charge thee tell the company to my face." Robinson—" Abroad, and at home too." Sheldon-" No, no, Sir John. That's too much." Penn -" I make this bold challenge to all men, justly to accuse me with ever having heard me swear, utter a curse, or speak one obscene word-much less that I make it my practice. Thy words shall be my burden, and I trample thy slander under my feet." Eventually, Sir John Robinson committed him to New- gate for six months-a sentence which drew from Penn this noble declaration :-"! would have thee and all men know that I scorn that religion which is not worth suffer- ing for, and able to sustain those that are aflaicted for its sake. I leave you all," he added, " in perfect charity." During his six months' imprisonment, Penn's intellect was very active, and he composed and published four polemical treatises :-" Truth rescued from Imposture," "The Great Case of Liberty of Conscience," " An Apology for the Quakers," and " A Postscript to Trath Exalted." He was released in July, 1G71, and, crossing over to the Continent, he visited Holland and Germany, making known the principles of the New Doctrine, and found- in- several small Quaker colonies. On his return to Eng- land, he renewed his suit to Gulielma Springett, and their marriage took place in February, 1672. After some 882 THE MERRY MONARCH; months of domestic happiness at Eickmansworth, he re- turned to active life, and resumed his missionary labours, accompanied, sometimes by his wife, sometimes by the leaders of his sect, the enthusiastic Fox and the learned Barclay. With singular indefatigability of purpose, he wrote treatise after treatise, pamphlet upon pamphlet, all of a controversial character ; of these he gave to the world no fewer than six-and-twenty, besides his two political essays, " On Oaths/' and " England's Present Interest Considered." They may be read by the curious in the collected edition of Penn's works ; but we cannot attribute to them that literary merit which is claimed for them by some of his fervent admirers, nor can we say that they are free from that intemperance of language which distinguishes the polemical writings of the period. Penn's next occupation was to draw up a constitution for a Quaker colony settled in West New Jersey, in North America ; for the time it was a singular concession to democratic ideas. While allowing the widest tolerance to different forms of religious belief ^ he was not less liberal in his political views; providing for the election of the people's representatives by vote by ballot, and conferring the franchise upon every adult man free from crime. Trial by jury was instituted ; imprisonment for debt was dis- allowed; the maintenance of orphans was charged upon the iState; and other not less wise and salutary enactments showed that the constitutiun-maker was far in advance, not only of his own, but of many succeeding generations. The colony proved completely successful, and attracted within its borders a constantly increasing number of settlers : the settlement in its result proving that the dreams of Har- rington and Algernon Sidney, the fancies of Sir Thomas OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II, 383 More and Lord Bacon, were not so Utopian as the wits liad imao-ined. It was the adumbration of that Christian commonwealth which Penn afterwards founded amid the pathless solitudes of Pennsylvania. In 1677 we find him, accompanied by Fox and Barclay, visiting Holland and Germany, to encourage and reorga- nize the scattered settlements of the Friends, and diffuse the radiance of the New Light. We can trace the three Quaker Apostles to Eotterdam, Leyden, Hawerden, and Haarlem. After an absence of four months, Penn re- turned to England. Over the incidents of the next three years we must pass at a bound. His friendship with Algernon Sidney and his advocacy of civil and religious rights, gradually estranged from him the confidence and favour of Charles II. and the Duke of York ; and it was not without difficulty that, in 1G81, he obtained, in lieu of the large sum of money owing to him by the Crown, a grant of a large tract of unoccupied Crown-land in North America, covering 47,000 square miles, and extending 300 miles in length by 100 miles in breadth. On the 5th of March, however, he was summoned to attend the Council at Whitehall, and the charter which conveyed to him that noble domain was then signed and sealed. Penn had pro- posed to call the province, in allusion to its hilly character. New Wales; but as Secretary Blathwayte, a Welshman, objected to this use of his country's appellation, he sub- stituted Sylmnia, on account of its vast forests, and King Charles good-humouredly prefixed the syllable Fenn, in compliment to the memory of his great Admiral. As Penn stood covered in the royal presence, he observed that Charles removed his hat. " Friend Charles/' he ex- claimed, " why dost thou not keep on thy hat?'' "Be- 384 THE MERRY MONARCH ; cause," retorted the Kiag, with a smile, " it is the custom of this place for only one person to remain covered at a time ! " Having obtained his charter, the legislator assiduously addressed himself to the task of devising " a complete scheme of government," in which he had the assistance of Algernon Sidney. Penn at this time was residing with his family at Warminghurst, in Sussex, and it was there that the two law-givers carefully laid down those political principles which afterwards inspired the constitution of the United States. It was their object " to support power in reverence with the people, and to secure the people from the abuse of power ; that they might be free by their just obedience, and the magistrates honourable for their just administration.^^ They provided two legis- lative bodies, a council and an assembly, to be elected by the people. They instituted universal suffrage, vote by ballot, and payment of members. They required no property qualifications for their representatives ; they divided the province into convenient electoral districts ; they allowed the free exercise of every religious belief, and maintained by careful enactments the security of person and property. As soon as the details of Penn's proposed scheme of government became known, numerous emigrants presented themselves to treat for lands in a state which promised to be so happily ruled, and before the end of tlie year were on their way to the New World. As early as April, Penn had despatched his cousin, Colonel xMarkham, as his lieu- tenant, to settle the boundary-lines, take possession of the province, and open up amicable negotiations with the Indians j a task wliich he executed with much dexterity. OR, Elf GLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 385 Penn had determined that no arms should be borne in his new colony, and had resolved to trust, in his intercourse with the aborigines, to the power of truth, justice, and humanity. Having attended the death-bed of his beloved mother, and completed such arrangements as in case of his own death might provide for the comfort of his wife and children, Penn took his departure from Deal on the 1st of September. Unfortunately a great disaster clouded his voyage at the outset. The small-pox broke out on board the crowded ship, and carried off upwards of thirty victims. On the 27th of October the Welcome arrived at New- castle, a settlement in the Delaware territory which Penn had purchased from the Duke of York. His landing was the signal for a general rejoicing ; men, women and children, Dutch, Germans, and English, flocked to the shore to welcome their governor, father, and friend. Next day, at a general assembly, the deeds and charters which had made Penn proprietor and governor of Pennsylvania, were read: after which, in a speech glowing with