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that of James II. in bronze in the privy garden | able in itself, and so certain of popularity, was of Whitehall. Here the scanty list of our statuaries terminates for the present. With regard to painting, a more promising era seemed to have commenced in England with Charles I., whose

sure to find many followers, and not a few rivals; so that while foreign painters crowded to England as to a newly-opened market, native talent began to rouse itself, and prepare for a similar

competition. The chief of these who followed in the steps of Sir Peter, were Henry Anderton, who almost equalled his master; Michael Wright, a Scot; and John Greenhill, a pupil of Lely, but who died in the midst of high promise. Toward the close of this period, also, on the death of Sir Peter Lely, his place was fully supplied by Sir Godfrey Kneller.

Of all the fine arts, none suffered so rude a shock from the

Cibber's STATUES OF RAVING AND MELANCHOLY MADNESS, in Bethlehem Hospital. Civil war as music. Among the

patronage of eminent foreign artists is well known, and whose splendid collection of paintings gave promise of a school in which native talent would have been fully cultivated. But the Civil war arrested this tendency, as well as dispersed the collection; and the Restoration introduced in their stead the French school of painting, with all its absurdities of allegory and classical mythology, as well as the meretricious moral taste, which was the chief characteristic of the age. The chief instructor of the nation in painting at this period was Antonio Verrio, whom Charles II. invited to England, and whose pencil was employed in decorating the walls and ceilings of some of our principal public buildings, which he did with gods and goddesses, Roman triumphs and regal deifications in extraordinary profusion, and gave a direction to the progress of the art in England which finally destroyed itself by its own extravagance. The best native painters of this school were Robert Streater, serjeant-painter to Charles II., whose chief work is the painted ceiling of the theatre at Oxford; John Freeman, a dramatic scene-painter; and Andrew Fuller, a specimen of whose artistic talent may be seen in the dome of St. Mary Abchurch. The eminent portrait painter of the day was Sir Peter Lely, a native of Westphalia, and successor of the celebrated Vandyke, whom he excelled in delicacy of execution, although greatly inferior to him in the higher qualities of the art. He came to London in 1643, and gave himself wholly to portrait painting, in which he became so great a proficient, as well as such a pleasing flatterer in his likenesses, that no beauty or fashion belonging to the court was considered to be genuine until it had received the signature of his recording pencil. Of course, his style of painting, so profit

religious grievances of which the Puritans had complained since the days of Elizabeth, the use of musical instruments in the celebration of public worship had always formed an important part; and therefore, when their season of rule arrived, they removed or destroyed the church organs, and drove the choristers from their stalls. In the same reforming spirit they closed the theatres, and silenced every place where profane music had been wont to be cultivated. Even a violin was enough to set their teeth on edge, so that the poor street Crowdero was obliged to exercise his harmless vocation in corners and by-places. But as the love of music is so universal that it can neither be utterly silenced, nor yet wholly satisfied with psalmody, its recovery was far easier at the Restoration than that of sculpture and painting. Accordingly, on the re-establishment of monarchy, both cathedrals and theatres were once more opened, and bishops and actors replaced in their several offices. In the same manner, organs were repaired, or built anew; and every effort was made to recall those musicians whom the civil discord had scattered, and where those could no longer be found, new performers were invited from the Continent. As for Charles himself, although his taste in music was questionable, he loved the art as a recreation and source of pleasure; and therefore, both for the royal chapel and the palace, a well-selected choir was speedily established. But in this, as in other matters, his predilections were so essentially French that the band of the chapel royal consisted of twenty-four violins, while the music of his palace entertainments was too exclusively such as would have suited the festivals of a Sardanapalus. "God forgive me!" exclaims Pepys, on returning from one of his visits to Whitehall, “I never was so little pleased with a concert of music

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

[SOCIAL STATE.

the paucity of facts with which the stately history of Clarendon is chargeable, and the diligence with which these are made subservient to mere party purposes, and contrast this with the fulness and minuteness of Burnet, we can scarcely hesitate in preferring, for all the useful purposes of history, the bishop to the chancellor. In philo

in my life." As Pepys felt, so, no doubt, felt many a Cavalier of the old English stamp; and thus the national spirit could not be so easily perverted in its music as in departments of still higher import. A proof of this is to be found in the popular musical compositions of the period, in the form of songs and ballads, and especially in the national airs of "Lillibulero” and “Godsophy, we have for the present era that universal save the King." A still higher proof is exhibited in the popularity of Matthew Lock's music to "Macbeth," with which the play was first performed in 1674, and which retains its attractiveness undiminished to the present day. A musician, too, appeared at this period of such surpassing genius, that his works alone would have sufficed, in the absence of others his contemporaries, to purify the stream of English melody, and make it flow in its own native direction. This was Henry Purcell, who was not only superior to every English predecessor, but without a rival among the great continental musicians of his day. That his excellence, also, was of no adventitious character, is proven by the fact that his popularity continued after new styles of music had been introduced, and that his compositions are more highly appreciated than ever by the best musical critics of the nineteenth century.

