us. He could himself (§ 21) produce a long list of difficulties and objections in the way of faith, many of which were never before started. But if these objections breed, at any time, doubts in his mind, he combats such misgivings, not in a martial posture, but on his knees.' From this description of the contents of the first few sections, the reader may form some notion of the peculiar and most original vein of thought which runs through the book. As the first part treats of faith, so the second gives the author's meditations on the virtue of charity. A delightful ironical humour breaks out occasionally, as in the advice which he gives to those who desire to be strengthened in their own opinions. When we desire to be informed, 'tis good to contest with men above ourselves; but to confirm and establish our opinions, 'tis best to argue with judgments below our own, that the frequent spoils and victories over their reasons may settle in ourselves an esteem and confirmed opinion of our own.' The treatise on vulgar errors, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, is an amusing examination of a great number of popular customs and received explanations, which, after holding their ground for ages, during the long night of science and philosophy, were now breaking down on all sides under the attacks of the enfranchised intellect. The Garden of Cyrus is an abstruse dissertation on the wonderful virtue and significance of the quincuncial form. This is mere mysticism, and of no more value than the dreams of the Pythagoreans as to the virtue of particular numbers. 79. Among miscellaneous writings, the Sylva of John Evelyn deserves a prominent place. It is a Discourse of Forest Trees, and the propagation of timber in his Majesty's dominions,' and was originally read before the Royal Society in 1662. The parliamentary grantees of royalist estates, feeling their tenure insecure, had made enormous waste of the timber on them, cutting down and selling in all parts of the country. Thus, at the Restoration, there was an alarming dearth of good timber for ship-building; and yet the preservation and increase of the fleet were matters of prime necessity: The Admiralty consulted with the King, who referred the matter to the Royal Society, and Evelyn's treatise was the result. It was the first book printed by order of the Society. Evelyn was a great planter himself, and his successors at Wotton, his estate in Surrey, have to this day religiously observed his precepts. The publication of the Sylva (1664) led to an immense development of planting all over England. Another interesting tract, from the same hand, entitled An Apology for the Royal Party, in the form of a Letter to a person of the late Councel of State,' was written in November, 1659. This was a bold action, for to speak for the King had been prohibited. The indignant vehemence of eloquent invective against the whole Puritan party, Presbyterians, Independents, Quakers, and all, is surprising in the gentle and polished Evelyn. Among the pamphlets of the time, the terrible energy of destroying hate has given a certain notoriety to the Killing no Murder' of Colonel Titus. This ultra-Republican, the Nihilist of the seventeenth century, thus addresses Cromwell :-"To your highness justly belongs the honour of dying for the people; and it cannot choose but be an unspeakable consolation to you in the last moments of your life to consider with how much benefit to the world you are likely to leave it. It is then only, my lord, the titles you usurp will be yours. You will then be, indeed, the deliverer of your country, and free it from bondage little inferior to that from which Moses delivered his. The writer says that the true remedy against a tyrant is Ehud's dagger'; and that assassination is better than an open attack; for it is clearly unreasonable to hold that 'it would be lawful for me to destroy a tyrant with hazard, blood, and confusion, but not without.' 79a. Dryden's Essay on Dramatic Poesy (1668) is the first sample of really valuable literary criticism that we possess. The striking and graphic exordium' brings four literary friends naturally together, Dorset (Eugenius), Sir R. Howard (Crites), Sir Charles Sedley (Lisideius), and Dryden (Neander); a conversation among them on poetry and the drama arises no less naturally; and when their boat lands them at 'Somerset stairs' in the evening, we have listened to the vigorous assertion by Lisideius of the superiority of the French stage in all things, to the vindication by Crites of the claims of blank verse, and to the qualified assertion by Neander of the superior advantages of rime. In the argument of the latter occurs a noble passage on Shakspere. In words, Dryden ranks Ben Jonson almost on a level with Shakspere; but when we read his deliberate critical estimate of each, it is manifest that he is as fully alive to the unapproached elevation of Shakspere as we are at the present day. Edward Philips, whose mother was Milton's sister, composed, besides many other works, a Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum, or a Complete Collection of the poets... of all ages' (1685). Hallam thought meanly of this production; yet the notices of some of the poets, e.g. Shakspere and Spenser, are not without interest. Philips also wrote a Life of John Milton (1694). 1 Extract Book, art. 104. Gerard Langbaine, of University College, Oxford, is the earliest of our dramatic historians. His work, entitled An Account of the English Dramatick Poets, was published in 1691. Thomas Rymer wrote two critical treatises, The Tragedies of the last Age considered and examined by the Practice of the Ancients (1678), and A Short View of Tragedy, . . . with some Reflections on Shakespear (1693). Rymer is severe upon the moderns, but his strokes are feeble. He was better employed in the next age in editing the great compilation of public documents and State papers of all kinds known as 'Rymer's Fœdera.' Physical Science. 