influenced by the same reasons which swayed the men of his party; they beheaded Charles I. because he was the leader of a hated church; Milton justified the regicide because the unconstitutional exercise of regal power is insulting to nationality. It is this lack of affinity between Milton and other men, this want of contact between him and the world, this independence in political, poetical, and religious thinking-this loneliness of the man-that gives a peculiar dignity to his character, that overawes our love, and forbids our intimate acquaintance with him. The student is referred to Masson's Life of Milton,-Dr. Johnson's Life of Milton, De Quincey's Life of Milton,-Hallam's History of Literature, Vol. IV.,Macaulay's Essay on Milton,- Lamartine's Celebrated Characters,- Channing's Essay on Milton,-Reed's Lectures on the British Poets, Vol. I.,-Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Poets,-Lowell's Essay on Milton and Shakespeare, North American Review, April, 1868,-the article on Milton in the Encyclopedia Britannica,Campbell's Specimens of the British Poets,- Taine's English Literature,—Landor's Works,-Masson's Essays on the English Poets,-and Addison's criticisms on Paradise Lost in The Spectator, Nos. 267, 273, 279, 285, 291, 297, 303, 309, 315, 321, 327, 333, 339, 345, 351, 357, 363, 369. CHAPTER XV. THE LITERATURE OF THE RESTORATION. FOR worthlessness of character and for the shamefulness of his public life, Charles II., the prince to whom the crown of the Stuarts was restored, stands without a rival in the line of 1660.] English kings. During the time of the Commonwealth he had found refuge on the Continent. His good-nature and his rank had won him hosts of friends; but as he was wanting in dignity of character, his friendships were not with the good. When he ascended the throne he inaugurated an age of debauchery and shame. The dissipated companions of his exile, and foreign adventurers who had fastened themselves upon him, were the favorites of his Court. His ambition was to ensure these worthless courtiers a good time. The gambler, the drunkard, and the libertine, found him ever ready to give them the royal smile and to join them in their criminal pleasures. Patriotism made no successful appeal to him. Decency fled from his presence. His halls of state were lavishly furnished, the doors were thrown open, and the rollicking king welcomed his subjects to his presence, where they could hear the profanity, could see the drunkenness and could suspect the baser infamies of the highest circle of English life. Under Cromwell's government severe restraints had been thrown about the people. Public amusements had been forbidden. Many innocent pleasures had been denounced. And now the Court laughed loudest at the unreasonable severity of the Puritans, and went to the farthest reach in a reckless pursuit of pleasure. The effect of such a revolution at court was immediate and fearful. The nation plunged madly into excesses. Popular literature in any generation is but the reflection of that generation's thought, and so we must expect to find that the applauded writers of the time of Charles II. are men who laugh at seriousness and apologize for vice. The drama of the time, as it appealed most directly to popular attention, was most outrageously vicious; but whatever writings came from other than the pens of Puritans were tainted with the disease of the Court. The most illustrious literary representative of the party of the Cavaliers is Samuel Butler (1612-1680). When more than fifty years of age, after witnessing the success and the failure of the Puritans, he wrote a satire upon their follies in which he condemned them to a ridicule so keen that his work still holds the pre-eminent place in our literature of satire. His early life was passed in obscurity. He was of lowly parentage. Lack of funds cut short his stay at the University of Cambridge; still he was there long enough to acquire some of the learning displayed in his works. For several years he was clerk in the office of a country justice, and afterwards became a secretary in the service of the Countess of Kent. In these positions he found opportunities for study and for intercourse with scholarly and accomplished men. Next we find him a tutor, or clerk, in the family of Sir Samuel Luke, a wealthy gentleman of Bedfordshire, who, as a violent republican member of Parliament, and as one of Cromwell's satraps, took an active part in the agitations of the Commonwealth. In the person of this dignitary Butler probably saw the most radical type of Puritan character. With the convictions of a Royalist and with the temperament of a satirist, he must have found his situation uncongenial. It is possible that personal feeling quickened his powers of ridicule and suggested the plan of a sweeping satire on the republican party, and that he began his Hudibras (141) while yet in the service of the gentleman whom he has so mercilessly lampooned. The Restoration brought Butler no special reward for his loyalty. He became Secretary to Lord Carbury, and for some time acted as Steward of Ludlow Castle; but this situation was nei1663] ther