CHAPTER THE FIFTH. LITERATURE, SCIENCE, FINE ARTS, MANNERS, CUSTOMS, AND CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE.
IT is now necessary to sink the historian for a time in the reviewer, and to take a retrospect of the literature of the period through which our narrative has passed. The republic of politics was not favourable to the republic of letters, and the Elizabethan dramatists were followed by a few playwrights of a very inferior class. The mantle of Shakespeare, or even of Beaumont and Fletcher, who had flourished under the monarchy, was caught by no worthy object, and it fell upon Shirley, for whom it was evidently a great deal too large. Denham and Waller, those two commonplace songsters, set up a faint warbling, and Hobbes had sufficient fire to burn with philosophic ardour, though his thoughts were fettered by his royalist principles. Hobbes, however, was a fireside companion to many, though they dared scarcely hang over Hobbes in the broad light of day.
Milton had written little till he gave to the world—which is true enough, for the world can hardly be said to have bought it—his "Paradise Lost," which he brought out in 1667, and though the sale was limited, it was sufficiently encouraging to induce him to baffle the crowd of imitators by advertising a new poem, to be called "Paradise Regained." He feared the sort of impertinent opposition which echoes every new work, and which, when an original writer takes it into his head to bid anyone "Go where the aspens quiver," "Meet him in the willow-glen," or commit some other foolery, will reply by expressing a desire to come where the aspens are actually quivering, and to be punctual at the willow-glen, for which the invitation is forwarded. "Paradise Regained" had the fate of all merely imitative literature, for it never acquired, and will never attain, the reputation its prototype or predecessor has enjoyed.
The Restoration seemed to act as a restorative to Milton's powers, for he published many of his finest things after Charles the Second returned to the throne. Cowley was one of the earliest writers who took to diluting the works of other people in some stuff of his own; and, taking the materials of Donne, he set an example of the modern practice of seizing upon another man's original ideas, for the purpose of beating or spinning them out into a shape that may, if possible, prevent the real authorship from being recognised. There was, however, a great deal of true genius among the literary men of the age, through which our narrative has just carried us. Spenser, whose tales were only too short, would have been sufficient to redeem the period from the imputation of mediocrity.
The stage was, during the reign of Charles the Second, in a very degraded state; but the cry for the restoration of the drama has been kept up so long, that we really do not know what there is to restore, if everything has been always bad, except the works of two or three writers, whose productions are being so constantly performed that the public cannot reasonably complain of not getting enough of them. The "palmy days of dramatic literature" are, according to the ordinary acceptation of those who use the term, any days but the present, and it is not improbable that our own will be looked back upon and lamented as the genuine "palmy days" by the generation of grumblers who may come after us. If everything is objected to in its turn—and such has been the fate of every successive crop of writings for the stage—we of course cannot tell with accuracy what it would be considered worth while to restore in the judgment of those who are clamorous for the restoration of the drama. There is also considerable difference of opinion as to how the restoration is to be effected; and we may perhaps be excused, therefore, for suggesting that some good strong salts—attic salts, of course—are likely to prove the most effectual restoratives to a drama in a languishing condition.
There was an immense increase in the family of science at or about the period we have been speaking of, and indeed science had so many sons, that it would not have been very surprising if the fate of the domestic circle of the old lady who lived in a shoe—namely, an abundance of broth and a scarcity of bread—had been their inheritance.
The illustrious Boyle might frequently have been left without a roast by the number of competitors who were seeking a living round him through the exercise of their talents; and amidst his curious experiments on air, that of trying to live upon it might, if successful, have been of the greatest use to him. He was an enthusiast in the splendid career he had long and perseveringly pursued; nor is it going beyond the truth to say of him, that he combined ecstatics with hydrostatics, by the eagerness and animation with which he threw himself into water, whose properties were almost the only property he ever realised. There were several other scientific luminaries in this age, and we must not forget Hooke, who always had an eye to the capabilities of the microscope, and took an enlarged view of everything that fell under his observation. For Sydenham, the restorer of true physio, we have not so much veneration; but Newton is a name that we cannot pass over so slightingly. This great man, to whom science was the apple of his eye, and to whose eye the apple had revealed one of the greatest truths ever discovered, lived for some time a most retired life, which he passed in tranquil obscurity. Such was his position when the fruits of his contemplation came home to him in the shape of a golden pippin, which he revolved in his mind as it revolved in the air, and the result was the great fact by the perception of which his name has been immortalised. Though Newton was a pattern of modesty in his intercourse with the external world, he was bold enough in his approaches to Dame Nature, and would not allow her to hide her face from him, if by any amount of perseverance he could get a peep at it. He even had the audacity to go the length of tearing off her veil, for the purpose of revealing her beauties; and Nature, instead of becoming indignant at this rough treatment, was evidently flattered by his attentions, to which she offered every encouragement.
It is a curious fact, that the institution of the Royal Society commenced under the auspices of a brother-in-law of Cromwell, one Wilkins, a clergyman, who, although so nearly allied to the republican leader, had no objection to accept facilities from a regal hand for promoting the objects of science, in which he felt a zealous interest. This brother-in-law of Cromwell was Bishop of Chester under the Restoration, which he liked just as well as the Commonwealth, and perhaps better, for his mitre was rather safer under a royal rule than it could have been during a republican government.
Charles the Second was without doubt a lover of the sciences to a certain extent; but his disgusting depravities left him neither money nor time for the advancement of genius and literary merit. His contemporary, Louis the Fourteenth, was more liberal of his bounty to those whose intellect formed their chief claim to consideration; but even this magnificent monarch scarcely devoted to literature, science, and art, as much as he often lavished on one worthless courtier. It is, however, a matter for humiliation and regret that we have not advanced upon the munificence of Charles the Second and Louis the Fourteenth; for, notwithstanding all the acknowledgment that talent in these days receives by way of personal consideration and respect, a few paltry thousands a year form the whole amount that the nation will afford to pension its instructors or entertainers, when their powers of instruction and entertainment have failed to afford them the means of comfortable livelihood.
Of the condition of the people during the period described in the few last chapters, we had rather say very little, as we can say nothing complimentary. Hypocrisy, during the Commonwealth, and unbridled licentiousness at the Restoration, were the characteristic features of the two divisions of a period which cast upon the respectability of the nation a blot that time has only turned to iron-mould. The fame of a nation, like a damask table-cloth, when once stained is never thoroughly restored; for, send them both to the wash—immersing the former in tears of regret, and the latter in the soapsuds—the stain is still indelibly there, beyond the power of pearl-ash or penitence.