noble feeling, he explained his principles of government, pro- mising to every person an equal and a fair share of poli- tical power and freedom of conscience. The governor and his companions then began their voyage up the river Delaware, with eager eyes surveying its wooded banks, and the vistas of shadowy valley and misty hill-top which were occasionally opened up through breaks in the far- spreading forest. The name of the Swede settlement of Optland he changed to that of Chester ; and there he con- voked the first General Assembly of Pennsylvania, to adopt, with such modifications and additions as might seem desirable, the constitution of which he was the author. VOL. II. C C 1 OQg THE MERRY MONARCH ; After visiting the capitals of the neighbouring provinces of New York, Maryland, and New Jersey, Penn proceeded to complete the organisation of his new settlement: dividing the land into lots, he sold it at 4d. per acre, with a reserve of Is. per hundred acres as quit-rent, to form a revenue for the support of the governor and proprietor. Certain equal aUotments were appropriated to his children; and two manors of ten thousand acres each reserved as a present for his patron, the Duke of York. A thousand acres, free of every charge, were set apart for the founder of the Society of Friends, George Fox. For the capital of his state he selected an admirab e site „ ^opV of land which extended between the two on a nan-ow neck ot lana, wmc •„.Wp rivers of the Delaware and Schuylkill, ihe navigable rivers o the soil was hanks were liigiij and open xo ^t^ixici , , , fertile, the air mild and salubrious. Here he marked out the plan of a noble city. Its area was to occupy twe^e squarl miles ; each river was to be overlooked by a street o?bold design, and bordered by a public P~^y J^ these streets were tobe linked together by the ll.gh Sheet a splendid avenue, one hundred feet in width, to be lined with trees, audits houses enriched with gardens. A street Tf equal width, Broad Street, was to bisect the city from north to south, crossing High Street at a right-angle. At the iunction-point of these four avenues was reserved a space of ten acres, for a public piazza or square, and ler provisions were made to secure the healthiness and Wy'of the new capital; which, in allusion to the grea • • le that underlay Penn's theoiy of government, the dr appropriately named FhUadel,Ma (or Brotherly ^°The' new colony attracted to its shores a constant stream OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 387 of emigration. In a few months no fewer than twenty- three vessels disembarked their hundreds of adventurers at the mouth of the Delaware ; and Penn could boast.that, in Philadelphia, eighty houses and cottages were ready ; that artisan, merchant, and trader were busy in buying and selling ; that farms were springing up in fertile places; and that the land rescued from the wilderness already began to bloom with golden corn. At the end of three years the new city contained six hundred houses, and there were nearly as many thriving farms in the surrounding country. The early part of Penn's career as a governor was marked by an interesting incident. Having arranged with the aboriginal Indians the terms of purchase of their lands, and concluded various treaties of peace and amity, he proposed to the native chiefs that a solemn conference should be held for the confirmation of the New Alliance.* The spot selected was a natural amphitheatre which ran gradually from the bank of the Delaware, in the immediate neighbourhood of the young city of Phila- delphia, and to the Indians was known as Shaclmmuxony or "the meeting-place of kings." Here a venerable elm, which already had endured the storms of a hundred and fifty winters — which now beheld the scattered houses of the white men, but was destined (for it flourished until 1810) to witness the growth of a mighty city on the bank of the sister-rivers — spread abroad its leafy shade. In the distance, against the deep blue heaven, was defined the undulating crest of a range of mountain heights ; while the foreground was occupied by an immense forest of pine and cedar, stretching far away into the hunting-grounds of the red men. Surely the stage was not an inappropriate * November 30, 1682. \ ggg THE MEEEY MONARCH; one for the dramatic scene which was to be enacted upon it! As for the actors, they too presented some striking and unusual features. Chief among them stood Wilham Penn the Founder of the New Commonwealth, his only badge of authority a snken sash, but showing in his mien and bearing that he was a man among men, a bom leader and ruler His costume consisted of an outer coat reach- ing to the knee; a vest of nearly the same length; of trunks ample in dimensions, slashed at the sides, and tied at the knees with ribbons; of rufEes at the wnst, and a snowy fold of cambric round the neck, ending in a fall of lace ; and a hat of cavalier shape, but innocent of feathers, surmounting a peruke of many curls At his right hand stood Cobnel Markham, his lieutenant ; another trusty and trusted adherent, Pearson, on his left; and in the rear, a group of his principal followers. The Indian Sachems appeared in their native attire. A mant of f uis fell from the shoulder, the loins were girded with cloth a head-dress of feathers waved in the wind, and the bright hues of their painted bodies glowed yet brighter in the sun. Taminent, their leader, having placed on his head a chaplet, into which a small horn was woven-a token hat the place was thenceforth sacred, and the persons of all who assembled there inviolable -the Sachems seated themselves on the ground in order of -f -^3^' ^^ P"; pared, with their Indian taciturnity, to hear what Onas L they had named the white chief, might wish to say to them. Penn spoke to them in their own language. His words were not many, but they were to the purpose, and testified to the anxiety felt by the white men to live with Z red men in peace and good-will. He then produced the Treaty of Friendship, which declared that m all time on, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 389 to come ^' the children of Onas and the natives of the Lenni Lenape " should be as brothers ; that all roads and ways should be held as free and open; that if any white m an injured a red man, or any red man inflicted harm upon a white man, the sufferer should lay his complaint before the proper authorities, and the case be investigated by twelve impartial men, and the injury buried ^'in a bottomless pit;" that the Lenni Lenape and the white men should help each other in their time of need ; and, lastly, that both should transmit to their descendants this chain of friendship, to the intent that it might yearly grow stronger and brighter, and be kept free from rust or blemish, so long as the water ran down the creeks and rivers, and the sun, moon, and stars gave light to earth. Taminent immediately announced the assent of the Indian Sachems to this remarkable treaty ; the only one, says Yoltaire, the world has known that was never rati- fied by oath, and never broken. Penn returned to England in August, 1684. He was summoned thither by urgent private affairs ; and on his arrival was received with much favour by Charles 11. and the Duke of York, the latter of whom, within a few months, succeeded to the throne. Penn was at once en- rolled among the courtiers of the new sovereign. This is a period of his career which no honest biographer can regard with unmingled satisfaction ; for we cannot think that Mr. Paget, in his " New Examen," with all his skill and enthusiasm, has succeeded in vindicating it completely from Macaulay's censures. It may be admitted, however, that he endeavoured to turn his influence to good account ; that he pleaded