80. The present Royal Society, incorporated with a view to the promotion of physical science in 1662, arose out of some scientific meetings held at Oxford in the rooms of Dr. Wilkins,' the President of Wadham College. They soon had the honour of numbering among their fellows the great Newton, some of whose principal discoveries were first made known to the world in their Proceedings. Newton was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge; in the chapel of which society may be seen a noble statue of him by Roubillac, with the inscription, Qui genus humanum ingenio superavit.' A History of the Royal Society, by Thomas Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, appeared in 1667. Isaac Newton, the son of a Lincolnshire yeoman, distinguished himself at Cambridge soon after the Restoration by his extraordinary mathematical ability. In 1686 he gave to the world his theory of universal gravitation in the Philosophic Naturalis Principia Mathematica, commonly called 'Newton's Principia.' His Treatise on Optics, being a theory of light and colours, first appeared in 1704. In the quarto edition of his works, edited by Horsley (1779-85), the fifth volume contains his non-scientific writings. The chief of these are, The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms amended, and Observations upon the Prophecies; in this last work are many curious and fanciful interpretations, and accounts of imagined fulfilments. He also wrote An Historical Account of two notable Corruptions of Scripture,' referring to the passage on the three heavenly witnesses (1 John v. 7), and that beginning ös épavepwon in 1 Tim. iii. 16. His Letters (to Oldenburg, Huygens, &c.) are admirable for their force, clearness, and sagacity. In the previous generation, Thomas Lydiat, fellow of New College, Oxford, an astronomer, had published a Prælectio Astronomica (1605), and addressed to Savile an Epistola Astronomica (1621) on the measure 1 John Wilkins, Cromwell's brother-in-law, was an upright, courageous, humane man; very intelligent and inquiring. He was warden of Wadham College, Oxford, and afterwards master of Trinity, Cambridge. In his Discovery of a New World he speculated on the possibility of the moon's being inhabited, and of human beings making their way thither. He also wrote propounding a Philosophical Language. (Hallam, iv.) ment of the solar year. Johnson names him in the Vanity of Human Wishes as an example of struggling and ill-rewarded genius. Sir Kenelm Digby, son of the Everard Digby who was executed for his share in the Gunpowder Plot, was brought up a Protestant, but returned when grown to manhood to the religion of his father. After suffering imprisonment and exile in the cause of Charles I., he was allowed to return to England by the Protector, with whom he came to be on intimate terms. He is the author of a Treatise on the Nature of Bodies (cir. 1645), a Conference about a Choice of Religion (1638), a fanciful tract On the Cure of Wounds by the Powder of Sympathy (1658), and many other works. (Encyclopædia Britannica.) He 80a. A few words must be given to some minor writers who have not found a place in our classifications. Thomas Killigrew, the son of a Middlesex baronet, was from early life attached to the Stuart court; there is frequent mention of him in Pepys' Diary. Italian opera was first domiciled in London through his instrumentality. He wrote several comedies and tragi-comedies, printed in fol. in 1664, and now forgotten. Sir George Mackenzie, whom Dryden calls in his Essay on Satire that noble wit of Scotland,' was a staunch loyalist. James II. could not bring him into his plans for a toleration of the Scotch Catholics; nevertheless he stood up alone in the convention parliament at Edinburgh to oppose the resolution that the king had forfeited his crown. wrote poetry and several moral essays, one on the advantages of Solitude as compared with Public Employment (1664); to this Evelyn wrote an answer. Hallam calls his essays 'empty and diffuse'; but this is rather hard measure. At any rate he seems to have been the first Scotchman who attained to a decent prose style. His Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland from the Restoration were first printed in 1821. The poems of John Pomfret appeared in 1699. 'Perhaps,' says Johnson, 'no composition in our language has been oftener perused than Pomfret's Choice.' Yet The Choice to modern notions is a poor and commonplace poem. Its quality may be judged by the opening lines: I'd have a clear and competent estate, Roger L'Estrange is the author of the spirited ballad Loyalty Confined.' He was an indefatigable pamphleteer, and holds a high place among the patriarchs of journalism, having set up The News' and The Intelligencer' in 1663, and 'The Observator' in 1679. He lived to a great age, and was eighty years old when he was arrested (1696) on a charge of plotting against William's government. 343 CHAPTER V. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1. WE will commence, as in the last period, with a brief summary of the political history. The opening of the century beheld the firm establishment of the state of things brought in at the Revolution of 1688, by the passing of the Act of Settlement, limiting the succession to the crown to Sophia, wife of the elector of Hanover, and the heirs of her body, being Protestants. Upon the accession of Anne in 1702, a Tory ministry came into power for a short time. But its principal member-the able and unprincipled Godolphin-passed over to the Whigs, and it was Whig policy which engaged the nation in the war of the Spanish succession. Marlborough, the great Whig general, was closely connected with Godolphin by marriage. Everyone has heard of the victories of Blenheim, Ramillies, and Oudenarde. The Whig ministry was dismissed in 1710, and their Tory successors, Harley Earl of Oxford, and St. John Lord Bolingbroke, concluded the peace of Utrecht in 1713. But at the death of Anne in the following year the Tory ministers, who showed symptoms of favouring the claims of the Pretender (the son of James II.), were at once hurled from power, and the long period of Whig rule commenced, which only ended with the resignation of Sir Robert Walpole, in 1742. This celebrated minister practically ruled the country for twenty-one years, from 1721 to 1742, during which period England, through him, preserved peace with foreign powers; and such wars as arose on the Continent were shorter and less destructive than they would otherwise have been. But in 1741 the temper of the country had become so warlike that a peace policy was no longer practicable, and Walpole was forced to succumb. The administration which succeeded, in which the leading spirit was that fine scholar and high-minded nobleman, Lord Carteret (afterwards Earl Granville), engaged in the Austrian succession war on the side of Maria Theresa. England played no very distinguished part in this war, the success at Dettingen (1743) |