John Locke (1632-1704) may be taken as the representative of the English Philosophy of the time, and his influence on the speculative opinions of his day was second only to that of Hobbes. His "Essay on the Understanding" contains the germ of utter skepticism and was the ground on which Berkeley denied the existence of the material world, and Hume involved all human knowledge in doubt.
In classical learning the greatest of the scholars of this period was
Bentley (1662-1742).
In history Lord Clarendon (1608-1774) wrote the "History of the Rebellion," and Burnet (1643-1715) his "History of the Reformation," one of the most thoroughly digested works of the century. His "History of his own Times" is valuable for its facts, and for the shrewdness with which he describes the state of things around him.
In miscellaneous prose, John Evelyn wrote several useful and tasteful works, and Izaak Walton (1593-1688), a London tradesman, wrote his interesting Biographies and the quaint treatise "On Angling." Both in diction and sentiment these works remind us of the preceding age; and Walton, surviving Milton, closes the series of old English prose writers.
Samuel Butler (1612-1680), the unfortunate, ill-requited laureate of the Royalists, who satirized the Puritans and Republicans in his celebrated "Hudibras," left some exceedingly witty and vigorous prose writings; and Andrew Marvell (1620-1678), the friend and protector of Milton, was most successful in sarcastic irony, and in his attacks on the High Church opinions and doings.
John Dryden (1631-1700) was the literary chief of the interval between Cromwell and Queen Anne. His prose writings, besides comedies, are few, but in these he taught principles of poetical art previously unknown to his countrymen, and showed the capabilities of the tongue in a new light. Inferior to Dryden in vigor of thought was Sir William Temple (1628-1698), who may yet share with him the merit of having founded regular English prose. His literary character rests chiefly on his "Miscellaneous Essays."
The symmetrical structure and artificial polish of contemporaneous French literature, while it was not without some good influence on English prose, was less beneficial to poetry, and its worst effect was on the drama, which soon ceased to be pictures of human beings in action and became only descriptive of such pictures. In this walk as in others Dryden was the literary chief, and of his plays it can truly be said that the serious ones contain many striking and poetical pieces of declamation, finely versified. His comedies are bad morally, and as dramas even worse than those of his rival Shadwell. Lee was only a poor likeness of Dryden.
In the "Orphan" and "Venice Preserved" of Otway we have southing of the revival of the ancient strength of feeling though alloyed by false sentiment and poetic poverty.
Congreve showed great power of language in tragedy, and Southerne not a little nature and pathos.
In comedy the fame of these writers was eclipsed by a knot of dramatists who adopted prose, but whose works are the foulest that ever disgraced the literature of a nation. They are excellent specimens of that which has been called the comedy of manners; vice is inextricably interwoven in the texture of all alike, in the broad humor of Wycherly (the most vigorous of the set), in the wit of Congreve, in the character painting of Vanbrugh, and the lively invention of Farquhar.