the cause of Locke, who had been driven \ 390 THE MEREY MONARCH; into exile for no other offence than that he was the friend of Shaftesbury ; and had interceded on behalf of Mon- mouth's misguided partisans. One of the unhappy victims of the *' reign of terror" which prevailed after the victory of Sedgemoor was Henry Cornish, formerly a pensioner of Algernon Sidney, and latterly a friend of Penn. Having provoked the anger of Charles II. and his Court by the frankness and courage of his opinions, he had been accused of complicity in the Rye House Plot (168:3), but on such untenable grounds that his persecutors were fain to withdraw the charge. After Monmouth's rebellion the attack was renewed, and supported by bribed witnesses. The mockery of a trial was played out ; a verdict of Guilty extorted from a reluctant but timid jury ; and the unfortunate man was hung npon a gibbet erected in front of his own house in Cheapside. He suffered with the calmness of a hero, protesting to the last his innocence. Penn, who had failed in his efforts to obtain a commutation of the cruel sentence, attended him to the scaffold. He was afterwards present at the last scene in the life of anotlier victim of the King's tyranny, for whom he had also interceded, and in vain, Elizabeth Garnet. This admirable woman was an Anabaptist, who had devoted her time and fortune to the relief of the miserable inmates of the London prisons-anticipating by nearly a century and a half Mrs. Elizabeth Fry's noble work of charity— and after the battle of Sedgemoor had sheltered in her house a fugitive from that fatal field. He repaid her generosity by in- forming against her, earning his own wretched life by betraying his protectress. For this venial violation of the law she was arrested, tried, and burned alive at Tyburn. OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 391 Her sufferings, and the fortitude with which she endured them— calmly arranging the faggots and straw around her so as to increase the violence of the flames— produced a most painful impression upon the spectators, so that many were affected even to tears. It was not long after these judicial murders that the perjury of the witnesses who had sworn away the life of Cornish was clearly proved. James seemed shocked that he had consented to the execution of an innocent man ; restored his estates to his family ; and sentenced his murderers to perpetual imprisonment. The influence which Penn exercised over James II., and his daily attendance at Court, soon originated a report that he was a Papist in disguise. It is the misfortune of men in advance of their age that their best and wisest actions are always subjected to the most malignant construction, and Penn was in advance of his age on the question of religious tolerance. A strong bond of sympathy undoubtedly existed between tlie King and himself, because both were members of religious bodies which had been subjected to a common persecu- tion and prescription. But this fact was not perceived or not understood by his contemporaries, and even the judicious and amiable Tillotson adopted the popular belief. A casual acquaintance asked Penn, one day, how it was that Barclay and himself were such ardent lovers of literature, when the Friends affected to despise it ? Penn replied that it was probably owing, in his case, to Ms early education at Saumur. His interrogator had no ear for French, and went about repeating that the Quaker had acknowledged himself to have been educated at the famous Jesuit College of St. Omar I Penn laughed at 392 THE MEEET MONARCH ; these calumnies until they seemed in some measure countenanced by TiUotson, his intimate acquaintance, when he addressed him with his usual frankness, and so clearly and strongly vindicated his acceptance of the leading doctrines of Protestantism, that the divine averred his full conviction '' that there was no just ground for his suspicion, and therefore did heartily beg his pardon for it/^— (April 29th, 1686.) It was at this time that James II. meditated a repeal of the Test Acts, which required from every candidate for public office a declaration of his adhesion to the Church of England ; but finding his Parliament hostile to any measure which afforded relief to the Roman Catholics, he dispensed with these Acts by virtue of his own authority. Anxious in this critical state of affairs to obtain the support of William of Orange, who was regarded through- out Christendom as the champion and shield of Protes- tantism, he dispatched Penn to the Hague on a private and confidential mission. If the Prince would support James in the repeal of the Test Acts and tlie passing of an Act of Toleration, Penn was instructed to promise him assistance in his opposition to the aggressive power of France. But however liberal might be William's private views, he was not disposed to risk his chance of suc- cession to the throne of England by openly contravening the feeling and opinion of the country ; so that while expressing his willingness to accept an Act of Toleration, he objected to the proposed repeal of the Test Acts. In all ecclesiastical questions he was guided by Bishop Burnet, then an exile in Holland, who cherished a strong dislike for Penn, and chose to regard him as a '' concealed Papist." "He was a talking, vain man," says the OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 393 malicious prelate, "who had been long in the King's favour. He had such an opinion of his own faculty of persuading, that he thought none could stand before it • thouo-h he was singular in that opinion ; for he had a tedious luscious way, that was not apt to overcome a man's reason, though it might tire his patience." Having failed in his mission, Penn returned to England by way of Holland and Germany. He continued his attendance at Court, endeavouring to cheek the King in the arbitrary career on which he had unwisely entered, and striving to counteract the Jesuitical influence that so injuriously affected his actions. He showed hiui that Parliament would not consent to a revocation of the Test and Penal Acts, and that no concord could exist between him and his Parliament until he acted on more moderate counsels, and expelled from his Court the Jesuits and violent Papists who were urging him to his speedy ruin. When he issued his Declaration of Indulgence to all relio"ious denominations, Penn warned him that to the popular mind it would seem only an ingenious device for the extension of more favour and the concession of greater power to the Papists, and that it was imperative he should not put it into operation without the sanction of the legislature. In the King's arbitrary interference with the rights of the Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford, Penn boldly stood forward as their uncompromis- ing advocate. When his honest expostulations were ignored, he would fain have retired to his commonwealth across " the western wave," and remained in England only at the urgent request of the King, who declared himself resolute to repeal the Penal Laws against religious sects, and establish toleration ; '' in which good work," he 394 THE MEERT MONARCH; OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 395 said, " lie should have to rely much on Penn's help and counsel/' It is not within our province to dwell upon the events of the last few months of James's disastrous reign. When William III. arrived in the capital, those of the late King's councillors who had not betrayed him fled from the country, but Penn remained. He was conscious that he had done nothing but his duty, and believed that he had no reason to fear any man. He no longer, he said, owed allegiance to James as a King, but should still respect him as his friend and patron. His fiivour with the late King, however, had kept alive suspicion ; and, being regarded as a Papist concealed under the mask of a Quaker, "he was summoned before the Privy Council in December, 1683, and though no charge was proved against him, compelled to give security in £G,000 for his appear- ance on the first day of the following term. At Easter he appearrd, bat no accusers came forward, and "the judge in open court declared that he stood cleared and free of any charge that had been made against him.'