7

May 1st, 1669-Up betimes. Called by my tailor, and here first put on a summer suit this year; but it was not my fine one of flowered tabby vest and coloured camelot tunic, because it was too fine with the gold lace at the bands, that I was afraid to be seen in it; but put on the stuff suit I made the last year, which is now repaired; and so did go to the office in it, and sat all the morning, the day looking as if it would be foul. At noon home to dinner, and there find my wife extraordinary fine, with her flowered tabby gown that she made two years ago, now laced exceeding pretty; and, indeed, was fine all over; and mighty earnest to go, though the day was very lowering; and she would have me put on my fine suit, which I did. And so anon we went alone through the town with our new liveries of serge, and the horses' manes and tails tied with red ribbons, and the standards gilt with varnish, and all clean, and green reins, that people did mightily look upon us; and, the truth is, I did not see any coach more pretty, though more gay, than ours all the day.

(b) John Evelyn (1620-1706) is the other diarist, and is much more respectable and much less amusing than Pepys. His diary is a more finished production in the matter of style, and may have been produced with an eye on the public. The style is only moderate in quality, and has little of the freshness that distinguishes Pepys'. The diary, however, is full of accurate information, and in some of the more moving incidents, such as that of the Great Fire, it warms into something like real eloquence.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS

Viewed as a whole, this period is seen to be one of transition; and, being so, it is to a large extent one of stagnation, time's dead low-water. The Elizabethan fervor had spent itself, and the new classicism was still in the making. Yet the time is important in the development of literary forms and style.

1. Poetry. (a) The Lyric. The form of the lyric shows little change. In bulk it is inconsiderable, for the lyrical spirit is largely in abeyance. Outside Dryden, who is the best example of the lyrical bard, we have the slight work of the courtiers, the Earl of Dorset (1637-1706), the Earl of Rochester (1647-80), and Sir Charles Sedley (1639

1701). These were fashionable men, taking their poetry with fashionable irresponsibility. Their poems, which nearly all deal with the love-theme in an artificial manner, have a decided charm and skill, being modeled on the Caroline poems that were the mode before the Civil War. Of real originality there is hardly a trace.

(b) The Ode. Once more Dryden towers pre-eminent in this class of poem. His two odes on the anniversary of St. Cecilia's Day and his other ode on the death of Mrs. Anne Killigrew are among the best of any period. Written in the irregular Pindaric meter, they are full of the high passion that gives the artificial medium some real fire and energy. We give the opening lines of the elegiac poem:

Thou youngest Virgin-Daughter of the skies,

Made in the last promotion of the blest;
Whose palms, new plucked from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,

Rich with immortal green above the rest:
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us in thy wandering race,
Or in procession fixed and regular
Moved with the heaven's majestic pace,
Or called to more superior bliss,

Thou tread'st with seraphim the vast abyss.

(c) The Satire. Several circumstances combined to make this age abound in satirical writing. It was a period of bitter political and personal contention, of easy morals and subdued enthusiasms, of sharp wit and acute discrimination. For these reasons satire acquired a new importance and a sharper edge.

The older satire, such as is represented in the poems of Donne and of Andrew Marvell (1621-78), was of a more general kind, and seemed to have been written with deliberate clumsiness and obscurity. These habits were repugnant to the ideals of the new age, whose satire is more personal and more vindictive. Its effect is immensely more incisive, and it obtains a new freshness and point by the use of the heroic couplet, in which it is almost

wholly written. Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel is an excellent example of the political satire, while his MacFlecknoe shows the personal type. Literary satire is also well represented in The Rehearsal (1671), which parodied the literary vices of the time, especially those of the heroic, play. This work, which was reproduced year after year, with topical hits in every new edition, was the work of several hands, though the Duke of Buckingham receives the chief credit. Butler's Hudibras is a satire on the Puritans. The miscellaneous satire of John Oldham (165383) had much of the earlier clumsiness.