genius, Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbury, who, besides being an ethical, metaphysical, and political writer, in every department of which he attained the highest eminence, was an historian and a poet withal, or at least a translator of poetry. But his reputation has descended to the present day chiefly on account of the atheism and materialism of his theology, by which he is thought to have deepened and confirmed the general depravity of the period, and furnished plausible arguments for the excesses of the court of Charles II. His great antagonist, Dr. Ralph Cudworth, appeared at the same time as an antidote, whose True Intellectual System of the Universe, wherein all the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism is Confuted, is an imperishable monuthinking the most profound, exact, and original. ment of learning the most recondite, as well as of theology, was Richard Boyle; while the most eleAnother distinguished writer, both in science and gaut moral essayist of the age was Sir William Temple.

Of English progress in the study of the exact sciences, it is enough to observe that the silence and seclusion they so urgently require was wanting during the previous public commotions, and that even an apprenticeship to profound calcula- to the state of English poetry during the Civil We have already adverted in a former chapter tion could scarcely be commenced until the din wars, and afterwards under the Commonwealth. and insecurity of civil contention had passed It was a period full of fierce earnestness, and away. Hence it was that few eminent students in rapidly succeeding incident; and therefore, inthese sciences appeared until the present season stead of modulating their thoughts into tuneful of political strife had closed. was not equally the case in those other depart- boldly and briefly in uupremeditated prose durSuch, however, numbers, men of genius were obliged to speak ments of intellect which are always in demanding the intervals of action, and express themselves as well as in active exercise, and which a time of public contest often tends to invigorate. need not here allude to the thunder-shower of We pamphlets that continued to deluge the political horizon, from the Killing no Murder of Colonel Titus, to the last discussion of the veracity of Titus Oates; or the controversies, both in theology and politics, which were occasioned by the encroachments of Popery and arbitrary power. It is enough to remind the reader, by the repetition of a few names suggestive of the different departments in which the intellectual leaders of the age had put forth their strength. Of these, we have for historians the Earl of Clarendon, and Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury-the former the solemn Johnson, and the latter the minute, gossiping Boswell, of English history during the seventeenth century. At first sight, it might seem utterly incongruous to place these names in such close juxtaposition; but when we recollect

more in deeds than words. In this way, whole bodied in actual travel and adventure. And then Iliads were fought, not sung, and Odysseys emcame the re-action, but such a re-action-and poets, but such poets! The impress of a profligate king that was stamped so deeply upon the court, soft sensitive spirit of poetry; and thus, in the was exhibited with still greater fidelity upon the indignant language of Macaulay, "Venal and licentious scribblers, with just sufficient talent to clothe the thoughts of a pander in the style of a bellman, were now the favourite writers of the sovereign and the public. It was a loathsome herd, which could be compared to nothing so fitly as to the rabble of Comus-grotesque monsters, half-bestial, half-human, dropping with wine, and reeling in obscene dances." It was strange that amidst such jarring din and dissonance, the organ-like music of Milton should have risen with a Te Deum such as the world had never yet

heard. But it sounded in an empty cathedral; | as the production of "something which his counfor the worshippers who would have borne the burden were silenced or driven away; and the sacred minstrel was obliged to console himself with the thought that the strain, like its subject, was imperishable, and that the time was coming when its undying echoes would be cherished by generations willing to listen, as well as able to appreciate.

trymen would not willingly let die." And this great task, which was nothing less than Paradise Lost, he commenced when the middle term of an active laborious life had passed away, and when he had done enough for public duty as well as for fame-when he was reduced to poverty and obscurity-when he was exposed not only to insults from the dominant party who hated him as As we have already seen, it was as a controver- a regicide, but from his own hard-hearted, unsialist that Milton was first distinguished. Poetry, grateful children-and when, above all, he was indeed, he had written, and that also from an early blind, and reduced to helpless dependence upon period; while the eminent acquirements which he the kindness and fidelity of those to whom his mnade as a student, and the observations with matchless thoughts were intrusted for transcripwhich he enriched his mind during a course of tion, and who perhaps repined at it as a weary travel, seem to have been especially directed to- unprofitable task. But with such a character as wards his chosen vocation as a poet. Already, that of Milton, perhaps most of these circumalso, he had discovered where his surpassing stances only the better qualified him for its acstrength lay, as well as given evidence of its ex-complishment. Men might revile him, but this istence by his "Comus," "L'Allegro," "Penseroso," and other early productions. On his return to England, however, at the commencement of the Civil

JOHN MILTON.-From the print by Faithorne.

war, other duties awaited him, from which he did not shrink for a moment; and while every man was arming himself for battle, he chose a more difficult and self-denying course of action. "I avoided," he says, "the toil and danger of a military life, only to render my country assist ance more useful, and not less to my own peril." And we know how well this duty was discharged in his controversial and political writings over a course of twenty years, in which he was the champion of English liberty against the whole literary world, which he opposed single-handed. It was only when this was done that he turned himself to his long-contemplated task, which he had ever regarded as the great work and object of his life, and which he had obscurely intimated

only threw him back upon the mens conscia recti, where all was peace and self-approval; and the world might forsake him, but this little mattered when he was about to create such a world of his own. In the alienation or the absence of all these, he would be better able to clothe his paradise with its loveliness, and his hell with its terrors, and hold communion with the beings that peopled them. His universal reading had made him independent of books, so that he needed nothing more than to recall them to memory, and adapt their information to his own immediate requirements; and for this, the utter obscuration of all external objects is especially favourable. And what though he could no longer behold the changes of day and night, and the bright or shadowy forms which they disclose in such impressive variety as to constitute a twofold world? Had he not seen them all? Could he not remember them vividly? Nay, could he not now invest them with every addition of grandeur or loveliness, untrammelled as he was by the sight of every-day reality, or the feeling that with every day, as old age advanced, the aspect of nature was waxing more common-place and tame? All that the wisest of sages had written, that the best of poets had sung, and the loveliest of nature unfolded to his view, were but the plastic elements which he now might mould at will, and out of them evolve the scenes of Eden, or the dialogues of the blest. Taking these circumstances, hitherto reckoned so disqualifying, into account, we not only assert that Paradise Lost was all the better by reason of Milton's age, injurious treatment, neglect, poverty, and blindness, but that such a poem would scarcely have been attempted, or at least successfully accomplished, without them. In his case they refined, spiritualized, and made all but angelic a mind for which humanity had already done its uttermost. Let none then de

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plore his calamities and bereavements, unless for | Samson Agonistes, which are only not the greatest a Milton they would have been contented with an English Tasso or Ariosto.

of English poems, because he had produced a greater. The last years of his life were chiefly spent in the study of theology, of which the chief result has been published in our own day in the form of a posthumous body of divinity. After having thus lived, laboured, and suffered during a period of which he was so far in advance, he died in 1674, and three years after was comme

No one who has heard of the Paradise Lost can be unaware of its transcendent merits; and therefore, as in the case of Shakspeare's writings, any critical disquisition is unnecessary. It is needless also to mention the neglect with which its first appearance was treated, as nothing else could have been expected from political preju-morated by a tomb in Westminster Abbey. But dice, as well as the depraved taste of the age of Charles II. It was not till after the Revolution, when the principles for which Milton had contended so ably were re-acting upon society at

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large, that justice began to be rendered to the
greatest and best of epics. This, however, he had
anticipated, and the conviction was sufficient to
cheer him onward to the close. Besides this
master-work, he wrote Paradise Regained, and
1 This was one of the garden-houses for which Milton appears
to have had a preference; but the ground is now walled off,
and appropriated to the house formerly inhabited by Jeremy
Bentham. The cotton-willow tree, planted by the great poet,
still flourishes, although the trunk shows signs of decay. The
depth of the premises is 46 feet. The present frontage of the
house, which has been rebuilt, answers to No. 19, York Street,
but it is evident that the original front was that facing the
park. On this side Jeremy Bentham placed a small tablet,
inscribed as follows-"Sacred to Milton, prince of poets."
the old wall which bounds the garden on the St. James's Park
side, opposite the house, are the indications of a door, now
built up, which was probably used by Milton in passing between
his house and Whitehall during his intercourse with Cromwell,