^ This long friendship with the exiled King afforded his enemies, however, a foundation on which they continued to base tlieir calumnies. In the spring of 1690, when the country was disturbed with alarms of a French invasion, he was suddenly arrested on the pretext that he was engaged in a treasonable correspondence with James Stuart. Being examined before William himself, he satisfactorily disproved the accusation; but was neverthe- less bound over to appear in Trinity term, and answer any charges that might be preferred against him. At the appointed time he duly presented himself, but was im- mediately discharged. For a third time in the same year he was exposed to persecution. He was accused of having joined in Lord Preston's conspiracy to restore the deposed monarch, and though the accusation was unsupported by a tittle of evi- dence, William profited by it to deprive him of the right of appointing a governor to his colony of Pennsylvania. At this very juncture Penn had engaged a ship to carry him to the New World ; but the illness and death of George Fox detained him awhile in England. He attended his funeral, and over his grave delivered a glowing panegyric. Just as the crowd dispersed, and when Penn had left the ground, a posse of constables, armed with warrants, arrived to take him into custody on another charge of treason and conspiracy, preferred against him by William Fuller, the '' Titus Gates " of the reign of William III. Weary of struggling against the malice of his foes, and unable through his conscientious scruples to deny " upon oath " the charges invented against him, Penn sought safety in seclusion. Meantime the King appointed Colonel Fletcher Governor of Pennsylvania— a soldier over the heads of peaceful Quakers !— and Penn's anxiety for the welfare of his young commonwealth increased daily. Nor did his domestic afPairs fail to trouble him. In order that his colony might not be burdened with pecuniary liabili- ties, he had maintained the government out of his private means, expending not less than £120,000. His estates in Ireland had been confiscated ; while, at home, his lands in Kent and Essex hardly sufficed to meet the immense claims advanced by a dishonest steward, John Forde, in whom he had placed his entire confidence. Locke now came to the front to repay the kindness shown to him by Penn in his days of prosperity, and interceded for his 59C THE MEERY MONAECH ; pardon. But tlie Quaker protested that he had done no wrong, and that, therefore, no pardon was needful. He threw Mmself, he said, upon the King's justice, not upon his mercy. He would not receive his liberty upon any conditions. A greater affliction than all now befell him, for those whom Heaven loves most it chastens most. Worse than loss of fortune, loss of fame, or the wreck of Ms hopes and anticipations was the death of his loved and loving wife, Gulielma Maria, at Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire, on the 23rd of February, 1693. Her husband's sufferings, sorrows, and misfortunes brought her to a premature grave, though a kind Providence spared her long enough to see the sun- shine breaking through the heavy clouds and the bright dawn slow-reddening upon the stormy night. The inftimy of Fuller having been publicly demon- strated, and the House of Commons having branded him as a rogue, cheat, and false witness, many of Penn's most influential friends interfered to procure his restoration to the position of which he had been deprived upon Fuller's single and unsupported evidence. They pressed his case with so much earnestness that William summoned a Council at Westminster (in November, 1692), before whom Penn defended himself with such force and clear- ness that the King declared his entire satisfaction, and absolved him from all the charges at various times pre- ferred against him. His enforced retirement, however, had not°been without profit : its results were two works of widely different character, but of equal merit—" An Essay towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe " and " Some Fruits of Solitude." We must pass rapidly over the next six years. Through OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHAELES II. 397 Queen Mary's generous action he was reinstated in his government of Pennsylvania; the military commission was revoked ; and he was bound simply to maintain eighty men, fully armed and equipped, as the contin- gent to be furnislied by his State, so long as the war with France lasted. In January, 1696, having found the need of a woman's gentle hand to keep order in his house- hold, he married, at Bristol, Hannah Callowhill, by whom he had six children. In the following April he lost his eldest son (by his first wife), Springett, in the twenty- first year of his age. He seems to have been a young man of rare promise. After paying a brief visit to his Irish estates in the summer of 1698, Penn received intelligence of growing troubles and dissensions in Pennsylvania, which determined him to go there with a view to the reform of its administration. He embarked, with his wife and all his children, except William, the eldest surviving son, in September, 1699, and in December arrived at Philadelphia, where he was received with an enthusiastic welcome. The settlers hailed him as their father and friend, whose pre- sence would compose all differences, and whose authority would reduce chaos into order. Nor were they disap- pointed in their expectations. With equal sagacity, judg- ment, and resolution he reformed the numerous abuses which had crept into the administration of the State, put down the contraband trade from which the colony had long been suffering, dismissed corrupt and incompetent officers, healed the jealousies of faction, and encouraged the development of commercial enterprise by many wise and liberal measures. Meanwhile, at his mansion of Pennsbury, he maintained a decorous state. He had his carriages, his horses, and his yacht, for Penn, though a 'p»^''iiiWC^'>»^ 398 THE MERRY MONARCH; Quaker, was no Pharisaical precisian ; lie kept his cellar of rare wines ; his house was splendidly furnished ; he loved to see his table well supplied; his daughters dressed like gentlewomen ; he himself was choice, though plain, in his attire; his gardens were planted with the most beautiful shrubs and flowers ; and everywhere prevailed a spirit of calm contentment, due, no doubt, to the mild and genial influence of the master. " To innocent dances and country fairs," says Mr. Hepworth Dixon, " he not only made no objection, but countenanced them by his own and his family^s presence. Those gentle charities which had distinguished him in England continued to distin- guish him in Pennsylvania : he released the poor debtor from prison ; he supported out of his private purse the sick and the destitute ; many of the aged who were beyond labour and without friends were regular pensioners on his bounty to the extent of six shillings a fortniglit : and there were numerous persons about him whom he had rescued from distress in England, and whom he sup- ported, wholly or in part, until their own industry made them independent of his assistance." While he was thus displaying his practical common- sense, and building up securely the structure of his new