(d) Narrative poetry. Dryden's translations and adaptations of Chaucer, Virgil, Ovid, and Boccaccio are the chief examples of this form. Among others, he gives us Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale, The Knight's Tale, and several tales from Boccaccio. There is no fresh development to record. Butler's Hudibras is narrative of a kind, though the chief interest is satirical.

2. Drama. The development of the drama is considerable. We summarize briefly what has already been indicated.

(a) In tragedy the most novel in the matter of form is the heroic play, whose peculiarities have already been pointed out on p. 199. There is little further development. The tragical faculty is weakening all through the period, even in comparison with the post-Shakespearian plays. This type of play is best represented by Dryden's All for Love and Otway's Venice Preserved. The characters are becoming more stagy, and the situations are made as horrible as the ingenuity of the dramatist can devise.

(b) In comedy the advance is noteworthy. The comedy of "humors" is dying out, though considerable traces of it are still visible. The influence of the French is giving the comedy a new "snap" and glitter, and the almost universal medium is prose. Congreve's Way of the World (1700), Wycherley's Country Wife (1675), and Farquhar's Beaux' Stratagem (1707) are good examples.

3. Prose. With the exception of the work of Dryden and Bunyan, the prose work of the time is of little moment. Dryden's prose is almost entirely devoted to literary criticism; Bunyan's contribution shows a remarkable development of the prose allegory. The remainder of the prose-writers deal with political and miscellaneous subjects, with, in addition, some theological and historical writing.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY STYLE

The main tendency .of the age, in all departments of literature, is toward a clear, plain, and forcible style.

1. Poetry. The new movement was seen most clearly in the development of the heroic couplet, which was soon to spread throughout poetry and through much of the drama. As we have seen (p. 182), in the previous age the couplet had become so loose that it resembled a cross between prose and verse. An exponent of such a measure is Chamberlayne (1619-89):

Poor love must dwell

Within no climate but what's parallel
Unto our honoured births; the envied fate
Of princes oft these burdens find from state
When lowly swains, knowing no parent's voice
Of negative, make a free and happy choice.

This is a curious liquid measure. The pause is irregularly distributed, and the rhythm is light and easy.

Cowley and Denham likewise obtain much credit for the introduction of the new measure; but the chief innovator is Edmund Waller (1606-87). Dryden, in his dedication to The Rival Ladies, says, "Rime has all the advantages of prose besides its own. But the excellence and dignity of it were never fully known till Mr. Waller first taught it." An extract from Waller will suffice:

While in this park I sing, the listening deer
Attend my passion, and forget to fear;
When to the beeches I report my flame,

They bow their heads, as if they felt the same,
To gods appealing, when I reach their bowers,
With loud complaints, they answer me in showers.

The note here is quite different from that of the previous extract. The tread of the meter is steady and almost uniform, and the pauses cluster about the middle and the end of the lines. It must be noted, too, that a large proportion of Waller's poetry took this form.

Dryden adopted the heroic couplet, but he improved upon the wooden respectability of his predecessors' verse. While he retained all the couplet's steadiness and force, he gave it an additional vigor, a sinewy elegance, and a noble rhythm and beauty. It is worth while giving another example of his couplet:

A milk-white hind, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on the lawns and in the forest ranged;
Without unspotted, innocent within,

She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.

Yet had she oft been chased with horns and hounds
And Scythian shafts; and many winged wounds

Aimed at her heart; was often forced to fly,

And doomed to death, though fated not to die.

DRYDEN, The Hind and the Panther

In its own fashion this passage is as melodious and powerful as some of the noblest lines of Milton.

In other forms of poetry the style contains little to be commented upon. The blank verse continues the disintegration that (with the exception of the verse of Milton) began with the death of Shakespeare. We give a good example of this Restoration blank verse:

Through a close lane as I pursued my journey,
And meditating on the last night's vision,
I spied a wrinkled hag, with age grown double,
Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself;