End of the King and Others.
The lives of these two men—Dryden and Locke—have brought us past the whole reach of Charles II.’s reign. That ignoble monarch has met his fate courageously; some days before the immediate end he knew it was coming, and had kind words for those about him.
He died on a Friday,[95] and on the Sunday before had held great revel in the famous gallery of Whitehall; next day came the warnings, and then the blow—paralytic, or other such—which shrivelled his showy powers, and brought his swarthy face to a whiteness and a death-like pallor that shocked those gay people who belonged in the palace. Then came the scourging with hot iron, and the administration of I know not what foul drugs that belonged to the blind medication of that day—all in vain; there were suspicions of poison; but the poison he died of was of his own making, and he had been taking it ever since boyhood.
A Catholic priest came to him stealthily and made the last promises to him he was ever to hear. To a courtier, who came again and again, he apologized—showing his courtesy to the last. “I’m an awful time in dying,” he said; and to somebody else—his brother, perhaps—“don’t let poor Nell Gwynne starve;” and so died.
James, the successor, was not loved—scarce by anyone; bigoted, obstinate, selfish, he ran quickly through the short race of which the histories will tell you. Only three years of it, or thereabout, and then—presto! like the changing of the scenes at Drury Lane Theatre in one of the splendid spectacles of the day—James scuds away, and Cousin William (with his wife Mary, both of the blood royal of England) comes in, and sets up a fashion of rule, and an assured Protestant succession of regal names which is not ended yet.
And now, in closing this talk, I will summon into presence once again some of the notable personages who have given intellectual flavor to the years we have gone over, and will call the roll of a few new names among those actors who are to take in swift succession the places of those who disappear. At the date where we now are—1688—the date of the last English Revolution (who, pray, can predict the next?), the date of John Bunyan’s death, the date of Alexander Pope’s birth—excellent remembrancers, these!—at this epoch, I say, of the incoming of William and Mary, all those dramatic writers—of whom we made mention as having put a little tangled fringe of splendor about the great broidery of Shakespeare’s work—were gone. So was Herrick, with his sweet poems, and his pigs and tankards; and Howell, and Wotton, and the saintly George Herbert, and dear, good, old Izaak Walton—all comfortably dead and buried. So were Andrew Marvell, and the author of Hudibras. Archbishop Laud was gone long since to the scaffold, with the fullest acquiescence of all New Englanders; Jeremy Taylor gone—if ever man had right of way there—to heaven; Milton dead; Cowley dead; Waller dead.
Old, ear-cropped Prynne, of the Histriomastix, was still living—close upon seventy—grim and gray, and as pugnacious as a bull-terrier. Among others lingering upon the downhill side of life were Robert Boyle and that John Evelyn, whose love of the fields and gardens and trees had put long life in his blood and brain. Sir William Temple, too, had still some years of elegant distinction to coquet with; our old friend of the Pepysian journal was yet alert—his political ambitions active, his eye-sight failing—never thinking, we may be sure, that his pot-luck of a Diary would keep him more savory with us to-day than all his wigs and his coaches, and his fine acquaintance, and his great store of bric-à-brac.
Isaac Newton was not fifty yet, but had somehow lost that elasticity and searchingness of brain which had untwisted the sunbeams, and solved the riddle of gravitation. Bishop Burnet, and that William Penn whose name ought to hold place on any American file of England’s worthies, were in the full vigor of middle age. Daniel De Foe was some eight and twenty, and known only as a sharp trader, who had written a few pamphlets, and who was enrolled in those soldier ranks which went to greet William III. on his arrival at Torbay.
Matthew Prior was still younger, and had made no show of those graces and that art which gave him later an ambassador’s place, and a tomb and monument in the “Poet’s Corner” of the Abbey. Jonathan Swift, then scarce twenty-one, is unheard of as yet, and is nursing quietly the power and the bitterness with which, through two succeeding reigns, he is to write and rave and rage.
Still more youthful are those two promising lads, Addison and Steele, listening with their sharp young ears to the fine verses of Mr. Dryden, and watching and waiting for the day when they, too, shall say somewhat to be of record for ages after them. And so, with these bright young fellows at the front, and the excellent gray-heads I have named at the rear, we ring down the curtain upon our present entertainment with an “Exeunt omnes!”