commonwealth, aff'airs in England were taking a direction entirely adverse to his just rights and legitimate interests. The English Government was developing a measure, neces- sary in itself though harsh in its incidence upon indivi- duals, which proposed to annihilate the great colonial proprietaries and weld tlie separate states into a homo- geneous colonial system. Such a msure must inevitably deprive Penn, and men like Penn, of the fruits of their pecuniary outlay, their labour, and their enterprise, by OR, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 399 wresting from them the settlements which they had founded and carefully nursed into prosperity. The owners of Pennsylvanian property then in England succeeded, however, in procuring a postponement of the bill untd Penn could return to plead their cause and his own; but they sent urgent messages to the founlei- of their colony to return to England at once if he would prevent an act of shameful spoliation. Penn made haste to comply: he left Philadelphia on the 16th of September, 1701, and arrived in Engl md about the middle of December. But in the interval a great change had taken i)lace in the position of alf airs. William III. was dead, and in the seat of that sagacious statesman- king sat the narrow-minded Anne. The Stuarts, however, had a hereditary liking for Penn, and Anne imaiediately welcomed him to her Court, and shoAved him in many ways her royal favour. No more was heard of the ob- noxious Colonies Bill. Penn took up his resilience at Knio-htsbridfre, and afterwards, in 1706, at Brentford. There he was living in peace and contentment when the event occurred which overclouded his later years. He had lono- entrusted the management of his affiiirs to Philip Ford, a Quaker, who died in 1702, after having abused his master's generous confidence by wholesale fraud and em- bezzlement. "The lawyer," says Mr. Hepworth Dixon, "knew how to take advantage of his client's want of worldly prudence; and in an evil hour, when Penn needed money to go over to America the second time, he induced him to give him— as a mere matter of form— a deed of sale of .the colony, on which he advanced him £2,800. This deed was considered by Penn, and professedly considered by Ford, as a mortgage. Ford received money on account ^i,HB*.gges> 1 400 THE MEEEY MONAECH ; OE, ENGLAND UNDEE CHAELES II. 401 of the province, and made such advances as the governor- required ; and it was not until the latter returned to Eng- land that the first suspicion of his steward's villany crossed his mind. He was loath to entertain it, and tried for a time to think himself deceived. But as soon as the old Quaker died his knavery came to the full light of day. Penn, from his uncertain remembrance of the various sums' advanced and received, believed the mortgage-or deed of sale-^to be nearly cancelled ; but the funeral rites were hardly paid to the dead before the widow sent in a bill for £14,000, and threatened to seize and sell the pro- vince if it were not immediately paid." A careful examination of the accounts and papers which Penn had fortunately preserved showed, however, that while Ford had received £17,859, he had paid on Penn's account only £16/200, so that his estate was indebted to Penn in a sum of £1,659. Desirous of sparing the Quaker community a public scandal, Penn proposed that the whole matter at dispute should be referred to arbitra- tion • but Ford's representatives took advantage of the written instrument, the deed of sale, to enforce their unjust claim. On a thorough examination taking place, it appeared that Penn, on the said deed of sale, owed £4,803, which he offered to pay; but his enemies knew they hid him in their power, as the deed was uncancelled, -threw the case into Chancery, obtained a verdict against him, attempted to arrest liim while he was attending ser- vice in Gracechurch Street, and eventually drove him for security into the Fleet prison. He found lodgings in^the Old Bailey, within what were then termed " the rules," or jurisdiction, of the Fleet. At length, to get free of his trials and anxieties, he consented, after a painful mental struggle, to mortgage his beloved Pennsylvania for the sum of £6,800, advanced by several friends, while he sold his Sussex estate at Warminghurst for £6,050. The air of London disagreeing with his constitution, shaken as it was by confinement and severe mental suffer- ing, Penn took a country house at Ruscombe, in Berkshire in 1710, and spent there his remaining years. In the early part of 1712 he was seized with a fit of paralysis, which seriously affected his intellectual powers. On his partial recovery he again directed his attention to his Western Commonwealth; but the effort proved too much for the enfeebled brain, and a second attack of paralysis resulted in October, 1712. Once more he recovered, slowly and imperfectly, but only to undergo a third and more violent shock, in the following December, which com- pletely incapacitated him from any further exertion. At first his life seemed to be in imminent danger, but his wonderful constitution asserted itself, and he survived for some years, soothed by the indefatigable devotion of his wife and surrounded by the pious attentions of his friends. His memory was gone and his speech imperfect ; but it was observed that the good man's affections remained unimpaired. In birds and flowers and children, in song and perfumes and bright colours, in things gentle and attractive, he showed a keen delight. It was the calm, sweet sunset of a long autumn day, which had opened with a radiant morning — had known clouds and the stress of storm at noon — and now slowly descended into the eternal sea with a ti-anquil glow and genial hush. William Penn died, between two and three in the morn- ing, on the 30th of July, 1718, in his seventy-fourth year. He was buried in the Quakers' cemetery at Jordans, near VOL. II. D D 400 THE MEEEY MONAKCH ; of tte province, and made such advances as the governor required ; and it was not until the latter returned to Eng- land that the first suspicion of his steward's villany crossed his mind. He was loath to entertain it, and tried for a time to think himself deceived. But as soon as the old Quaker died his knavery came to the full light of day. Penn, from his uncertain remembrance of the various sums' advanced and received, believed the mortgage-or deed of sale-to be nearly cancelled ; but the funeral rites were hardly paid to the dead before the widow sent in a bill for £14,000, and threatened to seize and sell the pro- vince if it were not immediately paid." A careful examination of the accounts and papers which Penn had fortunately preserved showed, however, that while Ford had received £17,859, he had paid on Penn's account only £16,200, so that his estate was indebted to Penn in a sum of £1,659. Desirous of sparing the Quaker community a public scandal, Penn proposed that the whole matter at dispute should be referred to arbitra- tion • but Ford's representatives took advantage of the written instrument, the deed of sale, to enforce their unjust claim. On a thorough examination taking place, it appeared that Penn, on the said deed of sale, owed £4 303, which he offered to pay ; but his enemies knew thiy had him in their power, as the deed was uncancelled, —threw the case into Chancery, obtained a verdict against Mm, attempted to arrest him while he was attending ser- vice in Gracechurch Street, and eventually drove him for security into the Fleet prison. He found lodgings in^the Old Bailey, within what were then termed « the rules," or jurisdiction, of the Fleet. At length, to get free of his trials and anxieties, he consented, after a painful mental i* ■■ - «•■ OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 