In

how little of the fame of the author of Paradise
Lost will have been diminished when the last
stone of the building will have passed away!
The next poet in order worthy of mention is
Abraham Cowley, who, during his day, enjoyed
more celebrity than Milton himself. Cowley was
born in London in 1618. Being a posthumous
child, and of humble birth, for his father had been
nothing more than a grocer, the circumstances of
his family were so scanty, that his widowed
mother had great difficulty in procuring for him
a classical education. The promise of excellence
which he gave, however, was well worthy of her
exertions; for when he was only fifteen years old
he published a volume of poems, of which one,
entitled "Pyramus and Thisbe," was written when
he was only ten years old, and another, entitled
"Constantia and Pheletus," was composed when
he was not more than two years older. His own
account of his first poetical inspiration is highly
interesting. In the window of his mother's
apartment lay a copy of Spenser's Faerie Queen,
and over this he pored with such enthusiasm that
he became irrecoverably a poet. Not content
with one style of poetry, he also attempted the
drama, and while still a school-boy, wrote a
comedy, entitled "Love's Riddle," afterwards pub-
lished when he removed to Cambridge to com-
plete his education. On becoming a student of
Trinity College, Cambridge, his early predilec-
tions still continued to predominate; and here,
besides his "Naufragium Joculare," which he pub-
lished at the age of twenty, he wrote the sacred
poem entitled, "Davideis," intended to be a com-
plete epic, but of which only four books were
finished. The notes with which he illustrated this
work sufficiently prove, that with all his devoted-
ness to the muses, he was by no means neglectful
in the capacity of Latin secretary. In the house itself the
arrangement of the windows has been entirely changed. It is
probable they extended along the whole front, with sliding
frames or lattice divided by panelled spaces. The original
panelling remains in the large room (21 feet by 13 feet) on the
first floor. The upper rooms are small, and the staircase, which
has not been altered, is steep and narrow. The ground floor
appears to have been comprised in one large room, as the original
fireplace was evidently situated about the centre of the wall,
on the west side. This was probably the family room, or com-
promise between kitchen and parlour; common to the economy
of houses of respectable pretensions in the olden time. This
distinguished house was afterwards the residence of William
Hazlitt.

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of the more literary and laborious departments of a university education. They are, indeed, a mass of profound and varied erudition. His college life was rudely interrupted by the commencement of the Civil war: he was ejected from Cambridge by the parliamentary visitors, and obliged to take refuge in Oxford; and when that peaceful seat of learning was compelled to surrender, Cowley fled to the court of the exiled queen, Henrietta, in France, and was employed by her as confidential secretary, in the management of her political correspondence with England. From the nature of his employment, his return to England was attended with considerable danger: he was apprehended, but released

COWLEY'S MONUMENT IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

after a short confinement, when he betook himself to the peaceful study of medicine, to escape suspicion as well as procure a livelihood. At the Restoration he experienced the usual neglect which awaited those who had toiled or sacrificed in the service of royalty; but at length, tardy justice was done to his services, by a lease of some of the queen's lands, upon which he was enabled to spend the rest of his days in studious retirement. He died in 1667, at the age of fifty-nine, and was interred with a splendid funeral in Westminster Abbey, between Chaucer and Spenser, while Charles II. might be said to pronounce his funeral eulogium in the brief comprehensive declaration, that "Mr. Cowley had not left behind him a better man in England."

Besides the works we have already mentioned, Cowley published a collection of poetry under the title of Miscellanies; the Mistress, a collection of love poems; translations of Pindar's odes; odes in the style of Pindar; Anacreontics; and a Latin work on plants in six books, partly in heroic and partly in elegiac verse. As a poet, none of his day equalled him in popularity: his works went through numerous editions, and were eagerly read by all classes; while Milton himself rated him so highly, that he declared the three greatest English poets were Spenser, Shakspeare, and Cowley. From this high estimation, however, the succeeding age dissented; and the estimation of Cowley at length diminished into somewhat less than that of a second-rate poet. Like many of the period, he was an imitator of Donne; but while he succeeded in the quaintness of phraseology and play upon words by which the writings of Donne are distinguished, he missed that which was of far higher importance-the warmth and depth of feeling by which the poetry of the dean of St. Paul's was chiefly characterized. Unimpassioned coldness is unfortunately the chief quality of Cowley's writings, with the exception of a few of his Pindarics and Anacreontics. Even his most importunate love-suits are either hard metaphysical demonstrations, or far-fetched conceits, in which the speaker is evidently thinking more of himself than his mistress; while his figures of speech, instead of being the natural living off-shoots of the subject, are flowers made of coloured cambric, or feather, stuck on with gum and wire. Such, indeed, was the prevailing taste of the age; but no poetry, however excellent, if constructed on such principles, can hope to descend to posterity.

Of a far more original and natural character as a poet, was Samuel Butler, the immortal author of Hudibras, the type of his age in political character and sentiment, as Cowley was of its intellectual habits and poetical taste. Of Butler's early history we know nothing, except that he was born at Strensham, in Worcestershire, in 1612, and was the son of a farmer. Whether he studied at any of our universities is uncertain; but at all events no doubt can be entertained of the extent and variety of his scholarship, which would have insured him distinction in any department of literary occupation, and which obtained him the friendship of Selden. He first lived in the family of the Countess of Kent, and afterwards in that of

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"A valiant Mameluke

In foreign lands y'clep'd Sir Samuel Luke." This was one of Oliver Cromwell's officers; and it does not speak much either for the honour or the honesty of the poet, that he requited the hospitality of the good knight, and violated the

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