Man disavows, and Deity disowns me,
Hell might afford my miseries a shelter;
Therefore, Hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all
Bolted against one.
Hard lot! encompassed with a thousand dangers,
Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors,
I'm call'd, if vanquish'd! to receive a sentence
Worse than Abiram's.
Him, the vindictive rod of angry Justice,
Sent quick and howling to the centre headlong;
I, fed with judgment, in a fleshy tomb, am
Buried above ground."
Cowper was born a little more than a hundred years after the death of Shakespeare, and about seventy after that of Cromwell. In Shakespeare's time it is certain that Puritanism had made little way in England, or there would have been far more reference to it than is suggested in his works. He mirrored the spirit of his age and country, and it mattered little whether he placed the scenes of his plays in an Italian city or "on the coast of Bohemia," the life depicted in them is that of England and the spirit embodied that of the robust Elizabethan age. Such reform as had taken place in the Church was little calculated to affect the character or temperament of the people, and although it is quite within ordinary knowledge that there were a considerable number of people already who had accepted the extreme doctrines that were later to so terribly transform the national character, they had then no more influence in the country than the Spiritualists have to-day, in the twentieth century. Once, however, they had taken root they spread with appalling rapidity, until by Cowper's time they had gained an ascendency over the minds of the people that the verses just quoted do but fairly indicate.
It was in the reign of James I. that Puritanism began to assert itself in a manner that at all foreshadowed what was to come, and it is a gratifying thought that Shakespeare did not live to see the England, that he had loved and so glorified by his genius, bend under the burden of the foreign intrusion that was to completely alter the aspects of her life as he had known them. A vital aid doubtless accrued to the movement through the constant influx of Calvinist refugees from the North of Europe, mainly Scandinavians, who were warmly welcomed and aided by Anne of Denmark, wife of the King.
It is curious to note how many movements of anti-national character that have taken place in England since the time of the Tudors have had the support of the reigning house. Happily such days are past. It must be granted, however, that it was as natural on the part of Anne to grant shelter to her own country people, whether in Scotland or England, as it was on their part to seek it at her hands.
To whatever causes the spread of Calvinism may be due, its effect on the nation generally was deplorable, and on music, particularly, absolutely fatal.
The gloomy fanaticism that its teaching engendered not only prompted the entire suppression of music of every kind, wherever possible, but made it become an object of loathing and contempt, and what was found impossible to achieve by legislation was effected by local tyranny. In the conventicles that sprung up