401 struggle, to mortgage his beloved Pennsylvania for the sum of £6,800, advanced by several friends, while he sold his Sussex estate at Warminghurst for £6,050. The air of London disagreeing with his constitution, shaken as it was by confinement and severe mental suffer- ing, Penn took a country house at Ruscombe, in Berkshire in 1710, and spent there his remaining years. In the early part of 1712 he was seized with a fit of paralysis, which seriously affected his intellectual powers. On his partial recovery he again directed his attention to his Western Commonwealth ; but the effort proved too much for the enfeebled brain, and a second attack of paralysis resulted in October, 1712. Once more he recovered, slowly and imperfectly, but only to undergo a third and more violent shock, in the following December, which com- pletely incapacitated him from any further exertion. At first his life seemed to be in imminent danger, but his wonderful constitution asserted itself, and he survived for some years, soothed by the indefatigable devotion of his wife and surrounded by the pious attentions of his friends. His memory was gone and his speech imperfect ; but it was observed that the good man's affections remained unimpaired. In birds and flowers and children, in song and perfumes and bright colours, in things gentle and attractive, he showed a keen delight. It was the calm, sweet sunset of a long autumn day, which had opened with a radiant morning — had known clouds and the stress of storm at noon — and now slowly descended into the eternal sea with a tranquil glow and genial hush. William Penn died, between two and three in the morn- ing, on the 30th of July, 1718, in his seventy-fourth year. He was buried in the Quakers' cemetery at Jordans, near VOL. II. D D ^Q2 THE MEBEY MONARCH; Chalfont, by the side of his first wife and Springett, their eldest son. His second wife, with four more of his children, ^ere afterwards interred in the same spot. No memorial xnarks the great Quaker's last resting-place ; bu* it xs nnder the fifth mound from the chapel door that William Penn lies. , . In noticing the Men of Letters of the Eestoration period it would be unpardonable to forget Sir Boger L'Estrange, one of the earliest of our political pam- phleteers. Bom in 1616, he fought as a loyal Cavalier during the Great Civil War; was captiued by the army of the Parliament, tried, and condemned to death ; and for four years lay in prison, expecting that each day would bring him the summons to the scaffold. It is said that at this time he wrote the poem-superior to his other compositions-entitled "The Liberty of the Imprisoned Eoyalists," from which we extract a few stanzas : — «' Beat on, proud billows ! Boreas blow ! Swell, curled waves, high as Jove^s roof . Your incivility shall show That innocence is tempest-proof. Though surly Nereis frown, my thoughts are calm ; Then strike, Afdiction, for thy wounds are balm. That which the world miscalls a gaol, A private closet is to me, Whilst a good conscience is my bail, And innocence my liberty. Locks, bars, walls, leanness, though together met, Make me no prisoner, but an anchoret. . . • Have you not seen the nightingale, A pilgrim cooped into a cage, And heard her tell her wonted tale, In that her narrow hermitage ? Even then her charming melody doth prove That ail her bars are trees, her cage a grove. OE, ENGLAND UNDER CHAELES II, 403 I am the bird whom they combine Thus to deprive of liberty; But though they do my corps confine, Yet, maugre hate, my soul is free ; And though I'm mured, yet I can chirp and sing, Disgrace to rebels, glory to my king ! " L'Estrange at length recovered his liberty, and had the good sense to keep free of political turmoil until the Eestoration. In 1663 he was appointed licenser or censor of the press, and received a monopoly of the printing and publication of news. Of this monopoly he availed himself to produce his newspaper, The Public Intelligencer, which, in 1679, was succeeded by the Ohservator. He published also an interminable series of pamphlets, in which he appeared as the swash-buckler -of the Court, defending any act of the Government with a prompt and audacious pen— generally lively and vigorous, and always abusive, vulgar, and unscrupalous. '' L'Es- trange," says Macaulay, " was by no means deficient in readiness and shrewdness; and his diction, though coarse, and disfigured by a mean and flippant jargon which then passed for wit in the green room and the tavern, was not without keenness and vigour. But his nature, at once ferocious and ignoble, showed itself in every line that he penned.^^ L'Estrange was not without some pretensions to scholarship, and translated, effectively if roughly, the Tables of ^sop, the Morals of Seneca (1678), Cicero's Offices (1680),Quevedo's Visions, the Annals of Josephus, and the Colloquies of Erasmus. He was knighted by James IL, and died in 1704. In reference to the newspapers of the period, the historian remarks :^'^ Nothing like the daily paper of 404 THE MEKET MONARCH ; OHT time existed or could exist. Neither the necessary capital nor the necessary skill was to he found. Freedom too was wanting, a want as fatal as that of either capital or skill. The press was not, indeed, at that moment under a general censorship. The licensing act, which had heen passed soon after the Restoration, had expired in 1679. Any person might therefore print, at his own risk, a history, a sermon, or a poem, without the previous approhation of any ofEcer ; but the judges were unani- mously of opinion that this liberty did not extend to Gazettes, and that, by the common law of England, no man, not authorised by the Crown, had a right to publish political news. While the Whig party was still formidable, the Government thought it expedient occa. Bionally to connive at the violation of this rule. During the great battle of the Exclusion Bill, many newspapers were suffered to appear, the Protestant Intelligencer the Current Intelligence, the Domestic Intelligencer, the True News the London Mercury. None of these were pub- lished of tener than twice a week. None exceeded in size a single small leaf. The quantity of matter which one of them contained in a year was not more than is often found in two numbers of the Times. After the defeat of the Whigs it was no longer necessary for the King to be sparing in the use of that which all his judges had pronounced to be his undoubted prerogative. At the close of his reign no newspaper was suffered to appear without his allowance ; and his allowance was given exclusively to the London Gazette. _ « The London Gazette came out only on Mondays and OE, ENGLAND TJNDEB CHAELES II. 405 Thursdays. The contents generally were a royal proclama- tion, two or three Tory addresses, notices of two or three promotions, an account of a skirmish between the Imperial troops and the Janissaries on the Danube, a description of a highwayman, an announcement of a grand cock- fight beWeen two persons of honour, and an advertise- ment offering a reward for a strayed dog. The whole made up two pages of moderate size. Whatever was communicated respecting matters of the highest moment was communicated in the most meagre and formal style. ... The most important Parliamentary debates, the most important State trials, recorded in our history, were passed over in profound silence. . . In the capital the coffee houses supplied in some measure the place of a journal. Thither the Londoners flocked, as the Athe- nians of old flocked to the market place, to hear whether there was any news. . . But people who lived at a distance from the great theatre of political contention could be regularly informed of what was passing there only by means of news-letters. To prepare such letters