permanent nor lucrative. It was in 1663 that he published the first part of Hudibras; and the second part followed in 1664. The poem soon became the popular book of the day; for its wit and ingenuity won the praise of the critics, while its tone and subject flattered the vindictive triumph of the royalists. Charles II. carried it about in his pocket, and was constantly quoting and admiring it; but all efforts to secure patronage for its author, either from the king or his favorites, proved fruitless. A fatality combined with the usual ingratitude of the Court to leave the great wit in his poverty and obscurity. Two years after the appearance of the third part of his famous work, he died in a miserable lodging in Covent Garden; and the expenses of his modest burial were defrayed by a friend.* As has been already stated, the poem of Hudibras is a burlesque satire upon the Puritan party, and especially upon its two dominant sects,-Presbyterians and Independents. It describes the adventures of a fanatical justice of the peace and his clerk, who sally forth, in knight-errant style, to enforce the violent and oppressive enactments of the Rump Parliament against the popular amusements. Sir Hudibras, the hero,-in all probability a caricature of Sir Samuel Luke, Butler's whilom employer-represents the Presbyterians. He is depicted as, in mind, character, person and bearing, a grotesque compound of pedantry, ugliness, hypocrisy and cowardice; his clerk, Ralph, is sketched with equal unction as the type of the sour, wrong-headed, but more enthusiastic Independents. The doughty pair, having set out on their crusade, first encounter a crowd of ragamuffins who are leading a bear to be "baited," and refuse to disperse at the knight's command. A furious mock-heroic battle ensues, in which Hudibras is finally victorious. He puts the chief delinquents in the parish stocks; but their comrades soon return to the charge, set them free, and imprison the knight and squire. They are in turn liberated by a rich widow, to whom the knight is paying court. Hudibras afterwards visits the lady; and her servants, in the disguise of devils, give him a sound beating. He consults a lawyer and an astrologer, to obtain revenge and satisfaction; and at that point the narration breaks off, incomplete. Evidently the fundamental idea of this poem was suggested by the Don Quixote of Cervantes; but its spirit, and the style of its development, are entirely original. Cervantes makes his hero laughable, without impairing our respect for his noble and heroic * "While Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive, See him, when starved to death and turned to dust, The poet's fate is here in emblem shown, He asked for bread, and he received a stone."-Samuel Wesley. As character; Butler invests his personages with the utmost degree of odium that is compatible with the sentiment of the ludicrous. his object was exclusively satirical, he could not and did not consider any of the noble qualities of the fanatics whom he attacked. Much of his ridicule is therefore embittered by prejudice; but much more will retain point as long as cant and hypocrisy continue. Hudibras is the best burlesque in the English language. “The same amount of learning, wit, shrewdness, ingenious and deep thought, felicitous illustration and irresistible drollery has never [elsewhere] been comprised in the same limits." Butler's style is at once concise and suggestive; many of his expressions have the terse strength of proverbs, and at the same time open boundless vistas of comic association. His language is easy, conversational, careless; familiar and even vulgar words are found side by side with the pedantic terms of art and learning; the short octosyllabic verse moves with unflagging vivacity; and the constant recurrence of fantastic rhymes tickles and stimulates the fancy. Yet, although no English author was ever more witty than Butler, he is utterly destitute of genial humor; bis analysis of character is pitilessly keen and clear; but he shows no power in sustaining the interest of a story. Hence he neither enlists our sympathy nor attracts that curiosity which is gratified by a well-developed intrigue. “If inexhaustible wit could give perpetual pleasure," says Johnson, "no eye could ever leave half-read the work of Butler; however, astonishment soon becomes a toilsome pleasure, and the paucity of events fatigues the attention and makes the perusal of the book tedious." Among Butler's miscellaneous writings which were published after his death, the most entertaining are a series of prose sketches. They are marked by that wit and wealth of suggestion which was characteristic of his genius. Many of his posthumous poems are caustic and undiscriminating satires upon the physical investigåtors of his day. He is particularly severe upon the Royal Society, which he ridicules in his Elephant in the Moon. In this age of debauchery, John Bunyan (1628--1688), the master of religious allegory, appeared. He came from the lowest grade of social life, grew up to manhood with an education so meagre that he barely knew how to read and write, and yet he produced a work |