became a calling in London, as it now is among the natives of India. The news writer rambled from coffee- room to coffee-room, coUecting reports, squeezed himself into the Sessions House at the Old Bailey if there was an interesting trial, nay, perhaps obtained admission to the gallery of Whitehall, and noticed how the King and Duke looked. In this way he gathered materials for weekly epistles destined to enlighten some county town or some bench of rustic magistrates. Such were the sources from which the inhabitants of the largest pro- vincial cities, and the great body of the gentry and Iftfiimiiritin uMiiinmiiriiiiWii'i'i 406 THE MEKEY MONAECH : clergy, learned almost all that they know of the history of their own time." * To the reign of Charles II. belongs no inconsiderable portion of the religious meditations and philosophical researches of Eobert Boyle. The son of Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, he was born at Lismore in 1027. He was educated at Eton and Geneva ; travelled through Italy, returned to England soon after his father's death (in 1643); and with his widowed sister, Lady Eanelagh, taking charge of his household, devoted himself to study and e^specially to the practical application of the experi- mental sciences. Chemistry and Natural Philosophy. At his house assembled the professors of the new philosophy, whose co-operation resulted in the foundation of the Eoyal Society, and Boyle was not only one of its most active members, but a frequent contributor to its " Philo- sophical Transactions." In 1660, Boyle appeared as an author, publishing a letter on « Seraphic Love," in which he expounded some of the principles of English Platonism, as approved by its apostle, Henry More. Soon afterwards he issued an interesting scientific treatise, "New Experiments Physico-mechanical, touching the Spring of the Air and its EfBects, made for the most part in a New Pneumatical Engine "-this engine being Otto Guericke's air-pump, greatly enlarged by Boyle, with the help of his ■ friend and assistant, Eobert Hooke. In the following . The elder Disreali observes that " Sir Boger ^^^^^^ ^^^ rivale. was esteemed as the most perfect mode of I""* ?*' ,. J tem to tem ,er of the man was factious, and the compositions ol the autlM r .eem to rc'cirrst hut I suspect they contain much idiomat.c exp.e.K,n^ H. ^,o,>B Fables are a curious specimen of familiar ^tjie. yuet } a due contempt of him after the Revolution, by this anagram .- " Koger L'Estrange, Lye strange Roger ! " OR, ENGLAND rNDEB CHAELES II. 407 year he published some clear and intelligent considera- tions on the conduct of experiments, and the results of his persevering inquiry, in "Certain Physiologica,! Essays " This was followed by "The Sceptical Chemist, directed against those self-sufficient philosophers who professed to find the true principles of things m salt, sulphur, and mercury. He gave to the world, in 1663, « Some Considerations touching the Usefulness of Ex- perimental Natural Philosophy," « Experiments and Con- Biderations touching Colours," and "Considerations touch- ing the Stvle of the Holy Scriptures." His scientific work has a much more definite value than his theological, which is often jejune and commonplace; and his "Occasional Reflections upon Several Subjects : whereto is premised a Discourse about such kind of Thoughts," was admir- ably ridiculed by Swift in his " Meditations on a Broom- stick " It is only fair to add, however, that this was written in his youth-to use his own expression, " m his infancy "-though not published until 1665. It would have been better for Boyle's fame if he had never published it at all. Passinc' over the minor works which flowed from his indefatigable pen, we may note his "Excellency of Theology compared with Natural Philosophy, as both axe the Objects of Men's Study" (1674), and his "Con- siderations about the Reconcilableness of Reason and Religion " (1075). These are both written in the devout strain natural to a man of his sincere and simple piety, whose pure and noble life was inspired throughout by a reverent sense of the Divine Love. Boyle refused to . take orders because, he said, he could serve reUgion more effectually as a layman, and because, we imagine, his 408 THE MEEET MONAECH ; humility shrank from the acceptance of so high a re- sponsibility. He printed at his own cost Dr. Pocock's translation into Arabic of the " De Veritate of Grotin's," and sent out a large number of copies for free distribution in the Levant. He also printed an Irish Bible. He was the first governor of a corporation for the Propagation of the Gospel; and as a director of the East India Company strongly advocated the duty of combining the diffusion of Christian truth with the extension of commercial interest. For six years he supplied Burnet with the means of pre- paring and publishing the first volume of his " History of the Eeformation." Though a Churchman, he was a de- fender of the principle of religious tolerance. He declined the Presidency of the Royal Society in 1G80, because he objected to the oaths required of whomsoever accepted the of&ce; he also dechned the Provostship of Eton, and more than once refused a peerage. His life of quiet study, persevering research, simple piety, and active charity— he gave to the poor a thousand pounds annually - came to a peaceful close in December, 1691. To the works already mentioned as written by this amiable Christian philosopher we must add—" Considera- tions on the Style of the Holy Scriptures ; " "A Free Discourse against Customary Swearing ; " "A Discourse of Things above Reason ; " "A Discourse of the High Veneration Man's Intellect owes to God, particularly for His Wisdom and Power;" "A Disquisition into the Final Causes of Natural Things ; " and " The Christian Virtuoso, showing that, by being addicted to Experi- mental Philosophy, a Man is rather assisted than in- disposed to be a Good Christian." OE, ENGLAND TTNDEE CHAELES II. 409 Some of our readers may be familiar, perhaps, with the following passage : — « Let us consider the works of God, and observe the •operations of his hands : let us take notice of and admire his infinite wisdom and goodness in the formation of them. No creature in this sublunary world is capable of so doing beside man ; yet we are deficient herein : we content ourselves with the knowledge of the tongues, and a little skill in philology, or history perhaps, and antiquity, and neglect that which to me seems more material, I mean natural history and the works of creation. I do not discommend or derogate from those other studies ; I should betray mine own ignorance and weakness should I do so; I only wish they might not altogether jostle out and exclude this. I wish that this mi-ht be brought in fashion among us ; I wish men would be so equal and civil, as not to disparage, deride, and vilify those studies which themselves skill out of, or are not conversant in. No knowledge can be more pleasant than this, none that doth so satisfy and feed the soul; in comparison whereto that of words and phrases seems to me insipid and jejune. That learning, saith a wise and observant prelate, which consists only in the form and prelagogy of arts, or the critical notion upon words and phrases, hath in it this intrinsical imperfec- tion, that it is only so far to be esteemed as it conduceth to the knowledge of things, being in itself but a kind of pedantry, apt to infect a man with such odd humours of pride, and affectation, and curiosity, as will render him unfit for any great employment. Words being but the ima-es of matter, to be wholly given up to the study of .thes°e, what is it but Pygmalion's frenzy to fall m love M 410 THE MEBBT MONARCH; with a picture or image. As for oratory, wticli is the best skill about words, that hath by some wise men beeu esteemed but a voluptuary art, like to cookery, which spoils wholesome meats, and helps unwholsome, by the variety of sauces, serving more to the pleasure of taste than the health of the body." This is one of the earliest incentives and encourage- ments to the study of Nature to be met with in our literature, and it proceeded from the pen of John Eay, whose whole life was devoted to this study, and to the application of it as an evidence of the truth of the Christian Revelation. Natural theology is outlined— or, rather, its principles are suggested— in the works of Cudworth, Henry More, and Boyle ; but it first assumed a definite form as a branch of Christian Apologetics in Ray's treatise, published in 1671, on "The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation." A quarter of a century later the argument was taken up and expounded by Denham in his " Physico-theology » and " Astro-theology ; " and in the second year of the present century it was popularised by Paley in his "Natural Theology." It has not, perhaps, the value which was at one time attached to it by divines ; but it must always be interesting, and the name of John Ray should, therefore, be remembered with respect. Ray studied Nature for practical purposes also. He was the most eminent botanist of his age, and un- questionably one of the founders of the science. His two folios "Historia Plantarum," form a monument of well-directed labour— of keen observation, quick per- ception, and untiring industry— fully justifying the eulogium on its writer pronounced by White of Sel- OE, ENGLAND rNDEE CHAKLES 11. 4 fcorne:-«Onr countryman, the excellent Mr. Ray, is th only describer that conveys some precise idea in every term or word, maintaining his superiority over his followers and imitators, in spite of the^ advantage of fresh discoveries and modern information." John Rav was the son of a blacksmith, and born at Black Notky, in Essex, in 1628. He was educated at Braintree Grammar School, and thence removed to Cam- bridr bein"-s are sometimes seen, nor eye can see. All other Dein^s * * 1 1 ^' " S^The Father hath life in Himself, and hath given the Son to have life in Himself. "4 The Father is omniscient, and hath all know edge originally in His own breast, and communicates knowledge of future' things to Jesus Christ; -^ — ^-;- eaith, or under the earth, is worthy to receive know edge Z f uLre things immediately from the Fat er, bu th Lamb. And, therefore, the testimony of Jesus is the % of prophecy, and Jesus is the Word or Prophet of ^°« 5 The Father is immovable, no place being capable of becoming emptier or fuller of Him than it is by the ete^na^ necessity of nature. All other things are movable fiom place to place. M-iA THE MEBEY MONARCH J <.6. AU the worship-whether of prayer, Praise, or thanksgiving-wHch was due to the Father before the coming of Christ, is still due to Him. Christ came notto diminish the worship of His Father. « 7. Prayers are most prevalent when directed to tue Father in the name of the Son. « 8. We are to return thanks to the Father alone for creating us, and giving us food and -iment and other blessings of this life, and whatsoever we are to thank Him for, or desire that He would do for us, we ask of Hun immediately in the name of Christ. « 9. We need not pray to Christ to intercede for us. If we pray the Father aright, He will intercede. » 10 It is not necessary to salvation to direct our prayers to any other than the Father in the name of the Son. » 11 To give the name of God to angels or kings, is not agains't the First Commandment. To give the worship of the God of the Jews to angels or kings, is against it. The meaning of the commandment is, Thou shalt worship no other God but me. , ^ ,, ^f whom «12 To- us there is but one God, the Father, of Whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom are all aie a,ii o ' ^ vvorship the things and we by Him. That is, we are ^, Father alone as God Almighty, and Jesus alone as the Lord, the Messiah, the Great King, the Lamb o God Who , • 1 i,.,H, redeemed us with His blood, and •was slain, and luitli uueemcu made us kings and priests." Newton was born at Woolsthorpe, in Lincolnshire, on Christmas Day, 1C42. In his childhood he showed a strong L towards the mechanical and -f emf ical ^n^es He received his early education at the Grantham G amm School, but at the age of fifteen was removed to take charge OB, ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II. 415 I -of the home farm on his father's small estate. His in- competency for this kind of work, however, was soon apparent, and he was sent back to school to fulfil the destiny marked out for him. Admitted as a sizar to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1661, he became a Junior Fellow in 1667, and M.A. in 1668. In the following year he succeeded Dr. Baum in the Mathematical professorship. In 1672 he was admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society, and communicated to it his new theory of Light, which revolutionized the science of Optics. He was several times returned to Parliament as a member for the University which his genius adorned. In 1695 his great services were recognized by Government, who made hiin Warden of the Mint, and in 1703 by his scientific brethren, who elected him President of the Koyal Society. In 1705 Queen Anne bestowed upon him the honour of knight- hood. He lived into the last year of the reign of George I., dying on the 20th of March, 1727, scarcely three months before the King, at the venerable age of 84. To the reign of Charles II. belong his two great dis- coveries, that of a new theory of Light, and that of the law of Gravitation ; but it was not until 1 6S7 that he published the " Philosophite Naturales Principia Mathe- matica," in which he revealed the secret of the power that binds together the several parts of the universe. The results of his minute optical investigations were embodied in his elaborate treatise, published in 1704, " Optics : or, a Treatise of the Eefractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light." He was the author also of several profound mathematical works, and to his close study of the Hebrew prophets we owe his " Observations upon the Prophecies of Holy Writ, particularly the Prophecies of Daniel, and j|g THE MEEEY MONAECH ; 1 f Q4- TnVin " His '' Historical Account the Apocalypse of St. John. ms „ „ ^ i, ^7 of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture' (1 John v. 7 and 1 Tim. iii. 16) testifies to the vigour and persistency of his Scriptural studies. . Newton made two important contributions to C Wxst^, which constitute, as it were, the foundation-stones o its two great divisions. The first was pointing out a method of graduating thermometers, so that compansons wxA each other might be possible in whatever part of thew rM observations with them were made. The second was by indicating the nature of chemical affinity, and showmg inaicauio o+f^pHon bv which the consti- that it consisted m an attraction by wn tuents of bodies were drawn '<^-!^^'\'^^\'^^/;t ^ted ; " thus destroying the previous ^y^ot^^^l^J^'^^ hooks, and points, and rings, and wedges, by means of wlich the different constituents of bodies were conceived to be kept to^^ether." The last name we shall mention in our hasty retrospect is that of Sir Thomas Browne, the Norwich physician author of the " Eeligio Medici" (Religion of a Physi- c^TlC^2., "Pseudodoxia Epidemica " (Epidemic False Doc rines) or"Inquiriesinto Vulgar andCommonErrors, Doctrines), or x i -Rni-ial- a Discourse 1646; and « Hydriotaphia, or Urn ^""f ' * on the Symbolical Urns lately found in Norfolk, 1658 to which is appended "The Garden of Cyrus-, or The o^nl T.ozen